Light Through the Window

by Cassandra Morphy

  "Alex, are you alright?" George asked, once they were all outside. "I'm so sorry."

  "Why?" Alex asked, dropping the facade as easily as she had donned it. "You do remember that we're not actually here to see anyone, right?"

  "That's my Alex for you," Ellie said. "Able to pull tears out of nowhere at the drop of a hat."

  "Yea. Can this Mare of yours do that?"

  "Actually, yes. She can. And much better, I might add. She probably would have gotten the file out of the old woman."

  "Oh, come off it. No one is that good. She already gave us more than she wanted to."

  "You seem to forget that it was the entire point of that school, to teach people to lie like the best of them. Besides, it wouldn't have mattered if we got that file or not."

  "Why not?" Becky asked. "We need that information, don't we?"

  "What we need is access to the records room," Ellie said. "And we'll be getting that tonight."

  "Uh, I wouldn't be so sure," Becky said. "It's a psych hospital. Someone is going to be in that back room all night, in case someone is brought in."

  "Wait, what?" Ellie asked. "Crap, really? So, the front door is out. And, it's probably too late to get access to the library or file clerk's office or wherever they have building blueprints in this backwater town. Seriously, why on earth would she have been committed here, of all places?"

  "Maybe she's from here," Becky said. "We could try slipping into the clerk's office to see if they have a census or something that she'd be on or check the old newspapers or something. Maybe she had a habit of dancing through the streets naked. That might get someone committed in a place like this."

  "Oh, we're going to be breaking into this place, tonight," Ellie said. "I just need to figure out how."

  With one last glance towards the doors, making sure that they couldn't be seen by the old woman, Ellie headed off to circle the building. Now that she knew the front door wasn't going to be an option, she had to find another point of entry for their nightly activities.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  More Crime

  Ellie was hiding out in the woods that surrounded the building. She had already used that cover to do a circuit around the building, looking for all possible entry points and places where people might be watching them from. Other than the front door, there were three emergency exits, one on each side of the building than the front. None of them seemed like a good point of entry. The emergency exits were the usual type, with no handle on the outside and no way of unlatching them. Plus, they would no doubt set off an alarm when opened.

  Instead, she settled on one of the windows on the ground floor. It was not too far over from the back emergency exit and low to the ground. To her, it seemed like the window led into a basement, somewhere beneath the back room she had seen from inside. It was exactly where a records room should be.

  Alex and George had taken the truck to go check into the hotel. It was just Becky and her again as they were looking at breaking into another target. Becky was sitting on a log next to her, watching the windows above their intended entry. The night had already settled in, dropping the area into darkness. But the windows of the building stayed lit the entire time, bathing the area in light and keeping them to the relative cover of the trees.

  "So, what are you thinking?" Becky asked. Her voice, muted as it was, disturbed the silence, startling Ellie. She jumped a little, pushing herself upwards from the ground where she was lying, as if she were about to flee. "Sorry," Becky muttered.

  "I'm thinking we wait until after midnight," Ellie said, ignoring her reaction and the comment it prompted. "It's only another hour or so. By then, Alex and George will be back in the parking lot out front. We'll have a quick getaway if we need one. Plus, anyone inside that would be sleeping at all tonight will be, so we'll have less people to worry about disturbing our efforts."

  "You do realize how crazy this whole thing is, right? I mean, we're breaking into a psych hospital because three of the parents of the crazy cult that you're worried is out to recruit you were here."

  "That is the long and short of it, yes. And, yes, I'm aware it's a bit crazy. Don't you think I know that I'd probably be better off checking myself into a place like this rather than breaking in? I just... If this is nothing, if it's all in my head, I'd do that. But..."

  "It's not just in your head. I know. It's weird. I still don't know what you're seeing, or sensing, or whatever, because you won't tell me. I know it's something, something strong and powerful enough to have you so worried about them. They are acting weird, though, I'll give you that, and that weirdness is being directed at you. It's just... I don't know, maybe if I saw someone start acting weird, someone that I knew as normal before all this, then I'd think it something to worry about."

  Ellie hadn't told anyone in the group about the girl from the night of the first break in just yet. She knew that, whatever happened to her that day, it must have changed her into one of them. Sitting there in the darkness, she almost told Becky about it. She had seen her, had met her. She would have known that she had been normal before that night. But the words wouldn't come to her, wouldn't form in a way that would let her keep her secret.

  "That's just it, though. Sam was acting normal, or at least normal enough for Alex. She trusted him, liked him even."

  "Yea, I liked Barry. That doesn't mean much, I guess."

  "Wait," Ellie said. She raised her hand to stay the conversation, pointing out with her other hand towards the window off to the side of their target. "The light just went off in the office."

  "So? They'll probably be back. Maybe the receptionist is out by the desk and it's on one of those motion detector timer things."

  "Or, maybe we can get in before anyone spots us. No one is watching out of those windows. It's clear across. You know what, stay here. Watch my back. Text me if you see anyone looking out or if the light goes back on."

