Before I Wake (14 page)

“Vera said shadow people were after her,” Arden explained. “She said she could hear them running up and down the hall.”

“Did you ever hear anything?”

“I heard running. But it wasn’t shadow people. It was Noah, Eli, and Franny. They get bored and run around at night. Harmless stuff.”

“Let’s go talk to them,” he said.

They left Mrs. Stewart in the care of a staff nurse, told the detectives they would be back, and headed off to find Noah, Eli, and Franny.

They found them lying on the floor in the semi-darkness of a murky, incense-thick room, groggy music playing, the lamps dimmed with red scarves. Nobody got up to answer the door. Franny just weakly shouted for them to come in.

“What was all the noise out there?” Franny asked. She was lying on her back, eyes closed, hands on her stomach. “Somebody die?”

Fury crossed the room and turned off the CD player.

The bottom seemed to fall out of the room.

“
Hey
,” Noah complained weakly.

“Are you all high?” Arden asked.

“High?” Franny giggled and folded herself into a sitting position, legs crossed. “You think we’re high?”

“Just chillin,” Eli said.

He and Noah sat up. Eli stretched and got to his feet. Noah rubbed his head and sleepily eyed the pillow beside him. “What happened to the tunes, man?”

Arden pulled a scarf from the nearest lamp. The bulb was weak and didn’t cast much light. All three blinked as if it were the sun.

“There’s been a murder,” Arden announced.

They took it in slowly.

“No,” Eli said. “When? Where?”

“Last night. One of the elderly residents.”

“Oh, man,” Noah said. “That sucks. Who would kill an old person?”

“And why?” Franny added. She got to her feet and wrapped her arms around herself, shivering.

“Were any of you out last night?” Fury asked.

The three looked at one another.

“We’d just finished a session at Mercy,” Noah said. “After that, we got something to eat in the cafeteria, then came back here and crashed.”

“
Really
crashed,” Eli said. “It was like, seven or seven thirty.”

“You didn’t go out after that?” Arden asked.

They shook their heads, appearing baffled by the questions.

“Are you thinking one of us did it?” Eli asked incredulously.

“We just wanted to know where you were,” Fury said. “And if you saw or heard anything. Routine questions. Everyone in the building will be interviewed. In the entire complex.”

Eli relaxed a little. “Okay. That’s cool.”

Once Arden and Fury stepped outside the room, Fury zoomed in on her.

“And what about you?” he asked as they walked down the long hall. “Where were you last night?”

She stopped.

He stopped.

“In my room,” she said slowly.

“All night?”

“Yes, all night.”

He stared at her. She refused to break eye contact.

Staring, staring.

A blink from him.

Flash.

Something in his eyes, happening so quickly that it was gone before she could get an accurate reading. But it had looked uncomfortably like suspicion.

Noah sat on the windowsill of the room he shared with Eli and Franny. Arden and Fury had just left, and his roommates were debating the situation.

“What should we do?” Franny asked. “Leave? I don’t want to leave.”

A rage builds inside me, a deep, seething hatred for humanity. I don’t care about anything. I don’t care if I get caught. I just want to kill. I need to kill, to take a life.

Noah watched Eli rub his head, stirring up his bushy hair. It was a mess. He probably hadn’t washed it in days.

None of them had gotten much sleep lately. Or at least Noah hadn’t, and he didn’t think Franny and Eli had either. He couldn’t remember much about the procedures they’d endured, but he knew they’d been rotated in and out of the isolation tanks, then watched closely for a period of time before being turned loose. When they’d headed for their room last night, none of them had spoken. They’d walked across the dark grounds like three zombies, gotten some food in the cafeteria that they couldn’t eat, returned to the tower, and crashed. Hadn’t even stripped down to their underwear. Just crashed.

Killing isn’t a big deal. Squashing ants. That’s all I’m doing.

“She was old,” Eli said. He picked up the spiral notebook he always carried with him.

He thought of himself as a writer. What kind? Noah wasn’t sure. Eli didn’t write stories; he just wrote about himself. What he thought about people. His reaction to different situations. Descriptions.

Noah had once told Eli that if he was going to be a writer, he had to do more. He had to tell a story.

Eli just threw him the finger.

“Do you think the killer’s still here?” Franny rubbed her arms. She sounded scared again. “I think he—or she—could still be in the building. That’s what I think. This is a big place. A maze. A killer could hide anywhere.”

Noah got up from the stone window seat.

