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  Prologue

  Part I - Stormy Days, Stormy Nights

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Part II – The Warden and his Cross

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Part III – Guardians of the Marrow

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  EPILOGUE

  END

  Author’s Note

  Seaforth Prison

  The Haunted Series

  Book 3

  Patrick Logan

  Prologue

  Warden Ben Tristen rubbed his eyes and leaned back in his chair. The old metal creaked, an annoying grating sound, but one that he was familiar with, having sat in it nearly every day for the past eighteen years. There was a time when the sound had bothered him, and he had even considered replacing it at his own cost, but he had decided against it.

  And now he was glad he had.

  The chair was like an accomplice, an old partner that offered him predictable comfort in his ever-changing environment.

  It was mid-evening, around the time that the twenty-two inmates should have been wrapping up their meals. That was another thing that he had initially loathed, but which now offered him solace: the rigid schedule and structure of Seaforth Prison. Inmates ate at the same time every day—every day, it didn’t matter if it was Christmas, New Year’s, their birthdays. Always the same time.

  Ben’s eyes drifted to the pictures on his desk, his gaze eventually falling on a picture of his best friend in the entire world. He loved his dog, a Boxer named Easton, for many of the same reasons he loved the mealtimes and his chair: Easton was predictable, reliable. His eyes drifted to the other photograph on his desk. His ex-wife and daughter? Less so.

  With a heavy sigh, Ben rubbed his massive hands together, trying to work out the knots that had formed in the joints over the past several years. The doc said this stiffness was normal, a natural part of aging, but Ben never thought himself a normal man. At six foot three and two hundred and thirty-five pounds of solid muscle, Ben Tristen was hardly a normal seventy-two-year-old man. So he loathed when the doctor referred to anything that happened to him as ‘normal’, the way he now loathed any hiccup in Seaforth’s schedule.

  Ben prided himself in keeping in shape, and not in the way that other people his age exercised, which usually consisted of going to the gym three times a week to walk on a treadmill and do some awkward curls followed by bench pressing a stack of paper. No, Ben was different. He preferred the power movements, clean, squat, bench.

  The basics for building muscle and strength, both of which came in handy as the warden.

  As Ben started to daydream about his next workout, the phone on his desk suddenly rang, snapping him out of his own head. A frown formed on his heavily lined face.

  The phone rarely rang in Seaforth.

  This was not part of the routine.

  He snatched it up before it could ring a second time.

  “Warden here.”

  “Ben? Ben, you there?” The frantic nature of the man’s voice on the other end of the line made Ben sit up straight in his chair, the old chair squealing in protest.

  “Lenny? What’s going on?”

  There was shouting on the other end of the line, and Ben started to rise.

  “Lenny! Answer me!”

  The warden’s sore fingers instinctively went to the wooden cross that hung around his neck and they started to massage it.

  “Ben, it’s Carson,” Lenny finally replied. “You need to get here—you need to get here quick.”

  Carson.

  Just the simple mention of the man’s name was enough to get Ben to hang up the phone and run from the room.

  ***

  In Seaforth, running was only permitted in the yard. Even the guards and Ben himself were forbidden from doing it.

  But this was an exception.

  It was an exception because of Carson.

  Just the mention of Seaforth’s most violent, sadistic, and infamous of prisoners was enough for Ben to break his own rule.

  Only after checking that both the pistol and his Taser, which he rarely wore nowadays, were affixed to his hip.

  Carson was held in Cell Block E, the only inmate currently in that block. It had been more than a year since Carson was held with the general population. A month before his move, Carson had strangled two gangbangers who’d thought they were tough, with inclinations of making a quick name for themselves by taking out the most infamous man at Seaforth.

  They had found out the hard way that Carson was best left alone—with him, there were never any second chances.

  Their multiple life sentences turned out to be rather short.

  And if there were no inmates in Cell Block E, then that meant that…

  Ben picked up the pace, tearing down the main corridor, ignoring the jeers and shouts from the prisoners locked in their cells flanking either side of him.

  At the end of the hallway there was a single door, one that he promptly reached. But before he could knock, it was yanked open, and one of the more junior guards, a wiry black man named Perry, opened it, his eyes wide, bulging.

  “Warden, you—”

  Ben almost slapped him.

  “Don’t open the door!” he shouted. “You don’t just open the door! How many times do I have to tell you? Use the camera! Check with Peter upstairs! Fuck, Perry!”

  The man dropped his gaze.

  “I’m sorry, it’s just—”

  “Look at me!” Ben ordered as he stepped over the threshold. Perry’s eyes immediately shot up. Ben extended a finger, which looked a little more gnarled than usual, at the man’s navy uniform. “Never just open the door. Not for me, not for nobody. Radio Peter, get him to check the cameras first. You got that?”

