Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum (29 page)

He reached a row of waist-high, boxwood
hedges that ran like a mini barricade just past the outer trees. About five
feet separated them from the back fence. Zach double-timed his crawl the
remaining distance. His woozy, throbbing head sobered when he saw that he was
lying about six feet away from Bryce Finman’s feet.

“C’mon, before somebody sees us,” he was
saying.

“Don’t worry. See how dark it is? I shot out
both of those streetlights.”

Zach imagined Matthew pointing over the
fence. Were they going to climb it? It’s barbed wire, Zach reminded himself.
Not impossible but...

“Fucking bankrupt State of Illinois and City
of Pullman,” Matthew continued. “It’ll probably take ‘em months to replace
those bulbs.”

“Just,
come on
already,” Bryce said.

“There. There it is. It’s open.”

“Holy fuck me, dude,” Bryce said, moving
farther from Zach’s hiding place. “I gotta admit, that’s fuggin’ brilliant.”

“I told you I was good,” Matthew said. “I
cut the fence down that way to give Old Man Winkler something to distract him.”

“Distract him? For what?”

“Hello? What do you think?” Matthew sounded
annoyed. “When I broke into the administration building, I had to leave another
hole for him to discover so he wouldn’t find this one.”

“Winkler’d never notice this.” Bryce
grunted. “Fuck, I knew it was here and didn’t see it.”

Zach couldn’t resist a peek. He raised his
torso off the ground and settled into a wobbly crouch. His eyes adjusted, but
he couldn’t believe what they saw.

Matthew stood on the other side of the fence
holding a net-like contraption. A modest triangle segment had been cut from the
fence’s corner pole to the ground. The hole was wide enough that Bryce could crawl
through it.

“Careful. Careful. Don’t touch the side or
the top if you can help it,” Matthew said. “Lean against the pole.” He
stretched the net-like contraption up and away from where Bryce passed through.

Zach wondered if he was hallucinating.

Once Bryce had cleared the fence, Matthew
stretched the net-like apparatus across to the post and fastened it back in
place. From Zach’s vantage point, even knowing there was an opening in the
fence, he couldn’t see it.

Apparently, the work was just as impressive
up close. Bryce stood with hands on his hips and was shaking his head. “Fucking
amazing.”

“Yeah, it won’t last,” Matthew said. “We
were lucky not to get any rain the past couple days. First good downpour will
crack the paint all to hell.”

“Who gives a fuck.” Bryce stated flatly.
“Come on. Let’s get outta here and get the stuff.”

They made their way up Lincoln Avenue. When
Zach was certain they were far enough away to be able to see into the darkened
corner, he stood. Perhaps Bryce and Matthew had been able to leap over the
boxwood hedges, but in his weakened condition, Zach would have to press through
them. At full strength, the task would barely have slowed him down. However,
short of blood, dehydrated and weak, he ventured only halfway through the bushes
before he had to stop and rest. His heart pounded against his chest. His head
swam and tiny lights flashed in the corners of his eyes. Anxiety that bordered
on panic reared its Medusa-like head. He couldn’t pass out halfway through the
bushes. The noise. They’d come back. He couldn’t pass out at all. Certain that
his willpower alone would sustain his consciousness if he only wished for it
hard enough.

I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish
I wish tonight.

He had to follow them—find out what they
were planning and figure out what they’d done. Zach pushed through the hedges,
ripping leaves away from their branches and breaking dead twigs. He tried to
press through despite his fatigue. Determined not to fail.

When you wish upon a star, makes no difference—

It was happening again. He was losing his
thought stream. His heart was pumping too fast for too little blood, which
meant his head would get less and less of it.

Be careful what you wish for, you might just
get it.

They were his mom’s words. His mom’s old
warning. When she had said it to him as a boy, he’d had no idea what it meant.
Mid-shrub, the meaning was very clear. Get your wish, cross to the other side
of the bushes, pass out, and let Bryce and Matthew find you when they return.

Zach strained to reverse his course. He
didn’t have much time to get back to the safe side, the darker side.

He teetered a second, his head swimming and
his vision failing. Against his will, for the first time in a long while, Zach
blacked out.

In fact, he was completely unconscious
before his head hit the ground.

Chapter Thirty-Two

8:02 PM - Rebecca

“How many times are you gonna call him?”
Angel asked. “There must be something wrong with his phone. Call Sara. She’ll
know what’s up.”

“I called her already,” Rebecca said. “She
hasn’t seen him for hours.”

An intuitive feeling had been running
through her since about 6 PM. Where was Zach? For just a flash, in her mind’s
eye Rebecca saw him, envisioned Zach covered in blood. She shook free of the
mental picture. She banished it far away.

The Foster’s modest front room contained
cheap oak furniture and smelled vaguely of spoiled milk. The walls were
decorated with country prints and pictures of Joey.

Ginny joined them. “He’s asleep. He was
tired and cranky all day. He didn’t sleep very well after the thing last night.
He kept having nightmares.”

“So are you ready to tell us what happened?”
Angel readied a video camera.

Ginny looked between him and Rebecca, then
she nodded and sat on the edge of her couch. She sighed. “Yeah.”

“Let me light some incense?” Rebecca asked,
hoping to cleanse the air.

“Um, sure.”

Ginny didn’t look thrilled about the idea,
but Rebecca lit it anyway.

“Okay, so the thing is, there’s what Joey
did, and then there’s the creepy thing.”

Rebecca glanced at Angel to make sure he was
filming. He flashed her a thumbs up. “Go ahead,” she said.

“Last night after dark, after Joey was in
bed sleeping—or so I thought, I looked out the front room window across the
street. Mrs. Radkey was standing in her yard with her hands on her hips and her
hair in curlers. I didn’t think anyone still wore curlers or that Mrs. Radkey
had anyone to curl her hair for, but that’s beside the point.”

