Shadow Tag, Perdition Games

by L E Fraser

  “You know a lot about it,” Eli said.

  “My sister had autism,” she said. “Pearl and I grew up on the bayou in Louisiana.”

  Eli didn’t relish the thought of being alone, and he found he was becoming more at ease with Ophelia. He wasn’t suffering the usual stress associated with having to analyse every phrase he uttered, constantly trying to assess whether he’d offended his audience. Maybe he could get her to stay for a bit, just until he felt more settled. He sorted through his minimal understanding of social nuances. Danny had taught him that asking a personal question helped to bridge relationships. He’d try that strategy.

  “Is it nice in Louisiana?” he began. But maybe a yes or no question wouldn’t work. “What is it like there?” he quickly added, giving his elastic another hearty snap.

  “We lived on an isolated property on the Bayou Teche, outside Breaux Bridge,” she said. “My dad and I would bait crawfish traps every morning, and my mother would tell us stories of her childhood in Savannah.” A resounding sadness in her eyes was so apparent that even Eli recognized it. “In the evenings, Pearl and I would take our mud boat into the bayou and watch the sun set. The water was very still, and the sun would cover it in brilliant streaks of gold and fuchsia.”

  “Do Pearl and your parents still live there?” he asked.

  She wrapped her arms around her waist and gazed out the window with a faraway look in her eyes. “They’re waiting for me beneath an ancient bald cypress tree draped in lacy Spanish moss,” she said wistfully. “On humid summer afternoons, Pearl and I would sit beneath that cypress tree. She had long, platinum hair, and I’d comb coconut oil through it until it shone silver in the sun. Her fingers would tap the rhythm of the birds’ songs, and her laughter would soothe my soul. We were happy then.”

  Her obvious melancholy unnerved Eli. She appeared about to cry, and he hoped she didn’t. He was not good at comforting people.

  “Go home and visit them,” he said clumsily.

  “Someday I’ll fly o’er the bayou to my beloved Pearl,” she said. “I still need to make the world a better place for people like you, who live with a special need. Imagine a world where the entitled are the ones who are marginalized, the ones who live in fear of scorn.” She bowed her head. “You shouldn’t be here, Eli. I wish your sister hadn’t brought you here.”

  Eli worried that she was judging Danny harshly. “Danny and I are like you and Pearl. She understands me and keeps me safe.” Realizing he was nervously tapping his fingers in the air again, he sat on his hands. “Just like you understand Pearl and keep her safe.”

  An expression of deep sorrow crossed Ophelia’s face, so intense that, again, Eli could read it. “You remind me so much of her. Pearl would have liked you,” she said. “I failed her, but you’ll be okay, Eli. I’ll protect you.”

  He felt a fusion of fear and apprehension. “Protect me from what?”

  “There’s something very wrong in here, and I only know a small part of it.” She studied him earnestly. “Trust only the woman who was with me when we met. Her name is Sam McNamara. If I can’t protect you, she can.”

  Eli’s mind whirled at warp speed. Before he could sort out his next question, Ophelia stood and went to the door.

  With her back to him, she said softly, “Wealthy patients get worse in here, Eli.” She held her keycard to the reader, a green light flashed. She opened the door and stepped through it, and there was a soft click as it closed again behind her.

  Now it was on. He was locked in and trapped. Panic swelled in Eli’s chest. It was suddenly hard to breathe and he lurched over to the window, knowing it wouldn’t open but trying anyway. He took a deep breath through his nose and released it slowly through his mouth.

  “This is bad. This is not good. This is very bad,” he muttered.

  His duffel bag sat like a giant cockroach on the fancy quilt that covered the bed. It irritated him that Ophelia hadn’t searched it or made him change out of his street clothes like Sam had warned. He could have brought his phone with him, rather than waiting for Sam to deliver it. It was lucky, however, that Ophelia hadn’t searched his clothes. He’d disobeyed Sam and Reece and had brought his pocketknife with him. His foster father had given it to him for his eighteenth birthday, and he never went anywhere without it.

