PALACE OF GHOSTS by Thomas S. Flowers - Evil resides in Amon Palace. Something worse came to visit. ***Interview with Thomas S. Flowers: Find out which of his scenes was the most difficult to write and why - Read Chapter One of his newest release: Palace of Ghosts - Giveaway***
Palace of Ghosts
Thomas S. Flowers
Genre: Paranormal Thriller
Publisher: Shadow Work Publishing
Date of Publication: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-988819-14-3
ASIN: B07NTQWWQG
Number of pages: 275
Word Count: 62K
Cover Artist: Luke Spooner
Four veterans of the Iraq War seeking a cure for Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder arrive at a notoriously haunted house in the bogs of Galveston Island called Amon Palace.
Samantha Green, a friendless former Army K-9 handler looking for a way to put her loss behind her.
Brad Myers, a lighthearted former Military Police Officer severally wounded in war wanting nothing more than a good night’s sleep.
Andy Lovejoy, an overweight light spoken drone operator who once watched the war from above now questions who he has become.
Marcus Pangborn, a headstrong Marine who desperately wants a dead friend’s forgiveness.
The group joins Doctor Frederick Peters, an experimental psychologist looking to prove his exposure theory hypothesis, and his two assistants, Tiffany Burgess and Dexter Reid.
At first, their stay seems to conjure nothing more than spooky encounters with inexplicable phenomena. But Amon Palace is gathering its powers—and soon it will reveal that these veterans are not who they seem.
Tell us about your newest book.
Palace of Ghosts is about a group of veterans who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, each representing different branches in the Armed Forces, including Army, Marines, and Airforce. These veterans are invited by their group therapist, Doctor Fredrick Peters, to spend a week in Amon Palace—a notoriously haunted house on the outskirts of Galveston Island. Doctor Peters doesn’t really believe Amon Palace is haunted, but he hopes his patients do—his goal is to force them into a stressful situation while in the confines of an otherwise isolated environment. He wants to trigger their individual traumatic memories without his patients worrying about hurting others or themselves. By being forced to face traumatic memory, he believes, they can then develop healthy ways of coping, break down the walls so to speak and rejoin normal civilized society. In other words, he wants to cure their PTSD.
Writing isn’t easy. What was the most difficult thing you dealt with when writing this book?
Facing myself. Palace of Ghosts took its pound of flesh, having to force myself to remember my own trauma, to recall my time in war. I feel it was therapeutic, but difficult, nonetheless.
Tell us a little bit about your writing career.
I started publishing in 2014, my first novel was Reinheit, a historic fiction piece about a possessed armchair that passed from Nazi Germany to a modern couple in America. I’ve also published a series of supernatural thrillers called Subdue, this includes Dwelling, Emerging, Conceiving, and Converging. My latest work includes a zombie series called Planet of the Dead, its sequel titled War for the Planet of the Dead, the third book (due later this year) is Escape from the Planet of the Dead. Early in 2019, I released what I hope will be another zombie series, called Island of the Flesh Eaters—a fun and gory romp into 1980s themed horror. My best-selling novel though was released late last year, The Last Hellfighter—a historic fiction piece about one of the last surviving members of the Harlem Hellfighters, a WWI U.S. Army regiment, who also happened to be a vampire slayer. Most of everything I’ve published is available on eBook, paperback, and audiobook. None of which would be possible without the support of Shadow Work Publishing and Darker Worlds Publishing—my two main publishers to date.
They say Hind-sight is 20/20. If you could give advice to the writer you were the first time you sat down to write, what would it be?
Don’t get hung up on the sells and who you publish with—focus on the story and everything else will fall into place.
What was your most difficult scene to write?
All the scenes in Palace of Ghosts in which the characters are forced into their trauma. Recalling my own experiences and tapping that vein to feed emotion into the story. It was difficult because it was my own. Those emotions they felt were real because they were real for me. The worst though was Brad’s recalling of firing his rifle into a car that was driving towards his convoy, not knowing but knowing that he had just killed a family because he thought they were a threat, not that that brought him much comfort. When Amon Palace conjured them into his room…it broke me.
Are themes a big part of your stories, or not so much?
