Nine Zero One Three: An Occult Horror Novel, page 1
Nine Zero One Three
Timothy Roderick
Copyright 2023 © Timothy Roderick
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be used or reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews, as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact Timothy Roderick at timothyroderick1@gmail.com.
The story is a work of fiction. All of the names, characters, incidents, organizations and dialogue portrayed in this novel are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, organizations, and products is intended or should be inferred.
Book Cover Design: Mat Yan
Editor: Laura Perry (laura@lauraperryauthor.com)
First edition, 2023
Contents
Prologue
1. Catalina
2. Magician
3. Nurse
4. Bugs
5. Mimic
6. Cherokee
7. Photograph
8. Michael
9. Pill
10. Ink
11. Lockett
12. Pacts
13. Eagle
14. Nun
15. Headliner
16. Entertainment
17. Fruit
18. Hopscotch
19. Restricted
20. Van
21. Diapers
22. Tongue
23. Bang
24. Burlap
25. Mallet
26. Ghosts
27. Trash
28. Ofrenda
29. Kelp
30. Tooth
Prologue
Chopsticks
The residents in the children’s wing began screaming. They pounded their tiny fists on the doors and stamped their bare feet on the checkered floor. Every morning the same alarm at seven and then another at five in the evening. Not too early. Not too late. But always a disruption. A loud, honking razz that made you think someone had thrown an electric chair switch or that bombs were dropping from the sky.
It was time for the nuns to begin their rounds from stations along the mid-ward. They’d pace the long, lonely hallways lit by institutional-green, fluorescent lights. Like ghosts, they moved in near silence, gliding down the corridors of Saint Cyprian’s Hospital. They brought with them trays topped with paper cups. Each contained a small universe of pills, filled to the brim.
The Sisters passed one another in a crisscrossing scurry along the passageways with the perpetual smell of rubbing alcohol and the bitter scent of burning hair. It was true: their rounds prompted the inmates behind the steel doors and meshed-glass windows to mingle—at least with the staff. It was therapeutic. Doctor recommended. A chance to shake off the stifling boredom.
But many residents bristled when the alarms broke the relative stillness of their world. Saint Cyprian’s was a sanctuary where inmates could disappear into their familiar inner turmoil, giggling or sobbing into their fists, their eyes wide, red-rimmed, or staring.
Chen and Mallory patrolled the children’s wing that day. The orderlies took it all in—the shouting and growls, the laughing and wails. Business as usual. Chen, the shorter, rounder of the pair, grabbed for the keys attached to his belt. He tried one in the latch on one of the doors to make sure it functioned properly. The nuns would soon visit with their daily deliveries of tranquility, and for that work, they required quick access.
A month earlier, a key had gotten jammed in the lock when a patient needed urgent medical care. From that day forward, Chen had insisted on seamless, predictable access. Preparedness meant rehearsal, practice, and maintaining routines.
“Hey Chen,” Mallory said. “Chen. Chen! Get the fuckin chopsticks out of your ears. You deaf or something?”
“Mallory, I can hear you… this is what’s called ignoring. So, pull the corn dogs out of your ass and let’s do what we came here to do. The sooner we’re done, the sooner we’re done,” Chen replied. He gripped his fists, his jaw, and anything else that might keep him from decking his workmate.
“Funny. Corn dogs. I get it… because I said chopsticks. I was trying to do you a favor by stopping you from opening cells the wrong way,” Mallory said. “They’re gonna get past you, and then good luck getting them back inside, cause I ain’t helping. You got that? I’m gonna stand here and watch one of these loons thrash your ass.”
“You see me opening anything? No. Christ, Mallory. We need to test the locks, remember? Look, if you’re scared, just go back and watch TV,” Chen said.
“Who said I’m scared? I’m not scared of anything,” Mallory said.
Chen bit down on the rest of the words that might spill out while Mallory strolled several paces behind.
“I’m not opening anything until I see the Sisters headed this way. That’s protocol, Mallory. Did you ever read the procedure book? Or are you still stuck somewhere in Cat in the Hat?” Chen asked.
He imagined some of the kids finally beating the shit out of Mallory, and it made him smile.
Mallory took out the night stick he kept hidden up his uniform sleeve. He pretended it was for another reason besides being chicken shit—besides fearing the patients, sudden noises, or his shadow on the wall. But you’d take one look at Mallory skulking around, jumping at everything, and you’d know what he was about. Even the patients recognized his unreasonable fear—and they’d taunt him.
“What in the hell are you doing with that, Mallory? I told you: you can’t work here if you’re that scared,” Chen said.
But Mallory maintained his pretense, his bravado, and puffed himself up more to prove Chen wrong. He swung his baton around and whacked it against the steel doors of the residents’ rooms. Chen watched Mallory grin when he’d hear upset responses coming from behind the cell doors. He was a simpleton whacking a hornet’s nest. But this was far safer than angering actual hornets, because here at Saint Cyprian’s, the hornets were all locked up, unable to sting.
