Carson stopped laughing.
“Bella! Get down!” he cried.
Another shot exploded the second window in the classroom, and another quiddity was felled.
Carson roared in anger.
A third shot, a third smashed window. This time, however, the bullet struck Bella directly in the back as she dove to the floor.
But nothing happened.
Ed watched, his confused expression matching hers as she patted herself, looking for a wound that simply didn’t exist.
Brett, finally overcoming the shock that gripped him, whipped the gun around to Michael again. But the man had moved, and before Ed could warn his friend, Michael drove his fist into the side of Brett’s head. Agent Cherry staggered, stumbling dangerously close to the remaining quiddity.
Ed pounced, but he wasn’t in as good a shape as he had once been. It was an awkward lunge, reminiscent of the quiddity stumbling out of the truck. Michael sidestepped and then delivered two punches to Ed’s side and stomach, immediately winding him.
He crumpled into a ball, gasping for air.
“Hugh,” he tried to say, but only air came out of his mouth. “Hugh, help me.”
Michael came out of nowhere, delivering another blow, this time to his chin. Ed’s head snapped back, and he felt his teeth gnash together, covering his tongue in sawdust.
Ed fell on his ass, then collapsed against the back wall. He fought against creeping unconsciousness, knowing that if he succumbed to the darkness, he would never waken.
The teetering quiddity would get to him.
As he blinked, trying to clear his vision, he realized that there was someone hovering over him.
It was Michael, and like Carson somewhere behind him, he was smiling.
“I’m going to enjoy eating you.”
But then something flew into his side, driving him to the floor. Ed scrambled to his feet, watching as Brett rained down fists on Michael like a man possessed. A snarl from his left drew his attention, and he realized that one of the dead was inches from Hugh, who appeared frozen in place.
“No!” he shouted, grabbing his partner by the shoulders and spinning him away. As he pulled him, something whizzed by his ear and the quiddity’s left arm exploded. Like the others, he fell to the ground and started to seize.
Ed looked to his partner.
“Hugh, snap the fuck out of it!” he ordered. “Get your shit together, we have to get the fuck out of here, now!”
Hugh’s eyes went wide and he raised his hand to point, but before he could even bring it to shoulder level, Ed felt something cold and sharp slide into his body just above his hip. It was so clean, so fast, that at first he didn’t even feel any pain.
Looking down, however, he saw the glint of a blade, and the top of someone’s head, which was covered in short black hair.
Bella had gotten to him again.
Chapter 43
“Robert,” Sean gasped from his left. “What have you done?”
But Robert hadn’t done anything.
When the light blinked out, and the ambient glow returned, Robert realized that he was gripping a corpse by the throat.
Or, more specifically, Helen was gripping him.
And yet, Robert could feel the texture of his waxy skin beneath his fingers, and he could smell his foul, rotting breath on his face.
He expected to be taken to the Marrow, to see Amy again, and part of him wanted that. Then he remembered Shelly.
She’s here and she needs my help.
Helen responded by squeezing even harder, picking the dead man right off the floor. Robert had never experienced this much strength, this much power in his entire life, not even the last time Helen had taken over and together they had grabbed Carson.
“Robert.”
Helen pulled hard, and the man’s throat tore away like overcooked turkey. Then she shoved him backward, as he lay on the ground gasping. A second later, he started to twitch, not unlike the quiddity that Aiden had blasted.
They came at him all at once then, the remaining four quiddity, all with hands outstretched, desperate to tear at his living flesh. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sean back away.
“Go!” Robert shouted. “Go and save Shelly! I’ll take care of these! Hurry!”
Sean nodded, and then Robert balled his fist as they lunged at him all at once.
***
Sean couldn’t believe what he had seen.
Robert had actually grabbed the dead, and he was still here. It went against everything that he had ever read, that had ever been taught to him, that he had ever seen.
If the quiddity touched a living soul, then they would be transported to the Marrow together. It was paramount, it was idiosyncratic to the separation, the idea that the two worlds were never supposed to mix, that they could never mix.
But Robert had done just that.
Sean hurried down the hallway, his legs moving of their own accord. Confusion overwhelmed him, but he tried his best to compartmentalize these feelings.
He still had a job to do.
Squinting in the dim light, he chased toward the last spot that he had seen Shelly.
As he did, a moment of clarity suddenly struck him.
If Robert could touch them and not get sent to the Marrow, then that could only mean one thing.
Robert was already dead.
Chapter 44
Shelly had been here before. She knew that now, for a fact. She had been in Sacred Heart Orphanage when she was younger.
When something horrible had happened, when all of them had been murdered.
All but three of them.
She stumbled down the hallway, confused as to why she had come back here, her mind a mess ever since she had found the photograph of her in the church.
The one that Robert had left for her.
Her fingertips brushed against the wall as she walked, feeling the hardness of the brick, the thin layer of dust like a covering of her soul.
Robert…
She loved him, she finally realized, even though she thought that she had felt this way for some time now.
