Lock Every Door (ARC)

by Riley Sager

  “Please, Jules,” Nick says with a sigh. “Don’t become a problem patient. We can make the rest of your time here comfortable or extremely unpleasant. It’s up to you.”

  He leaves quickly after that, letting the pills remain on the floor. The cleanup job falls to Jeannette, who enters the room a minute later dressed in the same purple scrubs and gray cardigan she wore when we first spoke in the basement.

  She places new pills on the tray. When she bends down to pick up the ones on the floor, the cigarette lighter in her pocket slips from her cardigan pocket and joins them. Jeannette curses under her breath before shoving it back into her cardigan pocket.

  “Take the pills or get the needle again,” she says. “Your choice.”

  It’s not much of a choice, considering they share the same purpose, which is more than to simply ease my pain.

  It’s sedation.

  Sustained weakness.

  So when it comes time for the next donation, I’ll go quietly, without fuss.

  Staring at the pills, those two tiny eggs in a white-paper nest, I can’t help but think of my parents. They, too, had a choice—to continue fighting a battle they had no chance of winning or to willingly wrap themselves in the sweet embrace of nothingness.

  Now I face a similar decision. I can fight back and inevitably lose, making what little time I have left, to use Nick’s words, extremely unpleasant. Or I can make the same choice my parents did.

  Give up.

  Succumb.

  No more pain. No more problems. No more worry and heartache and constant wondering about Jane’s fate. Just a deep, painless slumber in which my family waits for me.

  I turn to their photo on the bedside table, their faces crisscrossed by cracks in the glass.

  Shattered frame. Shattered family.

  I look at them and know which choice to make.

  I grab the paper cup and tip it back.

  FOUR DAYS LATER

  48

  They keep the door closed. It’s also locked from the outside. During my rare bouts of wakefulness, I hear the click of the lock before anyone enters. Which is often. People are always coming and going. A veritable parade stomping through my drug-induced slumber.

  First up is Dr. Wagner, who checks my vitals and gives me my pills and a breakfast smoothie. I dutifully put the pills in my mouth. I don’t touch the smoothie.

  Next are Jeannette and Bernard, who wake me with their chatter while they change my bandages, replace the catheter, swap out the IV bag. From their conversation, I gather that this is a small operation. Just the two of them, Nick, Dr. Wagner, and a night nurse who’s in big trouble after I managed to slip out unnoticed.

  There are apparently three patient rooms, all of them currently occupied—a rarity, to hear Jeannette tell it. I’m in one. Greta’s in another. The third is occupied by Mr. Leonard, who only days earlier received a new heart.

  Although they never mention Dylan by name, I know where that heart came from. Just thinking about it beating inside frail and ancient Mr. Leonard’s stitched-up chest makes me shove a fist in my mouth to keep from screaming.

  When I do eventually fall asleep again, it’s with tears in my eyes.

  They’re still there when I’m startled awake I-don’t-know-how-many hours later by Greta Manville. The door unlocks, and there she is, no longer in a wheelchair but moving around with the help of a walker. She looks healthier than the last time I saw her. Not as pale and more robust.

  “I wanted to see how you’re doing,” she says.

  Even though I’m half-comatose from the little white pills, enough anger courses through me to produce two words.

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’m not proud of what I’ve done,” Greta says. “What my entire family has done, starting with my grandmother. I know you know about that, by the way. You’re smart enough to have figured it out by now. Then my parents. Kidney disease runs in the family. Both of my parents needed one. So when I needed one as well, I returned to this place, knowing its purpose. And its sins. You judge me harshly, I know. I deserve to be judged. Just as I deserve your hatred and your desire to see me dead.”

  The fog parts. A rare moment of clarity, fueled by anger and hatred. Greta was right about that.

  “I want you to live as long as possible,” I say. “Years and years. Because each day you’re alive means one more day you have to think about what you’ve done. And when the rest of your body starts to fail you—and it will, very soon—I hope that small piece of me that’s inside you keeps you alive just a little bit longer. Because death isn’t good enough for you.”

