Palmer Entity: Supernatural Suspense with Scary & Horrifying Monsters (Asylum Series Book 2) Read online

  Palmer Entity

  Asylum Series Book 2

  Written by David Longhorn

  Copyright © 2019 by ScareStreet.com

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  See you in the shadows,

  David Longhorn

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue

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  Prologue

  “What’s that?” asked Dwayne, stopping suddenly so his friend walked into him.

  “Keep the noise down!” hissed Warren, shoving Dwayne aside. The bag of tools Dwayne was carrying clinked, prompting shushing and a jab in the ribs from Warren. “This is supposed to be a stealthy recon operation, not a—a bloody mess.”

  Dwayne peered ahead of them, into the trees. It was a moonlit night, but he was not used to such darkness. It felt like the countryside, and he was a city boy. They were moving through what seemed like a huge forest, not the small clump of trees they had seen by daylight. Warren was small, wiry, agile, slipping between the trees in near silence. Dwayne was stocky, short-legged, and clumsy, and did not like rough country.

  “There’s something in front of us,” Dwayne insisted. “In the trees. I think it’s an animal.”

  “Probably a fox,” said Warren, dismissively. “Or maybe a badger. Nothing to worry about. Come on!”

  Dwayne stood watching as his friend pushed on through the damp undergrowth. He knew Warren would simply leave him, so he followed after a couple of seconds. He was sure what he had seen was far bigger than a fox.

  “How big are badgers?” he whispered.

  “About a medium-sized dog,” replied Warren dismissively. “They’re not dangerous, they avoid people. Don’t you know anything about wildlife? Come on, for God’s sake! Don’t keep lagging behind.”

  Dwayne stumbled over something, thought it was probably a tree root. They were still not in sight of the actual building they had come to explore. The trees seemed too dense. He wished he could use his torch, but Warren had been firm about that. The security guard on the gates was out of sight, as they were approaching the apartments from the rear, but someone else might see a light and report it.

  After all, Rookwood had attracted a lot of attention for reasons Dwayne did not like to think about. He had protested when Warren had first outlined the plan. But his clever friend had poured scorn on Dwayne’s fears. Only kids and idiots, apparently, were scared of ghosts.

  “It’ll be dead easy,” Warren had assured him. “We just get inside, have a quick look around, work out how much wiring we can rip out and sell. Copper’s selling for three or four quid a kilo now. And I know this bloke with a van who can help us shift it.”

  “But what about all those people who died?” Dwayne had asked, plaintively.

  “Accidents, and maybe some murders,” Warren had shot back. “No such thing as ghosts, bud. Grow up! And man up!”

  The way Warren had told it in the pub earlier that day, they were going to make easy money with a couple of nights’ work. Dwayne, always short of cash, had agreed to help his friend. But he had not realized that climbing over the wall would be so difficult, or that they would have to trek through a forest. He was sure he had seen something big among the trees. It had been caught in a patch of moonlight for a split second, but when Dwayne had blinked, the dark shape had gone.

  “Are there deer in these woods?” he asked.

  Warren stopped.

  “Deer?” he demanded. “We’re in the suburbs, in the grounds of a posh apartment block. There’re houses all the way around this place. How could deer get here?”

  Dwayne, now resentful of Warren’s condescending manner, raised his voice again.

  “I saw something with antlers,” he insisted. “Like a deer. It was big as well.”

  “Bollocks,” jeered Warren, speaking at normal volume now. “You saw tree branches, they look like antlers. Branches waving in the wind. Now, come on!”

  Dwayne muttered resentfully as he thrashed clumsily through the underbrush, but decided not to continue the argument. By the time they got to the edge of the trees, he was scratched and bruised and damp. But then they were out of the forest and the dark, blocky shape of their objective loomed ahead of them.

  “Okay,” hissed Warren. “Keep quiet, keep low—stealth, right?”

  Dwayne gave an affirmative grunt. They stole forward, Dwayne trying to move like an action movie hero sneaking up on the baddie’s lair. Moonlight reflecting from one of the upper floor windows suddenly dazzled him. At the same moment, he thought he saw someone looking at them around the nearest corner of the building.

  But it can’t be a person, he thought. Not with horns. It must be tree branches in the wind, like Warren said.

  They reached the rear wall of Rookwood, and Warren led them along to the left, to the East Wing. This section of the building had been fire-damaged before it could be properly refurbished, he had explained. The doors were covered with hardboard, easy to pry off. Seconds later they were indoors, in near—total darkness.

  “Right,” Warren said, flicking on his flashlight. “Careful, don’t go into any of the rooms facing the front gate, or the security guard might see.”

  “I know!” retorted Dwayne, resentfully. “He won’t be looking up at the building though.”

  “Unless he leaves his little kiosk for a smoke, or a pee,” Warren pointed out. “Now come on, let’s see how much wire there is.”

  As they made their way into the East Wing, Dwayne noticed a faint tang of burning in the air. The fire had happened nearly a year earlier, but the smell suggested a much more recent blaze. He shrugged off the thought, tried to concentrate. Warren was, as usual, giving orders and supervising, waiting for Dwayne to do the actual work.

