Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death Prologue
Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death
Prologue
Don’t You Cry No More
When I was 15 years old, my best friends, Jess, Jo and Ash and I were going through a ghost hunting phase.
We would visit so called haunted buildings in our hometown of Lawrence, Kansas to see if we could capture a ghost on camera.
We never found anything and my skepticism grew.
The buildings we would visit, they were old, they creepy but they weren’t haunted.
It wasn’t until that fateful night in 1998 when the four of us visited the old abandoned Broken Creek Mental Institution.
From the moment we stepped inside the derelict structure, we knew that this place was different.
There was something in the air that didn’t feel right.
It was almost as if the building had come alive. Doors we had just walked through suddenly weren’t there, hallways grew longer and we were quickly separated.
As fear and panic began to set in, I tried desperately to find a way out.
It was hopeless, for reasons I wasn’t yet aware of, I was stuck.
I was about to give up when my big brother Dean arrived.
He was standing right in front of me; I could reach out and touch him but he acted as though I wasn’t even there.
He didn’t seem to hear me and I didn’t know why.
Watching my brother and my friends search for me and then leave, it broke my heart.
I tried to stay strong and not give up. I would use the piece of chalk I had placed into my pocket to mark the passing of the days but when it reached the 30-day mark, time started to blur, I couldn’t tell day from night and it was only then that I realized that I had gone without food, water and sleep.
I had no idea how that was even possible, from what I had previously understood, you could only go a few days without water, so how was I still alive?
I tried my best to track time and when what I assumed were years had passed, I felt like I was losing my sanity.
It also didn’t help that I wasn’t alone in the hospital, there were… spirits, they followed me, they harassed me. It was as if they were torturing me, never physically touching but getting close enough that I could feel their presence.
I could hear voices, they would whisper, they would scream.
There were footsteps and doors slamming and I could often hear the sound of water running.
And then one day I was left shell-shocked when my brother and my best friends came back.
I screamed at them until my lungs ached but they couldn’t hear me.
I watched them in desperation, I wasn’t exactly sure of how long it had been but I knew it had been many years, they all looked so different, so grown up.
They performed a ritual, words spoken in Latin, they held charms and objects that I had never seen before.
The spell that they used, it must have been powerful because it drew every spirit, every creature that was trapped in the building, to them. They were as eager to escape as I was.
My brother was so close to me and yet he had never felt so far away.
But it worked, the spell worked and the barrier came down.
I had never felt such relief, to be able to feel again, to touch.
To hug my friends and to have them actually see and hear me.
But of course, nothing is ever that simple, what came afterwards, it continued to change my life and to change my family’s life.
When I got home, I learned a little about what had happened to me, a demon named Crowley had been the one to trap me inside the old hospital, I still don’t really understand why, maybe I never will.
I had lost 10 years of my life and for all of those years, I hadn’t been able to see my reflection, at the hospital there were mirrors and the like but for some reason I was never able to see myself so it wasn’t until I got home that I saw my reflection.
I had continued to age.
Every time I have tried to make sense of what happened to me, the worse my understanding got.
The only thing that I knew for sure was that demons, witches and ghosts all existed.
I also learnt that angels were real, while I was gone, Dean had started a relationship with one, Castiel.
The years that my friends and I had spent searching for proof, it had been there, we were just always one step behind in finding it.
Until now of course.
Everything was made much worse when just weeks after coming home, I lost one of my best friends, the girl that I had loved, Jess. The official story was that she had been killed in a housefire but the truth was that she had been murdered.
A housefire that was contained to only one room, leaving the rest of the structure intact?
That was no accident.
Almost six months have passed since I returned home and to say that we’re still adjusting is an understatement. They say it gets easier, that things will return to normal but there is no normal for us, not anymore.
Not while Crowley is still out there.
But we won’t give up; we’ll fight this for as long as we’re physically able to.
Knowing what I now know, I owe that to Jess, I owe it to myself.
“Sam.”
Sam swallowed around the lump in his throat as he glanced up at the man sitting across from him.
“Sam, did you hear what I said?”
Sam shook his head and shifted awkwardly under the man’s gaze. “I’m sorry Dr. Richardson, what did you say?”
Dr. Richardson smiled softly. “I asked if you would like to talk about why you’re here.”
Sam stared at the notepad sitting in the doctor’s lap, the pen in his hand.
“I understand that your experience is difficult to talk about,” he said, “But that’s why therapy could be an excellent tool for you.”
“I don’t really want to talk about what happened,” Sam answered. “I’d rather forget it. Honestly I’m really only here because my Mom thinks it would be good for me.”
“She’s concerned for you Sam, you were gone for a long time,” he replied. “And suppressing your memories, you may think that it will make you feel better and perhaps for the short term it will, but it will only cause more issues in the long run.”
Sam welcomed the silence that followed when he didn’t answer the question.
He had thought about telling the doctor the truth but no one would ever believe him and that spurred him to make a decision.
“I may not have finished high school and I may have to play catch up with the technology but I know more about this world than you ever could.” Sam told him as he got to his feet. “You can’t help me.”
Sam began to walk toward the door and Dr. Richardson called after him but he didn't turn around. He walked out of the office knowing that being there had been a mistake.
His world was complicated and scary and he would struggle with it for the rest of his life.
But he was strong, he had survived so far and whatever was to come, he would survive that too.
Chapter 1