  I’m spent after that, sinking into the mattress like it’s quicksand. Greta remains by the bed.

  “Go away,” I moan.

  “Not yet. There’s a reason I’m here,” she says. “I’m being released to my apartment tomorrow. It’ll be more comfortable for me there. Dr. Nick says being in my own place will speed up my recovery. I thought you’d want to know.”

  “Why?”

  Greta shuffles to the door. Before closing it behind her, she takes one last look at me and says, “I think you already know the answer.”

  And I do, in a hazy, half-conscious way. Her departure means there’ll be room for someone else.

  Maybe Marianne Duncan.

  Maybe Charlie’s daughter.

  Which means I won’t be here by this time tomorrow.

  49

  I sleep.

  I wake.

  Bernard—he of the bright scrubs and no-longer-kind eyes—arrives with lunch and more pills. Because I’m too dazed to eat, he uses pillows to prop me up like a rag doll and spoon feeds me soup, rice pudding, and what I think is creamed spinach.

  The drugs have made me oddly chatty. “Where are you from?” I say, slurring my words like someone who’s had one too many drinks.

  “You don’t need to know that.”

  “I know I don’t need to. I want to.”

  “I’m not telling you anything,” he says.

  “At least tell me who you’re doing this for.”

  “You need to stop talking.”

  Bernard shovels more pudding into my mouth, hoping it will shut me up. It does only for as long as it takes for me to swallow.

  “You’re doing it for someone,” I say. “That’s why you’re here and not at, like, a regular hospital, right? They promised to help someone you love if you work for them? Like Charlie’s doing?”

  I’m given another mouthful of pudding. Rather than swallow, I let it drip from my lips, talking all the while.

  “You can tell me,” I say. “I won’t judge you. When my mother was dying, I would have done anything to save her life. Anything.”

  Bernard hesitates before answering in a soft murmur, “My father.”

  “What does he need?”

  “A liver.”

  “How much time does he have left?”

  “Not much.”

  “That’s a shame.” The sentence comes out mushy. A single, smushed word. Thassasham. “Does your father know what you’re doing?”

  Bernard scowls. “Of course not.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m not answering any more of your questions.”

  “I don’t blame you for not wanting to give false hope. Because you might be right here one day. Someone rich and famous and important will need a kidney. Or a liver. Or a heart. And if there’s no one like me around, they’ll take it from you.”

  I lift my hand and wave it around, weakly pointing in his general direction. After a second, it plops back onto the bed because I’m too weak to hold it up any longer than that.

  Bernard drops the spoon on the tray and pushes it aside. “We’re done here.”

  “Don’t be mad,” I say, slurring a bit. “I’m just saying. That deal you made? I don’t think it’s gonna stick.”

  Bernard thrusts the tiny paper cup at me, his hands shaking. “Shut up and take your pills.”

  I pop them into my mouth.<
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  50

  Hours later, I’m roused from my deep slumber by Jeannette, who unlocks the door before carrying in more food and yet more pills.

  I look at her, groggy and dazed. “Where did Bernard go?”

  “Home.”

  “Was it something I said?”

  “Yes.” Jeannette slides the tray in front of me. “You talk too much.”

  Dinner is the same as lunch. More soup. More creamed spinach. More pudding. The pills have made me surly, uncooperative. Jeannette has a hard time scooping even the slightest bit of soup into my mouth. I outright refuse to open my mouth for the spinach.

  It’s the rice pudding my pill-addled body craves. Willingly I open wide when Jeannette dips the spoon into it. But as she’s bringing it toward my mouth, I change my mind. My jaw clamps shut, and I suddenly turn away, pouting.

  The spoon hits my cheek, sending pudding splatting onto my neck and shoulder.

  “Look at this mess,” Jeannette mutters as she grabs a napkin. “Lord forgive me, but I can’t say I’ll be sad to see you go.”

