THE LOOSED

There was heavy fatigue on the man’s face, and deep exhaustion in his eyes. A torment gnawed at his soul, a secret he kept hidden from the few around him, those that he could let in. Marcos Castaneda arrived at his apartment door, number 12, and relaxed his grip on his briefcase, allowing it to softly thud to the floor. He pressed his fingers against his temple, attempting to ease the headache that was coming on again. After a brief pause, he slid the key into the lock.

Gazing at his bandaged left hand, his mind was instantly transported back to Sanctuary and the unusual events of tonight. It had begun precisely at nine. Three of his patients had entered a state of hysterics, each screaming almost simultaneously that dark entities were coming to get them. One of them wrote enigmatic words on the wall, “Tear the flesh and open wide the door.” Terrified, the patients recounted being awakened in their sleep by a sensation of non-human hands slowly suffocating them.

One patient, a young boy of fifteen named Michael Grody, battled chronic insomnia and paranoia. After Marcos had given him a sedative, the boy lashed out in terror, slashing Marcos’s hand with a kitchen knife. Even as the drugs kicked in, he fearfully muttered all night about a red door and Room number 11—a place where sadistic creatures would torture him. But in Sanctuary, there was no red door, and no Room 11. In Sanctuary, there was only the pain of lost minds and lost souls.

Something else unnerved Marcos: Michael had whispered the name... Ethan. He claimed the dark entities had found Ethan, an eight-year-old boy, and they were ready to take his flesh before he could reach Sanctuary. To Michael, Ethan was just as real as the sadistic figures that came out of that red door, and he wanted to save him.

Marcos was certain that what occurred tonight at the hospital wasn’t a collective delusional psychosis. No, he believed more and more now that it was connected to the dark visions which the old man he knew as the Veteran had glimpsed through the drawing of the cards, through what he called the opening—that invisible doorway that led down the path to both terror and bliss. It was all getting to him, leading him into darker and darker places, and he was in that place within his own soul where there was only terror.

Marcos turned the key, hearing the door lock click open. Pausing for a moment, he sensed a presence watching him. He turned to find Mrs. Agnes, just three doors away, peering from her doorway. Checking his watch, it showed twelve-fifteen a.m. “Sorry if I disturbed you, Mrs. Agnes,” he apologized.

A long nightgown draped Mrs. Agnes’s thin frame as she shuffled into the hallway, but she was barefoot with sores on her aged feet. She walked toward him. “You didn’t wake me,” she whispered, her voice barely audible in the hushed hallway. “Couldn’t sleep tonight, that’s all.”

Her gaze was distant, almost vacant, except for the flicker of fear that lingered in her eyes. “Everything alright, Mrs. Agnes?”

She looked up at him for a long moment as if lost in her thoughts. “I’ve been having terrible dreams, that’s all.”

His own dreams had become increasingly twisted, revolving around a nightmarish figure with a sinister grin, holding a strange black object in its abnormal hands. The figure caressed the object, pulsing with the same darkness that consumed its dark soul. In his nightmares, it stood over the contorted, shattered, and naked bodies of many men with black gas masks on their faces. They were broken soldiers on a battlefield of a forgotten war. It had felt to Marcos as if he were there, witnessing and actually living that horror.

“I’ll help you inside,” he said to Mrs. Agnes.

“Please... let me stay out here with you,” she pleaded.

Marcos could see the desperation etched on her weathered face, a plea for help evident in her weary eyes. “You should rest,” he advised gently.

Mrs. Agnes shuffled toward him, her voice filled with urgency. “I don’t want to rest... I don’t want to sleep anymore.”

As she approached, he noticed a profound sadness etched on her tired face. Over the past three years, it had become unsettling for him to witness the genuine pain that consumed his patients. To him, the pain they carried always manifested through their eyes like symptoms of a dreadful affliction consuming their minds and, ultimately, as he had come to find out, their souls.

Mrs. Agnes crossed her arms, her gaze fixed on the open apartment door. “I need to keep the lights on and wait a bit longer. My son Andrew should be home soon. He’s working late again, always working late...”

Marcos really wanted to spare her the pain of remembering that her son was dead. The young man had been dead for some years now. He believed leaving her in her delusion was even crueler. He needed her to remember what happened. “Your son Andrew... he’s not coming home. You know this...”

Concern flickered across her face, a mix of sadness and defiance. “Why wouldn’t Andrew come home?”

He fumbled in his coat pocket, eyes downcast. Finding the golden angel pin with Andrew’s name, he held it out to her. “You gave me this a year ago...”

Her eyes widened as she gazed at the angel pin bearing her son’s name. Taking it from him with a trembling hand, she asked, “Why does it say Andrew?”

He needed to reach her. “Your son Andrew... do you remember what happened to him?”

She touched her forehead, her gaze unwavering as she studied the pin for a moment, trying to remember. Closing her hand around it, her fist trembled more. “I don’t know...”

He needed her to remember what happened. “Your son passed away three years ago. There was a funeral.”

Her gaze became distant. She turned away, fixating on her open door. “No, that can’t be true. Why would you say something so awful to me?”

