“Mom, Mom, are you okay? Jude whispered, touching her mom’s shoulder.
“Yes, keep going. I’m fine,” she said. But the memories of that night were coming back, and worse the cries, shouts and whispers grew louder. The chamber seemed to trap the spirits, to ignite their fury, and amplify their grief. Sophia had encountered many spirits in her life - these were different - angry, hostile, menacing.
“Dr. Kaiser?” Alice called ahead of them.
Sophia heard Dr. Kaiser’s voice, shrill.
“Get off me, get away, stop them. You stupid girl, stop them.”
Sophia ran, Jude beside her. They charged through the dark tunnel and into the room. The torches flickered from the walls.
Hattie lay on the bed, her face waxen, her blue eyes huge with black dilated pupils in their center.
“LSD,” Sophia murmured.
Damien unbuckled Hattie’s straps and lifted her from the bed.
Alice hunched over a man in a white coat.
Kaiser.
He was shrieking and flailing at the air, the ground, and he slapped at Alice’s hands.
“They’re eating me alive,” he howled. “The blood, my blood.”
Blood gushed from his hand and yes, the shadows seemed to be descending upon him in droves, waves, moving towards that blood.
Jude ran to Hattie and Sophia broke her trance and followed.
“Oh baby,” she whispered.
“Mama?” Hattie asked looking at her with huge petrified eyes.
“You’re okay, honey. Go,” she urged Damien, and they ran from the room, hearing the calls of Dr. Kaiser and the pleas of Alice as they streaked down the tunnel into the dark forest.
Epilogue
The Northern Michigan Asylum for the Insane
September 25, 1965
Kaiser
Kaiser sat in the hall outside his room. Another patient was sweeping the hallway, occasionally crouching to the floor to brush his hand over the cement as if he’d missed a spot.
A cold sweat popped along Kaiser’s brow and he wiped it quickly away lest the patient see his fear.
Dr. Knight paused in the hallway staring at him for a long moment before plastering on one of his placating smiles.
“How are you today, Stephen?” Knight asked squatting down in front of Kaiser.
Kaiser held his hands balled in his lap. He wanted to punch and pummel the doctor. How dare he address him by his first name in front of patients? It was the most terrible breech and an intentional one at that.
“I’m sure you can imagine how I am, Larry,” Kaiser hissed. “Where is Alice?”
“She was needed on another floor. How did you sleep last night? Have the nightmares improved?”
Knight spoke to him as if he were a feeble-minded child.
“The Brotherhood is very concerned, Stephen. If you were to say something during one of your episodes,” Knight trailed off.
“I got you into The Brotherhood, Knight. Me! You were unworthy, most of them are. How dare you threaten me?”
Knight stood up, holding his hands in the air and stepping away as if Kaiser was a wild animal ready to attack.
“Whoa, Stephen. Please calm down or I’ll have to call for an orderly. Have you seen the new one who just started? Frank something or other? He’s great big.” Knight held his arms out wide. “Not the brightest fellow, but strong as an ox.”
“Wait,” Kaiser gasped, grabbing at Knight’s white coat. “You have to get me out of here. She only has power here. Don’t you see? This pace,” he gestured around wildly, “is a gateway for the dead.”
Dr. Knight prised Kaiser’s hands from his coat and offered him another of those demeaning smiles.
“Stephen, perhaps it’s time for a new treatment,” Knight suggested, checking his watch.
“I want to speak with Alice, now,” Kaiser bellowed, struggling up from his chair. His body heavy from medication refused to step forward. He collapsed back into his chair.
The patient who’d been sweeping paused.
Kaiser turned his angry stare toward the young man, and he quickly shuffled down the hall.
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, Stephen. But do remember what I said. The Brotherhood is not one for taking chances.”
Knight walked away, and Kaiser imagined strapping him to the table in the chamber, peeling off his eyelids with a razor sharp scalpel.
The hall stood empty, and soon night would fall. Kaiser shivered and glanced at his cut hand. Already blood had pooled beneath the bandage. No amount of wrapping sufficed. By morning his bed would be soaked in blood.
He blinked down the long corridor, the shadows growing sinister.
She would come for him again as she did every night - his mother, with her smashed-in head and her army of ghosts, ready to take her vengeance.
September 27, 1965
Sophia
“He thought you were tucked away, safe and sound in Andrew’s little hunting cabin,” Gram Ruth said, standing with her back to Sophia.
She had aged in the decade since Sophia had last seen the matriarch of the Porter Estate. Ruth Porter, the woman who had once terrified Sophia, had lost some of her height as arthritis clawed at the weak muscles of Ruth’s frame forcing her lower, curling her inward. Her hair had turned from black to silver and though she still pinned it high on her head, the barrettes looked old, tarnished.
Ruth reached forward running her fingers over the china on the foyer bureau, creating smudges she would check later to ensure her housekeeper was cleaning properly. Sophia had seen her do it a dozen times.
The foyer looked as it had that fateful morning thirty years before when Sophia had first stepped foot in the Porter’s home and yet all of its grandeur had seeped away. The staircase, once foreboding, the gleaming floors, the statuary more like a museum than a home, looked cold, sterile and most of all - powerless. The woman before her was only a frail old woman, her magic gone.
“And when he went there to find me, what did you tell him?” Sophia murmured, staring at Ruth’s pinched shoulders. “How could you do that to him, Ruth? You might have hated me, fine, but your own son, your grandchildren?”
Ruth spun around. Her face too was marked by the years, ruts and grooves around her mouth and eyes, a layer of chalky powder useless against the ravages of time.
She pointed a shaky finger at Sophia.
“You ruined my son, stole him from me. He would have wasted his life on that dreadful little farm you tricked him into buying.”
“And now he’s dead,” Sophia shook her head, more sad than angry.
“You killed him,” Ruth hissed, and spittle clung to her thin, painted lips.
“I was trapped in an insane asylum, tortured day and night. How did I kill him, Ruth? Are you sure it wasn’t your lies that killed him? Your betrayal?”
Ruth squeezed her hands into fists, breathing heavily, staring at Sophia as if still, after all these years, she would rather see her dead than standing in her house.
“He should have let it go,” Ruth spat. “But no, you’d brainwashed him. He couldn’t function without you, you saw to that. It wasn’t my fault he died in the barn. I didn’t push him, he stumbled. I only meant to keep him away from the boxes…”
Ruth stopped abruptly realizing she had revealed a terrible secret.