Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 35

The Biddle Institute… West 82nd Street… The Biddle Institute… West 82nd Street… The Biddle Institute… West 82nd Street… Ryan kept repeating the words over and over again in his mind, terrified that he’d forget the name of the place where his mother was, or where it was located. But right now he was even more terrified that Tony Fleming would catch him.

His first impulse when he’d discovered there was a trapdoor in the ceiling of his closet had been to climb up through it and see if he could find a way out of the building. But the darkness beyond the shaft of light coming up from the closet was so complete that just peering into it made Ryan’s skin crawl, and in an instant he was imagining the dangers that could be lurking just out of sight. There had to be rats — he’d seen one creeping along the bottom of the drainage moat that ran all the way around the building only a couple of days ago. There’d be spiders and cockroaches, too. Maybe even black widow spiders, or brown recluses. Ryan had read all about them in a book on poisonous bugs he’d found in the library last summer, and it seemed like the worst ones — the black widows and brown recluses, like to live in dark places where you couldn’t see them. There could even be bats. He was pretty sure of that, though not as sure as he was of the rats, cockroaches, and spiders. But bats lived in caves, and the space around him had to be just as dark as a cave.

His skin crawling with just the thought of all the things that might be lurking in the inky darkness, he’d dropped back onto the closet floor and rummaged around in his drawers until he’d found the flashlight he used to read under the covers at night. When he turned it on, the bulb glowed brightly. He was just about to close the drawer when he remembered something else that was in the drawer. It was a knife. It wasn’t very big, and even though most of the scrimshaw was worn off its handle it was still one of Ryan’s favorite things. It had been his father’s, and he could still remember his father showing him how to hone the blade on a whetstone until it was so sharp you could cut your finger without even feeling it. He wasn’t supposed to carry it with him because if he forgot and took it to school he’d be expelled right then. But as he thought of all the things that might be in the space above the closet once again, he picked up the knife and slipped it into his pocket.

A moment later he was back up on the top shelf in the closet, peering once again into the darkness. But this time the beam of the flashlight cut through it, and even though he was pretty sure he’d seen something scamper away from the light, it wasn’t nearly as scary as it had been before.

There was about two feet of space between the ceiling of his room and the beams supporting the floor above. Not enough room for him to stand up in, but plenty if he crawled along on his hands and knees. All kinds of pipes and wires ran through the space, some of them looking like they’d been there forever, others looking pretty new. Then, as he shined the light toward the back of his room, he saw something that shouldn’t have been there at all.

Though it didn’t make any sense, it looked like three steps, starting from the ceiling on which he lay, and rising the two feet up to the floor above his head. But that didn’t make any sense — why would anyone build stairs in a crawlspace? But even as the question formed in his mind, so did an answer.

A secret passage! That was it — it had to be!

His fears suddenly forgotten, he started crawling across the rough boards that had been laid over the beams of the ceiling, clutching the flashlight in his hand and keeping his head low so he didn’t bang it on the joists above him, he crawled toward the steps as quickly — and silently — as he could. A few seconds later he was peering at a narrow staircase, less than three feet wide, that led steeply down to an equally narrow passageway. Ryan gazed at it for several seconds, then turned to peer back over his shoulder at the shaft of light still rising through the open trapdoor.

It seemed like the passageway had to be in the wall between his room and some room in the apartment next door, and when he twisted his neck to look upward, it seemed as if the steps ended one more floor up. But where did the passage downstairs lead? His heart racing, he crept onto the steep flight of steps and made his way down. As he descended into the narrow passage, the walls almost seemed to be closing in on him, and for a moment Ryan felt an almost overwhelming urge to scurry back up the steps, across the ceiling, and drop back into the safety — and light — of his room. But then he steeled himself against the fear; if he was going to find a way out, it was going to have to be through the passage.

