EERIE

by Blake Crouch Jordan Crouch

  One of Art’s.

  Deep breaths.

  716.

  A small pane of reinforced glass looked into the room.

  She peered through the bottom corner of the window.

  A little light bled through a curtain on the far side of the room, but it only brightened several tiles on the floor. Everything else lay in shadow.

  She eased the door open.

  It swung on its hinges without a sound.

  Light from the hallway spilled across the floor.

  Reaching in, she palmed the wall, running her hand along the smooth concrete until it grazed a light switch.

  She hesitated.

  Glanced up and down the corridor.

  Nothing moved.

  That nurse was crying again and the patient beating his door even harder, but she relegated these superfluous distractions to background noise.

  She hit the switch—two fluorescent panels flickering to life—and then dug her shoulder into the door and charged.

  The door crashed hard into the rubber stop on the wall and bounced back, but she was already past and swinging into the bleak little room.

  There was a single bed lined with metal railing and occupied by Jim Moreton.

  The man lay on his side under a white blanket, his back to her.

  She cleared the far side of the bed and then opened a door beside a dresser, groping for the light switch.

  A small bathroom appeared.

  She stepped in, swept back the shower curtain.

  Cleared the toilet alcove.

  She was breathing so hard her vision had begun to populate with throbbing motes of blackness.

  She went to the closet, opened the sliding doors.

  Ten pairs of identical khaki slacks. Ten long-sleeved button-down shirts—all variations of blue. Three pairs of Velcro shoes.

  Otherwise, empty.

  She turned her attention to the bed. The wrist she could see wore a padded restraint that was attached to the railing by a leather loop.

  “Mr. Moreton?”

  As she moved toward the bed, the face on Seymour’s receipt flashed through her mind.

  Sunken cheeks. Frown lines like canyons in his forehead. Wild, stringy hair.

  The hairline on the back of this man’s head was cropped, and it ran back to a patchy area at the top of his scalp where it had begun to thin.

  She knew that bald spot.

  Sat behind it every day at the precinct.

  Sophie rolled Art Dobbs onto his back.

  The left side of his face resembled an eggplant, swollen and shiny. His eye had disappeared into it and the other was turned up into its socket like a cue ball.

  “Art.”

  She shook him.

  Then ripped back the covers.

  No blood.

  “Art, can you hear me?”

  A gurgling noise issued from his nose as air struggled through the grotesque new angle of his nasal cavity.

  He was out cold, but at least he was breathing, and he wasn’t shot.

  She dialed 911, held her phone between her shoulder and ear as she headed out of the room.

  “Nine-one-one, where is your emergency?”

  “Evergreen Psychiatric Hospital in Kirkland. This is Detective Benington with the Seattle PD.” Sophie edged out into the corridor. “Shots fired, officer down. Art Dobbs is in room seven-sixteen in the acute unit.” Started moving at a jog. “Four suspects. Armed. Driving a black GMC Savana. They may have kidnapped Jim Moreton, a patient here.” She was approaching an intersection, the floor up ahead smeared with what appeared to be blood.

  “What are his injuries?”

  “I have to go now—”

  “Ma’am, please—”

  Sophie ended the call, slid the phone back into her jacket.

  The blood smear wasn’t isolated. Footprints—the tread of a dress shoe—continued on.

  She swung around the corner and sited down the corridor.

  The prints trailed off after a few steps, but the blood trail didn’t.

  There was a man sitting against the wall under an exit sign that burned red at the far end—didn’t look like Moreton, but she couldn’t be sure from this distance.

  Sophie called out, “Seattle Police! Get on your stomach and spread out your hands!”

  The man was fifty feet away.

  He turned his head and stared at her but failed to move.

  “Did you not hear me, sir? Do you want to get shot?”

  He said, “I’m already shot.”

  As Sophie moved forward, she saw that he wasn’t lying. The man held his right leg with both hands and he sat in a small, dark pool that reflected the fluorescents redly.

  Good for you, Art.

  At thirty feet, she recognized him.

  Seymour.

  He said, “I need a doctor.”

  “Do you have a gun?”

  He shook his head.

  She stopped in front of him.

  “Where’d your buddies go?”

  “I don’t know.” He was grunting through the pain and blood was still trickling through his fingers. Sophie unsnapped her handcuffs, knelt down, and popped a bracelet around Seymour’s left wrist. The other cuff, she locked to the handrail.

  He groaned. “You have to help me.”

  “Help’s coming. Keep pressure on that wound. You’ll be fine.”

  Sophie grabbed Angela’s ID badge from her pocket and swiped it through the card reader.

  The door buzzed and she shouldered her way through into the blinding illumination of a floodlight.

  Started jogging along a walkway between the dark buildings.

  She was disoriented—no idea of her location relative to the main entrance—and she couldn’t hear a thing over the sound of rain beating down on the grass, the pavement, her head.

  She accelerated.

  In the distance, she spotted a row of streetlights.

  The parking lot.

