Free Live Free

Four In The Dark

“Doctor,” said the nurse who opened the door, “I hate to interrupt you, but we have a man here, and we don’t seem to have any record of him.”

She opened the door farther, and Barnes walked in. “I’m not really a patient,” he said ruefully. For a moment his hands wandered over the coarse cotton of his pajamas. “It’s just that these are the only clothes I have. Hello, Stubb. What are you doing here?”

“The hell with me, what are you doing here? I sent Candy, not you.”

Dr. Bensen rose to look at him. “Someone hit you on the jaw,” he said.

“Yes, sir.” Barnes nodded. “One of your patients, Doctor. He knocked me out and stole my clothes, my wallet, and everything. Even my glass eye.”

“The routine of this hospital is incessantly interrupted.”

Sandy said, “You know, you look very interesting without the eye. I didn’t know it was glass.”

“I bet I look terrible. Have you got a mirror?”

She took a compact from her purse, opened it, and handed it to Barnes. He studied his face intently. “Blow me down. I look awful.”

“I think you’re cute.”

“You can get another eye,” Stubb told him.

“What with? That eye cost me two hundred.”

Dr. Bensen asked, “What’s your name? Full name.”

“Osgood Myles Barnes. Listen, Stubb, do you know the one about the guy with the wooden eye?”

“I’ve got a hunch I’m about to hear it.”

“He was a farmboy, see? Up in New England, and somebody hit him in the face with a hay rake and put his eye out.”

“Age?”

“Thirty-four. So he went to Boston to buy a glass one. They had the real good ones from Germany, but they cost a bundle, and he only had twenty bucks.”

“Place of birth?”

“Pottstown, Pea Ay. So just when he was about to go back to the farm—he already had his ticket—this peddler comes up to him and he has wooden glass eyes.”

“Occupation?”

“Sales. What they really were was pine knots with a blue dot or a brown dot painted in the middle. So the guy bought one for twenty bucks and put it in and went home.”

“College graduate?”

“No. Two years at Pitt in business administration. But everybody on the train laughed at him and his wooden eye, and he got so embarrassed about it he wouldn’t go out any more after he got back to the farm.”

“When was the last time you were hospitalized?”

Sandy said, “Why are you asking him all these questions?”

“My nurse will have to fill out a card.”

“Wait a minute.” Stubb bent over the doctor to see what he was doing. “Ozzie’s not a patient here.”

Dr. Bensen removed his glasses and wiped them with a handkerchief. “Frankly, Mr. Stubb, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions. My nurse said she couldn’t find a record of him, but he’s dressed like a patient, and there is a certain child-like ambience I find suggestive.”

“You’re crazy yourself,” Barnes told him.

“There’s no need for hostility. If an examination indicates that you’re sufficiently responsible to function in society, you’ll be released, and your clothing, even your artificial eye, will be returned to you.”

“You mean you’ve got my stuff? I thought Reeder had it.”

“Clothing, and corrective lenses, or other objects that might be broken to produce a sharp edge, are stored for the patient until release. Have you ever been hospitalized before?”

“Does having a baby count? I had twins three years ago.”

Stubb said, “I wouldn’t make that kind of joke, Ozzie. I don’t think it’s going to go over here.”

“What kind would you make?” Barnes asked.

The telephone rang.

Stubb said, “Sandy, I want you to take Ozzie and get him out of here. Right now. I’ll talk to Proudy if I can and tell you whatever I find out.”

Dr. Bensen was on the telephone. “What’s that?” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“Where can I take him?” The short girl looked doubtfully at Barnes.

“You’ve got an apartment? You live alone?”

“So far, damn it.”

“Well, you just got a roommate. What’s the phone number?”

“Mr. Stubb, it’s freezing out there. He’s got to have more than those things.”

Barnes added, “I’ll say I do. I got a blind date tonight.”

“Then she won’t be able to see how you’re dressed. Split, you dumb bastard. Get out of here, or you may not ever get out.”

Dr. Bensen slammed down the telephone, produced a handkerchief from somewhere in his white coat, and patted his gleaming forehead. “That damn fool Roberts is telling them to discharge the Gypsies. Excuse me. I have to see what he’s up to. I’ll try and find out what’s keeping Proudy too.” He went through the doorway, and they heard him whispering urgently to the nurse in the room beyond.

“I think you’re right,” Sandy said. “I think we’d better go. All of us.”

“In a minute,” Stubb said. He was looking out the barred window at the city under its blanket of snow. It was nearly dark.

“I need clothes,” Barnes muttered. “I’d like to get my eye back too, but I don’t think there’s much chance of that.”

Sandy asked, “What are you waiting for?” She was buttoning her coat.

“I’m waiting because he’s still out there,” Stubb told her. “We may be able to talk Ozzie past the nurse, but I want to give Bensen time to get away from the area.”

The nurse’s voice penetrated the door like the anguished squawk of a gull. She was telling someone he could not use the telephone.

“That’s our break,” Stubb said. “Come on.”

