The X-Philes: Chapter 8
Phil is a psychic. Dan is a detective. When Phil is visited by the ghost of his brother, he knows something isn't right. Can he and Dan solve the case, or will they become the next victims?
Rating: M
For Moe, who always believed I was a writer at heart. May 1941-May 2022
“Alright, thank you. We’ll meet you there.”
Dan hung up on the phone.
“Calling in reinforcements?” Phil asked.
Dan nodded.
They were about four hours out from the town Dan had grown up in. A town Phil quite frankly was tired of seeing. Phil missed his own home back in Connecticut. He was sure Dan missed being at his current home too, but at least he was going back to someplace that felt familiar.
Phil realized how selfish of a thought that was under the circumstances.
“What are you thinking about?”
It was a question that Phil probably should have been asking Dan, but instead it was the other way around. Dan was handling the disappearance of another parent remarkably well. Phil reflected bleakly that this was probably their new normal for the time being.
“I want to go home,” Phil replied honestly.
Dan nodded. “Yeah, me too.”
Phil didn’t ask if he meant West Virginia or Connecticut.
A new song played on the radio and Phil decided he didn’t like it so he changed it. Dan glanced over at Phil even though he hadn’t moved.
“I liked that song,” he grumbled cheerfully.
“Too bad,” Phil smiled back. He wriggled himself down into the seat and leaned back, closing his eyes, still smiling.
*-*-*-*-*
Phil sensed a change in the weather, not through anything supernatural, just basic human instinct, two hours later and woke up. Maybe it’d been the clouds darkening the sky and therefore the world around him, or maybe just some barometric pressure, but Phil blinked his eyes open just as the first heavy raindrops started to fall. It was fitting, really, he felt, but he didn’t say anything.
Phil looked around but there wasn’t much to see besides the road stretched out in front of them and the trees pushed back on either side around them. The unmowed grass swayed and the tree branches bounced in the wind that was picking up strength and speed. It seemed like it was going to be a doozy of a storm. The sky was nearly black and they were heading right into the thick of it.
The longer they drove the heavier the rain came down, pelting the windshield relentlessly. The noise was overwhelming adding a cacophonous layer to whatever generic song was playing on the radio at the time. Phil was sure he’d heard it a hundred times in the past month.
Even if they’d had anything to say to one another there was no point discussing it now. They rode the rest of the way in silence between them- and it was the only thing that was silent.
When Dan pulled up to his childhood home the long dirt driveway and surrounding road was filled with beefy-looking government cars like you’d see in the movies. Dan parked as close as he could to the house and turned the collar of his leather jacket up. It was the best he could do under the circumstances. Phil had grabbed his sweatshirt out of the back seat after waking up, for Dan had turned the AC on since they couldn’t have the windows down, and it was a much more bitter cold than the fresh West Virginia air had been speeding on along down the highway. Now, he flicked the hood up over his head and around his ears as Dan shut off the ignition and begrudgingly opened the door to rush inside.
By the time both of them reached the covered front porch they were drenched.
The small house wasn’t accustomed to fitting so many people and Phil found it claustrophobic and difficult to get anywhere.
He recognized a few faces from the briefing they’d had before they’d left for West Virginia in the first place all those months ago as well as the face of Nurse Millwood.
“Great, you’re here.”
Agent Thatcher and the other agent she’d been with greeted them both.
She led them into Dan’s own over-crowded kitchen. On the table were files spread out haphazardly, not enough room to separate them into their respective piles.
“We think we’ve found another facility similar to the one you reported in Texas. We have agents on our way out to that one as we speak. If you’d like to be on scene, it’s up to you which facility you’d like to head to, but you’ll be late to the party on that one.”
Dan and Phil exchanged a glance.
“We’ll head to this new facility with you,” Dan agreed, looking back up at the agent.
“Very well. We’ll be ready to head out soon, we’re just tying up a few loose ends before we move everyone out. Get what you need together in the meantime. We’ll brief you both on the way to the airport.”
Phil was a little surprised they were letting him come with, but he figured he’d be forced to stay back while they did the actual invading work. His best guess was they’d send in a SWAT team of sorts ahead of the agents to clear out the building, followed by crime scene technicians and detectives gathering evidence. He hoped that somehow Dan’s mother would be there as well. It certainly didn’t make sense to bring her back to Texas: they’d already breached it once and almost gotten away with one hostage. It would be foolish of MedLife to think that this time they wouldn’t go in unprepared and with the full force of the FBI behind them.
