by B Branin
Chapter 23: Epilogue
“Finally ready to go home?”
Glancing up at the door to my room, I fixed my patient gown so it was as modest as the flimsy garment would allow. I tried to avoid meeting the eyes of my guest who had visited me faithfully every day since my arrival at the clinic. You would think I would’ve gotten used to seeing her over the last five weeks I had spent in the hospital.
Faye smiled, understanding how her presence could make me uncomfortable.
After losing consciousness at the Ocean Grocer, I had been discovered by Fiona and then dragged by the Twins (none too gently I suspect) to the nearest hospital. After being patched up, I had been transferred to the psych ward because for nearly a week, I had only stopped screaming and ranting long enough to piss, eat and catch a few fitful hours of fatigued-induced sleep.
Why I had been screaming was anyone’s guess. I didn’t remember much of that first week thanks to my new…disorder. I had probably been trying to outshout the countless voices in my head. The second week here I had been put on suicide watch after trying to shove a pencil in my ear in an attempt to rupture my own eardrum, thinking that would stop the voices.
It had taken me five long weeks to come to terms with the fact that I would never have a moment of silence again. No matter what medication was thrown my way, the thousands of souls that now resided within my body would continue to haunt my mind. Their muddled and mixed babble never stopped and was a constant barrage of clamor against my consciousness.
Imagine everyone on earth speaking to you all at once, in their native tongues and with different ranges of emotion and volume. In addition, they never shut up and never had to catch their breath. Try to grasp that and you might understand what I was experiencing but I doubt anyone’s imagination was that perceptive.
Simply put, I was never alone and it was never, ever quiet.
Even after five weeks of this hell, I still had trouble distinguishing the voices of people talking to me in reality from the voices echoing inside my mind. Only through a conscious effort was I able to get the voices to simmer down to a manageable collection of whispers.
It was a nearly unbearable strain on my nerves.
When I wasn’t focused on forcing the voices to be quiet, they’d become a chorus of sound so terrifyingly loud that a pressure would build up inside my skull. The resulting pain was so intense it would force me to blackout, a reflex to end the agony. That’s how immense the suffering was if I, just for a moment, relaxed my mind. Every waking second was a battle for control, to hold together the last shreds of my sanity and hush (but never silence!) the voices of those lost souls I now harbored.
“Yeah, more than ready.” I grumbled, sitting up in bed, “If I have to eat another fucking cup of pudding, I’m gonna kill an orderly.”
Faye laughed, tossing me a brown bag filled with my clothes. Opening the bag, I gave her a look. With a wink she turned her back towards me so that I could have some privacy. My heart sank when I saw the little tuff of medical wrap peeking out from underneath the collar of her shirt.
Before passing out that fateful night at the Ocean Grocer, I did something drastic. Using my switchblade, I had carved the tattoo from Faye’s vacant body, leaving a horrible and disfiguring scar. Yet with the ink-rune gone, her soul could enter the right body. Not even Faye was sure when she had actually rejoined the living. The first thing she remembered was waking up to immense pain, freezing water and me covered in her blood.
Like I said before, that night and most of the following week was a blur for me. To be perfectly honest the first time Faye came to visit me at the hospital I had nearly had a heart attack, thinking it was Lorraine back for revenge. Fiona (with the assistance of two orderlies and several drugs) finally managed to calm me down long enough to convince me that it was indeed her sister and not Lorraine.
At first my client had been doubtful as well but finally managed to confirm Faye’s identity. Apparently the two Ambrose sisters had hardly spent a minute apart for two whole weeks after Faye’s rebirth. It had taken Faye another week to finally convince her little sister to return home and continue the life she needed to live.
Fiona visited me the day before she left for home, thanking me with tears in her eyes for saving her sister. I might have cried a little myself but I was too busy focusing on hiring an exorcist to expel these damn souls from my body (after three failed exorcisms, I gave up…plus the hospital staff had restricted my visitor rights after I nearly escaped during my third week).
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate it.” I informed Faye as I got dressed, “But why are you still hanging around here? It’s not like I need a full-time nurse or anything. I’m certain I can be crazy all by myself.”
