“You want to know about Leland?” the man demanded with his scratchy voice.
Robert nodded.
“For starters.”
Sean shot a look over at the Cloak, but it was obvious even to Robert who was the subordinate here. As uncomfortable as he looked, there was no way that he was going to challenge the Cloak.
The man sighed heavily.
“Leland Black is the embodiment of pure evil, a coalescence of all of the most primal of emotions: lust, anger, pain, love, all of these wrapped up into an idea of a human being. He wasn’t always this way, but a long time ago, something happened to him, something that changed him. You see, some people are selfish, obsessed with the self, with the idea of being unique. But we aren’t unique; humans aren’t unique. We are but worker bees in possession of a hive mind. The idea of self-awareness is just a blip, an evolutionary mistake, one that makes us think that there is such thing as a self.”
Robert tried to wrap his mind around this idea; it was one that he had heard before, but he had yet to fully come to terms with it. And it was his brother, Carson Black of all people, who had first spouted this rhetoric.
No self? How can that be? I am…I am me, aren’t I?
“Think of Leland as the id, without the protecting oversight of the ego. He truly is evil, and believes that by opening the rift, by proving to everyone that dying isn’t just a one-way street, that he can transform this Earth. In reality, however, if he succeeds, he will destroy it.”
Robert looked over at Cal, who was staring so intently that there were creases forming all over his forehead.
“The thing about Leland,” the Cloak continued, clearing his voice, “is that he has harnessed the power of the Marrow, powers that no man should be in possession of. And it has changed him even further. Now when you look at Leland, you see your greatest fear embodied.”
“Wait, what?” Cal asked.
Robert was also incredulous. He swallowed hard, remembering the horror of seeing Leland lift his head, of showing him his face.
And that face had been Robert’s.
What the hell does it mean?
“Leland embodies your fear, latches on to it and uses it to control you. The most susceptible are the insecure, the outcasts, the evil ones themselves.”
“Like Jonah and Michael,” Cal whispered.
The Cloak ignored the comment, but Robert was thinking the same thing.
“The Marrow must remain closed. The evil harbored therein must stay locked away. We have to do everything in our power to keep it that way. It is our duty as Guardians.”
Robert was suddenly sweating, and he wiped it from his brow. He licked his tacky lower lip and then turned to look at Aiden, who was staring out the window. He wondered what the man was thinking, what he thought about all this, given that he was dead.
“What do you see when you look at him?” Robert nearly gasped. “What do you see?”
The Cloak turned his gaze back to the windshield without saying anything. The pause went on for so long that Robert thought the man was going to refrain entirely.
But then he spoke, and his words took Robert’s breath away.
“I see you, Robert. I see your face.”
Robert started to tremble, and he pictured not him, but this man in the cloak, this small man with the stooped spine and the gravelly voice, on the beach approaching the Goat.
And then looking up and seeing Robert’s face beneath that wide-brimmed hat.
Helen, who had been quiet for so long that Robert had almost forgotten that she was in his head, finally spoke up.
But what she said wasn’t anything that Robert expected.
He’s a woman.
Robert’s jaw dropped.
“What?” he whispered out loud. Cal shot him a glance, but he ignored the look.
What?
Look at the way she moves, the small hands. The Cloak isn’t a man; it’s a woman.
Robert stared at the cloaked person in front of him, trying to observe his mannerisms, his posture.
You know what? he thought. I think you’re right.
But that didn’t change the fact that Robert himself was the woman’s greatest fear.
Chapter 33
“What are we doing here, Carson?” Michael asked, his voice dripping with annoyance. Carson didn’t answer right away. Instead, he simply gazed out of the window at the massive brick structure before them.
It had been a time since he had been to Sacred Heart Orphanage. A long, long time. Back then, he had been but a child, learning the details of the Marrow, of the afterlife that he would soon thereafter abandon.
It was even before Sean had taken him to the church. Father Callahan’s church.
A smile crossed his face as he remembered the man spread eagle on the floor of his cell. The priest deserved that. After all, he had let him go; he was to blame for Sean leaving him with those horrible junkie stepparents.
Carson shook his head, and looked at the place. There were souls here, dead souls. Important dead souls.
Young, but powerful.
His patented Cheshire grin began to form on his thin lips.
“Carson? I asked what we’re doing here.”
Carson turned, but instead of offering a response, he looked at Bella first.
“Open the back of the truck, get things ready.”
Bella nodded, and immediately pulled her door open. Although she hated being ordered around, he could tell that she felt the power of this place.
She knew what was at stake.
Carson turned to Michael next.
“This isn’t going to be easy, Michael—we’re going to need your help.”
Michael’s expression soured.
“Help with what? It seems all I’ve been doing is helping you and your girlfriend, but I am getting nothing out of it.”
Carson’s smile grew.
Michael reminded him of a much younger version of himself, despite the fact that the man was older than he was.
“Today is a glorious day, Michael. Today, Daddy’s coming home.”