  She was sprinting now, the rain driving into her face, boots streaking through pools of standing water that had collected in the grass.

  She broke out from the buildings, crossed a sidewalk, and blitzed into the parking lot. She was panting, years since she’d run this hard.

  Wiping rainwater out of her eyes, she spotted the van in the distance. A trio of dark shapes jogged toward it, carrying something wrapped in white.

  Sophie reached a gray Honda Accord and took shelter behind it, rain pouring off her face, lungs burning as she gasped for breath.

  Where is my backup?

  She glanced through the windows.

  The van was fifty feet away.

  Three men struggled to carry what appeared to be another man over their heads. They looked like errant pallbearers moving across the barren parking lot.

  She got to her feet, and over the roof of the Accord, sited down the men and the van.

  Water streamed off the slide, the Glock’s polymer frame beaded with rain.

  It was harder than she had imagined—much harder—summoning her voice.

  “Stop! Seattle Police!”

  The men didn’t flinch, didn’t react.

  She yelled it again at the top of her voice.

  They were almost to the van. In unison, they dropped to their knees and set the man in white on the wet pavement. One of their number rushed forward to the sliding door, fumbling with a set of keys.

  His partners turned.

  “Get on the ground!” Sophie yelled.

  Never saw them draw.

  A pair of muzzleflashes bloomed and the windows exploded.

  She squeezed off six shots—no precision aiming, just panicked, general direction, not-wanting-to-die chaos fire—and then ducked behind the front passenger door.

  The cold, wet pavement soaking through her pants.

  Four gunshots echoed off the buildings, the rounds chinking into the metal of the Honda. Her ears still ringing, she peeked over the jagged range of glass sticking up out of the
bottom of the door.

  Grazer and Vincent had returned to the van where they were helping Talbert lift Moreton off the ground and stow him inside. She drew a bead on one of them, but she didn’t trust her aim with Moreton in the mix.

  Two of the men disappeared with Moreton into the van and the last one—Grazer?—turned and fired three shots at the Accord. Sophie took cover behind the door again as air rushed out of the front tire on the other side, the car sagging forward and away from her.

  She heard the van’s sliding passenger door ram shut.

  Popped up, double-tapped at Grazer as he rushed around the hood of the van and piled in behind the wheel.

  The engine started, and as Sophie ran out from behind the car, the tires spun on pavement for a split second, caught, and then launched the van across the parking lot.

  Planting her feet shoulder-width apart, she aimed at the right, rear tire.

  It was the only moment since rolling onto the hospital grounds that she’d possessed a shred of self-awareness. She made herself breathe. She saw that micron of space beyond the night sights that she knew was the tire. Saw the white puff of air as the bullet pierced the tread. Saw the van spin out of control. The cavalry arrive. Jim Moreton saved, his kidnappers in cuffs on the ground.

  She fired.

  She fired again.

  And again.

  And again and again and again.

  The next time she squeezed the trigger, the slide locked back, smoke coiling off the exposed barrel of the Glock.

  The van turned hard out of the parking lot, tires fully intact and squealing across the wet road. It straightened and accelerated, the engine winding up, RPMs maxed.

  She’d missed.

  Seven times.

  And now Jim Moreton, father of the man she might possibly love, was going to die.

  She stood in the rain, stunned by her failure.

  Here came the sirens.

  She started running toward her car.

  Chapter 39

  Grant started down the stairs, the blanket jostling in his arms. He could feel the creature wrapped inside vibrating like a tuning fork. It put out so much body heat that the blanket could have just come out of a dryer.

  “What’s happening?” Paige asked, a few steps behind him.

  “It’s ready to leave.”

  “It told you that?”

  He reached the bottom of the stairs and made his way across the foyer to the front door.

  “Grant.”

  He stopped.

  “What?”

  “Talk to me.”

  “I have to take it somewhere.”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  He turned and stepped into his boots. With his free hand, he grabbed the North Face jacket off the coat rack and draped it over his shoulder.

  Paige arrived at the bottom of the staircase. She clutched the banister, panic and a profound sadness in her eyes.

  “It’s in your head now,” she said. “You’re like the others.”

  Grant shifted the weight from one arm to the other and looked back at her.

  The blankets moved in his arms.

  A translucent appendage emerged.

  Paige recoiled, placed a foot on the step behind her as Grant covered it back with a loose fold.

  “I don’t understand it all, but I’m still Grant,” he said, though he only half-believed.

  “You went upstairs to kill that thing.”

  “I have to go.”

  “This is insane. You don’t even know what it’s telling you to do.”

  “You’re right. But it won’t be in your house anymore. It’ll be out of your life.”

  He saw the early shimmer of tears in her eyes.

  “What happened in there?” Paige asked.

  He looked at her. What could he possibly say? That even though he’d never been a father, he felt like he was holding his child in his arms? That with every passing second, that feeling was growing stronger? On the verge of eclipsing the protective instinct he’d felt toward his own sister when she was five years old and all he had in the world?

  “It’s not something I can explain,” he said. “I just don’t have the words.”