  “Just rip some wiring out of the skirting board,” Warren said. “So we can get a look at it, take a sample back to Fat Eric.”

  Fat Eric, Dwayne knew, was a dealer in scrap metal with a sketchy reputation. The man was reputed to be very rich. Warren had talked about making thousands of pounds.

  But how much of that will I see? Dwayne thought, as he laid out his tools. Warren never cuts me a fair share.

  “Get on with it!” Warren urged.

  Dwayne picked up a claw hammer and smashed the wooden skirting board, then ripped away a few feet. The wiring inside was less easily handled. Even though the power was supposedly out, Dwayne made a point of putting on rubber gloves. Warren
fretted impatiently, but still did not offer to help.

  “Hurry up, doof, it’ll be dawn soon!”

  Always bullying, Dwayne thought, resentment growing stronger. He cut away a length of wire and jerked it out of the wall. The bare metal shone brightly. Warren snatched it out of his hand, examined the plunder. Dwayne shivered, suddenly feeling cold. He saw Warren’s breath as his so-called friend ordered him about, telling him to rip out more wire.

  “No,” said Dwayne.

  The simple word surprised them both. Warren stood looking down at his old schoolfriend, mouth open, as if seeing Dwayne for the first time. The cold became more intense, but it stopped mattering to Dwayne. He stood upright, hammer in hand, a chorus of voices in his head.

  ‘He’ll always rip you off,’ the voices said, chiming in with his own long-festering resentment. ‘He thinks you’re a moron. False friend! Bully! Smug bastard!’

  “Dwayne, mate, what’s up?” asked Warren, his voice suddenly quiet, concerned.

  Dwayne raised the hammer. Warren retreated, but collided with a stack of empty paint cans and fell backward. Dwayne heard the voices urging him forward, telling him to strike home. He brought the hammer down. Warren, squealing in terror, brought up his hands to shield his face. The hammer hit Warren’s fingers, glanced off, but did enough damage to elicit a howl of pain. Warren’s flashlight spun across the room, sending crazy shadows hurtling across the bare walls.

  “What are you doing?” Warren screamed, scrambling ineptly away on his backside, right hand useless. “Stop!”

  For a second, Dwayne hesitated. He recalled the good times he and Warren had enjoyed. But then the voices in his head became one. It was clever and persuasive, and the good times faded.

  ‘This is your chance to get rid of him forever!’

  Dwayne smiled, strode purposefully toward Warren again. But the slight pause had given Warren the chance to get to his feet and scramble for the doorway. Dwayne lashed out with the hammer, missed, and was off balance for a moment. Warren reached inside his jacket, and Dwayne remembered the smaller youth carried a knife. Sure enough, there was a click and a thin blade shone in the torchlight.

  “Don’t make me cut you, man!” Warren warned, taking a fighter’s stance.

  ‘He’s a coward, a little weasel—you can take him,’ the voice reassured Dwayne. ‘Besides, you smashed his good hand.’

  It was true. Warren wielded his flick-knife with his left hand, while his right dangled uselessly. Dwayne lashed out with the hammer again, but despite his handicap, Warren dodged, slashed, cut Dwayne’s cheek. He felt the warm spill of blood, felt rage, and lashed out. Warren dodged again, but less successfully, and the hammer connected with his forearm. The knife clattered to the bare floorboards. Dwayne closed in for the kill, but Warren lunged forward under the flailing hammer, and head-butted Dwayne. Unable to swing the hammer, Dwayne dropped it and grappled with Warren.

  Confusion followed as the young men punched, kicked, and bit each other. Dwayne managed to get on top and tried to throttle his foe. Warren managed to gouge one of Dwayne’s eyes with his thumb, escaping the bigger youth’s grip. Then both of them scrambled for the knife.

  ***

  Warren looked down at his hands in the bleak, white radiance of the flashlight lying on the floor. The right was crippled, fingers bent sickeningly out of shape. The left hand was covered in blood, as was the knife it clutched. He reeled back and leaned against the wall, trying not to look at the bulky figure sprawled, face up, on the floor.

  Dwayne was still breathing, wheezing rather, but Warren knew he wouldn’t be for long. A dark stain was spreading around his head and shoulders, blood pumping from the wound in his thick neck. At that moment, Dwayne made a horrible noise in his throat and fell silent. Warren had often wondered what the old-fashioned term ‘death-rattle’ meant. Now he knew.

  ‘You’ll never get away with this,’ said a voice in his head. ‘No way. Fingerprints everywhere. Even if you get rid of the knife, they’ll get plenty of evidence. They’ll put you away for a long time.’

  Warren tried to ignore the voice, to devise ways he could get away with it. But every possible path seemed to end in the same way, with the clang of a door you couldn’t open from the inside. Warren started to cry.

  “It was self-defense!” he whimpered.

  ‘Nobody will believe that,’ said the cold, clear voice. ‘They’ll say you went barmy and killed him.’

