Seaforth Prison (The Haunted Book 3) Read online

The woman pushed her lips together, making a duck face. He also thought she pushed her substantial chest out a little, but he couldn’t be sure given the thick coat she was wearing.

  “Your name is Robert? Is that it?”

  Allan shook his head slowly.

  “N-n-no, but—”

  She pointed to her bust.

  “You’re saying I’m Robert? Do I look like a fucking Robert?”

  “N-no, of course not, but—”

  She waved him off, then leaned back into the house.

  “Hey, Robert, get your ass down here, there’s a little kid here to see you.”

  Allan frowned and pushed himself to his feet.

  “My name’s Allan,” he said, extending his hand to the woman who remained in the doorway, hands crossed over her chest now.

  She looked at his hand, but made no move to shake it.

  “So you can speak. That makes you better than most of Robert’s visitors.”

  There was some commotion inside the house, and then a man with brown hair and narrow features appeared behind the pretty woman.

  “Yeah? What do you want?” he asked, and Allan couldn’t help but smile. It was Robert Watts, exactly as he had pictured him after he had first found his posts online less than a year ago.

  Ever since his parents had died more than ten years ago, Allan had wanted to be a ghost hunter. His passion had only intensified when he had seen his parents’ spirits at the crash site. Since that time, Allan had spent nearly every waking hour reading every book he could get his hands on, visiting supposedly haunted houses, and interviewing so-called ghost hunters, but it was all bullshit.

  That is, until he read about Inter vivos et mortuos, about the book Between the living and the dead—until he found out about Robert Watts, of course. And before he started to see the dead everywhere.

  Allan’s entire face lit up with a grin that he couldn’t even come close to containing.

  “Robert, my name’s Allan, and I want to join your team.”

  Robert didn’t react as he had hoped; instead of smiling, the man grimaced. The woman, on the other hand, remained stoic.

  “Team? What the hell are you talking about?”

  Allan slipped the bag off his shoulder and set about opening it.

  “I want to join your team—I want to hunt ghosts like you, Robert.”

  Chapter 2

  “Watch the video, tell me what you see.”

  Father Callahan rubbed his eyes with an arthritic hand, but made no move to lean closer to the monitor. In fact, he didn’t even look at it.

  “I’m tired, Ben. Really tired. If it hadn’t been you who called me, I would’ve never left my parish. It’s been a long, long trip, and these old bones don’t travel well anymore. And my eyes don’t work so well anymore. Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

  The warden observed the man in the black robe, the wooden cross, one nearly identical to his own, hanging nearly to his navel given his stooped posture. Father Callahan was old, very old, and the man was right; he wasn’t fit for travel, not anymore. But what choice did he have? Who else could he call? Who else would believe that his best guard, his best friend, had had his eyes gouged out by a psychopath, and yet he had seen Quinn more than a hundred yards from where his dead body lay?

  Ben cleared his throat, massaged his sore hands, and then took a deep breath.

  “I know, Father, I know. But before I tell you what happened, I need you to watch the video. I need you to tell me what you see. Please. I’m old, you’re old, neither of us have time for games anymore—and this isn’t one, Father. I’m—” His voice hitched, and he was forced to clear his throat to avoid it cracking completely. “I’m desperate here.”

  Father Callahan sighed, but he put his reading glasses on the end of his nose, and then tilted his head backward to look through them and at the oversized monitor.

  “Thank you, Father,” Ben said, before his voice transitioned to professional. “This is surveillance video from yesterday. Please, watch carefully.”

  Ben leaned over and pressed play, and the video started to roll.

  Shot from above and from the left, the camera showed the last third of the hallway of Cell Block E, and was focused on Carson’s cell door, which was firmly closed. The timestamp in the bottom left of the screen read: 5:55. Thirty seconds later, a man stepped into the scene, traveling down the hallway, a tray held in front of him.

  “That’s Quinn. He’s going to drop the food off, as he does every day, at 5:55. Exactly 5:55, every day.”