Facing him again, she slowly opened her hand, gazing down at the pin. “I used to call Andrew my angel when he was a boy...”

He reached out and touched her hand gently. “Please, try to remember now. You gave one of these to everyone in this building.”

She turned away once more, fidgeting with a button on her sweater while staring blankly at her door nearby. Unbuttoning her sweater, she touched an identical angel pin attached to her nightgown. Moments later, she faced him with tears streaming down her face, shaking her head. “Andrew isn’t dead... he can’t be... I spoke to him... just today, on the phone...”

“It was a difficult time for you,” he said to her. “I understand. I was there. I attended the funeral... and we sat together...”

She nodded, moving closer to him, and gently grasped his arm. A moment of clarity shone in her gaze as she nodded once more. “Yes... you had been living here for only a week when my son... was... was murdered...”

Marcos understood her pain more deeply than she would ever realize. He had also experienced the loss of someone he cherished with all his heart. She had been his life. Nodding, he softly uttered, “I’m sorry this happened to you.”

The dreadful realization flooded back to her, tears welling up in her eyes. “Andrew was killed...it was in a store robbery. I remember the tall policeman arriving at my door and informing me that he was stabbed... in the heart...”

Marcos clasped her aged hand in his, reassuring her once more that everything would be alright. “You should try to get some rest, even if just for a few hours.”

She shook her head and gazed up at him. “I remember something else. I was waiting for you to return home... to tell you something.”

“You shouldn’t wait up for me, Mrs. Agnes,” he said gently.

Her gaze was solemn, her eyes brimming with fear. “But I had to warn you,” she whispered.

Marcos grew uneasy, taken aback by her words. “Warn me?”

“...I saw you in my dream...”

In his first visit to the Veteran in apartment 505, the old man held his hand and asked if he had seen the real face of the grinning man who wasn’t human. At that time, Marcos had no idea who the veteran was speaking to him about. He had only wanted to find the man who murdered his wife—the man who was flesh and blood like he was. “What did you see, Mrs. Agnes?”

She looked lost again. “A terrible dream...”

He had realized that the Veteran’s cryptic words were a forewarning of a sinister force being loosed in his world as it had been loosed so many times before. He saw it now—the man he sought, the one known as the Priest, was just the beginning of the evil he would have to face alone soon. “Tell me what you saw...”

A loud slam of a door echoed from the floor below, followed by an eerie silence. Mrs. Agnes seemed unfazed by the noise, her eyes fixed on him, filled with fear. “In the dream, I knocked on your door, but when you opened it...”

Suddenly, the lucidity in her eyes faded once more as she trailed off and fell silent. “It’s okay,” he reassured her, “you don’t have to say anything more.”

She shook her head insistently, as if she needed to tell him at that moment or would never have another chance. “It was a shadow that stood behind you. But its face was your face with dark eyes...”

“Are you certain it was my face you saw?”

She reached over and gently touched his face, like a mother comforting her son. She nodded reassuringly. “It was your face, Marcos. I know it was your eyes that stared back at me... even if they were filled with so much hate...”

Her eyes held an empty stare, and she began to tremble as if she were suddenly cold. Her voice quivered with sorrow as she spoke, reaching out to grasp his bandaged hand and placing the angel pin in his palm. “My Andrew is gone... he will never return home to me... I understand that now.”

Marcos embraced her, offering as much comfort as he could. “You should go inside now.”

Mrs. Agnes rested her head against his shoulder, tears streaming from her eyes. “My son was taken away... my son... my darling Andrew... It was my fault... my fault... I shouldn’t have let him go...he went to get my medicine that night for me...and he never came home...”

Marcos could only listen, as he usually did with the patients at Sanctuary. More and more, he felt powerless to help others when he was getting lost himself in his own mind, when he was getting lost in that world of death he had entered. Tears filled her eyes as she whispered, “It wasn’t his time. I know it wasn’t his time...”

He patted her back reassuringly, though he knew that remembering was a terrible cross to bear. “It’s going to be all right, you’ll see.”

She shook her head, stepping back from him. Wiping the tears from her eyes, she crossed her arms, so afraid. Locking eyes with him, she spoke in an oddly calm voice, “You’re going to die soon, Marcos... I can feel it.”

She stared at him again with that blankness in her eyes. She then turned and walked away slowly, softly repeating her son’s name to herself, “Andrew, Andrew.” He observed her until she reached her apartment door. She shuffled inside without glancing back, gradually closing the door behind her.

Marcos stood in the dim hallway, lost in his own pain, his thoughts on Mrs. Agnes’s dream and about that shadow. The Veteran too had seen that shadow that lay within him, and had confided in him that it had a face as dark as the night itself, filled with something inhuman. But Marcos knew something else, felt it deep in his soul—that shadow was filled with the hate that only the world can breed when your life is torn apart.

He released the dark thoughts. He had to hold himself together. He stooped to pick up his briefcase. Putting the angel pin in his pocket, he pushed the door open and peered into his small, dimly lit apartment. It was the space where he felt utterly alone, and where he felt the most pain in his soul for the life that was taken from him.