by R. T. Lowe
But there wasn’t a ladder in this room, or a door, or any other kind of opening—just flat, smooth, hard, impenetrable materials. He knew he had to be close to the surface after climbing for so long. There had to be a way out. This had to lead to something. The ladders couldn’t have been random. What am I missing? He stood there for a long while, deep in thought.
When it came to him he felt stupid for not figuring it out sooner: a secret door. There had to be a secret door in this room. Just like Woodrow’s Room. But where? That was the question. Squatting down low, he looked up at the ceiling, then he went over to the wall across from the ladder and starting at the top, placed both hands on it, meticulously working his fingers all the way down to the floor. Then he proceeded to probe the other walls. But there were no levers, no switches and no buttons—nothing that would activate a secret door. Nothing. Not a single goddamn thing.
Frustrated and slightly panicked, he knelt down in the center of the room and stared around, focusing on every little bump, groove and ridge on the surface. He wasn’t seeing something that had to be there. But what? He’d touched, pushed, poked and massaged every square inch of the room. He couldn’t have missed anything. But this has to be the way, and you better figure it out or no one will ever see you again.
But he had missed something, and it hit him like a Jimmy Clay cheap shot. The bulbs. He bounced to his feet—and smacked his head on the ceiling because he forgot to duck—and stepped over to the bulb furthest from the ladder. It was near the top of the wall, perfectly centered and extremely bright—he had to squint to look at it. Sweat was gathering on the nape of his neck and rolling down his back. He reached up and lightly touched the metal casing, expecting it to be hot. It was—the first thing he’d been right about all night. He tapped down on it. Nothing happened. He flicked up on it, but that only burned his fingers. Tugging on the sleeve of his sweatshirt, he wrapped it around his hand and nudged the bulb’s protective shell to the left.
Something behind the wall made a soft clicking sound, like the gears of a grandfather clock before the chime. Then the wall moved, shifting slowly and almost noiselessly from right to left. He stepped back and watched as a narrow, hobbit-sized opening in the bottom right corner of the wall appeared in front of him. It was a safe bet it wouldn’t stay open for very long so he hopped over to the little door and crouched down, preparing to step through it. He took one tentative step. Then he stopped.
There were objects dangling in his face… and there was something familiar about them. He reached out and tapped one with his finger. It was soft. It had buttons. Next to it was a thin metal wiry thing hanging from a rod. And next to that was a pair of pants, and next to that, a jacket with a zipper. He squatted down as much as he could, and keeping his head low, duck-walked into the opening, praying that the door wouldn’t close and crush him against the wall.
He took a deep breath and shuffled forward with one thought whirling around in his addled brain: Whose closet is this?
Chapter 19
Room 444
Foot rot. That’s what the closet smelled like. It was probably coming from the shoes. Mostly sneakers, but the moldy Limburger stench seemed to be mushrooming up from a pair of topsiders. Guy’s shoes. Felix was scooting his way inside a guy’s closet, a closet that looked just like Felix’s closet in Downey. Same scuffed wood floor, same white painted interior, same size. This was a dorm room. A guy’s dorm room.
With his butt dragging over the shoe tops and the clothes hanging from the rod brushing against his head, he leaned forward, keeping one hand on the floor for balance, and stuck his face right up against the quarter-inch gap where the doors came together. The room was dark. Good, Felix thought hopefully. Not morning yet. Whoever lived here was probably sleeping. He pressed his ear against the doors, held his breath and listened. Nothing. Complete silence.
The floor started to vibrate softly and there was a sudden whirring noise—the sound of gears in motion. The same sound he’d heard just a moment ago. He knew what it meant: the secret door was about to close. He snatched the hood of his sweatshirt and pulled it around, flattening it against his throat. The Final Destination movies had all made their rounds at the August house and he was familiar with death-by-your-own-shirt.
