'No, really. And I feel like He's talking back to me.'
'Starlene got to you, didn't she? Fed you the company line. Well, has your life gotten any better since you've developed a meaningful personal relationship with a thing you can't see?'
'Why do you always get so defensive over things that have nothing to do with you?'
'Why do you vomit every time you eat?'
Vicky pointed at the scar on Freeman's wrist. 'You disappear your way, and I'll disappear mine.'
Freeman moved away from the window to the entrance of the rec room. Through the glass cafeteria doors, he could see the counselors stooped over their food. All he had to do was walk away. No one would even notice he was missing, at least not until after-dinner group sessions.
He headed down the hall past the main office. The office lights were off and Bondurant was nowhere around. Vicky called Freeman, but he pretended not to hear. She wasn't the only one who knew how to escape. He'd been doing it for years, both inside and outside his head.
Freeman paused at the front entrance. A keypad beside the door blinked, a security system that required a code. The door's release bar would set off an alarm. Still, if he ran fast enough and reached the fence at the back of the property, he could cross over the farms and hide in the woods. From there, he'd have a decent shot at making it to…
Where?
He had nowhere to go.
Just like always. He put his back against the cool glass and slid to a sitting position. Vicky was waiting.
'I know the code,' she said. 'That's how I get out.'
'What did you do, read the night watchman's mind?'
'No. Cynthia… did things for him in trade.'
'Does Cynthia want to get out, too?'
'No, I think she just likes doing it. She told me what she did, and I didn't believe her until she gave me the code. I think she wanted to shock me.'
'Did it work?'
'I've heard worse. Like your saying you could triptrap into my head and not being afraid of what you found. That's way worse.'
Freeman looked up. Vicky's eyes blazed with intensity. Even if he could have triptrapped her at mat moment, he wouldn't have dared. She punched three keys, a green light flashed, and she pushed the door open.
The evening Appalachian air swept over them, whisking away the mildewed odor of Wendover. Freeman rolled to his feet, grabbed Vicky's hand, and men they were off, running silently across the lawn. The grass was damp from an early dew, and Freeman's sneakers were soaked before they reached the boulders. One of the second floor windows lit up but they didn't stop.
'Is this the best way to go?' Freeman asked.
'There's a place on the far side of the lake where you can climb a pine tree and jump over the fence. You land in a laurel thicket. Get a few scratches, but no broken bones.'
'Sounds like you've done it before.'
'You're not the only one with secrets.'
They slowed when they reached me cover of the boulders and Freeman let go of Vicky's hand. The moon was three-quarters full and glowed off the skin of the lake. Among the scant patches of forest, reflected light spilled silver across the ground. They moved down the path, Freeman's ears straining for the slightest sound.
It wasn't sound but sight that stopped them.
They rounded the bend, and the old man in the gown stood on the path in front of them.
'You can't go this way,' the man said, or maybe he hadn't said anything, only put the words in Freeman's head. His lips hadn't moved at all, just parted as if he wanted to draw a breath but couldn't.
'Did you hear that?' Vicky whispered.
Freeman nodded. 'I didn't even triptrap.'
The old man stood there, unmoving. Moonlight caught his flesh where the gown was ripped. His skin was milky, translucent, as if you could poke a finger in and it would keep on going.
'Who are you?' Freeman said, wondering if he even needed to speak in order for the man to understand.
'I live here,' the man said or thought. He waved his hand across the lake. 'I used to sleep here. But they woke me up.'
'They?' Vicky said.
'I kept them.'
Freeman looked behind Vicky. He couldn't decide if he was more afraid of the old man or of Bondurant and Kracowski and whatever was happening in Wendover. They could rush past the old man and make it to the fence. Even if the man had any muscle inside the ragged gown, he looked to be a hundred and twenty.
'I saw you in the home,' Freeman said waving in the darkness toward Wendover. 'You say you live here?'
'Here, there, nowhere,' the man spoke-thought. 'It's all the same.'
'Are you…' Vicky said. 'Are you dead?'
'Not dead. Not anymore. The dead get to sleep. The dead are lucky.'
Freeman pressed backwards against the rhododendron branches. 'You're one of the people underneath, aren't you? The people in the deadscape.'
'You can't go this way.'
'We don't want to go back to the home. It's too scary.'
Vicky gave Freeman a look that said So even a snake-eyed tough guy suffers a moment of weakness now and then.
'You can't go this way,' the man repeated in a voice like the lost wind over an empty grave.
'We're in a hurry,' Freeman said. 'Any minute, the counselors are going to notice we're gone.'
'Please,' Vicky said. 'We haven't done anything to you.'
The old man looked out over the lake, eyes as blank as water. 'Drowning isn't so bad.'
Freeman nudged Vicky away from the old man and stepped between them. 'You're not going to hurt us. I won't let you.'
The man's lips finally moved, lifted into a wrinkled smile that might have been hiding swallowed light. 'I don't need to hurt you. They're doing a good enough job of it already. Wendover gets us all, sooner or later.'
As they watched the man's form softened and blurred, the edges blending with the moonlit night. His body broke into milky ropes, which then unthreaded themselves until at last only a pale mist hung in the air. The mist drifted from the path, down the grassy slope of the bank to the water's edge. There, it slowly dissolved, and Vicky and Freeman were left with nothing but the distant chirping crickets and the fireflies blinking against the thick0*.
The old man's words came again from the sky, talking like dead snow: You can't go this way.
Neither of them spoke for a moment. Freeman's heart was pounding so hard he could feel his pulse in his temples. A bullfrog croaked and splashed. From the darkness beyond the rhododendron came the hoot of an owl.
'Let's go,' Freeman whispered.
'But he said-'
'Who cares what he said? He's gone and besides, he's dead. What can he do to us?'
'I don't like this.'
Freeman glanced at the night sky. The moon had risen higher. The ground was well-lighted now, and they could make good time if they kept moving. Every minute counted when you were serious about running away.
'Do you trust me?' he asked.
'Trust doesn't mean anything. You trusted Starlene Rogers, but you left her back there at Wendover, in that creepy basement. No telling what's happened to her.'
'She's a grown-up. She's one of them. The enemy. You have to stomp people who get in your way, like De Niro in Raging Bull. She'd end up shrinking you to nothing if you gave her half a chance.'
'I'm going to be nothing anyway.'
