The Ghost of Blackwood Lane Read online

  The Ghost of Blackwood

  Lane

  The Ghost of Blackwood Lane, 2nd edition

  Published in 2012, by Gypsy Publications

  Troy, OH 45373, U.S.A.

  www.GypsyPublications.com

  Copyright © 2012 by Greg Enslen

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author or publisher.

  Enslen, Greg

  The Ghost of Blackwood Lane / by Greg Enslen

  ISBN 978-1938768-01-9 (paperback)

  Library of Congress Control Number 2012942601

  Edited by Jon Williams

  Book Design by Tim Rowe

  Cover by Pamela Schwartz

  For more information, please visit the author’s website at

  www.gregenslen.com.

  PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Books by

  Greg Enslen

  Black Bird

  Tipp Talk 2010

  The Ghost of Blackwood Lane

  Tipp Talk 2011

  The 9/11 Machine

  A Field of Red

  Dedication

  This book would not be possible without the tireless involvement of my parents, Albert and Delores Enslen. I actually wrote this book back in 1997, but I set it aside to work on what turned out to be my first book, Black Bird.

  While I always liked this story, I thought it needed a complete reworking to be good enough to publish. But before locking it away in the vaults, I gave my folks a chance to read it.

  Ten years later, after marriage and three kids and more changes than I can enumerate, I decided to start resurrecting my writing. My folks strongly suggested that I revisit this piece, one of their favorites. On my reentry into the world of Gary and Judy and the Luciano brothers, it dawned on me that they were right—this book didn’t need major revisions, only a good edit and the thoughtful feedback of a few trusted readers.

  What you hold in your hands is as much my parents’ work as mine. I wrote the words, but they spent hundreds of hours shining and polishing this rough stone into something that I can be proud of.

  Mom and Dad, thank you for your dedication, your hours scribbling on manuscripts and updating timelines, and most of all, your patience. Here it is, finally!

  Thanks also to my wife Samantha, who edited the book, making it infinitely better. I have a tendency to be verbose, and she helped me rein it in with her red pen of doom. She’s probably tired of hearing about this story and the scores of other goofy tales that patter around inside my mind. But she always listens—or at least does a good job of pretending to listen.

  A final thanks to my sister, Pam Schwartz, for creating the beautiful cover—it’s just the right amount of creepy.

  Prologue

  It all started out very simply.

  There was a set of books, filled with pages of financial information. And in those pages, there were columns and rows of numbers that added across and down, meaning little to a non-accountant.

  But a single row of numbers in one of those books started it all. That row of numbers and two vastly differing opinions about what those numbers represented.

  One man felt that the numbers were perfectly normal—they portrayed a reality that he and his family had always considered “good enough.” The numbers were numbers, and it didn’t matter how they had come into being—they just were.

  But another man felt that the numbers spoke of a deeper problem. John O’Toole saw the numbers for what they really were, because that’s what he was paid to do. And once he had seen the undercurrent beneath the sea of digits, and the illegality they represented, he couldn’t “un-see” them. No matter how much he tried.

  After a few tentative discussions with his employer, he began to feel that others should know about the problems in the ledger. John needed to find other people who could do something about it. He felt the reasons piling up behind him, pushing him like an unceasing tide, to do the right thing. Even if it meant risking his life and the lives of his family and friends.

  But the numbers in the thick accounting ledger? They were perfectly innocent.

  Chapter 1

  Agent Sims wasn’t comfortable with this procedure.

  He didn’t like being in town at all, so this outing was already a bad idea. They were exposed just by being out in public.

  The windows worried him the most. They extended from floor to ceiling and overlooked O’Fallon’s quaint downtown. Across the street sat several other small buildings that looked right into the room. FBI agents had immediately closed the blinds upon entering the doctor’s office, but Sims was still worried. He hoped this procedure wouldn’t take long. It sounded like science fiction, anyway.

  Besides, the O’Tooles should be locked away, not trotting about in town where people might see them.

  But the decision wasn’t Sims’ to make—his higher-ups were eager to see the prosecution finished, and they’d ordered this procedure to move things along.

  The doctor’s office was large and nicely decorated. A desk and chair sat to one side of the room, a couch and coffee table were grouped in the center, and bookshelves lined the walls. To Sims, it looked more like someone’s living room than a psychiatrist’s office.

  He glanced at a wall calendar of Rorschach drawings. To him, the splotches of paint for this month—July 1987—looked like braying hounds.

  Sims saw Hanson, another agent, standing by one of the windows, his hand resting on the butt of the gun peeking out from beneath his suit coat. The other two agents moved restlessly around the room.

  Gloria, the primary witness’s wife, had been killed by a car bomb less than twenty-four hours ago. Her son had been walking to the car when it exploded outside the FBI safe house. The bomb had been meant for his father, John O’Toole.

  But if they couldn’t get the kid under control quickly, the whole case might get blown.