When he was sure that his hood wasn’t going to get caught in the door, he twisted his neck around to see what was happening behind him. The door was shifting back into place, slowly draining the light from the closet. He reached out for the topsiders—he couldn’t stand the stench any longer and didn’t think anyone would miss them if they somehow disappeared to the wrong side of the secret door—and a spider crawled out of the shoe and pounced on his finger. The spider was small, and most likely not dangerous to anything bigger than a bug, but Felix reacted like anyone would. He sucked in a jagged breath and took a swipe at it. The spider escaped without injury, but Felix lost his balance and bumped his head against a pair of pants swaying lazily from a sagging hanger. It had a domino effect: The pants swung into a shirt, which tapped another pair of pants, which slapped against three or four empty wire hangers, rattling them like a tambourine.
The portal to the tunnels beneath campus sealed itself shut with an anticlimactic puff, like air blown through a straw. The floor went still. He waited in the darkness. Sweat beaded up on his forehead and slid down his face. His undershirt was sticking to his back. Finally, the hangers stopped dancing. He didn’t allow himself a sigh of relief. He may have escaped the tunnels, but he was still trapped—trapped in a closet. And his situation, although perhaps no longer life and death, was still dire. If he didn’t get out of here unseen, he was screwed. Best case: the dean would throw him out of school. Worst case: police involvement, maybe even jail time.
So now he needed to escape from something else. A closet. In the dark. And without waking up the kids who lived here. His chances of succeeding seemed dim. But he did have one thing going for him: He didn’t know which dorm this was, but for his purposes, it didn’t matter. The room layout in every dorm and frat he’d been to was basically the same. Closets were at the foot of the beds on either side of the hallway door. That was pretty much it. Finding the door—even in the dark—should be easy enough. And once he made it that far, the stairs would lead him to safety before anyone saw him (as long as no one was still hanging out in the halls or on their way to the bathroom).
He placed his pointer finger against the door on the right and pressed until he heard the latch click faintly as the magnets (one on the door and one on the frame) separated and the door swung open. He waited a few moments, hoping for silence. Maybe they were out of town? But the sounds of slow, heavy breathing quickly dismembered his hopes. First to Felix’s left, then to his right, as if there was an echo in the room.
Okay, Felix said to himself. Let’s do this.
He stretched one hand outside the closet and planted it firmly on the floor before reaching out with the other hand and doing the same. Then keeping his elbows flexed and his butt low to stay under the hanging clothes, he bear-crawled into the room. His heart pounding fast and hard in his chest, he got up from his crouch, cringing as his rain-soaked sneakers squeaked on the hardwood.
He paused, listening to the heavy—and still uninterrupted—breathing. The room was exactly as he’d pictured it. The closet to his back was on the hallway side of the room. Before him was a window that separated a pair of desks. Felix was standing at the foot of one bed. The other bed was on the far side of the room to his right. His escape hatch, the hallway door, was also to his right, and close, just a few feet away. Good—so far.
Then he felt a cold flash of panic and his heart crawled up into his throat. The room wasn’t nearly as dark as he would have liked. Alarm clocks on both desks, light seeping in from under the door and through the blinds (loosely shuttered, especially at the bottom where several inches of glowing yellow glass were visible on one side) cast the entire room in softly filtered light. If he woke someone up, would they be able to m
ake out his facial features or would he just appear as a darkened silhouette? He didn’t know. And he didn’t want to find out. He pulled the hood over his baseball hat.
The kid sprawled out in the bed in front of Felix made a groaning noise and said something. Probably just sleep gibberish. But Felix was tense, and so were his reflexes. He jerked back, and when he did, his arm slapped against the open door. The nudge from his arm started it. Momentum and springback did the rest.
The door banged shut. It was loud. Like a porcelain piggy bank falling from a dresser and smashing on the floor loud. Felix waited motionless, holding his breath. Someone coughed—the kid to his right. He slid his leg out from under the bedding and curled it around the blanket. Felix remained fixed to the spot, frozen, praying that the kid would keep his eyes shut. The room was too damn bright. If the kid opened his eyes, he’d be able to see Felix just as easily as Felix could see him.
A moment passed in silence. The room was calm again. It looked like the kid had gone back to sleep. Felix exhaled silently and took in a long nervous breath. He stood still for another beat and then made up his mind: Time to go. Felix made it one step before the kid’s eyes popped open. He blinked a few times and then, looking directly at Felix, said sleepily, “Jeremy—what are you doing?”