In the outer room, a man with curly black hair and pierced ears was pushing the buttons of a complicated looking telephone while holding off the nurse with one hand.

“Don’t worry, Miss!” Stubb shouted. “We’ll get him out of here for you. Ozzie, grab his other arm! Sandy, you hang up the phone!”

The man was thin, but wiry and a kicker. As soon as they had him in the hallway, Stubb whispered to Barnes, “Okay, let him go.”

The man rushed back toward the office, arriving at the door just in time to collide full tilt with Sandy Duck and knock her down. He leaped over her like a hunted buck, the flash of white supplied by a large handkerchief trailing from his hip pocket, and vanished again into Dr. Bensen’s office. The nurse shrieked.

One of the patients on the benches that lined the hall rose and helped Sandy up. The rest watched, dull-eyed. “Thanks,” she said.

Stubb asked, “You hurt?”

“Just rumpled.” She tried to thrust a hand down the neck of her wool blouse. “I think my underwear is in trouble.”

“Here,” the patient who had helped her up said. “Let me do that for you.” He seemed perfectly serious and sincere.

“Never mind.” Sandy tugged at a strap. “I’ve got it.”

“Come on,” Stubb said. “Let’s get out of here.”

“Aren’t you going to help the Gypsies?”

“Not now. The first thing is to get Barnes out. Then I’ll come back and see about them. I’ll try to talk to Proudy too.”

The patient said, “I don’t think the Gypsies need much help, Mr. Stubb. There’s a doctor and a fat nurse, and a Gypsy nurse and one of the attendants, and a little boy who are going around letting them loose.”

Stubb turned to stare at him. “How’d you know my name? You’re …”

“No I’m not, Mr. Stubb. I’m Richard Albright Chester.”

“Nimo the Clown! Do you know, I don’t think I would have recognized you if you hadn’t yelled at us while we were talking to Davidson. I wanted to see about you when I got the chance, but we had something else to do first, and then Ozzie came in.”

“You’re a clown?” Sandy asked. They had been hurrying down the hall; now she pushed the button for the elevator.

“Not just at present, no. But I have this strange ability to become a clown sometimes.”

Barnes looked at him curiously. “When the moon is full, or something?”

“No, it just happens. Pretty often, really.”

The lights went out. All up and down the corridor, the lights on the ceiling went out behind their heavy glass bowls and wire guards. The long fluorescent over the empty nurse’s station by the elevator blinked out. The red elevator telltale between the elevator buttons, just above Sandy’s finger, winked out; and the sighing of the warm wind in the steel grills along the baseboard stopped when the EMERGENCY EXIT light over the entrance to the stairs went dark.

Sandy froze. It seemed to her that what had happened was much more fundamental, much more serious, than the mere extinction of light. Somehow, with her ears, with her nose, with senses she had written about but had hardly known she possessed, she knew everything had changed, though she could not have said how. She no longer walked on hard plastic tiles, but felt beneath her feet something more resilient and almost living, like the skin of an animal. Every wall save the one she faced seemed to fly away from her, off into the darkness. When she took her finger from the elevator button, that wall vanished too. A moment later she reached for it and felt nothing.

“Power failure,” someone—she thought it might be Stubb—said beside her. “It won’t last long.”

A completely new voice remarked, “I’m doing flips. Chocolate flips.” He-if it was a man—seemed to move past her in some complex fashion, then was gone.

Another voice (or perhaps it was only Stubb’s again) said, “You think it’s just the hospital?”

She heard herself say, “Probably.”

“Who are you?” (Possibly the second voice, or Stubb’s.)

“Sandy,” she told it.

“You don’t sound like Sandy.” A groping hand touched her face and she jerked back. Somewhere a human being was howling like a wolf.

Somewhere else—outside—a car or truck was howling too, moaning down the street and far out into the city. There was a crash, muffled but unmistakable.

“Do you think it’s all over? All over town?”

“I don’t know.”

“It must be. I can’t see any lights outside the windows.”

“There aren’t any here. Here in the hallway. You can’t tell by that.”

“Anybody wanna buy a bat?”

“There was a window in that doctor’s office.”

“To hell with that. Where’s the stairs?”

“Please! Please! We have an emergency generating system. The lights will be back in a moment.”

Sandy said, “My gosh, I hope he’s right.” She had lost contact with Stubb and Barnes, and with the wall as well. With each tentative step she felt sure her hands would encounter it, but there was only more space. It seemed colder already.

“If you’re in your room, please stay in your room.”

“Harris, is that you?”

“I’m just trying to maintain order, shit-face. O-w-o-o-o!”

“Stop that! Harris, go back to your room.”

Someone bumped into her. It was the second time in five minutes that she had been bumped, but she was too frightened to be angry. The bumper caught her before she fell. “Lady, where’s the steps?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m trying to find them myself.”

“You nurse?”

Then the lights came back. She was in the middle of the hall, with patients milling around her. The man before her was the man with pierced ears.

The lights went out again.