He moved forward, and about thirty feet ahead came to a cross passage. He hesitated, trying to get his bearings, but in the confines of the narrow corridor, he couldn’t be certain which way he was going. And if he came to another intersection, and then another, he’d never find his way back. But even as the possibility of getting lost came into his mind, so did the answer. He fished in the right front pocket of his jeans and his fingers closed around his father’s knife. Taking it out of his pocket and flipping its blade open, he crouched down close to the floor and carved two small grooves into the wall, forming a tiny arrow that pointed toward the staircase. When he was done he straightened up and shined his light on the mark. Satisfied that it would barely even be visible to anyone who wasn’t looking for it, he chose a direction, and turned right. A few paces further along he suddenly froze, then waited, uncertain what it was that had caused him to stop.

Instinctively, Ryan snapped off the flashlight and held his breath, waiting.

After a few seconds that seemed like endless minutes, the pupils of his eyes expanded to the maximum in the near total darkness of the passageway, and he saw a tiny speck of light a few paces ahead. Once again he was seized by an urge to race back to his room; once again he conquered his fear. When the light didn’t move, and the sound didn’t come again, he finally crept forward, still not daring to turn on his flashlight, and feeling his way in the darkness with his hands and feet. And finally he found the source of the faint glimmer of light: there was a tiny hole in the wall of the passage, just low enough so that if he stood on his tiptoes, he could peer into it.

He pressed his eye to the hole, and for a moment the brightness of the light on the other side blinded him. But then his eye adjusted, and he realized he was looking into a room.

But not just any room.

It was Laurie’s bedroom.

But something was wrong — Laurie’s bed wasn’t made! The covers were kicked back, and the sheet was all rumpled. But Laurie always made her bed, every single morning. She wouldn’t even eat breakfast until she’d made her bed.

So why hadn’t she this morning?

Hadn’t she gone to school at all? Had she gotten sick again? Maybe she was in the bathroom, throwing up.

But if she was home — if she was sick — why hadn’t Tony told him?

And if he’d lied about Laurie, had he lied about his mother, too?

He wanted to call out, to let Laurie know he was there if she was close enough to hear him. But even as he opened his mouth, he changed his mind. What if not only Laurie heard him, but Tony too? Letting the breath he’d intended to use to call out to his sister escape silently into the darkness, Ryan tried to figure out what to do next. But there were only two choices — go back to his room, or keep going and try to find out where the passage went. Back in his room, all he could do was wait.

Abandoning the peephole and turning his flashlight back on, Ryan moved deeper into the passage.

He’d made another turn and gone down another flight of steps — marking every turn he made — and was halfway to the next intersection when he suddenly heard a voice.

His stepfather’s voice!

And heard it so clearly his blood ran cold and he froze in his tracks, certain he’d been discovered. But then he heard another voice — a voice that sounded kind of familiar, but that he couldn’t quite place.

“Your wife was a friend of hers,” the voice said. “We’re talking to everyone she knew. Is your wife here?”

Once again Ryan held his breath, but this time he pressed his ear to the wall even though the voices were so clear he didn’t need to.

And then, a few seconds later, he heard it: The Biddle Institute… West 82nd Street.

His mother was only a few blocks away! If he could just get out of the building he could go up there and find her, and then everything would be all right. And there had to be a way out — all he had to do was find it. But just as he was about to slip away into the darkness to begin exploring the maze he heard his stepfather’s voice again.

“If we’re about through,” Anthony Fleming was saying. “I’d like to go up and check on my son — he seems to have picked up a bug himself.”

Ryan froze. If his stepfather found his room empty and he couldn’t find a way out right away—

Trapped!

