The Kingdom of Childhood (23 page)

Without a word he headed out the door.

He jogged through the dark neighborhood to the main road. Once on the sidewalk, its ancient cement crumbled by giant tree roots, he faced the remaining half mile like an obstacle course. Goal: to get to the McDonald’s parking lot as quickly as possible. Action hero Zach Patterson, third-degree black belt, able to leap orange construction netting in a single bound. He jumped over a Jersey wall, scrambled up the chain-link fence behind the Planned Parenthood clinic, dropped onto the lawn of a rehabilitation center and, with an elegance that he felt in his bones, vaulted with one hand over the ranch-style fence on the lawn’s opposite side. He ducked through some brush, and voilà, emerged on the far end of the parking lot of the McDonald’s. Temple stood outside the van, leaning against it with his ankles crossed, waiting for him.

“Where the hell were you?” he shouted across the lot.

“Yardwork.”

“At night?”

Zach shrugged.
My stupid parents.
He knew Temple wouldn’t buy the excuse for a second, and with a hard glance
he dared his friend to pose a theory. But Temple only threw an arm in the air in a gesture of frustration, then said, “Get in the car.”

Zach climbed in the side door. Kaitlyn was in the front, munching on a cheeseburger; Fairen sat on the bench seat beside him, while Scott and Tally were thigh-to-thigh in the back. Scott had his arm around her shoulders. He did not acknowledge Zach’s wave of greeting. Being around Tally always made Scott so self-consciously cool that Zach felt clownish in contrast; he always felt the impulse to make an ass of himself in a way Scott couldn’t help but acknowledge, to throw him off-base. He grinned and faced the front of the van, trying to ignore the slightly nauseating smell of mass-produced cheeseburger.

The engine rumbled and turned over. “So about this hospital thing,” Tally said. “Are you sure this place is safe?”

“Actually it’s extremely unsafe,” Zach told her.

“And illegal,” Temple added.

“Then why are we going?”

“Because it’ll be fun,” said Scott. “It’s trespassing. Therefore, it’s fun.”

Fairen reached over and rubbed Zach’s forearm. For a moment she laced her fingers into his, then let her hand wander onto his thigh. He looked down at his leg in surprise.

Tally asked, “Have you ever actually seen this Bunny Man person Scott was telling me about?”

“Nope,” said Temple. “And we won’t tonight, either. But Fairen’ll get some good photos for our report.”

Kaitlyn began to sing, “‘One night in my ramble I chanced to see, a thing like a spirit, it frightened me—’”

Scott threw a balled-up receipt at her head. Fairen snickered, but Temple said, “Hey. Don’t throw shit while I’m driving.”

Fairen let her hand come to rest on the inside of his thigh, her fingers tucked between his leg and the upholstery. She wasn’t particularly high up, only a bit above his knee, but it didn’t matter. He put his arm across the seat back, slid his hand under her hair, and stroked the nape of her neck.

Temple pulled into the parking lot of the town house complex, and Zach regretfully disentangled himself from Fairen. He would rather have sat with her in the van all night than gone looking for some guy in a rabbit costume, as entertaining as that search could be. Something about her touch felt restorative just now, when he still felt dirty from his tryst with Judy. Why had he even shown up? When the hell had he started feeling so
obligated
to her, as though she were some sort of girlfriend he couldn’t shake loose? And in the end it had been so pointless, so remote from the allure that had once felt infinite to him. He itched to take a shower.

Fairen slung her camera around her neck and hopped out of the van. They hurried through the forest, past the swamp that gleamed like obsidian and smelled like rot, and emerged in the shadow of the hospital’s towering main building, all the while peering around for cops. Scott—Indiana Jones all of a sudden, now that they had his girlfriend in tow—led the way toward the black gap that formed the building’s front door. Tally hesitated at the entrance, her slim fingers on the moulding, and peered cautiously around inside.

“I’m not so sure about this,” she said.

Temple jostled her from behind. “Get in, quick, before the cops see us.”

They gathered in the broad center hall, each switching on a flashlight. Pale green paint peeled off the walls in sheets; Zach’s narrow light fell on a constellation of spotty black mold growing along the plaster. A smell of wet rot permeated the air, hanging heavy as moss. Jagged rings of water stains
dotted the ceiling, and a jumble of iron water pipes lay on the floor near the crippled staircase. The white light from Tally’s flashlight lit up Fairen’s face with a ghostly pallor. She shifted her place in the circle to stand beside Zach, and clutched for his hand.

