The Seer by Clifford Beck - HTML preview

Chapter 41

Fraser insisted that Gordon take the lead as he carried the camera, and audio recorder. Given Fraser's arrogance, the fact that he made this request gave Gordon the he was secretly fearful, and therefore, something of a coward. He had met others who demonstrated what is clinically known as narcissism, and often saw arrogance and cowardice go hand-in-hand. But in spite of this, Gordon did not argue, feeling that it wasn't important enough to waste his energy on. He also felt the tension created by Fraser's anger had already peaked, and he didn't want to risk a confrontation.

They climbed the cold, concrete stairs, their shoes occasionally slipping on the build-up of dust and grime that had accumulated over years of abandonment. Neither spoke a word as they finally reached the third floor. Gordon pulled open the heavy metal door, and heard the faint sound of whispers in the air. Once beyond the door, Gordon scanned the hallway with his flashlight. Between its length and the darkness, Gordon found its broad expanse a bit intimidating. Fraser, on the other hand, took on what was obviously a pretentious bravery, but it was his physical responses that gave him away. He walked slowly, looking in every direction with wide open eyes. On the one occasion that Gordon's flashlight flooded his face he noticed a heavy sheen of sweat on his forehead as streams of moisture ran down his face. He tried to assume the demeanor of being in charge, but his cowardice easily showed through.

They walked from room to room, with the infrared camera running constantly. So far, Fraser had seen nothing, and was quickly becoming frustrated. However, Gordon's attention had been captured by the sound of bare feet running across the concrete floor, darting from one room to the next. Aiming his flashlight down the hallway behind him, he was startled into a gasp by something he should have expected. Standing outside one of the abandoned rooms was an elderly woman. She stood barefoot and gaunt, dressed in only a hospital gown, with long gray fly-away hair. Just behind each eye were large, round electrode patches, adorned with white wires that hung down to her waist. Staring at him, she smiled broadly, displaying yellowish brown teeth, some missing, while others were broken, or chipped away. He only saw her for a moment, as her face broke out into a giggle. The next moment, she was gone.

“Fuck,” Gordon whispered.

Until now, he had never seen a single trace of insanity in any of the souls he had encountered. Even during his psychiatric training, Gordon had seen only one electroshock treatment, but the patient had been fully sedated, and did not possess the wild expression of the old woman, who, moments before stood only a few yards away.

“Gordon!” Fraser hissed. “Will you shut the fuck up?!” For the first time in a long time, Gordon felt his patience begin to weaken, as his anger started to make its way to the surface. Now, he understood why Fraser was without a job. He had no people skills, and without resorting to clinical thinking, he once again, saw him as someone who cared only about himself, carrying within him a small, black plastic bag of dog shit where his heart should be. For Gordon, this would likely be the deciding factor for his continued participation on the team. But for the time being, tolerance would substitute itself for impatience.

After searching a small handful of rooms, Fraser decided it was time to leave. Clearly, his transparent charade of bravery was wearing thin.

“Shouldn't we cover the rest of the floor?” Gordon asked.

Suddenly, Fraser had a change of mind, not wanting to appear weak, and turning to Gordon with stern words.

“Now, look...Gordon,” he said. “I don't give a fuck if you're a psychiatrist, or whatever you call yourself. I've got more experience at this than you, so you follow my lead, got it?!”

“Um, yeah, sure,” Gordon replied. An angry response would be a waste of time and energy, as well as an effective means of escalating an unnecessary confrontation. Gordon also realized that life tends to dole out the proper consequences to people who act like assholes, and eventually, Fraser would meet with his own undoing.

They made their way through the hallway, into dark and dusty rooms. Out of continued fear, Fraser 'ordered' Gordon to stay in front of him, perhaps, out of paranoia that something would strike out at him from the darkness. Soon, they encountered what looked like a procedure room, with the remains of a surgical table, fixed into the floor. Near the foot of the table was an electroshock machine. It's power cord old and frayed, but still plugged into the wall. Without power, it sat as a harmless relic from a time when psychiatric care relied more on experimentation than science.

“That's an electroshock machine,” Gordon said. With anger and frustration, Fraser turned to him as though he knew what he was looking at.

“I know what it is! Why don't you go out in the hallway, and look for some ghosts or something?” Gordon was not one to make judgements, but after everything he had seen of Fraser's attitude and hostility, the only thing that entered his mind was how much of an asshole he truly was. He knew that Fraser had no knowledge of medical devices such as this, but in order to avoid a confrontation, he retreated to the hallway. Meanwhile, Fraser closely inspected the electroshock machine, and as if he were an expert clinician, he reached for one of the dials when the console mysteriously came to life. Never stopping to wonder how it happened, and still believing he could operate it, Fraser grasped the voltage dial.

Immediately, the machine surged, and delivered a painful shock through his fingertips, exploding up his arms, and into his body. Without time to scream, Fraser was thrown across the room, igniting in a blue fire. By the time he struck the cinder block wall, his clothes had been burned from his body, his skin melted away, falling to the floor in puddles of grayish brown. Fraser was dead before he the floor.

The pop of electricity echoed through the damp darkness of the third floor, bringing Gordon running back to the procedure room. As he approached the open door, the noxious odor of burning flesh assaulted his senses, sending him into a nauseous panic.

“Jesus Christ!” he yelled.

