Sanctuary (Featuring the Paranormal Investigators) by Chris Carrolli

"Sanctuary"  is a prequel to Chris Carrolli's Book Pipeline:

           The lights in Sanctuary Hospital were dim, faded, hanging-garden fixtures; the surrounding sconces held lit candles along the walls, the best light that could be accomplished. The war had turned this former Library into a makeshift hospital for the fallen soldiers and the casualties of wartime battle. Unlike before, cries, screams, and moaning agony rang throughout, becoming constant barrages against the souls and the minds of those who worked there.

            Rebecca Moore was one such soul, as it was not her intention to become a nurse, but life’s story had changed quickly for her. She, like many women, had been shoved onto the battlefront to serve the wounded and dying boys and do her part for the cause. She’d placed her dreams on hold to face the reality of death as blood soaked her hands every day, and screams of pain drove her to madness by the minute. 

            And now she attended to the wounded soldier in front of her. Delirium and fever had begun to settle in him like most of the men that were here. Doctors feared plague, but Rebecca knew better that the rate of infection on the battlefield was much greater, an unacknowledged problem in this war.

            She lingered above him as he lie on the bed, gasping and writhing in a cold sweat, and the blood soaked bandage wrapped around his head wound needed changing; the blood was seeping through. Every time she tried to change the bandage, she was interrupted. Strange people were entering the hospital, and from where was unknown.

            Two men had shown up out of nowhere, standing by the soldier’s bedside as she moved herself closer to his head. They were dressed in strange clothing, no apparel that she had ever seen before, and taking photographs with some new invention that looked much differently than the current cameras and could be held in the hand.

            “Who are you?” She heard her voice climb in annoyance at the interruption. Were they from the newspaper? What right had they to barge in here like this?

            The one man with the long hair pressed a button on the camera in her direction, and a bright light flashed out, blinding her. She shielded her eyes, bending her right arm at the elbow and bracing it in front of her.

            “Stop it! What do you think you’re doing?!”

            And suddenly they were gone.

            “Anna! Henry!” She’d called out to the younger nurse, and Henry; the doctor’s assistant. They ran quickly into the room; they’d also seen the two men. “Where did they go?” Confusion gripped the three of them, seeming to spread to the patients lying in beds set side by side in the overcrowded room now known as a mass ward.

            “We’re not sure, Rebecca,” Anna said in a nervous voice. “They came in here flashing that light at everyone. They were scaring the patients!”

            “The doctor has been called out on an emergency so we’re going to have to handle it ourselves.” Henry was fast on his feet, authoritative. “I will take the back doors; Anna, you take the front. Let’s check to see where they may have come in, and where they may have gone out. Rebecca, stay here incase they return.”

            That had been almost an hour ago. Henry and Anna could find nothing out of the ordinary. The two men could have entered from either way, even the basement, but no one actually saw them enter. The three staff members remained on alert as the severely wounded and sickly patients stirred, sensing something amiss, unsure if the men were real or feverish hallucinations.

            What if these men were dangerous?

            She reached over to unfasten the cloth bandage when another unexpected guest stood at the foot of the bed and spoke to her.

            “Hello, can you tell me who you are?”

            Speaking to her was a man about her own age, fat, with the oddest pair of spectacles she’d ever seen. She almost shushed his projective voice lest it disturb the patient. Like the others, this intrusive guest was also clad in an indescribable fashion, though this one addressed her as though he were lost.

            “Who are you, exactly, and what are you doing here?” Her patience thinned to a point of non-existence. “You’re not with the Union Army, I can tell by your clothes. So what are you doing here, and why are you dressed like that?”       

            “Tell me why you’re here,” the pudgy young man said, calmly.

            “Can’t you see why I’m here? This is a hospital, and for the last time, I won’t have you disturbing my patients! What do you want, here?”

            Her heart sunk to her knees, as suddenly the man was no longer there. Pure fear formed in droplets across her forehead, and now she broke into a cold sweat, wiping her face with her sleeve. The soldier moaned for her attention. She kept trying, but today, she was not accomplishing much.

            Henry strode into the room.

            “Where did he go?” He held out his arms in dismay; the stranger had evaded him.

            “I don’t know.” Rebecca’s voice was a mixture of fear, confusion, and sadness.

            Henry threw up his arms, turned, and walked away.

* * * *

            It seemed like she’d stood there forever, shaken by the visitor. She had a job to do, but somehow, this last visitor had made her feel weakened, tired, the way one sometimes felt after arguing.

