Dark Visions (14 page)

"It's Lewis!" she said.

The three of them swung around through the dining room and into the kitchen. The shouting stopped.

"Oh, no," Anna said.

Lewis was standing by the kitchen sink, panting. There was a sort of heap at his feet, a heap with mahogany-colored hair at one end.

Marisol.

"What happened?" Kait gasped. Lewis just shook his head. Rob had dropped to his knees at once, and was gently turning Marisol over. A trembling started in Kait's legs as she saw the face. Under her olive complexion, Marisol looked chalky. Even her lips were pale. Her eyes were open a little, showing slits of white eyeball.

"Did you call nine-one-one?" Anna asked quietly.

"It's no use," Lewis said in a strangled voice. He was braced against the sink for support, looking down.

His face, normally sweet and impish, was drawn with horror. "She's dead. I know she's dead."

Waves of chills swept over Kaitlyn. What Rob was moving was now Marisol's body, not Marisol. That one word, "dead," made all the difference. Suddenly Kait didn't want to touch ... it. The body.

She knelt by it anyway, and put a hand on its- Marisol's-chest. Then she jumped a little.

"I think she's breathing."

"She's not dead," Rob said positively. His eyes were shut, his fingers at Marisol's temples. "Her life force is really low, but she's alive. I'm going to try to help." He stopped talking and sat still, his face lined with concentration.

In the background, Kait could hear Anna calling 911.

"What happened, Lewis?" she demanded again.

"She had a sort of... It looked like a seizure. I came down early because I was hungry, and she was in here cutting up grapefruits, and I said hi, and she was kind of crabby, and then all of a sudden she fell down." Lewis swallowed and blinked rapidly. "I tried to pick her up, but she just kept jerking and shaking. And then she stopped moving. I thought she was dead."

Medication, Kait thought. If Marisol had been on medication for seizures-and she stopped taking it... Or for diabetes. Could diabetes give you seizures?

"Where's Joyce?" she said, getting up suddenly. It was the first question she should have asked. Joyce was always down here before the kids, drinking mugs of black coffee and helping Marisol make breakfast.

"Here's a note on the fridge," Anna said. Underneath a magnet shaped like a strawberry was a note in spiky, casual handwriting.

"She's at the store," Kait said, and at that moment heard the front door open.

"Joyce!" She and Lewis shouted it together. Kaitlyn rushed to the dining room entrance. "Joyce, something's happened to Marisol!"

Joyce came running. When she saw Marisol on the floor, she dumped her ecological cloth grocery bag on the counter, where several apples and a box of coffee filters spilled out.

"Oh, my God-what happened?" she said sharply. "Is she breathing all right?" Her hands flew from Marisol's wrist to her neck, searching for a pulse.

Rob didn't answer. He was sitting lotus style by Marisol's head, eyes shut, fingers on her temples. Early sun slanted in the east window and shone on his tanned shoulders.

"I think she's breathing okay now," Lewis whispered. "He said he would try to help her."

Joyce looked hard at Rob, then the strain in her face eased. "Good," she said.

"Is she epileptic?" Kaitlyn asked softly but urgently. "Because Lewis said she had a seizure."

"What? No." Joyce spoke absently. "Oh-you mean the medication? No, it's for something else entirely; he said a psychiatrist prescribed it. God knows, maybe she took an overdose. I never even got to talk to her about it."

"I know. We saw your note," Kait began. "But-"

"Listen-sirens," Anna said.

After that, things happened very quickly. Kait and Anna ran to the front door to wave down the paramedics. Just as the rescue van arrived, a black limousine pulled up behind it. Mr. Zetes got out.

And then there was a lot of confusion. Mr. Z was walking very quickly, despite his cane-and the paramedics were rushing inside with equipment- and the rottweilers were barking-and Kait was behind everyone, trying to see into the kitchen. The noise was deafening.

"Get those dogs out!" one of the paramedics shouted.

Mr. Zetes snapped an order and the dogs backed into the dining room.

"Clear this room!" another paramedic said. She was pulling at Rob, trying to get him away from Marisol.