  The man nodded quickly and Ben pushed past him.

  “Fuck,” Ben grumbled. “Nearly three million dollars on fancy cameras and security, and nobody even wants to use the damn thing.”

  Ben fondled the keycard affixed to his belt.

  “Where’s Quinn? He down there with Carson?”

  Perry swallowed hard and again nodded as Ben strode into the whitewashed holding area that led to two other doors. The one on the right led to the yard, while the left led to the inmates’ mess hall.

  On the other side of the mess hall was the door that led to Cell Block E. Ben scanned h
is keycard and entered the mess hall.

  Perry started to follow, but he held up a hand and stopped him, turning an ear to the inmates that were still shouting behind him.

  “Keep them calm. No matter what, don’t get them even more riled up. Calm. Got that?”

  Perry nodded and then the door closed, shutting out both the sound and the man’s frightened expression.

  Ben hurried across the cement mess hall, his eyes fixed on the door at the other side. Heart racing, he reached for his keycard again, but before he could grab it, the door burst open and Deputy Quinn Laughlin stumbled through, his hands covering his face. Ben let out a sigh of relief.

  His worst fear hadn’t been realized.

  Not yet, anyway.

  “Quinn! What the fuck’s going on? What’s going on with Carson?”

  The man said nothing; instead, he continued to stumble forward, his hands cupping his eyes.

  “Quinn! Quinn?”

  Ben reached for the man, but the deputy turned away at the last moment.

  “Go!” Quinn bellowed. “Go to Carson! Now!”

  Confused, Ben took a small step backward.

  What the fuck’s going on?

  “Quinn!”

  “Just go!”

  A shout from behind the man drove Ben through the still open door, leaving Quinn to tend to whatever wound or spit or feces-throwing incident that Carson had inflicted on him.

  “I’ll be back,” Ben said over his shoulder as he entered Cell Block E.

  Unlike the well-lit and sterile cells in the general population, Cell Block E was dank, the air filled with a briny smell as a result of the south wall being closest to the sea. Also unlike the gen pop, the four cells in Cell Block E didn’t have bars. Instead, they had thick, wooden doors with a simple mail-slot style hole in the center to deliver food.

  Carson was in the last cell; Ben knew this, because he had put him there himself. But even if he hadn’t known, the two guards standing outside the door would have tipped him off.

  Ben started running again. As he rushed toward them, the guard at the door closed the metal shutter on the delivery slot and then bent at the waist and started to vomit.

  Only then did Ben see the body of a third guard lying still on the ground in the center of the hallway.

  “Hey! What the fuck’s going on?” Ben demanded for what felt like the fiftieth time.

  The man who had been vomiting looked up at him with bloodshot eyes and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Ben was within a dozen feet of them now, and he could see that there was a small pool of blood on the floor around the fallen guard.

  “I’m sorry, Warden,” the man said. Then he bent over and puked again.

  “What the fuck happened?”

  It was Lenny, a tall, thick man with sunken eyes—the who had called him down here—who answered now.

  “I don’t know…we heard shouting, came running, but by then it was too late.”

  Too late?

  Ben shoved the first guard aside and dropped to one knee beside the man on the ground.

  “Fuck,” he said, looking away. A quick breath to calm himself, and he turned back to the body.

  The guard was on his back, hands at his sides. The blood wasn’t from a neck wound as he might have expected, given that Carson had first gained notoriety for ruthlessly slitting the throats of at least thirteen people, but from his eyes.

  The man’s eyes were dark pits filled with semi-coagulated blood that quivered like undercooked eggs.

  The rest of his face was covered in red streaks.

  “Jesus,” Ben muttered. Then his instincts took over. He dropped his ear to the man’s chest, listening for the thump of his heart or the wheeze of a breath.

  He heard neither.

  Ben sat up and interlaced his sore fingers, prepping himself for chest compressions.

  “Where the fuck is medical? Did you send for medical? And what are you guys just standing around for? Help me!”

  He felt a hand on his shoulder, and his head whipped around.

  “We tried, Warden—we did everything we could, but by the time we got here, it was already too late. I’m sorry, I know—” Lenny’s voice faltered. “I know you and Quinn were close.”

  Ben recoiled at the mention of his friend’s name, an image of his friend in the mess hall covering his face coming back to him.

  “Quinn? What are you talking about? I just saw him…saw him with his hands—”

  His eyes darted from Lenny’s stern face to the man in the floor, his eyes scanning his uniform.

  The tag on his chest read: Quinn Laughlin.

  “No,” Ben said softly. “It’s a trick, I just…I just…”

  He felt the hand on his shoulder again, but he shrugged it off.