“You’d be surprised at the amount of complications being brought back to life can bring.” Faye replied turning back around, “It makes even ordering pizza a real pain in the ass, much less getting a job.”
“So you’re hanging around here because you can’t get a job?” I asked, walking over to the lone mirror in my room and fixing my hair.
I was so used to seeing Lorraine’s face hovering over my reflection’s shoulder that I didn’t even flinch anymore. Apparently Lorraine the Lost had been correct in saying that souls needed a vessel to inhabit. Unfortunately for the ex-cult leader, when I had invited the other thousands of souls into my body, she had been left out.
Thank God for small miracles.
Now like all souls without a body to inhabit, she had become a ghost. I would have preferred that she had been a wandering spirit but for whatever reason, Lorraine was content on haunting me and me only. Luckily I was only able to see her when looking into a mirror or some other reflective surface. Without a reflection, Lorraine appears to me as she does everyone else: non-existent.
“No, it’s not that.” Faye replied, “I’ve been crashing at your place.”
I spun around, “What?!”
“Hey don’t give me that! I didn’t have anywhere else to go! So while you’ve been staying at this wonderful bed and breakfast,” Faye laughed, waving her hand at the sterile hospital room, “I’ve been at your apartment. Don’t worry, I tidied up and even arranged your skin-mags and booze in alphabetical order.”
What I had learned in the last month or so was that Faye’s personality was completely opposite of her sister’s. Where Fiona was meek and mild with the odd show of strength now and again, Faye was courageous and outgoing with a few moments of meekness.
“I’d prefer to have them arranged by frequency of use.” I grumbled, slicking my hair back with some water before heading towards the door, “Shall we?”
Nodding, Faye walked me out of the room, leading me down the hall to where I was to sign the release forms and collect my meager belongings the hospital staff had taken from me upon my admission to the psych ward. The similarities between jail and this wing of the hospital were staggering.
Faye waited in silence as I finalized my release from the loony bin. The doctor who had overseen my stay helped me fill out the forms and tried to convince me to schedule appointments with a psychiatrist that he strongly recommended.
I declined, knowing modern medicine was unable to cure me.
According to the doctors, I suffer from paranoid schizophrenia. Apparently explaining to them that I had a thousand souls stored in my body after I had stolen them from a devil didn’t help my case any. I had to lean on the right people and call in a few favors to finally convince the doctor that this was a momentary breakdown and that I could be released.
“So a few of the Lost Girls have been working the talk show circuit.” Faye informed me as I collected the bag containing my confiscated possessions and made for the nearest exit. “They are putting a ‘say no to drugs’ spin on their stories. It looks like you’re in the clear.”
After my week long scream-fest, Fiona and Faye finally brought me up to speed on what had happened that fateful night after I had passed out. Apparently Fiona had discovered the vaca
nt bodies of those girls Lorraine had kept in storage. Only after Faye was revived did they realize what they had to do…and with the Twins’ help, they removed the soul-blocking tattoos on the vacant bodies of the victims.
Without Lorraine around to work her sinister magic, the orbs that had trapped the stolen souls had shattered after being soaked in holy water. Once the tattoos were removed, the souls instantly leapt back into their original bodies, all safe and sound…well except for a disfiguring scar that had freed them from limbo.
Most of the girls returned home to their families or similar environment, vowing more to themselves than to Fiona never to speak of these events. A few of them had no families to return to and disappeared into the streets. A couple of the orphaned girls took their stories first to the police, then to the media claiming how they were drugged and kidnapped by some crazy cult.
The media had dubbed these ex-cultists the Lost Girls and since there were no celebrities abuse rumors going around, were giving them their fifteen minutes of fame. I didn’t care either way because none of the girls could identify me or my friends. I was finally able to wash my hands of the entire Daughters of All fiasco and all it had cost me was my sanity. This, considering I had barely dodged death and eternal damnation, was a pretty fair trade.
In the hospital’s parking lot Faye called a cab and I called my contacts to get a feel for what had been happening during my recovery. I had been out of the loop for far too long. I left a message for Father O’Brawley at the rectory, telling him that I would be at confessional on Sunday. I then called the Booze Bin where Frankie the barkeep informed me the Twins had opened a tab in my name which had just past the five hundred dollar mark.
