Personal Effects: Sword Of Blood

By J.C. Hutchins

Personal Effects: Sword of Blood is a prequel novella to J.C. Hutchins' supernatural thriller novel, Personal Effects: Dark Art.

Art therapist Zach Taylor is curious to a fault. When a patient suggests that a "grand design of nine" has been completed, Zach attempts to unwind the meaning of the woman's cryptic phrase ... and descends into a world filled with mystery, ruthless subcultures and many questions.

The answers may lie in the patient's granddaughter, a self-proclaimed psychic named Hen. But Zach soon discovers that Hen may be crazier than the patients he treats ... and the treasure he’s pursuing may be more dangerous — and deadly — than he ever imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: J.C. Hutchins
• Release date: Dec 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988772021

Book preview

Personal Effects: Sword of Blood

A Prequel Novella to Personal Effects: Dark Art

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Copyright © 2012 by J.C. Hutchins and ZNL LLC.

www.jchutchins.net

Ebook Design by DarkFire Productions

www.darkfireproductions.com

Published by Canonical

www.getcanonical.com

First Ebook Edition: November 2012

Personal Effects created by Jordan Weisman and J.C. Hutchins

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

A preview of Personal Effects: Dark Art

Also by J.C. Hutchins:

7th Son: 7 Days

7th Son: Deceit

7th Son: Descent

7th Son: Destruction

7th Son: Obsidian (edited by)

Personal Effects: Dark Art (with Jordan Weisman)

Chapter 1

The grand design of nine.

It’s rare indeed when I can look back and pinpoint the truly defining moments in my life. Often, the shape of us—the people we become—is crafted by a series of seemingly insignificant decisions, tiny moments, eye-blinks. We’re carved into being by white lie whispers and rose-glassed glimpses. Like our bodies, our life paths are organic, a natural result of the world around us ... and often, the paths of least resistance that we’re all inclined to take.

But sometimes, those rare sometimes, we can turn and stare down the path we’ve tread and see—see and feel and remember—when something unnatural shoved us into an uncharted part of the world, or ourselves. Life’s fish hooks, I call them. Until today, I could count on one hand how many times a hook had snagged me and tugged me into another stage of life.

But ever since the killer uttered those five words—The grand design of nine—I’ve lost count of the hooks, and all the places I’ve been since.

I sat mere feet from the white-haired murderer here in Room 414, watched her press the needle through the fabric; saw her thin, spotted fingers hold the silver with confidence as the rest of her hand trembled. The stitches were blood-red, the pattern on the crazy quilt before her an appropriately incomprehensible design. I watched Gertrude Spindler lick her paper-white lips, squint her eyes here in the dim light of her home for the past twelve years, and whisper those words.

From my seat near the door, I didn’t catch the phrase itself—just the syncopation of it, the aural slipperiness. It intrigued me enough to ask her to repeat it.

Gertrude Spindler—better known here by staffers here as Spindle, a widow most black who’d poisoned her husband back in the 1990s—looked up from her nearly-completed work and brightened. Her eyes, a brilliant turquoise even now at the age of 75, glittered a bit more than usual. I could swear she winked at me before replying:

I said, ‘The grand design of nine,’ young Mister Taylor.

I’m an art therapist working at what’s commonly known as the most rotten, dangerous and nigh-forgotten mental institution in New York state. We get the hard cases. I’ve heard utterings of the bizarre, unhinged and incomprehensible. Most of it you tune out, lest you go mad yourself.

Others ring long and loud in your mind, like a church bell. They resonate, if that makes sense. They stir the part of you that’s peppered with curiosity, or the part that never stopped believing in the boogeyman. The part of you—or rather, the part of me—that’s still afraid of the dark.

That’s what Spindle’s words did to me. They tugged.

I leaned forward, pulling my pen away from my notepad and returned the smile, hoping the expression would urge my patient to explain. I eyed Spindle, and the dozen quilts behind and around her, pinned to the walls here in her room. My sessions with her are paradoxically cheerful affairs; she creates quilt after quilt, and I ask her what they represent. She’s low-maintenance. For living in such a lonesome place like The Brink, her work is sunshine bright, patchwork proclamations of endless optimism.

Ah-ah, she said in sing-songy voice, turning back to the quilt. Perhaps. In a moment. Nearly finished.

I nodded. How curious.