  “It’s Quinn; Carson got to him. Don’t know how, but—”

  “No!” Ben suddenly bellowed, trying and failing to comprehend what was going on.

  I just fucking saw him! How—?

  Heart racing in his chest, he wiped some of the blood off the fallen man’s cheeks.

  “No,” he moaned.

  It was Quinn. He had no idea how, but it definitely was Quinn.

  Ben shot to his feet so quickly that a bout of dizziness struck him.

  “Ben? You—”

  The warden shoved Lenny out of the way and braced himself against the thick wooden door of Carson’s cell.

  His breathing was coming fast and furious now, and he could feel his muscles getting tight.

  With a flick of his wrist, he pushed the metal slider open and stared into Carson’s cell.

  The man was naked and sitting with his back to the door, revealing a network of scars, some old, some new. His shaved head glistened under the single bulb high above.

  “Carson, what have you done?” he demanded. When the man didn’t react, he raised his voice. “Carson!”

  Carson slowly rose to his feet, moving from a seated position to standing without using his hands. Then he started to turn, his hands out in front of him.

  “Welcome, Ben.”

  Carson was smiling.

  “I’m sorry about your friend Quinn, Ben, I really am. But I needed him to see.”

  Ben’s gaze dropped to the man’s flattened palms, a single object laying on each.

  His stomach lurched and he nearly succumbed to the urge to vomit.

  On each of Carson’s hands was one of Quinn’s eyeballs, both pointed directly at Ben.

  “I needed him to see!” Carson suddenly roared as he raced toward the door. “The Goat will see! He’s coming, and when he gets here, he will see!” Then he started to laugh. “Daddy’s finally coming home! Can’t you feel it, Ben? Can’t you feel it?”

  Ben let the metal slide fall with a clank and then stepped away from the door, sweat breaking out all over his body.

  Carson’s shouts from inside were muffled through the thick wood, but his words were clear enough.

  “Can’t you feel it in your chest, Ben? A tightness? That’s how you know, Ben…that’s how you know he’s close…the Goat is coming…he’s coming home.”

  Ben closed his eyes and concentrated on blocking out the madman’s ramblings.

  How is this possible? How the fuck did this happen?

  His hand instinctively went to the cross that hung around his neck and he squeezed it tightly.

  Eyes still closed, he said, “Call Father Callahan.”

  Then he dropped to his knees and hugged his friend’s corpse. “Please, get Father Callahan here as soon as you can.”

  And then, for the first time in nearly two decades—the first time since his wife had scooped up his only daughter and had left without so much as a note—Warden Ben Tristen started to cry.

  Part I - Stormy Days, Stormy Nights

  Chapter 1

  Allan Knox stood on the front door of the cracked cement steps and gazed upward at the massive wooden door in wonderment. His heart was racing, his brow swea
ty. His backpack, the same one he had been lugging around for years, suddenly felt way too heavy, the straps biting through his coat, which was too light for the frigid air, and pinched his shoulders.

  I should go. I should just turn around and walk away. They don’t need me.

  He swallowed hard, trying to figure out what his next course of action should be.

  Maybe they won’t even be home.

  Allan leaned backward and looked to the many leaden windows that lined the front of the Estate. Lights were on in several of them.

  There goes that theory.

  Allan hooked his thumbs between the straps of his backpack and his jacket, easing the pressure.

  Maybe this is the wrong house.

  But a quick glance around confirmed that it was indeed the correct house. The description of the cherub with the X’d out eyes in the fountain was spot on. Even though someone had tried to wash the X’s away, he could still see their faint outline on the oxidized brass or stone or whatever the hell it was made of. And it wasn’t just the statue; there were other things about the place that Robert Watts had posted online that were accurate.

  The wrought iron gates that he had pushed through, for instance. The long, winding drive, the cracked exterior bricks of the Estate.

  The gigantic goddamn wooden door that looked like it should be used as a drawbridge to cross a moat.

  I should go.

  And then, as if nodding would confirm this as his final decision, Allan took a step backward, and then another. A moment before turning and leaving, however, he heard the sound of a latch sliding from inside the estate. Allan was so surprised by the sound that he stumbled backward. A split second later, he lost his footing completely, landing hard on his ass. He cried out, and then grimaced at the sound of metal scraping on metal from inside his backpack.

  The door opened and he found himself staring up at a pretty woman with short blonde hair. She was eying him suspiciously, her bright green eyes barely visible from beneath her furrowed brow.

  “Who the fuck are you?” she demanded.

  Allan swallowed hard, still wincing from the pain that radiated up from his tail-bone.

  “R-r-r-obert,” he stammered.