“You did good work out there in the field. You gave us a lot of information to start building a case against these guys. Good work, Detective.”
Dan nodded his thanks and followed Phil out of the kitchen and the house altogether.
They stood leaning on the porch railing, the overhang of the roof shielding them from the worst of the rain. They watched the rain drip off the edge of the roof in a steady stream as just beyond it came down in sheets, complete with booming thunder and lightening.
“Until this storm eases off we’re not going to be able to get anywhere,” Dan commented. Phil hadn’t realized they’d be flying out, but it made sense. They were dealing with an active hostage system- or so they hoped- and every minute counted. Of course they weren’t going to drive. He was glad to be out of a long car ride finally, but wasn’t that enthused to be flying. Maybe it’d be a nice private jet like they had in Criminal Minds. Phil could hope, at least for now.
“It’ll clear up by the time we get to the landing strip,” Phil replied. It was another thing he just knew.
When the rest of the company started to file out of the house in twos and threes the two of them headed back to Dan’s car. Dan grabbed his gun and his badge and Phil grabbed some snacks, not really sure of what else to bring, and stuffed them in his pockets.
They were ushered by two unknown agents into a waiting black SUV with tinted windows that Phil suspected were at least bullet-resistant if not bulletproof. One agent climbed into the driver’s seat and the other into the passenger seat, leaving Dan and Phil to clamber into the back seats. Phil remembered Agent Thatcher telling them they’d be briefed on the way to the landing strip and chose not to put in his earbuds as much as he would have been more comfortable doing so.
The driving agent, with the help of the passenger agent, navigated the mess of moving cars as every vehicle attempted to assemble in an orderly line down the road to leave at once. Once they were in an orderly fashion and turning off the street Dan’s house was plopped on, the passenger agent turned in his seat and handed them a briefing folder.
“I’m Special Agent Carr and this is Special Agent Jackson. It’s an honor to be riding with both of you.”
Phil was surprised that he meant it.
“In this folder you’ll find the information we’ve been able to gather on our end based off the information and hypothesis’ you’ve provided us. Some great deductive work, there, if I do say so myself. You really have a knack for this.”
Dan smiled but tilted his head towards Phil. “He’s the one that came up with most of this stuff.” Phil realized Dan must have been briefing them throughout their travels, not just the last time they were in West Virginia.
The Agent, surprised, did his best to look behind his seat at Phil. “Well, well. Every think about a career as a detective?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Dan interjected, head now buried in the file.
The agent glanced at Dan and back at Phil.
“I’m quite happy where I am in life now, thanks,” Phil declined gently.
The agent nodded with a wide smile and turned back to addressing Dan, which was easier given Dan was behind the driver’s side seat and not his own.
“Based on the information you gave us we were able to plug in factors related to this facility and find a number of other potential locations all over the US that might suit their needs. It certainly wasn’t easy to narrow down to this one location, but luckily we have the best of the best when it comes to our team.”
“And you’re sure that there’s a facility here?” Dan asked, closing the file and handing it over to Phil without looking.
Phil grabbed the file and started sorting through it himself. It left out all of the deductive work that had been put into finding this place and left only the bare-bones details. Only the facts.
“Sure am. We’ve had some of our agents on stealth watching the place and we can confirm.”
Phil flipped the report over and pulled out the picture underneath. He turned it landscape-wise and studied the picture carefully. The picture was of an above-ground facility somewhere in the woods right off a service road. It wasn’t as hidden as the facility in Texas, but it was clear that not many passer-bys were taking an interest in it. How many random buildings with tall fences topped with barbed wire had the two of them passed on their world tour? Too many for Phil to count and none he could even bring up a clear picture of in his head. The truth was that even a place like this was so common that besides a “I wonder what goes on in there” people weren’t too interested in what these places really held. They were a dime a dozen.
“He’s right,” Phil confirmed, handing the picture over to Dan even though he’d already glanced at it. Dan took it, however, and studied it again in light of Phil’s confirmation: a wide, rectangle building seven stories high with rows of windows all around, far enough off the road the average person driving wouldn’t be able to see what was inside. On the gate your usual “Private Property: Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted” sign, but no sign of any company logo or name.
“And this is in Massachusetts?” Dan asked, confirming. It hadn’t escaped Phil’s attention, either. He was on his phone googling the distance between the address given and Martyn’s house in the suburbs. It was much closer than he’d expected. He wasn’t surprised, though. He doubted anything about this case would surprise him anymore.
