by Ike Hamill
Stephen went for the couch and forgot about the door behind him. It closed on a spring and clicked shut, leaving him in total darkness. His breath caught somewhere in his throat. He tried not to imagine what could be popping out from behind a corner or sneaking up on him. He was just about to make his way back to the door when he steadied himself and decided to keep going. Once he got to the couch, he could find a light somewhere, he figured.
He continued a couple more steps until he reached the couch and then worked his way down its length. It ended several feet from the wall and just past the back of the couch, Stephen’s outstretched hand struck the upright pole of a floor lamp. He fumbled with the shade and turned the dial.
By the dim light he saw more than he wanted to see. The couch sat in front of a low coffee table and faced a long section of wall. Pictures and documents had been pinned to the wall. He recognized Ben’s family immediately. A picture of Ben’s mom occupied the upper-left, and was followed by Matt, Ben’s dad, and then Ben. He used to wear his hair like a helmet, but this picture showed Ben’s more recent crewcut.
Stephen approached and looked at the documents pinned alongside the pictures. Some looked like invoices from doctors, and others appeared to be printouts of emails. He couldn’t discern the significance of the individual papers, but understood implication of the sum of them. The man must be planning to do, or have already done, something to Ben and his family.
His panic spiked and he spun around to see if there was another wall containing information on him. He expected to see the face of his mother looking back from a eight-by-ten inch photo on the wall behind him, but he found nothing but a blank wall. Still shaken, he returned to looking at the information about Ben. He tore himself away from the wall to look for a solution to his own problems.
Around a corner, a short hall led to another door. Stephen saw that it locked both at the handle and with a deadbolt. Hope sprung up — he remembered one of the doors on the other hall had a lock like this.
He gripped the doorknob with his left hand and the deadbolt with his right. He meant to turn it slowly and soundlessly, but halfway through the turn it picked up speed and made a loud click. Stephen cringed. He tried to turn the door handle, but it wouldn’t move. The knob had a lock as well. He turned the handle-lock and pulled open the door.
The hall was painfully bright, and Stephen recognized it. Across the hall a door stood mostly closed, but he thought it must be the pole room. If he looked to his left he would see a dead man in a pool of dark blood. He didn’t want to see that man again, but looked anyway, to confirm his assumption.
The blood was there, but the man was gone. He saw the open door to the exam room, a big pool of blood, and bloody footprints leading down the hall, but no body. Stephen pulled his head back through the doorway and closed the door most of the way. He wondered if Jack had only injured the man — could that be the same man holding Jack now? He shook his head. Anyone who had lost that much blood wouldn't be walking around.
Stephen took a few deep breaths and braced himself to enter the hallway. He pulled open the door, checked to make sure that it would open from the outside, and stepped into the bright hall. He looked left and right and then headed left towards the puddle of blood. Looking at the bloody footprints which led down the hall he almost ignored the drips that trailed towards the other exam room. He stopped before his feet hit the wet blood and followed the streaks with his eyes. They curved away from the puddle and described a big arc through the door to the exam room.
He wanted to go into the exam room to look for the gun. He managed a shallow breath and smelled the blood in the air. The drips continued through the doorway and over to the bathtub mounted near the wall. From his angle, he could see a single dark sneaker poking up above the lip of the tub.
Taking care to step around the drips on the floor he approached slowly, craning his neck to see over the edge of the tub. His head swam and he felt nauseous; he tasted acrid spit in anticipation of his rising vomit. Stephen turned away and looked at the opposite wall, trying not to think about the dead guy. He imagined the dead man slinking out of the tub to creep up behind him.
Stephen shielded his eyes from the bright lights and bent over. An image of his dad swam before his lidded eyes. His dad said once — “It doesn’t matter if I’m right, because I know how to be loud.” He spun this around in his head, trying to figure out how it might apply to his current situation, but he ended up with nothing.
He opened his eyes and saw that he had one good piece of luck — the gun sat just under the chair in the center of the room. Stephen stole a glance back to the tub to be sure the dead guy hadn’t moved, and then shuffled forward to grab the gun. He flicked the safety back and forth until he was sure it was off and then tucked the gun into his front pocket with the handle sticking out. It felt uncomfortable against his hip, but very comforting. He turned to the door and prepared to go back out into the hall. Another sideways glance confirmed that the man in the tub remained dead. He forced himself to take a step backwards and pick up his pack from where Jack had left it.
First, he poked his head out and then he swung through the door frame, still trying to avoid stepping in the aromatic blood. The only things to his left were the room with the pole, and the supply closet. Stephen thought for a second and then went left to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten anything. He intended to never return to this hotel.
Back at the doorway to the exam room, he had to take a large, diagonal step across the hall to clear the puddle. He found bloody footprints that coursed back and forth to the next door down the hall.
Stephen found himself completely unprepared for the rude pile of fingers below the door. Heaped against the wall, smeared in blood, he saw two severed fingers and a thumb. He hurried past this wreckage and tried the other doors in the hall. They were all locked.
Stephen came back to the finger-door and considered the mess. They were too big to be Jack’s. It was pretty clear, once he thought about it — this door must require a finger scan and Jack had tried these fingers.