My greatest surprise came when I got an answering machine after calling Buggy’s number. According to the recording, the haphazard hacker had decided to take a vacation to Switzerland after buying and appointing himself CEO of an internet security company. I had no doubt in my mind that the programmer he had been “flirting” with over these last few weeks would somehow end up as his secretary…if she didn’t quit after seeing her new boss.
The cab pulled up and I eagerly jumped in, wanting to get as far away from the hospital as possible. The moment I sat down something odd happened…the hushed whispers inside my head silenced themselves. For the first time in weeks I was alone with my thoughts and nothing else. I was just about to shout in excitement, thinking my infliction was over when, unified, about three hundred voices spoke all at once.
Run! RUN! Get out! GET OUT!
A chill raced down my spine but as soon as the ominous warning was issued, the whispers returned in their thousands. Once more my mind was filled with voices pooling together to create a meaningless babble that echoed inside my skull.
“You okay?” Faye asked, noticing my paling complexion as she shut the door behind her.
“No, just…” I looked up at the cabbie, “Do you know where the Booze Bin is?”
“I know where you’re headed, boss.” Beamed the fat cabdriver, “No worries.”
With that the cabbie took off and I tried to calm my racing heart as I pondered the voices’ warning. As we drove, Faye and I began to discuss other things, mainly how to get her life back on track. In this day and age, no social security card or birth certificate could be a real damper on any chance of having a normal life. Luckily I had changed identities enough times to know where to get her some quality forgeries.
As the cab drove onward, I told Faye that I might be able to pull some strings. Maybe I could find the dirty detective that worked for Zotkin and have her death record misplaced or destroyed. Of course that only solved a few problems. The biggest concern Faye had was trying to decide how to tell her parents she wasn’t dead.
I was in the middle of a suggestion when I trailed off, feeling a familiar tingle run up my spine and make my scalp itch. Looking outside the cab window, I noticed that we were in the Dock District but not in the area where the Booze Bin was located. That either meant that the cabbie was taking a scenic route or we were in trouble.
As the cab pulled into the parking lot of a nondescript building, I decided that yes, we were in trouble.
“What’s the deal?” I asked the cabbie, my hand slipping into the bag of my belongings and taking hold of my switchblade, “You’re not lost I hope?”
The cabbie turned around to face me, his smile still splitting his chubby face in two.
“Nope, this is where you need to be Mr. Broker.” The cabbie informed me through his cherub demeanor, “After all, you own this building.”
I glanced over at the ramshackle building. I had done plenty of property cons in my life but never in this city. So either this guy was stupid or he had prior business with me. Considering he knew my name even though I had never offered it, I was fearing the latter was the case.
“Own it? I just got out of the nut house! If I purchased anything during my stay there I think I’m entitled to a refund.” I replied, trying to keep the worry from my voice.
“We are well aware of your stay in the psych ward. Just like we’re aware of the events leading up to your hospitalization.” The chubby cabbie replied, though there was no hint of hostility in his voice, “In fact, me and my partners were rather impressed. Not everyone can dismantle a cult lead by a witch and bitch slap a devil twice in the same week. That takes serious talent.”
Faye tensed up upon the cabbie’s words. She started the question that I was too scared to ask.
“How do you…?” Faye began but the cabbie just held up his hand and stopped her.
“I’m not here to answer questions but to give you some choice information.” The cabdriver continued, sliding open the glass that separated the front of the taxi from us in the back, “I work for the S-3 Program. It’s all hush-hush I assure you and not even your hacker friend would have heard of us.”
S-3 Program? Where had I heard that before…in the gothic hospital, right? Dr. Livingstone had mentioned it. Whatever it was, they had certainly done their homework not only to know what the hell I had gone through but to also get information about my known associates. Oh man, Buggy would shit a brick once I told him about this!
“To put it simply, the S-3 Program keeps a lid on the bizarre goings on in this country. Things like a body snatching witch for example.” The cabbie continued with a wink in our direction, “Unfortunately, we are a pretty small organization so some occurrences slip past our notice.”
