Whisper in the Dark (A Thriller) (29 page)

Miracle of miracles, he found a crumpled pack of Winstons inside, one lonely, battered cigarette still in the pack. Shaking it out, he stuck it in his mouth, pressed the in-dash lighter, waited for it to pop out, then fired up the Winston.

The smoke in his lungs felt wonderful.

52

“
ALIVE? WHY
would you say something like that?”

“Because it’s true,” Lisa said. “Abby’s alive. What you saw in that room today was real. Every bit of it. Just like the old man said.”

“What is your obsession with this old man?”

Then it hit him. Something Blackburn had mentioned early this morning about an old homeless coot claiming he knew Jane Doe. Could this be the old man she was talking about?

“You have to believe me, Michael. I saw it with my own eyes. I knew it was all true the minute Cassie showed me the tattoo.”

“What tattoo?”

“The Hello Kitty tattoo.”

“On Jane’s shoulder?”

“The one that
used
to be there. Cassie showed me the observation tapes. It was like a special effect from a movie. We saw it fade right before our eyes. I think Cassie was ready for a nice tall drink after that.”

Tolan felt the flesh on his head prickle.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’re telling me the Hello Kitty tattoo is gone? Completely gone?”

Lisa nodded. “Just like the needle marks, the eyes, and everything else you saw.”

No, Tolan thought. It couldn’t be right. This kind of nonsense went against everything he believed in.

But hadn’t Clay reported a case of heterochromia? Hadn’t Cassie confirmed the change in Jane’s eyes? Hadn’t Blackburn claimed he’d seen the needle marks? Hadn’t Jane sung that goddamn song?

Mama got trouble

Mama got sin

Mama got bills to pay again

Tolan had thought he was losing his mind, but if Cassie and Blackburn and Lisa and Clay had also seen these things, was it possible that Lisa was right? That his delusion was not a delusion at all?

“It’s her, Michael. It’s Abby. She’s a borrower.
Un emprenteuse
.”

“A what?”

“It’s what the old man called her. She’s come back from the dead, and borrowed a friend’s body to do it.”

Tolan tried to grasp this idea, but couldn’t get past the absurdity of it. He’d spent his life looking for rational answers to people’s problems, looking for ways to explain away their delusions and their superstitions. Yet despite this resistance, part of him wanted to believe. Could it really be Abby lying on that hospital bed?

“Why?” he said. “Why would she want to come back?”

“Why do you think? She’s not here for a glorious reunion. You killed her, Michael. You butchered her.”

“No,” he said. “I don’t believe it, I—”

“Stop it. You know it’s true.”

“Then why can’t I remember? Why can’t I remember any of them? Abby. Anna. Carmody.”

“Because you’ve blocked it. Just like your . . .” She paused, looking up sharply. “What was that? Did you hear that?”

He had no idea what she was talking about.

“It sounded like a cell phone ringing. I thought I heard it before.”

She popped open her door and climbed out, moving around the front of the car. Tolan opened his own door and joined her.

She pointed toward the forest of pepper trees. “It came from in there.”

Tolan stared into the darkness, but his mind was somewhere else. All he could think about was Abby.
His
Abby. Lying on that hospital bed.

“I don’t hear it now. Maybe I’m just being paranoid.” Lisa turned, looking toward the trunk of the car. “We’d better get that body inside. There’s an old incinerator in the basement. We can hide her in there.”

But Tolan wasn’t listening. He started for the pepper trees. “I have to go to Abby. I have to make it right.”

As if in response to this, the wind kicked up, rustling the leaves, whistling in the black windows and doorways of the old hospital.

Lisa grabbed his arm. “What are you doing?”

“I have to go to her. She came here for me.”

“What you have to do is help me with this body or neither of us is going anywhere.”

“No,” he said, wrenching free. “She needs me.”

“She doesn’t
need
you, Michael. She wants to kill you.”

“I don’t care,” he said, starting for the trees again. “I have to see her. I have to make it right.”