He looked at the finger pile again and then squeezed his eyes shut. He tilted his head back. He didn't have many options. He couldn't trust Jack, and probably couldn't get out of the hotel without Jack’s help. Even the gun wouldn't help him climb a pole or get through a locked door.
When Stephen found the will to go on, it came from an unexpected source. He thought of Ben. He wondered if the crazy guy had killed Ben and Ben’s family. Could the crazy guy engineer the disappearance of an entire family? Stephen couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to his own parents.
Stephen took a deep breath and crouched down. One bloody finger sat slightly apart from the rest. When his fingers hit that sticky, dead, skin he instantly wished he had thought to cover his hand in his shirt or something. He shook his head and lifted the finger to the strip at the left of the door.
He touched the finger to the pad and nothing happened. Reaching down to drop the finger and try the next, it occurred to him that he didn’t know how these things worked. He tried touching his own finger to the sensor and got no response. After a second, he got the idea to swipe his finger and the sensor emitted two sharp beeps. Next, he re-tried the severed finger.
A light on the unit flashed green and the lock buzzed open. Stephen pulled the gun from his pocket and aimed it at the handle. The buzzing stopped — he hadn’t moved quick enough. He swiped the finger again and dropped it. He opened the door with his left hand and pointed the gun with his right. The door swung outward, revealing a dim room packed with surveillance equipment lining each wall.
Stephen, moving stiffly with the gun leading the way, crept in. When he stood halfway through the door the buzzing stopped again and Stephen nearly dropped the gun. He blinked away the distraction and kept moving. This door stayed open on its own, so he left it and proceeded to the center of the room.
Racks of equipment lined the walls. Stephen recognized the tape machines and mon
itors, but the computers seemed foreign to him. He had seen laptops and desktop machines — these were big servers. Each monitor showed a different video feed; some from cameras mounted in rooms that he recognized. He wondered if the crazy man had watched him on the monitor that showed the top of the soda machine.
One panel contained a series of lighted switches. Each switch had a descriptive vertical label — “Room 217,” “Library,” “Hall 2 Vending.” He suddenly thought he might not need Jack after all — perhaps if he just flipped off these switches, he would have a way to escape. He flipped all the switches that were lit. He paid special attention when he flipped the switches that had “Vending” in the name, but saw no change in the monitor that showed the machines.
“Now what?” he asked aloud. He glanced around nervously at the sound of his own voice and considered his choices one more time — he could try to escape alone, or try to rescue Jack. He wanted to run, but still believed he had little chance without rescuing Jack. With the strength of revelation he realized he could do both. He would try to escape, and then if his plan didn’t work, he would return for Jack.
Bolstered by this decision, he headed back through the door to the bloody hallway. Consulting his mental map, he found his way through the bright hall and the dim shrine to Ben’s family. Back outside the crazy guy’s room, he headed for the door to the man’s lair. Stephen hoped that the door was still unlocked. It was the only obstacle between him and the secret passage that led to the soda room.
He reached out and grabbed the handle. It turned easily in his left hand as he raised the gun and his right hand, just in case.
CHAPTER 25
Jack
“What do you mean — ‘Wait for Stephen’?” Jack asked. He craned his neck to see what the man was doing to his thigh. The pain came to Jack in little bursts and throbs. It didn't hurt as much as he had feared — maybe he still had some of that anesthetic in his system after all.
“I’m almost certain that Stephen’s going to try to fight back,” said the man.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” said Jack. “He…” Jack started to continue and then gasped for breath because of a new stab of pain. “He was pretty pissed that I tied him up.”
The man looked at Jack and slid the magnifying glasses up so he could look Jack in the eye. “You wouldn’t believe how loyal kids your age are. Everyone else is an outsider, and they bond almost instantly against outsiders,” he said. “That’s another thing I would have taught you. How to spot the bonds between people. Those bonds inform you exactly how to divide your prey from the herd.”
Jack didn’t return the man’s stare. He instead tried to see the damage to his thigh. The man blocked most of Jack’s view with a spotlight.
“How are you signing that? And isn’t it risky to ‘sign’ a victim?” asked Jack. With his questions, Jack hoped to slow the man down. He also wanted to take his mind off the pain.
“I fold back the skin and burn the muscle. It looks really good — much better than a brand or a tattoo,” said the man. “And it will be destroyed when I dispose of you. It’s completely temporary, that’s part of what makes it so beautiful. It’s a wilting flower from the second it’s complete. For most artists, their reward comes when others appreciate their work. I’m more evolved. I know that I’m the only one that can appreciate what I’ve created, and I have no interest in getting caught. But I also know that it’s time to pass on my wisdom to the next generation, just as it was passed to me.”
“So you were taught?” asked Jack.
“Yes, didn’t you guess that from your research? Of course you did, you’re just trying to stall,” said the man.
“No, I’m not,” said Jack. “But why do you want to teach someone?”
“When you perfect something, you want it to be passed on,” answered the man. “Imagine a detective intelligent enough to see the pattern. He’d soon find out the pattern went back over one-hundred years. That would blow his mind.”
