The Demonists (14 page)

Brenna had known something was wrong almost immediately upon entering the room. There had been a feeling in the air, a badness that hadn’t been there before.

He looked as though he was sleeping, lying there in his pumpkin onesie. Something had told her to go to him, to make sure that he was all right. Brenna had done this countless times since he was born. If she had added up all the time that she had spent watching him sleep, making sure that he was breathing . . .

If she could only have that time back again—with him.

The tears welling up in her eyes were scalding hot as they tumbled down her face. She was careful to not let the tears land on the photos. She didn’t want to ruin them.

She remembered how she had gone into the room, careful not to make a sound, and had stood over the crib looking down on her son, searching for signs that he was fine—deeply asleep and fine.

But this time she couldn’t find any.

It felt as if hours had passed as she had stood over the crib, her eyes desperately looking for movement. She remembered how she’d berated herself for thinking such things. Of course he was all right. Of course he was just sleeping.

Brenna tensed with sensory memory.

Remembering how she’d reached down to take his tiny hand in hers.

It was so cold. Like plastic. Like a doll’s hand.

Her first instinct was to rub his skin, to try and get the circulation back. It must have been too cold in his room, she’d guessed.

But then the realization began to dawn, and the panic like jagged bolts of electricity to sink in.

He wasn’t waking up.

Ronan wasn’t waking up.

Brenna braced herself to the torturous memories, setting the pictures back into the front cover of the storybook and closing it. She set it down on the couch beside her, letting the remembrances come.

She didn’t really know how long she had tried to wake him up, snatching him from the crib, bouncing him in her arms. She remembered that she had begged him to wake up, to not scare Mommy that way.

It hadn’t been long after that when she had begun to pray. She’d never been religious, but then, at that moment, she was as devout as any holy man on the planet.

She’d promised God anything and everything if He (
She
?) would help her son to wake up.

The screaming and crying started not long after she realized that God wasn’t listening, the only one to hear her cries being her husband. And he was as useless as God.

The memories that followed were a blur: EMTs, hospitals, doctors explaining about SIDS, the autopsy— They had cut her baby open to find out what had killed him, and the answer had been less than satisfactory. There was something wrong with his breathing, something completely unnoticeable, something that had become a problem that Halloween night.

Something that had decided to act up and end his life.

Picking his tiny coffin was the next, strongest memory. Imagining her baby being placed inside that box and being put into the ground. The day Ronan was buried, a large part of her was buried with him.

The part that cared about going on, about continuing with her life.

The breakdown nearly took her, and at the time she wouldn’t have cared. She had been hospitalized for nearly six months, and during that time as they struggled to heal her, her world continued to die.

Craig left three months into her hospital stay. He said that he couldn’t do it anymore, and that he was sorry. She didn’t have the strength to argue, and they sold their dream house, and he went away. There were divorce papers that she barely remembered signing, and that was the last time she’d heard anything about him.

She still wondered where he had gone, and whether or not he had found some semblance of peace.

Brenna placed the flat of her hand on the book cover, sealing the memories away once again. She got up from the couch and returned the book to the shelf, sliding it back into the open slot.

Until next time.

Her mind was a jumble of images and emotion, and she considered her options at the moment; she could most certainly do some more work, or she could try and get some sleep.

Doubting very much that sleep would be attainable, she crossed the room and snatched up her empty glass from the floor. She would have a little bit more whisky while perusing her files and then . . .

It took her a moment to recognize the sound of her cell phone ringing. Having to remember where she had left it, she went to her bag and rummaged through the multiple pockets frantically, wanting to catch the call.

“Isabel,” she said, holding the cell to her face.

There was silence, which made her start to believe that she was too late when somebody spoke.

“Yeah, it’s Grinnal,” the reedy, high-pitched voice of one of the odder members of her forensics team said.

“What’s up?”

“Sorry to bother you,” he said. “I debated on whether or not to call, but decided that maybe—”

“What’s up?” she asked again, letting a little petulance slip into her tone.

“It’s the teeth,” he said.

“The teeth?” For a moment she had forgotten one of their more gruesome pieces of evidence. “What about them?”

There was another long pause.

“Grinnal?”

“Yeah,” he said. “You might want to come in so I can show you.”

He went silent, and for a moment she believed that he might have hung up.

“I think there’s something written on them.”

Franklin Cho had owed John and Theodora a tremendous debt. He’d never believed in the supernatural, in ghosts or anything of that nature, until he’d been confronted with something that he couldn’t explain.

Cho was thinking of those things as he walked the corridor of the supposedly secure wing of his psychiatric hospital, on the way to check in on a patient who was also the closest of friends. Theodora had put him immediately at ease. All the fear that he had been experiencing at the time of the inexplicable events had seemed to melt away after spending less than ten minutes with the woman. He stood at the door staring through the small window at the sleeping Theodora Knight, saddened by the events that had brought her here. He still didn’t know precisely what it was that had happened but understood that it had something to do with her and her hus band’s unique area of expertise.

Dr. Cho had been experiencing what could best be described as high-level poltergeist activity when he first met the parapsychologists who would become his friends. When it first began, he had believed that he was imagining things, that the strange events that had started to interfere with his normal day-to-day activities were just unusual happenings—flukes—that could be easily explained away. Strange banging noises, items from his home disappearing, only to be found in other locations outside the residence, furniture and appliances moving inexplicably on their own: these were just a few of the bizarre experiences plaguing him.

And then they got worse.

Mechanical devices breaking down, lightbulbs exploding, an overwhelming sense of being watched when nobody else was there. Cho had been at the end of his rope when the answer to his problems presented itself at a fund-raiser for cancer research, in the form of two guest speakers: celebrity stars of a very popular television program about ghosts and whatnot.

