Midnight Voices

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.

Yet even as she lay strapped in the bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for—

For what?

What was she waiting for?

A doctor? A doctor who would come and make her well?

But she wasn’t sick.

Not sick… not crazy… not paranoid…

But wasn’t that the very definition of paranoia, that you thought all the things you imagined were really true?

What if the doctor — if he really was a doctor — was right? When he’d come in to see her — when? Hours ago? Minutes ago? Not that it mattered. All that mattered was that he’d explained it all.

Explained it all as if he were talking to a five-year-old.

“You’ve had a breakdown,” he told her. “Nothing serious — I suspect you’ll be able to go home in a few days. You just need a good rest, away from your job and your children. Just think of it as time for yourself.”

But it wasn’t a breakdown and she wasn’t crazy and—

And she remembered the look in Detective Oberholzer’s eyes when she’d tried to tell him what was happening. He hadn’t believed her any more than the doctor had.

After the shot — the shot that made her fall asleep so quickly she hadn’t even been able to finish what she