  Father Callahan said nothing. He leaned in closer.

  On screen, Quinn walked up to the door, knocked once, then opened the metal slide and put the tray on it.

  “He’s supposed to wait—”

  Callahan hushed him, and Ben clamped his jaw shut. The man moved even closer to the monitor, his frizzy gray hair now blocking nearly all of Ben’s view of the screen. It didn’t matter; the warden had watched the video dozens of times already.

  And he still didn’t understand why Quinn did what he did. Which was why he had brought Father Callahan in—that and what had happened in the mess hall minutes afterward.

  The two went back a long time, and if there was any man that Ben thought might have insight into something like this, it was Father Callahan.

  Rumor had it that the man had seen some things…some things in a swamp that were similarly unusual, unexplainable.

  Ben fingered his cross again.

  The Goat will see! Daddy’s coming home.

  He shuddered.

  On the video, the tray disappeared into the slot; then, as usual, Quinn reached out to slide the metal closed again. But when it was halfway down, he hesitated, moving his head closer to the slot as if Carson was saying something to him.

  “No sound,” he offered, but Callahan waved his hand, indicating for him to keep his mouth shut.

  Ben obliged.

  It was at this point in the video that things changed. After hearing whatever Carson had said, Quinn’s face suddenly darkened, and then he did the inexplicable. His lips moved, then he reached down to his belt and flipped through the keys on the loop almost robotically. He found the key he was looking for, then slid it into the lock. Then Quinn opened the cell door and stepped inside.

  That was when static filled the screen.

  Father Callahan suddenly leaned back.

  “What happened?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

  Ben shrugged.

  “Don’t know exactly. There was some sort of power surge, lights flickered. Our IT guy is working on it. Power company said there was nothing on their end, but it happens every once in a while.” He reached for the keyboard and started to fast-forward.

  “There’s no image for exactly three minutes, then”—he pressed play, fighting back tears now—“this.”

  The static suddenly vanished, revealing the exact same scene as before it had come, with the door partly open, the hallway empty. And then Quinn stumbled out, his hands covering his eyes, blood spilling from between his fingers. His shoulder bumped the door, throwing it wide, and then he fell to one knee. A second later, he collapsed on his face, unmoving, where he lay until the other officers arrived. But just before Lenny and Paul came and flipped him over, a shadowy figure could be seen just inside the doorway. And then Carson reached out and slowly shut his cell door.

  A few minutes after that, Ben himself appeared in the shot. The warden shut off the tape.

  “I don’t understand…” Ben said softly, more to himself than the priest. “I mean, what would make Quinn go in there?”

  Father Callahan was still frozen, his eyes locked on the now black screen.

  “And why didn’t Carson leave? He had a perfect opportunity to leave, but he didn’t. Instead, he actually closed the cell door. Why would he do that, Father?”

  Ben cracked his knuckles, the gnarled joints creaking instead of popping in protest. Then he ground his teeth and flexed the muscles in his arms an
d chest.

  “What the fuck would possess him to do that?”

  Father Callahan finally leaned back from the screen.

  “As you know, Ben, my eyes don’t work as well as they used to. In fact, they barely work at all. But I think I saw the guard’s lips move before he went into the cell. Did you catch that?”

  “Uh-huh. Like I said, no sound…I tried slowing it down, zooming in and all that. Still can’t figure it out. Looks like ‘toast’, maybe. ‘Ghost’? ‘Oat’? No fucking clue.”

  Father Callahan suddenly recoiled like he had been struck in the chest. The man stumbled backward, and Ben shot to his feet and grabbed the elderly priest before he toppled.

  “Callahan, you alright?”

  The man reached up and gripped Ben’s shoulders, breathing deeply.

  “N-n-no,” he stammered. “Not oat, but Goat. And the reason why the man didn’t leave is because he’s waiting for someone to come and get him.”

  Ben felt a chill race up his spine.