“I feel weird about this,” she said under her breath. “There’s broken glass all over the place. We should have brought gloves.”

“Don’t pick anything up and you’ll be fine.”

“What if I catch tuberculosis?”

“You won’t. That was fifty years ago.”

Scott turned his back to the group and shone his flashlight up to the balcony of the second story. Zach couldn’t resist the opportunity to mess with him. He handed his light to Tally, then rushed up behind Scott and twisted his arm behind his back, uttering a loud “Yah!”

Scott’s light clattered to the ground, spinning the beam into a twist of brightness and shadow that, for a moment, disoriented Zach. In that time Scott gained the advantage, releasing himself from Zach’s grip and forcing Zach into a headlock. Zach, calling upon ten solid years of judo experience, immediately realized Scott wasn’t playing.

Zach jabbed an elbow into Scott’s side and grasped his wrist. But Scott—in a blatantly illegal move—jerked Zach’s head back and threw him to the ground. Zach broke his fall with his hands and coughed reflexively. Before he could gather himself Scott was on his back, holding him down with his body weight. He locked his arm around Zach’s neck again and jerked his arm behind his back, sending a lightning bolt of pain from Zach’s wrist to his shoulder. Scott was taller, heavier, and—Zach understood—angrier. He held on.

“Get him off the damn floor, Scott,” Temple yelled.

“Let him up,” urged Fairen. “That’s disgusting. There’s glass.”

In the darkness, the others couldn’t tell that Zach could barely breathe. He felt Scott twisting him against the gritty floor and desperately coached his own mind. Scott’s fighting skills were shit. His own were superb. He wasn’t being overcome; he was being psyched out.

“Stop playing, you idiots,” said Fairen.

Zach gathered what little oxygen he could and surged up from the floor, throwing Scott to the ground and, at long last, rising to his feet. He took two steps back as Scott got up and squinted when Temple shone a flashlight on them. Scott walked back to Tally, leveling a cool-eyed gaze on Zach. This time Zach understood that what he felt was not paranoia. Scott knew.

He returned to Fairen’s side, recoiling as she reached for his hand. His wrist felt as though it had been crushed beneath a school bus. She touched his shoulder and asked, “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

They followed the others around the staircase and entered a long hallway. The light from their Maglites was entirely ineffective. Circles of brightness swirled on the walls, bringing out hanging black wires and inkblots of mold, crumbled plaster and more loosened flaps of sickening green paint. When Temple’s light turned onto a broad doorway, they passed through it into a cavernous room.

“Is anyone keeping track of the way we came in?” asked Kaitlyn.

Fairen said, “I’ve been dropping bread crumbs all along.”

“That’s not funny,” Kaitlyn replied. Her voice wavered.

“There’s something stuck in the bottom of my shoe,” whined Tally. “Can we stop for a minute?”

Scott shook his head. “Don’t pull it out. It could be glass and cut you. Or a nail with tetanus.”

“Tetanus?” asked Tally. Her voice had risen by an octave.

They shone their lights on the walls. Graffiti was everywhere: trios of meaningless letters, curse words, the occasional swastika. The room was empty of furniture except for a desk that sat askew beside the farthest wall. But the floor was littered with napkins and fast-food containers, a filthy blanket, two garbage bags and a snow boot.

Scott focused his light on a wall. “That looks like gang graffiti.”

In a disparaging voice Fairen asked, “Scott, what would
you
know about gangs?”

“He grew up on the mean streets of Sylvania,” Zach said.

His wrist pounded as though his heart had been relocated there. “The Waldorf thug life.”

“Shut the fuck up,” said Scott.

“Damn, Scott, chill out,” said Temple.

“I don’t like this,” Tally informed them, her voice wavering. “I’m going back out to the hallway.”

“Hang on a sec,” said Scott, looking over the graffiti.

Tally turned. “I’ll meet you out there.”

“That’s not the way,” Fairen called. She shone her flashlight on Tally’s retreating back. Suddenly Tally vanished, and screamed.

“What the
hell!
” yelled Temple.

Scott ran across the room to where she had disappeared. He stopped at the doorway and leaned into the blackness. She was still screaming.

“It’s an elevator shaft,” he said. His voice was hard but framed by panic.

“Oh, Christ,” said Zach.

“Get me out of here!” shouted Tally. “Get me OUT!”