From the look of the building Phil suspected this was less a place that manufactured the drugs and more a place that was used for testing, though Phil was loathe to even call it that. It was more like medicalized torture, if anything.
“Do you think there are more out there?” Phil asked Special Agent Carr.
“It really depends on their level of funding,” he leveled. “I’m hoping that we’re either dealing with an investor that doesn’t have that many assets or isn’t putting all his eggs in one basket.”
Phil seconded that whole-heartedly.
“The plan for when we get there is to send SWAT in first and clear out the building. We’ll have local law enforcement, local fire and rescue, and local paramedics on scene as well as the Bureau’s medical staff on site in case your hunch is right and there are patients there.” This time it was Special Agent Jackson talking. “Once the building is clear and empty, we’ll head in.”
Phil resented the implications that these were patients: they were only sick because doctors were making them sick. He wasn’t sure how it was possible to give someone cancer, and he knew that “cancer” was a broad term for a single phenomenon that caused many, many different issues depending on the type and the location, but he was sure that where there was a will there was a way. Besides that, the plan had sounded pretty similar to what he’d expected.
They arrived at the air strip soon after. It didn’t look to be official or anything, just an area nearby Dan’s house they’d been able to land. There was a jet and a helicopter. To Phil’s dismay, they were loaded onto the helicopter, however, the jet didn’t seem like the luxurious types found in glorifications of the FBI on TV anyway. It seemed more like a utility military plane.
Phil had never been in a helicopter before, and while it wasn’t exactly on his bucket list, under different circumstances it might have been more exciting. To some degree, though, it still was.
The concept of taking off vertically was a new one to him and he watched eagerly out the window at the ground as they took off, leaning at an awkward angle to get the best downward view.
Each member in the helicopter was equipped with a headset so they could speak to each other.
“Have you been briefed?” the copilot asked.
“We have,” Dan replied over the roar of the craft’s blades above them and the wind around them.
“We’ll be landing a ways away since you’re not direct FBI personnel. You’ll be the some of the last ones on scene. For now, try your best to just sit back and enjoy the view.”
Phil wondered if they’d minded if he traded his headset for his earbuds, but decided once again against putting them in. If something was happening he wanted to know about it, anxiety be damned. Instead, he tried his best to follow the copilot’s advice to sit back, relax, and enjoy the scenery underneath them.
*-*-*-*-*
The jet had beaten them to the area of Massachusetts the facility was located in. The copilot informed Dan and Phil of the plane’s landing while they were still a good twenty minutes out. The initial sweep of SWAT was due to start soon, and they’d probably come in right around the aftermath.
Phil had a funny feeling nagging at the back of his mind he couldn’t quite place. It was the same kind of feeling he got when he sensed ghosts nearby, but somehow it was just different. His mind returned to that fateful day he’d spent at Alcatraz with Martyn and his parents. That was the closest thing he could compare it to. They passed over populated towns and forests, the feeling growing stronger and stronger within Phil as his mind raced to put a finger on it. The feeling that came from being at the hospital was also there as a comparison.
The closer they got to the compound the more defined it became. There was so much pain. So much suffering. Like the souls at the hospital. Like the souls at Alcatraz. Like a graveyard.
A graveyard.
Phil realized with horror what he was feeling and he quickly turned his head to the side retching, almost as if the realization had heightened the experience.
“Little late for being airsick,” the pilot joked but Dan turned to Phil, alarmed. Phil looked back at Dan, tears streaming down his face. Dan reached out a hand. Phil took it. He couldn’t handle the pain alone.
Flashes of people wasting away in hospital beds set up in a crude factory-like setting danced before their eyes. IV drips. Crying. Screaming. Pain. Burning. Death. So much death. Hundreds of bodies. Bodies being buried around the building. Radiating out. The ripple effect. Further and further out from the building as more and more bodies accumulated.
They tugged their hands apart, panting, crying at the images.
“Oh my god,” Dan whispered, horrified.
*-*-*-*-*
The had to walk a ways towards the building itself, the whole time Phil swaying on his feet, Dan’s arm around his shoulders, steadying him. It was different than a graveyard: souls were at peace for the most part. No soul was at peace here.
Phil, for the first time, could see ghosts, sitting or standing on top of their remains as they got close. And the people they were taking out of the building alive looked almost as dead as the rest of them.
Phil tried his best to ignore the ghosts for the moment and focus on the people who were still alive. They were being loaded into ambulance after ambulance as best as could be. The nearby hospital wouldn’t know what hit them.