But she wasn’t sure that the feeling was mutual. There was something about him, a huge hunk of him that still clung to the past. She saw it in his face, in his eyes, in his very quiddity.
Knew it like she knew the baby inside her was a baby girl.
He hadn’t let go of Amy yet, and she wasn’t even sure that he had let go of Wendy, either.
She swallowed hard, and then felt that crushing pain in her chest again. Only now it was deeper, lower, in her guts, in her stomach. In her womb.
Shelly kept on moving, her feet barely rising off the floor now, just dusty, shuffling steps.
Her mind flashed back to that time, to the others running out of the classroom, while for some reason she had been compelled to run back in. And that was when Sean had found her.
And had brought her to the boiler room.
Which was where she was headed now, guided by long-lost memories of decades ago, like some sort of organic GPS.
Only Shelly had no idea what the arrow pointed at, where her final destination was.
Or what was waiting for her when she got there.
Chapter 45
Cal’s jaw dropped when he saw Robert, his fists covered in gore, the quiddity all around him.
“No! No, no, no!” he shouted.
Either Robert didn’t hear him, or was already on his way to the Marrow; he didn’t turn. Instead, he kept raining down punches, and tearing—there was a horrible tearing sound in the hallway—as chunks of dead flesh were tossed around.
Cal jumped to one side to avoid a hunk of hair or scalp. As he did, the camera around his neck smacked him in the chest, reminding him that it was still there.
He raised it up to his eyes, and looked through the viewfinder.
What he saw took his breath away. Nearly the entire field of vision was filled with bright light of the quiddity. Every piece of shrapnel
was glowing, peppering the field of view. But that wasn’t what made him gasp.
That was Robert himself. Instead of being dim, gray, like the man at the cemetery had been, Robert was so bright that it was difficult for Cal to look directly at him.
Robert growled and tossed more rotting flesh to the ground, as Cal pressed the trigger. At first, nothing happened. Then, the remaining thrashing quiddity started to slow, their movements becoming more labored. As did Robert’s.
The man turned to him then.
“Cal, stop…the camera,” he gasped. His voice was strange, as if it weren’t completely his. Like it someone else speaking through his mouth and lips.
Cal was torn, not sure what to do next. He kept his finger on the button.
***
Something’s happening to me, Helen thought. Something’s happening, I’m being…I’m being pulled.
Robert felt it too, although he was for some reason convinced that it was only affecting Helen and not him.
His head turned, and that was when he realized that Cal had entered the orphanage and was aiming the camera directly at him.
“Turn it off,” he tried to say, but with Helen in control of him, the words came out strange, almost garbled. “Cal, turn off the camera.”
His friend had a confused expression on his face, and when it was clear that he wasn’t going to listen, Robert felt the urge to come to the fore again.
But he had to wait—wait for the rest of the dying and dead to be gone. He didn’t, couldn’t, be in control when he was still in contact to him.
Please, Robert, you need to take over, I’m being pulled and I don’t think—
Several of the corpses that Helen had decimated turned to vapor, while others still, the ones that she hadn’t torn apart yet, started to slow, to be locked in place by the camera.
It would only be a minute or so before he was in the same boat, and he wasn’t sure if that happened if he would ever be able to take ownership of his own body ever again.
Not yet, Helen, not yet.
He felt Helen try to move, try to speak, but she couldn’t manage. She was still in charge, in control, but she was also frozen.
Robert managed to look around, and saw that there was just one more quiddity, a woman in a torn wedding dress reaching for him. Her fingers were outstretched, the nails horribly long and yellow from where the cuticle had peeled back in death.
Not yet, not yet, not yet…
He could feel Helen try to get away, to move back from the woman, but Robert’s body didn’t behave. Then the hand stopped, mere inches from his left eye, and Robert could wait no longer.
He burst forward, upward, as if desperately trying to break the surface of a body of water. At first, he just bounced back, as if the water had been covered in ice. He tried again, desperately trying to put himself back behind his eyes, in his head, in control.
For the briefest of moments, he thought that it wouldn’t be possible, that the camera had frozen the water, and that he would be trapped as an observer forever in his own body.
But then he broke through.
Robert stumbled forward, spinning just in time to avoid the woman’s outstretched claw.
“Robert!” Cal shouted.
Robert stepped over the remaining pieces of dead bodies, those that hadn’t vaporized yet, and then turned to his friend.
“What the fuck happened? What was happening to you? How did you…?” Cal rambled, the camera still held up in front of him.
Robert shook his head.
Helen? You still here?
No response.
Guilt swept over him then. Had he waited too long? He had promised the woman that he would take her to the Marrow, give her the choice like everyone else.
But not like this, not banished like—
I’m here.
Robert let out a sigh of relief.
“It wasn’t me, Cal. It was Helen—she took over. And she’s already dead, the quiddity can’t take her.”
Cal’s eyebrows knitted in confusion, but Robert also saw some semblance of understanding cross his features.