Yes, when I write I write not just to a particular audience, but also a particular appetite of my own. I’ve been a horror fan ever since my big sister let me watch Night of the Living Dead oh so many years ago. And there are many different niches and sub-genres within horror to explore and write about. My zombie stories are written for myself mostly—and those who enjoy Romero styled tales of the living dead. My historic horror fiction books are written to satisfy the history nerd inside myself—and hopefully readers who enjoy those themes as well. In zombie stories I love exploring themes of humanity at its worse and at its best. In historic fiction, I like to search the past to find meaning in the future.
What are you working on now?
With the release of Palace of Ghosts, I’ve moved on into a new story called Detective Carter and The Cult of the Feared Ones. I love detective stories and I love the Lovecraft mythos. I’m hoping to explore the concept of cosmic horror, the boundless depths of the universe, and what terrors await us in the deep.
Is there a release date planned?
I’m planning on releasing Detective Carter sometime this summer. Escape from the Planet of the Dead will release in October. And as of yet to be disclosed project, I’m hoping for a winter release.
Who is your favorite character from your own stories, and why?
Damn…that’s a hard one. This will seem odd, but my favorite character to date is my least favorite—Dexter Reid in Palace of Ghosts. He’s such a vile person, I poured a lot of emotion and my own troubled thoughts of how some people treat veterans, as wastes. He was such a horrible person, I actually enjoyed writing his character because vile people usually meet vile ends in my stories.
Most writers were readers as children. What was your favorite book in grade school?
Around 3rd grade, my mom really encouraged me to read more. And I did. Tons of Goosebumps and R.L. Stein books, and then eventually Tolkien, King, Barker, and Remarque (to name a few). But as for grade school level, my most favorite book was Stinker from Space by Pamela F. Service. It was so fun and imaginative and different than the other stories offered back then. I need to find a copy so that my daughter can enjoy it too.
What are your plans for future projects?
I’m planning on releasing that Detective Carter book sometime this summer. Escape from the Planet of the Dead will release in October. And I have a as of yet to be disclosed project, I’m hoping for a winter release.
Is there anything you would like to add before we finish?
Thanks for having me! I appreciate you letting me yarn a bit about the new book. I’d like to give a big shout out to my team, to Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi, my PR guru, and to my publisher Shadow Work Publishing, to Luke Spooner who did the cover design for Palace of Ghosts, to Patrick Loveland for doing the creepy interior illustrations, and of course to my editor, Chad Clark—he made me kill some darlings in this one, but it was all for the better. And lastly to Bewitching for taking me on another whorl wind tour.
Good luck with your newest release, and thank you for being with us today.
Keep scrolling to read chapter one of Palace of Ghosts, by Thomas S. Flowers.
By Thomas S. Flowers
Chapter 1
Missing Persons
Detective Carter studied the man across the table through the smoky haze of stale cigarettes. He paid close attention to any clue that could give away some other reasonable explanation than the insanity that had just been confessed. Manila envelopes and folders spread out before him, containing recent photographs and reports of what remained of the old mansion out in the bogs on Galveston Island by Boddeker Road. The fire was substantial to say the least, leaving only skeletal remnants of charred stone and soot of what was once a magnificent estate. And among the destruction spread out on the table in interrogation room 2B, six separate missing persons reports. Reaching down, he switched off the recorder, flipped the tape and resumed the interview.
“Maybe we should throw you back in holding for another twenty-four hours—see if that gets you to start talking reasonably,” Carter’s partner, Detective Harley Warren, growled. He walked around the room and stood behind the suspect. He leaned close to his ear and whispered, “What you’re giving us, Doc—well, we ain’t buying it. I think maybe you’re a shit liar and can’t come up with a more realistic story. You want to know what I think? I think maybe you did something to your patients. Maybe you lost your temper and—" he made a slicing motion with his thumb across his neck.
Squinting against the harsh fluorescent light above them, Carter focused on the suspect’s reaction. But all he saw was more of the same.
The suspect propped his head up with his elbows on the table, rubbing his temples, eyes closed. “I’ve told you what happened, I know its hard to believe, but—”
“Hard to believe? I’d say this was all a waste of our time.” Warren stood but remained behind the suspect. “There are six people missing—six, don’t you think their families deserve closure? Just tell us where the bodies are and then we’ll let you go see the wizard, get your own personal padded cell.”