  Warren realized this was true. There was no reason for what had just happened. All the stories about Rookwood were true. The place itself was insane, and so was anybody who got caught by it. With that realization came another; it was intensely cold, so cold that Warren was shivering.

  ‘Better end it now,’ declared the voice. ‘Join the rest of them, here, where you belong.’

  The room vanished, along with Dwayne’s body, and Warren saw Rookwood as it had been. It was a place of fear and pain. Brutal, grinning attendants wheeled struggling patients along bleak corridors to a special, terrible place where monstrous experiments were conducted. Warren felt as much as saw all this, experienced the misery and madness that permeated the building.

  “No!” he breathed.

  He had a last-ditch impulse to survive, to banish the vision, flee Rookwood, take his chances outside. But then he felt the arm that held the knife moving. He tried to stop it, but it swung up, turned the sharp, blood-stained blade, pointed it at the side of his neck. Warren exerted every fiber of his being to try and stop the metal reaching his flesh. But then came the first prick of pain, and his quivering hand slowly drove the knife into his throat.

  The last thing he saw as a living human was the face. It looked as if it was formed out of shadows on the wall in front him, a dark visage that stared at Warren, and appeared to see through him. The face that flickered briefly into existence was human enough to have an expression. It showed a little pity, a small trace of compassion, before it vanished again.

  Warren’s last thought before dying was of a remark made by the friend he had just killed.

  He was right. It did have antlers.

  Chapter 1

  “She thinks we’re gay, you know.”

  Paul Mahan looked up at Mike Bryson, baffled at the Englishman’s remark.

  “Who thinks we’re gay?” he asked. “And if this is some kind of lewd joke, I will not be amused.”

  Mike jerked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the living room window.

  “No joke, I mean Mrs. Ratbag over the road. Mad cat woman. Curtain twitcher, always looking into other people’s business.”

  Paul laughed, put down his iPad.

  “Well, two young-ish men sharing a house, it’s a reasonable assumption. And, to be fair, it’s a little more reasonable than assuming she’s called Mrs. Ratbag.”

  “History will vindicate me,” Mike prophesied in a portentous voice. “Anyway, the curry’s nearly ready. Prepare yourself for a culinary treat.”

  “Oh, I’m prepared.”

  Paul got up and walked to the window. Sure enough, the elderly woman was peering out at them. He waved to her cheerily and she withdrew, fading into the shadows. A gray cat on the window ledge remained, peering inscrutably at him.

  “Cats,” said Paul. “I forgot about the goddamn cats.”

  He turned to see Mike looking concerned but trying not to.

  “Remember the missing cat posters around Rookwood? Never got to the bottom of that. I mean, did the cats simply run away because of the evil aura, something like that? Or were they, you know, killed in some way?”

  Mike shook his head.

  “Look, you shouldn’t be dwelling on it,” he insisted. “Put it in the past. Think about anything else. Work. Booze. Watching terrible old movies. The forthcoming festival of curry flavors.”

  The Englishman headed back to the kitchen and Paul looked out again, met the green, unblinking gaze of the cat.

  If any animal has psychic powers, it’s the feline, he thou
ght. They see things people can’t.

  The old lady who was definitely not Mrs. Ratbag appeared again, this time looking down the street. Behind her, another figure appeared, and Paul saw the face of an elderly man, bald and wrinkled, dressed in a cardigan, shirt, and tie. The old man was watching the woman, but she seemed unaware of him. The cat, however, looked up at the man, thrashed its tail, and jumped off the windowsill out of sight.

  “Mike,” Paul called. “Is Mrs. Ratbag married, do you know?”

  “Widow,” Mike shouted back. “Bloke in the corner shop told me he died a couple years back. Why do you ask?”

  Paul watched the old man fade, become a kind of three-dimensional shadow, his features turning colorless, then blurring.

  “No reason,” he replied, watching the ghost vanish.

  Paul’s phone chimed and he checked the caller, sighed. He thought about sending it to voicemail, then decided it would be unproductive. The woman who wanted to talk to him was nothing if not persistent.

  “Hi, Mia,” he said, walking back to the sofa. “The answer’s still no. Thought I’d save you some time by making that clear.”

  Mia Callan was the producer, director, and driving force of a British TV series called ‘Great British Hauntings,’ or GBH for short. For months, she had been asking Paul to contribute to a special feature on Rookwood. He had no intention of ever returning to the place, or going anywhere near it. He had explained this, at length, to Mia via email, Skype, phone, and in person when she waylaid him outside the Humanities Department of Tynecastle University.

  “I can offer you a substantially bigger fee, Paul,” she began. “It took some negotiating with the money guys, but they finally caved.”

  Paul smiled, recalled his first and—he sincerely hoped—only meeting with the ambitious young woman. Mia Callan was working-class British, forging a career in a media world dominated by the children of privilege. She took no prisoners, and clearly had no intention of taking ‘No’ for an answer. Her determination to make an episode about Rookwood might have been admirable in other circumstances. But as things stood, Paul found it irritating, at best.