Temple began tearing around the room, presumably looking for some sort of rope. Zach dared not approach Scott.

“We’re getting you out,” said Fairen. She sounded confident and comforting, like a nurse. “Don’t freak out. Just take a deep breath and hang on.”

“There are needles down here!” Tally cried. Then she screamed again.
“Get me OUT!”

Temple returned to the group. “I don’t see anything around here. I’m afraid to go into those bags.”

“Just tear them open, man,” Scott ordered.

Temple raised his eyebrows. “You want ’em open,
you
do it. I’m not coming out of here with six kinds of hepatitis. Have at it.”

“Then go downstairs,” Scott told him. “Take Kaitlyn with you. See if there’s an opening down there.”

Tally began to sob. “I don’t want to die here,” she cried. “I don’t want to die.”

“Calm down, Tally,” said Fairen, her voice echoing in the shaft. “Nobody’s going to let you die.”

Scott squatted down and leaned into the hole. “I’m here, baby,” he called. “Temple and Kaitlyn are coming down to let you out.”

Fairen looked over her shoulder nervously at Zach. Scott caught the look and twisted on the balls of his feet to face Zach. “Go find help,” he said. “Just in case.”

“You mean leave the hospital?”

“Yeah. The place is crawling with cops. It shouldn’t take you long.”

“Temple ought to go,” said Zach. “He’s got the car.”

“That’s why he needs to stay. If we get her out of there and she’s injured, how else are we going to transport her?”

Zach stalled. He looked around the room and said, “Why don’t we give Temple time to find her a way out of there? He
only just left, and if I bring the cops back, we’ll probably all get arrested.”

Scott sneered at him. “Quit being such a pussy and find a goddamn cop.”

“I’m not being a pussy,” Zach argued, his voice rising. “I’m being logical.”

“Oh, is that right?” Scott retorted. “I guess you get real smart when you hang out with teachers in your free time. You ought to be Albert fucking Einstein by now. Who do you think’s smarter, you or Fairen? Let’s ask her.”

Zach felt his stomach go cold. He glanced at Fairen, but she was leaning into the shaft again, cooing to Tally.

He took off.

The beam from Zach’s flashlight shivered against the floor as he ran down the hallway and into the center hall. Glass crunched beneath his feet. He paused just outside the main doorway and shone his light around, looking for police. Seeing none, he considered his path—back through the woods toward the town houses, or deeper into the hospital complex where the police likely were? He swerved his light toward the woods and recalled the journey through them: two blocks’ worth of underbrush and deadfall, with only the narrowest of paths marking the travels of derelicts like him.

He turned and ran along the access road toward the children’s hospital. The weather had turned cold, and his down vest, unzipped, provided only thin protection from the chill. His right hand grew slippery with sweat and he tried to switch the flashlight to his left, then immediately regretted the attempt. Even the small weight of the cheap plastic light sent hammering pain through his wrist. He stopped at a sharp turn and peered into the darkness, then looked down and shone the light onto his wrist. It was beginning to swell. The back of his
hand looked pink and puffy beneath the glare. He stepped off the shoulder into the road, shone his light in both directions, and saw nothing but the low mist they had seen on their first visit. That, and black looming darkness.

A terrible thought occurred to him: what if the police presence was an urban legend, and the Bunny Man was real?

You’re losing it, Zach,
he thought.

He looked in the direction from which he had come. The hospital was a fair distance away now. Somewhere in there was Tally, present state unknown, and Fairen, unprotected, and Scott, who might at any moment get fed up with Zach’s failure and start running his mouth about—about what? How in the hell had he found out?

Zach blocked it all—the pain, the fear—and began running again, up the road and past the children’s building. Beyond that were a series of decrepit outbuildings—staff quarters, laundry, a heating plant. No cruisers anywhere to be found. An access road looped past the heating plant and toward another large structure; maybe the cops congregated over there, where they would be less visible between the buildings. He held his left arm against his stomach and ran up the access road. Trying to hold his wrist motionless didn’t help much, and the darkness still offered no sign of help of any kind. Between the buildings he stopped again and set the flashlight between his neck and shoulder, cradling his wrist in his right hand. His nails were filthy from scrabbling around on the floor with Scott, and for a moment he thought of that creepy guy Judy had described.
Der Struwwelpeter, here he stands, with his dirty hair and hands.
And Zach was a monster indeed, in Scott’s eyes at least. That much was certain.