  The Goat will see…Daddy’s coming home.

  Chapter 3

  “Let me get this straight, you read about me…about us…on the Internet? You think we are some sort of—what—modern-day ghostbusters?”

  Six months had passed since purging the Seventh Ward, but to Robert Watts, it still felt like it had only been yesterday. And his limp was a perpetual reminder of his time there.

  The kid on the couch across from him looked down.

  “I didn’t—I mean, I didn’t mean to offend you or anything—”

  “How, exactly, did you find out about me?” Robert asked sharply.

  Allan looked up.

  “You weren’t that hard to find, not really. I mean, I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for at first, but I always cruise the sites—the hidden ones, like where I found you—asking specific questions, trying to find anything about the Marrow, about quiddity, about spirits trapped on this side. That’s how I found you.”

  Cal’s beer overflowed and foam splashed to the floor following mention of Marrow and quiddity. Robert shot him a look, and then his eyes darted over to Shelly. She was standing behind the man—kid, he’s just a kid—her arms crossed over her chest, her lips pressed together tightly.

  Typical Shelly pose.

  “What do you know about the Marrow?” Robert asked accusingly.

  The boy’s gaze fell again.

  “Look, I’m sorry—I’ll leave if you want. I’m not wanting for trouble. I just thought—I mean, when my parents died all those years ago, I saw them…I mean, I saw them even after their bodies were gone. And that sent me on this path. I want to know about them, about where they are, how they are, who they are. I found some stuff on the ‘net, but not much. Nothing more than what you guys have probably read, about the sand, the water, the quiddity. And then there is the book; I kept hearing about this book, Inter vivos et mortuos. I almost gave up, too, but recently I’ve seen more—”

  “Wait, you saw your parents? You see quiddity?” Cal interrupted.

  Allan nodded.

  “Sometimes with just my eyes, but not always—hold on a sec.” The boy reached down and started to unzip his backpack.

  Shelly unfolded her arms from her chest.

  “No, you hold on a sec,” she said, taking a large step forward. Allan craned his neck up to look at her, his eyebrows raised.

  She held out a hand.

  “Let me see your bag first.”

  The boy made a face and Robert leaned back.

  “Calm down, Shelly. He’s just a boy, he’s—”

  She squinted at him.

  “Yeah, let’s be safe, all right?” She hooked a chin to the three parallel scars that ran from Cal’s cheek to his top lip. “Remember what happened last time when we were taken by surprise? Remember—”

  Robert waved an arm.

  He wasn’t in the mood to head down memory lane.

  “All right, fine. Check the bag.”

  Allan nodded at him as if he’d been waiting for Robert’s permission before handing it over.

  Shelly made a face as she rummaged through the myriad of cameras and other foreign-looking equipment. Allan cringed at the sound of scraping metal, but she eventually shrugged and handed it back.

  “Just a bunch of voyeur shit—Cal, you probably have the same in your room to peek on me in the shower.”

  Cal didn’t smile.

  “Very funny.”

  “Guys, let him talk,” Robert implored. Then to Allan, he said, “You were saying about with your eyes or…?”

  The fear and anxiety that had been on the boy’s face since he arrived—nerves, probably, although the idea that it was from meeting Robert made him uncomfortable—suddenly washed away.

  “Yeah, I see them sometimes with my eyes, but what I found is that with this”—he pulled a regular-looking DSLR camera from his bag and fiddled with the lens—“I can see more.” He raised an eyebrow. “A lot more.”

  Cal made a face.

  “There are more of them?”

  Allan smiled, which made him look even younger than his eighteen or so years.

  “Oh yeah, so many more—but that’s only recently. For years, I would only pick up one or, if I was lucky, two a month, trolling around a cemetery or around an accident. But recently…” He took a deep breath. “Recently they’re everywhere. You know what I think?”

  No one answered, but Allan continued anyway, pushing his round spectacles up the bridge of his small nose.

  “I think something’s happening. Something’s changing.”