  "Ellie, wait," Becky said, but Ellie was already in motion towards the window.

  The back of the building sported the employees' parking lot, which had a dozen or so cars spaced throughout the area. The cars gave her some cover, but she didn't think she needed it. Instead, she just flat out ran across the distance between the woods and back window, clearing it in a few seconds.

  When she got to the window, her assumptions about it proved to be true. Instead of a proper window, it was just a basement hopper, barely tall enough to let her through. Her new glass cutter was already in her hand. She had bought it along the way, on the first snack break. It had slipped easily out of her bag, which was turning into a decent replacement for the one she left back at boarding school. She barely glanced over at the window into the back office before attacking the glass. Not wanting to spend the time on a larger cut, she went with just the small circle around the middle of the window, hoping the clasp was in the usual spot. It took her a few circuits of the circle before it fell free from the rest of the glass, falling inward and crashing against the cement of the basement. She reached her hand into the opening, feeling around for the clasp. It took her only a moment, but that moment let all manner of ideas play out through her head of what would happen to her hand if she didn't find it.

  With the hopper pulled out and up, she was able to slip her head into the window. She didn't want to end up all the way in, only to have her head stuck on the outside with the rest of her body held up by her neck. Instead, she slithered in under the window until she was able to get her arms and hands free to pull herself forward. There was a moment of panic when the window fell down again, trapping her butt outside. Three quick tugs had her falling forward, free falling towards the cement. She let out a little squeak as she fell, before landing awkwardly on her side.

  "Ow," she muttered. She pulled herself up to her feet, barely noticing the fresh flow of blood from her stomach, where her shirt didn't quite meet up with her jeans. As she stepped away from the window, she kicked the piece of glass that she fell on away from her. It clattered across t
he cement, spilling her blood all across the floor.

  The lights weren't on in the room; what little she could see was from the ambient light from outside, supplied by the moon and the windows above. She pulled out her cell phone, flipping the flashlight function on in one fluid movement, bathing the area in light. Along the wall behind her, and all the walls of the room, were lines of filing cabinets. She hadn't noticed the one she had climbed down. It was the same height as the window, so she had just thought it an extension of it. In the center of the room were several shelves, filled with boxes of more files.

  "Great," Ellie said, looking around at everything that she was going to have to search through. "Just great. I'm going to be here all night and still not find anything."

  She gave herself a few seconds to feel down about the situation before getting to work. Each of the filing cabinets had a year printed in the label slots, ranging from 1970 to 2010, with the usual letter range beneath it. Each year had its own filing cabinet, with the spillover going into the boxes on the shelves. Unfortunately, without knowing the year that Natalie had first been admitted, or however the years were related to her, she was stuck searching each cabinet one at a time. She skipped the earlier years, jumping over to the 1990's, but it wasn't until the 2003 cabinet that she found what she was looking for.

  Natalie Jennings's file was huge, about the size of an abridged dictionary. It took Ellie several tries to pull it loose from the drawer, as it had slipped down from the bars on the sides. Once it was free, she looked around her, trying to find some place that she could set it down to at least skim through it. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, but she was hoping for a list of other patients she hung around with. Other patients that could be Sam's dad or the others that had started whatever the group was. Ellie ended up pushing aside one of the boxes on the shelves so she could use the free space to work with.

  It was awkward, holding the cell phone so she could see what she was doing while flipping through the file. She skipped all the way to the end, hoping something there would be more helpful than her original commitment, back in '82. All she had caught from that first page was that Natalie had been committed soon after the death of her father. The back few pages weren't that much helpful either. Her doctor at the time, a Dr. Mendez, was working to get her released. He claimed that she was well again, that her mental issues had disappeared soon after her latest commitment. However, there were legal issues that kept Natalie in the hospital indefinitely. The notes suddenly cut off near late November in 2003, with no explanation.

  "Great," Ellie muttered again.

  Suddenly, a loud bang came from the door to the room. Ellie jumped in startlement, her phone slipping from her fingers. She just barely managed to grab it again before it hit the hard floor. But she stayed down there, ducked behind the boxes, trying to see the door through them. After a moment, she remembered to turn off the flashlight on her phone, drowning the area back into darkness. Her eyes took a few seconds to adjust to the ambient light again. In that time, the door remained closed, and she no longer heard anything from the other side.

  Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, she jumped back up from her crouch and got to work. She pulled the email that Mr. Wentworth had sent her to get the names of the other two parents that were known to have been there. Their files were, conveniently enough, in the same filing cabinet, so she was able to pull all three out and rush to the window to make her escape.

  "Hey," Becky said, her face filling the window when Ellie came over to it.

  "Don't do that," Ellie whispered harshly. She pushed the files through the window one at a time. The other two weren't as thick as Natalie's, but she didn't want them getting stuck in there anyway. "Help me up."

  "Maybe you should try the front door," Becky said, looking down at the area inside the room. The filing cabinet was taller than Ellie, which made it difficult to climb up on it.