“I have to help,” Phil slipped out from under Dan’s arm and made his way to the closest person lying on a gurney.
Whoever they were looked up at him. Their face and gown were clean, hair groomed well, and somewhat fed, but they were still gaunt, and it wasn’t life out on the street that had done that to them. Besides that they had red marks all over their body, like pools of blood that had gathered just underneath the surface of their skin, the same as the patients who had originally been tested back in 1999 in West Virginia: the Howells’ patients.
Phil reached out a hand and confused, but surprised, they took it and squeezed. Phil squeezed back, sending just a little bit of hope and comfort into them. They smiled as much as they could and laid back down, closing their eyes. Phil moved on to the next person.
Dan followed behind Phil at every step of the way, using a hand to guide Phil’s overwhelmed and weakened body. It was hard enough to see all this on his own, but he sensed Phil taking away a bit of the reserves he had left to place into everyone as they went from person to person, making it even harder to stand.
Phil stopped at the last one. It was a boy, just a bit older than the ghost he’d seen.
“What’s your name?” Phil asked, quietly, placing a hand over the boys, which laid by his side on the gurney.
“Jack,” the boy replied. His eyes were dull in a way Phil knew he’d never forget.
“It’s going to be okay, Jack.”
Jack smiled, even though it seemed like there was nothing behind it.
“I know.”
Phil tilted his head. “How do you know?”
“I just know,” he replied, and Phil wondered for a brief second if he’s found someone in life not so different from himself.
Phil turned away and Dan followed.
“I have work to do,” Phil told Dan. Dan nodded. “I do too. I’ll meet you back out here when I’m done.”
Phil nodded and turned away as Dan turned towards the building’s front entrance. Phil glanced off to his side to watch Dan climb up the stairs until the building had swallowed him whole. And then Phil turned to the forest surrounding them.
Crime scene technicians were already sweeping the area with their ground-penetrating technology, marking areas with little flags. So far Phil counted 26.
“Twenty-six bodies. God,” the technician closest to him muttered in shock.
Phil turned to face him.
“You have about three hundred more to go,” he replied dimly.
The technician looked up from the screen on his radar in shock.
“You can’t be serious. Did you find patient records or something?”
There was that word again. Patients.
Phil shook his head. “I just know.”
Phil could still see every ghost, and they knew he could see them. Their gazes followed him as he walked towards the edge of the ring.
“Phil?”
That voice. Phil knew that voice.
He started crying before he even turned around.
“Martyn?”
Phil didn’t know ghosts could hug but Martyn rushed towards him, wrapping his arms around him.
“Phil, I knew you’d come find me.” Martyn’s ghost was crying too, it seemed.
Phil nodded and and held Martyn’s arms. Then he let go and turned.
“Hey! Hey! I need you over here!”
The technician looked up.
“But I-”
“Please!”
Phil felt his voice catch and after a brief hesitation trotted over to where Phil was standing, still surrounded by hundreds of people only he could see.
Phil grabbed a white flag out of the technicians hands and planted it at his feet.
“Here. I need you to dig here.”
He moved out of the way so the technician could confirm there was in fact a body there.
“Oh god,” he muttered, repeating Dan’s exact words.
“I need you to dig here.”
The technician looked at Phil and hesitated once again. Phil could see the question written on his face.
“My brother is buried here. I know he is.”
The technician’s face softened.
“I saw my grandma, the night after she died,” he whispered, as if he didn’t want anyone else to hear him, a man of science, admit such a thing.
The technician nodded at Phil and waved over his crew.
“We start here.���
“But-”
“No ‘but’s. We start digging here now.”
Half of the crew returned to sweeping the ground with their tools that looked a lot like metal detectors to Phil while the other half grabbed equipment like shovels and brushes out of the back of the crime scene van.
Dan, meanwhile, had made his way up to the top floor of the building, glancing briefly down hallways as he made his way up. It was on the top floor he walked towards the side of the building and looked out the window down below. He saw Phil standing outside the fence on the edge of the woods where the trees had been cleared in a perimeter around the building with a crew of technicians starting to dig at his feet and he knew that their journey had come to an end. They had found the missing, now confirmed murdered, Martyn Lester, right outside the very doorstep of the people who had killed him and hundreds of others.
