Coldhearted (9781311888433) Read online

  “Have you gone back to the graveyard?”

  “Yeah, even though my grandmother would be furious.” He shrugged, clueless as to why she’d acted that way. “I’ve never been possessed since,” he said lastly, before falling into meditative silence.

  Edie was starting to put the pieces together. Quinn had been possessed by a ghost who knew his grandmother. So this meant that Tristan was able to possess Russell because he had some link to Russell that he didn’t share with anyone else in Grimsby.

  But what was it? And could the link be easily broken?

  Chapter 20

  Grimsby Sanatorium was creepy, but Edie had been expecting this.

  It looked more like a maximum security prison than a residence for the mentally ill. The moonlight exposed its ugly features. It was gray-bricked, with shattered-out, iron-barred windows, and dead vines snaking up the sides. In the front was a tiered fountain without running water. Edie assumed that when the place had been in operation it’d given the sanatorium an appearance of hospitality.

  The building seemed to easily cover a football field with walkways between wards, and the central point of entry was at least five stories with a pyramid roof. The front door was wooden and looked sturdy with a KEEP OUT sign hanging lopsided by one nail.

  She was standing in front of it while waiting for Jules and Quinn. They were gathering their equipment from the Tahoe that was parked next to a stylish black Land Rover.

  The door to the sanatorium creaked open and a tall guy came out. He was in his early twenties with short-cropped, raven black hair.

  “Edie, right?” he said, smiling.

  “Yes,” she acknowledged.

  They shook hands. Edie noticed that his were warm with a secure grip.

  “I’m Gunnar, nice to meet you.”

  “Nice to meet you too,” she agreed.

  “First ghost hunt?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “Jules said you have a ghost attached to you?”

  “His name is Tristan Lockhart. He’s more of a poltergeist, really.”

  Someone stepped out of the shadows, behind Gunnar. He was average height with curly blond hair. Both of his hands were occupied; his left was holding a small device, while his right was holding a digital camera. He put both in his left hand to shake Edie’s with his right.

  “I’m Rory. You must be Edie.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said. “What’s that?” she asked next, pointing to the smaller device that he was holding.

  He held it up for her but she still couldn’t identify it. “It’s a digital recorder for EVPs.”

  Edie furrowed her brow. “EVPs?” she repeated, confused.

  “Electronic Voice Phenomena,” a female voice translated, and then thankfully clarified, “Basically, ghost talk.”

  A tall girl came out of the shadows next, followed by another tall girl, who looked exactly like her. The twins, Edie remembered.

  Rory stepped aside to let them pass. “Edie, this is Bree and Amee.” he introduced, pointing out Bree as the brunette and Amee as the blonde.

  They seemed nice, smiling.

  “Glad you could make it,” Bree said, holding a digital recorder too.

  Amee’s hands were stuffed into her coat pockets, but it seemed more out of habit than keeping warm. “We heard about your attachment,” she said. “You could be a conduit like Quinn.”

  “Did you just call me a condiment?” Quinn asked.

  He was grinning as he came to stand by Edie’s side. He had a duffel bag loaded down with the strap hoisted over his shoulder.

  Amee sighed.

  Bree said, “Good ol’ Quinn. He’s like that one funny guy in a horror movie.”

  “Whoa,” Quinn said, not smiling anymore. “Doesn’t the funny guy always die?”

  “No,” Jules refuted, coming up beside Edie. She had a heavy duffel bag too, holding the straps with one hand. “You’re thinking of Star Trek when a guy with a red shirt goes with the Away Team down to an alien planet.”

  They all looked at Quinn’s shirt. It was red.

  Quinn cursed. “Someone change with me.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Gunnar said.

  “Yeah, let’s get this investigation going,” Rory said. He looked at Edie and smiled. “I’m excited to see what kind of activity we get with you here.”

  “Me too,” Jules agreed. “It’s going to be awesome.”

