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CHAPTER
No 21
Dan was looking into a yawning void. How far under the earth did this place go, anyway?
The cold rushing up from the space below was shocking. His sweatshirt wasn’t close to being warm enough; he should have brought a damn parka. And couldn’t they have built the stairs a little wider? A safety inspector would have a heart attack—these stairs were steep, narrow, and had a sheer drop on both sides, with only a tiny pole of a railing to hold on to.
Clutching the rail in one hand and his flashlight in the other, Dan took the first step. Three stairs, four, ten. At fifteen steps, he reached a small landing, but he still couldn’t see the floor with his flashlight. Just more and more stairs, pitched at a nightmarish incline, leading into the bowels of the basement.
One more landing, twelve more steps, and at last he reached the bottom. He shined his cell up and around, watching as the meager light failed to find the top or even sides of … What, a cave? A vault? He couldn’t be sure, but he could tell it was enormous. Coughing, he listened to the sound bounce and echo for a solid minute before finally fading away.
He slowly walked forward into the huge space. There were wooden posts that ran from the floor to the ceiling. Otherwise, the hall he was in seemed completely empty.
Finally, he reached a square arch leading into yet another space beyond. Dan suddenly felt like laughing—he’d been creeped out by the expansiveness of the cell level and the warden’s secret office, but this was something else, something he could hardly fathom, even as his eyes fed him the information. It was like a palace down here. What could it have been used for?
But this was the last room; it had to be. Shining his light all around, he found a rusted metal box screwed into the wall beside him, and he carefully nudged open the front panel. The rusty hinges squealed, and the echoes in the chamber reverberated endlessly.
He’d hit the jackpot. There were switches in the box, and lots of them. Dan flicked the biggest one and was rewarded with a low hum, then a buzz, and finally a quiet pop as the lights came up. Only a few worked, and one exploded overhead in a shower of glass and sparks. Dan ducked instinctively, and then gasped.
He was looking down into an operating amphitheater.
In the very middle of the room was a raised wooden platform, and standing dead center was an operating table. It was covered with a smooth sheet, originally white, now gray with dust. There was a padded pillow at the top. Leather straps, buckled, trisected the bed. Around the main table stood a few smaller tables on wheels. They had surgical instruments on them.
Encircling the platform were stepped rows of chairs, like in a sports arena. The stands. As if watching someone’s surgery was some kind of amusement …
With a sickening lurch, Dan realized he’d seen this room before, too, in another nightmare. In his dream, he’d started out on that table.
He moved slowly down the stands, drawn to the platform. He walked a complete circle around it, his eyes never leaving the padded headrest. How many killers had been treated here? Had little Lucy been strapped down for surgery while people watched? Dan thought of the scar on her forehead that suggested a lobotomy. If it had been that, and she had survived, poor little Lucy wouldn’t have had much of a life.
Why on earth would an operating amphitheater be built so far underground? Were they concealing something?
A small desk and filing cabinet at the very back of the room caught Dan’s eye. They’d both been pushed into the shadows as if they wanted to be overlooked. Dan’s heart raced. If patients were operated on here—if Lucy Valdez had been operated on—there would surely be records of it. If he was lucky, those records might not have gotten lost in the shuffle when Brookline closed.
But as he approached the cabinets, his head felt suddenly heavy, like it had been stuffed with wool. He blinked once … twice.… The floor didn’t feel so sturdy anymore.
He stood over the table, ready, confident. This was his moment. He had an audience, and he would not disappoint them. This was his chance to prove that his methods, however unorthodox, worked. He was the warden, the trusted father of the Brookline family, strict but ultimately fair. Daniel looked down at his clean white coat and the instruments in his hands, sanitized and gleaming. Everything was prepared.
Necks craned as each man tried to get a better look. Before him, strapped to the operating table, was a young boy who liked to set fires. When Daniel blinked, it was someone new, someone else who needed fixing—a cruel widow who had poisoned six husbands, a pretty young girl with fiery red hair. Blinking again, he found the most wretched creature of all. He looked at the man’s waxy face, slack now from the sedatives. This man was broken, but he wouldn’t be broken for long. He could be fixed, they could all be fixed.…
Dan—the warden—started. Sudden sounds … A pounding like thunder … Footsteps overhead … His vision blurred, spinning out of control. Not now! They couldn’t come for him now. The authorities would never understand what he was trying to do.
Dan … Dan …
They were calling his name now, they were coming for him.
“Dan! Hello? Dan, are you all right? You’re scaring me, snap out of it!”
Snap, snap, snap.
Dan was cold all over and realized with a jolt that he was lying on the floor. Abby’s face materialized above him through the fading blur of the vision. For a moment, he was relieved, but then he felt instantly ashamed. What would she think if she could see inside his head?
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CHAPTER
No 22
“It’s me,” Abby said. She was kneeling beside him. “It’s okay, you’re all right now, you’re all right.”
“How long have I been out?” he said, touching a sore spot on his head where he must have bumped it. He saw that he was on the floor near the file cabinet, surrounded by scattered papers.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I just got here and you were lying on the ground.”