  “I don’t understand what’s happening.”

  “Me either.”

  “So what now?”

  “I put this thing in the car and start driving.”

  Paige released her death-grip on the railing. She wiped her eyes. Her shoulders relaxed.

  She went to the rack and grabbed her jacket—a charcoal gray peacoat with wooden toggles.

  “We can take my car,” she said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’ll drive. You navigate.”

  “Paige, this is my thing now. My burden. You’ve carried it long enough. You don’t have to come.”

  She put the coat on over her plaid pajamas, stepped into a pair of black Uggs.

  “We’ve had enough of leaving each other, don’t you think?”

  • • •

  Excluding two brief excursions that had nearly killed him, it had been almost a day and a half since Grant had been outside, and the feeling of moving down the steps without an onslaught of debilitating pain bordered on surreal. Like walking out of prison. He didn’t entirely trust it, still half-expecting the blinding migraine to T-bone him at any moment.

  The rain was torrential, huge drops smacking the flagstones beneath Grant’s and Paige’s feet as they headed toward the sidewalk.

  “Where’d you park?” Grant yelled over the rain.

  “Around the corner.”

  They walked up the sidewalk, Grant holding the blanket tightly in his arms, grateful for the warmth.

  Turning the corner, they moved alongside the wrought-iron fence.

  Paige reached into her pocket.

  Up ahead, the car alarm on a black CR-V chirped. Paige jogged ahead and opened the curbside rear passenger door.

  Grant ducked in.

  She shut him inside.

  The car smelled new.

  Rain pounding the roof and the windshield.

  Paige climbed in behind the wheel, cranked the engine.

  “Five-twenty,” Grant said.

  “Across Lake Washington?”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s toward Kirkland. Toward Dad.”

  “I know.”

  Paige buckled herself in and put the car into gear. Pulled out of the parking space. There was no one on the street—pedestrian or vehicle. They cruised past rows of streetlamps, rain pouring through the spheres of light.

  He blinked and Paige was accelerating up the I-5 onramp, merging onto the empty interstate.

  He lost time again.

  Falling inward.

  Then they were several miles down the road, alone on 520, barreling east across the floating bridge as the toll cameras flashed blue above them.

  Grant felt intensely purposeful. As zoned-out and deep as if he were under the influence of a psychotropic drug, and yet still in control of his faculties. The strangest paradox—complete self-ownership but on a new plain of awareness.

  As if all his life had been leading toward this moment.

  He didn’t speak.

  Didn’t think.

  Just clutched the blanket to his chest—was this what it felt like to bring your newborn son home from the hospital?—and watched the sleeping city out his window.

  • • •

  “Grant.”

  He returned to the moment.

  Lake Washington still out the window.

  Paige was reaching into the backseat, her phone lighting up in her hand.

  She said, “It’s Sophie.”

  He took the phone.

  “Hello?”

  “Grant?”

  “Are you with my father?”

  “They took him.” Sophie was crying—he could hear it in her voice.

  “Is he alive?” Grant asked.

  “I cou
ldn’t … stop it … from happening.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “I don’t know.” She was becoming hysterical. He could barely understand her. “I’ll find him, Grant. I swear to you.”

  “I know you did everything you could. I don’t blame you for anything.”

  “Are you and Paige okay?”

  “I have to go now.”

  “Grant, what’s wrong? Are you still at the house? Did something happen? Grant?”

  He powered off the phone.

  Paige said, “What happened?”

  “They took Dad.”

  “Who? My clients?”

  “Sophie lost them. They got away.”

  Paige began to hyperventilate.

  “I need you to calm down,” Grant said. “You have to get us there safely.”

  “Explain to me what happened.”

  “I don’t fully understand.”

  “Then call her back!”

  “It doesn’t matter, Paige.”

  “They took our father!”

  “Are you still okay to drive me?”

  Page relaxed her grip on the steering wheel.

  “Yeah.”

  She settled back into her seat.

  “I’m trusting you, Grant.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I need to know that you know how this is going to end.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then what are you trusting?”

  Chapter 40

  The sky over the gas station parking lot where Sophie sat with the engine cooling was just beginning to brighten into a flat gray. She ended her fourth and final call to Paige’s cell and let her head fall back against the headrest. Like every other attempt, straight to voice mail.

  —Where are you? An APB went out half an hour ago, and a van fitting the description was just spotted in Bothell. I’m on my way. Call me.

  —Almost to Bothell. Call me.

  —I’m pulling into the gas station where the van was spotted. Where are you?

  She had gotten the clerk inside to replay the footage—van pulls up to the pump, glare on the windshield too severe to ID who’s at the wheel, but Vincent—unmistakable—exits from the sliding passenger door five seconds later. He walks around the hood of the van and stops in front of the pump where he digs a card out of his wallet and feeds it to the machine. Three unbearable minutes of waiting while he gasses up, the man staring dead into the camera the entire time. Finally, he caps the tank, returns the nozzle, and climbs inside. A few seconds later, the van rolls out of frame.