  Gunnar led the way inside. Rory let the girls enter first, and then he followed. They were so excited about investigating a creepy sanatorium that they didn’t even realize that Edie and Quinn were still standing outside. She was hesitating because she was nervous, but she didn’t know why Quinn was stalling too.

  “Aren’t you going inside?” she asked.

  He tugged on his shirt. “It’s red,” he whined. “It’s like walking into a lions’ den, and saying, ‘Hey, lions, we’re cool, right? You won’t rip me from limb to limb, right?’”

  Edie shook her head and sighed, watching her breath escape. “You’re being ridiculous, Quinn. Trust me. The color of your shirt has nothing to do with whether you live or die.”

  He wobbled his head. “Yeah, I know. It’s just…I’d feel better if I was wearing a different shirt.”

  “You could always take it off,” she suggested innocently.

  Quinn grinned. “I knew it. You just want to see me naked.”

  She sighed, aggravated. “Yes, Quinn, it is my greatest wish in life to see you without a shirt on in a creepy, abandoned mental asylum. You got me.”

  “All right, fine!” Quinn fumed, and began walking toward the entrance. “But if I die, I want them to play ‘I Want To Know What Love Is’ by Foreigner.”

  She’d yet to move and furrowed her brow in disbelief. “Really?”

  He halted and turned around to face her. “Yeah, it’s an awesome song. Don’t judge me.”

  “All right, fine, whatever you want. It’s your funeral.”

  He started walking again. She caught up and followed beside him. They were silently walking side by side, until she stopped, and pulled him to a halt.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  He smiled. “Yes, I’d be happy to be the father of your children.”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, Quinn. Why did you hook up with Rochelle when you knew she was dating Mason? Didn’t you feel that was wrong?”

  “That’s precisely why I did it,” he admitted with absolutely no shame. “I’m attracted to girls who are attached. Single girls don’t interest me.”

  She was confused and disgusted. “That’s horrible, Quinn. So you’re saying if I were to break up with Mason and stayed single, you’d want nothing to do with me?”

  “Look, I get a thrill out of taking another guy’s girl.” He gave an unapologetic shrug. “It’s probably some kind of caveman thing or something. When Rochelle and Mason broke up, I was done with her.”

  “So that’s why you won’t give Candie the time of day because she’s single?”

  Quinn nodded. “That. And she’s clingier than Saran Wrap. At least that’s what the other guys say.” He shook his head. “I don’t want a commitment. I just want to have fun.”

  She wagged her finger at him. “You know, one day Quinn, you’re going to meet a girl and fall so madly in love, you won’t even be able to get back up.”

  He smiled. “How do you know I haven’t already?”

  She folded her arms over her chest. “If that were true, you wouldn’t be here. You’d be with her.”

  “And if you loved Mason, you wouldn’t be here, either,” he threw out. “Where is your boyfriend, by the way?” He pretended like he was looking for Mason, shielding his eyes. “Where’s good ol’ Mason Fenwick?” He lowered his hand. “What lie did you tell him?”

  Busted. “I told him I was sick with the flu.” She pointed a threatening finger at the muscled football player. “And you’d better not say a word to him, or anyone else beyond who’s he
re, about me being at this sanatorium. I’m not here for fun. I’m here to find a way to rid me of this ghost, once and for all. Now are you going to continue to be a jerk, or are you going to help me?”

  “Jeez.” He held up his hands in a submissive gesture. “Don’t worry. I’m not a blabbermouth. It’s cool. You know, you’re scary when you’re determined.”

  “Well, at least you find me less attractive.”

  “Au contraire, ma petite fleur,” he said in a deep, exotic voice.

  She’d let him walk a few feet, before saying in astonishment, “You speak French?!”

  He stopped and turned toward her. “I’m full of surprises, Edie.” He smirked. “Get to know me better and you’ll discover more of my hidden talents.” He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively at her.

  She said nothing and brushed past him, entering the sanatorium. The others had been making their way back with a look on their faces to suggest that they’d been worrying about Edie and Quinn. When they discovered the pair to be all right, everyone except Jules began their pre-investigative routine: checking and rechecking their equipment, talking among themselves.