“Stop, Michael! It’s too late.”

He stopped dead then and turned, dread once again filling his gut. “What do you mean it’s too late? What did you do?”

“It’s already in motion. She’ll be dead by the time you get there.”

He advanced on her, overtaken by a sudden rage.
“What did you do?”
 

Lisa brought her hands up and backed against the car. “I did what I had to. I went back to the old man, set it up with him. I would’ve done it myself, but I got your text message and—”

“To do what?”

“To keep her from hurting you. From hurting us! She’s evil, Michael. Don’t you understand that?”

“You sent him after her?”

“Yes,” she said, then quickly shook her head. “No. He’s only helping. Because he knows how dangerous she is. He knows what kind of damage she can do.”

Tolan felt his rage build, accompanied by the growing roar of the wind through the trees. It was as if that wind was swirling inside of him.

Was this how it had been with Abby?

With Anna Marie?

“Who else?” he shouted, forcing Lisa to raise her hands even higher, to ward him off. “Who else did you send after her?”

Lisa said nothing for a moment, her eyes again filling with tears. “I did it for you, Michael. For us.”

“Who?”
he shouted.

She lowered her hands, her lips trembling as she finally answered his question.

“Bobby Fremont.”

Then, in the distance beyond the trees, a fire alarm began to ring.

SIX
 

The Children Who Brought Balance to the World

53

T
EN MINUTES BEFORE
the alarm went off, before The Rhythm gave its final push, bringing all of the elements together in the old, dead hospital, Solomon St. Fort thought about what he was supposed to do and hoped it would all go the way they’d planned.

When the nurse lady came to him earlier that day and told him what she’d seen and who she was trying to protect, he had readily agreed to help her. If the woman who wasn’t quite Myra had not yet completed her transformation, there was still a chance he could reverse the process and make her go back to wherever she’d come from.

He didn’t know if the incantations his grandfather had once taught him would work. He’d never had to use them himself and wasn’t even sure if Papi ever had. But it was worth a try if it meant getting Myra back.

And he knew now that for him, personally, this day had been about much more than Myra.

It was about redemption. The redemption of a soul scarred by a lie. A lie he had been telling himself for far too long.

If The Rhythm didn’t want him here, it would’ve kept him away. His “yes” to the nurse lady, his agreement to do this deed—at (he might add) incredible risk to his own life and limb—was all part of The Rhythm’s plan.

So at the appointed time, a time chosen to take maximum advantage of the security crew’s shift change, Solomon climbed off the bunk he’d been assigned, then went into the hallway, around the corner and, careful to stay one step behind the motorized video cam as it panned the adjoining hallway, approached a locked door marked AUTHORIZED STAFF ONLY.

Using the key card the nurse lady had given him, he went through that door and found himself on a stairway leading down to the basement. A moment later, he was standing in the basement itself.

It was exactly as described: a row of storage lockers adjacent to a maze of pipes. Mounted on the far wall was his first target, the electrical panel, a column of switches that controlled power to the entire detention unit.

Sitting on the floor below it was a flashlight and an umbrella.

Grabbing them both, Solomon stared at the switches, each of them labeled for a different part of the detention unit. He turned off the backup power first, then, sending up a prayer to God and Henry and Papi and his sweet departed mother, reached up and switched off the main power line.

The shouting began almost immediately.

A
FEW MINUTES
later, Solomon was upstairs in one of the main corridors, using the flashlight to help him navigate in the dark. Patients all over the detention ward were calling out for lights, spilling out of the Day Room into the corridors. Those in seclusion banged on their cell doors, screaming obscenities, as a frazzled staff and security crew struggled to maintain order.

Without hesitation, Solomon moved to his second target: a locked fire alarm mounted on the wall. Inserting a key, he turned it, flipped open the door, and pulled the alarm. He had wondered if it would work with the juice off, but the nurse lady had assured him it ran on a separate power system.

And, boy, was she right about that. The racket it made was loud enough to curdle cheese. The moment it went off, Solomon opened the umbrella as water valves came alive overhead.

