by Ethan Cross
Movement in the darkness. An impact. The sound of rolling wheels.
His finger shook on the trigger as the white object rolled into view.
The hospital gurney skidded down the hall toward their position. It gradually veered to the right until it came to rest against the wall, halfway between them and the darkness.
A large sheet covered the gurney on all sides, almost reaching the floor. Other than a flower of red on the very top, the sheet seemed ghostly white. The layer of white concealed an object shaped like a human body.
Girard caught his eye. “Wait here. Cover us.”
He nodded in rapid fire as a response.
Girard and Dobbs moved toward the gurney in leapfrog formation, taking cover in the doorways. All the doors along the corridor were closed, but the doorjambs were deep enough to provide concealment. Within a few seconds, they arrived at the gurney. Girard shined his flashlight toward the end of the hall but illuminated no threats.
Travis kept his gun trained on the end of the corridor but watched as Girard motioned for Dobbs to cover the gurney. He saw Girard reach out with a steady hand and pull back just enough of the sheet to reveal the face of the body.
He couldn’t see the face from his position. Dobbs swung the shotgun away from the gurney and toward the end of the hall, and Girard uttered something unintelligible under his breath.
He couldn’t contain himself any longer. “What’s happening?” he called to them.
Girard shook his head and looked toward Travis. His voice barely over a whisper, Girard said, “It’s the Doc. He’s dead.”
The sound of a shotgun erupted through the confined space, and Girard flew into the wall. His ruined body fell to the floor.
Dobbs swung his shotgun back and forth with wild, jerky movements as he backpedaled rapidly down the hall.
Travis also searched for the source of the blast, but he couldn’t locate the assailant. Fear threatened to overwhelm his faculties.
He watched in horror as the sheet fell away to reveal a man with a sawed-off shotgun hiding on the gurney’s lower platform. The man fired, and his fellow trooper’s legs exploded in a spray of crimson.
Travis unleashed a barrage of panicked shots in the killer’s direction, but the man dove toward the cover of a doorway.
Dobbs wailed as he crawled for cover and discharged the shotgun blindly into a wall near the killer’s position.
Two more shotgun blasts exploded down the hall. The trooper’s screaming ceased, and a set of the work lights exploded in a shower of sparks. Darkness consumed the bodies.
A shadow flitted through the black, and Travis fired in the direction of the apparition. Another set of work lights exploded. The darkness crept closer.
Travis trembled all over. His body felt cold, the world surreal. He couldn’t breathe.
The fight or flight instinct took over, recommending flight. He kicked through a set of doors into another hallway near the nurse’s station. This hall contained no lights, but he didn’t care at the moment. Escape was his only thought. After a few feet, he tripped over something in the darkness and remembered his flashlight. He cursed his stupidity and retrieved it from his belt.
As he sprinted through the hall, the beam of illumination bounced up and down until he reached what would soon be a small waiting room. He slid within the doorway and wheeled back in the direction from which he had come. The flashlight’s beam irradiated no pursuers.
He felt light-headed, and he couldn’t catch his breath. For the first time, he remembered why he had been stationed in the hallway. His guts churned, and the bile began to rise. He bit down on his lower lip.
He had been there as protection, and he had just left Emily Morgan behind.
64
Emily Morgan scanned the hall from the doorway of her hospital room. She had been sleeping peacefully when the screaming began. When she had heard the shotgun blasts, she pulled the IVs from her arms. She steadied herself on the doorframe, but the world crested and fell like ocean waves. Her legs didn’t feel like her own. She seemed to float instead of walk. She wondered if the disorientation stemmed from the trauma to her head or Dr. Callow’s prescription. Either way, she was in no condition to fight or run—but she could hide.
Only the closest work light was in operation. Darkness suffocated the rest of the hallway. She stumbled from the room and headed away from the ruined lights. The corridor was also dark in that direction, but that was her plan. She could hide in the darkness just as easily as the killer.
She had only moved a short distance down the hall when the last of the work lights blinked out.
Her knees threatened to buckle, but she steadied herself against the wall and pressed forward. The darkness seemed fluid as if she were drowning in a sea of oil. Her plan was simple: move down the hall as far as she could, hide in a random room, and pray.
Her breathing and the noise made by her socks shuffling along the floor were the only sounds.
She stopped. There was another sound behind her.
The air was still. After a moment, she continued on.
She stopped again. Nothing.
She prayed that the noise existed only in her imagination, but she could have sworn that she had heard the rustle of fabric at her back. And the sound seemed to be keeping pace with her.
The world rolled, and she trembled all over. The shaking caused her head to throb.
When she advanced, she did so with as slow and calculated movements as she could manage. She moved to the opposite side of the hall and crept forward. A little farther … just a little farther.
She felt a warm wind against the back of her neck, but that wasn’t possible. There was no wind here.
She imagined another possibility—the killer’s breath.
She pushed the thought from her mind. He would have been just as blind as she was in this place. Unlike some, she didn’t believe Ackerman to be the bogeyman. He was just a man whose mind had been twisted. He couldn’t see in the dark.