  “I thought you’d been ghost-napped,” Jules said to Edie, readjusting her glasses.

  Edie waved a dismissive hand at Jules. “I was just talking with Quinn.”

  Jules’s eyes widened. “You’re not pregnant, are you? Because Quinn’s one smooth talker.”

  Edie crossed her wrists over her stomach in an X motion. “No way! Besides we were outside, where it’s freezing cold. And we were gone for only five minutes.”

  “I don’t need that long,” Quinn said, smug.

  Unbeknownst to Edie, he’d been standing behind her and Jules, listening in, as he quietly dug into his duffel bag. Finally, he retrieved a video camera and turned it on Edie, recording.

  “Well, Edwina St. John, this is your first ghost hunt. How do you feel?”

  Suddenly, the lights went off, and something cold and hard was being pressed into her hand.

  “A flashlight,” Jules said. “We investigate in the dark. Our cameras are equipped with night vision.”

  “No, give her a camera,” Gunnar said, sounding far away. “I’m guessing she’ll get the most activity. I want to capture some spectacular evidence this time guys. This sanatorium has a long and sinister past; tales of torture, experimentation, rape, and murder. It’s the perfect hotspot for spectral phenomena. If there aren’t any trapped ghosts here, then I give up.”

  Edie exchanged the flashlight for a camera with Jules showing her how it worked. It seemed simple enough. Edie scanned the area that they were in with the night vision bathing everything and everyone in an eerie green glow. She turned the camera on Quinn, staring at her intently.

  She remembered his question from earlier. “I feel scared and excited at the same time,” she said truthfully.

  Everyone chuckled in agreement.

  “Welcome to our world,” Gunnar said.

  She watched him in her camera turn to face the long, dark corridor ahead.

  “Well, let’s get to work,” he said.

  ****

  It looked like Grimsby Sanatorium had been abandoned in a hurry. Medical texts were still on the shelves, covered in dust and spider webs. Syringes—big, fat syringes—were positioned on metal trays, as if they were ready to inject the residents with sedatives or some other drug, causing paralysis, so they wouldn’t be a bother to the staff. Flasks of amber-colored liquids were open, lined in rows along a counter. Flies and other insects had been caught in the solutions and died instantly from its poisonous effects.

  Dead rose petals were scattered along the black and white tiled floor of the infirmary. Rusted metal-framed beds on rollers were stuck against the wall with mattresses splattered in blood and other filth. In one small room, an elevated chair with a leather strap on each armrest and straps to confine the ankles below, told the tale of a revolving door of residents, who for some reason or another had been tied down, forced to sit for hours, unable to move while they’d been poked and prodded by experimental doctors, seeking answers to the questions of insanity.

  She could hear their screams. No, it wasn’t ghosts. Her imagination was just running wild, envisioning herself back in time when the sanatorium had been in operation, where men and women and perhaps children had been treated as prisoners, denied access to the outside world, all because they’d had the unfortunate fate to be claimed by a psychosis that the medical community had deemed too threatening to be allowed among the sane members of mankind.

  What was sanity? What was insanity? What right had these medical professionals had in determining the fate of someone who’d thought differently, acted differently than their peers? They couldn’t have all been dangerous. They couldn’t have all been a threat to society. Who’d judged them? Who’d forced them against their will to a life of confinement, torture, and inevitably, death?

  Unfortunately no one was talking. Gunnar and the other ghost hunters had been asking these very questions. He and the others had been taking EMF sweeps, temperature readings, thermal images, and EVPs, hoping to receive “ghost talk,” as Bree had called it.

  But Grimsby Sanatorium was silent and seemingly vacant of specters.

  “Why don’t we let Edie try?” Gunnar suggested. She found him among the others with her camera. His was turned on her, expectant. “I was sure given the account of rape in the infirmary someone would’ve made contact, but...” He sighed and Edie could see his breath. It’d been cold from the very start of their investigation, but now it was positively frigid. “Are you up for it, Edie?”

