But evidently he hadn’t.
Robert limped as fast as he could to the couch and sat, not caring about the soot that puffed up around him as he did.
Hands trembling, he grabbed the album and opened it to the first page.
It was the same black-and-white photograph as before, depicting a smiling Father Callahan and a stern-faced Sean Sommers. Robert flipped to the next page, his hands shaking so much that the jiggling photo was making him nauseated. He wasn’t sure why, but he was suddenly terrified.
The next photograph was of a child of about six years, sitting on the floor of the church. Robert didn’t recognize her, and quickly turned the page. The next photograph was almost identical, only the girl was younger than the first. He flipped through the next few images waiting for something to justify his rapid heartrate and the sweat on his brow. It appeared that Father Callahan had taken a picture of everyone that he had rescued or housed over the years, young or old.
Kendra, the little girl that he had played hide-and-seek with in his memories, was the seventh girl. Robert ran his finger gently over her image, hearing her voice in his head.
‘Quick, in here!’
They had been friends, he was sure of it, even if she had been much different than he—outgoing, strangely mature for her age.
Where are you now, Kendra?
A tear slipped from his cheek and landed on her face. He wiped it away, then turned to the next photograph before he became overwhelmed with emotion. It wasn’t so much that he longed for a friend that he barely remembered, but that he longed for just remembering.
The woman was older than the others, in her late-twenties, maybe, and unlike the girls, she wasn’t smiling. Robert leaned in close, squinting at the photo.
It looks like…like…
He dropped the album.
It was Christine, the one that he had been hiding from that fateful day with Kendra. But it was also the woman from Carson’s cell, the one that had been holding Father Callahan’s hand.
Robert gasped.
She had been at the church under Father Callahan’s care, she had to have been, but something terrible had happened to her—he knew this, like he’d known that the book would be in the secret room. Something had happened that had sent her on a different path, had turned her against Father Callahan, and in the process made her a useful pawn for Carson and Leland.
His brother and his father.
Robert shuddered, and quickly flipped the page. The next photograph was of two girls, twins, their matching gap-toothed smiles aimed directly at the camera.
Not recognizing them, Robert quickly flipped the page. There was a reason why Father Callahan had left this stashed away, a reason that he wanted him to see it. And it wasn’t for Christine, or Kendra, or even…
Robert’s train of thought froze as he found himself staring at his own image as a young boy. He had never seen a photo of himself this young. His hair was stark white, cut straight across his forehead, and he had a small, upturned nose and heavy cheeks. Unlike the girls, however, he wasn’t smiling. Holding a small truck in his hand, he was on one knee in a room that he didn’t recognize. His dark eyes were locked on the camera, but they also seemed to be looking through it.
Robert swallowed hard and inspected the image closely, trying to figure out if there was something in it that he was supposed to see. In the background, he made out a small cot with what looked like sheets balled up at the end of it, but the rest of the image was blanketed in shadows.
What? What is it that you wanted me to see, Father?
Breathing rapidly now, Robert turned to the next photograph, the final one of the album.
His face sunk, his heart dropped into his stomach. In the photo, her face was different, younger, rounder.
But it was her.
“No,” he moaned. “It’s impossible.”
Chapter 26
“Got the book,” Aiden said, his voice and demeanor as cold and deadpan as ever.
Sean looked up and couldn’t help but smile. It had been at least a decade since he had given the book to Father Callahan with strict instructions not to show it to anyone. At the time, the man in the cloak had said it was necessary, that it should never be in the same place as a Guardian. Back then, Sean had just shrugged and agreed. But now…now that he knew the power of the book, he realized that he had missed it.
That he had longed for it.
Sean reached out and took the book from Aiden, his hand subconsciously caressing the rough leather cover. His fingers began to trace the letters engraved on the cover—Inter vivos et mortuos—and he felt his smile grow.
It was the book—the book that had started it all.
“Good. Did you see Robert? Was he there?”
Aiden stared at him.
“No. He wasn’t there. Just the book.”
Sean screwed up his face. He was beginning to think that getting the man involved in this was a mistake, just as the man in the cloak had told him. Still, he had served his purpose: he had helped him with the Harlops, at Pinedale, and at Seaforth. He had even dealt with his brother.
But Sean had underestimated the man, that much was certain. He was just an accountant, and he was never supposed to have been this involved—and Sean had told him too much.
An image of Robert in Seaforth, his hands up, demanding that the guard stop, flashed in his mind.
And then there was that, too—whatever it was.
“Any idea where he is?” he asked absently. Aiden was good, but he had a sneaking suspicion that if Robert wanted to remain lost, he would manage it.
There was just so much about the man that even Sean didn’t know.
Aiden shook his head.
“No. He hasn’t returned to the estate, either, as far as I can tell.”
Sean, still caressing the cover, thought about that for a moment.
If he wasn’t at the estate, then where was he? Part of the reason why he had given the man the house was so that he could keep his eye on him. And that was what the money was for, too. It was all about making sure that he stayed put, that if he ever needed him again, then he would be there.
That if anyone other Carson types came looking for a Guardian, that Sean would know exactly where he was.