He’d be trapped, and there wouldn’t be any way to get away and—

His mind reeling at the thought of what Tony might do to him when he finally found him, Ryan hurried back the way he’d come, moving as fast as he could while still trying not to make a sound. But all the while he repeated two phrases over and over again, as terrified that he’d forget them as he was that his stepfather would catch him: The Biddle Institute… West 82nd Street… The Biddle Institute… West 82nd Street… The Biddle Institute… West 82nd Street… Then just as he got back to the base of the last flight of stairs, the flashlight began to fail. He raced up the steep steps, threw himself into the crawlspace between his ceiling and the floor above, and started toward the glow of light rising through the open trapdoor. By the time he dropped back into his closet, there was only enough electricity left in the batteries to make the bulb glow a dim red.

Had he stayed in the passages, he would have been left in the dark.

Left in the dark, and lost.

But he wasn’t lost, and he was back in the light of his room, and he knew where his mother was.

Now all he had to do was wait for the right time to find his way out. But before he could do that, he had to get his stepfather to let him out of this room, at least for a little while.

Less than a minute later, when his stepfather unlocked his door and came into his room, Ryan gazed contritely up at him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I did see something last night.” His stepfather said nothing, but his strange, dead eyes remained fixed on Ryan. “I–I woke up, and heard something, and went out into the hall. And I heard you saying everything was going to be all right. But I didn’t know what was wrong, and I was scared and when you came into my room I pretended to be asleep.”

“So that’s all you heard?” Anthony Fleming asked.

Ryan nodded, and he was pretty sure his stepfather believed him.

Frank Oberholzer’s stomach began sending warning signals the moment he found the Biddle Institute. The building wasn’t large for a hospital, and Oberholzer was almost certain that hadn’t been its original purpose. Its brownstone façade gazed down on nearly a hundred feet of street frontage and the street floor, which was several steps above sidewalk level, boasted a series of eight large bowed windows, four on each side of the double doors that were the only entry to the building except for a small service door dropped into a well at the west end of the building. Above the main floor were four more, the second and third sporting carved stone pillars above each of the bowed windows, which supported what appeared to be a terrace fronting the entire length of the fourth floor. Until this morning he’d assumed it was a private home that was now being used by a private foundation or maybe some kind of consulate. The only thing that identified it was a brass plaque set into the stone to the right of the door, a plaque that was so discreet that Oberholzer hadn’t even noticed it when he’d looked at the building from across the street. The fact that he hadn’t noticed it told Oberholzer two things: first, that The Biddle Institute was not interested in attracting any walk-in trade, and second — and far more important — that he was slipping. A few years ago, he never would have missed the plaque.

And if he’d missed that, what else might he be missing?

His stomach grumbled a response that didn’t help his mood at all, and he reached into his pocket, pulled out a roll of Tums, and stuck a couple of them in his mouth in the vain hope they might be able to calm his stomach’s anger at the pastrami he’d fed it for lunch an hour ago. The fire in his belly quenched at least for a couple of minutes, he mounted the steps, searched for a bell, then tried the door. To his surprise, it opened, and he stepped into a room that could have been the lobby of one of the small hotels over on the Upper East Side where you weren’t sure whether you were in a hotel or a high-priced retirement home.

The furnishings of the lobby — Oberholzer was pretty damned sure they didn’t call it a waiting room — were of the same vintage as the building itself, and unless Oberholzer missed his guess, they were the real thing, not reproductions. A middle-aged woman dressed tidily in a pleated blouse and a dark blue suit sat at a desk just to the right of a second set of doors — twins of the ones he’d just come through — that protected the interior of the building from the eyes of anyone who might wander in from the street. The woman behind the desk looked up, her expression a careful mask of absolute neutrality, tempered by the mildest of curiosity.

“May I help you?” Oberholzer flashed his badge, which didn’t cause even a twitch in the woman’s face, and identified himself. All that got him was a repeat of her question, which produced yet another flare-up of the glowing coals of acid smoldering in his belly. “And how may I help you, Sergeant Oberholzer?” Didn’t the badge impress her at all?

“I’m here to see a patient,” he growled. “Caroline Fleming?”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” the woman said with an equanimity that fanned the embers in his stomach into flames.