A show that he’d never seen, nor had cared to see. He’d always been more of a PBS guy when he actually had the time to watch television. He hadn’t even wanted to be at the event, having not had a decent night’s rest in weeks thanks to a mysterious voice that cried whenever he closed his eyes, but a dear friend—unaware of his situation—had asked him to attend, and he hadn’t wanted to disappoint her. He’d planned on going, being seen, making a donation, and then leaving as quickly as he could. The TV stars had been wrapping up their talk when he arrived, allowing him to stealthily enter, make his pledge, wave to a few of his colleagues, and start to be on his way when he was stopped by the woman speaker as she left the stage.

Theodora Knight.

She’d said that she wanted to talk to him . . . she wanted to help him with his—
problem
.

Cho rapped gently on the door and stepped in to find a nurse administering medication through an IV. They were giving Theodora lorazepam, a calming agent for the overly anxious. It had been used quite successfully with dementia patients suffering from severe anxiety, and they seemed to be having equally good results with Theodora.

“How’s she doing, Stacy?” he asked, picking up and looking at her chart.

“She’s seems fine,” Stacy said, finishing with the IV. “Resting comfortably.”

He heard a cough from the corner of the room and turned to see a security guard sitting and reading a magazine. There had been some kind of incident in the room the other night involving unauthorized personnel that he had still been unable to quite figure out, and thought it might be best to assign somebody to keep watch over her. Cho finished reviewing the chart and stepped closer to the bed, looking down at his friend. She looked thin, her skin an unhealthy pallor. Whatever it was that was affecting her was certainly taking its toll. He remembered how she had looked the first time they met, the vibrancy that seemed to come off her in waves.

When she’d mentioned his problem he remembered feigning ignorance, pretending to not understand. He recalled the look she had given him then as clear as if she were staring at him now, as well as what she had said.

“He’ll never leave you alone until you acknowledge he was here,”
she’d said. He’d been even more confused then, asking her who she was talking about, who would never leave him alone?

“Your brother,”
she’d said.

His suspicion that she was nothing more than a charlatan was verified at that moment. He’d never had a brother. In fact, he was an only child. And he’d told her so, believing that he’d seen through her performance, catching her off guard.

But Theodora had been completely unfazed. She’d stuck to her story and even gone on to explain that he had indeed had a brother, but they had never known each other outside the womb. “I’d like some time alone with my patient,” he said softly. Stacy understood, and quickly left. It took a moment for the security guard to get the picture. “Take a break,” Cho told him. “I’ll keep an eye on things for a while.”

The security guard stood and left them alone, and Dr. Cho pulled a chair up alongside Theodora’s bed. To see her like this, as if her very life force was being drained away, was truly something terrible. He reached beneath her blanket and took her hand in his, hoping to will some of his own inner strength into her. There was no natural reason why she was in this condition, which left only the most disturbing of alternatives.

Again, he went back to that night when he’d first met her. He had gone home shaken by her strange words. The unusual events that had been plaguing him began to intensify, so much so that the constant, unexplained disruptions were even beginning to affect his work. He’d been unable to stop thinking of what Theodora had said about a brother, unable to rest, and finally he worked up the courage to ask his elderly mother about it. He’d been certain that she would scoff at the concept, but to his surprise she hesitated.

Cho squeezed Theodora’s hand. “Can you hear me, Theo?” he asked. “It’s Franklin.”

She continued to sleep, showing no signs that she could hear him, but that didn’t stop him.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry for not being able to help you, like you helped me.”

Cho’s mother had finally explained that when she had first found out that she was pregnant, the doctors had believed that she was having twins, but a follow-up visit several weeks later showed evidence of only one child. The doctors had said that the second child was a victim of a phenomenon called vanishing twin syndrome, where one of the two children in utero is miscarried and then absorbed by the other, healthier child. She had always believed the doctors had just been wrong.

He remembered thinking over and over again,
She was right, Theodora Knight was right.
“I was at the end of my rope, and you helped me,” he said to the unconscious woman. “You gave me my life back . . . and helped my brother to finally rest.”

Cho had contacted Theodora Knight almost immediately after learning about his twin, practically begging for her help. He had been beyond desperate by then, and she couldn’t have been more gracious. Together they explored his life before the strange activity had begun. Cho had shared that he had a benign cyst on his lower back that had been discovered just before the poltergeist activity began. He had been planning to have it removed, but those plans had taken a backseat to the chaos his life had become.

Theodora had felt that it was all connected, and had encouraged Cho to proceed with the surgery. Cho hadn’t understood, but by then he had learned not to question Theodora’s advice. He’d had the cyst removed and was stunned by the pathology results. The sac had contained embryonic residue of his twin.

Theodora had explained that those remains needed to be acknowledged for what they were, and interred with some level of respect. Cho had done as she directed, and the unusual phenomena affecting him had stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Theodora had basically saved his life by showing him the existence of another reality, and now she needed him, his expertise, and he would do anything that he could to save her.

He continued to hold her hand, carefully studying her face for any signs of improvement. And his vigilance was rewarded, as she sud denly began to stir.

“Theo?” he called, standing and leaning over her. “Theo, it’s Franklin. Can you hear me?”

Her eyes opened and she looked at him vaguely.

“Hey there,” he said, gently smoothing the hair away from her face. “How are you feeling?”

Her eyes closed slowly, and then opened again, wide, as the expression on her face grew rigid.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked her. “Anything to make you more comfortable?”

Her mouth started to move, and he leaned closer to her, placing his ear near to her mouth. “What is it, Theo?” he asked her. “What can I do for you?”