"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
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