From Darkness Comes: The Horror Box Set (139 page)

Four more of his shuffling steps, and still he kept on. He wasn’t swimming, he wasn’t bathing, he wasn’t sinking.

The old man was walking on water.

The kids were all accounted for, even Deke and his buddies. Starlene knew they liked to sneak off and smoke cigarettes in the laurels, but she didn’t think cracking down on them would do any good, at least until she established rapport. She needed to earn their trust to be a good therapist. And at least it wasn’t marijuana they were smoking. Probably.

Down by the lake, Vicky and Freeman were talking. That was a good sign for both of them, because Freeman had acted like a sassy loner and Vicky had been aloof ever since Starlene had taken the job at Wendover. The poor girl was a classic anorexic-bulimic, and maybe having a friend would help her self-esteem, which in turn might boost her appetite. She sighed. Sounded like a “Dr. Phil Get Real” platitude.

Starlene looked at her watch. Dinner was fifteen minutes away. House parents rotated shifts on a weekly basis, and her week off was coming up. After eating, she would make the long drive down to Laurel Valley, where her cat awaited in her cold mobile home. A good book and a prayer would get her to midnight, when sleep would probably come.

A restless sleep, as they all were these days. First it was Randy who had intruded on her dreams, with his big arms and strong smile and his irritating overprotectiveness. Guys these days thought just because you kissed them meant you were obligated to roll back the sheets and let them wallow like hogs in the slop of your skin. Randy didn’t understand the meaning of patience, especially that business about waiting for marriage. Chastity didn’t seem to be a treasured virtue outside her Baptist church, and virginity was more a burden than a prized possession these days.

And Randy was so secretive, with his “Don’t ask questions” attitude. She needed an ally on the inside. This job was tough enough without having to wing it alone. How could she have a lasting relationship with someone who believed in keeping things from her?

Now she had other worries to lose sleep over. This strange business with the disappearing man in the gown, for example. She hadn’t hallucinated, no matter what Randy and Mr. Bondurant and Dr. Kracowski thought. And she believed religious visions were confined to the Old Testament, not let loose in the modern waking world. Though, Lord knows, the truth often came cloaked in the weirdest of disguises.

And the boy, Freeman, who had left Room Thirteen dazed and trembling. He was another puzzle in this stone house of mysteries.

“The boy’s doing fine now,” came Dr. Kracowski’s voice from behind her.

Kracowski stood under an oak tree with Dr. Swenson. Paula, the doctor liked to be called, especially by the men. She batted her eyelashes every time she introduced herself by her first name, and doubly enjoyed it after some man had peered at the nameplate on her breast a full five seconds too long. Starlene wasn’t jealous, though she wondered what strategy the woman had employed to get through medical school.

Kracowski waited, looking at Starlene like a cat that had swallowed cream. Pleased with his playmate or smug in his therapeutic genius?

“I don’t know,” Starlene said. “He looked awful shaky when he left that treatment room.”

“You don’t trust me at all, do you?” Dr. Kracowski turned to Dr. Swenson. “She doesn’t trust me.”

“That’s not really my place, sir,” Starlene said. “My main responsibility is for the welfare of the kids.”

“As is mine, Miss Rogers. We’re all part of the Wendover team. And victory is measured by happy hearts and contented souls. One child at a time.”

“What was that business with the electricity? I didn’t think the home was authorized to administer electroconvulsive therapy. And I’m pretty sure that neither Freeman nor his legal guardian authorized it.”

“Wendover is Freeman’s guardian now,” Kracowski said.

“And the treatment must have done his heart good,” Dr. Swenson said, in her cheerleader voice. “He’s well enough to be flirting with the Vomit Queen.”

Starlene wanted to choke the woman for her use of the nickname, but Kracowski’s grin stopped her cold.

“Now, Paula, just because the children can’t hear us doesn’t mean we can let down our guard,” he said. “After all, if you name a puppy ‘Butt-Ugly,’ it will suffer from poor self-esteem and the resultant depression. Even though the puppy doesn’t know the meaning of the words. It’s all projection and perception, setting up expectations.”

Starlene looked at her watch again. Three more minutes. She could put up with this insufferable pair that much longer, surely. This was nothing compared to the trials of Job or the rigors of a church bake sale.

