It was just standing there, staring back at him with its queer, white eyes and bulging teeth. Eric had no idea where the hell it came from. He’d walked the length of that hallway himself just a short while ago, peering into each room as he went. There was no place for it to hide and there were no windows. It was as if it had simply appeared there out of thin air.
But this was obviously not the time to linger and think about it.
Slowly, cautiously, with his heart thundering in his ribcage, he stepped backward, retreating into the nurse’s station and letting the door screech closed again.
Strangely, the creature showed no interest in following him. The ones on Hosler had been determined to rend him limb from limb, but this one only stood there and watched him go.
Maybe it wasn’t hungry.
As soon as the door had closed, he peered through the window at the creature. It didn’t approach. In fact, it settled itself down onto the floor and dropped its head as if it were nap time.
Clearly, he wasn’t getting out that way. But at least he hadn’t been mauled.
Yet.
Behind him, whatever was in the stairwell began scratching at the door again.
He needed to find another way out. Fast.
He recalled the fire exit in the large, corner room to his right. He’d already explored over there, so it should be safe to go that way. But as soon as he reached the door, he saw another of the creatures emerge from the room with the broken window and turn its milky eyes on him.
Where the hell were they coming from? Even if this one had entered through that window, it surely couldn’t have crossed the busy, wide-open hospital parking lot in broad daylight without attracting attention. It wasn’t the sort of thing people didn’t notice.
The scratching became more urgent. The door began to shudder on its hinges. Whatever was on the other side would push its way through very soon.
He had no choice. Eric turned and ran for the door on the opposite side of the room. All he could do was hope that there would be another fire exit on this side of the building as well.
No creature blocked his path as he passed through the door, but it was immediately obvious that the building was not laid out the same on this side. The hallway led only a short distance and then turned left.
This wasn’t ideal. Moving deeper into the building seemed like a bad idea. But he was out of options.
“You still here?”
Karen’s cell phone buzzed at him as Isabelle confirmed that she was.
“How are they getting in?”
NO IDEA
“Why are they here?”
I DON’T KNOW
Eric didn’t know why he thought she should have any of these answers.
There was a T-shaped intersection in the center of the hallway, branching to the right, and another at the far end. A shadow moved across the wall at that far intersection, encouraging him to take the first right, where a dozen dark, open doorways lined the corridor.
His awful imagination was in heaven here, feeding him all sorts of wonderfully grim and morbid suggestions for what might be lurking in all of these dark rooms as he passed, tormenting him with his own escalating anxiety.
But each room miraculously proved to be empty.
Finally, he emerged into a long, open room with another emergency exit directly across from him. He hurried to it, but it was sealed shut and wouldn’t budge.
He turned his back to the door and scanned the room. There were two more doors in here, one on each end. Either one could lead him right back into the waiting jaws of one of those foul creatures.
“This is really beginning to suck,” he growled.
STAY CALM
“Sure. Stay calm. Right. Why didn’t I think of that?”
SARCASM WON’T HELP
“It won’t hurt.”
Something began scratching at the door on his right, solving the problem of which one he should try first. He hurried across the room to the door on the left and peered through the window.
The way was clear.
But as soon as he pushed open the door, another of the black creatures trotted out of one of the rooms ahead of him and stood there, blocking the hallway and staring back at him.
Eric took an instinctive step back, but a squeak of hinges drew his attention to the other door. Looking over, he saw the other beast push its way into the room.
He was trapped.
He turned back to the hallway. The one here was crouched down, staring at him, but it wasn’t snarling. In fact, its head was cocked a little, as if it were merely curious about what he would do next.
Another stairwell door stood to the left, between him and the strangely calm beast. It appeared to be the only option available to him. He didn’t have any choice in the matter. Barely suppressing the overwhelming panic that was rising in his knotted belly, he took three cautious steps forward, his eyes fixed on the creature before him, and let the door behind him swing closed.
It didn’t attack him. Despite his experience with these things earlier in the day, it didn’t seem that they were all that eager to chase him down and disembowel him. But he still had no urge at all to walk up and try to pet the damn thing.
The stairwell door opened quietly enough, but the shadowy interior wasn’t very welcoming. He had two options: up or down. Neither offered much hope of escape, but the basement was clearly the less desirable destination, so he pulled the door closed behind him and began climbing.
Another creature was waiting for him in the second floor hallway, so he continued past it. The third floor door didn’t want to open. And as he approached the fourth floor door, something below him gave a short series of disturbing yips and he bolted from the stairwell and shoved the door closed behind him.
Now he was on the topmost floor, looking down an empty hallway, with no idea how the hell he was going to get out of this building.
And he was out of breath.
THERE’S SOMETHING STRANGE ABOUT THOSE CREATURES
“There is,” gasped Eric. “They’re not like the other ones at all.”
THEY’RE NOT AS AGGRESSIVE
“Yeah. What’s up with that?”