Oberholzer’s eyes raked her desk in search of some kind of nameplate, but found nothing. “And you would be—?” he asked, leaving the question hanging.

“Ms. Nelson.”

“And your position is—?”

“Reception.”

Oberholzer took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, but the air in his lungs did nothing to soothe the fire in his stomach. Now he could feel the acid boiling up into his trachea. On television, the receptionists always cooperated with the cops — you never saw anybody but the guy at the very top stonewalling. “And is it the responsibility of the receptionist to decide what’s possible and what isn’t?”

The Nelson woman didn’t so much as flinch, but one of the inner doors opened and a man of about the same age as Ms. Nelson appeared, wearing a suit every bit as conservatively cut as the receptionist’s, but in a shade of blue so dark it was almost black. “I’m Harold Caseman,” he said, advancing toward Oberholzer with his right hand extended. “How may I help you?”

A buzzer, Oberholzer thought as he produced his badge one more time. Ms. Nelson keeps a bland face and a firm foot on the buzzer. “I’d like to see one of your patients,” he said aloud. “Caroline Fleming.”

Caseman’s brows knit into a worried frown. “First, we don’t refer to our clients as patients; and as for visiting, I’m afraid we have a policy—”

“The NYPD has a policy, too, Mr. Caseman.”

“Doctor Caseman,” the other man corrected.

“But one who has no patients,” Oberholzer reminded him. “And I guess if she’s not a patient, then doctor — patient confidentiality wouldn’t apply, would it?”

“Semantics, Sergeant Oberholz.”

“Oberholzer,” the detective corrected, giving exactly the same amount of weight to the last syllable of his name as Caseman had given to the first syllable of his title. “So what you’re saying is that she is a patient, but you just don’t call her one?”

Caseman sighed as if he were trying to educate a recalcitrant six-year-old. “The word ‘patient’ implies illness,” he began, but Oberholzer had finally had enough.

“So does the title ‘doctor,’ ” he interrupted. “So what do you say we cut the crap, okay? Is Caroline Fleming here, or not?”

“She is,” Caseman admitted, after a hesitation in which Oberholzer could see him calculating the chances of winning this particular battle. “Very well, if you insist.” He held the inner door open for Oberholzer, followed him through, and led him to an elevator that took them to the third floor. Stepping out of the tiny oak-paneled car, Oberholzer found himself in a corridor that ran the full length of the building. Like the reception area, it resembled a small and elegant hotel far more than a hospital, and another conservatively dressed middle-aged woman sat at a desk in an alcove very much like that of a floor concierge. “The key to Mrs. Fleming’s suite, please, Mrs. Archer.”

Opening a glass-fronted case, Mrs. Archer lifted what looked like an old-fashioned hotel key — from long before the days of computerized cardkeys — off a hook.

Less than a minute later, Oberholzer was facing Caroline Evans Fleming. She lay in bed, propped up against three pillows. Her hair hung limply around her ashen face, and there was a glazed look in her eyes. “Mrs. E—” Oberholzer began, but caught himself before he’d completed even the first syllable. “Mrs. Fleming?” he asked, but Caroline Fleming stared straight ahead, as if she neither heard nor saw him.

“She’s exhausted, and she’s had some sedation,” Caseman explained.

Oberholzer moved closer to the bed, and bent closer. “Mrs. Evans?” he said, this time deliberately using the name he’d known her by when he first met her months ago. “It’s Detective Oberholzer.”

For a moment there was no reaction at all, but then Caroline’s head slowly swung around until she was looking at him. Something flickered in her eyes, and she lifted a hand as if to reach out to him.

“Dead,” she whispered. “Every one of them. They’re all dead.”

Oberholzer took her hand. “It’s all right,” he said. “We’re going to find out what happened to your friend.”

