Scarsdale Crematorium (The Haunted Book 4)

by Patrick Logan

  He had felt something—something in his stomach and chest, a tightness of sorts.

  “Yes,” he admitted.

  “Is it…is it Robert?”

  Sean shrugged.

  “I can’t tell. Maybe.”

  “You sure he’s okay? You have one of your men with him?”

  Sean nodded.

  “The best. He’ll be fine.”

  “How long did you tell him to watch Robert for?”

  Sean thought about this for a moment before answering.

  “I never gave him a timeframe.”

  “Good, good.” The cloaked one’s voice was rough, androgynous. A small hand snaked out from beneath the robes and took the book from Sean.

  The fingers peeled back the cover, and carefully flipped through the pages until they stopped at a very specific passage.

  “A Guardian, bound between worlds, will open the rift,” the harsh voice read. Sean knew this passage well. In fact, he knew the entire book nearly by heart. The passage that the cloaked one read now was, in his estimation, was the most important of the entire book.

  The Prophecy.

  “But the Guardian won’t be able to hold it open. Only the quiddity of a child, of a powerful child born of two Guardians, will be able to hold it open and allow souls to pass into the world of the living.”

  The cloaked one closed the book and shuddered again.

  “The worst is yet to come.” The voice was harsher than usual. It was so gruff that it grated Sean’s nerves. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette, surprised that his hand was trembling slightly.

  “The worst is yet to come, Sean. And we must be prepared for it.”

  Chapter 37

  Allan Knox awoke on a beach. It was a beautiful beach, and although his memory was clouded, he instantly knew where he was.

  The Marrow.

  As he stared at the waves lapping at the shore, Allan was suddenly struck with a nagging decision that needed to be addressed. It manifested as his own thought, but knowing what he did about the Marrow, he was aware that it was not of his own creation.

  He could dive into the Marrow and absolve him of the self, effectively refilling the quality of quiddity for those who have yet to be born.

  Allan knew what decision he should make, what decision was right. But he hesitated before making it, his eyes turning upward. The sky had acquired an orange tinge, and it looked as if fire had started to lick at the clouds’ fluffy edges.

  He could give himself to the Marrow, or he could remain whole, unique, an individual, and head into the pregnant fire in the sky.

  It was the decision of the self, the one that everyone must make on the shore. It was the realization that there was more to this world and others than the selfish desires that guided and often tainted human actions in life.

  An error in evolution.

  A mistake.

  “Before you choose,” a voice said, and Allan whipped around. Only he found himself unable to turn, his feet locked in the sand. He looked down and gasped.

  The sand was gone; in its place was a thick, black tar. But it was far from inert; there were hands in the muck, holding him in place. Feeling panic start to creep into his chest, Allan tried desperately to lift his foot. He made it a few inches from the surface before another hand reached up and pulled him back down again.

  “What’s happening?”

  A crack of thunder drew his eyes upward again.

  The sky erupted into a deep orange inferno that strangely seemed to mirror the blue water beneath. And in this fire, he saw faces—faces that bubbled and popped in and out of existence.

  “You have a choice to make,” the voice said again. Even though Allan couldn’t turn, he knew who was speaking.

  Leland Black.

  “Guilty as charged. You have a choice to make, Allan, but before you do, consider this: why did you want to find the Marrow in the first place? Because of your parents, correct? No—no, you don’t need to answer, just listen. Do you see the irony of your decision? You need to use the very thing—self-awareness, a simple glitch in the course of evolution—to decide whether not to give it up. Do you not see the irony here? The circular logic?”

  Allan felt a pressing need to make his decision, but Leland’s words gave him pause.

  “Oh, and one more thing. Ask yourself the following before you drown yourself in the Sea, Allan: what was the point of it all?”

  Chapter 38

  “Burn the bastard,” Shelly suggested as they stood over Jonah’s corpse. “Burn the fucking bastard.”

  She had since untied Robert, and had been in the process of bandaging up his finger when Cal had asked what they were going to do with the fat man’s body.

  “Seriously?”

