Cleo Virginia Mariniere had the habit of walking past the cemetery on her way home from work. It was well maintained and quite old, with graves that dated back centuries. Along the north perimeter of the memorial park, on a hill, sat ruins from what had once been a pediatric hospital and research center.
On this particular afternoon Cleo Mariniere had walked past the cemetery to her home, and circled back with her dog Renwick, a goldendoodle Cleo had found wandering on her front patio on a far-reaching afternoon several years ago. Cleo Mariniere had been immediately smitten with his kind eyes, and wide white collar. Renwick was a happy pooch who needed to stretch his legs and Cleo Mariniere wanted to give him the chance to do that before it was too late. Cleo Mariniere still had to grade several more of her students’ papers when she settled into her favorite barcalounger in her living room, and Cleo Mariniere was not planning to go out again after that.
As they meandered along the perimeter of the cemetery, Cleo Mariniere was distractedly considering why the dilapidated stone remnants of a Children’s Hospital were so close to, and practically adjacent to a cemetery. That’s when Renwick started to chase a squirrel.
There were no cars around and it was okay with Cleo Mariniere for Renwick to take a few joyful leaps before they returned to her small home, and Cleo Mariniere was not alarmed by Renwick’s movements along the grassy stones at all. However, it was starting to get dark at which point Renwick would be nearly invisible to any cars and that concerned Cleo Mariniere as she gazed around the hilly north perimeter of the now dusking, mostly grassy cemetery.
The hospital ruins were comprised of what looked like the back wall of what had been, perhaps, a three or four story building that may have been about the width of one city block. Cleo Mariniere had curiously researched for information about it, and until then, her benign curiosity had gone unanswered.
The other three sides of the ruin were only a few feet high, these heights varying, overgrown with grass, wildflowers and undulating piles of dirt. Along the side that flanked the north perimeter of the cemetery, the gothic stone of the former center extruded more visibly to the human eye, due to a long bald patch of extra dark dirt. Nitrogen rich soil, Cleo Mariniere, a science teacher, observed to herself, common where human remains had decomposed.
“Renwick!”
The kindly-eyed pooch was nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless, within the perimeter of the ruins, glimmering lights captured Cleo’s attention in the fall dusk. Cleo Mariniere quickened her steps. Damn dog. Cleo Mariniere would never finish her grading before midnight if Renwick didn’t materialize soon.
Cleo Mariniere reminded herself to tread carefully despite her concern about the wasting day. After all, if she stepped on a rusty nail and had to go to the ER to get an emergency tetanus shot, her grading schedule would be seriously compromised. “What on earth possessed me to take Renwick off his leash?” she thought, somewhat distractedly. Renwick could encounter an equally gory fate at these deserted hospital grounds…
On the horizon, to Cleo Mariniere’s right, was the recently opened supermarket, next to the old gas station; flickering neon signs on a darkening fall night. To her left, a cemetery parking lot, scented by tree bark and the perfume the cemetery used to mask the smell of decomposing human flesh.
Cleo Mariniere thought she saw Renwick’s tail wagging in the distance and was torn between wanting to check her phone and wanting to not lose sight of her trusty goldendoodle.
That is when Cleo Mariniere heard what sounded like singing, from far away. Cleo Mariniere adjusted her posture as she concentrated on identifying what she was hearing. It definitely sounded like children singing, but the melody, rather than pleasing her, sent a stiff chill down her spine.
Happy Birthday?
Were they singing Happy Birthday?
Cleo Mariniere relented and checked her phone. It was getting late and Renwick’s tail was no longer visible in the quickening night. Cleo Mariniere used the phone like a flashlight to scan along that tall back wall and finally, Cleo ran towards her dog. Cleo Mariniere had almost caught up with Renwick, who appeared near the back of the ruin’s perimeter. As Cleo Mariniere took one more step, she heard a sickening crack, and felt herself falling. An unfamiliar breeze beckoned at her neck as she descended.
