Midnight Voices (31 page)

Ryan shifted the light away from her eyes. “It’s me!” he whispered as loud as he dared.

For a moment Laurie didn’t react at all, but then she slowly turned her head toward him. Her lips worked for a moment, and then words began to come out, slowly and weakly.

“Find Mom,” she whispered. “Find her, Ryan. If you don’t, I’m going to die.”

Night lay like a shroud over the city, and as Ryan gazed out his window at the park, the first thing that popped into his mind was what had happened to his father there. Ever since that night, Ryan had hated even the thought of going out alone after dark, terrified of what might happen to him. But tonight there was no choice.

He’d wanted to leave right after he found Laurie—in fact, he’d wanted to take Laurie with him. But she was so weak she could hardly even talk, let alone get off the gurney and follow him through the maze to—

To where?

That was the thing—even if Laurie could make it, he didn’t know where to take her.

He didn’t even know how to get out of the building. In fact, he didn’t even know
if
he could get out of the building.

Once he’d figured out she couldn’t make it up even the first flight of stairs, he’d wanted to just stay with her, but she’d kept arguing with him. “You have to find out how to get out—you have to find Mom. If you don’t . . .”

Her words had trailed off, but she hadn’t had to finish for him to understand.

They’d both die, like Rebecca.

So finally he’d promised Laurie he’d find a way out, then gone to see if he could keep his promise. The first place he’d tried was the door at the far end of the corridor he’d come into as he came down the last flight of steps. He’d approached it slowly, stopping every few steps to listen for anyone who might be coming, for the closer he got to that door, the farther away he was from the stairs that were the only other way out. But there had been no sounds, and finally he’d come close enough to the door to try its knob.

Locked.

Locked, and with no keyhole.

He’d gone over every inch of the door, using up two whole batteries, searching for a way to open it, but except for the knob, there was nothing at all on his side of it. No hinges whose pins he might be able to pull, or a place where he could try to pry it open if he could find a crowbar somewhere. When the batteries had started to fade, and he’d seen what time it was, he’d given up on the door, but instead of going straight back to his room, he’d explored as much of the maze of corridors as possible.

And found no way out.

On the first floor, there’d been only one narrow corridor, with only one door. Or at least he thought it was a door. It hadn’t had any knob or lock or anything else, but it looked like it might slide if he could just figure out how to release it. But when another set of batteries began to fade as he searched for anything that might open the door, he finally gave up, knowing he’d never find his way back to his room if he ran out of batteries.

He hadn’t had enough time to explore all the passages on the upper floors, and when he’d dropped back into his closet, he’d only had one set of fresh batteries left.

It wasn’t more than five minutes after he got back that a key turned in his lock, and there stood his stepfather, his dead eyes fixed on Ryan. “You will apologize to Miss Shackleforth.”

Ryan did it, carefully making his face look like he was really, really sorry for what he’d done.

He sat through dinner, forcing himself to eat, pretending he believed his stepfather’s story that Laurie was having a sleepover with one of her friends.

He didn’t ask which friend; instead he acted like he didn’t care.

At eight, he told his stepfather he was tired, and was going to go to bed early, and when Tony came in to tuck him in, he didn’t object. And he asked if he could go visit his mother in the hospital the next day.

“We’ll see,” Tony told him. Then he left, closed the door, and just as Ryan had been hoping, locked it.

Now Ryan was looking out into the night, and the courage he’d been working up all evening was starting to ebb away. Taking one last look out the window, he patted the batteries in his jacket pocket, checked for the keys and the black laundry marking pen and his pocketknife, then stuffed some extra pillows under the covers, just in case Tony came back for a look. Turning all the lights off, he went into the closet and climbed up the shelves one more time. Lifting the trapdoor carefully, he pulled himself through, then re-closed it.