  The air seemed close, and the stench of disinfectant was making him nauseous. He went into the bathroom to splash cold water on his face. There was no stopper for the sink. Above the vanity was a large mirror. He rapped it with his knuckles. It wasn’t glass, maybe acrylic or some other unbreakable material.

  Eli wandered back into the bedroom, and looked up at the grill of the air vent in the ceiling.

  “There is lots of air,” he muttered, but his body wasn’t listening to his voice of reason. His lungs felt tight, and butterflies were convulsing in his stomach.

  There was a call button for the nurse by the side of the bed. He wanted to press it and demand to see Danny so she could get him out. Was less than two hours in a locked room going to be his downfall?

  Well, yes. Yes it was.

  Just as he was reaching a trembling finger toward the call button, the door clicked open. Eli jerked back and spun around.

  Sam slid into the room, closing the door quickly behind her.

  “Where have you been?” Eli squeaked. “I am totally freaking out.” He held out a quivering hand for his security blanket. “Give me my phone!”

  She handed it over and he quickly swiped in his password. A wave of calm engulfed him as the screen lit up, connecting him to the outside world. He cradled the phone in his open palm, and its solid weight soothed his nerves.

  “I’ve been trying to find a rehab patient,” Sam explained. “Someone gave her ketamine. Bethany claims this ‘fox’ took the missing girls.”

  “Whoever it is must also be giving Fadiya ketamine,” Eli said. “It must be the man who pretends to be a brother and brings the perverts to Fadiya’s room. Bethany could identify him.”

  “And now she’s missing,” Sam said grimly and handed him a blank white keycard. “Aazar said he cloned it from Dr. Armstrong’s card. It opens all the clinic’s doors.”

  Eli snatched the card out of her hand and marched to the door to test it. The reader light glowed green and he heard the lock click open. The claustrophobia that had plagued him since his arrival in the room vanished.

  He quickly told Sam about Ophelia’s southern accent and then repeated what she’d said, repeating every word verbatim.

  “So, she knows something’s wrong in here,” Sam said. “Did she elaborate on what exactly she knows?”

  He shook his head.

  “I never noticed an accent. It’s weird that she hides it,” Sam said. “The conversation you described doesn’t sound anything like Ophelia.”

  Eli shrugged. “Why does she wear one coloured contact lens?” he asked.

  Sam frowned. “She does?”

  “The brown one. The lens moved when she looked out the window,” he said, curious about why someone would want to have different-coloured eyes.

  Sam thought quietly. “It’s a brilliant way to alter your appearance,” she said at last. “Pretty much all you notice about Ophelia is the heterochromia.”

  “I like her. She is nice,” Eli said.

  “She is?” Sam asked.

  He nodded. “I think her sister is dead.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Ophelia said she had failed Pearl, and she used past-tense verbs while talking about her sister.” He couldn’t read subtext in language, but he had no trouble with direct statements. He often thought life would be easier—probably for everyone—if people spoke frankly. “She said ‘Pearl would have liked you’,” he repeated. “So, I think Pearl is dead.” For some odd reason, it troubled Eli that Pearl was no longer listening to birds singing in the high branches of the ancient cypress tree. “I think something bad happened to her.�
� He couldn’t explain why he thought that, so he didn’t bother trying to justify his feeling.

  “Listen, I need to go and see if anyone has found Bethany. Then I’ll go home and check in with Reece and Danny. Are you going to be okay?”

  He nodded, hoping he wasn’t going to flip out the second he was alone again.

  Sam partially opened the door and poked out her head to glance furtively into the hallway. “It’s only nine o’clock, but you better grab a nap. It could be a long night,” she said quietly and softly latched the door behind her.

  Right, like he would be napping in a locked room in a psychiatric hospital.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Eli

  ELI JERKED AWAKE. Darkness surrounded him. He blinked rapidly, uncertain where he was. A cloying scent of disinfectant hit him.

  Right, he was in Serenity Clinic in a private room on the lockdown unit.

  The digital clock on the nightstand read one-twenty-eight in the morning. He couldn’t believe he’d fallen asleep. This was his first undercover mission and he was acting like an amateur. No wonder Reece had opposed the idea of sending him to protect Fadiya.

