by Mark White
‘Poor kid.’
‘Yes. He visited once but never came back. Sam didn’t even recognise him. Anyway, as I was saying, to the outside world Sam didn’t appear noticeably troubled or mentally unstable. He worked in London for a big design agency, and by all accounts he was good at his job. According to a statement that Max gave to the police shortly after his father’s hospitalization, Sam was a good dad and appeared to have a happy marriage. Sarah evidently didn’t see it that way, as she’d been having an affair with Sam’s friend and work colleague, Tom Jackson; an affair that she managed to conceal from Sam for four years.’
‘Four years?’
‘It’s a long time, isn’t it? Sam found out in the end, of course. People always do. Apparently he caught them together outside a hotel near to his office. I believe that’s what triggered his sudden breakdown, but as you’ll see from the notes, it’s what happened next that most likely brought him here. To cut a long story short, in the days that followed Sam finding out about his wife’s affair, the most bizarre series of tragic events took place. Tom Jackson killed himself and murdered two of his work colleagues; Max’s childminder, Gracie, fell to her death down some stairs, and to top it all off, Sarah ended up committing suicide in the family bathroom.’
‘You’re joking, right?’
‘Afraid not. I admit it beggars belief, but that’s what happened. When Sam found Sarah lying in the bathtub, he proceeded to try and end his life by stabbing himself with the same pair of scissors that she’d used on herself. Hence the mask. Luckily the next door neighbour, a man called George Gransham, heard the commotion and called the police. They managed to get to Sam before he could cause any further harm to himself. Sometimes I think it might have been better for him if they’d let him finish the job.
Doctor Jarrod looked across to Sam, who continued to stare out of the window, seemingly oblivious to the conversation going on around him. ‘Can he hear us?’
‘If he can, he certainly won’t show it. He hasn’t said a word to anyone in years. When he first came here, he was understandably hysterical. He was convinced that his father was the reason why all these people had died; he believed that this William Railton was somehow using Sam as a conduit through which he could get to the others. Once they were dead, his father would reappear and enter Sam until such time that he was ready to kill again. It’s nonsense, of course: there was a room full of witnesses who saw Tom Jackson killing two people before turning the gun on himself, and the pathologist who examined Sarah’s body certified that she’d committed suicide. But Sam wouldn’t listen; he was convinced that William Railton had possessed him. That’s why he blinded himself – so that his father would no longer be able to use him as a conduit. He didn’t want anyone else to die, especially Max. I had intensive conversations with him for several weeks after he arrived here, but he wouldn’t listen to me. And then he stopped talking. He hasn’t spoken a single word since. As a psychiatrist, maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t think there’s any way back for him; no matter how intensive the therapy or the medication. Believe me, we’ve tried everything.’
‘So why did you bring me to see him?’
‘I realise I’m stating the obvious, Doctor Jarrod, but you’re new to psychiatry. I, on the other hand, have been working here for more years than I can remember. In my capacity as medical director of this hospital, I’ve been fortunate – if you can call it that - to have worked with all manner of murderers and paedophiles and serial offenders. Some of them I’ve managed to help and that gives me a great deal of job satisfaction. It’s why we do what we do. Sadly, however, for every patient I’ve successfully treated, there’ve been at least three others to whom I’ve made little or next to no difference. I’m afraid Sam Railton is merely one in a long line of failures.’
‘So you brought me here because you think I might be able to bring a fresh approach?’
Doctor Ahmed laughed and shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Doctor Jarrod. I don’t mean to be rude. I have every confidence that you’ll turn out to be a great asset to our hospital. But I didn’t bring you here for that reason. Precisely the opposite. I brought you here because I wanted to show you that the vast majority of patients in this hospital are untreatable.’
‘Isn’t that attitude slightly defeatist?’
‘Yes, but it’s also realistic. I certainly don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm, Doctor Jarrod. I’m simply trying to rebalance your expectation levels. This place is full of Sam Railtons – people who believe they have sinister voices inside their heads telling them what to do - and it’s getting busier by the month. Blackstone Hospital, just like every other high-secure facility throughout the UK, is bursting at the seams with patients who are way beyond rehabilitation. All we can do is keep them locked up, drugged up to the eyeballs so that they can’t cause any more harm to the outside world. What happened to Sam was tragic, but I’ve seen far worse. And he’s not alone. The planet is full of people like Sam; desperate souls who, for whatever reason, are unable to cope with reality and therefore choose to see the world as they want to see it. Did Sam have a miserable childhood? Yes. Did this play a part in his subsequent breakdown, pushing him over the edge of the abyss when he discovered his wife was having an affair? That explanation certainly works for me. But he’s not alone, far from it. I appreciate you’re new to all this, but I imagine you saw others just like Sam during your stint at Broadmoor.’
‘I did.’
‘Of course you did. Show me the person who hasn’t experienced at least a little pain in their life and I’ll show you a liar. And while most of us manage to stay on top of our issues and get on with the grinding task of day-to-day living, there are others for whom life simply becomes too painful to bare. Hence the drugs, the drink, the eating disorders, the affairs, the suicides; and yes, the desire to escape the horrors of reality by blaming it all on some outside entity. We’re all positioned somewhere along that spectrum. Some of us, like Sam, end up falling off the other end.’
‘Do you think he’ll ever talk to us?’
‘I doubt that very much. However, you can be sure of one thing: Sam Railton will have in his mind a version of events that differ entirely from the truth. His brain will have concocted a story which may be completely ridiculous to everybody else, but which makes perfect sense to him. He’s trapped in a fantasy world from which no amount of medication or psychotherapy will be able to free him. Probably for the best, considering what he’s been through.’
Doctor Ahmed checked his watch. ‘Lunchtime,’ he said, smiling at Doctor Jarrod. ‘You can look through Sam’s notes later. I think we’ve had enough for one morning.’
‘Okay,’ she said, returning the notes to the pouch at the end of the bed and following her boss out of the room.
When they were gone, Sam turned slowly away from the window and lifted his mask to reveal two empty, skin-filled sockets. He shuddered as he felt the presence of his father standing by the door.
‘Don’t listen to them, Sammy-boy,’ said William Railton. ‘They speak their bullshit and they walk away, leaving you to rot in here.’
Sam felt a hand clamp down on his shoulder and a mouth being pressed against his ear.
‘I won’t leave you,’ his father whispered, his foul breath clogging Sam’s nostrils. ‘You made sure of that, didn’t you boy? I’m not going anywhere, I promise. I’m stayin’ right by your side ‘til the day you draw your final breath.’
THE END
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark White was born in County Durham, England, in 1974. Like hordes of other children across the globe who grew up in the ‘innocent’, pre-internet days of the 1980s, he spent many an evening curled up in bed (in a literary sense, of course) with horror legends Stephen King and James Herbert. Having spent his twenties and thirties working in a variety of interesting and not-so-interesting jobs that took him well along the road to a mid-life crisis, he decided to do what he always wanted to do, which was to write stories that
would remain with the reader long after they had finished the last page.
Mark is married to Felicity, with whom he has a son, Leo, and a daughter, Imogen. Enter The Dead is his third novel. His first two novels are Shepherd’s Cross, a supernatural thriller that topped the Amazon UK Horror chart, and Career Break, a light-hearted look at the male mid-life crisis. All of Mark’s novels are available to purchase from Amazon.
Follow him on Twitter at #mawhitewriter or email him at [email protected]
(If you enjoyed reading this book, Mark would be very grateful if you could post a review on Amazon.)
Table of Contents
PART 1: SIGNS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
PART TWO: ENTER THE DEAD
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
PART 3: THE EVIL WITHIN
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