  "Oh, shut up." Ellie pulled open the bottom drawer to the filing cabinet in front of the window, using the extra height to pull herself up on top of it. It meant leaving the drawer open as she made her escape. But, between the broken glass and the missing files, there was no avoiding letting them know that someone was there. Once she was on top of the filing cabinet, it was a lot easier getting out than it had been getting in. Becky held the window open for her, giving her that much more space to work with.

  "You get everything?" Becky asked.

  "No, but I got what we're going to get. Come on. Let's get out of here. Is Alex and George back yet?"

  "Not yet. I was coming to tell you, I think there's someone doing a search around the outside of the building."

  "What?" Ellie asked, her eyes going wide. She looked both ways along the outside of the building but didn't see anyone.

  "Yea, someone had come out the back door earlier. Nearly gave me a heart attack, because it looked like he was going to move towards the window, but then he went the other way. I had to wait until he turned the corner to come warn you."

  "Why didn't you text me? I could have been caught."

  "Oh, uh... I forgot. Sorry."

  "Fine, never mind. Let's just get out of here."

  Becky lifted the three files in one hand, giving her a look that said she had been waiting on her. The two of them ran towards the woods, once again using it for cover from the prying eyes of the building. It was only seconds after they made the trees that Ellie saw a flashlight, panning out across the back parking lot. Not too far away from the flashlight was a single red dot, barely noticeable next to the much brighter light. Right before the light got to the back door, it shut off. The man stood there, next to the door, for a few more minutes. His position would have been right outside the window that Ellie had only just escaped through. As Ellie's eyes adjusted to the low ambient light again, she was able to make out the man's face, along with the lit cigarette that was in his mouth.

  "Yea, I don't think that's a security guard," Ellie said. "I think it's just a dumb smoker."

  "Do people still do that?" Becky asked. She stuck her tongue out in disgust at the very thought of it.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  The Hotel

  Once the smoker went back inside, they made their way around the building, sticking to the trees once more. As they came around to the visitors' parking lot, a pair of headlights were cutting their way through the night. Ellie, reflexively, ducked down behind a tree, not realizing that it was likely Alex and George until she could make out their faces in the windshield. They had driven the truck right up to where she was hiding, though she wasn't sure if they had spotted her or that she had made it back to the planned rendezvous.

  "Get in," Alex whispered, harshly into the night. The windows were rolled down, letting the cool night air into the hot truck. The truck didn't have a working air conditioner, which made the drive almost unbearable.

  Becky rushed brazenly from the cover of the woods to the truck, not even looking to see if anyone was watching from the building. After the reaction to her last break in, and the near miss of the smoker, Ellie wasn't so reckless. She watched the building for almost a minute before slipping from the trees and jumping in the back seat, right next to Becky. As soon as she slammed the door shut, Alex was peeling out of the parking lot, the tires screeching against the asphalt.

  "Maybe make a little more noise," Ellie said.

  "Want me to honk a few times as we pass the door?" Alex asked.

  "Let's just get out of here. Maybe it'll be better to drive through the night instead of going back to the hotel."

  "No way. I paid good money for that room."

  "Wait, room? As in singular?" Becky asked.

  "Yea, we couldn't afford more than one," George said. "There are two beds, though, so it won't be that cramped."

  "Uh... no. I'm not sharing a bed with any of you guys," Becky said. "No offense."

  "There's also a lounge chair in the corner," George said. "I've claimed that. That just leaves these two to shar
e a bed, something I imagine they've done before."

  Ellie gulped audibly. They had, indeed, shared a bed before, though not since they broke up. She noticed Alex's eyes dart her way through the rearview mirror. They spoke of a large smile hidden beneath them. If she didn't know better, if she didn't know that they were all broke college kids, she might have thought that Alex had planned the whole thing for just that result. But it was probably too late to use her emergency card to get her own room once they got there.

  "Did we get anything at least?" George asked.

  "Yea, I'd hate to think this trip was for nothing," Alex said.

  "It wasn't for nothing," Ellie said. "George got his first out of state road trip. You got to stick it to your old man. Not sure what Becky got out of all of this, but she doesn't seem so upset about it."

  "It was fun. I like breaking and entering, as long as I don't have to do either."

  "And, I got three dusty old files," Ellie said. "I'm not sure what, if anything, we'll get out of it. But I figure we can read them over once we get to the hotel."

  "Uh, no way," Alex said. "It's almost midnight, the hotel is a good twenty minutes away from here, and we have to drive back tomorrow. I'm going straight to bed when we get to the hotel."

  "I'd at least want to get something to eat," Ellie said. "I haven't had anything today but junk food."

  "Well, if you had come with us to check into the hotel, like we had suggested, you could have gotten dinner with us. But, no, you wanted to hang out in the woods all evening."

  "If we hadn't, we wouldn't have managed to get anything," Becky said. "The crime part of this trip is over."

  "Unless we find something in the files that says we need to go back there," Ellie said. "I was trying to find a list of the people that they hung out with, but then that guy came out the back at the worst time possible. We can go by there again before heading home tomorrow."