She thought back to the night when Ackerman had forever changed their lives. It seemed long ago, but it had only been a matter of days. She remembered his eyes the most. At the time, she had mistaken the look in his eyes for only madness or rage, but looking back, she also saw pain and hopelessness within his gaze. After the incident, she had studied the man who had killed her husband. She had learned of his past. She had needed to understand.
She felt the wind on her neck again. Then, she felt something else, something of substance. A finger traced the line of her neck down her shoulder.
The terror crippled her. She stood petrified.
She gathered her resolve and thrust an arm back against the killer. Her forearm struck flesh, but she was weak and knew that she could do little damage.
She ran down the dark hallway, tripping, stumbling. The swaying of her reality finally overwhelmed her, and she toppled forward. She crawled in desperation, questing for a place to hide.
She found what felt like a table. Something the workmen had used? No, not a table. A cabinet of some kind? She felt wheels under the object. Whatever it was, it was empty, large enough to hold her, and her only option. She crawled inside and quieted her breathing.
Her heart beat at such volume that she feared he would find her by it. She felt him drawing near. She imagined the hammering in her chest calling to him like a beacon.
She willed the pounding to stop. She had never thought of herself as a strong person, but Ackerman had made her realize that she could survive anything. Death would not claim her tonight. She would beat back the reaper.
She thought of her daughter. The loss of a parent and the trauma of the incident would affect the girl in profound ways. Ashley needed her mother by her side, and she vowed that nothing in this world or the next would take her away.
The voice froze her thundering heart.
“Emily. I see you.”
65
Travis Depaolo stared into the darkness and reasoned that the ki
ller must have extinguished the last of the work lights. He cursed himself again. He felt like a coward. He had to make it right.
He left his flashlight off and listened.
The absence of light made him feel as if he stood in the vacuum of space gazing into the belly of a black hole. He feared that to step forward was to give himself as offering into the arms of oblivion. He stepped forward anyway.
The approximate location of Emily Morgan’s room from his former position next to the nurse’s station was across the hall and back to the left. He wanted desperately to turn on the flashlight and illuminate his path, but he knew that the killer would find him by the light. It would draw death down upon him like a moth to a flame.
The doorway eluded him as he moved across the hall and groped blindly for the entrance. He found the opening and moved inside. Once through the entry, he pushed the door almost closed, in order to block the light from entering the hall, and then activated the beam.
His heart sank as the light shone upon the empty bed. The sheets had been thrown back. Tubes ending in needles lay strewn across the floor.
The killer had claimed his prize. He was too late.
He fought back the guilt and fear. Maybe she made it out of the room?
He extinguished the light and opened the door. He listened in the darkness again.
This time, he heard a faint whisper down the hall. The voice reverberated off the walls. By the time it reached his ears, it sounded as if a legion of the damned lived in the darkness. The voice repeated Emily Morgan’s name.
He moved in the direction of the voice. He didn’t turn on his light at first, but then he decided that he might bump into the killer or walk right past the man and not even know it.
He flipped on the flashlight. His eyes adjusted while his gun sighted along the beam. He mimicked his deceased commander and moved forward by taking cover within each of the doorways. He prayed for strength.
66
Ackerman watched Emily Morgan tremble in the pale green light.
In the past, night-vision goggles had been expensive pieces of equipment purchased by mail order or at military surplus outlets. Now, however, the ability to see in the dark could be attained for less than a hundred dollars at a local toy store. The black goggles had been designed for children playing hide and seek, but the straps could be adjusted for more mature gamers as well. They weren’t quite military grade and didn’t have the range and capabilities of their more expensive brethren, but they served his purposes just fine.
The bandages that encompassed Emily Morgan’s skull made him think of a little girl from long ago—the first person he ever killed.
He remembered the little girl’s pale features. Although he reasoned that Emily came by her complexion naturally while the little girl’s ghostly pallor was only temporary, caused by her heart drawing the blood away from her face.
Set her free, Francis. Pull the trigger.
His father would cut him if he refused, which was better than the burnings. He remembered raising the gun.
At the time, he didn’t think that she would actually die. His father had played the same game before with another girl, a little blonde girl wearing a blindfold. In that instance, his father had cut him until he succumbed to the man’s will. But when he pulled the trigger, the girl didn’t die. The gun had been empty. His father had ended the game and claimed to have released the girl a few counties over.
He remembered thinking that the same thing would happen with the pale child.
In this case, Ackerman Sr. didn’t have to persuade the boy with force. He didn’t hesitate. He aimed the gun at her bandaged head.
Looking back, he wondered why his father had taken the time to bandage a wound when the girl was about to die. He never could understand his father’s way of thinking.
He remembered the shot like an explosion in the small space—the ringing in his ears, the girl falling, the blood. He remembered his father crying and the feeling that he had done something wrong. He had done as he was told, but no matter what he did, his father never seemed pleased. The pain never stopped.
Frank Sr. had hugged the dead girl and sobbed, repeating, “I had to know. I had to know for sure.” When the father turned to his son, he gave the boy a look of disdain and said, “You’re a monster.”