But now he was gone, and if the pressure in Sean’s chest was any indication, this wasn’t over yet.
As long as Leland was still hanging around on the shores of the Marrow, this would never end. The only way to make him leave, as far as the book was concerned, was for him to absolve the self.
And Sean couldn’t envision a scenario in which that actually happened.
“You want me to keep an eye on the estate? The others?”
Sean contemplated this for a moment.
“No…yes,” he corrected himself.
Thoughts of Robert in Seaforth, doing that strange thing with his hands, ordering the quiddity to stand down, came to him again.
That wasn’t in the book.
Maybe there are other options for Leland, and for Robert, too, Sean thought.
He shook his head, and stroked the cover of the book even more aggressively.
Maybe there is more to learn than what is in the book.
“Yes,” Sean agreed, more strongly this time. “Keep an eye on Robert’s friends. And if he comes back, let me know—let me know right away.”
PART III – Intractable
Chapter 27
“He’ll come,” Jonah said, nodding vigorously. Blood still dripped from his head, a slow, steady stream, forcing him to continually wipe it away with the back of his hand.
Shelly had brained him pretty good, Cal realized, as he stared at the four-inch cut that ran from the top of his head to just above his eyebrow. She had brained him good, but it hadn’t seemed to even faze the little fucker. If anything, it only seemed to make him even more despicable.
Cal shook his head.
“No—no he won’t. He left and isn’t coming back,” Cal said, t
rying not to sound dejected. He tensed his hands, and the rope holding them together bit into his wrists. He glanced over for support from Shelly, who was also tied to one of the kitchen chairs, her chin to her chest, but she remained silent.
“Oh, he’ll be back, all right,” Jonah contended.
Cal and Shelly were in the sitting room, both tied to a chair, with Jonah standing in front of them, the broken tripod gripped in his hand like a spear. Allan was lying face down on the floor, still unconscious. A dinner plate-sized pool of blood surrounded his mouth and nose from where Jonah had struck him. He was so completely and utterly still that the only thing convincing Cal that he was still alive was the bubbles that formed in the blood every few seconds when he exhaled.
And then there were the dead.
There were eleven of them, all told, all in various states of decay. They stood behind him and Shelly, not terribly unlike how the men in the prison had been standing—their hands limp at their sides, heads hung low, and unlike Allan on the floor, not breathing.
“You seem pretty fucking sure of yourself.”
Jonah giggled.
“Yep, yep, yep. Robert’ll come.”
Cal gritted his teeth. The selfish part of him hoped that Robert did show up, that he put this man and the quiddity behind him in their place. But despite their recent differences, he still loved the man. He wouldn’t have blamed Robert if he was gone, to have forever left this filth in the rearview.
If anyone had reason to up and be a hermit, it would’ve been Robert. The only thing the man had left was…well, him and Shelly. And Cal wasn’t sure that they were worth whatever the man in the bloodstained Mickey Mouse t-shirt before him had in store.
“Give it up, you freak. Robert’s gone, he doesn’t give a shit about us. So why don’t you just tell your fucking dead goons to touch us and send us on our way, how about that? Send us to see the fucking Goat, Leland, whatever the hell he is. Cause when I get there, I know exactly what choice I’m going to make.”
Cal looked over at Shelly when he spoke, but she couldn’t hold his gaze.
She was crying.
Jonah, on the other, was amused.
“Oh, I can’t really tell them what to do. Only Carson can do that. But I guess…if Robert…” the man hesitated before continuing, “No, he’ll be back. He’ll be back.”
“Wait—Carson? Carson?” Now it was Cal’s turn to laugh. “Now you’ve really fucking lost it, bud. Carson’s dead. I don’t know how you managed to tell these fucking spirits to do your bidding, but I can assure you that it wasn’t Carson who did it.”
“You’re wrong. Carson Ford is very much alive. In fact, he should be—” Jonah checked his watch. “—he should be here very soon.”
Cal leaned as far forward in his chair as his bindings would allow and eyed up Jonah in an attempt to determine if he was, in fact, insane.
Carson was dead—Sean had told him so. Sean had told him that Robert himself had killed him—shot him dead. His own brother, which was the reason why Cal figured that Robert had left them, to try and deal with what he had done.
Carson couldn’t be alive…could he?
No, Cal concluded. Jonah was just a run-of-the-mill psychopath—a demented psychopath who somehow managed to order the dead around to do his bidding.
He shook his head.
“You’re wrong, Elmer Fudd. Robert ain’t coming.”
Jonah giggled again.
“Wanna know how I know he’s coming?” he asked.
“Oh, please, do tell.”
Jonah hooked a chin over to Shelly, who was now staring intently. She hadn’t said anything for a long while now, and Cal hoped that she would pipe up with a biting remark, showing that she was still okay. That she was still Shelly. But she didn’t; Shelly remained silent.
“Because of her.”
And this time Shelly did reply, but her response lacked the vehemence that Cal expected.
“He won’t come back just for me,” she said softly. “He’s staying away because of me.”
“No, no, silly girl. Not because of you, but because of the baby in your belly.”
Cal recoiled.