  “Well I ain’t digging a hole big enough for that slob. Besides, he deserves to be burnt. It’s just too bad he’s already dead.”

  Robert watched as Shelly wrapped a piece of gauze over the middle knuckle, where the finger ended.

  “Shit, Robert, doesn’t it hurt?”

  Robert shrugged. It did hurt, but no more or less so than any of his dozen other injuries.

  “I’m gonna miss this finger…it was my favorite,” Shelly said, clearly trying to lighten the mood. But her voice lacked the proper intonation to be successful.

  “Sick,” Cal replied.

  He held his camera in his hand and was staring at something on the screen.

  “Check it out,” he said. He stepped over Jonah, and turned the screen so that Shelly and Robert could see.

  The first thing Robert saw was Allan lowering the camera and coming to his rescue. He delivered a solid kick, one that none of them had thought the scrawny kid would have been capable of, to Michael’s head, and Robert felt a strange sense of pride. But as the scene continued to unfold, the smile melted off his face. The quiddity—Helen, her name was Helen—no longer frozen by Allan’s camera reached out and grabbed him. His eyes went black, and his entire being started to shake.

  Cal panned away, and focused on Robert instead, who was shouting at the top of his lungs. The camera zoomed out, fitting both Robert and Allan, still clutched by the quiddity into the frame.

  The image degaussed, and when it returned to normal, the glowing quiddity started to pixelate. As Robert’s concentration deepened, the iridescent cubes began to stretch out from the crown of the woman’s head like colorful taffy, flowing toward Robert’s outstretched hand. As Robert watched his on-screen self’s eyes roll back, the colors seemed to be sucked into him. The red and yellow and orange hues leaked from Helen’s corpse until it had turned completely gray, not unlike Allan’s appearance through the red lens.

  Robert, on the other hand, was blooming.

  And then his eyes turned black and he reached out and grabbed Carson by the throat.

  Please, make it stop, Helen begged.

  Robert looked away.

  “Turn it off,” he said. When Cal ignored him, he repeated the demand, this time more forcefully.

  He obliged.

  “What happened, Robbo? We saw something like this at the cemetery and at Seaforth, but not like this. It went…it went into you,” Cal said softly.

  Robert, still looking away, winced when Shelly pushed hard to seal the bandage on his now half-finger.

  “Sorry,” she grumbled. She too was in obvious shock at what she had seen.

  Robert was conflicted. They had seen what he had done, and they could tell that he wasn’t right, that something was off.

  Cal was right, this wasn’t like Seaforth, or even the Seventh Ward.

  This was different.

  It was different because Helen was in here with him now.

  “Robert?” Shelly asked.

  “She’s…she’s in here,” he said quietly, pointing at his temple with his nub of a finger. “Somehow…somehow I sucked up her quiddity and now she’s in here.”

  Shelly made a face, and Robert didn’t blame her. He knew how he sounde
d.

  He had taken Helen’s self and combined it with his own.

  “What? How?”

  Robert shrugged.

  “I don’t know…I don’t know. All I know is that my self is now entwined with hers.”

  Cal squinted at him. Then he rubbed his face and eyes.

  “What the fuck, Robert? What does it all mean? Will she ever go to the Marrow?” Cal asked with a sigh.

  Robert shrugged.

  He couldn’t know for certain, but he had promised.

  And Helen was quick to remind him of that.

  I will get you there one day. Even if I have to find the book again and—

  With all that had happened at the estate, Robert had completely forgotten about what had happened at the church.

  And about the photo album.

  His eyes hardened as he focused on Shelly’s face.

  “I think there is something that you need to tell me,” he said, trying hard to keep his emotions in check.

  His anger.

  Her image, her round, smiling face staring up at the camera from the church floor, flashed in his mind.

  The same church where he had stayed, the part of his life that he couldn’t remember.

  Shelly just blinked, obviously taken aback by his question.

  “You have a secret, and I think it’s about time that we bring it all out in the open.”

  Shelly looked down at her feet, and then opened her mouth to answer. Only, it wasn’t her time at the church that she admitted to, but something else.