Dan turned away from the window. The top floor appeared to be an office level of sorts, no patient beds or medical equipment anywhere. Other investigators and crime scene technicians had already opened every drawer and were now sifting through hundreds and hundreds of records of some kind. Dan found he didn’t quite care what they contained anymore. This was out of his hands now, and he was glad. He needed to focus on finding his mother.
It was at that moment he spotted an agent jogging up the final set of steps, slightly out of breath, eyes fixed on Dan. He moved to meet her.
“Detective Howell?”
“This is.”
“We have your mother. She’s safe and on her way to the local hospital for a more thorough check-up, but she appears unharmed.”
Dan rushed past her and started making his quick descent down all seven flights of stairs. His feet were in a flurry of movement as he reached the bottom and rushed out the door. Phil was too focused on watching the crime scene technicians uncover his brother’s remains to notice.
Dan wondered how they could have missed his mom when they were going from ambulance to ambulance but realized that she probably hadn’t been with those who were being tested on. He glanced from ambulance to ambulance searching, searching, searching, until finally- there, yes, there she was. Dan’s long, lanky legs carried him over in a hurry.
“Mom!” he wrapped his arms around her as gently as he could, but the force still pushed her backwards. She was standing outside an ambulance; paramedics had been giving her a once-over but stepped out of the way as Dan rushed in. They were used to this kind of thing. It was the kind of thing they saw every day. Dan knew they must have had strong wills to do the job they did every day and do it well.
“Thank you,” he addressed.
“Don’t thank them they haven’t done anything,” his mom snapped tersely. “I’ve told you, I’m a nurse, I’m fine, thank you.”
The paramedics just rolled their eyes and went on to attend other patients. Dan was sure this was also something they were used.
“I don’t need to go to the hospital,” Dan’s mom insisted. “I’ve hardly been here a day.”
“Alright, alright. Well, come on then, there’s someplace we need to be.”
By the time Dan and his mom approached Phil and the crime scene technician crew they had stopped using shovels and were instead brushing away dirt from Martyn Lester’s skin and the folds of his clothes.
He was hardly recognizable in the state of decomposition he was in and Dan looked away.
Phil reached out a hand and Dan took it, seeing instead the world as Phil saw it. In front of him stood Martyn Lester.
“Thank you for all of your help, Detective Howell.”
Dan nodded, not wanting to look like he was talking to thin air.
Martyn turned back to his younger brother.
“He’s a good one. Don’t let him go.”
Phil blushed and pushed Martyn, who stumbled a little. Dan wasn’t sure whether he was surprised or not that Phil could influence ghosts physically. Maybe part of him was on the other side, so they say.
“You’ve finished what I set out to do, and I can’t thank you enough. I’m not the only one you’ve helped, though,” Martyn said, addressing them both. From behind him, Dan saw a familiar figure. This time he wasn’t able to keep his words to himself.
“Dad.”
Dr. Howell moved to stand beside Martyn.
“Martyn,” he addressed courteously.
“Dr. Howell.”
“It seems our work here is done. Are you ready to go?”
Martyn glanced over at Dan’s mom who was standing beside Dan.
“Don’t you want to say goodbye?” Martyn asked.
Dr. Howell shook his head. “I’ll see her soon enough,” he replied, confirming Phil’s suspicions. Dan’s breath caught in his throat at the suggestion, but he smiled in spite of it.
“Then, yes, I’m ready to go.” Martyn turned back to Phil.
“When you get home there’ll be another letter from me to you on your table. It contains everything I’ve known about. I hope you can add it to your files and it will be of some use to you.”
“You’ve already been of great use to us, Martyn,” Phil replied, not caring that it looked like he was talking to nothing but thin air. He was used to the weird stares. He’d gotten them all the time growing up, and Martyn had encouraged him to ignore them, so he did. “Go now, to wherever it is you guys go.”
Martyn smiled. “If you ever need anything else I’m just a ouija board away.”
Phil grinned back. “And don’t I know it. Don’t think just because you’re dead that you can get away from me!” And Phil realized that for the first time he was accepting that Martyn was, truly, dead.
Dr. Howell and Martyn gave a wave before turned around and wading their way through other ghosts and disappearing. Looking around, Phil noticed less and less ghosts as one by one they realized their ordeal was over, that they had been found, and their families could be notified.
“It’s over. It’s really over.”
He and Dan looked towards Nurse Howell.
“Are you ready to go home mom?” Dan asked. She nodded.
“They’re never going to hurt you again,” Phil added, and she smiled at him with a gaze that seemed worlds away.
“Never again.”
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