Ghosts of Rosewood Asylum (38 page)

“In any case,” Evelyn continued, “with
John’s resources in the police department, he’d find me if I ran. I bought a
train ticket to Springfield. I boarded the train with my packed luggage. I got
off the train at the first stop without my bags, without virtually any
possessions. Thomas picked me up and brought me back to Pullman. He brought me
here to Rosewood.”

“Thomas Carter?” Zach verified.

Evelyn’s eyes welled with tears. “Yes, dear
Thomas.”

“You two were lovers?”

“Oh no!” She raised a translucent hand to
her mouth. “Not at first anyway. That was only much, much later.”

Zach wanted to ask a question but hesitated.
It involved Thomas’s murder and he knew it would upset her.

“At first, I thought that I’d only stay at
Rosewood a short time. I’d let John either get caught for his crimes, or for
him to give up on trying to find me. I knew Rosewood would be the very last
place he’d ever look. Because of his mother, he feared and despised ‘the
insane’ as he called them. Besides, who would have ever suspected?”

“And Thomas?” Zach asked. He hoped she would
give him the information he needed without having to ask her about it.

“Thomas was very kind to me and he provided
me with everything that I needed. During the daytime, I was free to stroll the
grounds. The nurses and other orderlies knew I wasn’t
their
ward and
assumed me to be a visitor, a do-gooder that liked to visit the infirmed. I did
so enjoy getting to know some of those people.”

Her face clouded, darkened. Evelyn looked
more pale than when she had first appeared. Her skin wasn’t just whiter, her
entire image appeared to be losing color, fading.

“When Thomas ended up dead and John tried to
frame me for the murder, I knew that if I stayed, it was a matter of time
before he got to me. I pleaded with Dr. Johansson to let me go. He knew from
something called a fingerprint that I was innocent of the crime, but I couldn’t
convince him that I didn’t belong here. I knew that if I made too much of a
fuss, or told him what I knew of John, not only would he really think me
insane, but that John would...”

“Have you done in?” But she’d skipped over
something important, Zach thought.

“Yes. Now, with the strength he’s acquired
over the years, over any period of time he cannot be endured, he cannot be
resisted. He manipulates people to do his will. Other crimes, he commits
himself. Hiding and flight are the only options.”

“What about defeating him?” Zach asked.
“What about getting rid of him for good?”

“I don’t think it’s possible,” she said.
“It’s all I can do to keep him away from the hospital building. Look at what he
did to your group. His subtle manipulation influenced them dramatically over
just two days.”

“My group?”

“Well yes, the Mexican boy lighting candles
all over the place. The Asian girl, smoking drugs. The tall guy with the weird
haircut waiving his funny cigarette around where one loose ember could light
the whole property on fire. Do you think these are accidents? Coincidences? He puts
ideas into people’s heads. He promises them things.”

Zach said nothing.

“Think what he can do over time. Imagine his
affect on the young, the lonely and the feeble minded.”

Zach thought of Wendy’s description of the
1998 arsonist. He was homeless, bipolar and he was hearing voices—voices that
told him to burn down the Pullman Factory.

“Usually, John preys on women. Before I came
to Rosewood, John burned down the Pullman Market Square because he claimed two
female spirits were haunting it. His writings stated that he burned down the
H.H. Holmes ‘castle’ to purge it of lingering female spirits.”

Zach was familiar with the concept that fire
burned and incinerated human spirits. It was a hotly contested debate in the
paranormal circles. Zach had once asked Hunter his opinion. “Better to be safe
than sorry,” he’d said. “If I’m ever a ghost, take care that I’m exorcised and
sent to the light before anything burns down my haunting site.”

Evelyn’s figure continued to lose color. The
glow about her was diminishing.

She continued. “I need not mention John’s
motive for burning Rosewood’s female quarters. To murder his wife, yes, but to
kill as many women as he could.”

The matter of fact way Evelyn spoke of
herself in the third person and glossed over her own death didn’t surprise him.
Many lingering spirits confused the details of their passing. She was rambling
now. Sharing everything that had been bottled up in her for over a hundred
years. But this was information that Zach might need to do battle with John
Paramour.

“Even his final act of arson,’ she said,
“setting himself ablaze, which to some might appear an act of weakness or
surrender was a deliberate and planned act. What the official history doesn’t
report, what decent people of those times would never print in an official
record, was that he first marked the spot with a pentagon. He surrounded
himself with grisly souvenirs, trophies, if you will, of his crimes. He
wanted—still wants to become a demon god.”

Zach sensed that his time with her was
growing short. With every passing moment, she seemed to be more and more
translucent.

“Before Thomas’s death,” she continued, “I
assumed Rosewood would be the last place John would look for me. After the fire
at the female’s quarters, I hid quietly here in the basement again. I let John
think that I’d departed. I had no intention of leaving and letting him
completely take over. Someone needed to thwart his destructive schemes. Could
you imagine the havoc he would wreak if they’d made a school or museum of
Rosewood? All those children. Oh, my heavens no. I did what I could. I
frightened people away. I limited his damage.”

“Evelyn, did you and Dr. Johansson work
together to keep John at bay?”

“No. Yes and no, really. Dr. Johansson never
completely accepted his death. When Rosewood closed, he continued fighting for
its survival. He didn’t quite understand but regardless, his actions helped
keep John away from the administration building.”

“Evelyn, why did you withhold this from me
for so long? Why didn’t you just tell me this that first night we met?”

She answered so matter-of-factly, but her
response caught Zach completely by surprise. “Your uncle told me not to.”

“What?”

Her voice was becoming more and more faint.
“He said we needed to wait and let you figure most of it out on your own.”