***
The halls were empty, seemingly undisturbed since the last time anyone had been in the orphanage.
Since Carson himself had been in there.
There were still dark streaks of blood on the floor, long tracks of the dried liquid marking the hallways.
Back then, no one had known that they were even here, so no one had known to clean up after them. And the kids had already been lost souls, so there’d been no one to look for them, either.
As Carson made his way down the hallway, he tried to ignore the dust that his footsteps made airborne.
“Keep walking,” he instructed Ed and Hugh, who not only had their hands bound behind their backs, but were also tied to each other.
The men shuffled forward, and Carson looked around. Bella was on one side, Michael on the other. The twenty dead souls that he had ordered into the back of the truck were treading behind them like some sort of winding worm.
The smile that had formed on Carson’s face in the truck remained plastered on his face. Despite what had happened at Seaforth, things were looking up.
Leland was ready, and Carson almost had everything he needed to bring him home.
They continued to make their way down the main hall, and while it looked like Carson was just wandering aimlessly, he wasn’t.
He knew exactly where he was going.
They passed several old-fashioned classrooms, and Carson went over to one of them and peered through the dusty glass.
“No,” he muttered. “Not this one.”
They passed two more, identical to the first. When they came to the fourth window, something in Carson’s chest started to tighten. He didn’t need to see the brown stains covering the concrete just outside the door to know that this was the right one.
“This is the room,” he said. “Michael, open the door and lead our guests in. This is the spot.”
He could
n’t keep the excitement from his voice. As Michael led Ed and Hugh into the room, Bella pulled him close.
“Are you sure this is going to work? I mean, they’ve been dead for so long…haven’t they passed over already?”
Carson shook his head.
“They aren’t normal kids, Bella. They are Guardians. They don’t follow the same rules as everyone else…which is why Leland has been able to stay on the shores for so long.”
Bella’s face was smooth, soft, and Carson leaned down and kissed her on the lips.
“It’s going to happen this time, Bella. I know it is.” He put a finger to his chest. “I can feel it.”
He also knew that if his plan worked, then it would create such an energy pulse that all of the remaining Guardians would feel it. And the bastards would have no choice but to come. And when they did, Carson and his army would be waiting.
“Go on in,” he instructed, and Bella entered with Carson following closely after. Once inside, he surveyed the room.
It was much how he remembered it from all those years ago. The simple, wooden desks, the chalkboard, the leaden windows. There was more dust on everything now, but he thought he could still make out the Latin words that the teacher had written on the chalkboard.
Inter vivos et mortuos.
Yes, this most definitely was the place.
He turned to Michael.
“I need you to take the two detectives and put them in the corner. I want them to see this, to know what happened here today.”
Michael nodded and shoved the older detective roughly in the back. Then Carson started to move the desks to the sides of the room. Bella joined in, and in only a few minutes they had cleared the center. Satisfied, Carson walked to the middle and started to remove his clothes.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Ed demanded. Michael drove his fist into the man’s gut, and he buckled. He reared back to punch him again, but Carson stopped him.
“That’s enough, Michael.”
The man frowned, but instead of punching, he shoved them both to the floor. They grunted as they landed roughly on the hard surface.
Even though Ed had been the one who had been struck, it was Hugh who was breathing in short gasps, unable to catch his breath.
After removing his clothes, Carson folded them neatly and then placed them on one of the desks. Then he went back to the center of the room and took a seat, cross-legged, hands on his thighs.
“Bella, I need you to guide me again,” he said, and then closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He waited, sensing her trepidation. With a nod of his head, he encouraged her.
It was time.
Somewhere far away, he heard Bella’s voice, but he didn’t concentrate on it. Instead, he focused on the dead, instructing them to enter the room, to form a circle around him.
In his mind, he saw them do his bidding, and then reach out and hold each other’s hands like some sort of grotesque Ring Around the Rosie.
When their hands met, he felt a pressure start to build inside his chest.
Good, this is good.
Then he focused on Bella’s voice, and went deeper than he had ever been before.
Chapter 34
“What the fuck is this?” Agent Brett Cherry mumbled. He reached over and grabbed his flask, tried to take a sip, but realizing that it was empty, threw it to the ground. “What the fuck is this?”
Blinking madly, he rubbed at his eyes. For a second, he thought he was drunk, passed out, and was imagining things. He actually pinched his arm, but the sharp pain confirmed that he was, indeed, awake.
Even though they had had a head start, Brett had caught up to the truck about ten minutes before it pulled into the orphanage parking lot. He knew it was the truck based on the weight of the vehicle, the way it was lower on the back axis, and the tracks that it made on the derelict road and driveway matched those outside the crematorium. But if he needed further proof, then all he had to wait for was the lithe lady with the stern expression and strange short haircut to hop out of the truck and open the back. It was nearly dark out, but the sliver of light the moon provided was just enough for Brett to make out what was in the truck.
