Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum (37 page)

“Hey, listen,” Zach said, hoping to change
the subject. “I’ve got a feeling Joey is in Rosewood and my intuition tells me
I need to go in there alone in order to—”

Footfalls approached them in rapid succession
from the same direction Zach had come. Before either could stand, a deep voice
called out. “It’s after midnight—technically that means it’s ‘tomorrow.’”

“Who’s there?” Ray growled.

“Are we awake?”

Upon hearing the
Blazing Saddle’s
quote, Zach took a deep breath and stuck his arm out to hold Ray down. “That
depends,” Zach whispered, unable to stifle a smile. “Are we black?”

“Yes, we are and
I’m
very confused!
What are you white boys doing nappin’ on the job?”  He twanged the last
line in a Slim Pickens drawl, a parody of a
Blazing Saddles
movie quote.

Hunter emerged from the pitch. He was fully
clothed in black. “You boys wouldn’t be able to see me at all except for the
full moon,” he said.

In the commotion of the night, Zach had
never noticed the moon at its apex. Hunter was probably right. Even with ample
moonlight, it was hard to see him. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I felt called to come back tonight. I
intended merely to stand on the back fence line to try and contact the doctor.
I saw the hole in the fence and came on through. When I saw you two clomping
through the trees, I figured I’d better tag along. Just in case.”

“Yeah, you’re just in the nick of time,
thanks,” Ray said. He and Zach stood. Ray still cradled his right hand in his
left.

“Is he alive?” Hunter cocked his head and
peered at Winkler in an odd sort of way.

“He’ll survive,” Ray said. “Prolly wake up
with a hell of a headache.”

“He was a whiskey shot away from passing out
anyway,” Zach said. “With any luck we’ll find the kid and be gone before he
wakes. With a lotta luck, he won’t even remember this in the morning.”

Hunter continued to stare down at him. “No.
He’s no threat to us. To himself, maybe, but not to us. Better take his cell
phone just in case.”

Zach did and also located the custodian’s
keys.

“Okay, are we ready to go in?” Ray headed
towards Rosewood’s entrance.

“Hold on guys,” Zach said. “I really feel
strongly that I should go in there alone.”

“And I feel really strongly that I should
get sex from Natalie Portman any time I want,” Ray said. “But ain’t gonna
happen...neither of ‘em.”

“No,” Hunter said. “Hear him out.”

“Listen, I can’t explain it. I just feel it.
And I know you guys will try and protect me at all costs...” He sighed. “What
if, what if you just give me ten, maybe fifteen minutes in there? Hunter, you
go try and make contact with the doctor. Try and solicit his help over here.
Something big is going down tonight. More than just a little boy missing. Do
you feel it?”

“I feel it, brother.”

“Ray, call Rebecca and tell her there was a
change of plans. Sneak out and around to the security guard at the main
entrance and meet her and Joey’s mom there. Tell them that we’re getting
permission to come in and look and stall them there as long as you can. Ginny’s
presence here will only hurt things.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But what if it takes longer?” Zach didn’t
even wait for him to nod. “I’ll give you Winkler’s keys, so you can break ranks
and barge in whenever you feel you need to. You could even get away from those
guys and sneak back through the fence hole. Just give me fifteen minutes.
Please
.”

Ray reluctantly agreed.

“And Ray? Get some ice for your hand. You’re
of no use to us long-term with a maimed paw.”

They shared a chuckle, albeit nervous and
brief. Zach retrieved the custodian’s wayward flashlight, clicked it off and
decided to bring it along as a backup to his night vision goggles. He unlocked
the front door and tossed the keys back to Ray who snatched them with his good
hand.

They stared up at him, waiting to leave once
he entered. It seemed something should be said. It felt like
he
should
say...something. But all that he wanted to say, all that needed to be said was
too much. Anything spoken would come across as trite. So he said nothing to his
friends, and they said nothing back.

Zach turned and journeyed into Rosewood’s
murk. Behind him, the door shut.

Chapter Forty

Zach had no idea where Joey would be, but he
knew the first place he’d look. Also, he hoped to contact Evelyn. He needed to
solicit her help.

Zach passed through the lobby. Through his
night vision goggles, the scattered electronic equipment in the ancient
vestibule gave the impression that the past had somehow smashed into the
present, or perhaps vice versa.

He thought he should at least make a
half-hearted attempt to avoid a prolonged search. “Joey? Joey are you here?” He
thought of adding, “It’s the guy from TV,” but did not. He was especially
grateful he didn’t when the echo brought his words back at him. Hearing
something that stupid in his own voice repeated back to him would have caused
him to lose all self-respect. He stifled a chortle. What was it about libraries
and terrifying, deserted, haunted asylums that brought out the giggles in
people?

“Joey?”

No such luck. Zach would need to look for
him and for Evelyn in the basement. That meant going down the basement stairs.
He’d nearly put his last experience on them in the dark, out of his mind. He
opened the door that led down, took a deep breath and tried to put it out of
his mind again. This time, he told himself, he had night vision goggles. Still,
he was having difficulty making out the stairs, but taking his second step, he
had the thought of throwing caution to the wind and sprinting down them. Then
the low battery indicator flashed urgently in his field of vision. They’d been
fully charged earlier in the evening and the battery should have lasted several
more hours. A phantasm had obviously sapped it. Was draining it.

Zach was taking his third step down when he
heard an echoic voice. “Turn back!”

Zach wasn’t afraid of Evelyn—however, on the
staircase, it was difficult not to wonder what other spirits haunted Rosewood’s
basement. At night. During a full moon.

Quickly, he took another step down. And another
while the night vision picture flashed. Another as it faded and was gone. He
stood in complete blackness. He took off the goggles and placed them against
the wall.