“Tell me, Miss Rogers,” Kracowski said, waving his hand to indicate the children playing and shouting on the grounds. “What do you see when you look at our young charges?”

“I see hearts in need of hope. And I think we ought to do more than just shock them senseless.”

Swenson glowered. “Richard’s treatments affect positive change at the atomic level. He heals the whole person, from the inside out.”

Kracowski laughed. “I don’t need another advocate, dear. The results will speak for themselves once I collate my data and get my articles written.”

“That’s what it’s all about with you, isn’t it?” Starlene knew she was risking her job, but she’d had enough of Kracowski’s subterfuge and pompousness. “As long as you get credit in the psychological community, you could care less about the kids.”

“I care more than you can imagine, Miss Rogers. Those kids out there, the ones who receive Synaptic Synergy Therapy, they are
me
. Or, rather, the way I was when I was young. Lost, confused, unsure of my place in the world. I had so much anger inside.”

“Did you plug yourself into a wall socket, or did you find somebody to talk to?”

“We’re really not so different, Miss Rogers. I believe in optimism. That’s a version of harmony, no matter if the harmony is induced by SST or through the attention of someone who pretends to care.”

“I care,” Starlene said. She watched Vicky and Freeman on the rocks by the lake. They seemed to be arguing about something. She hadn’t seen Vicky so animated in weeks.

“I’m sure you do care,” said Swenson. “You’re brainwashed by the twin systems of religion and social sciences.”

“Paula, don’t rush to judgment,” Kracowski said. “We all need faith.”

“Faith,” Starlene said. “I’ll remember that tonight when I’m saying my prayers.”

The sun was lower now, touching the cut of the mountains, and shadows reached like fingers toward Wendover Home.

“I’ll tell you what,” Kracowski said. “Why don’t you let me administer an SST treatment to you? If you’re sound and healthy, it can do no harm. If you have any troubles, your emotional fields will be aligned to their proper state. And you’ll see that I’m not some Victor Frankenstein running a chamber of horrors.”

Starlene folded her arms. The evening was growing cold. Or maybe the chill originated from the challenge in Kracowski’s voice.

“Sure,” she said. “I’ll be your guinea pig. You’d probably love to have a case involving an adult subject, anyway, to make your research more credible.”

“Tomorrow morning, then?”

“I’m scheduled to rotate off duty tonight.”

“I can have the schedule changed. Things will soon be very interesting around here. The state board is going to visit in a few days, and our directors are excited about what’s happening here.”

“More likely, they’re excited about basking in the reflected glory of your genius,” Starlene said.

Down by the lake, Vicky and Freeman had stopped talking and were looking out across the water. Starlene followed their gazes, and that’s when she saw the old man.

She was about to blurt out to Kracowski, to show him that the man with the wet footprints was
real
, that she wasn’t prone to temporary insanity or hallucinations. But she saw the old man walking on water, four steps, five steps, and she was trying to deny the evidence of her own eyes when he disappeared.

Maybe she
did
need an SST treatment.

Or maybe she just needed to have her brain fried to a crisp.

Because, in recorded history, only one person had ever walked on water, and Jesus Christ was safely resurrected and borne aloft to Heaven.

Unless Jesus had made his promised return right here in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, on the grounds of Wendover, then a different kind of spirit was on the loose.

The conference room was quiet, the lights low. Francis Bondurant fidgeted with the glass in his hand. He longed for another drink, but he didn’t dare let Dr. Kracowski learn of his vice. At least on duty and in public, he was a ginger ale man.

Across the polished table from him, Kracowski and Swenson sat side by side. This room was where the Board of Directors held its quarterly meetings, and was several doors down from where Bondurant had imagined seeing the old woman the previous night.

No, not imagined—she was REAL, she stared at me with that grinning forehead scar and—

Bondurant tossed down a couple of fingers of the ginger ale. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his suit, realized he was sweating, and loosened his tie. More oxygen to the brain never hurt, though surely his heart was thundering enough to send plenty of air to his skull.

“You’re melting,” Kracowski said. “What’s going on?”