  Witness relocation was always a tricky business. The team really couldn’t afford this wasted time, especially here in town, but the boy’s father had insisted. In the last few hours, the man had made his testimony contingent on this early morning visit to the doctor’s office.

  Sims glanced at his watch again. They’d already been here almost ten minutes, and John O’Toole, his son, and the doctor were just sitting on the couches, talking. It didn’t even look like they had started yet.

  Sims and the other agents knew Gino Luciano owned this town—it had always been that way here in O’Fallon, Illinois, with the Lucianos and their money, for as long as anyone could remember. The Bureau had known about the family for a long time, known about their activities and their influences, and had been trying to make a case against them for almost as long.

  John O’Toole was the most important witness they had found so far. And instead of holing him up safely somewhere on the other side of St. Louis, far away from this little town, they were here, right in the lion’s den, wasting time talking.

  And Agent Sims felt like a sitting duck.

  The boy had dropped his baseball cap and gone back to pick it up. If it hadn’t been for that, the boy would’ve been in the car, too, when it exploded.

  The FBI already had a location picked out for them, but the boy didn’t want to leave O’Fallon. No one, not even his father, could convince him how necessary it was. After the car bomb had gone off, the boy had confessed that he’d called his girlfriend the day before—her line must have been tapped. It was the only explanation for how they knew the location of the safe house. But even the death of his mother had
n’t convinced the kid to leave town, so now John O’Toole was taking drastic steps to ensure that the boy would go with him to Sacramento.

  The doctor, the boy’s uncle, was a respected psychiatrist and seemed to be dealing with the grief of losing his sister. But still, Sims didn’t think this would work—the whole plan sounded like hocus-pocus to him. But the boy would have to say good-bye to his girlfriend once and for all. If this was the only way to do it, then so be it.

  It came down to the fact that the boy was only 17, and his father was still making the decisions in his life, even the drastic ones.

  Sims had never seen anyone hypnotized before. He’d always had a nonprofessional’s interest in psychology—you had to if you were going to be a good cop or federal agent. He wondered if anyone really understood what happened when someone was hypnotized.

  ------

  “Is he under?” the father asked anxiously, his attention turning from his son’s face to Dr. Martin.

  Dr. Frank Martin nodded, his eyes on the boy. There was the gradual fluttering of the eyelids and a general relaxed posture that indicated a very shallow relaxation pattern, the first stage of any hypnosis. The boy had been fighting it all along, and now the doctor would need to deepen the relaxation.

  “Yes, he is relaxing, finally. But you see how long it took to get him to this stage, so he’s obviously resisting it, consciously or subconsciously.” Frank shook his head again. “I still don’t like this, John—hypnosis isn’t a carnival act. It’s a serious, clinical tool, and must be carefully used. This ludicrous request of yours—it can only lead to failure.”

  John O’Toole looked at his brother-in-law, and Frank could tell he was collecting his thoughts. “Look, Frank. I know you blame me for Gloria’s death, but there was nothing I could do about it. The men I used to work for are bad men, very bad, but I didn’t think they would ever go after Gloria or Chris. Even the Bureau didn’t think it would get this bad this quick.”

  Frank saw the tears coming.

  “I was in the living room when the car blew up, Frank,” John said quietly. “The explosion was huge—it blew in the front windows of the house. And I thought for a moment that this couldn’t be happening. It all happened in slow motion,” he said, looking down at his hands. “Now Gloria is gone, and I almost lost Chris....”

  Frank saw his brother-in-law look around the room slowly before continuing. “Frank, Chris and I have to go away—I have to testify, and then Chris and I have to get away or this will all be for nothing. But Chris...he just won’t listen to me. He doesn’t understand what’s at stake. He’s in love.”

  Dr. Martin glanced at the framed picture of Gloria and himself on one of his shelves—he had just graduated from medical school, and Gloria had come down to Carbondale to watch the ceremony. She had been his little sister, so full of life. Now she was gone.

  He glanced away and his eyes came to rest this time on his diploma and medical license. Was this ethical, what he was about to do? Or was he saving this patient’s life by blocking out some of his memories, allowing him to start a new life somewhere else, out of harm’s way? If you looked at it that way, then not performing the memory suppression could actually kill his patient.

  But was it right?

  He didn’t know. But time was growing short, and the FBI agents were clearly nervous.

  That was what finally convinced Frank. The agents were glancing out the windows, and the lead agent, Sims, looked like he thought this was a bad idea. Obviously, it was a last resort.

  This was a dangerous situation, and it was his responsibility as a doctor to do whatever he could to see that his nephew got out of this situation safely. And after all this settled down, after the trial and after the boy was out of danger, Dr. Martin would remove the block and let the boy get back to a relatively normal life.

  The lead agent was looking at the doctor.

  “Sir, if this is going to be a problem, let me know now,” Agent Sims said. “We are risking exposure being here, and if necessary, we can take the boy here to a different doctor. But Mr. O’Toole has requested that you carry out this procedure.”