Disoriented, having landed in a pile of dirt, Cleo Virginia Mariniere heard the singing again:
“Happy Birthday to you”
“Happy Birthday to you”
Cleo Mariniere had fallen through the ground, into some kind of hole. Perhaps it was a tunnel. The older homes in the neighborhood had been built before the Revolution and those estates had contained tunnels, to fend off attacks from Native Americans. Cleo Mariniere had heard local gossip about how sometimes those tunnels were still in use.
Okay, Cleo Mariniere thought, dusting herself off, in a dark illuminated only by her phone light. I’m not hurt, I fell through some kind of rotted floorboards at the old Children’s Hospital and I’m in some kind of tunnel.
What happened to Renwick?
And how do I get back up to street level?
Cleo Mariniere brushed soil out of her auburn hair. This morning she’d gathered that chignon with such care. What a sloppy mess she must look now, she thought. At least nothing feels broken. Just find your dog and go, she commanded herself. Those papers are never gonna get graded and I am starting to feel creeped out.
“Happy Birthday to you”
“Happy Birthday to you”
Now, completely unnerved, Cleo Mariniere’s line of sight followed the childish singing voices, behind her.
Cleo Mariniere’s heart THUMPED. They looked like they were almost a city block away. Gathered around in a circle were several children. Glowing in a diaphanous party dress, one child, standing apart from the others, was visible from the distance. Cleo Mariniere stood and stared transfixed, now in horror.
They had Renwick.
Her goldendoodle was surrounded by children. Cleo Mariniere continued to stare in shocked disbelief as she moved closer towards them. The children glittered unexpectedly and overall seemed somewhat transparent. Their little bodies turned toward a dais where the birthday girl in a diaphanous dress seemed to be clasping her hands in excited anticipation. One of the small children before her attempted to place a paper party hat on the laconic dog.
Cleo Mariniere was mute, with a mixture of horror and curiosity. Although the children were translucent and glowing, she could make out pertinent details that further alarmed her.
The birthday girl, hands still clasped expectantly, well, Cleo Mariniere could discern that she was the birthday girl from her tiara and her paper hat, its elastic secured below her chin, but, her flesh, the flesh on her little face looked decayed. There were spots of sooty dark as well as an actual absence of flesh, where the tip of her chin should have been. As Cleo Mariniere continued to recoil in horror, she noticed the girl’s arms, long and thin beneath the sheer and pink short puffed sleeves of her party dress, were similarly decayed. Thick black marks encircled her neck as well as her wrists. There was almost no flesh at all on the emaciated creature’s small hands.
The singing children encircling Renwick shared the birthday girl’s undead pallor of decay, as well as her semiformal style of dress. It was old fashioned, Cleo Mariniere desperately realized, before everything went BLACK.
The next thing Cleo Mariniere remembered was regaining consciousness in the back of an ambulance. It was stopped outside of her residence. Cleo Mariniere had recognized her home as she emerged from the creaky open back doors of the ambulance.
“Are you certain you want to be left here with your canine instead of being taken to a proper infirmary or hospital Ms. Mariniere?” said a voice Cleo heard, only distantly, in the now late night.
Overhead it thundered ominously. Cleo Mariniere shakily pushed open her front door. Renwick was whining and promptly curled up, exhausted, on the apple green velvet sofa. Bewildered and similarly exhausted, Cleo Mariniere thought: Where was Renwick’s leash? Where had that old fashioned ambulance come from?
Cleo Mariniere shakily looked out the window as the skies thundered again. A low peach and gray hued fog had descended upon the now mostly empty street. It was hours later, Cleo Mariniere and Renwick were quite disheveled and the *#$% papers were still ungraded.
Further into the autumn, seated in the back of her own classroom, Cleo Mariniere tried to concentrate. She’d had almost no sleep due to her recent grading backlog. Today, as part of an outreach program, a nurse, “Nanti Tusadera, R.N.” would address the students about careers in medicine.
A slide show accompanied Nurse Tusadera’s narrative for the students. It concerned the history of some of the local hospital systems. Cleo Mariniere had mostly heard the lecture before. Her waning interest in the presentation was piqued by slides depicting a former children’s pediatric hospital and research center.