Rob was resisting.

Then Mr. Zetes spoke, in a voice that quieted everyone. "All you young people-go upstairs. You, too, Rob. We'll let the professionals take care of this."

"Sir, she's barely hanging on-" Rob began, his voice thick with worry.

"Move!" the pulling paramedic shouted. Rob moved.

On her way up the stairs, Kait came face-to-face with Gabriel, who was coming down.

"They don't want us," she said. "Go back up. How come it took you so long, anyway?"

"I never get up until seven," Gabriel murmured, backing up. He was fully dressed.

"Didn't you hear the yelling?"

"It was hard to ignore, but I managed."

Rob glared at him as he passed. Gabriel returned it with a derisive look that started with Rob's bare feet and ended with Rob's tousled head.

"We can see from the study window," Lewis said, and they all followed him into the alcove-except Gabriel, who went to one of the other windows.

In a few moments the paramedics came out with a stretcher. Lewis's hand made a slight movement toward his camera, which was lying on the window seat. Then it dropped to his side again.

They all watched as the stretcher was loaded into the back of the paramedics' van. Kait felt both frightened and strangely remorseful. Marisol's face had looked so small among all the big rescue workers and the equipment.

"I hope she's all right. She's got to be all right," she said, and then she sat down on the window seat. Her legs were very shaky.

Anna sat down and put an arm around her. "At least Joyce is going, too," she said in her quiet, gentle voice. A little of her calm penetrated Kaitlyn, like a cool wind blowing. Below, Joyce climbed into the van and it pulled out. The black limo stayed.

Rob was leaning against the window glass, one knee on the seat beside Kait. He was completely unselfconscious about his lack of dress.

"Mr. Z sure does have bad luck," he said softly. "Every time he comes here, he finds trouble."

The cool wind blowing through Kaitlyn turned cold. She looked quickly at Rob. "What are you saying?"

"Nothing," he said, still gazing out the window. "It's just too bad for him, that's all."

Lewis and Anna looked puzzled. Kait stared down at the black limousine, feeling an uneasy stirring in her stomach.

After a while, Mr. Zetes called them down to go to school. Nobody wanted breakfast. Kait didn't want to go to school, either, but Mr. Zetes didn't ask her opinion. He escorted them out to the limousine and ordered the driver to take them.

"Oh, God, I left my sociology book," Kait said when they reached the corner. The limousine, instead of turning around, backed up.

Kait ran up the porch steps and yanked the door open, conscious of the five people waiting on her in the car. She burst inside-and then stopped in middash. Mr. Z's two rottweilers were running toward her, toenails clacking and skidding on the hardwood floor. A terrible baying struck her with the force of a physical blow.

Kaitlyn had never been afraid of a dog in her life-but these weren't dogs, they were salivating monsters whose barking made the ceiling ring. She could see their pink and black gums.

She looked around desperately for a weapon-and saw Mr. Zetes.

He was standing in the little hallway just in front of Joyce's room. The strange thing was that Kaitlyn hadn't seen him arrive-and she was sure he hadn't been there when she burst in. She'd been looking in that direction, because that was where the dogs had come from.

Even stranger, she would have sworn that no door had opened or closed over there. The door to the front lab, just behind him, was shut. So were the French doors to his left-the ones that opened on Joyce's room.

But there wasn't any other door-to Mr. Z's right was only a solid wall that supported the staircase. So he had to have come from the lab or Joyce's room.

Kait saw his mouth move, and the dogs shut up. He

gave her a courtly nod, his piercing dark eyes on her face.

"I forgot my sociology book," Kaitlyn said unsteadily. Her pulse was hammering, and for some reason she felt as if she were being caught in a lie.

"I see. Run up and get it," was all he said, but he waited until she came downstairs with it, and saw her out the door.

The drawing came, appropriately, during art studio class.

Kaitlyn had been thinking about Mr. Zetes all day, and had made the interesting discovery that it's quite possible to be miserable during lunch even though important people are being nice to you. Several cheerleaders and three or four attractive guys had sat down to talk to her group-but it didn't matter.