  Filled with self-disgust, Eli scrubbed his face with his hands, feeling the familiar scratch of his neatly trimmed goatee against his palms. He grabbed his phone and sent Danny a text. Before he’d fallen asleep, he’d sent numerous messages until she’d ordered him to leave her alone unless it was important. Telling her everything was fine wasn’t important but he felt less isolated by reaching out.

  He lay in the darkness, dreading the next few hours. The time between two and four in the morning freaked him out. These were the witching hours—a time when demons were most powerful. When he was nine, a bully at one of the group homes had shared that nugget of unwanted information. It had stuck in his head more than the beatings and ridicule had.

  He thought he heard something and sat up, straining to identify the noise. He eased off the bed and tiptoed to the door, pressing his ear against the heavy metal. There were muffled voices in the hallway, close to Fadiya’s room. He couldn’t distinguish words, but he definitely heard the cadence of speech. A whispered argument, maybe. Probably just nurses, but Eli didn’t like that they were outside Fadiya’s room. Unlocking his door to peek was too big a risk. If the people were standing close to his door, they’d hear the click when the lock released. He waited anxiously, wondering what he should do.

  After a minute, a door slammed. The noise was too loud for a room door. It must have come from the self-closing fire door that accessed the stairwell. Eli counted slowly to thirty and heard nothing more from the hallway. Holding his breath, he tapped the white plastic card against the reader. The click of the lock sounded deafening in the silence. He nervously turned the knob, opened the door a couple of centimetres, and peered into the lit corridor. About two metres from his room, on the opposite side of the hallway, a figure in a long beige robe stood outside Fadiya’s room door. A hood concealed the person’s face and Eli couldn’t get a sense of gender because of the loose fabric of the garment. As he watched, the person walked to the fire door, opened it, and disappeared into the stairwell.

  Here was his opportunity to prove his investigative prowess to Sam and Reece. Eli eagerly typed a text to Danny.

  Someone in a hemp robe outside Fadiya’s room. Went down the stairs. In pursuit.

  He silenced his phone, tucked it into the back pocket of his jeans, and dashed to the stairwell door. He jammed his keycard against the reader, hoping Aazar was right and the cloned card accessed all the doors. The box flashed green and the door clicked. Relieved, Eli slipped into the stairwell and eased the door shut. There were footfalls on the stairs below him. He snuck a look over the banister and caught a flash of beige. The person was moving fast. Eli descended the stairs, pausing at the second-floor landing to listen for the sound of a door closing below him. He continued to the first floor and his anxiety rose. Still no echo from a latching door. Then it hit him. They were escaping through the basement level. There must be a connection to the underground parking garage. If the robed figure made it to a car in the garage, Eli wouldn’t be able to follow.

  Apprehension churned in his stomach as he dashed down to the last landing. To the left of the door, the staircase continued down. A sign screwed into the cement wall read Restricted Access. Below him, he finally heard a door slam. The stairs must lead to a floor below the basement but Eli hadn’t seen a sub-basement in the renovation plans.

  The blueprint of the hospital renovation rose in his mind. He studied the rotating 3D schematic of the clinic and overlaid it across an image of the circa-1900 blueprints. There was a cellar in the original building. It wasn’t part of Serenity’s renovation plan, which was how he’d missed it.

  Ignoring the Restricted Access sign, Eli sprinted down the stairs. At the bottom was a heavy grey door. Ribbons of rust ran through deep scratches and dents in the old paint. Affixed to the centre was a large white sign with red letters that spelled Danger. Below the sign was a D-1 symbol, a circled graphic of a skull and crossbones.

  Eli hesitated, with his right hand on the door handle and his left holding the security keycard. A class D-1 symbol meant that beyond the door were toxic materials. But this was a psychiatric hospital. Whatever danger lay behind the door couldn’t be that bad. Maybe Serenity Clinic had posted a higher warning than necessary to discourage employees from entering an unsafe area. Given the age of the building, it made sense that a Victorian-era cellar would be a health hazard. Coal had been the primary heat source in Toronto during that time and the building’s sub-basement had probably housed the old boilers. Coal dust was a physical toxicant, so that must be the reason for the symbol, he told himself. He wouldn’t be down there long enough to cause a health issue.