Zach didn’t have time to consider the
implications of
that
information. Evelyn’s shape was little more than an
outline. At the rate she was dissipating, he might not even be able to hear her
final response.

“I have one last question.” It was the
question Zach didn’t dare ask earlier. He suspected the answer; however, he
needed her reaction, if not her words, to confirm it.

“Hurry Mr. Kalusky. I’m so very tired.”

“Did Thomas go to your husband and tell him
you two wished to be together?”

Her outline flickered as though the question
startled or upset her.

“Oh, no. Thomas would never have done that.
We’d talked about running away together. Moving west or south or east but, no.
Thomas would know better than going to John. He’d never do that. Thomas will
return for me one day. This I know.”

The last thing Zach could see of Evelyn
before she completely vanished from sight was her mouth twitching.

Before the lie becomes the truth.

Invisible now, Evelyn’s voice was fading as
though she was moving away through a very long tunnel. “I need to go lie down
now, Mr. Kalusky. I hope you don’t mind. I believe that little boy is here,
wandering the halls. He’s not working for John. I suspect he doesn’t believe
John’s lies. The little boy is trying to fight him. I tried to frighten him and
his mother away. I doubt he’ll...”

The rest, assuming there was any, was
inaudible to Zach’s ears.

Chapter Forty-One

Zach heard them shouting before he was
halfway up the staircase. He used the flashlight to locate the night vision
goggles, and then kept it on while he scrambled the rest of the way up.

“Joey! Zach! Hello? Where are you?”

He hurried into the lobby where Ray, Hunter
and Rebecca stood. Their flashlight beams swarmed throughout the darkness.

“Hey, you guys were supposed to give me at
least fifteen minutes alone!”

“Hey moron,” Ray said. “It’s been over
twenty-five minutes. Which floors did you cover?”

“I got hung up,” Zach said. “But he’s not in
the basement.”

Ray growled and surveyed the lobby. “Where
the hell is this kid?”

“He’s in here somewhere. Hey Hunter, any
luck on contacting the doctor?”

Hunter seesawed his hand in a “maybe yes,
maybe no” motion. “I felt a presence, but he didn’t talk. Hopefully he listened.”

“Rebecca, aren’t you supposed to be with
Ginny?”

“Nice to see you too,” she said. “We were
waiting with her at the main gate. The cops have to report missing children to
the national database within two hours of a report, so Ginny wanted to check in
here before making this a federal issue. We left her with the security guard up
front. Ray made up an excuse that he needed to show me something in his car. If
she finds out we’re in here and kept her out of the loop, she’s going to throw
a conniption fit.”

“Hey, we’re wasting time here with
pleasantries,” Ray said. His right hand had swelled to the size of a small
water balloon.

“Okay.” Zach pointed up the staircase.
“Hunter and Rebecca, start at the top and work your way down. Ray and I will
cover the first floor. If we don’t find him, we’ll likely meet up on the second
floor somewhere. Partners stick together. No one breaks off alone.”

“Live together, die alone,” Hunter said.

Zach didn’t bother asking what that line was
from. “Call or text message if you find him. Let’s go!”

They broke off in pairs. Hunter and Rebecca
trotted up the circular main staircase. Zach started down the hall toward the
back of the building. Ray followed along.

“Where are we heading?” he asked.

“Winkler said something about a door being
left unlocked in the visitor’s area. Let’s start there.”

“So what held you up in the basement?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Zach said. “I’ll
tell ya later.”

They arrived at the old visitor’s room and
shone their flashlights around it. There were a lot of footprints across the
dusty floor, however they looked like they’d come from the ghost hunter’s tour
their first day at Rosewood.

“What’s that?” Ray whispered.

His light beam trained on something on the
floor that looked vaguely like a spider. He crept to the far side of the room.
He bent, picked it up and held it near his face. Zach sidled up next to him and
illuminated the find. It was a fuzzy red piece of lint. The kind that would
scrape off a child’s pajamas.

“I’ve got the eyesight don’t I, buddy?” Ray
asked.

Zach said nothing, but rewarded his friend
with a thumbs up signal.

Following the line from the outside door to
where the lint had been, the two of them trekked into the hall leading to the
infirmary. They left no room unchecked.

“Did you hear that?” Zach asked, hoarsely.

Ray extended his nose in the direction the
noise had come from. It had sounded like a child’s sigh. After investigating
the infirmary, they checked every room and were heading back towards the lobby.
Since the tiny evidence of red pajamas, they had found nothing.

“I know where he is,” Ray said. “Room 111.”

It made sense. In addition to the tables the
video equipment was set up on, there were packing pads and a number of
equipment cases. The perfect hiding spot for a kid. In hindsight, they should
have looked there first.

They entered but didn’t see him. “Joey? Are
you in here?”

There was rustling behind the cases beneath
the table.

“Joey?”

“Go away. Leave me alone!”

Zach turned and flashed Ray a thumbs up. Ray
looked as relieved as Zach felt that they’d found the boy. “Joey, your mom’s
very worried about you.”

“Well, I’m worried about her. That’s why I’m
hiding.”

Zach motioned to Ray to call Hunter and
Rebecca.

“Joey, it’s not safe to hide here. We’ve got
to get you home.”

“No!” he skittered away until his back hit
the wall. “He told me he’d burn it down if I didn’t help him. It’s the only
thing he said that I believe.”

“Who?” Zach asked, already knowing the
answer. He inched closer to the boy while the question distracted him.

“The boy who isn’t a boy. He promised that
he’d bring my daddy back. He wanted me to help him burn this building down. I
told him to do it himself.”