  Frank shook his head, glancing at the boy.

  “It’s okay. I just wanted to explain to John again how dangerous this could be, and allow him to reconsider.”

  Frank glanced at John, who nodded at him, and then Frank realized that this was out of his hands anyway. If he didn’t do the procedure, John O’Toole was desperate enough to find another doctor. And Frank wouldn’t have that.

  He turned back to his nephew.

  “Chris, can you hear me?”

  The boy answered sluggishly, as though he were half-asleep. “Yes, Uncle Frank, I can hear you.”

  Sessions like this, with a reluctant or openly combative patient, were usually carried out in a different fashion. Patients who came into his office with preconceived notions about hypnosis, usually gleaned from TV or the movies, had to be slowly drawn into the hypnotic state. Usually, this was done with the progressive and laborious “transferral of power” process, whereby a patient slowly gives up conscious control over his or her situation and allows the doctor to gradually deepen a relaxed, suggestive state into a more formal hypnotic state.

  For those patients that were the most difficult to hypnotize, creative methods had to be employed that allowed the patients to be hypnotized while still hanging onto some semblance of control. Often, those patients were put under using the “choice” progression technique—that is, giving the patient various choices of how the therapy session would proceed. All of the choices offered the patient would eventually lead to a suggestive state, but by giving the patient choices, the most stubborn conscious mind could concede power and yet still stay in control. The patient wasn’t choosing to be hypnotized—but was being hypnotized, nonetheless. Either way, it would usually take three or four two-hour sessions to even reach a hypnotic state in the most resistant patients.

  And once the doctor was comfortable with the deepness of the state, a post-hypnotic suggestion could be implanted that would make subsequent inducement of hypnotic states much easier and much quicker.

  But Frank didn’t have time to do that here—Chris needed to be under for a very short amount of time.

  “Chris, remember, you are relaxing comfortably. You are safe and happy, and nothing can harm you here. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Chris said.

  “Good,” Frank continued. “Now, I would like you to imagine that you see a long staircase, with you standing on the top step, and the stairs leading down away from you. Can you see it?”

  The boy nodded.

  “Okay, Chris, I need you to answer me out loud when I ask you a question. Can you see the staircase in front of you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Now, as you take a step down onto the top stair, you’ll notice that you feel a little more relaxed. I want you to imagine walking slowly down these steps, and with each step, you’re descending into a more relaxed state, a state where you feel more at ease.”

  The boy was silent, but as Frank watched closely, he could pick out the signs. The body posture was becoming more relaxed, and the hands that had been fists on the boy’s chest relaxed, drifting down to rest on the couch on either side of him.

  “Okay, Chris, you continue to descend, feeling more and more relaxed, until you reach the bottom step. There’s a landing there, and a large door. This door doesn’t frighten you or make you anxious. Instead, you feel calm and relaxed as you open the door and step into a large, beautiful room. Do you see the room?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about the room, Chris.”

  “There’s a lot of nice furniture, and a big window with light coming in. Very bright light, like summertime, when it’s really warm outside. It looks like a nice place, maybe like a mansion, and it looks like they’re getting ready to have a party or something. There are trays of food and drinks on the tables.”

  Frank always marveled
at what the mind constructed when posed with an imaginary image. For some people, a beautiful room would look like a palace, or a sunroom filled with plants, or even a brothel with a score of scantily clad women. The “comfortable room” technique was Frank’s favorite, allowing the patient to construct his or her own mental image of a completely comfortable place. Residing even temporarily in this relaxing environment would free the conscious mind.

  “That’s good, Chris. It sounds like a beautiful room.”

  “Yes, Uncle Frank. Mom would love it.”

  Frank glanced up, and John was just reacting to the boy’s words. The father stood suddenly and walked to the other side of the office, pulling a cigarette from his jacket and lighting up, taking a few quick puffs.

  “Good, Chris. Can you see your mom?”

  “No, Doctor. She’s dead. She died in the car and I was walking to it and dropped my hat. I flew through the air like Superman and landed on my head. She isn’t in the room because she’s dead...and I could be...dead too, but I’d dropped my hat and went back to get it and I wasn’t in the car when....”

  Too much anxiety.

  “Chris, that’s okay. Remember, this room is calm and soothing and relaxing. You’re feeling very relaxed and not upset at all.”

  The boy seemed to calm almost instantly.

  John leaned in and whispered into Frank’s ear. “Do it, Frank. Hurry. And say something about his mother, too, so he won’t be upset.”

  Frank looked up suddenly at his brother-in-law, angry, and he stood, walking John over to the wall, pushing him up against it. Out of the corner of his eye Frank saw an agent step toward them, but the lead agent held him back.

  Frank had been concentrating on the boy so much that he hadn’t even heard John walk over, trailing a hazy layer of smoke. Frank’s eyes caught John’s and held them.