Fear

FIFTY-EIGHT

Miles entered the keypad number from Singhal’s wallet. The lock holding the ancient iron gate beeped, disengaged, and Miles pushed the metal bars open, left it unlocked.

They ran across the overgrown grass to the hospital’s front door.

‘You first,’ Groote said, ‘since it’s your idea.’

The door was locked. Miles knelt down, tested the lock with Groote’s Mr. Screwdriver, worked it open. They stepped into the silence of the abandoned hospital.

Groote shut the door behind them. Both men held their guns out in front of them, pointing into the dim light. The opening foyer was dusty, scattered with junk – leftover papier-mache monster masks; bright orange flyers, fading, that promoted the haunted-house event and other long-ago October concerts in clubs; discarded paper cups and beer cans; a tattered banner, torn in half, that said: TO

CHAMBER OF HO

They stood and listened for a long minute. The silence made Miles’s ears ache.

Ho? Groote mouthed, pointing at the ripped sign.

Horrors, Miles decided. Chamber of horrors.

Groote tapped at his ear. Listen. And in the hush, he heard a quiet computerish hum from down the hall.

Miles saw Andy beckoning him along the hallway. Sweat broke out on his ribs, in the hollow of his throat, in his hair, and he realized he was more scared than he had ever been in his life. Scared of what would happen, scared of the psychopath standing next to him, scared of what he was becoming.

Groote gestured with his gun toward the hall. They went past several deserted offices. Tattered curtains, leftovers from the haunted house, hung in the windows, the rooms all empty. In the last one a laptop sat on a folding table. Miles moved to read the screen.

It displayed a PowerPoint presentation called ‘Research Options on Memory and Trauma with a Beta Blocker Approach.’

All the bloodshed, all the suffering, all the millions at stake, it came down to a PowerPoint presentation.

Miles put his mouth close to Groote’s ear to whisper, ‘We’re not alone. Sorenson wouldn’t leave this behind.’

Trap us in the hallway, Groote mouthed. He gestured down the corridor. Miles nodded and followed him.

A brick propped open a door at the end of the hallway. A large room loomed beyond. Perhaps once it had been the cafeteria, or a space for socializing. Now it wore false walls, shaped into a twisty maze, a setup of nightmarish paintings on black paint, and mirrors arranged to confuse and frighten. Junk, left behind by the Halloween fund raiser, probably with a thought to reuse it next year, before Dodd bought the derelict property.

Miles could smell the dusty aroma that seems to permeate open spaces long neglected. It had hung like a perfume in the fatal air in Miami, and panic seized his chest. He could not flashback now, no, Jesus, don’t lose control, he told himself, don’t let your brain be a traitor.

Groote nodded at him and Miles went through the door first, gun out, arms level, afraid to breathe, to think, to see. No Andy, no Allison, no DeShawn, please, he thought. Groote followed him. The haunted house-scape still stood in the large room, monster faces leering at them from plywood and black paint: howling ghosts, shambling zombies, big-fanged vampires, all the playthings of manufactured, false fear.

Miles tapped Groote on the shoulder. They hadn’t discussed what procedures to take if they needed to do a search. Groote jerked his head to the right, pointed to Miles, jerked it to the left. Miles nodded. He moved to the left, Groote moved to the right.

Miles walked down a twisting passage. Black fabric, hung to mask the operations of the haunted house, hung in tatters. Silence again.

Andy stood at the end of the passage, and he frightened Miles more than any fabricated monster. ‘You can’t do this. Sorenson will kill you. I mean, you think you’re really going to stand there and shoot another person?’

Miles glanced behind him. Allison stood watching him as though to see what he would do next. He whirled back to Andy; but he was gone. He pivoted again; Allison had vanished. But the curtain moved, and there was no hum of air conditioner to sway it He sensed movement behind him and spun as Sorenson burst through the tatters of black fabric at the corner where Andy had stood, leveling a gun at him and firing.

The bullets needled through the meat and muscle of his arm and his leg. Miles screamed with agony and fell through the black curtain along the passageway, trying to simply put cover between himself and Sorenson. Two more bullets whistled above him, ripping holes in the black cloth. He went flat and he heard two shattering gunshots as he barreled headfirst to where a plywood wall met a wooden support pillar.

Trapped. No way to go forward or sideways.

Miles rolled back out into the passageway, bullets blazing above him as he tried to gain his footing, and he saw Groote take two shots, chest and shoulder. Groote staggered back, fell hard on the flooring, eyes wide, his teeth chomping into his own lip in pain and shock.

Miles turned.

Sorenson walked toward him, the gun locked on Miles’s head.