She looked so concerned that it made him feel better. And maybe it was the relief of seeing her worried face, or the relief that it was her and not some ghost of the past made real—Dan didn’t know and he didn’t care—but suddenly he reached up, pulled her in, and kissed her.
It surprised them both.
“Oh. Well,” Abby breathed. She tasted like Altoids and cherry lip balm. “I guess we can stop pretending to hate each other now, huh?”
“I guess so,” Dan replied.
She smiled up down him. “And … can we just pretend I never said that stuff about you being a weirdo?”
“Wait a minute, what stuff?” he asked.
Abby swatted him lightly on the chest. As nice as it was to see her smiling and laughing again, Dan really didn’t remember her calling him a weirdo. Had he blocked that out, or did she mean she’d said it to some of her art friends? Or to Ash.
Dan shook his head. He wasn’t going down that road. Not anymore. He had kissed her and it was as good as he could ever have hoped.
“We should get out of here,” Abby said. “This place gives me the creeps.”
She helped Dan get up. His head hurt, and he felt more than a little dizzy.
“Hey,” he said suddenly, “what are you doing down here anyway?”
Abby looked a little embarrassed. “Um … I went to your room after dinner, just to see you and apologize for the way I’ve been acting. You weren’t there so I got worried that you’d come down here by yourself. I guess I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”
Dan reached out and took Abby’s hand, and she gave it a squeeze. They walked up the stepped rows. Back at the top, Dan stopped to flick off the lights. He turned around and took one more look at the now-dark chamber.
Two bright spots glowed from the far corner.
Just a trick of the eye. Just imprints of the lightbulbs left behind. Not the eyes of men watching. Dan shut the door quickly behind him.
“What’s the hold up?” Abby asked.
Dan moved next to her, shaking his head. “Nothing,” he said softly. “Nothing. Let’s just get out of here. Are you hungry? I’ve got some amazingly stale snack cakes up in my room.”
“Sounds delicious,” Abby said, leaning into him. “It’s a date.”
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CHAPTER
No 23
When they got to the final door, Dan felt he was done with the basement for good. What mattered now was Abby, and how warm her hand felt in his own. They would fix things with Jordan, and he would finish the summer with his best friends, out in the sunshine, away from all this gloom.
Dan’s euphoria was short-lived.
Something had gone terribly wrong on the first floor. Police were swarming everywhere, and the entrance hall was flooded with students. One girl was crying hysterically. The lights made Dan’s eyes hurt after the blackness of the basement.
Exchanging a worried glance, Dan and Abby did their best to blend in with the crowd. A tall police officer crossed in front of them, almost bumping into them. He barely spared them a glance and rapidly moved across the hall, shouldering students out of the way. The crowd parted for him slowly. He reached the crying girl and took her by the shoulders, talking to her gently.
“What the …” Dan and Abby tried to see what was going on, but the crowd was just too dense to move more than a few feet.
Another police officer rushed in through the front door. Dan could see the flashing blue-and-red lights of the police cars parked outside. It looked like there were four or five of them.
“Move out of the way!” the officer thundered. “This is a crime scene! Move outside, now!” She and the tall policeman started herding the kids outside onto the lawn. The students shuffled slowly, bottlenecking at the front door. Dan and Abby moved along with the crowd, following the officer’s instructions.
“Police?” Abby whispered. The color had drained from her face.
“Let’s try to find out what happened.”
Outside, a third policeman was now talking to the crying girl. Everyone else stood in groups, conversing in hushed whispers. Dan finally spotted Yi and Jordan. Jordan didn’t look too good. He glared at Dan and Abby and then disappeared into the crowd.
“What’s going on?” asked Dan.
Yi looked at Dan with surprise. “Your roomie found a dead guy on the stairs. One of the hall monitors. Jake … George …”
“Joe?” Dan blurted out, and Abby covered her mouth.
“Yeah, that’s it. Joe. Your boy Felix was coming back from a late-night run and found him. It looked like he’d been dead for a while.”
A while couldn’t have been that long, surely. Dan had seen Joe in the halls just before he went into the basement. That was what, an hour ago? Maybe less? Dan needed to figure out how long he’d been down there.
Yi was saying, “At least, that was what it looked like when I saw him.”
“You saw him?” Abby said, horrified.
Yi nodded. “Just a glimpse, after Felix started screaming. Eyes open, wide open. Just … staring. It was so freaking creepy. Jordan saw him, too. Joe was standing, propped up in the stairwell with one hand on the railing, and another holding his cell phone.…”
Like a sculpture …
“Hey,” Yi said suddenly, startling them both. “Where were you guys anyway? How is it you didn’t know?”
“We weren’t doing anything,” Abby said too quickly. Then she glanced up at Dan.
“Yes,” he said, “that sounded as guilty as you think it did.”
“Crap. All right, fine. You’re right.” She looked at her feet. “We were making out, okay?”
Dan wasn’t going to argue with that exaggeration. He liked it quite a lot, in fact. It was a clever cover, too—this way no one would know they’d actually been exploring the old wing.