I observed her hands as they continued to add stitched flourishes to the final square on the quilt, a square I noticed now was quite different from the rest of the work. This block of fabric was darker than the rest, and featured intricately-stitched designs. I watched her work, fascinated.

I was assigned Spindle’s case as soon as I was hired by Dr. Peterson nearly three months ago. Back then, I’d taken a Google-fueled crash course in quilting, in order to better understand my patient. I’ve forgotten much of it, but I recall that quilters are a meticulous, patient breed. Even those who craft crazy quilts like Gertrude Spindle have a vision of their completed works as they assemble them with thread and yarn and fabric.

In this regard, my patient and I have a lot in common: I’m often consumed and obsessed by a personal mind’s-eye image when I do my own sketching and painting.

But if Spindler’s vision for this particularly upbeat quilt included a metaphorical thundercloud in its lower right-hand corner, I couldn’t fathom why. Spindle was rock-solid, reliable. This square of fabric was different, and I was a little awestruck by it. She never did anything differently.

My profession demands that I quest for meaning in the artwork my patients create ... and by finding that meaning, I can help recommend treatment to the Brinkvale doctors who oversee their long-term care. This addition to the quilt stymied me.

She worked the needle for another moment, then cinched off the thread and knotted it, concluding her work. Her wrinkled face crinkled with a self-satisfied expression as she sighed. Finally, she gazed up from her quilt and gave a pleasant laugh.

Well! There now! All done, she said, patting the fabric in her lap. I don’t think I believe it, myself. Thirty years, all there, the thing that hides in plain sight.

I leaned in closer, feeling my brow furrow. In every session I’d ever shared with Spindle, she’d always been lucid, in full control of her whip-smart faculties. The former Manhattan celebrity was rarely coy, unless you counted the occasional flirt with this 25-year-old art therapist. (Which I didn’t.)

A wily harbinger of dementia? Something else?

What’s hiding in plain sight? I asked.

The grand design of nine, young Mister Taylor, she replied, and smiled.

And what’s that?

Spindle settled back into her chair, wincing a bit from the past hour’s worth of hunched work. She was a beautiful woman, even in her golden years; her close-cropped hair evoked both modernity and classy timelessness. Spindle’s face glowed amber in the nearby bedside Tiffany lamp, one of few possessions she’d brought from her life outside The Brink twelve years ago.

"Why, it’s a design, you silly young man! She give a spunky titter. Let’s see what I’ll say. There’s a great blade of blood, and The Charred, and a purpose, a great purpose for it all. It’s my legacy, for all the world to see. She gave me a wink—yes, that was most definitely a wink this time. For those who know what to look for."

I didn’t understand, and told her so.

I don’t expect you to, you poor dear, she said, smiling. But you’re a clever one. Maybe you will.

I considered this as I closed my notepad, and stepped forward to shake her hand goodbye. It was a harmless pleasantry she demanded I perform whenever we meet and whenever I leave, and it’s one I always obliged.

Maybe I will, I said.

~ ~ ~

Gertrude Spindler is one of the few convicted patients here in Brinkvale Psychiatric Hospital who is, remarkably, quite content spending her days under forever evaluation and incarceration. Confidentially, I can’t blame other patients for hating it here. I love my job, and there are some talented professionals doing good things here, but Brinkvale is a rotten place.

Brinkvale Psychiatric wasn’t built atop cursed land more than 100 years ago ... it was built in it, inside an abandoned Long Island brownstone quarry. The land had enough blood-spattered history to fill a textbook, long before the hospital was ever built. The horrific things that have happened within this building’s nine subterranean floors since 1875 could fill a dozen more.

The facility may have turned the ethical bend thirty years back, but it’ll never outshine its century-plus-long reputation as being a home for the damned, the dead-enders. This building goes 200 feet deep. It’s a windowless, hopeless place. Locals call it The Brink.

Call me a fool for working here, but the pickins are slim in this spiraling 2008 economy. The health care industry has been hit harder than most so far ... and being a wet-eared newcomer to the profession doesn’t help. It’s the law of the noob: you take what you can get, break your back doing the very best you can, and hope the universe rewards you for your efforts.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I would’ve laughed at that. Laughed at me, this present-day me. How altruistic. Don’t bullshit a bullshitter. Giddy-giddy. Thank goodness those days of anti-me are gone.

Spindler

Reviews for Personal Effects

[Kevin Pillay · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I am white. I am whiter. I am whitest. I am the Governor-general.