Midnight Voices

friend.”

Caroline’s lips worked for a moment, and her eyes darted around the room as if she were searching for some unseen enemy. “You don’t understand,” she breathed. “All of them — they’re dead.” Her voice began to rise as she repeated the word again and again. “Dead! Dead! Oh, God, why doesn’t anyone believe me? They’re all dead!” Her voice dissolving into a broken wail, her eyes flooded with tears, and a moment later she was sobbing.

“It’s all right, Mrs. Fleming,” Harold Caseman said, stepping closer to the bed and at the same time opening a cellphone, tapping a key, then speaking a few words so rapidly that Oberholzer couldn’t follow them. Almost as soon as he’d returned the phone to his pocket, a nurse appeared with a hypodermic needle.

A few seconds after that, Caroline Fleming went to sleep. But just before they closed, she fixed her eyes on Frank Oberholzer and reached out to him. “Help them,” she whispered. “Help—”

But before she could finish her words, the drugs silenced her, and her hand fell away to the bed.

“Mom?” the word drifted from Laurie’s lips like a wisp of mist, evaporating as quickly as fog in the morning sun. Except that there was no sun — indeed, there was almost no light at all; only a grayish half-light, just bright enough to let Laurie know she was no longer in her room, but not bright enough for her to identify where she might be.

She tried to sit up, but couldn’t. Despite the fact that she’d been asleep, she felt more tired now than she ever had before in her life. Her body felt as if all the energy had been drained out of it, as if someone had pulled a plug and all her strength had leaked away.

Once again she tried to call out to her mother; once again all that emerged from her throat was a faint murmur that even she could barely hear. And the simple act of trying to call out left her so exhausted she almost drifted back into unconsciousness. But then, just as she was about to surrender herself to the gentle arms of sleep, she heard something.

A sound, even fainter than the one she herself had just made, so faint she wasn’t really sure she’d heard it at all. Yet something about it gripped what little consciousness she still possessed, and she turned away from the comfort of sleep.

Twisting her head, she peered into the grayness to her right.

And saw something.

Indistinct in the dim light, she had to strain to make it out, and at first all she knew was that it looked vaguely familiar. Then it came to her — one of those tables they use to roll people around in hospitals. She’d seen them on TV hundreds of times. But what was it called? She groped in her mind, which felt as worn out as her body, then found the word.

A stretcher — no, there was another word. Gurney.

That was it. Exhausted by the effort to find the right word, she lay still, gasping for breath as if she’d just finished running a foot race rather than searching her mind for a word. And as she lay in the twilight recovering her breath, her fingers began to explore the surface on which she lay.

A hard surface, covered by a sheet, but feeling cold through the thin material.

Another gurney.

Was she in a hospital?

She began searching her memory again, but she was so tired that simply putting together the pieces of yesterday seemed more difficult than a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. But slowly they began to fall into place. She hadn’t been sick last night — she’d felt fine. It had been her mom who was sick. When she’d come home from school, her mom had been sick in bed, and she’d gone in to visit her. Had she caught the flu then? But she didn’t feel like she had the flu — with the flu, she always threw up a lot, and her bones hurt, and she got a fever. All she felt now was exhausted — more tired than she’d ever felt in her life.

But not sick.

She reached into her memory again, and found more pieces. Going to bed. Staying awake as long as she could for fear the voices would come.

The voices and the dreams.

They had come last night — if it really was last night: the way she felt, it seemed like it must be days since she’d rested at all. But the dreams had come, worse than ever. There had been people all around her, lifting her up, putting her on—

On the gurney! The gurney she was still on? But how? It was a dream!

More pieces fell into place. She remembered tubes being put through her nose and her mouth and—

She whimpered at the memory, then flinched as she felt the pain of the needles that had jabbed into her arms and her legs and her belly and her chest and—

The whimper grew into a cry of pain and horror.

A second later she heard an answering sound — the same sound that had drawn her away from the beckoning arms of sleep. She twisted her head again, and now, through the gray twilight, she could just make out a shape lying on the gurney that stood a few yards from her own.

“I-is anyone—” she began, but her strength failed her before she could finish the question. She thought she saw a movement, but it was so slight and so nearly invisible in the dim light that an instant later she was no longer sure she’d seen it at all. Her breath escaping in a silent sigh, she let her head roll back so she was looking straight up.

And went back to her memories.

There were people all around her — faces she recognized, but that didn’t look quite right. They all looked younger than she remembered them, and they were smiling at her, clucking over her like hens over a wounded chick.

Hens… That was it — the faces had all been women.

Except Tony had been there, and Dr. Humphries, and—

“Lauuurrrie!”

The howl of anguish came boiling up out of her memory, and even though her name itself was barely recognizable in the chaos of the scream, she recognized the voice at once. Her mother! Her mother had been there too, and tried to rescue her, to save her from—

From what?

She didn’t know.

But one thing she did know: it was not a dream.

It had never been a dream.

It had all been real. The voices behind the wall of her room, the figures around her bed, the fingers prodding and poking at her — all of it had been real.

A sob welled up in her, but even as it began to constrict her throat, something changed. It was so subtle that at first she thought she was wrong. But then it happened again — a faint draft wafting over her cheek, as if someone had opened a door somewhere. She choked back the sob, forced herself to be completely silent — even held her breath and willed her heart to stop beating — and listened.

Footsteps.

Then the dim light brightened, and she could at last see the space around her. Above her, heavy beams supporting wide, rough-hewn boards.

Around her, brick walls, blackened with age.

Pipes and wires and ducts running everywhere, slung between the beams and running up the walls.

The basement — it had to be the basement of The Rockwell. And now, as the footsteps drew nearer, she twisted her head to look once more at the other gurney. Now the shape that lay on it was clear — a boy, his body so thin it was almost lost under the sheet that covered it. His head was twisted so he was looking toward her, and she could see his eyes, sunken deep into their sockets, and looking huge in his emaciated face. He lay so still that for a moment Laurie had a terrible feeling that he must be dead, but then, as the light brightened still more, he blinked.

Blinked, and moaned, and seemed to Laurie to shrink even smaller than he already was. A moment later she heard a rattling sound as if someone were pushing some kind of cart toward her, and then she heard a voice, one that she recognized, but couldn’t quite place. But when a shadow fell over her, and she looked up, she recognized