“In the old wing?” Yi asked.
Abby shrugged.
“You two are weird as hell,” Yi muttered. Then he said, “You know, I’m worried about Jordan. Seeing Joe definitely freaked him out—I mean, it’s freaked all of us out. But he wasn’t looking too good before. These days he hardly talks to me, and he’s always working on math that I’m pretty sure is not even for a class.”
“Do you think his nightmares are getting to him?” Abby asked.
“Yeah—he keeps waking up in the middle of the night. And I think there might be stuff with his parents, like they found out he was here or something. Anyway, I get the feeling it’s way worse than he’s letting on. I just hope he’s got a place to go back to, you know?” Yi paused. “Are you two keeping an eye on him?”
Abby and Dan exchanged a worried look. Since they’d all gone their separate ways, they had no idea that Jordan had gotten this bad. Dan felt guilty—he should have checked on Jordan, even though Jordan had withdrawn.
“Yeah, we’re keeping an eye on him,” Dan said. We are now, anyway.
More policemen arrived. They began sectioning off the students, arranging them in smaller, more manageable groups. Probably for interviews.
Shit, why did he feel so guilty?
“Dan, buddy? You feeling okay? You just got a little green.…” Yi punched his arm lightly.
“Me? I’m fine.”
“What are you talking about?” Abby demanded, looking up at him. “Clearly, none of us are fine.”
Two cops, the tall one and the police officer who had moved everyone outside, reached where they were standing and herded their group over to a tree.
“Better come up with a believable story,” Yi said softly. “Before Mulder and Scully over there get a go at you. You don’t want them knowing you were in the forbidden zone.”
Yi turned to talk with another kid, but Dan could hardly move. What if Yi was right? Were they really going to be interrogated? Of course they’re going to question you, someone was murdered.
“We weren’t in the old wing,” Dan said, grabbing Abby’s arm. “We were in the second-floor lounge, the one by your room. We have to get our story straight or they might think we had something to do with … with …”
He couldn’t bring himself to say it.
“But we weren’t anywhere near the second floor.” She looked at him strangely. “Why would we need a story?”
He took her by the forearm, tugging her away from the other students. “Just trust me, okay? Think about it—we were both out wandering late at night. Joe’s a big guy, so they probably won’t suspect you could overpower him, but the two of us—”
“Hey, I resent that,” Abby said, yanking her arm out of his grasp. “I might be a little on the petite side—”
“Tiny.”
“Whatever. It doesn’t matter, Dan, I’m stronger than I look. And it’s not like you’re some kind of muscle-bound hulk, so I don’t see why you’d be a suspect and I wouldn’t.”
“Why are we arguing about this?” he whispered. “You’re Wonder Woman, okay? You’re …”
“Say I’m Black Widow.”
“Abby—”
“Say it.” She crossed her arms, cocking one hip to the side.
“You’re Black Widow. Times ten. Happy now? And Jesus, why aren’t you more freaked out?”
“I am freaked out,” Abby squeaked, giving him a little shove. “I’m seriously freaked out. This is what I do when I’m freaked out. I babble. Inanely. I babble inanely to distract myself from the freaking out!”
“Okay, okay.” He hoped nobody had heard that. They both sounded guilty, even if they weren’t. Well, not guilty of murder, just guilty of having poor judgment and a blatant disregard for the loose curfew rules
. He knew that at least. Right?
“Poor Felix. I hope he’s not too traumatized,” she said, turning to search the crowd. “Do you see him?”
“No,” Dan said. “I’m sure he’s being questioned by the police.”
“Gird your loins.” Yi was back. He slid up to them, talking out of the corner of his mouth. “I got Mulder and Scully on my six.”
Dan took a deep breath, preparing to unleash a whole mouthful of bullshit on officers of the law. They separated him from Abby, the policewoman taking her aside while Dan went with the tall guy. The whole process was surprisingly quick and painless. He was asked standard questions—where he was, what he heard and saw, if he could remember any strangers around the dorm that day. Dan answered vaguely, mentioning he was on the second floor with his friend, that he had seen Joe “earlier that day” but hadn’t noticed anyone suspicious loitering in Brookline.
“Thanks,” the cop told him when the questions ran out. “If you see anything strange, anything at all out of the ordinary, you tell someone. Okay, son?”
“Okay. Thanks, sir.”
Dan wandered away, numb. He had just lied through his teeth to a cop. Why? Exploring the basement wasn’t the same as murder, it just wasn’t. He had to keep reminding himself of that over and over again. Forget about your freaking alibi, whoever did this is still out there.
The officer finished speaking to Abby a moment later. As Dan waited for her, he heard one of the cops talking to another in low tones.
“Probably some bum,” he was saying. “They’re always getting blind drunk and wandering up on to campus. We’ll find him in a bush outside, just you wait.”
Dan wondered how a stranger could get into the dorm, considering the front doors locked automatically from the outside.
“Could I have your attention please?” Dan recognized the director from the first couple of days. He had been all smiles then. Now he looked ragged, still rumpled from sleep, and shaken to the core.
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