“It’s like this, sir—”

Paula Swenson smiled at Bondurant’s term of subjugation and moved closer to Kracowski. She had selected the alpha male and her eyes said she had nailed him until death or a hefty divorce settlement, whichever came first. She cared not one bit for the children, for the home, or for Wendover’s good standing. She made her reputation on her back, not on her feet.

Bondurant clenched one fist beneath the table, imitating the grip of “The Cheek Turner,” picturing Swenson bent over his desk and squeaking, softly at first and then in real pain, as he brought the paddle down again and again and again—

“Now you’re evaporating as well,” Kracowski said.

Bondurant wiped the sweat from his eyebrows. “Too many things going on at once. Those two directors showing up on short notice, your experiments increasing in frequency, the staff changing over, and state inspectors coming by in a few days. This McDonald guy lurking around all the time. And these new supporters, I know they’re a godsend, but it’s hard to get a handle on them.”

“Pressure is internal, not external,” Kracowski said.

“That’s a good one,” Swenson said. “You’ll have to write that down.”

“I already have.”

“It’s just”—Bondurant paused to finish his glass—“the staff has become a little unsettled.”

“Unsettled?”

“Well, it’s about the . . . you know . . .”

“If I knew, your calling this meeting would have been unnecessary.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And my time is quite valuable. Should you ever need a private consultant, you’ll find that you couldn’t afford me.”

“Lucky for Wendover that you’re willing to work for free,” Swenson said, as if hardly happy about it.

“I’m not working, I’m playing. I’m playing the biggest game of all, isn’t that right, Bondurant?”

“Game?” Bondurant’s hands trembled.

“The God game. Healing little souls, that’s what we do here, isn’t it? Redeeming the sins of society. Fixing God’s mistakes.”

Bondurant wished he had a little something in his glass. He’d even risk some whiskey. The knot in his throat tightened. Nothing to do but say it plain. “It’s about the ghosts.”

Kracowski had been leaning back in his chair, casual, perhaps with a hand on Swenson’s thigh under the table. Now he sat forward and stared as if trying to decide to what species Bondurant belonged.

After a long pause in which the room’s air grew more dense, Kracowski smiled. “Ghosts.”

Swenson giggled. “Spooky-boo. So that’s what’s been coming to me in the night? I thought it was
you
, Richard.”

She squeezed the doctor’s arm but he pushed her away. “Not now, Paula. The man’s serious.”

Bondurant wished that he, like the mad woman he’d seen, could disappear into the wall. Kracowski despised weakness, and belief in anything that couldn’t be proven was a weakness. “We’ve had three staff members make reports. One even quit over it.”

“And what did these reports consist of? The same old campfire story about the old man in the gown? Because I’ve heard that one myself. Ever since I was four. Do you know what an urban legend is, Bondurant?”

He nodded in response.

“Well, Wendover seems to have its very own urban legend, the one about the dreary little hunchback they call ‘Look-Out Larry.’ I’m quite sure the so-called ‘ghost’ predates the existence of Wendover Home, and local townsfolk will be more than happy to share the legends their grandparents whispered about this place. Every town has a ghost, and every old building has one.”

“Wendover’s only a dozen years old, but the building’s been here for more than seventy years.”

Swenson said, “Does that mean lots of people have died here?”

Kracowski laughed. “Nobody ever dies at Wendover. Do they, Bondurant?”

“Only for a little while,” he said under his breath.

“What’s that?”

“I said, ‘Not like Enlo.’”

“Ah, the home where the little girl died from a restraint hold.”

“
Alleged
restraint hold,” Bondurant said. “That technique is approved by Social Services. The girl most likely had an undetected heart condition. But it should serve as a warning. Enlo was put on six months’ probation.”

“Too bad. You’d think the authorities would let the girl’s ghost return from the grave and dispense justice.”

Swenson touched the doctor’s shoulder. “You’re funny, Richard. No wonder I like you.”

Kracowski frowned at her. “Not in front of the staff. How many times do I have to tell you?”

Bondurant wondered if Kracowski really believed the staff didn’t know about their little affair. But Kracowski wasn’t common, he didn’t deal in gossip, and, to him, casual conversation about personal matters was poison. He lacked humanity even though he professed to work in human services. Even though Wendover and its clients were sport to Kracowski, he took the game seriously.