“What was she doing exactly?” Rebecca didn’t
see how the story was important.

“She was staring. Just staring at something
along the side of my house. Of course I ran outside to see what was there.”
Ginny looked at the wall.

“What was it?”

“I stormed out and sprinted to the side of
the house. There, just around the corner was my son...playing with matches—not
just playing with them. He was trying to set the house on fire.”

“Oh my gosh.”

“I know, right? Anyway, I grabbed him hard
and I scolded him bad. I even spanked him. It’s the only time I’ve ever spanked
him in public. But he looked so...lost, so confused. It was like he’d been
sleepwalking. I was still angry and put him to bed.”

“What about Radkey?” Rebecca asked.

“By the time I’d taken Joey back inside the
house, she’d disappeared, presumably back into her house. I’m telling you
though. She was watching him the entire time. Staring as though she’d
known
what Joey was doing. Something’s wrong over in that Radkey house.”

Rebecca could feel it. She had felt
something drawing her attention there the prior night. Talking to Radkey
earlier in the day had creeped her out.

“Joey was raised better than that. He’s a
sweet boy, but he’s been radically different since his dad died.”

“Aw, his dad passed.” Rebecca said.

“What happened?” Angel asked.

Ginny looked composed as she said it. “Seven
months ago, my—I mean Joey’s dad committed suicide.”

8:37 PM - Sashza

Bryce hadn’t called and by now, she was sure
he wouldn’t call. And that was that for Rosewood. She was done with it. Solve
the mystery or not, release the spirits or not, she wasn’t even going to tell
him what else had come to her. Bryce Finman wasn’t interested in anything but
ratings anyway. She knew that. It used to bother her, but accepting reality had
its own reward. Accepting the reality of what the
Demon Hunters
really
were, a television show and nothing more, allowed her to focus on her private
practice. Her private clients who, once fame had been established on the show,
were willing to pay three and four times what they were before she was
“famous.” It was for her, the end justifying the means. Sashza wished to begin
a series of operations which would transform her from what she had been created
as, to what she knew at heart she was meant to be.

But these visions, or “after-visions” as
she’d come to refer to them, were like nightmares with tentacles attached to
her soul. She couldn’t shake the thoughts or the memories of the little girl.
Amelia was her name. Had something from her psychic reading at Rosewood stowed
away in her subconscious? Had it been ported home with her? She wondered if
anguish over having been denied a female childhood had attracted something in
Rosewood’s haunted residue. Memories, although not Sashza’s memories, had
lapped over her throughout the day like bathwater slowly turning cold and cloudy.

“No,” Boy had said, looking up, “this is my
place.”

That one caused her to shiver every time it
came back. Not so much what he said, but how he’d said it. Not so much the icy
resolve in his eyes, but the hate that lay just behind it. Not so much who he had
been in life, but what she sensed he had become—was becoming in death.

No. She would not tell Bryce Finman anything
about it.

Sashza traipsed through the living room of
her North Shore home in slippers. She would make a spot of tea, turn in for the
night and shake this evil from her. She grabbed the teapot from the stove and
trinkled it full with water. She closed the lid and placed it on the stove’s
back burner, where she placed it most nights. Turned the knob, as she did most
nights. The flame for the back burner took a moment longer than it did most
nights to light. Click. Click. Click.

There was a cold draft. Click. Click. Click.
It caught and lit—as did three other burners simultaneously. There was a flash
of fire.

The blaze caught her robe. With a wisp of
air, the flames attacked her. She could feel them tearing at her chest, like
vicious little mouths. They were singeing her eyelashes. They ran up her
nostrils.

She turned her face away, but she couldn’t
hide. It had come from nowhere. It had come all at once.

This can’t be happening
, she thought amidst the blaze.

But it was.

8:49 PM - Ginny Foster

Something was wrong. Call it women’s
intuition, mother’s intuition or whatever. Ginny knew it. She had trusted these
kids in her home, and had told them about the previous night’s activities. Now,
Rebecca and Angel were like workers at the DMV making her wait, and wait.

And wait.

Enough had gone on the last twenty-four
hours that Ginny was ready to pack her shit up, as her father used to say, and
drive the keys to her landlord. If he wanted, he could chase her ass down for
the rest of her rent. Screw the security deposit.

Exhausted and cranky, Joey had been put to
bed an hour ago. He fussed and even cried as he often did when overtired, but
within three minutes of his head hitting the pillow (and after Ginny tickled
his back), he was asleep. Now, she sat on the edge of his bed listening to his
rhythmic, sleep-drenched breathing as she played with his matted blond hair.
Nothing would hurt her Joey. Not on her watch.

Nothing.

Ginny knew he’d been put through a lot
during her rocky marriage to his dad. Joey’s father, ass that he was, never
learned not to scream at her in front of little Joey. When she’d finally
convinced him she was serious about throwing his ass out and divorcing him,
what was his final legacy to his son? To kill himself.

How does someone explain suicide to a
six-year old? Joey, your dad loved you very much but not enough to stick around
to watch you grow up? Honey, your dad was really just sticking it to your mommy
by ending his life? Buddy, your father was a sick man and his self-prescribed
cure was boarding up the garage and running the car inside until the carbon
monoxide put him to sleep forever?

That fucker.

She’d let Joey’s dad off the hook for all
the things he’d done to her during the marriage, but she’d never forgive him
for the suicide—doing it
on the property
and trapping her in this damn
house with nine months left on an ironclad rental agreement. And the emotional
trauma it would stick Joey with for life? She’d never forgive that bastard.