The suspect scoffed. “Missing? They aren’t missing—they were taken, but long before coming to Amon Palace. Whatever happened to them happened in Iraq.”
Warren made a face. “Again with this crazy bullshit.”
“Its not bullshit—I’m telling you what happened, you simply don’t want to listen. The suspect glanced behind him, speaking to Warren directly.
Warren waved him off. “Fancy talk, Doc. But where does it leave us? I’ll tell you, I think you just scored a free ride to the insane asylum. Three hots and a cot, you’ll be living like a king while the parents of the people you killed suffer. All because you’re too chicken shit to tell us what really happened.”
The suspect looked into his palms and said, mostly to himself, “Insane? Maybe I am insane—God, I wish I was.”
Carter cleared his throat. “Okay, Doctor Peters, let’s take it slow. Let’s see if we got this straight. What you’re telling us is that you put together this group from patients you were treating at the VA hospital, right?
“Correct,” Peters nodded. “An experiment in exposure therapy.”
“Jesus Christ, don’t you think these vets have gone through enough without you playing around with their heads?” Warren barked.
“I was trying to help them!” Peters cried.
“Sure you were—sounds like you were trying to help your own career, if you ask me,” Warren quipped.
Carter held up a hand, glancing up at Warren, gesturing for him to ease off.
Warren rolled his eyes but said nothing else.
“Okay, Doctor. So, you put together this group for a week at Amon Palace?” Carter asked.
Rubbing his temples again, Peters said, “I’ve told you all of this already. Yes, I acquired special permission from Mrs. Driscoll. She allowed me use of her estate to conduct the week-long experiment.”
“Mrs. Driscoll? As in Elizabeth Driscoll, daughter of John Driscoll?”
“Yes, and niece of Sir Christopher Driscoll.”
Carter glanced up at Warren.
Noticing the exchanged expression, Peters asked, “Why?”
Carter shifted in his seat and looked Peters straight in the face, bracing for the reaction that would come. “Elizabeth Driscoll has been dead now for over thirty years. The estate passed on to another member of the family who had never bothered to do anything with it. Amon Palace has been abandoned since the 1980s.”
As if on cue, Peters’s hand dropped to the table. His eyes shot wide. “What?” he whispered.
Carter nodded, “Whoever you talked with—if anyone, it wasn’t Elizabeth Driscoll.”
“That can’t be possible,” Peters stammered.
“Let’s assume for now that whoever it was you spoke with, you believed it to be Elizabeth Driscoll,” Carter said, scribbling gibberish in his notebook, a trick he’d used a dozen times with perps. They see him writing something down after getting the rug swept under them and get nervous. And with jittery nerves come mistakes.
“Can’t be—I spoke with her…” Peters went on, glancing at the notebook, whispering to himself. He looked up suddenly, “What about the Andersons?”
Carter frowned. “Who?”
“Marge and John Anderson.”
“Are you saying there were others?”
“There should be—they were the caretakers hired by Miss Driscoll.”
Exhaling, Carter said, “Amon Palace has no caretakers—at least none on record.” He flipped through some of the folders on the table. “And there have been no bodies recovered as of yet at the crime scene.”
Peters resumed rubbing his temples. “They have to be there, she hired them to take care of the estate. I spoke with both on more than one occasion. And I saw them both on the night of the fire…they were in the house.”
Warren stepped forward and slammed his fist on the table beside Peters, filling the room with a loud pang as he shouted, “Don’t you understand what we’re saying? The woman you supposedly talked with doesn’t exist and there were no caretakers! Which means your story is total fucking bullshit!”
Peters flinched.
“Okay, Doctor,” Carter prodded on, “you brought this group in for an experiment. And then what, spooky encounters start happening—are you telling us that Amon Palace is haunted?”
Warren scoffed. He stood back now, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his barrel chest.
Smiling, Peters said, “Go ahead and laugh, I understand. I didn’t believe either, not at first. Haunted by some specter or specters or demonically possessed? That would be the real question. Those familiar with parapsychology—of which I am not; I’m paraphrasing here from what I’ve read—almost all cases with reports of hauntings, psychic invasions, and the like, all bear a strong parallel to our experiences within Amon Palace. Cold spots, slamming of doors or banging on walls by some unknown; unseen force, retrocognition—and yet, according to documents published by the Vatican, hauntings such as these sometimes serve as the first manifestation of an entity ultimately bent on demonic possession. According to said article, odors of human excrement or rotting eggs, sulfur can be a characteristic clue of demonic infestation.”