Caroline’s lips worked for a moment, and her eyes darted around the room as if she were searching for some unseen enemy. “You don’t understand,” she breathed. “All of them — they’re dead.” Her voice began to rise as she repeated the word again and again. “Dead! Dead! Oh, God, why doesn’t anyone believe me? They’re all dead!” Her voice dissolving into a broken wail, her eyes flooded with tears, and a moment later she was sobbing.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Fleming,” Harold Caseman said, stepping closer to the bed and at the same time opening a cellphone, tapping a key, then speaking a few words so rapidly that Oberholzer couldn’t follow them. Almost as soon as he’d returned the phone to his pocket, a nurse appeared with a hypodermic needle.

A few seconds after that, Caroline Fleming went to sleep. But just before they closed, she fixed her eyes on Frank Oberholzer and reached out to him. “Help them,” she whispered. “Help—”

But before she could finish her words, the drugs silenced her, and her hand fell away to the bed.

“Mom?” the word drifted from Laurie’s lips like a wisp of mist, evaporating as quickly as fog in the morning sun. Except that there was no sun — indeed, there was almost no light at all; only a grayish half-light, just bright enough to let Laurie know she was no longer in her room, but not bright enough for her to identify where she might be.

She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Despite the fact that she’d been asleep, she felt more tired now than she ever had before in her life. Her body felt as if all the energy had been drained out of it, as if someone had pulled a plug and all her strength had leaked away.

Once again she tried to call out to her mother; once again all that emerged from her throat was a faint murmur that even she could barely hear. And the simple act of trying to call out left her so exhausted she almost drifted back into unconsciousness. But then, just as she was about to surrender herself to the gentle arms of sleep, she heard something.

A sound, even fainter than the one she herself had just made, so faint she wasn’t really sure she’d heard it at all. Yet something about it gripped what little consciousness she still possessed, and she turned away from the comfort of sleep.

Twisting her head, she peered into the grayness to her right.

And saw something.

Indistinct in the dim light, she had to strain to make it out, and at first all she knew was that it looked vaguely familiar. Then it came to her — one of those tables they use to roll people around in hospitals. She’d seen them on TV hundreds of times. But what was it called? She groped in her mind, which felt as worn out as her body, then found the word.

A stretcher — no, there was another word. Gurney.

That was it. Exhausted by the effort to find the right word, she lay still, gasping for breath as if she’d just finished running a foot race rather than searching her mind for a word. And as she lay in the twilight recovering her breath, her fingers began to explore the surface on which she lay.

A hard surface, covered by a sheet, but feeling cold through the thin material.

Another gurney.

Was she in a hospital?

She began searching her memory again, but she was so tired that simply putting together the pieces of yesterday seemed more difficult than a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. But slowly they began to fall into place. She hadn’t been sick last night — she’d felt fine. It had been her mom who was sick. When she’d come home from school, her mom had been sick in bed, and she’d gone in to visit her. Had she caught the flu then? But she didn’t feel like she had the flu — with the flu, she always threw up a lot, and her bones hurt, and she got a fever. All she felt now was exhausted — more tired than she’d ever felt in her life.

But not sick.

She reached into her memory again, and found more pieces. Going to bed. Staying awake as long as she could for fear the voices would come.

The voices and the dreams.

They had come last night — if it really was last night: the way she felt, it seemed like it must be days since she’d rested at all. But the dreams had come, worse than ever. There had been people all around her, lifting her up, putting her on—

On the gurney! The gurney she was still on? But how? It was a dream!

More pieces fell into place. She remembered tubes being put through her nose and her mouth and—

She whimpered at the memory, then flinched as she felt the pain of the needles that had jabbed into her arms and her legs and her belly and her chest and—

The whimper grew into a cry of pain and horror.

A second later she heard an answering sound — the same sound that had drawn her away from the beckoning arms of sleep. She twisted her head again, and now, through the gray twilight, she could just make out a shape lying on the gurney that stood a few yards from her own.