Using the flashlight as sparingly as he possibly could, feeling his way along the passages that were now familiar to him, he began working his way upward. This time he ignored most of the side passages, going only far enough down any of them to determine that there were no stairs leading further up, for tonight he had a single goal.

To get out.

And if there were no way out through the basement or the first floor, there was only one thing left: the roof.

He was on the ninth floor—which he was pretty sure was the top floor—when he ran out of stairs. The last flight of steps seemed longer than any of the others, and when he finally came to the top, the passage only ran for about thirty feet before it ended at another passage that ran perpendicular to it.

He shined the light in both directions, but neither seemed any more promising than the other, and finally he started down the one to the right. It ended after about fifty feet, and there was another perpendicular passage. He explored the corridor in both directions and found dead ends both ways.

He went back the other way; passing the corridor he’d originally come through, he found a second transverse at the far end.

Both ends of this transverse ended as abruptly as the first.

No way out.

His heart sinking, he started back toward the passage that would take him to the stairs leading downward, but then, just as he was about to start down the steps, he remembered how he’d gotten into the passages in the first place.

Shining the flashlight upward, he began going back through the passages one more time, this time in search not of a door or of stairs, but of another trapdoor.

He found it at the very end of the first passage he’d explored. At first he wasn’t sure what it was—it looked like a ladder that was bolted to the ceiling. But when he examined it more closely, he could see that it was hinged at one end, and that there was what looked like a rope going up through the ceiling at the other end.

He stretched, trying to reach the ladder, but no matter how hard he strained, his fingers couldn’t even come close to touching it.

Taking off his shoes so he’d make as little noise as possible, he jumped.

And still didn’t touch the ladder’s lowest rung.

A stool—that’s what he needed. But where was he going to get one?

His desk chair?

But how could he even get it up through the trapdoor? And if he dropped it, and Tony Fleming heard the noise—

The flashlight was starting to get weak, and he reached into his pocket for the last set of batteries. Then, as he was deciding whether to change them now, or wait until the others were completely dead, an idea started forming in his mind. Stripping off his jacket—a thin nylon one whose big pockets had been more important than its lack of warmth—he tied a knot in one of the sleeves, then dropped all the batteries he had into the sleeve. Twisting the jacket as tight as he could, he grasped the end of the other sleeve so that he had a sort of makeshift rope with a weight at one end. It wasn’t very long—maybe four feet total, but if he could sling the weighted end over the bottom rung of the ladder, he just might be able to pull it down.

He hefted the jacket, giving it an experimental swing. If he wasn’t careful, the sleeve with the batteries in it would thump against the wall or the floor and—

He decided he didn’t want to think about that.

Taking a couple of more test swings, he finally arced the sleeve of the jacket up toward the ladder.

It thumped against the ceiling, not even hitting the ladder, then dropped back down. Ryan barely caught it before it hit the floor.

He tried three more times before he finally found the angle that would hit the bottom rung of the ladder.

It took twelve more tries before the sleeve containing the batteries miraculously slid through the narrow gap between the rung and the ceiling itself.

He started flipping the jacket, trying to feed more of it over the rung, counting on the batteries to pull it down the other side.

His right arm was fully extended when he realized that the second sleeve was still a foot from his grasp.

For almost a full minute, he stared up at the jacket and the ladder, then made up his mind. The lower sleeve still in his hand, he jumped up, trying to feed the jacket a little further, then let go of the sleeve.

And now both sleeves hung tantalizingly above him, just out of reach. But if he jumped, and then grabbed both sleeves at the same time—

He paused, gathering himself, then crouched down and took three deep breaths, as if he were about to dive into water instead of leap into the air. Then, as his lungs reached full capacity he launched himself upward, and a split second later his hands closed on the sleeves of the jacket.

And as the end of the ladder came down he heard the faint squeak of an unseen pulley as the counterweight rose somewhere in or on the other side of the wall. A moment later the bottom of the ladder was on the floor, and Ryan held it in position as he unknotted the sleeve, put the batteries back in the jacket pocket, and put the jacket on. Then he climbed the ladder, and pushed up on the small trapdoor that the ladder’s rungs and rails had hidden almost perfectly.