More laughing from Warren.
“As I said, laugh if it makes you feel better. But what would you find more incredible, that Amon Palace is; was indeed possessed, or at the very least haunted, or that we all somehow shared the same hallucinations and grotesque misinterpretations of fact?”
Carter leaned back in his chair, pondering the possibility.
Warren jabbed Peters with a finger. “If what you’re saying is even true—we only have your statement to go off of. Convenient, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?”
Peters shook his head, “Certainly not convenient for Samantha Green, Brad Myers, Marcus Pangborn, Tiffany Burgess, or Dexter Reid.”
Warren wound up as if he was about to punch Peters.
“Okay, okay,” Carter offered his hands again, urging his partner to cool down. “You bring your experimental exposure group to Amon Palace and everyone starts seeing things—but didn’t you say you wanted them to see this weird stuff? Triggers, you called them, right?”
“The idea—the experiment,” Peters exhaled, glancing sideways at Warren, “was for them to spend a week unplugged from the rest of the world. No phones. No TV. No internet. Completely isolated in an unfamiliar and potentially stressful environment that could possibly trigger certain responses. At the time, I did not believe Amon Palace was truly haunted. Exposure therapy works by triggering patients, forcing them to confront buried trauma. But this was supposed to be a place where I could safely monitor their conditions. There have been cases before, therapeutic exposure experiments that have gone awry. I’m sure you have heard of the former Navy Seal whose post-service time was spent helping veterans with PTSD. He would take them to gun ranges, a known trigger for many soldiers returning from war. The idea is the same—to help patients with PTSD face trauma in order to heal. On one occasion, he had taken a veteran out who had been struggling significantly. The veteran snapped. And in the end, he shot and killed his would-be therapist and his friend. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. A horrible tragedy with three ruined lives. At Amon Palace I wanted my patients to be able to face the memory of their trauma without the fear of hurting loved ones or themselves. As they began to react to the suggested belief that Amon Palace was in fact haunted, I would guide them toward projecting what they feared the most—their own unique traumas.”
“Jesus Christ,” Warren quipped again.
Carter silenced his partner with a hand. “So, the experiment was designed for them to react to being locked up in a creepy mansion under the pretense that the house was haunted, and it worked?”
Peters nodded, tears brimming his eyes. “And I confess, I pushed them—more than I should have.”
Carter leaned forward, he could sense they were finally getting somewhere. “What do you mean, pushed?”
Looking up, tears now trickling down his face, he said, “Hypnosis.”
“Hypnotherapy? You put them in a suggestive state when they were already under duress?”
“Under duress? No—they volunteered!”
“Only because you promised a cure—didn’t you?”
“And it would have worked too…but they weren’t who I thought they were—they changed into something horrible.”
Carter sneered, tired of this interrogation, tired of the lies and wild fantasies. “And why didn’t it work, Doctor? Did your little hypothesis backfire? Did you have visions of your career burning so you decided to burn everything else? Did you kill them?”
“NO!”
“THAN WHAT HAPPENED?”
“THEY WERE TAKEN!”
Carter shook his head, the feeling of defeat sinking in and the weariness of this prolonged interrogation taking a toll. “Taken? Where, Doctor—and by whom?”
Thomas S. Flowers is an Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom Army veteran who loves scary movies, BBQ, and coffee. Ever since reading Remarque’s "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Stephen King’s "Salem’s Lot" he has inspired to write deeply disturbing things that relate to war and horror, from the paranormal to his gory zombie infested PLANET of the DEAD series, to even his recent dabbling of vampiric flirtation in The Last Hellfighter readers can expect to find complex characters, rich historical settings, and mind-altering horror. Thomas is also the senior editor at Machine Mean, a horror movie and book review site that hosts contributors in the horror and science fiction genre.
PLANET of the DEAD and The Last Hellfighter are best-sellers on Amazon's Top 100 lists for Apocalyptic Fiction and African American Horror.