“Wha—Shelly, what’s he talking about?”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “He doesn’t know anything.”
But Shelly’s expression belied her words: her face drooped and her jaw went slack. And in that moment, Cal knew what Jonah said was true.
It can’t be.
But it could be, and it was. Shelly being pregnant explained her weight gain, her wild, even for her, mood swings.
“Oh, you’re pregnant all right,” Jonah said. He flicked his tongue out and wagged it, spraying blood on his chin. “I can smell it on ya.”
Chapter 28
Robert knew there was something wrong even before he made it to the front gate outside the Harlop Estate.
It was his chest—pressure was building just behind his breastbone, making it difficult for him to take a full breath. It was a sensation he had felt before, and he was becoming oddly comfortable with the implications: there were quiddity here, which meant that Shelly and Cal and Allan were in danger.
He pulled the door to Marv’s Tempo open even before it was fully stopped. Then he squeezed through the opening in the gate, thankful that he didn’t have to engage the squeaky motorized mechanism. As he neared the front of the house, he stooped low, a difficult act given his aching body, and stuck to the shadows by the edge of the fountain.
The light in the front room was on, and as he neared the sitting room window, he caught sight of a man tied to a chair.
“No,” he whispered as he continued to move. It was Cal, and the man’s face was sunken.
Then he saw the dead hovering behind him, and Robert froze.
***
“He won’t come back, because he doesn’t even know!” Shelly shouted, suddenly recanting her objections to the fact that she was pregnant. “You fucking psycho! It doesn’t matter what you do to us, because Robert is not coming back! Tell Carson he’s going to need to find someone else to participate in his sick game—to open the rift in the Marrow.”
Cal didn’t like the way Jonah was staring down his long nose at Shelly, all the demented humor suddenly gone from his face. As he watched, the man put his tongue back into his mouth.
“Don’t call me a psycho,” he said quietly. Cal watched as Jonah tightened his grip on the broken camera tripod leg.
“Fuck you, you fucking psycho!”
The man took a step toward Shelly, holding the tripod out in front of him like a lance.
“Don’t,” he ordered.
“Psycho,” Shelly spat back.
Jonah moved quickly for such a big man, closing the distance between them in a fraction of a second. Then he brought the sharp end of the broken tripod legs down in a sweeping arc.
“No!” Cal shouted, but even flexing as hard as he could against the ropes, there was nothing he could do.
Shelly screamed, and Cal expected to see a geyser of blood. To his relief, it appeared as if the man had missed his mark.
“Please,” he begged, “don’t—”
But then Jonah moved to one side and Cal realized that the man hadn’t missed; he had found his mark. Only he had more sinister intentions than just gutting her.
The front of Shelly’s blouse had been sliced open, revealing her full breasts behind a lacy black bra.
“No!” Cal shouted, but was helpless to watch as Jonah lunged at her bare skin, his full weight nearly toppling the chair.
He sucked and kissed at her breasts like a wild animal. When he tore her bra off, revealing her small, dark nipples, Cal looked away, tears streaming down his face.
“Get the fuck off of her!” he yelled. He pulled so hard against the ropes that bound his hands that he felt blood start to drip into his palms.
It was no use; whatever kind of fucked up Jonah was, whatever midget brain that he had in his bald head, he had experience tying peo
ple up.
Shelly screamed again, which was quickly followed by more of the man’s disgusting wet, lapping sounds.
“Get off her!” Cal shouted again. His ankles were also tied, but he was still able to flex his feet. He drove his toes into the floor, causing the chair to rise up a few inches, before coming down hard again. He repeated this motion, desperately trying to smash the chair’s old wooden legs. On the third or fourth try, he heard a crack, but the wood held. When he tried to propel himself upward again, harder this time, ignoring the pain in his bound limbs, one of the quiddity suddenly stepped in front of him.
The ghost was hideous—half of her face was missing. To his horror, Cal realized that he could see directly into her head through her face. His guts roiled as he expected to see a brain, pulsating maybe, or a bloody wound therein, but instead it appeared as if her head had been hollowed out, like an eggshell. When she looked at him, he saw the ragged end of the optic nerve leading from the eye on that side of her head flap like tinsel in the wind.
Cal could stand the sight no longer, and he turned his face away, tasting vomit rise in his throat. But before he allowed himself the sweet release, the front door to the estate suddenly flew open, drawing his gaze up again.
“Get the fuck off her,” Robert demanded as he rushed into the room.
Chapter 29
The hideous troll with the bloody forehead leapt off Shelly and tried to turn, but at some point he had dropped his trousers and they caught around his knees.
He fell flat on his face.
As he scrambled to his feet, Cal was shocked to see that the man was smiling.
“See? I told you he would come. It’s just too bad that I didn’t get my chance to do the same.” He looked at Shelly, who was bare-chested and sobbing. “But I will soon, don’t you worry, sweetie.”
Robert rushed toward the man, fists balled at his sides. Jonah had something in his hand, something that reflected in the lights, but Robert was so blinded by fury that he didn’t appear to notice.
Scarsdale Crematorium (The Haunted Book 4) Page 12