I FEEL LIKE THEY WERE TRYING TO HERD YOU TO THE TOP FLOOR
“Fantastic. So you think I’m in trouble here?”
I DON’T KNOW
PLEASE BE CAREFUL!
Eric nodded. She was right. Those things had seemed to be everywhere he turned, just like on Hosler, except those had tried to eat him. These… Well, he wasn’t sure what the deal was with these things.
He started down the hallway. The rooms up here were just as empty as the ones on the first floor, but the doors were different. The windows were larger, but the glass was reinforced with a heavy wire mesh. And a set of solid bars were bolted over each exterior window.
Suddenly, this looked less like a hospital than a prison.
Then it finally occurred to Eric why this building had felt so constrictive. This wasn’t a hospital. It was an institution. This was a place where people were not merely treated, but locked away.
What kinds of people had lived here?
His imagination was now gleefully constructing all sorts of awful horror-movie-worthy scenarios to torment him.
He made his way to the end of the hall, looked both ways and then turned left.
No creatures. No scratching noises at the doors. No moving shadows. The entire atmosphere had changed, and yet he continued to feel as if he were moving deeper and deeper into serious trouble.
At least if something happened to him here, Isabelle would be able to tell Karen what became of him. It wasn’t much comfort, but it helped a little.
The cell phone buzzed at him: DON’T EVEN THINK SUCH THINGS!
“Sorry.”
Eric pushed open a door and stepped into another open room. It was not like the ones downstairs. Those had the feel of common areas. This one was stark and sterile, more like an operating room…
What kinds of things went on in these rooms, he wondered. Did gruesome procedures take place here? Inhumane experiments? Brutal treatments? Or was this nothing more than another example of his imagination getting the best of him. Perhaps this was nothing more than an ordinary examination room, or even an observation area of some sort.
On two of the walls, someone had drawn strange, circular markings. As he approached one of them, he realized that he’d seen it before, back in the apartment over the tavern. These were the symbols that were connected to Aiden’s map by the two lengths of string.
He hadn’t paid much attention back in the apartment, but now he took a closer look. It was a spiral made up of a cryptic series of numbers. Starting at the bottom and working his way inward, counterclockwise, the numbers read 0893428007023116.
But what did it mean?
Reading the numbers from the inside of the spiral outward made no more sense to him.
He turned and walked to the other symbol. It was the same as the other, except the numbers were different. Here, they read 1351887622323116. Perhaps the numbers in the apartment were different, too, each one unique. They must mean something…
He pulled out Karen’s cell phone and fumbled with it until he found the camera, then he snapped a picture of one symbol, then the other.
The last five digits were the same, he realized as he compared the two more closely. But that still didn’t tell him anything.
No maps were laid out in this room, no string, no photographs. It didn’t appear that Aiden’s work extended to this building. But there was one more curious thing. A large, messy hole had been drilled through the wall near the corner and a narrow, steel pipe shoved through it. He walked over to this and peered into it. It ran into the next room and was aimed at the window. Through that window, Eric could see the roof of the hospital next door. He could also see a fairly impressive view of some of the city’s rooftops beyond it. As he looked out, he realized that he could also see that curious, square tower he’d spied through the holes in the plywood in the apartment. It rose up from the tops of the trees, a prominent feature of the modest skyline, yet he still couldn’t place it.
What was it about that building? Why had someone in both of these mysterious structures gone out of their way to point it out? It made no sense.
Eric stepped away from the pipe and glanced back at the two symbols. This was starting to feel like a Dan Brown novel, except he wasn’t nearly as talented as Robert Langdon. Blue’s Clues was more his level, to be honest.
Two curious symbols and a mysterious structure he still couldn’t recognize, despite the fact that it apparently stood right in the heart of his own home town…
Something caught his eye and he turned back to the steel pipe. Something that looked like a small drop of golden liquid was dangling from the end.
He bent and leaned closer. What was that? Some kind of oil? A lubricant of some sort? He was sure it hadn’t been there before.
And there was something very peculiar about it. It seemed to be trembling, as if the pipe were vibrating, but it was perfectly still.
As he watched, the drop suddenly and inexplicably ran up the curve of the pipe and perched quivering atop the rusty threads.
“What the…?”
Leaning close, he saw that it looked almost metallic, like mercury, except it was gold instead of silver. And it seemed to be growing. When he first saw it, it was nothing more than a tiny drop, but now it had grown into a quivering glob almost the size of a Hershey’s Kiss.
He lifted Karen’s phone, intending to take a picture of this mysterious phenomenon, but before he could get it lined up, it suddenly split in two, ran down both sides of the pipe and dropped to the floor. There, it sizzled and danced like water on a hot skillet. Smoke began to rise off it, emitting a curious, acrid stench. It also began to expand at an alarming rate, pooling into a puddle and forcing him to quickly back away before it encased his shoes.
“What the hell is this stuff?”
But before Isabelle could tell him she had no idea, the strange liquid rolled itself into several long ribbons and began to reach out for him.