You can follow Thomas and get yourself a FREE eBook copy of FEAST by joining his newsletter. Sign up by vising his website at www.ThomasSFlowers.com
a Rafflecopter giveaway
ISBN: 978-1-988819-14-3
ASIN: B07NTQWWQG
Number of pages: 275
Word Count: 62K
Cover Artist: Luke Spooner
Evil resides in Amon Palace. Something worse came to visit.
Four veterans of the Iraq War seeking a cure for Post-Traumatic-Stress Disorder arrive at a notoriously haunted house in the bogs of Galveston Island called Amon Palace.
Samantha Green, a friendless former Army K-9 handler looking for a way to put her loss behind her.
Brad Myers, a lighthearted former Military Police Officer severally wounded in war wanting nothing more than a good night’s sleep.
Andy Lovejoy, an overweight light spoken drone operator who once watched the war from above now questions who he has become.
Marcus Pangborn, a headstrong Marine who desperately wants a dead friend’s forgiveness.
The group joins Doctor Frederick Peters, an experimental psychologist looking to prove his exposure theory hypothesis, and his two assistants, Tiffany Burgess and Dexter Reid.
At first, their stay seems to conjure nothing more than spooky encounters with inexplicable phenomena. But Amon Palace is gathering its powers—and soon it will reveal that these veterans are not who they seem.
Interview with the Author
Thomas S. Flowers
Welcome to JB’s Bookworms with Brandy MulderTell us about your newest book.
Palace of Ghosts is about a group of veterans who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, each representing different branches in the Armed Forces, including Army, Marines, and Airforce. These veterans are invited by their group therapist, Doctor Fredrick Peters, to spend a week in Amon Palace—a notoriously haunted house on the outskirts of Galveston Island. Doctor Peters doesn’t really believe Amon Palace is haunted, but he hopes his patients do—his goal is to force them into a stressful situation while in the confines of an otherwise isolated environment. He wants to trigger their individual traumatic memories without his patients worrying about hurting others or themselves. By being forced to face traumatic memory, he believes, they can then develop healthy ways of coping, break down the walls so to speak and rejoin normal civilized society. In other words, he wants to cure their PTSD.
Writing isn’t easy. What was the most difficult thing you dealt with when writing this book?
Facing myself. Palace of Ghosts took its pound of flesh, having to force myself to remember my own trauma, to recall my time in war. I feel it was therapeutic, but difficult, nonetheless.
Tell us a little bit about your writing career.
I started publishing in 2014, my first novel was Reinheit, a historic fiction piece about a possessed armchair that passed from Nazi Germany to a modern couple in America. I’ve also published a series of supernatural thrillers called Subdue, this includes Dwelling, Emerging, Conceiving, and Converging. My latest work includes a zombie series called Planet of the Dead, its sequel titled War for the Planet of the Dead, the third book (due later this year) is Escape from the Planet of the Dead. Early in 2019, I released what I hope will be another zombie series, called Island of the Flesh Eaters—a fun and gory romp into 1980s themed horror. My best-selling novel though was released late last year, The Last Hellfighter—a historic fiction piece about one of the last surviving members of the Harlem Hellfighters, a WWI U.S. Army regiment, who also happened to be a vampire slayer. Most of everything I’ve published is available on eBook, paperback, and audiobook. None of which would be possible without the support of Shadow Work Publishing and Darker Worlds Publishing—my two main publishers to date.
They say Hind-sight is 20/20. If you could give advice to the writer you were the first time you sat down to write, what would it be?
Don’t get hung up on the sells and who you publish with—focus on the story and everything else will fall into place.
What was your most difficult scene to write?
All the scenes in Palace of Ghosts in which the characters are forced into their trauma. Recalling my own experiences and tapping that vein to feed emotion into the story. It was difficult because it was my own. Those emotions they felt were real because they were real for me. The worst though was Brad’s recalling of firing his rifle into a car that was driving towards his convoy, not knowing but knowing that he had just killed a family because he thought they were a threat, not that that brought him much comfort. When Amon Palace conjured them into his room…it broke me.
Are themes a big part of your stories, or not so much?
Yes, when I write I write not just to a particular audience, but also a particular appetite of my own. I’ve been a horror fan ever since my big sister let me watch Night of the Living Dead oh so many years ago. And there are many different niches and sub-genres within horror to explore and write about. My zombie stories are written for myself mostly—and those who enjoy Romero styled tales of the living dead. My historic horror fiction books are written to satisfy the history nerd inside myself—and hopefully readers who enjoy those themes as well. In zombie stories I love exploring themes of humanity at its worse and at its best. In historic fiction, I like to search the past to find meaning in the future.
