Midnight Voices

Checking the gag on the nurse one last time, she followed Ryan to the door. He opened it a crack, and they both listened. Hearing nothing, he opened the door wider and peered out into the hall outside.

Nothing.

“Come on,” he whispered. “Follow me.”

“You climbed up this?” Caroline asked as she peered down the ladder that led to the first landing of the fire escape on the back of the building next door to The Biddle Institute. Just looking at it made her dizzy, and the thought of climbing down it made her stomach churn.

“It was easy,” Ryan said. “Lots easier than jumping off the roof of The Rockwell.”

Caroline stared at him, but could see in his eyes that he was telling the truth. But instead of speaking the words that rose in her throat — the words of a horrified mother who can’t believe how stupid her own child could be — she choked them back. Battling the vertigo that threatened to overwhelm her, she stepped up onto the rampart at the roof’s edge, turned around, gripped the top of the ladder as hard as she could, and started down. I’ll never make it, she thought. I’ll miss my step, and lose my grip, and—

“Remember what Dad always said,” Ryan whispered, sensing his mother’s fear. “Never give up!”

As Brad Evans’ words echoed in her ears she decided that no matter what happened, she wouldn’t miss her step.

And she certainly wouldn’t lose her grip — not on the ladder, and not on her mind.

CHAPTER 38

I just look like a nurse going home from work, Caroline told herself as they hurried east on 82nd, not quite running, but walking as quickly as they could without drawing attention to themselves.

“Why don’t we call the police?” Ryan had asked almost the moment they’d climbed down the ladder into the utility passage behind the building next to the Institute. But Caroline had rejected that idea immediately, clearly remembering the look on Sergeant Oberholzer’s face as she’d tried to tell him what was happening in The Rockwell. The first thing the police would do would be to call Tony Fleming — or whatever his name really was, since she was certain he’d had as many as Virginia Estherbrook. Then she’d be right back in the Institute, and Laurie and Ryan—

Laurie and Ryan would be left with Anthony Fleming.

Which wasn’t going to happen.

“We don’t have time,” was all she’d told Ryan.

After midnight — that was the time it had been last night when she’d found the secret door hidden in the closet of Tony’s study.

Midnight — that was the time Laurie had told her she’d heard the voices — the voices Caroline herself had insisted had come from nothing more serious than bad dreams.

Midnight — that, she was sure, was the hour when the feasting at The Rockwell began. After the children upon whom they fed had gone to sleep, and would retain only the memory of what had to be a nightmare.

“What time is it?” she asked for the third time in the last two blocks. They were going down Central Park West now, and as Ryan tipped his watch to see its face by the light of the nearest streetlamp, she glanced back over her shoulder, satisfying herself yet again that no one was following them.

“Twenty of twelve,” Ryan told her.

Caroline sped up her pace slightly, and Ryan had to break into a slow dog trot to keep up with her, but uttered not a word of complaint. Finally, with almost fifteen minutes left before the hour would change, they were across the street from The Rockwell. As she gazed up at the building, nothing looked amiss at all; lights still glowed in a few windows, but most of them were dark, as if the building’s occupants had already gone to bed.

But they weren’t in bed, Caroline knew. They were awake, and moving through the passages hidden behind the walls of their apartments, getting ready for—

Caroline shuddered, turning her mind away from the thought. “Give me your knife,” she said softly.

Ryan, not even thinking of arguing with his mother, reached into his pocket, found the knife his father had given him, and silently put it into his mother’s waiting hand.

Caroline opened the largest blade and tested it gingerly against the skin of her left wrist. All she felt was a slight scraping sensation as the fine hairs on her wrist fell away. Thank God I didn’t take it away from him, she thought as she closed the blade and slipped the knife into the large pocket on the skirt of the nurse’s uniform she was wearing. But then, before she’d even let go of the knife, she changed her mind.

Pulling it back out again, she reopened it.

“All right,” she said softly. “Let’s go.”

They crossed the street, and a moment later came to the front doors of The Rockwell. She pulled one open, stepped through, then peered through the glass inner doors.

Rodney was at his post, a newspaper in front of him as always.

He never sleeps, Caroline realized as she pulled the glass door open with her left hand, the fingers of her right hand squeezing hard on the handle of the knife. He’s always there. Always there, and never asleep. I should have known… As the door opened, he looked up, and for a moment appeared puzzled.

Caroline was almost to the counter when she saw comprehension come over his face, and by the time he started to reach for the phone, she was there. As the fingers of his left hand closed on the receiver, the fingers of Caroline’s closed on his necktie.

Startled, his fingers loosened on the receiver, and it clattered to the floor. He started to pull away, but Caroline, her strength fueled by her fury and her terror for her children, was far quicker than he. Jerking hard on his necktie, she pulled him toward her across the countertop, then brought her right hand up and jabbed the point of the knife directly into his throat. With a sideways wrench, she pulled the knife to the right, ripping his throat open.

In an instant the stench of rotting flesh spewed forth from the gaping wound, and Rodney’s breath began to rasp as he tried to draw air through his already collapsing windpipe. He reached out toward Caroline, his fingers curling into grasping claws, but his knuckles were already swelling with arthritis and his talonlike nails were blackening and starting to fall away. Long before they could close on her flesh, his hands and arms had lost their strength and his legs buckled under his weight. As the decaying corpse collapsed to the floor, Caroline darted around, crouched low over Rodney’s body, and searched his pockets for his keys. A moment later she had them, and she bolted away from Rodney as his last breath rattled in his ruined body. “Quick,” she said to Ryan, but it didn’t matter, for he was already ahead of her, pulling the basement door open and bolting down the stairs.

They charged through the basement, frantically searching for the door Ryan had told her about as they left the Institute, the one with no knob or keyhole on its inner side. And then, behind the furnace, they found it.

Metal clad, it bore no markings at all, with only a single keyhole, and a simple handle by which it could be pulled open. Frantically, Caroline began trying to find the right key, but her hands were trembling too much, and after only a moment Ryan took over.

On the third try, the lock turned, and Ryan pulled open the door. The corridor he’d approached from the other end only a little while ago stretched out before him, and halfway down he saw the door behind which lay Laurie.

If she was still there at all.

“Hurry,” Caroline urged as Ryan fit the key into the second door. Now his fingers, too, were trembling, but finally he twisted the key, and pushed the door open.

“In there,” he told his mother, turning on the flashlight and pointing it toward Laurie.

As she stumbled through the room, Caroline barely noticed the gurneys that stood in a silent row. “Laurie!” she screamed, no longer able to keep her voice under control. “LAUUURRRIIE!”