It didn’t matter. I knew where O’Connell was heading. I’d find her on the third floor.
“Call the police,” I said to the nurse. “Then try to keep people in their rooms.”
She shook her head. “I can’t, I can’t—”
I heard someone shout in fear, then the slam of a door. I yanked the woman upright and said, “Where are the elevators?” She gestured vaguely in the direction the Truth had taken. “Okay,” I said. “Now please call the cops.”
I reached the intersection. The hallway to my left seemed to stretch the length of the building. Several people in patient gowns and bathrobes peeked from their doorways. They were looking at the Truth.
The demon strode down the middle of the corridor. He reached the bank of elevators and stopped, turned. He looked in my direction. Waiting.
I ran out of the intersection, away from him. There had to be another elevator, or a set of back stairs. Anything was better than getting into a box with a serial-killing agent of justice. I slowed to a jog, and started looking at signs, trying to find a way upstairs.
“Hey you!” a voice said angrily. I looked back. A man in blue scrubs, not much older than me, marched down the hallway toward me. “What are you doing in here?”
That question had too many possible answers. I picked the simplest. “I need to get to the third floor,” I said. The young man—doctor or orderly or whatever he was—was passing an exit sign when a tremendous bang stopped him in his tracks. The fire door beneath the exit sign bulged inward. Incredibly, the man started to walk toward it.
“I wouldn’t open the door,” I said. But it was too late; a second blow sent the door clanging open.
A big man dressed in blue spandex stepped into the hallway, a disc of metal big as a manhole cover hanging on his arm. The Captain. Leaning on him was Smokestack Johnny, wearing his traditional overalls and his blue- striped cap. He had one arm draped over the Captain’s shoulder. His right leg was missing below the knee. The Captain pointed at the man in scrubs. “Corpsman! This man needs medical attention.”
“I had me a bit of an accident,” Johnny said cheerfully. I turned and ran.
The hallway ended a dozen yards later in a left turn. I stutterstepped around the corner, then found myself in a long corridor that ran along the back side of the hospital. A few seconds later I saw a white plastic sign that said stairs. I threw myself against the door and got inside the stairwell, chest heaving.
Five seconds, passed, ten, and my breath began to slow. How many demons were here? How the hell had they all decided to converge?
And where the hell were the cops? Even Mayberry had two cops. I slid to the side and slowly raised my head to look out the door’s square window. The length of hallway visible to me was empty. I turned and started up the stairs, using a hand on the railing to haul myself up. I forced myself to ignore the burning in my legs, the sweat running into my eyes.
On the second-floor landing I swung around the bend and was almost bowled over by a middle-aged man hurrying down. He was dressed in pajamas, and a length of IV tube hung from his arm. He jerked back from me, terrified. “No,” he said. “No.” As if I were a mugger with a knife at his throat. I stepped aside, raised my hands. “Be careful down there,” I said.
“It’s crazy.”
No, that wasn’t the right word. All those demons—the Captain, the Truth, Smokestack Johnny, little ol’ me—it was too much at once. Too much for anyone to take.
Pandemonium.
He ducked his head and swept past me, heading down. I looked up. Somewhere above me, a small voice was crying. The sound grew louder as I climbed. When I rounded the final landing I found the source: a white girl, eight or nine years old, dressed in a white lacy nightgown. Her glossy brown hair hung in curls to her shoulders. She sat on the step in front of the third-floor exit, sobbing into arms crossed over her knees, her shoulders shaking. Her feet were bare and dirty up to the shins, as if she’d walked for miles through fields.
I stood very still. There was no way past her. She lifted her head, looked down the stairs at me. Her eyes glistened, and her cheeks were wet. “No one will help me,” she wailed. I put a hand on the rail, moved up a step. They said the Angel could kill with a touch.
“I haff to get inside, but he won’t let me. I try and try, but he’s so big and strong and I’m just a little girl.” She wiped at her nose. “None of the others even listen to me. And you won’t help me, you’re just a kid and you never listen to anybody. All you do is play nasty pranks.”
“I’m not like that,” I said. “Not . . . now.” I took another step, stooped a bit.
“I’d like to help you,” I said. “Let me go up there. There’s a friend of mine, a woman with no hair, and I’m afraid she might be in trouble.”
She rolled her eyes. “The bald lady? What kind of girl would make
herself so ugly like that?” She sniffed. “She said she’d help me, but she was no help at all.”
“What happened?” I said quietly.
The Angel shook her head, exasperated. Glossy curls swayed and bounced. “See for yourself.”
She stood, wiped at her cheeks, and leaned back to pull open the heavy door. I followed her out.
The long hallway was empty for most of its length. At the end, where it T’d with another corridor, a man stood in an open doorway, arms crossed over his chest. He wore a red top and red tights, and a white cape that hung down his back. A figure lay on the floor in front of his white boots.
I walked forward, a sick feeling in my stomach. It was O’Connell. She lay sprawled at his feet, one arm flopped across her chest, the other stretched in my direction, reaching toward a pistol that lay on the floor. Her eyes were closed. Her mouth pooled with blood.
The caped man looked at me, smiled. His face was square and handsome, and his hair, so black it was almost blue, shone as if coated with Vaseline. “Hi there,” he said. The Boy Marvel, I presumed. But a full-grown man, just like in the comics.
I slowly walked forward. “I just want to take her out of here,” I said to him.
The Little Angel spun to face me, her small fists clenched. “What did you say?”
“I’d like to move her,” I said to the man, and stepped closer. He moved too fast for me to see. One moment his arms were crossed over his chest; the next they were straight in front of him, and I was flying back. My shoulder hit the floor first and I tumbled. I landed on my chest. I couldn’t breathe. My lungs felt like they’d been smashed to the back of my ribs.
“No one gets to the boy except through me,” the caped man said. His voice carried easily, like a radio actor leaning into the mike. I turned to my side, gasping. Twenty feet away, at the other end of the hallway from the Boy Marvel, the Truth stood with his hands at his sides, his face shadowed by the brim of his hat. Beside him stood a gray-haired man wearing only pajama bottoms. His chest and wide belly were covered with white hair. The old man looked at me for several seconds, then he opened his hand and showed me the silver butter knife he was holding. I got my elbows under me, pushed myself to a sitting position. Who the hell was this now?
The old man closed his fist, then turned to the wall and plunged the tip of the knife into the drywall. He dragged down, slicing a line that puffed chalk, then slashed sideways. Three more quick strokes and he’d carved the suggestion of a hallway and the outline of the door. He looked over at me and winked.
The Painter. Well, fine. At least there’d be a record of this night. The demon wouldn’t help me, but neither would he get in my way. That wasn’t his job. And the Truth wouldn’t interfere unless somebody violated his code of honesty.
I got to my feet and turned back to the Boy Marvel. The Little Angel stood between us, her arms crossed petulantly. “But he wants me in,”
she told the caped man. “You know he does. How long do I have to wait?”