What are you working on now?
With the release of Palace of Ghosts, I’ve moved on into a new story called Detective Carter and The Cult of the Feared Ones. I love detective stories and I love the Lovecraft mythos. I’m hoping to explore the concept of cosmic horror, the boundless depths of the universe, and what terrors await us in the deep.
Is there a release date planned?
I’m planning on releasing Detective Carter sometime this summer. Escape from the Planet of the Dead will release in October. And as of yet to be disclosed project, I’m hoping for a winter release.
Who is your favorite character from your own stories, and why?
Damn…that’s a hard one. This will seem odd, but my favorite character to date is my least favorite—Dexter Reid in Palace of Ghosts. He’s such a vile person, I poured a lot of emotion and my own troubled thoughts of how some people treat veterans, as wastes. He was such a horrible person, I actually enjoyed writing his character because vile people usually meet vile ends in my stories.
Most writers were readers as children. What was your favorite book in grade school?
Around 3rd grade, my mom really encouraged me to read more. And I did. Tons of Goosebumps and R.L. Stein books, and then eventually Tolkien, King, Barker, and Remarque (to name a few). But as for grade school level, my most favorite book was Stinker from Space by Pamela F. Service. It was so fun and imaginative and different than the other stories offered back then. I need to find a copy so that my daughter can enjoy it too.
What are your plans for future projects?
I’m planning on releasing that Detective Carter book sometime this summer. Escape from the Planet of the Dead will release in October. And I have a as of yet to be disclosed project, I’m hoping for a winter release.
Is there anything you would like to add before we finish?
Thanks for having me! I appreciate you letting me yarn a bit about the new book. I’d like to give a big shout out to my team, to Erin Sweet Al-Mehairi, my PR guru, and to my publisher Shadow Work Publishing, to Luke Spooner who did the cover design for Palace of Ghosts, to Patrick Loveland for doing the creepy interior illustrations, and of course to my editor, Chad Clark—he made me kill some darlings in this one, but it was all for the better. And lastly to Bewitching for taking me on another whorl wind tour.
Good luck with your newest release, and thank you for being with us today.
Keep scrolling to read chapter one of Palace of Ghosts, by Thomas S. Flowers.
Read Chapter One
Palace of GhostsBy Thomas S. Flowers
Chapter 1
Missing Persons
Detective Carter studied the man across the table through the smoky haze of stale cigarettes. He paid close attention to any clue that could give away some other reasonable explanation than the insanity that had just been confessed. Manila envelopes and folders spread out before him, containing recent photographs and reports of what remained of the old mansion out in the bogs on Galveston Island by Boddeker Road. The fire was substantial to say the least, leaving only skeletal remnants of charred stone and soot of what was once a magnificent estate. And among the destruction spread out on the table in interrogation room 2B, six separate missing persons reports. Reaching down, he switched off the recorder, flipped the tape and resumed the interview.
“Maybe we should throw you back in holding for another twenty-four hours—see if that gets you to start talking reasonably,” Carter’s partner, Detective Harley Warren, growled. He walked around the room and stood behind the suspect. He leaned close to his ear and whispered, “What you’re giving us, Doc—well, we ain’t buying it. I think maybe you’re a shit liar and can’t come up with a more realistic story. You want to know what I think? I think maybe you did something to your patients. Maybe you lost your temper and—" he made a slicing motion with his thumb across his neck.
Squinting against the harsh fluorescent light above them, Carter focused on the suspect’s reaction. But all he saw was more of the same.
The suspect propped his head up with his elbows on the table, rubbing his temples, eyes closed. “I’ve told you what happened, I know its hard to believe, but—”
“Hard to believe? I’d say this was all a waste of our time.” Warren stood but remained behind the suspect. “There are six people missing—six, don’t you think their families deserve closure? Just tell us where the bodies are and then we’ll let you go see the wizard, get your own personal padded cell.”
The suspect scoffed. “Missing? They aren’t missing—they were taken, but long before coming to Amon Palace. Whatever happened to them happened in Iraq.”
Warren made a face. “Again with this crazy bullshit.”