            The soldier called out to her again, reaching with his hand, and she took it to calm him. Whoever these strangers were, they were upsetting her patients by being here. She would put a stop to it next time.

            The bandage...how many times was she going to have to change that bandage today? Was he bleeding to death?

            “Anna, go get Henry. This man needs stitched!” Henry would have to do something about the bleeding. Couldn’t he see that the bandage was not enough?

            She attempted to untie the bandage again, when she felt the air around her change. It grew colder, like the seasons had changed instantly. This time, she knew she didn’t hear anyone come in through the door. She looked up from the bedside, and there was a young woman standing at the entrance to the room, another meddling trespasser.

            Yet this disruption came in the form of a sweet, innocent, face and a long, blond mane that hung freely past her shoulders, but what Rebecca noticed most was the deep blue eyes, almost hypnotizing her as she made contact with them.

            “Why are you still here?” The young woman spoke softly, but was anchored well where she stood her ground. “It’s over, everything is over. You have done your job well.”

            What was she talking about? Rebecca became confused by her, like her mind was slipping away.

            “What do you mean? The war is far from over. More are coming from Gettysburg every minute. The doctor can’t possibly attend to them all. Henry does his best, but he is not enough. There are only four of us here. There were more helping us, but so many leave because they can’t handle the death, the blood, the screaming. We can’t possibly help them all; we need assistance.”

            A thought occurred to Rebecca.

            “Are you another nurse? Were you sent from the hospital in New York?”

            The young angelic beauty shook her head.

            “No, don’t you understand? It’s time to go. This is no longer your realm.”

            As soon as the young girl spoke her words, the air changed again. Rebecca could hear a stirring about her, and somehow, it all began to make sense. She knew what the girl had been saying, but in a way, she did not.

            “But this bandage is so bloody,” she said, “I have to change it; there is so much blood.”

            “No,” the girl said. “There is no more blood; there is no more death. It’s all over. It’s time for you to move on. Leave this place as it no longer serves your purpose. You’ve done your job, and you’ve done it well...walk onward.”

            Suddenly, a brilliant burst of white had enveloped the surroundings, swallowing everything, including the strange girl. All of it was no more. Everything was white, glowing magnificently beneath an electric blue. The soldiers stood perfectly alongside Rebecca, marveling at what they all saw. Henry and Anna also stood in awe of the brightness that silently called out to everyone.

            That calling came in the form of a great hymn playing in a soft, yet grandiose melodic scale through the vast and never-ending background...

           

            Glory, Glory, Hallelujah...

            Glory, Glory, Hallelujah...

            Glory, Glory Hallelujah...

            His Truth is marching on...

           

            Finality washed over them, and with great strides they followed the sound into the bright, hot, whiteness.

* * * *

            Harold Payne; the hotel owner, was a short, bald man with thick glasses and a nervous flutter to his voice.

            “So, what were your findings?” He’d asked the Paranormal Research and Investigative Society from the local university to come to the hotel, and now the three young men and the pretty, young blond sat before him in his office.

            Dylan Rasche, the team’s leader, spoke first.

            “Mr. Payne, you said that this hotel was a hospital back in the nineteenth century, correct?”

            “That’s right,” he said. “It was a Library before that. They turned it into a hospital during the Civil War. It housed many of the wounded and the casualties of Gettysburg from what I understand. It was a place were many died from the battle.”

            “Well, that is the source of the haunting and the appearances you’ve seen here throughout the hotel. My team and I have not only proven it, but we think we may have solved your problem. My tech partner, Brett, and I began by taking pictures with infrared cameras. They are known to expose hidden spirits, ghosts, and therefore providing us with what is usually referred to as “ghost photos.”

            He motioned to Brett, who took over.

            “I happened to take this one in the room, around the area you mentioned.”

            He handed the picture across the desk to Payne. The hotel owner looked at the picture and stirred slightly in his seat. It showed a young woman, apparently a nurse with her white cap affixed to her long, pinned back, brown hair. She held her right arm across her face, as though to shield her from the unwanted exposure.

            “My God!” Payne’s jaw dropped as he recognized her. “Yeah, that’s her. That’s one of the few that we’ve seen around here.”

            The heavy-set, young man spoke next.

            “Mr. Payne, my name is Sidney Pratt. I am a clairaudient capable of hearing those who have passed on, especially here in this hotel. My psychic ability is my job with the society. I spoke with this woman briefly.”

            So, this is the guy who can hear dead people...Payne had heard about him.

