Midnight Voices

CHAPTER 38

I just look like a nurse going home from work, Caroline told herself as they hurried east on 82nd, not quite running, but walking as quickly as they could without drawing attention to themselves.

“Why don’t we call the police?” Ryan had asked almost the moment they’d climbed down the ladder into the utility passage behind the building next to the Institute. But Caroline had rejected that idea immediately, clearly remembering the look on Sergeant Oberholzer’s face as she’d tried to tell him what was happening in The Rockwell. The first thing the police would do would be to call Tony Fleming — or whatever his name really was, since she was certain he’d had as many as Virginia Estherbrook. Then she’d be right back in the Institute, and Laurie and Ryan—

Laurie and Ryan would be left with Anthony Fleming.

Which wasn’t going to happen.

“We don’t have time,” was all she’d told Ryan.

After midnight — that was the time it had been last night when she’d found the secret door hidden in the closet of Tony’s study.

Midnight — that was the time Laurie had told her she’d heard the voices — the voices Caroline herself had insisted had come from nothing more serious than bad dreams.

Midnight — that, she was sure, was the hour when the feasting at The Rockwell began. After the children upon whom they fed had gone to sleep, and would retain only the memory of what had to be a nightmare.

“What time is it?” she asked for the third time in the last two blocks. They were going down Central Park West now, and as Ryan tipped his watch to see its face by the light of the nearest streetlamp, she glanced back over her shoulder, satisfying herself yet again that no one was following them.

“Twenty of twelve,” Ryan told her.

Caroline sped up her pace slightly, and Ryan had to break into a slow dog trot to keep up with her, but uttered not a word of complaint. Finally, with almost fifteen minutes left before the hour would change, they were across the street from The Rockwell. As she gazed up at the building, nothing looked amiss at all; lights still glowed in a few windows, but most of them were dark, as if the building’s occupants had already gone to bed.

But they weren’t in bed, Caroline knew. They were awake, and moving through the passages hidden behind the walls of their apartments, getting ready for—

Caroline shuddered, turning her mind away from the thought. “Give me your knife,” she said softly.

Ryan, not even thinking of arguing with his mother, reached into his pocket, found the knife his father had given him, and silently put it into his mother’s waiting hand.

Caroline opened the largest blade and tested it gingerly against the skin of her left wrist. All she felt was a slight scraping sensation as the fine hairs on her wrist fell away. Thank God I didn’t take it away from him, she thought as she closed the blade and slipped the knife into the large pocket on the skirt of the nurse’s uniform she was wearing. But then, before she’d even let go of the knife, she changed her mind.

Pulling it back out again, she reopened it.

“All right,” she said softly. “Let’s go.”

They crossed the street, and a moment later came to the front doors of The Rockwell. She pulled one open, stepped through, then peered through the glass inner doors.

Rodney was at his post, a newspaper in front of him as always.

He never sleeps, Caroline realized as she pulled the glass door open with her left hand, the fingers of her right hand squeezing hard on the handle of the knife. He’s always there. Always there, and never asleep. I should have known… As the door opened, he looked up, and for a moment appeared puzzled.

Caroline was almost to the counter when she saw comprehension come over his face, and by the time he started to reach for the phone, she was there. As the fingers of his left hand closed on the receiver, the fingers of Caroline’s closed on his necktie.

Startled, his fingers loosened on the receiver, and it clattered to the floor. He started to pull away, but Caroline, her strength fueled by her fury and her terror for her children, was far quicker than he. Jerking hard on his necktie, she pulled him toward her across the countertop, then brought her right hand up and jabbed the point of the knife directly into his throat. With a sideways wrench, she pulled the knife to the right, ripping his throat open.

In an instant the stench of rotting flesh spewed forth from the gaping wound, and Rodney’s breath began to rasp as he tried to draw air through his already collapsing windpipe. He reached out toward Caroline, his fingers curling into grasping claws, but his knuckles were already swelling with arthritis and his talonlike nails were blackening and starting to fall away. Long before they could close on her flesh, his hands and arms had lost their strength and his legs buckled under his weight. As the decaying corpse collapsed to the floor, Caroline darted around, crouched low over Rodney’s body, and searched his pockets for his keys. A moment later she had them, and she bolted away from Rodney as his last breath rattled in his ruined body. “Quick,” she said to Ryan, but it didn’t matter, for he was already ahead of her, pulling the basement door open and bolting down the stairs.

They charged through the basement, frantically searching for the door Ryan had told her about as they left the Institute, the one with no knob or keyhole on its inner side. And then, behind the furnace, they found it.

Metal clad, it bore no markings at all, with only a single keyhole, and a simple handle by which it could be pulled open. Frantically, Caroline began trying to find the right key, but her hands were trembling too much, and after only a moment Ryan took over.

On the third try, the lock turned, and Ryan pulled open the door. The corridor he’d approached from the other end only a little while ago stretched out before him, and halfway down he saw the door behind which lay Laurie.

If she was still there at all.

“Hurry,” Caroline urged as Ryan fit the key into the second door. Now his fingers, too, were trembling, but finally he twisted the key, and pushed the door open.

“In there,” he told his mother, turning on the flashlight and pointing it toward Laurie.