Target three, coming up.

As the hospital erupted in chaos, Solomon rounded another corner and made his way to the seclusion rooms. The moment he stepped foot in the corridor, a light shone in his face and someone said, “Who the hell are you?”

It was a police officer, posted outside seclusion room three. He was holding a hand above his head in a fruitless attempt to stay dry. Solomon gave him a concerned look and said, “The guards sent me to fetch you. Up in front. They need help with the evacuation.”

“What about the people in here?”

“They’ll get their turn, but right now they need you up front.” Solomon held out the umbrella and was immediately hit by a shower of cold water. “Here, take this.”

The guard took it, said, “Thanks,” and headed around the corner.

Solomon then turned to his new target: seclusion room six.

At the wire-mesh window stood a kid of about twenty, looking so calm and quiet you’d think he was a monk saying his evening prayer.

But the moment Solomon shone his light on the glass, the kid’s eyes brightened, lips curling into a grin.

Solomon had seen him before, in the shower room, when two guards had escorted the kid inside. They took him to a spigot and stood back, their hands resting lightly on their weapons as they watched him undress and shower.

He’d looked dangerous then. But now, up close and personal, he looked downright lethal. Which, Solomon had to admit, gave him pause.

But the nurse lady had assured him that the kid could help them get Myra out of here, and if anything went wrong, he looked like just the type of guy you’d want on your side. So Solomon pressed the intercom button and said, “You’re Bobby, right?”

“Just open the door, old man.”

Solomon figured he’d take that as a yes, then punched a code into the keypad. The moment it buzzed, the door flew wide and Bobby Fremont stepped into the corridor.

“Why’d you give away the umbrella, you useless turd?”

Solomon ignored the insult and pointed to seclusion room three. “She’s in there.”

“I know where she is. You think I’m a fuckin’ moron?”

Fremont crossed the corridor and stood before the door to SR-3. “Open it up.”

Solomon moved up to the glass and tried to peer inside, but it was too dark to see anything.

“Come on, goddamn it. Open it.”

Turning to the keypad, Solomon punched in the code.

“Be quick,” he said. “We’ve gotta get her out of here before that cop comes back.”

“Fuck you,” Fremont told him. “I’m gonna enjoy this ride for as long as I want.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Fremont snatched the flashlight from him. “You did your job, old man, now go tell Lisa that this bitch is as good as dead.”

Then he put a hand on Solomon’s chest and pushed.

Solomon stumbled back, nearly losing his footing on the wet floor.

Had he just heard what he thought he’d heard?

Was Fremont planning to
kill
Myra?

No, no—that couldn’t be right. They were supposed to take her out to the parking lot and meet up with the nurse lady.

Regaining his balance, Solomon moved toward the kid, watching as Fremont shone the flashlight beam into the darkness and aimed it at the bed.

But the bed was empty.

“What the fuck?”

Fremont stepped past the threshold and swept the light around the room.

The woman was nowhere in sight.

“What is this?” he growled. “Lisa promised me some prime pussy, so where the hell is it?”

Then, as if in answer to the question, they both heard a sound. A faint whimper. Coming from overhead.

It sounded more animal than human.

Fremont aimed the flashlight beam toward the ceiling. And despite Solomon’s concerns about this young punk’s intentions, what he saw there made his entire body go numb.

“Holy shit,” Fremont said.

A moment later, he wasn’t saying anything.

He was too busy screaming.

54

I
T STARTED TO
rain.

Blackburn crushed out the last of the Winston and flipped his wipers on, wondering when the hell De Mello was gonna call back and give him that location. He had been headed in the direction of Baycliff just out of instinct, but for all he knew, it was the wrong direction altogether.

He was about to pull to the side of the road, debating whether to try calling Carmody again, in the dim hope that he’d been wrong about that severed ear.

Then his cell phone bleeped.

“I don’t know what the holdup was,” De Mello said, “but they’ve got it pinpointed.”