Turning his flashlight on Fraser's body, Gordon knelt down next to him, but was struck by an odd sensation covering his hand. Seeing smoke and steam rising from Fraser's fresh remains, he raised his hand from the floor to find it running with molten skin. It didn't take long for him to realize what was dripping from his hand, and feeling his stomach churn, quickly crawled to the nearest corner, and vomited violently.

By the time Gordon got to his feet, he was both weak, and sore from the prolonged clenching of the muscles in his stomach and neck. Still sick to stomach, he returned to Fraser's blackened body for a closer examination. Given the severity of his burns, Gordon determined that trying to find a pulse was pointless, much less taking any heroic measures. Thinking there might be some hope of saving him, Gordon retrieved his cell phone, only to discover that, due to the thickness of the walls, his phone was unable to receive a signal. However, he had a radio. Tom had given one to each member of the team. Hopefully, it would work where his phone had failed.

Stepping out into the hallway, Gordon keyed the radio, hoping to reach the rest of the team.

“Tom!” he yelled.

At first, there was only the soft crackle of dead air. He needed to get help, but didn't want to leave Fraser lying alone in the dark.

“Tom! I need some help!”

The quiet sizzle of the radio was suddenly broken by Tom's voice.

“Gordon,” he began. “What's goin' on?” Gordon's attempt to keep himself together was quickly dissolving, but he managed to gather enough words to form an answer.

“I think Fraser's dead!”

There was a short pause before Tom replied.

“Where are you?”

In spite of the haze of panic that flooded Gordon’s mind, he was able recall their location relative to where they entered the building.

“We’re one floor above the entrance,” he answered. Tom, having memorized the map, knew exactly where they were and replied quickly.

“We'll be right there!”

In spite of the terror he felt, Gordon was relieved to hear Tom's voice, and clipping the radio to his belt, turned his back to the wall. He brought his hands to his face as his eyes began to tear up. Gordon was certainly not alone in his opinion of Fraser, but he also believed that even someone like him didn’t deserve to die so horribly.

With his back against the wall, Gordon brought his hands down from his face to find the old woman standing in front of him. It hadn't been long since he'd last seen her, standing only a few yards away, giggling. Now, she stood in front of him with an expression of growing anger.

“I'm sorry,” he began. “I don't think I can help you.” The old woman became enraged, and vanishing into the darkness, suddenly reappeared, inches from his face.

“Where are my pills?!” she screamed. “I need my pills!”

Being terrorized by the disembodied dead was a new experience for him, and so far, an effective one. However, he had discovered one other thing about making contact with the dead. Not only could he see, hear, and touch them, he could also smell them, and as the old woman moved in closer, Gordon became overtaken by a strong odor that he could not only smell, but taste. It seemed to not only induce a quiet gagging, but burned its way into his nose and eyes.

“I...I'm sorry,” he continued. “I can't help you!” As her rage deepened, the old woman raised a hand, displaying brown, jagged fingernails. Gordon tried to speak in a calming tone, when she let out a scream, and ran her nails down his face.

“I need my fuckin' pills!”

Now, Gordon realized that if he could be attacked by the drifting dead, it was possible that he might be killed.

He brought his hands up to his face, inspecting himself for injuries, and bringing them back down, discovered thin streaks of blood across his palms and fingers. Looking back up from his hands, Gordon was surprised to find the specter of the old woman had vanished, replaced by the dark silence of the ancient hospital's third floor. He felt a great sense of relief from the sudden onset of quiet, but at the same time, held it with equal suspicion. Grabbing his knees, Gordon bent down to let the blood return to his head, having been deeply frightened by a confrontation he did not expect. As he was about to stand, Gordon felt a strong wind blow through the third floor, and looking up, was horrified to see a mass of the disturbed dead flooding toward him. Their faces charged at him from the seemingly endless dark, while others faded toward him from the walls. Hundreds were closing in on him as the air filled with the screams of insanity, and eternal anguish.

Drawn by the same thing that had led others to him, they pushed their way forward, reaching out to their newfound messiah. Gordon, overwhelmed by the mass of twisted faces, cries of pain, and psychotic screams, sunk to the floor as he covered his face.

“I can't help you!” he screamed. “Please! Leave me alone!” But the dead kept coming, and as if trying to heal themselves, they reached down to him, tearing at his clothes, plucking out small bits of flesh from his body, perhaps, in an attempt to absorb whatever it was that acted to soothe the troubled souls of the departed. All of them wanted what Gordon possessed, and some, driven by desperation, faded their way through others to get to him, with fingers clawing at his face.

As shock set in, Gordon began to lose consciousness. He felt a pair of hands pull him up by his arm.

“Gordo! C'mon, stay with me!”

It was Donna. The team had arrived, and while she was trying to coax Gordon back to consciousness, Tom and Steve rushed into the procedure room, discovering Fraser's incinerated body remains. Returning with pale, sweating faces, they staggered back to where Gordon now lay on the floor, as Donna continued tending to him. The team had never dealt with injuries, so a first aid kit had been overlooked, and Gordon's clothes had quickly become soaked with blood as a few fingernail-shaped chunks of flesh still clung to his face. Within minutes, the team also found their cell phones ineffective, and picking Gordon up from the floor, carried him down to the door leading to the back of the building. Once outside, an ambulance was called. Donna continued to try to bring Gordon up from a near catatonic state, but his mind was steadily slipping away, leaving him with the expression of lifelessness, his eyes open and unblinking, his faculties lost beyond recovery. Donna, not knowing anything about psychiatry or medicine, was unable to put a name to his condition. Yet, she knew that what she was seeing was something he would not easily recover from, if he recovered at all.