Pandemonium

“Hey you!” a voice said angrily. I looked back. A man in blue scrubs, not much older than me, marched down the hallway toward me. “What are you doing in here?”

That question had too many possible answers. I picked the simplest. “I need to get to the third floor,” I said. The young man—doctor or orderly or whatever he was—was passing an exit sign when a tremendous bang stopped him in his tracks. The fire door beneath the exit sign bulged inward. Incredibly, the man started to walk toward it.

“I wouldn’t open the door,” I said. But it was too late; a second blow sent the door clanging open.

A big man dressed in blue spandex stepped into the hallway, a disc of metal big as a manhole cover hanging on his arm. The Captain. Leaning on him was Smokestack Johnny, wearing his traditional overalls and his blue-striped cap. He had one arm draped over the Captain’s shoulder. His right leg was missing below the knee. The Captain pointed at the man in scrubs. “Corpsman! This man needs medical attention.”

“I had me a bit of an accident,” Johnny said cheerfully. I turned and ran.

The hallway ended a dozen yards later in a left turn. I stutterstepped around the corner, then found myself in a long corridor that ran along the back side of the hospital. A few seconds later I saw a white plastic sign that said stairs. I threw myself against the door and got inside the stairwell, chest heaving.

Five seconds, passed, ten, and my breath began to slow. How many demons were here? How the hell had they all decided to converge?

And where the hell were the cops? Even Mayberry had two cops. I slid to the side and slowly raised my head to look out the door’s square window. The length of hallway visible to me was empty. I turned and started up the stairs, using a hand on the railing to haul myself up. I forced myself to ignore the burning in my legs, the sweat running into my eyes.

On the second-floor landing I swung around the bend and was almost bowled over by a middle-aged man hurrying down. He was dressed in pajamas, and a length of IV tube hung from his arm. He jerked back from me, terrified. “No,” he said. “No.” As if I were a mugger with a knife at his throat. I stepped aside, raised my hands. “Be careful down there,” I said.

“It’s crazy.”

No, that wasn’t the right word. All those demons—the Captain, the Truth, Smokestack Johnny, little ol’ me—it was too much at once. Too much for anyone to take.

Pandemonium.

He ducked his head and swept past me, heading down. I looked up. Somewhere above me, a small voice was crying. The sound grew louder as I climbed. When I rounded the final landing I found the source: a white girl, eight or nine years old, dressed in a white lacy nightgown. Her glossy brown hair hung in curls to her shoulders. She sat on the step in front of the third-floor exit, sobbing into arms crossed over her knees, her shoulders shaking. Her feet were bare and dirty up to the shins, as if she’d walked for miles through fields.

I stood very still. There was no way past her. She lifted her head, looked down the stairs at me. Her eyes glistened, and her cheeks were wet. “No one will help me,” she wailed. I put a hand on the rail, moved up a step. They said the Angel could kill with a touch.

“I haff to get inside, but he won’t let me. I try and try, but he’s so big and strong and I’m just a little girl.” She wiped at her nose. “None of the others even listen to me. And you won’t help me, you’re just a kid and you never listen to anybody. All you do is play nasty pranks.”

“I’m not like that,” I said. “Not . . . now.” I took another step, stooped a bit.

“I’d like to help you,” I said. “Let me go up there. There’s a friend of mine, a woman with no hair, and I’m afraid she might be in trouble.”

She rolled her eyes. “The bald lady? What kind of girl would make