He was in the attic of the building, and as he flashed the light around, he saw another door.

A door whose lock responded to one of the keys on the ring his mother had taken from the shop.

A door that led to the roof.

He paused on the threshold, sucking the cool night air deep into his lungs. Above, the sky was clear, and the moon was almost full. Turning off the flashlight, he dropped it into the pocket of his jacket and began making his way along the narrow catwalk that ran between two of the roofs’ steeply pitched peaks, around one of the turrets, and finally to the low rampart that ran around the building’s perimeter.

He worked his way slowly all the way around, searching for a fire escape.

And found none.

Each of the four fire escapes that served the building started from the eighth floor, two floors below Ryan.

There were no ladders, no pipes, not even a ledge to creep out on.

He started around the building again, and when he came to the west side of it, he suddenly saw something.

On the building behind The Rockwell, the fire escapes began at the roof, and ran all the way down to the second floor. But the roof of the building next door was a full floor lower than The Rockwell’s rampart, and the fire escape was opposite a spot where The Rockwell’s roof pitched so steeply downward that Ryan didn’t dare try to creep out on it. But a few yards to the left, there was a flat area before you came to the cupola on the corner.

Still, the gap between the buildings looked like it had to be at least ten feet wide.

He’d never make it.

He’d fall down the shaft between the buildings and hit the concrete at the bottom and—

Suddenly the chasm itself seemed to be pulling at him, and a horrible dizziness came over Ryan. He backed away from the precipice until the sick feeling that he was going to fall began to lift.

But then he edged closer again, and took another look at the gap.

Maybe it wasn’t ten feet—maybe it was only eight.

And in school last year, he’d done almost seven and a half feet on a running start. And since the roof of the building next door was lower, he was sure to go further.

Wasn’t he?

He looked down again, then quickly looked away as the dizziness washed over him once again.

But what choice did he have? It was either try it, or give up.

Backing away from the edge, he tried to gauge exactly how many steps it would take to reach the rampart.

If he missed the rampart—

If he was wrong about how wide the chasm was—

If he tripped—

If—

Then, as he kept staring at the chasm, he heard his father’s words once again:
’Keep on going . . .’

Making up his mind, Ryan sucked his lungs full of air, then began running toward the precipice.

One step. Two steps. Three steps.

His right leg stretched forward, raised high, and his foot found the top of the rampart. He swung his arms back, heaved himself forward, and led off into the air with his left foot.

His right foot left the rampart, and he was suspended in mid-air.

And time seemed to stop, stretching into eternity. . . .

I’m not crazy. I’m not paranoid and I’m not psychotic. It’s all true. It all sounds crazy, and it all sounds paranoid, but it’s not. It’s all true.
The words had become a mantra to Caroline, and she’d silently repeated them to herself so many times that they had taken on an almost mystical quality, the words themselves repeated so often that they’d become meaningless, but the rhythm of the chant embedding itself deeper and deeper into her soul, an anchor to keep her sanity from drifting away.
It’s all true. It’s all true. It’s all true. Not paranoid. Not paranoid. Not paranoid. Not crazy. Not crazy. Not crazy. . . .
But despite the constant repetition of the mantra, she could feel herself slipping closer and closer to the edge of madness. It yawned before her, an immense bottomless chasm that seemed to be drawing her toward it as surely as a great height exercises its deadly magnetism on an acrophobic.

The thing of it was, even with the mantra to cling to, her memories were seeming more and more like figments of her imagination, or something she’d dreamed. How, after all, could they possibly be true?

Tony couldn’t be dead.

Melanie Shackleforth couldn’t be Virginia Estherbrook.

And she couldn’t possibly have seen Tony and all her neighbors gathered around her daughter, draining the very life out of her.