Ackerman remembered the tears flowing down his face as his father left the room, leaving him alone with the dead girl.
The memory seemed so real. He could almost still feel the warm liquid running down his cheeks. He reached up and realized that the tears weren’t a memory. He pulled off the goggles and wiped them away.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the light of a flashlight and a man moving down the hall toward him. He replaced the goggles and looked back at Emily Morgan as she cowered within the empty tool cabinet. The doors were open. A stack of uninstalled slide-out shelf units sat next to the industrial cabinet. A white mark on top showed where the price sticker had recently been peeled away.
He swung the cabinet doors shut on Morgan’s trembling form. Moving to one end, he pushed the cabinet down the hall in the direction of the approaching light. As his legs pumped into a full sprint, the container gained momentum.
As he drew near to the trooper, he aimed the cabinet at the man and released his grip. The container rocketed forward on its own momentum. It slammed into the dumbfounded cop.
Following behind the cabinet, he launched himself upon his stunned opponent. He stripped away the trooper’s pistol and pummeled his face. The man fell backward and lost his grip on the flashlight.
As the trooper crawled away, Ackerman retrieved the gun and flashlight from the ground.
The trooper reached one of the rooms and pulled himself up. The man opened the door and stumbled inside.
Ackerman wondered what protection the man hoped to find there. Watching in the pale green glow, he followed the cop into the room. He removed the goggles, lit the flashlight, and placed it on the floor. A dim glow filled the empty space.
The trooper crawled into a corner of the room like an injured animal hobbling away to die. Upon reaching the corner, he turned to face his pursuer and whimpered in short ragged breaths.
Ackerman placed the shotgun and the man’s pistol on the floor and produced a knife from a sheath at his side. He twisted the blade, but the meager light wasn’t adequate to illuminate the steel.
He moved toward the trooper. The man shook as if having a seizure. He noticed a pool of liquid spreading out from beneath the man. The trooper had pissed himself.
A wave of exhilaration washed over Ackerman. He imagined this was the way that eagles felt. He soared upon the winds of fear. “What’s your name?” he said.
“Travis.” The man stuttered as he spoke.
“Well, Travis, today’s your lucky day. You’re going to live beyond this evening. I need you to go back to your cop friends. Tell them that I have Emily Morgan and that I’m holding her hostage. Tell them that I loaded a car with cans of gasoline and stashed them away before we played our little game here. I’m going to douse this whole floor, and if any of them come into this building, I’ll kill her and burn the place to the ground. I don’t know if the sprinklers and fire systems are even completed, but I disabled them and shut off the water just to be sure. Tell the world what you’ve seen here, Travis. Make them believe. I’m waiting for a friend to arrive. If he’s not here within twenty-four hours, I’ll turn myself in without a fight. Everyone lives. Everyone goes home happy. But if anyone challenges me, we all die. Now go.”
Travis scurried to his feet, stumbling over himself and slipping in the pool of urine.
As he moved past, Ackerman slammed him into the wall and pressed the knife against the artery in the trooper’s neck.
“Please, no.”
“Shhhh …” In a whisper, Ackerman said, “Travis, I want you to remember that, from this day forth, the only reason you are alive is because I allowed you to live. I’m your god now. I own you. I h
ave given you the gift of life, and at any time, I may decide to reclaim that gift and take back what is mine. Just remember to cherish every second that you have, and realize that one day you may close your eyes and when you open them … I’ll be there.”
He shoved Travis toward the door, and the trooper darted away like a house pet with a wolf at its heels.
67
Marcus had no trouble finding Ackerman. He just followed the sound of sirens and flashing lights.
He pulled Alexei’s car into a parking lot a block from the scene. He looked over at the glove box. He had tried to ignore the weapon that he had used to murder the Sheriff, but he had to face it now.
He retrieved the gun and ejected the magazine. He stared down at it for a moment. Then, he reclined back against the headrest and released a long breath. He thought of the path that had brought him to this point. He tossed the useless weapon onto the floorboard of the passenger side. There were no life-ending projectiles in the magazine. He needed information and another weapon.
A cool breeze struck him as he exited the vehicle. Pandemonium reigned at the scene. Cop cars and other emergency vehicles surrounded the building. The police had placed barricades at a safe distance, and a multitude of onlookers gawked up at the glass and brick structure. He scanned the faces and saw a mixture of morbid curiosity and genuine excitement.
We’re so fascinated by what we fear.
He glanced at the other buildings of the hospital. He could tell that the facility had been recently built. The architecture struck him as modern and yet somehow reminiscent of the nineteen fifties. Red brick and pillars of glass composed the buildings’ faces. The building that had been surrounded shared the same look but was unfinished. The landscaping was nonexistent, and a walkway of plywood served as the sidewalk leading up to the new construction.
He watched the scene for a few moments and tried to calculate his next move. Then, he noticed one of the officers step around the barricade and move in the direction of a nearby parking lot. The lot was a maze of empty vehicles, many of them marked and unmarked squad cars.