The old photographs were of the Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center. “Its ruins are adjacent to the Croatoan Cemetery and are still visible from the supermarket mini mall on Alley Street. One entire floor of this facility was devoted to treating indigent children who would otherwise not have been able to afford treatment. A common problem of that era was accumulated toxicity, a type of poisoning which sometimes caused seizures in children. Various kinds of contamination ran rampant in this era and due to insufficient knowledge and training, children were often misdiagnosed, and understood to be possessed, and in need of an exorcism.”
Cleo Mariniere lurched out of her seat to interrupt the slideshow. If it got back to the students' parents that the science teacher had a guest speaker who discussed religion with the students, Cleo Mariniere’s job could be in jeopardy.
“Thank you so much, Nurse Tusadera! We’re so grateful for your visit!” “Class, that concludes Nurse Tusadera’s presentation.”
Lowering her voice a bit, Cleo Mariniere looked toward Nurse Tusadera, “Please allow me to take you out for lunch if you like, Nurse Tusadera.”
A few minutes later, Cleo Mariniere, middle school science teacher extraordinaire sat, with Nurse Tusadera, in the faculty section of the middle school cafeteria. The walls of the cafeteria were painted light chartreuse, reminiscent of vomit.
“Please call me, “The Nanti”, Ms. Mariniere, that’s what everybody calls me. The Pound Pediatric Hospital & Research Center treated indigent children as well as children of means. However, often, there were very different outcomes for the indigent pediatric patients. Many times, after they were admitted, they never again left the hospital. Exorcisms were performed on site, for those children, to treat what were probably toxin induced seizure disorders and accompanying behavioral disorders. They were often restrained.”
Cleo Virginia Mariniere Ph.D., listened with restrained skepticism. “Please call me Dr. Mariniere, or Cleo. I wrote, presented and defended my dissertation on the scientific method last year.”
The nurse continued, “Well that’s the folklore, anyway. There are no records of those children, or even of the research wing, unfortunately. When the building burned down its administrative records went with it, and by that time they’d been closed for decades… It wasn’t their first fire. Drives me to rage, Dr. Mariniere, sickened children, restrained in their beds, dying in a fire. That’s why the hospital lost their charter. The place then went to ruin. There’s nothing to see there now.”
“I walk my dog near there. We love it, but had no idea its history was so sordid until you mentioned it to the class. Is there anything more to the story, anything that can be corroborated?”
“No. Pound wasn’t part of any still existing local hospital system. Remember that we are talking centuries ago. Pound was originally the residence of affluent pre-colonists. They added an infirmary out of necessity and left it to the community on the condition that Pound’s descendants receive care. It was built around them. Back then such institutions were much less organized. There was much less licensing and structure. The hospitals we know today weren’t even a thought in these folks’ minds. Standardized procedures for diagnosis? No such thing. Records wise… there have been too many catastrophes at the site and it was too long ago to be certain about anything. However, my family has been in nursing for generations, and I remember my now late, Great Aunt Nanti recalling about the exorcisms and fires, around the holidays. Great Aunt Nanti… never had her own children… hasn’t walked this world in years… sometimes when she took to her storytelling she would remember us to her Great Aunt Nanti. Nursing’s in my blood, Dr. Mariniere.”
“Well, thank you so much for coming to speak with the students, and with me.”
(Editor's note: Renwick The Exorcist is a fictional ghost story.)
“Renwick The Exorcist” A Halloween Tale in Three Parts:
“Renwick The Exorcist” Part I: https://stanza28.blogspot.com/2021/08/renwick-exorcist-i.html (Released August 28, 2021)
"Renwick The Exorcist” Part II: https://stanza28.blogspot.com/2021/09/renwick-exorcist-ii.html (Released September 28, 2021)
"Renwick The Exorcist” Part III: Available October 28, 2021
🎃🎃🎃 Happy Halloween 🎃🎃🎃