  Robert swallowed hard, Sean Sommers’ last comments repeating in his mind.

  The man warned never to go back, that the divide between this world and theirs—Leland Black’s fiery world—was growing thinner each and every day.

  He’s your father.

  He shook his head. Leland wasn’t his father; Sean was off his fucking rocker with that one.

  “How do we know you’re not just a fake? A hack reporter or something, a Nigerian prince that wants our credit cards?” Shelly asked, her voice stern.

  Allan stared directly at Robert when he spoke.

  “Because,” he said, fiddling with the lens on the end of the camera. He flicked a switch and a red light popped on. “I can show you.”

  Chapter 4

  “You are a man of faith, Ben, I know this,” Father Callahan said, his voice cracking. “Even though you left my parish years ago, I can tell by the way you fiddle with your cross—the one I gave you—that you are a good student of God.”

  Ben nodded as the crooked man spoke. They had since turned off the monitors and were now sitting in the staff room across from each other.

  “Yes, I believe, Father. Ever since…well, for a long while now I have tried to stay true.” He looked around at the plain white walls, the plastic tables; even in the staff room, the tables were made of thin plastic, just in case the inmates managed to get in here. “Especially in this place.”

  Father Callahan nodded, and for a minute or so neither man said anything. The silence made Ben uncomfortable, which was strange given that he was often alone with his thoughts.

  And he usually liked it.

  Now, however, his mind was filled with horrible images of his friend, hands clasped to his face, and of Carson, holding the eyes in his palms, a lecherous grin on his face.

  The Goat…

  But Ben didn’t interrupt Father Callahan’s train of thought. The man wasn’t one of the rambling priests that he often caught on TV, spewing whatever religious clichés that came to mind. Rather, Callahan was a man who chose his words wisely. And it appeared as if this time, given what had happened, that the man was being very careful indeed.

  Father Callahan cleared his throat, and Ben pulled himself out of his head.

  “Ben, I think I should tell you a story. One that I heard a long time ago, but I believe has suddenly become important.” He paused, and Ben waited for him to catch his breath. “But
not here. Not in this place. Does Seaforth have a parish?”

  Ben nodded.

  “Yeah, it hasn’t been used in years, though. After the last riot, we shut it down. Inmates were using it as a safe spot to exchange letters, contraband, you name it. And Father Regis was either turning a blind eye to this or was actually contributing to it—we never found out which, but he was let go and the parish became off limits. There were some security issues with the place, too; the electronic lock kept failing. Had to replace it with an old-fashioned one.”

  Father Callahan frowned, but nodded. Ben also knew him to be an understanding man.

  And the priest was one of the few privileged enough to know what kind of prisoners they kept at Seaforth Prison.

  The worst kind.

  The Carson kind.

  “Let’s go there,” the elderly priest said. “And then we’ll talk.”

  ***

  “When I was a much younger man, I was involved in an exorcism…one that failed. Badly. It was…very unpleasant,” Father Callahan said. Nearly completely blind, the man had a way of looking off to one side as he spoke that Ben found slightly unnerving. “For a long time afterward, I searched for what happened to people after they died. As a priest, I thought I knew, but…” He shook his head. “Then a man came to my parish with two gifts and a book.”

  “Gifts?”

  Father Callahan waved an arthritic hand.

  “Another story for another time. But the book—the man also brought a book called Inter vivos et mortuos.”

  The priest waited, and eventually Ben shook his head after realizing that the man was expecting a response.

  “Never heard of it.”

  Father Callahan tilted his head to the other side.

  “No, of course not—very few have. There are not many secrets left in this world, this much you must know already, but this, the Inter, is one of them. And I have never told anyone about it before.”

  The warden reached out for his Styrofoam cup and took a sip of his now lukewarm coffee. It was too bitter, and he grimaced as he swallowed.

  Ben also had his secrets, including having seen Quinn walking around after he had been murdered. He shook his head.