However Kaitlyn tried to listen to them, her mind kept drifting to Mr. Zetes standing in that cul-de-sac of a hallway. Like a magician appearing in a sealed cabinet.

In art class, Kaitlyn was supposed to be doing a project for her portfolio-that important collection of pictures that might get her college credit next year-but she couldn't focus. The busy, creative classroom around her was only a blur and a hum.

Almost mesmerized, she flipped to a blank page in her sketchbook and reached for her oil pastels.

She loved pastels because they made it so easy to get what she saw from her eyes to the paper. They were quick, fluid, vigorous-free. For a normal picture, she would start by rapidly sketching the major shapes, then layering on detail. But for the other kind of picture, the kind she didn't control. . .

She watched her hand dot tiny strokes of carmine and crimson lake in a rectangular shape. A tall rectangle. Around the rectangle, strokes of Van Dyke brown and burnt umber. The close dots of the browns gradually formed a shimmering pattern, with whorls and lines like wood grain.

Her hand hesitated over the box of pastels-what color next? After a moment she picked up black.

Black strokes clustered heavily inside the rectangle, forming a shape. A human silhouette, with broad shoulders and body lines that swept straight down. Like a coat. A man in a coat.

Kaitlyn sat back and looked at the drawing.

She recognized it. It was one of the images she'd seen in that visionary mosaic yesterday-the doorway.

Only now she could see the full picture.

A man in a coat in front of the rectangle of an open door. The red of the doorway gave an impression of energy around him. Framing the door was wood- wood paneling.

The solid wall across from Joyce's door was wood-paneled.

"Nice broken color technique," a voice above her said. "Do you need a squirt of fixative?"

Kaitlyn shook her head and the teacher moved on.

The limousine picked them up after school. Joyce was still at the hospital, Mr. Zetes told them when they got home. Marisol was still unconscious. There wouldn't be any testing today.

Kait waited until everyone had drifted upstairs, and then quietly, one by one, she began to gather them.

"We've got to talk. In the study," she said. Anna, Lewis, and Rob all came at once. Gabriel came when she stuck her head in his room and hissed at him.

When they were together in the study, she shut the door and turned the TV on. Then she showed them the picture and told them what she'd seen that morning.

"So you think, like . . . what? There's really a door there?" Lewis asked. "But what does that mean? I mean, so what?"

Kaitlyn looked at Rob, whose eyes were dark, dark gold.

"There's more," she said, and she told Anna and Lewis what she'd told Rob and Gabriel the night before.

All of it, about Marisol's warnings and the strange things that had been happening.

When she was through, there was no sound except the blaring of a music video on TV.

Anna sat with her head slightly tilted, her long braid falling into her lap, her eyes faraway and sad. Lewis rubbed his nose, forehead puckered. Rob's face was set, his fists resting on his knees. Kaitlyn herself gripped the sides of her sketchbook tensely.

Gabriel was sitting back with one knee hooked over the arm of the couch. He was playing with a quarter, flipping it over and catching it. He seemed completely unconcerned.

Finally Anna said, "Something's going on. Any one of those things-like what Marisol said, or the cold thing on your forehead-any one of them could be explained. But when you put them all together, something's ..."

"Amiss," Rob supplied.

"Amiss," Anna said.

Lewis's face cleared. "But look. If you think there's a door down there, why don't we just go down and see?"

"We can't," Anna said. "Mr. Z's in the living room, and so are the dogs."

"He's got to leave sometime," Rob said.

Lewis squirmed. "Look-you're really saying that the Institute is, like, evil? You really think so?" He turned to Rob. "I thought you loved this place, the whole idea of it."

Gabriel snorted. Rob ignored him. "I do love the idea of it," he said. "But the reality ... I've just got a bad feeling about it. And Kait does, too."

Everyone looked at Kait, who hesitated. "I don't know about feelings," she said finally, looking down at the picture of a door. "I don't even know whether to trust my drawings. But there's only one way to find out about this one."