As she stumbled through the room, Caroline barely noticed the gurneys that stood in a silent row. “Laurie!” she screamed, no longer able to keep her voice under control. “LAUUURRRIIE!”

Her daughter’s name reverberated in the room, then died away, and in the silence Caroline felt a terrible wave of hopelessness rise up, threatening to engulf her. The smell of death was so strong that she wondered if any of the forms that lay on the gurneys could still be alive. But even as her last vestige of hope faded, she heard something.

A voice, faint and indistinct.

“M-mom?”

“She’s over there,” Ryan said, pointing to a gurney that stood a few yards away. A moment later Caroline was gazing down into her daughter’s wan face, stroking her forehead, her own tears dampening Laurie’s skin.

“Get me out,” Laurie pleaded. “They’ll come back. They’ll—” But before Laurie could finish her words, her mother had lifted her up into her arms and was already heading back toward the door.

Ryan started after her, but then paused, remembering the boy he’d seen — the boy lying on the gurney next to Laurie’s. Frantically, he searched for the boy in the gloom, and a moment later found him. But one look told him all he needed to know: the boy’s eyes were open and staring straight up, but there was an emptiness to them.

The same emptiness Ryan had seen in Tony Fleming’s eyes.

The emptiness of death.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I—” His voice broke into a choking sob.

“Ryan!” he heard his mother scream. “Hurry!”

With one last look at the dead boy on the gurney, Ryan turned away and stumbled after his mother.

Then he was out of the room and running down the hall toward the door that led to the basement. He was still thirty yards away when the corridor was suddenly flooded with light, and he heard a voice.

His stepfather’s voice.

“Ryan!”

For a second Ryan froze, but then he heard his mother. “Run!” she screamed. “Run, Ryan!”

Her voice galvanized him, and Ryan charged toward the door, running as fast as his legs could carry him. Behind him he could hear his stepfather’s feet, pounding after him, getting louder by the second. Suddenly his stepfather spoke his name again, and this time he was so close that Ryan could feel his breath on the back of his neck. But this time Anthony Fleming’s voice didn’t freeze him like a faun caught in the headlights of a truck; this time it spurred him on, and just as he felt his stepfather’s fingers touch his shoulder he burst through the door.

Caroline was ready, slamming it as hard as she could the instant Ryan was through. For just a split second the door seemed to catch before it slammed into the jamb, but once again Caroline was ready, and as Ryan spun around and threw his weight against the door, she twisted the key that was already in the lock.

A howl of rage rose on the other side of the door, but Caroline ignored it, lifting Laurie back into her arms and starting toward the stairs. But once again Ryan wasn’t following her. Instead he stood frozen by the door, his eyes fixed on something on the floor. Her gaze following her son’s, Caroline felt her gorge rise once more.

On the floor by the doorjamb were four severed fingers, still twitching reflexively as if trying to close on their intended prey.

“Don’t,” she said, as Ryan stooped over, as if to get a closer look.

Then, as one of the fingers twitched again, he jumped back, and turned away.

A few seconds later, they burst through the door into the lobby, and Ryan ran ahead to hold the front door open so his mother could carry Laurie out onto the street. Hesitating only a second, Caroline started south. “Do you have any money?” she asked as they crossed 65th Street. Ryan shook his head. Swearing silently to herself, Caroline tried to figure out what to do — she still wasn’t willing to go to a police station, not with the possibility that Dr. Humphries, or someone with the Biddle Institute might have already warned them to be looking for her. And without any money—

Suddenly a cab appeared by the curb a few yards ahead of her, and as Caroline stopped short, its front window rolled down.

“You need a ride, lady?” the driver asked.

Caroline stared at the cabbie, her feet suddenly feeling rooted to the sidewalk. “I–I don’t have any money,” she finally said. But Ryan was already at the back door of the cab, pulling it open.

“Come on, Mom! Get in!”

Still Caroline couldn’t move. Then, as she looked down into Laurie’s pale face, she saw the blood that streaked the front of her stolen nurse’s uniform. If she didn’t get in the cab, and someone else saw her — Making up her mind, she eased Laurie into the cab, then climbed in after her.

“There’s a hospital a few blocks away,” the cabbie said. “It’ll only take a coupla minutes.”

A hospital, Caroline thought. They’ll ask questions. Questions she couldn’t answer, at least not now.

Not tonight.

Maybe not ever.

“No,” she said. “I can’t go to a hospital, and I can’t go to the police.” She saw the cabbie eyeing her in the rearview mirror, his sympathy of a moment ago rapidly devolving into suspicion. In her mind, she raced through the possibilities, rejecting one person after another until suddenly she knew the one person she could call, the one person who wouldn’t ask questions, the one person who would simply take her in. “Do you have a cellphone?” she asked.

The cabbie seemed to consider for a moment, then finally handed one back through the open divider separating the front seat from the back. Her fingers starting to shake, she punched in a number and pressed the send button. Be home, she silently begged. Please be home.

On the eighth ring, an answering machine picked up, but even before the message had played through, Caroline was already talking. “Kevin? Are you there? Mark? Oh, God, if you’re there—”

“Caroline?” Kevin Barnes’s voice cut in, indistinct over the outgoing message that was still playing. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“I have to come over. Right now. With the kids.”