“Fuck is this?” he said for what felt like the hundredth time.
Ed and his partner Hugh were pulled out of the back, their hands bound behind them. Ed slipped, pulling the both of them to the ground.
Brett swore again, and resisted bolting from his car.
He had parked far from the truck, pulling up behind a tree a quarter mile away. And now he was looking at his old friend through a pair of small binoculars. He pulled them away from his face when Ed landed hard in the mud, and turned his eyes skyward. He wished he had some night vision goggles, because in under an hour, the orphanage will be bathed in darkness.
But he hadn’t thought this far ahead. In fact, he hadn’t thought he would be on the road at all today.
Brett put the lenses back to his face and continued watching. The woman took the two detectives around the front of the truck, and then the doors opened. Brett recognized the first as Michael Young, followed by a thin man that he had never seen before. As they started toward the entrance of Sacred Heart, he almost followed them with his eyes. But something in his periphery, motion from the back of the truck, caused him to stop short.
There were more people in there.
But they weren’t people, not really.
The bodies were moving strangely, all angular, twitchy, and they literally fell out of the truck. Squinting hard, Brett could see that they were all pale, bordering on gray, with clothes that were either torn or nonexistent.
And that said nothing of their faces, their completely black eyes, the dark blue veins that covered their heads and bodies like roads on a map.
Their stitches, their bruises.
He suddenly felt sick, remembering Kendra in the swamp.
His first thought—hope, really—was that they would lie in the mud where they fell, and he could chalk it all up to an alcoholic mirage.
But that wasn’t the case. One by one they rose, pulling themselves from the mud, not bothering to wipe away the thick clumps. And then they wordlessly stumbled after the others.
For a full minute after the truck had finally been abandoned, Brett just sat and watched. And then he reached for his flask again, before remembering that it was still empty.
“Fuck this shit,” he said, as he pulled his car door open. “Fuck all of this shit.”
And then he headed after them, pushing Director Ames’s words from his mind.
Chapter 35
“It’s happening,” Robert whispered. “Jesus, it’s happening…we need to hurry.”
He could feel a tension in his chest, as if his ribs were suddenly too small for his body. He looked over at Cal, and was surprised to see that the man was staring at him, a queer expression on his face. For an instant, he felt bad for his old friend, as the man clearly felt left out of this whole ordeal, particularly since it had come to light that Shelly was also a Guardian.
A quick glance at Sean and the Cloak in the front seat and he knew that they felt the pressure, too.
Something was happening.
Carson was meddling again, trying to open the rift.
Sean let out a gasp and grasped at his heart.
“Carson is there, too. Shelly…Carson, they’re both at Sacred Heart.”
The Cloak muttered something under his breath.
“Why—ahh, fuck,” Robert keeled over, grunting and wheezing at the pain.
Cal reached over and laid a hand on his back.
“Robbo, you alright?”
With great effort, he managed to straighten himself out and pull in a full breath.
“Fine,” he croaked. “Why…why is Carson there?”
“He knows…he knows what happened there. He thinks he can use the dead to help him.”
Robert squinted hard.
“I though the prophecy said that only a Guar
dian—”
“There were Guardians there once, nineteen of them. But…” The Cloak’s voice broke, leaving him unable to continue.
“What do you mean? What happened—?”
Cal suddenly piped up.
“Are we seriously doing this again?”
“Doing what?” Robert asked, gritting his teeth against the pain. All of the pressure had caused his finger to burst open, and he tried desperately to apply new gauze without drawing too much attention.
“This. Barging into a fucking hell house full of ghosts without a plan.”
It seemed ridiculous, even to Robert, who was still confused about the role that Sacred Heart Orphanage played in all of this. The only thing that his research had revealed was that it used to be one of the largest orphanages in the northeast, but had been abandoned more than fifty years ago. Two decades later, a rich developer had tried to buy the place and turn it into condos, but a white knight, an undisclosed buyer, had swooped in and scooped it up before the deal was finalized. Based on everything he had read, nothing had been done with the place since.
A plan would have been nice, but there was no time. They needed to hurry before Carson—
“I have a plan,” Aiden offered from the back. It was the first time in a long while that the man had spoken, and he drew the attention of everyone in the car. “I’ll stand point with Ol’ Betsy, make sure that no one leaves the orphanage. Robert, you—”
“Wait, how do we even know the gun will work? I mean, have you tried using it since…since…?”
Aiden nodded.
“It’ll work.”
Yet despite the man’s confidence, Robert wasn’t so sure.
“Sean and Robert, you guys take the lead. Find out where Carson and Shelly are inside the orphanage. The goal is to draw Carson out, get Shelly to safety. Cloak and Cal, you go in next. Support for Sean and Robert. Remember, if you find any ghosts, stay clear.”
If?
Robert thought that it was a fairly weak plan, especially coming from Aiden. Cal evidently felt the same.
Sacred Heart Orphanage (The Haunted Book 5) Page 14
