The Acclaimed Spine-Tingling Series Continues

Prologue

Säter, Sweden – July 7, 2020 – One year later. 

“So, this is where it all started, huh?” Philly Detective Frank Collazo mumbled under his breath as he sat in the back of an aging Volvo taxi, looking out its windows.  

 “This is it. This is the place,” the driver spoke using his best American accent. 

“This is the town?” Frank seemed confused.  

“This is the place that you look for, no? Säters, the former mental institution.” The driver was having difficulty communicating with the language barrier. 

It suddenly dawned on Frank that the monster’s origin wasn’t a town but rather a place. And then it all made sense to him. 

Staring out of the backseat passenger side window, Frank looked up at the dilapidated monster on the hill and the grown-over grounds surrounding it. Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure he wanted to get out of the car. Instead, he sat and pondered what horrors the house would share with him if only he’d venture forth. Staring, his memory flashed to 888 Bedford Street back in Philadelphia for a moment. Trying to erase the vision, he closed his eyes tightly and shook his head from side to side.  

 The Swedish driver waited patiently for Frank to exit the vehicle, his gaze finding Lake Ljustern and the campground just beyond its shore. It was a place the driver had visited as a child back in the 1980s. 

 After several more minutes of silence and consternation, the forty-something-year-old driver turned to Frank and said, “Detta är det. Det här är stället.” 

 ”In a fog, Frank only heard white noise coming from the front seat. His mouth agape, and his psyche ravaged by fear, he turned to the driver and inaudibly responded, “Huh?”  

 “This is the place,” the driver repeated himself. 

Frank nodded in acknowledgment and looked back to the crumbling shell, partially recommitted to the forest. The once lavish estate with its rolling hills and tranquil gardens was no more. Once officially known as Säter’s Mental Hospital & Sanitarium, most knew it as the ‘Institution for the feeble-minded.’ To the locals, though, it was simply known as Säters. For Frank, however, it was now nothing more than an ashy tombstone. One with dates but no names. Frank, however, now knew the name of a former resident and was determined to etch it into the unhallowed grounds. 

“Thank you,” Frank whispered as he handed a 100 Krona bill to the welcomed hand of the taxi driver. 

The driver looked at the tip in his hand and then back at Frank and just stared, his hand still extended. 

Frank counted the Swedish currency in his palm and handed over another 50 Krona. A total of just under $15. Frank double-checked the currency exchange rate on his phone and knew he was under-tipping the man after the two-hour drive from Stockholm. But seeing the numbers 100 and 50 marked on the bills, Frank felt it was more than enough after paying the man 900 Krona at the beginning of their journey north from Stockholm. 

The driver huffed before folding his hand and recoiling his arm. With bulgy eyes, he motioned to Frank to get out after popping the trunk. 

Seeing the driver roll his eyes in the rearview mirror, Frank begrudgingly stepped from the vehicle and gathered his small bag from the compact car’s trunk. The wrenching sound of the trunk’s rusty hinges slamming shut un-nerved Frank further, taking him back to the corner of Wayne Avenue and West Schoolhouse Lane exactly one year ago to the day. 

As the taxi hastily sped away, Frank was returned to the here and now and was beginning to question why he’d made the four-thousand-mile journey. He knew he needed closure of the open wound, a wound that he was sure would never heal. As he limped forward, favoring his damaged right leg, Frank was stopped in his tracks by a howling wind that leaped from the forest, hurdling the crumbling red-clay shingles atop the permanently closed mental institution. It was a place that had once molded a monster. More than one, Frank surmised as he stared at the fallen red bricks amassing in front of the institution’s façade.  

As Frank hesitantly limped forward, one methodically painful step after the other, he thought of Penny and his little girl, Bonnie. The two were never far from his thoughts. The pain in his right leg was sharp and cutting, but the pain in his heart clawed at his soul. Each step burned yet another scar onto what was left of his life. The nine-hour flight from JFK to Stockholm was exhausting in his physical condition, but Frank was determined to see the place that helped to create the monster that had all but consumed him. 

“Monsters create monsters,” Frank whispered as he stood paralyzed by another gust of cool July wind coming in off the lake. It was a phrase he’d often share with Penny. Drowning in the notion, as he surveyed the landscape, Frank was sure that the lake behind him and the monster in front of him knew that he was right. The Schuylkiller was born of incest, greed, hatred, and abandonment, and whether Frank liked it or not, they would be tied to each other until he joined him in hell.  

Frank needed to see the origins of the evil that had ended the life he once knew and began the one that would drive him for his remaining years. After overcoming his fear, he moved closer to the decaying behemoth. His eyes went to a hole in the tattered façade, one made by curiosity seekers and vandals alike. Graffiti artists had left their mark time and time again since the institution closed for good back in 1995. In five-foot red letters, the word EVIL graced the former hell Frank was about to enter. The letters reminded him of four other letters, though, two sets. Letters that haunted him still.  

No matter his fear, he’d come too far to turn back. Frank would soon learn the truth, and he’d hoped the truth would somehow ease his physical and emotional pain.  

Though the front entrance had long since been bricked over, tourists and locals all knew the story of the place and created a jagged, four-foot circular hole in the building’s exterior just below the barred windows to the immediate right of the sealed double doors. As Frank approached, he looked skyward at the tall pines jutting from the building’s rooftop. For years the forest had crept up from behind it and stalked the institution until finally grabbing hold of its prey. But the surrounding hills and forests of Northwest Stockholm would never conceal the heinous acts of the monsters who once obsessed over and tortured the battered souls they were entrusted to heal. 

While the Scots Pines and the Wych Oaks helped to shield the nearly eleven thousand residents of Säter from abhorrent rumors and shameful memories of the place, they would never extinguish the evil that once lived there. It was an evil that had latched onto Frank nearly four years earlier, and in his heart, he wasn’t sure that it would ever let go.   

Frank Collazo needed to know what monster created his monster. He wouldn’t leave Sweden until he found the truth. 

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About the Author

Michael Cook is a published poet, author, accomplished business professional, and entrepreneur. Michael is also the owner of the #7 Escape Room experience in the World, Odyssey Escape Game, located in Atlanta, GA and Chicago, IL.

Originally from Ohio, by way of New York City, Michael is a resident of Suwanee, GA. Michael Cook is a father to four children, a husband, a brother, and a friend.

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