“Its not bullshit—I’m telling you what happened, you simply don’t want to listen. The suspect glanced behind him, speaking to Warren directly.
Warren waved him off. “Fancy talk, Doc. But where does it leave us? I’ll tell you, I think you just scored a free ride to the insane asylum. Three hots and a cot, you’ll be living like a king while the parents of the people you killed suffer. All because you’re too chicken shit to tell us what really happened.”
The suspect looked into his palms and said, mostly to himself, “Insane? Maybe I am insane—God, I wish I was.”
Carter cleared his throat. “Okay, Doctor Peters, let’s take it slow. Let’s see if we got this straight. What you’re telling us is that you put together this group from patients you were treating at the VA hospital, right?
“Correct,” Peters nodded. “An experiment in exposure therapy.”
“Jesus Christ, don’t you think these vets have gone through enough without you playing around with their heads?” Warren barked.
“I was trying to help them!” Peters cried.
“Sure you were—sounds like you were trying to help your own career, if you ask me,” Warren quipped.
Carter held up a hand, glancing up at Warren, gesturing for him to ease off.
Warren rolled his eyes but said nothing else.
“Okay, Doctor. So, you put together this group for a week at Amon Palace?” Carter asked.
Rubbing his temples again, Peters said, “I’ve told you all of this already. Yes, I acquired special permission from Mrs. Driscoll. She allowed me use of her estate to conduct the week-long experiment.”
“Mrs. Driscoll? As in Elizabeth Driscoll, daughter of John Driscoll?”
“Yes, and niece of Sir Christopher Driscoll.”
Carter glanced up at Warren.
Noticing the exchanged expression, Peters asked, “Why?”
Carter shifted in his seat and looked Peters straight in the face, bracing for the reaction that would come. “Elizabeth Driscoll has been dead now for over thirty years. The estate passed on to another member of the family who had never bothered to do anything with it. Amon Palace has been abandoned since the 1980s.”
As if on cue, Peters’s hand dropped to the table. His eyes shot wide. “What?” he whispered.
Carter nodded, “Whoever you talked with—if anyone, it wasn’t Elizabeth Driscoll.”
“That can’t be possible,” Peters stammered.
“Let’s assume for now that whoever it was you spoke with, you believed it to be Elizabeth Driscoll,” Carter said, scribbling gibberish in his notebook, a trick he’d used a dozen times with perps. They see him writing something down after getting the rug swept under them and get nervous. And with jittery nerves come mistakes.
“Can’t be—I spoke with her…” Peters went on, glancing at the notebook, whispering to himself. He looked up suddenly, “What about the Andersons?”
Carter frowned. “Who?”
“Marge and John Anderson.”
“Are you saying there were others?”
“There should be—they were the caretakers hired by Miss Driscoll.”
Exhaling, Carter said, “Amon Palace has no caretakers—at least none on record.” He flipped through some of the folders on the table. “And there have been no bodies recovered as of yet at the crime scene.”
Peters resumed rubbing his temples. “They have to be there, she hired them to take care of the estate. I spoke with both on more than one occasion. And I saw them both on the night of the fire…they were in the house.”
Warren stepped forward and slammed his fist on the table beside Peters, filling the room with a loud pang as he shouted, “Don’t you understand what we’re saying? The woman you supposedly talked with doesn’t exist and there were no caretakers! Which means your story is total fucking bullshit!”
Peters flinched.
“Okay, Doctor,” Carter prodded on, “you brought this group in for an experiment. And then what, spooky encounters start happening—are you telling us that Amon Palace is haunted?”
Warren scoffed. He stood back now, leaning against the wall with his arms folded across his barrel chest.
Smiling, Peters said, “Go ahead and laugh, I understand. I didn’t believe either, not at first. Haunted by some specter or specters or demonically possessed? That would be the real question. Those familiar with parapsychology—of which I am not; I’m paraphrasing here from what I’ve read—almost all cases with reports of hauntings, psychic invasions, and the like, all bear a strong parallel to our experiences within Amon Palace. Cold spots, slamming of doors or banging on walls by some unknown; unseen force, retrocognition—and yet, according to documents published by the Vatican, hauntings such as these sometimes serve as the first manifestation of an entity ultimately bent on demonic possession. According to said article, odors of human excrement or rotting eggs, sulfur can be a characteristic clue of demonic infestation.”