Felix felt the blood drain from his face.
Seconds ticked by. Felix looked to the door, not sure if he should make a run for it.
“Jeremy,” the kid whispered. “Hey!”
Then the other kid—Jeremy—started to stir. He mumbled something and let out a long breezy fart.
The first kid rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then propped himself up on his forearm. Felix could see his eyes shifting back and forth from Felix to his roommate’s bed. His mind was probably clouded with sleep, but not so clouded as to think that Jeremy could be in two places at the same time. “Je… Jeremy,” he said uncertainly. There was a twinge of fear in his voice. “Jere—”
“Shut up, Andy,” Jeremy grunted and rolled onto his side, facing the wall.
“Jeremy!” This time, Andy shouted his roommate’s name. Andy was sitting up now, leaning back against his headboard.
Jeremy shot up, startled, his head turning toward Andy.
“Your closet!” Andy pointed at Felix. “Your closet! Your closet!”
When Jeremy’s eyes found Felix, he gasped and flinched back so hard he seemed to levitate off his bed.
The time for stealthiness had slipped away. Felix was at the door, yanking it open, and emerging into the hallway. As he slammed the door shut, screams of panic erupted from inside the room. He quickly checked both directions. The hall was empty. The emergency exit door was at one end and close, and the staircase was all the way down at the other end. After taking a swift glance at the room number—444—he sprinted toward the staircase. With just two dorm rooms between Felix and the stairs, the sound of voices—laughing, boisterous voices—rose up from the landing below and crashed down on him like a swinging gate. He slid to a stop, then spun back around and reversed course, tearing down the hall for the emergency exit. In room 444 Jeremy and Andy were now calling for help. With images of prison—communal showers, shivs and large men with a fondness for teenage boys—prompting him to run faster, he rushed to the exit. A sign on the door read ALARM WILL SOUND WHEN OPENED. He’d always wondered if that was true.
The alarm went off with a shrieking, rolling howl the instant he opened the door. He burst out onto the platform and into the sheeting rain. The weather had turned nasty and cold while he was wandering the tunnels. He adjusted his hood and started down the slippery stairs, going fast and reckless. He lost his footing just before the second floor landing and crashed against the railing, nearly cartwheeling over the top. He steadied himself, feeling like someone was blasting him with a fire hose, then went to the other side, the side where there was supposed to be stairs. There were no stairs. But there was something else.
You’ve got to be kidding me, Felix thought as he stared down at the emergency exit ladder. Not another goddamn ladder. He considered jumping. But he had to be at least fifteen feet off the ground. If he landed wrong, he’d be risking a broken ankle. So he settled down onto his stomach and went over the edge backward, searching blindly with his feet, holding on tightly to the bottom of the guard rails. It reminded him of venturing into the deep end of the Coos Bridge public pool when he was five; when he lost contact with the bottom, he’d felt fear—and a serious rush—then the lifeguard had yelled at him to get back to the shallow end.
His feet finally touched down on something solid, and when he felt like his footing was secure, he let go of the railing and latched onto the ladder with both hands. The sirens going off inside the building seemed to be getting louder. Voices were coming at him from all directions. He started down as fast as he dared, thinking he might be in the clear.
A door swung open beneath his feet and kids began streaming out of the dorm. He stopped. The emergency exit ladder was positioned directly above the building’s side entrance. If the kids pouring out of the building looked up—even just a little—they couldn’t miss him. How would he explain this? What possible reason could he offer for using the emergency exit? The emergency exit for a dorm where he didn’t even live. And when Jeremy and Andy told their story, the pieces would all come together and Felix would be toast. Going down was no longer an option. He was trapped—again. He glanced up, trying to think. If he couldn’t go down maybe he could go up. The roof. He could hide out there until everyone went back to bed. He might get pneumonia, but that was better than expulsion, prison and a life in total ruin. He wiped the rain from his eyes and started climbing.