Chen tried to pretend he worked alone. He gave those unfortunate souls who’d found their confused way to Saint Cyprian’s his best. Smiles. Gentle words to those most afflicted. Chen just kept helping folks along, as if his kindness was enough of an apology for Mallory’s unfortunate presence.
“It’s the parents. There’s no other explanation for why we got so many nuts here,” Mallory said. “Seems like the number is going up every day, too. Look, Chen. You came from a decent home, didn’t you?”
Chen shrugged, though he wanted to take Mallory’s baton, bloody his head with it, and leave him lying on the floor for the nuns to mop up.
“You come from a decent home, then this shit won’t happen to you. I came from a decent home. Lots of people do. And do people with proper parents end up here? Like I said, it all starts with them. We should just lock them up before they have more, you know what I mean? Tie their tubes or whatever shit doctors do.”
All the while he’d spout his opinions, Mallory would whack that nightstick against the doors, eliciting more cries and yowling. He’d laugh.
“Look here,” Mallory said. He tapped the door frame of cell number 133. “Have you checked this one out yet? Perfect example. This one was in a car wreck, and the family just up and abandoned the kid here. All in the police report. Now I ask you—who does that to a kid?” He stared into the glass mesh. “Wow, look… just look at that freak. Just sits there praying some gibberish—the fuck knows what’s being said. All day squawking like that and reading from that goddamned book.”
Chen was never one to fall for mumbo jumbo about déjà vu or dreams and predictions. But today he had a feeling. A sensation like a dark cloud covered the hallway, and he felt like he was suffocating. Then the feeling exploded into a full-blown panic that something awful was about to happen. It made no sense. Everything was typical in the children’s wing.
But when ideas like this entered Chen’s head, he’d learned not to ignore them. Sometimes they turned out to be true. In a place like Cyprian’s, he learned to follow instincts.
“Mallory, let’s just finish checking this hall and get out. I don’t want to miss my coffee break.” That was his excuse.
“This one? 133?” Mallory tapped the door frame with his nightstick again. “This sorry SOB’s sister dropped the kid off and ran.”
“I heard you the first twenty times,” Chen said.
“Yeah,” Mallory replied, “but is it fair she gets away with living her life out there while leaving her own flesh and blood in here?”
“Look, Mallory, if you’re not interested in moving along, I’ll go to the next hall by myself,” Chen said.
“Christ, Chen. Without a little conversation—a little repartee—then what’s the fun of working as a team? In fact, I think we’re gonna have a little fun right now. Are any of the nuns coming?” Mallory asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t care, and whatever you’re thinking of doing, don’t, because I’m going.”
“Wait,” Mallory said. He took his nightstick and whacked the metal door so hard and so many times that it thundered down the linoleum corridors. The inmates screamed and cac
“Hey, Rachel,” Mallory sang the child’s name. He pressed his nose to the glass and looked left and right. “Where’s 133? Shit. Come here and look. Can you see anything?” He pushed open the rectangular metal slot cut from the center of the door for food trays. “I don’t see anyone here. Seriously, Chen. This is not good.”
He placed his nose back up on the glass. Just then Rachel, with wild, brown-ringed eyes, placed her cheek on the glass and screamed. Mallory yelped and fell backward to the floor.
“Sum-bitch! Did you see that? Did you see what 133 did?” he asked.
Chen tried not to laugh. “What’s the kid trying to say?” Chen asked. He looked at the small window and noticed she was mouthing words then pointing to the room next door. “Is there something next door?” he asked Rachel. He exaggerated the words in case the child couldn’t hear through the door.
Rachel pointed again and banged her forehead against the glass. Then she did it again.
“No… no, Rachel. Step back,” Chen said.
Rachel dropped below the glass but brought her hand up to the window and kept pointing to the adjacent cell.
“What’s with all the pointing?” Mallory asked.
“I don’t know,” Chen replied. “You go into 134’s cell. Make sure she’s all right.”
Mallory grumbled to himself and laced his mutterings with curse words. He shoved the nightstick into the waistband of his pants and pulled out the keys for 134’s room. He peered through the window.
“The kid’s just sitting on her bed. What’s all the fuss?” Mallory asked.
Chen was already busy unlocking room 133. “I can’t do two damn things at the same time, Mallory. Can you please go in there and check? I can’t keep babysitting you. Unless you want to deal with Rachel?”
133’s forehead slammed into the tempered glass a final time, which cracked it. A circular stain of blood dripped down. The child laughed and disappeared below the window.
“Fuck that!” Mallory said. He stood on tiptoes, peering through the small window of 134. “She’s just sitting there. I don’t know why I have to check on her.”
“Christ, Mallory. Rachel is in crisis. Quit being a fucking coward and go in the room. It’s a child, for Christ’s sake,” Chen said. He unlatched the door to 133’s room and waited for Mallory to do the same with 134’s.