“I need to go!” Robert shouted hurrying down the hallway. “I need to find Shelly!”
“Wait! What about me! What about the fucking quiddity?”
Robert didn’t look back as he broke into a sprint.
“Stay there! Keep them at bay!”
Chapter 46
Ed collapsed on the ground, breathing heavily. His hands were covered in blood from the knife that Bella had stuck him with. Looking into her dark eyes, he knew that she wanted to keep sticking him, plugging him full of holes. But Carson had shouted to her, told her to go get Shelly, whoever the fuck that was.
And then they were surrounded again. Michael had gotten the best of Agent Cherry, and his friend was slumped beside him. Hugh was also seated, although he was still staring blankly into space, his face slack.
And the dead were all around them.
It was only a matter of time before they lunged at them again.
And when that happened, there would be nothing they could do about it.
He took a deep breath, and accepted the fact that he was going to die. Staring at Carson’s smiling face, the bowed heads of the dead children still huddled against him, Ed began to reconsider whether or not everyone had good in them.
This man, this demon conjurer, was pure evil.
Chapter 47
Sean knew where Shelly was going, even before he saw her outline up ahead. His first instinct was to call after her, to hurry and catch her, but something held him back.
It was the thought he had had while he’d been bound by Robert and his ragtag team of ghostbusters.
Shelly and her baby were what Carson needed to keep the rift open.
He pressed himself against the wall when Shelly hesitated, her head turning slightly.
She didn’t see him.
A moment later, she broke into a sprint, moving as quickly as her large body would allow, and Sean followed. Another figure appeared from a room on his left, and Sean fell even further behind.
Even though he had never met the woman, he knew who she was based on the descriptions provided by both Robert and Aiden.
The woman with the short black hair moved like some sort of cat, sliding and gliding across the floor with unprecedented dexterity. Sean reached for his pistol on his hip, but then realized that Robert had taken that away from him long ago, and he hadn’t thought about asking for it back.
He doubted that the man would have given it to him anyway.
Shelly took a sharp turn to the right, and the woman followed, not making a sound. There was no way that Shelly knew she was being followed by Bella. And yet Sean still didn’t call out, didn’t even move to warn her.
Even when Shelly went into the small boiler room and Bella followed, he just sat in wait.
He propped himself against the other side of the door and listened.
“You,” Shelly said with such disdain that Sean thought that her voice carried had an actual weight to it. “What the fuck do you want?”
“Carson says you need to come with me. He wants to have a chat.”
“Fuck him, I’m not going anywhere.”
There was a pause. The door had no window, but even if there were one, Sean wouldn’t have risked looking in. Instead, he bowed his head and continued to listen, his mind already made up.
Shelly and her child were just too dangerous.
“What are you going to do with that? Stab me? Cut my baby out? I will claw your fucking eyes out, bitch.”
Bella laughed.
“Carson wants to see you, Shelly. It’s in your best interest to come with me before I have to use this.”
Shelly growled.
“You wouldn’t do that to a pregnant…”
“Sean, what are you doing?” a gruff voice whispered from his left. Sean whipped around, hands at the ready.
He straightened his posture when he saw a cloaked f
igure approach.
“I asked you what you were doing,” the Cloak demanded, taking an aggressive step forward. “Is that Bella in there, with Shelly? Why aren’t you going to her?”
Sean subconsciously moved in front of the door, blocking his path.
“I—I can’t,” he said at last. “I need to protect the integrity of the Marrow, and every minute that the child is allowed to grow, every second it gets closer to birth, the more danger we’re all in.”
The Cloak froze.
“What—what are you saying? Sean, what are you saying?”
Sean lowered his head.
“I’m saying that she can’t—fuck, the baby can’t make it to term.”
For several seconds, the only sound that Sean heard was the two women arguing inside the boiler room.
“Get out of my way,” the Cloak demanded at last.
Sean shook his head.
“I can’t do that. I am a Guardian, and it is my duty to keep the Marrow safe. I’m sorry, I just can’t let you go in there.”
A sound came from the Cloak then, something that made Sean’s eyes water, and the hair on the back of his neck stand at attention.
It took him a while to realize that the Cloak was laughing.
“You won’t let me? ME?! I gave you your power and I can take it away!” he growled.
The bickering in the room behind Sean suddenly stopped and his heart started beating loudly in his chest.
This wasn’t how he had seen things going. Still, the Cloak was old, withered, and his time had come to an end. This was the only rational choice, even if his elder didn’t see it that way.
The Cloak took a step forward, a shuffle, and Sean readied himself.
He hadn’t wanted it to come to this.
But there was no other option.
The gates to the Marrow could never be opened.
“I gave you your power,” the Cloak repeated as he reached up and grabbed the lip of the black hood. “And I can take it away.”
In one smooth motion, the Cloak pulled the hood back, while at the same time yanking down the turtleneck.
Sacred Heart Orphanage (The Haunted Book 5) Page 16