More laughing from Warren.
“As I said, laugh if it makes you feel better. But what would you find more incredible, that Amon Palace is; was indeed possessed, or at the very least haunted, or that we all somehow shared the same hallucinations and grotesque misinterpretations of fact?”
Carter leaned back in his chair, pondering the possibility.
Warren jabbed Peters with a finger. “If what you’re saying is even true—we only have your statement to go off of. Convenient, wouldn’t you say, Doctor?”
Peters shook his head, “Certainly not convenient for Samantha Green, Brad Myers, Marcus Pangborn, Tiffany Burgess, or Dexter Reid.”
Warren wound up as if he was about to punch Peters.
“Okay, okay,” Carter offered his hands again, urging his partner to cool down. “You bring your experimental exposure group to Amon Palace and everyone starts seeing things—but didn’t you say you wanted them to see this weird stuff? Triggers, you called them, right?”
“The idea—the experiment,” Peters exhaled, glancing sideways at Warren, “was for them to spend a week unplugged from the rest of the world. No phones. No TV. No internet. Completely isolated in an unfamiliar and potentially stressful environment that could possibly trigger certain responses. At the time, I did not believe Amon Palace was truly haunted. Exposure therapy works by triggering patients, forcing them to confront buried trauma. But this was supposed to be a place where I could safely monitor their conditions. There have been cases before, therapeutic exposure experiments that have gone awry. I’m sure you have heard of the former Navy Seal whose post-service time was spent helping veterans with PTSD. He would take them to gun ranges, a known trigger for many soldiers returning from war. The idea is the same—to help patients with PTSD face trauma in order to heal. On one occasion, he had taken a veteran out who had been struggling significantly. The veteran snapped. And in the end, he shot and killed his would-be therapist and his friend. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole. A horrible tragedy with three ruined lives. At Amon Palace I wanted my patients to be able to face the memory of their trauma without the fear of hurting loved ones or themselves. As they began to react to the suggested belief that Amon Palace was in fact haunted, I would guide them toward projecting what they feared the most—their own unique traumas.”
“Jesus Christ,” Warren quipped again.
Carter silenced his partner with a hand. “So, the experiment was designed for them to react to being locked up in a creepy mansion under the pretense that the house was haunted, and it worked?”
Peters nodded, tears brimming his eyes. “And I confess, I pushed them—more than I should have.”
Carter leaned forward, he could sense they were finally getting somewhere. “What do you mean, pushed?”
Looking up, tears now trickling down his face, he said, “Hypnosis.”
“Hypnotherapy? You put them in a suggestive state when they were already under duress?”
“Under duress? No—they volunteered!”
“Only because you promised a cure—didn’t you?”
“And it would have worked too…but they weren’t who I thought they were—they changed into something horrible.”
Carter sneered, tired of this interrogation, tired of the lies and wild fantasies. “And why didn’t it work, Doctor? Did your little hypothesis backfire? Did you have visions of your career burning so you decided to burn everything else? Did you kill them?”
“NO!”
“THAN WHAT HAPPENED?”
“THEY WERE TAKEN!”
Carter shook his head, the feeling of defeat sinking in and the weariness of this prolonged interrogation taking a toll. “Taken? Where, Doctor—and by whom?”
About the Author:
Thomas S. Flowers is an Operation Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom Army veteran who loves scary movies, BBQ, and coffee. Ever since reading Remarque’s "All Quiet on the Western Front" and Stephen King’s "Salem’s Lot" he has inspired to write deeply disturbing things that relate to war and horror, from the paranormal to his gory zombie infested PLANET of the DEAD series, to even his recent dabbling of vampiric flirtation in The Last Hellfighter readers can expect to find complex characters, rich historical settings, and mind-altering horror. Thomas is also the senior editor at Machine Mean, a horror movie and book review site that hosts contributors in the horror and science fiction genre.PLANET of the DEAD and The Last Hellfighter are best-sellers on Amazon's Top 100 lists for Apocalyptic Fiction and African American Horror.
You can follow Thomas and get yourself a FREE eBook copy of FEAST by joining his newsletter. Sign up by vising his website at www.ThomasSFlowers.com
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Comments
Post a Comment