  Eli flicked his card against the reader and it flashed green. He shoved the door open a crack and peered into the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. The only light was from a few low wattage bulbs that hung from frayed cords. Toward the back of the vast space, a light bobbed along what looked like a wide corridor. Eli slipped through the door and eased it closed behind him. The cavernous area smelt dank and musty. The massive, antiquated boilers cast eerie shadows in the dim light. Rusted pipes ascended from the heavy machinery to the ceiling. Beneath his feet, crumbling sandstone and bricks littered the packed-dirt floor.

  Eli tugged out his cell phone. No service. He fiddled with the settings to no avail. The thick sandstone and brick walls, plus the fact he was underground, created a dead zone. Danny’s location-positioning app wouldn’t be able to find his phone. He hesitated by the door, snapping the elastic against his wrist to quell his rising unease. His law enforcement training screamed at him to leave, find service, and alert Danny to his location. He could wait outside the door and identify the person when they exited the sub-basement.

  But the person had to have a reason for coming down here. There had to be something in this desolate space. He stood motionless, chewing on his lower lip as he studied the giant boilers. It took a lot of fuel to run them. Back in the day, how did they transport tons of coal to a sub-basement? Then it hit him. Some of these old buildings had tunnels with rail links to connect the boiler room to a surface area where wagons delivered the coal. While he was standing around like a loser, his perpetrator could be escaping through a tunnel. No way was Eli going to blow his chance at proving his value to Sam and Reece by letting the person escape.

  Decision made, he dimmed the brightness on his cellphone flashlight so he could make out where he was going without exposing his location. He inched down the dimly lit corridor between the boilers, stepping over the occasional chunk of bituminous coal that had escaped a sweeper’s eye. He snuck forward, circled a vintage coal cart, and abruptly froze. A light was bouncing toward him. The person was returning to the hospital exit. Eli frantically looked around for a hiding spot. There were no crevices around the colossal boilers large enough to conceal him. His ey
es fell on the rusted coal cart. If he sat on his shins and tucked his head against his knees, it should be deep enough to hide him. His black shirt would add extra camouflage in the shadowy darkness. Eli quickly climbed in, cringing as ancient coal residue coated his hands. He pulled the neck of his black T-shirt over his nose and breathed shallowly through his mouth. Footsteps drew closer and stopped about a metre from his hiding spot.

  “Pick up in an hour,” said a male voice. There was a pause. “She's fifteen, but looks thirteen. You’ll get a good price on auction.” There was another, longer pause. “No one cares about this one so they won’t look for her.”

  The man was talking about a girl. Eli’s heart galloped in his chest. He tried to memorize the man’s voice so he could identify it later.

  “It’s too risky. The family hired round-the-clock nursing. You shouldn’t have sent me that regular tonight. I had to send him packing.”

  He had to be talking about Fadiya. Eli clenched his fists, digging his nails into his palms. Some asshole had expected to rape Fadiya tonight. That must have been the argument Eli had overheard.

  “Make it work. I need this girl out of here tonight.”

  Another pause.

  “I have to check in upstairs but I’ll meet you in the room in exactly one hour. I want the full payment or you don’t take her.”

  He grunted in response to something, and then continued speaking. “This is the last one. That detective bitch is asking too many questions.”

  The man began walking again. His footsteps faded and a door closed.

  Eli climbed out of the coal cart and brightened his phone light, scanning the beam down the aisle toward the back of the cellar.

  This was huge. If he aided in shutting down a human trafficking ring, he’d earn validation. No one would ever doubt his investigative abilities again.

  He hurried down the wide aisle to the rear of the sub-basement. In a corner was a walled alcove with two wooden doors. The dirt floor around the doors was black with coal dust. Beneath the caked grime were metal tracks inlaid into the packed dirt. This must be the old coal room. The men would shovel the coal into a cart and run it along the tracks to get it to the boilers. If he were right, then a chute or a tunnel would lead to the surface to accommodate the coal delivery. That was the way the sex traders removed the abducted girls from the hospital and escorted in the degenerates who paid to rape Fadiya.