“Sounds like you do want an audience,” said Jack.
“Just an audience of one: my eventual pupil,” the man pulled his glasses back down over his eyes and returned his focus to Jack’s thigh.
Jack tried to think of another question that might recapture the man's attention. “How long did you study with the last guy? And what happened to him?” he asked.
“Honestly, not long,” replied the man, pausing again. “I had to get rid of him pretty quickly and then figure out most of the stuff on my own. It’s almost like I replaced him.”
“How did you learn everything on your own?” asked Jack.
“He had a couple of journals stored under the floor of his place. I eventually found them,” replied the man. “Some things I pieced together when he caught me.”
“He caught you? How did you get away?” asked Jack.
“He was careless. Probably wanted me to get the upper hand,” the man looked away and seemed distracted. He perked up very quickly and looked Jack in the eye. “That’ll never happen to me though,” he said.
The doorknob turned. It startled Jack, but the man seemed unfazed. In fact, the man didn’t even turn around to see the door opening.
“Hello Stephen,” said the man to the slowly opening door.
Stephen’s shoe entered first — he slid the door open with his toe so both his hands could grip the gun.
“Turn around,” said Stephen. The man still bent over Jack’s thigh. First, he looked up at Jack and raised his glasses again. He gave Jack a small shrug as if he was perplexed by Stephen’s order.
“Slowly,” said Stephen.
“Okay,” said the man. He pushed away from Jack and turned on his rolling stool to face Stephen. “Is that better?” he asked as he held up his hands; his left still holding his instrument.
“Farther away from Jack,” said Stephen. “And put that thing down.”
“This thing is very expensive,” said the man. He tilted his head down slightly and leveled his cold eyes on Stephen. “I’m not going to just drop it on the floor.”
“Put it down or I’ll shoot your fucking hand off,” said Stephen. He spoke at an even pace, careful not to sound panicked, but a tremor crept into his voice.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” said the man. “Let me reason with you, Stephen. By the way, you can call me ‘Patrick.’ It’s a name that Jack made up for me, but it fits nicely.”
He reached to put his instrument back in its holder. Pausing halfway, he looked at Stephen and raised his eyebrows. Stephen nodded assent and the man set the instrument down.
With that done, he placed his hands in his lap and resumed speaking — “First, I know you don’t want to hurt anyone. Honestly, I don’t want you to hurt anyone either.”
Stephen tried to hold his stance. His arms trembled from exertion.
Stephen had intended to silently slip behind Patrick’s bureau and use the tunnels to get to the vending machines. His memory had failed him miserably, as he found himself in the exam room with Jack. Now he stood face-to-face with the crazy guy — Patrick — and Patrick was right. Stephen desperately didn't want to shoot anyone.
“Second,” Patrick continued, “when I captured Jack and you had your adventure in the ceiling, I found that gun and removed the ammunition.”
He sounded confident; Stephen believed him completely. Narrowing his focus on the back of the revolver, he could see a sliver of the chambers on the left and right, and they looked empty.
Stephen could only think of one idea, and it required complete commitment.
“You’re lying,” said Stephen.
“I just saw you look at the cylinder,” said Patrick. “You know it’s empty.”
Stephen assessed his options. He'd seen empty chambers on both sides of the cylinder. Unless someone had unloaded the gun, he should at least have seen the spent casings. Could he bluff Patrick? Jack spoke before Stephen could decide.
“He's wearing my backpack,” said Jack. “I had extra bullets in
there. Stephen could have reloaded.”
Patrick paused and looked into Stephen's eyes.
“You boys are not very convincing,” said Patrick. “And I’m the one who unloaded the gun, so you’re not going to bluff me.”
Stephen kept quiet. A new plan formed in the back of his mind; he had to keep it from showing in his eyes.
“The probability of that is very close to zero, based on his reaction,” said Patrick, gesturing towards Stephen. “I think I’ll take my chances.”
Patrick rose from his stool and brushed his hands on his lab coat. He took a step towards Stephen and hesitated only slightly when Stephen raised and re-aimed the gun. With two confident strides across the floor, he stood with his chest directly against the barrel of the gun. Stephen let the man press into his arms a bit, getting a few inches closer.
With his left hand, Patrick reached up and took the gun from Stephen. Sighing deeply, shoulders falling, Stephen raised his hands in surrender. As if explaining a simple concept to a small child, Patrick opened the revolver and showed Stephen the empty cylinder, holding it directly in front of his face.
This was his moment — Stephen cast back his right hand, tilted his head to the left, and landed his fingers perfectly on Kate’s kitchen knife. He had rescued it from the shelf in the closet and tucked it into the pack, at the ready.
He pulled the knife from the pack in a perfect shallow arch. When he brought the knife down, the blade faced Patrick.
Stephen tightened his grip as his right hand had reached eye-level, where Patrick held the gun for his inspection. The knife was tilted, and when it struck Patrick, it slipped nicely between Patrick's knuckles and split the skin and muscle, down to the wrist. The knife rebounded off Patrick’s wrist, and only the tip of the knife scratched the next few inches. The tip scraped down Patrick’s arm, and Stephen pressed forward again and dug the blade in deep.