  I lie completely still as she leans over me to mop up the spilled pudding. Sleep is already threatening to overtake me again. I’m almost completely unconscious when Jeannette nudges my shoulder.

  “You need to take your pills,” she says.

  My mouth falls open, and Jeannette drops the pills into it, one at a time. Then I’m asleep, closed fists at my sides, riding the narcotic fog until my mind is empty and blissful and at peace.

  When I hear the door’s lock click into place, I wait. Breathless. Counting the seconds. After a full minute has passed, I stuff my fingers into the far reaches of my mouth and fish out the pills. They emerge softened and slimy with saliva.

  I sit up, wincing with pain, and lift my pillow. Beneath the case, in the pillow itself, is the small tear I had created yesterday after talking to Nick. I shove the spit-slick pills into it, where they join the others. Eight of them in total. A whole day’s worth of little white pills.

  I replace the pillow and lie back down. I then unclench my fist and examine the cigarette lighter I had snatched after it fell from Jeannette’s cardigan pocket while she cleaned me.

  It’s made of cheap plastic. The kind you can pick up at a gas station for a dollar. Jeannette probably has two more sitting in her purse.

  She won’t miss this one.

  51

  I toss the blanket aside and slide my legs over the side of the bed, even though it hurts to move, hurts to breathe. Three sets of stitches pull at the skin of my abdomen.

  Before placing my feet on the floor, I pause.

  I’m not sure standing’s a good idea. Even if it is, I’m not sure I can. I am, for lack of a better word, in shambles. My legs tingle from disuse. The back of my hand is bleeding from when I plucked out the IV needle. Removing the catheter was even worse. Soreness pulses through my core, a counterpoint to the pain roaring along my stomach.

  Yet I attempt to stand anyway, sucking in air to steel myself against the pain before pushing off the bed. Then I’m up, somehow standing on those weak, wobbling legs.

  I take a step.

  Then another.

  And another.

  Soon I’m staggering across the room, the floor seeming to rock back and forth like a ship’s deck on a stormy sea. I sway with it, lurching from one side to the other, trying to stay upright. When the floor doesn’t stop moving, I grip the wall for support.

  But I keep walking, my joints crackling, as if I’m a freshly hatched chick, now shedding eggshell. The sound follows me all the way to the door, where I try the handle and discover it is indeed locked.

  So it’s back to the side of the bed, where I grab the photograph of my family. I press it against my chest with one hand while gripping Jeannette’s cigarette lighter in the other.

  With a flick of my thumb, there’s a flame, which I touch against the fitted sheet in the center of the bed. It ignites in an instant—a fire-ringed hole that grows exponentially. The flames soon reach the top sheet, and that, too, starts to burn. It’s the same with the mattress. Expanding circles of fire spreading into each other and then outward, all the way to the pillows, which pop into flame.

  I watch, squinting against the smoke, as the entire bed is engulfed. A rectangle of fire.

  Then, just as I had hoped, the fire alarm starts to blare.

  52

  It’s Dr. Wagner who enters the room first, drawn by the fire alarm’s literal siren’s call. Jeannette follows right behind him. They unlock the door and burst inside. Jeannette screams when she sees the flames on the bed now threatening to make the leap to the walls and ceiling.

  Because they’re too focused on the fire, neither of them sees me standing just behind the recently opened door.

  Nor do they see me slip out of the room.

  By the time they turn around to notice me, it’s too late.

  I’m already closing the door behind me and, with a quick turn of my wrist, locking them inside.

  53

  I walk as fast as I can, which isn’t very fast at all. Pain hobbles me—a fierce, stabbing ache that keeps me gasping. Still, slow walking is better than not being able to walk at all.

  Behind me, Dr. Wagner and Jeannette pound on the door from inside my room. In between their frantic knocks is the sound of Dr. Wagner coughing and Jeannette shrieking.