            “She saw me as an intruder into the situation. She kept asking me why I was there, maintaining quite adamantly that this was a hospital, and she would not have me disturbing her patients. This woman fits the classification of a ghost, not a spirit. Spirits have moved on, ghosts have not. She did not even understand that she was dead.”

            “And I would agree with that conclusion in my own findings.” The girl spoke next. “I am Leah Leeds. I also work with the society, utilizing my ability as a seer.”

            It took him only seconds to recognize the name: Leah Leeds. She was the one who saw things in that creepy manor house when she was a little girl. So that’s what happened to her—she became a psychic detective with the society at the university.

            “When I saw her, she looked at me strangely. I understand that. She is seeing the product of a different time. To her, the war never ended; it continued on and on for all of this time. The setting of this building has changed, but it has not changed for her. She continued to tend patients over and over in a sort of ghostly created time warp.

            “She talked about the hospital being overwhelmed, tending to countless soldiers from Gettysburg. This hospital staff couldn’t keep up; they were understaffed with no one to help. The few that were here were volunteers. Not many were willing to expose themselves to death and blood, as she put it. She asked, hopefully, if I was a nurse. That’s when I told her that it was time to move on and that the war was over. It was almost like an unveiling had occurred. I believe the continuum has broken for all of them. They have moved on.”

            Now, the long haired one named Brett spoke again.

            “Mr. Payne, I retrieved some town records in researching this hotel, as well as some old newspaper clippings that I obtained through the historical society at the university. I think I can identify the woman in the picture that I took.”

            Brett brought a manila file folder over to Payne’s desk and opened it face up. On one side of the folder was an old newspaper photo of the same woman in the ghost photo, the same woman Payne and several guests had claimed to have seen.

            “This was a photo of Rebecca Moore taken in 1863,” Brett said, pointing at the clipping. “If you notice the headline, it may make this whole thing a little more understandable.”

            Payne’s jaw dropped as he read the piece of history.

            Staff Members Killed in Hospital Fire.      

            “Somehow, a fire started in this building when it was a hospital,” Brett said, surmising. “Rebecca Moore, Anna Lunt, and Henry Sellers, died trying to help several bed-ridden patients from this building. The ceiling had collapsed on them. A few survived, including the doctor, who was not present, having left regarding another emergency.”

            “I knew there was a fire here, but I didn’t know the extent of it. I feel so stupid not having discovered it myself.”

            “No need to, Mr. Payne. You couldn’t have handled this on your own.” Dylan reassured him that most likely, since it had been a hotel for years after being a hospital, the building’s past history was probably not exposed for fear of it hurting hotel business.   

            “But, you do see why they couldn’t leave, Mr. Payne?” Leah Leeds spoke with such elegance, such intelligence. He couldn’t wait to get home and tell Linda that he’d met the girl from the Cedar Manor House. “To them, there was no conclusion, no finality. They had failed in their attempts at saving lives, something they swore to do. Their souls were not at rest because their work had been so tragically interrupted.

            “This place was called ‘Sanctuary Hospital,’ and that’s what it provided, sanctuary to many wounded and dying men. This is also what it became to them in their restless turning, a sanctuary safe from moving on, safe from acceptance of what had occurred. As Sidney said, they didn’t know that they were dead; they just wanted to finish their goals. We had to make them recognize that it was time to move on, and now they have gone on into the light that they have resisted for so many years.”

            Payne sat back with a sigh, feeling humbly sorry over the past. The investigators concluded their work, and he thanked them for their time.

            “Should I call you all back if there are any repeat occurrences, I mean, if they should they turn up again?”

            “They won’t be back again, Mr. Payne,” Leah said, as the four of them were leaving the hotel’s front entrance. “They have moved on, having finally found what they’d been looking for all along...sanctuary.”

            The investigators left him behind in new, clean, hotel.

 Author Bio

Christopher Carrolli is a full-time writer, who lives in Western Pennsylvania. He is a graduate of University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg and holds a BA in English Writing, and an AA in English. He has also won the Ida B. Wells Prize in Journalism.

Pipeline is Book One of Chris’ “The Paranormal Investigator Series” published by Melange Books. Sanctuary serves as a prequel to the first book. The Listener, released on October 29, 2012, is Book Two of the series. Chris is currently writing the third installment, The Third Eye of Leah Leeds and projecting a 2013 release.

http://www.melange-books.com/authors/christophercarrolli/index.html

Find Pipeline and The Listener on Amazon - Click here

Barnes and Noble- Click here