It had been nice there, with the sun on his back. Down on the ground, police were everywhere. Poking around, probably looking for the murder weapon.

He went over to the CD player and started stacking his CDs. He loved music more than anything in the world. More than Franny, and that was saying a lot.

After a while, he abandoned the plastic jewel cases. He unzipped his duffel bag and dug inside, looking for some clean clothes.

He spotted the shirt he’d worn last night. Quickly, he grabbed the canvas handles of the bag and walked across the room.

“Where are you going?” Eli asked.

“To take a shower.”

“I’ll take one when you’re done. Then maybe we can go into town and get a pizza. I gotta get outta here for a while.”

“Yeah.” Noah nodded. “That sounds good.”

“Chicken and pineapple!” Franny said. “And darts. They have darts at Grumpy Steve’s.”

The mood was lifting. Even though someone was dead, they were moving on. That’s what you did. Moved on.

People are resilient
, Noah’s shrink always told him.
They can handle a lot of things you wouldn’t think they’d be able to handle
.

Noah had been through some weird stuff in his life. He’d been alone with his grandfather when he’d died. The old guy had sprawled out on the couch. Said he was going to shut his eyes for a minute. He never opened them again.

Noah was eight.

He remembered shaking him, trying to get him to wake up. He spent the whole day there, waiting. Getting hungry. Bored. Then his mom came to pick him up and all hell broke loose.

The bathrooms in the asylum were cool. Pale green tile on the floor. Smaller green squares of one-inch tile on the walls. Black trim. Porcelain sinks like they used to have in old schools. Unlike some of the other rooms, this one had a regular stand-up shower. No claw-foot tub.

And huge windows. Some with original, poured glass. The kind that was hard to see through.

Windows were a big thing here. An important part of the Kirkbride design. Even in the 1800s, they’d understood the importance of sunlight. They’d understood how a person could come unglued without it.

Light.

Touch.

Sensory deprivation.

Noah had read a lot about it before coming to the Hill. He knew that people—perfectly sane people in similar situations—had lost it in less than twenty-four hours. Funny that being alone like that could cause a person to lose his mind.

Years ago, they’d done experiments with babies and found that the ones who were touched and held and talked to learned much faster.

He reached behind the curtain and turned on the shower.

He pulled off his dark green, long-sleeved cotton shirt. He loved that shirt. Had it for three years. Wore it all the time.

He stripped the rest of the way, then stepped into the shower.

Water beat against his chest. It ran in rivulets down his legs and swirled around his feet before disappearing into the drain.

What Franny and Eli didn’t know was that Noah had gone out last night. On a run, as they called it.

He didn’t remember the actual act of stabbing Vera Thompson, but he remembered the way her blood smelled. He remembered her dead eyes, and the gash in her throat that had almost severed her spine.

He remembered wiping her blood on his face.

He remembered tasting it while Albert French whispered in his ear.

We all have to have apprentices. People to carry on our work when we’re gone.

Noah washed his hair.

Then, slowly and methodically, he washed his body using the liquid soap Franny had gotten from the health food store. She said it was biodegradable and wouldn’t harm the environment. He liked that about her. Her concern over things she could do nothing about.

He would miss her.

He shut off the shower and dried himself. He combed his hair. He shaved. When he was done, he stepped back and regarded his reflection in the mirror.

A fragile, sad, sensitive person looked back.

A tragic figure.

Now he finally understood that he’d been too unstable for the project. What he hadn’t wanted Franny to know was that his old man had bought his way in with a big fucking donation. The Hill had sounded exciting, even romantic, certainly something to do; plus Noah hadn’t wanted Franny to leave him behind. He certainly hadn’t wanted her to take off by herself with Eli, who’d liked her for a long, long time.

Noah removed his sneakers from the duffel bag.

He put them neatly side-by-side on the floor. On top of that, he placed the folded, bloodstained shirt he’d worn last night.

Naked, he climbed onto the stone window ledge, undid the metal hook latch, and shoved the window open.

Fresh air hit him in the face.

The sun was brilliant, almost blinding. Off in the distance, in a grove of nearby trees, birds were singing like crazy.

There was nothing else to do. No other solution. He couldn’t face Franny. No way could he face Franny.

No way could he face his dad.

Or himself for one more second.

And music. How could he ever listen to music with the same innocence?

He couldn’t.

Long live Albert French.

He pulled in a deep breath.

And jumped.