“So…you’re like, real Paranormal Investigators?” Faye asked.
The cabbie let out a lighthearted laugh.
“We simply keep the public ignorant of some of the more unusual threats that can crop up.” He told us, “But we can’t do it all. And when we slip up, things happen…bad things. Like a devil being summoned into our world.”
I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. All that damn pudding I had swallowed during my stay at the psych ward threatened to come back up, “So…are you here to silence us?”
Faye looked at me with horrified eyes, my fear spreading to her. If this guy’s job was to keep word about paranormal threats hush-hush, Faye and I were loose ends. Hell, every one of my friends involved was a loose end! Did that mean he was about to put a bullet between our eyes to make sure we kept quiet?!
“Relax, I’m not here to kill you.” The cabbie/secret agent explained, “We are quite impressed with your work. I doubt even one of us would have faired much better given the circumstances. Besides, you also come highly recommended from Dr. Spriggan, a freelancer who helps the S-3 Program every now and again.”
I groaned. This was turning out to be a conspiracy even worthy of Buggy’s standards. Dr. Spriggan, my guide to the supernatural as well as the best selling author on the occult, was apart of this secret organization?! Great, next I’ll be meeting with Big Foot for lunch.
“Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?” The cabdriver blathered on, locking eyes with me as he spoke, “Here’s the deal. You impressed us and we wan
t you on our team…not as an agent but as another freelancer. We can’t possibly handle everything that goes bump in the night, so we need people like you. People who know that the paranormal can be very, very dangerous.”
“You got that right.” Faye and I said at once.
The secret agent jerked a thumb to the shitty building outside.
“So why not help us? Become a real Paranormal Investigator and turn this building into your new office. You’ll help sort out the fake paranormal bullshit from the real dangers and it’ll help the S-3 Program keep the public safe as well as blissfully ignorant. How about it?”
I hardly waited for the cabbie to finish speaking before blowing a gasket.
“Are you fucking insane?! Because I sure as hell am! I can hardly hear a fucking thing over the voices in my head all because I have a thousand or so souls using my body like a cheap motel!” I bellowed at the secret agent, “No! I’m done with the supernatural and paranormal! No way in hell am I going to spend the rest of my life hunting down ghosts and aliens or whatever else is out there so you suits can take a vacation!”
I didn’t realize I was trembling until Faye reached out and took hold of my hand. Whether it was shakes from anger or stress, I had no idea but either way, I got the message across. My anger had been so sharp and so focused that even the whispers scratching at the back of my mind had been cowed momentarily.
The cabbie sighed and reached into his jacket pocket. I half expected him to pull out a gun and kill me right then and there. Perhaps that would have been a blessing. Instead of a pistol, he simply pulled out a slip of paper and held it up for me to see.
“Reconsider.” The secret agent said, “I mean it when I say we could use your help. If you do, we’ll let you keep this.”
I reached out with a still trembling hand and took the paper. I unfolded it and tried not too look too surprised. Though it had been warped thanks to a holy-water bath, there was no mistaking this slip of paper. It was the identification number and password to the Swiss bank account that Lorraine had owned.
The same account that Mr. Killington had transferred millions of dollars into.
“When our agents swept through the Ocean Grocer and collected the remaining Soul Scream, we stumbled across this. There is five million dollars sitting in that account, more than enough to pay off all your debts.” The cabbie informed me then winked, “And let you live rather comfortably while managing a Paranormal Investigation Agency.”
I swallowed hard and looked to Faye for support. Her face reflected my own look of shock, confusion and distrust. Finally she simply shrugged. As she did so, the voices of the lost souls began to chatter excitedly.
I summoned up a smile as I pocketed the slip of paper.
“The name’s Arthur Broker. Paranormal Investigator.”
About the Author
While not time traveling or committing acts of intergalactic piracy, B. Branin spends most of his time in his underground lair located in Utah. His free time is spent reading, writing and preparing for the zombie apocalypse. Readers should feel free to contact him at [email protected] and if he isn’t too busy breaking the hearts of supermodels or Hollywood starlets, he might even reply.