And then the ladder dropped like an elevator in free fall. He held on tight and bent his knees as he braced for impact, expecting it to slam into the ground. But the design of this ladder was a little different. Still five feet off the ground, the ladder’s descent came to an abrupt stop, springing Felix into the air like a popcorn kernel heating up to the right temperature. He splashed down on his butt, his momentum carrying him head over heels into a perfectly executed back somersault.
“Hey!” a girl’s voice called out to him. She sounded surprised. “Are you okay?”
Felix didn’t stick around to chat. He pulled his hat down to the bridge of his nose and took off through the puddled lawn. He knew where he was, but he needed to make sure of it. He circled past the front of the building and found a sheltering tree next to a building that he thought was the medical clinic. He stood there for a while and watched hundreds of students huddling under umbrellas as the RAs shouted at them to get further away from the dorm. He could only imagine what they were saying about the school scheduling a fire drill at this hour—whatever hour this hour might be—in this kind of weather. Then he found what he was looking for above the entrance: ASTORIA HALL.
And with that information in hand, he sprinted toward Downey, trying to outrun the rain.
Chapter 20
The Interview
AshCorp’s interview room was small, and except for a pair of matching chairs facing each other by the wall-to-wall windows, unfurnished. But the view was something to behold. Graham had finished setting up over an hour ago. It didn’t take long. He was the camera guy. Setting up the tripod and the boom microphone took all of five minutes, if that. During the week, he was the assistant production manager for the morning news. This was just his whenever-we-need-you weekend gig. Management was saving money through ‘synergy consolidation’. That’s what they were calling it anyway. It just meant low-ranking schmucks like Graham were stuck working two jobs and getting paid for one.
Graham knew he shouldn’t be grousing, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. All morning, vague complaints thinly disguised as conversation had ben slipping out almost unconsciously, his resentment and dissatisfaction convincing his dark inner thoughts to find their voice. He turned to the woman in the chair and bit down on his lip to keep his tongue from forming words he
would certainly regret. Her face was round, her hair short, a full fringe bob with lots of layers and textured bangs hairsprayed into stiff obedience. She wore a conservative black suit and a white blouse, her understated jewelry was minimalistic, classsic. She possessed a rare look: part dignified matriarch, part doting grandmother. It was easy to see why she had been so successful in her career. Her face drew people in, inviting them to share themselves with the world, their dirty laundry, their blackest secrets. Their side of the story.
Before he could stop himself, Graham blurted: “Why do they have us come here on the weekend if they’re just going to make us wait?” He should have kept his mouth shut. She wasn’t just anyone. And she definitely wasn’t his doting grandmother. She was Connie Redgrave, the News Lady, a moniker she’d earned by anchoring Channel 8’s 7:30 news for the past thirty-seven years.
Connie straightened her skirt and looked up from her phone (she was scrolling through her emails), holding his eyes for a long beat before she spoke. “I realize you’d rather be doing something else on a Saturday morning, but I can’t help that. I’m here because the president of channel eight asked me to be here. You’re here because it’s your job. I don’t see a distinction between the two. So let’s make the best of it.” She went back to her phone.
Graham bottled up what he wanted to say and gazed out the window at the endless green of Ashfield Forest. Only a few fractured shafts of light slanted down through a dirty gray sky. His spectacular cloud level perspective of the forest made him feel like he was on the observation deck of a skyscraper. A private treehouse for a billionaire who had run out of ways to spend a bottomless well of inherited wealth. The realization that he was pissing away his weekend (another weekend) in a billionaire’s treehouse turned the resentment to jealousy, and something much more bitter, not quite hate, but close. Graham and his wife had graduated from Portland College six years ago. She was a teacher. She worked hard, harder than him. They had two kids. Both young: four and one. They’d done everything right. What they were supposed to do. What they were told to do. And between the two of them, they’d piled up $211,000 in student loans. Graham figured at their current pace they’d be debt free and able to put a down payment on a house when they were sixty-one. Just a year younger than Connie Redgrave. And the man Connie was going to interview—the owner of this treehouse—would consider $211,000 (Graham thought of it as his life’s burden) a typical day’s interest on one of his offshore accounts.