A shriek whistle emanated from somewhere on
the staircase. It rose in pitch until Zach’s ears hurt. “Who are
you
?” a
voice boomed.

It was one of Angel’s Whistling EMF-EVPs.
Seemingly a lifetime ago, but it was only hours, he had told Angel to place one
there. It must have been forgotten in their rush to leave Rosewood. The siren
continued to signal paranormal activity. “Why are you here?” Angel’s recorded
voice asked.

The hair on Zach’s arms stood straight up.
His whole body tingled.

At the bottom of the stairs, a faint light
came into view. Zach used the glow to locate the EMF-EVP on the steps and
switch it off. He looked back and saw an apparition. It was a little girl. She
was hazy at first, as though emerging from fog. Dressed in rags, her hair was
unkempt. She took a step up toward him.

“Evelyn, is that you?” Zach yelled.

As if in response, the girl pointed up at
him. Her mouth opened exposing a swollen tongue. Her lips never moved as the
words came. “Get out!”

A chill ran through Zach. It was as if ice
water crept up his legs and once it reached his waist, shot up his spine. He
took a chance and stepped toward her. “Evelyn, a little boy is missing. We need
to find him. We need your help.”

The image wavered. It flashed and
disappeared. In its place stood the skeletal remains of a burn victim. Flesh,
sparse and charred, hung off the bones. There was a black-light glow that
emanated from its core. It stood there glaring at him. Zach hoped this was
Evelyn. He couldn’t be positive that it was her, but he knew it was not John
Paramour. Of that he was certain.

Zach’s leg trembled as he inched forward to
the next step down. “No,” he said, softly. “You’ll not scare me away. I need
your help.”

It, the thing, screeched. It was a terrible
ungodly sound of pain and suffering. Zach thought of the air trapped in a
balloon squealing as it escaped through a clamped opening. This noise was
misery escaping through a stretched portal.

Zach took another unsteady step towards it.
He stood just three or four stairs away. The thing vanished. Its scream continued
in echoes off the walls down the basement’s hallways. Again it was pitch black.

Zach considered pulling out the flashlight,
but that had an extremely limited battery source. A spirit could drain it with
very little effort, and then he’d be stuck with no way to flee in case of real
threat. He pulled out his cell phone and used the soft glow from the display to
light his way. He continued down the stairs one at a time. The interaction with
the entity left Zach more convinced that it was Evelyn. It was she who was the
mysterious ghost woman of Rosewood. It made sense. She tried to scare people
away using her own abilities in an attempt to keep them safe from John
Paramour, the real danger.

He made it to the bottom of the stairs and
headed down the hallway where she’d been found over a century ago. Was she even
hiding back then? Hiding from him? Zach suspected she was.

“But why hide now, Evelyn?” He meant it to
be a question but, echoed over and over, his words sounded more like an
accusation.

“We can fight him. Fight him together.” The
repeating echo of “together” sounded encouraging. “Help me find the little boy
and stop John from hurting him!” The reverberation of those words jumbled
together. Zach was approaching the area they’d caught her both on camera as a
female form on her way to meet him at
Muses,
and on EVP recordings made
by Rebecca and Patrizia.

“Evelyn, please?” Zach let all the fear and
worry and concern get expressed in his voice. “I need your help. Please talk to
me.”

“Leave this place. Leave!” It came from all
around and echoed meekly off the concrete.

“I’ll not turn back. I’ll not leave,” Zach
said.

“You’re not afraid?”

“No, Evelyn, I’m not afraid of you.” Zach
said, softly.

The basement air, already stale and chilly
became ice cold. She materialized out of the darkness about twelve feet away.
She looked like the elderly lady he’d originally met. Taking a few steps toward
him, she regressed in age—grew younger. A pretty lady not much older than
him—her age at her death. It was hard to think of her as this age—so young. Her
hair chopped short had, during that time period, helped her look crazy. By
modern day standards, it was in style.

“You’re in danger,” she said. “You need to
keep your friends away from here. I’d hoped that perhaps...”

“That we’d solve the case and get rid of
him?”

“No, no. Not like that at all.”

A long ago lesson had stayed with Zach,
mostly because he thought of it every time he heard the song,
Billie Jean.
Zach considered the advice of Monsignor Macginty.

Take care of it in yer head, before the lie
becomes the truth.

Dead over a century, it must be difficult
for Evelyn to distinguish between the truth and what she wished was reality.
She lived in the shadows between the living and the world of her past. From
what Zach knew of her short life, it had been filled with deceit and intrigue.
He needed to know the truth; Joey’s life might depend on it.

“Evelyn, once this is over, we’ll stay away.
Everyone will. I promise.”

“It would be best that way,” she said.

“First, I need to know what happened—an
innocent boy’s life is in danger. Please tell me the truth.”

“What would you like to know?”

“Why did you come to Rosewood?”

“It started one day when John was at work, I
accidentally came upon his plans. They were terrible, terrible writings of hate
and power. He wanted to be a god. He wanted to be
the
God. He wanted to
be a demon. He was insane. I knew I had to hide, not run.”

“Why run or hide?” Zach asked. “Why not
report it to someone? The Mayor or someone big?”

“Think about it,” she said, her voice
cracking. “A young woman alone standing up to a powerful man, a police chief?
In Chicago? Let’s be realistic, these kinds of things just don’t happen, Mr.
Kalusky.”

Zach considered Evelyn being raised a full
generation prior to women gaining the right to vote. It would be difficult
enough in modern times to bring down a police chief with unsubstantiated
accusations of demonology, back then it would surely have been scoffed at. Then
a thought really hit him hard.
Who knows what he would have done to her.

Zach shuddered.