  Something that made Robert’s jaw drop.

  “Robert, I’m pregnant.”

  Epilogue

  Carson tried to wrap his arms around Bella, but she shoved him away.

  “How can you be smiling at a time like this?” she demanded, her thin eyebrows knitting. “Seriously, Carson, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  They were back in the basement of Scarsdale Crematorium, and after Carson had searched through the dead bodies and had only counted ten, he couldn’t help but smile.

  Instead of answering, he reached over and hammered the button on the side of the oven. There was an audible click, then the furnace turned on, illuminating his face in a flickering orange and yellow glow.

  “Help me with the bodies,” he said, turning to Michael. The man’s arm was wrapped in a sling made from his shirt, but he was strong, and just one hand would be enough for him to help hoist the bodies into the furnace.

  They were of no use to him now…unless…

  Michael nodded and stepped forward, but Bella reached out and blocked his path.

  “Carson? Seriously? Did you lose your fucking mind in Seaforth? We fucked up—we had our chance, and we lost it. You think that Robert’s going to let his guard down now? You think we’ll ever get close again?”

  When he still didn’t answer, she took a deep breath.

  “Carson! What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Michael pushed by her, and together they grabbed the first body. With a grunt, and Carson shouldering most of the weight, they put it on the lip before shoving it all the way inside.

  Then he took a step backward and watched as the flames started to lick at the underside of the body.

  Bella grabbed his arm, and he spun toward her.

  “Answer me, Carson.”

  And then, at long last, he did.

  “Because, Bella—because if Robert can do that, then so can I.”

  END

  Author’s Note

  The most frequent question that I get asked as a writer, is ‘Where do you get your ideas?’

  In a recent video blog on my Facebook page, I explained the inspiration for my first novel, Skin.

  The idea for Shallow Graves was a little bit different; unlike Skin, it didn’t come from an experience, but from an article that I read. It described a man in the UK who was so fed up with funeral costs that when his mother died, he decided to bury her himself, in his own backyard.

  I was reading a ghost story at the time, so my mindset was such that I asked myself, what if the man’s deceased mother was so angry at him for not giving her a proper burial that she came back?

  And that, dear reader, was the impetus behind the idea that eventually blossomed into Book 1 in the Haunted Series. As you well know having read this book, the idea has grown legs and expanded ten-fold; the books in this series all explore a central theme: the illusion of the self and the strange truth that only humans are blessed, or cursed, with self-awareness. I attempt to investigate these ideas, this nihilistic world view of reality, in the context of a good old fashion, good vs. evil, ghost story. Oh, and as you well know, there’s a lot of blood… always a lot of blood.

  I hope you have enjoyed this adventure so far, and I’m happy to report that it’s a long way from over; in fact, Book 5 is available for pre-order now.

  So come on, follow me down the rabbit hole. And if you do, and even if you don’t, rest assured that it wasn’t you who made the decision. It was your biology, the three or so pound piece of electric meat behind your eyes that makes you do what you do.

  You keep reading and I’ll keep writing.

  Patrick

  January 2017, Montreal

  Books by Patrick Logan

  The Haunted Series

  Book 1: Shallow Graves

  Book 2: The Seventh Ward

  Book 3: Seaforth Prison

  Book 4: Scarsdale Crematorium

  Book 5: Coming soon!

  Insatiable Series

  Book 1: Skin

  Book 2: Crackers

  Book 3: Flesh

  Book 4: Parasite

  Book 5: Stitches (Spring 2017)

  Family Values Trilogy

  Witch

  Mother

  Father

  Daughter (Spring 2017)

  Short Stories

  System Update

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents in this book are either entirely imaginary or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or of places, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Patrick Logan 2017

  Cover design: Ebook Launch (www.ebooklaunch.com)

  Interior design: © Patrick Logan 2017

  Editing: Main Line Editing (www.mainlineediting.com)

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, cannot be reproduced, scanned, or disseminated in any print or electronic form.

  First Edition: January 2017