  Edie nodded, knowing everyone had their cameras on her, so they could see her reaction. They were standing where the residents had slept, their rooms or more precisely, their cells. Edie entered one where Gunnar had said a murder had been committed by two male residents, who’d fought and killed each other over the affections of a female resident. She’d been pregnant by one and later hanged herself over the ordeal, killing herself and the unborn child.

  Edie entered room number 314, alone. The bed had been removed, as well as any other personal effects. The only remains that’d been left were white chalk marks on the gray wall, forming the same words, over and over again, from top to bottom, left to right.

  Edie recognized the passage from Thessalonians:

  For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.

  Edie was shivering, her teeth chattering. She wanted to flee, to go back to the warmth of her bed, but she needed to talk to this woman, who’d taken her bed sheets, manufactured a noose, and secured it to the now hollow pipes above, killing herself.

  Her name was Lavinia.

  “Lavinia?” Edie called out. She was holding the camera in one hand, targeting the pipes above. Her other hand held out the digital voice recorder. “Lavinia, are you here?”

  Edie tried to sound like Gunnar and the others, so confident in how they’d been trying to communicate with the dead, but being a novice, she sounded unsure, like Lavinia had never really died in this room, and the thought of her ghost wandering around, was absurd.

  Edie focused on the repeating passage along the walls. “Did you like reading the Bible? Did you write this on the wall before you died? Can you write something else for us?”

  “Good, good,” Rory muttered, approving of Edie’s method, as he stood outside the room with the others.

  “Maybe we’ll get some automatic writing,” Bree said, sounding excited.

  “Is there a piece of chalk lying on the floor, Edie?” Amee asked.

  Before Edie could look, Jules almost shouted, “I can see it in the corner over there.”

  Edie looked around, but couldn’t see anything, except spider webs and dust. And a few splatters of dried blood.

  Quinn came inside the room, crouched down, and picked something up. “Here,” he said, ha
nding the piece of chalk to Edie. “Hold out your hand and see if Lavinia takes it from you.”

  She did, feeling again, absurd, even though she knew full well the capabilities of a ghost, having Tristan Lockhart in her life. For some reason, she didn’t sense Lavinia was even around or any other ghosts; that frustrated Edie because she desperately wanted to talk to them about ridding herself of Tristan. And for some odd reason, he’d yet to make an appearance, scaring the crap out of everyone. Of course it was only a matter of time. Unless Edie had been right and he was scared of this place; scared of what Edie may uncover that would lead to the failure of his diabolical plan, whatever that was. Were the ghosts of Grimsby Sanatorium keeping him away? Or was he just waiting to surprise them all by making a grand entrance?

  It wouldn’t surprise Edie.

  And Edie was further unsurprised when Lavinia didn’t grace them with her presence. The piece of chalk stayed in her hand and the repeating passage on the walls remained unchanged.

  Edie found Quinn’s hand and gave him the chalk. “Why don’t you try?” she suggested, aiming her camera at him. “Maybe she doesn’t want to talk to a girl.”

  He grinned. “Well, I do have a way with the ladies.” He held out his hand with the chalk. “Oh, Lavinia, darling, can you take this chalk and write something on the wall for me? It can be anything, Lavinia. I just want to know you’re here. I want to meet you.”

  Smooth talker.

  They waited for several minutes but nothing happened. Apparently Lavinia was the one woman who could resist Quinn McDermott.

  Gunnar stepped into the room. “Edie, play back your recording. Let’s see if we got anything.”

  Her fingers were too cold and stiff to work the device, so Quinn helped her out. It was a long recording and the only voices on it were those of the living.

  “Sorry,” Edie apologized to Gunnar. “Guess I’ve jinxed everything.”

  Gunnar shook his head. “No, no, don’t say that. We’ll move on, okay?”

  “What was that?” Jules asked, but more to herself, sounding scared and excited at the same time.