Mallory had his key in hand, and he fitted it into the door. He withdrew his nightstick and had it poised and ready to clobber the girl if he had to. She might have been only seventy pounds, but he’d do whatever he had to.
Once he was inside, the door swung shut.
Chen entered 133’s room and found her with her blonde hair all mussed, dangling like a tattered curtain in front of her face. She sat on the edge of the bed mumbling. It wasn’t unusual. She was obsessive.
Rachel screamed and threw back her head. Chen could see the blood oozing down her forehead. But Chen he knew to give her a minute to calm down, so he backed up.
“You’re okay. It’s okay. Honey, just lay down. You’re fine,” he said.
The child stood from the bed, made a gesture as though she was hanging herself from a rope, and made horrible gagging sounds. Chen helped ease Rachel onto her mattress because the child couldn’t help herself. She began shaking, and her eyes rolled upwards until all he could see was their whites.
He knew this was a seizure—he’d seen this before. He fled from the room just long enough to activate the wall alarm across the hall, and sirens sounded that drowned out the child’s gagging.
He ran back into the cell, and Rachel no longer seemed distressed. She sat composed on the edge of the bed with her knees together, spine straight as a paper cut.
“One,” Rachel said. Her voice sounded robotic.
“One?” Chen asked. “Rachel, are you all right?”
“One,” she repeated.
Chen backed away and opened the door enough to see the nuns rushing, but instead of coming to room 133, they congregated at 134.
The hallway erupted in the nuns’ screams. He locked the door for Rachel and pressed his back to the wall. There was a red lake in that checkerboard hallway. It flowed from 134’s room. And the nuns’ small white shoes splashed and stained in the crimson. He could see through the open door that Abigail, patient 134, shivered in a corner of her cell, knees drawn up.
Chen couldn’t remember much after that besides the coroner arriving later and removing Mallory’s body from room 134 in a zipped bag. The nuns tried to usher Chen away—more than once, for his own sake. But there was no use. He’d glimpsed what happened before the men in emergency gear sealed up the orderly’s remains in that body bag.
The man’s head lay on the floor, detached from his body, as though it was another of 134’s stuffed animals that lay scattered about. Blood seeped from Mallory’s mouth, and on his chest was the number 1 scratched into his skin.
The coroner wheeled Mallory’s remains from the room, and the patients hooted and jeered.
The kelp beds undulated around his chalky face, stroked his hair, caressed his cheeks like the hand of a loving mother. He could have been any of the missing. Any of them. But this one wasn’t among the nameless that the police needed to sort out. Inez knew him.
The pink sunset clouds stretched out to the ends of the horizon, but his upturned eyes would remain unseeing. The sun was a blaze of burnt orange tipping into the western sea, and she perched above at the cliff’s edge, eyeing him. And she wept again. She wondered at how small a life becomes when it ends, when the wind receives its last breath.
This was his end. The man lying broken on the rocks below the rugged cliffs and the rocky coastal terrain would not tell his tale. He would not say what needed to be said so that no one else would repeat his fate—at least no one would hear him unless they knew how to listen.
Police had discovered him in the trunk of his own car. Beheaded, like most of the others.
Inez knew how to listen, how to see. Santa Muerte had told her, “Go to the sea cliffs. Tell him goodbye.” She was happy to hear her again. She’d been gone for so long. But there was a reason for it. Choices had to be made. Ofrendas were necessary.
This was the place where her friend could tell his tale—here at the end of the world where sea and sky meet, he could tell it to her. And she’d listen. She’d seen ghosts before, heard their anguished cries. And she knew they’d follow her, watch her, haunt her forever unless she listened and bore their pain.
one
Catalina
1975
The tiny sheriff’s office, high on a weedy hillside overlooking Avalon Bay, hid among the tall weeds and fragrant chaparral. The place was not one you’d stumble onto on your own. You’d have to know where it was already. It was beige and low. Flat roof. Just flat. And beige. The color of dried dyer’s greenweed and the wild fennel that grew just outside.
Most buildings in Avalon clustered in bunches on the hillsides, just like the sheriff’s office. Hikers might spot the roof from up high, and they could follow the tall radio tower if they got lost. But aside from that, the station sat quiet, invisible among the weeds, except for the television running in the lobby.
Sometimes they’d have to abandon the set and move into action. When a boat ran out of gas in the harbor, or when a parent lost track of a wandering kid, or when a pub got rowdy enough to keep hotel guests awake past midnight. Beyond that, it was all weeds and television.
There were only five on the staff. There was a station commander and four deputies handling the day-to-day affairs. They rotated through shifts, operating the police radio day and night. Dispatch consisted of calling someone’s name over a desk and telling them where to go. The four under the station commander also took turns manning the phones and monitoring the weather bureau in case there was bad weather, incoming storms.
The job allowed for idle time, unless it was the Fourth of July when the deputies worked alongside the Avalon Fire Department for fireworks set up. They’d dress up a model-T too, then all of them would pile inside and wave to the townsfolk for the annual Christmas parade.