  To my left is a darkened doorway. Inside I see Mr. Leonard, dead to the world despite the racket coming from the room next door. Surrounding him is all manner of monitoring equipment, their lights disconcertingly festive. Like a strand of Christmas bulbs.

  I make my way to the nurses’ station, where I allow myself to pause for just a second to catch my breath. Just beyond it is another hospital room and the short corridor I took the first time I left this place. The corridor ends at a door that leads directly into Nick’s apartment. From there, I need to make it down the twelfth-floor hallway to the elevator. In my condition, taking the stairs isn’t an option.

  I push off the nurses’ station and am on my way to the corridor when the door at its end starts to open. I duck into the room to my left and press myself against the wall by the open doorway, hoping I haven’t been spotted.

  Outside, I hear the rapid click of heels.

  Leslie Evelyn.

  While waiting for her to pass, I scan the darkened room.

  That’s when I see Greta.

  She sits up in bed, startled, staring at me in fear.

  Her mouth drops open, on the knife’s edge of a scream.

  One sound from her could give me away, which is why I stare back, my eyes saucer-wide, silently begging her to stay quiet.

  I mouth a single word.

  Please.

  Greta’s mouth stays open while Leslie hurries past the door. She waits a few more seconds before finally speaking.

  “Go,” she says in a hoarse whisper. “Hurry.”

  54

  I wait to move until Leslie pushes open the door two rooms down. Smoke pours from the room, gray and heavy, filling the nurses’ station. I use it as cover while heading down the corridor. With each passing step, the pain seems to calm. I don’t know if it’s actually going away or if I’m just getting used to it. It doesn’t matter. I just need to keep moving.

  And I do.

  To the corridor’s end.

  Through the door left open by Leslie.

  Into Nick’s apartment.

  I close the door behind me, remembering how heavy it is, using a shoulder to nudge it back into place. When the door is finally closed, I spot the deadbolt in its center.

  I slide it shut.

  Satisfaction swells in my chest, although I harbor no illusions that Leslie and all the rest are now trapped. Surely there’s another way out of there. But it will certainly delay them, and I need all the time I can get.

  I hobble onward, exhaustion, pain, and adrenaline dancing through me. It’s a heady mix that makes me dizzy.

  When I
reach Nick’s kitchen, the whole place seems to be spinning. The cabinets. The counter with its wooden knife block. The doorway to the dining room and the night-darkened park outside the windows.

  The only thing not spinning is the painting of the ouroboros.

  It undulates.

  Like it’s about to slither right off the canvas.

  The snake’s flickering-flame eye watches me as I shuffle to the knife block on the counter and grab the biggest one.

  Having the knife in my hand chases away some of the disorientation. Like the pain, it lingers, but at a level low enough to push through. I need to escape this place. I owe it to my family.

  I look at the photograph still clutched to my chest. When faced with the decision to take those pills, I saw their faces and knew what my choice had to be.

  To fight.

  To live.

  To be the one member of my family who doesn’t vanish forever.

  I keep going, out of the kitchen, back into the hallway, where thin strands of smoke have started to make an appearance. Here the noise of the fire alarm is distant yet audible. A system separate from the rest of the building.

  The sound fades slightly as I head down the hallway. At the other end is Nick’s study, the bookcase at the far wall still open. Beyond it is 12A. The study. Then the hallway. Then a way out.

  Doors within doors within doors.

  I stagger toward them, oblivious to the smoke, the pain, the exhaustion, the dizziness. My sole focus is the bookcase in the study. Reaching it. Passing through it. But as I approach the open bookcase, I feel a sudden heat at my back.

  I whirl around to see Nick standing in a corner of the study.

  In his hands is Ingrid’s gun.

  He lifts it, aims it my way, and pulls the trigger.

  I close my eyes, wince, try to spend my last second on earth thinking about my family and how much I miss them and how I hope there’s some way to see them in the afterlife. In that fraught, fearful darkness, I hear a metallic click.