“I-is anyone—” she began, but her strength failed her before she could finish the question. She thought she saw a movement, but it was so slight and so nearly invisible in the dim light that an instant later she was no longer sure she’d seen it at all. Her breath escaping in a silent sigh, she let her head roll back so she was looking straight up.

And went back to her memories.

There were people all around her — faces she recognized, but that didn’t look quite right. They all looked younger than she remembered them, and they were smiling at her, clucking over her like hens over a wounded chick.

Hens… That was it — the faces had all been women.

Except Tony had been there, and Dr. Humphries, and—

“Lauuurrrie!”

The howl of anguish came boiling up out of her memory, and even though her name itself was barely recognizable in the chaos of the scream, she recognized the voice at once. Her mother! Her mother had been there too, and tried to rescue her, to save her from—

From what?

She didn’t know.

But one thing she did know: it was not a dream.

It had never been a dream.

It had all been real. The voices behind the wall of her room, the figures around her bed, the fingers prodding and poking at her — all of it had been real.

A sob welled up in her, but even as it began to constrict her throat, something changed. It was so subtle that at first she thought she was wrong. But then it happened again — a faint draft wafting over her cheek, as if someone had opened a door somewhere. She choked back the sob, forced herself to be completely silent — even held her breath and willed her heart to stop beating — and listened.

Footsteps.

Then the dim light brightened, and she could at last see the space around her. Above her, heavy beams supporting wide, rough-hewn boards.

Around her, brick walls, blackened with age.

Pipes and wires and ducts running everywhere, slung between the beams and running up the walls.

The basement — it had to be the basement of The Rockwell. And now, as the footsteps drew nearer, she twisted her head to look once more at the other gurney. Now the shape that lay on it was clear — a boy, his body so thin it was almost lost under the sheet that covered it. His head was twisted so he was looking toward her, and she could see his eyes, sunken deep into their sockets, and looking huge in his emaciated face. He lay so still that for a moment Laurie had a terrible feeling that he must be dead, but then, as the light brightened still more, he blinked.

Blinked, and moaned, and seemed to Laurie to shrink even smaller than he already was. A moment later she heard a rattling sound as if someone were pushing some kind of cart toward her, and then she heard a voice, one that she recognized, but couldn’t quite place. But when a shadow fell over her, and she looked up, she recognized who it was in an instant.

Rodney. Next to him was an old-fashioned tea-cart, like the ones they sold in the shop where her mother worked, and on it stood two glasses filled with something Laurie couldn’t identify.

The doorman was peering down at her, and when he spoke, the stench of his breath made her turn her head away.

“Don’t do that,” Rodney said, his fingers closing on her chin and forcing her face back so she was facing him once more. “I like to look at you. Don’t turn away when I look at you.”

Laurie tried to cry out, but her voice failed her, and all she could do was stare up into the doorman’s eyes.

“Time to eat,” he said, his grip on her jaw relaxing. Then he uttered a strange sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Can’t have you dying on us, can we?” he asked. “Oh, no — can’t have that. Not yet, anyway.”

Then Rodney slid an arm under her shoulders, his touch cold and clammy against her skin, and raised up, almost causing the sheet to fall away. Supporting her with his arm, he picked up one of the glasses with his free hand and held it to her lips.

Too weak to resist, Laurie let her lips open and a moment later her mouth filled with a foul-tasting slime that made her stomach convulse in rebellion.

“Swallow it,” Rodney instructed, holding her mouth closed to prevent her from spitting the stuff out. His head bent closer, and his foul breath washed over her as he spoke into her ear. “Go ahead and swallow it. Or would you rather die right now?”

Her stomach knotting with nausea, her throat constricting against the disgusting concoction, Laurie forced the mouthful down.

It was followed by a second mouthful, then a third.

By the fourth, Laurie was sobbing, and by the fifth she was certain she would die if she had to drink any more of it.

Then she began to be afraid of something even worse.

She began to fear she might not die.