Gateway (The Gateway Trilogy, Book 1), page 4
“Hi,” was all he said, removing his hand from my mouth. He had the manners not to wipe it on my bedspread.
“Hi,” I whispered back, as if this were the most natural circumstance for having a conversation.
“I didn't mean to scare you.”
“You didn't,” I said.
Was he going to tell me what he was doing here? It seemed ridiculous to have to ask.
“It's time to go see Callie.”
My eyebrows must have climbed three inches up my forehead.
“What?” I said too loudly.
Taren tensed and looked back at Lauren who continued to snore softly. Satisfied that she hadn't woken, he turned back to me.
“You said you would come if I could arrange it.”
“You can't seriously mean now. It's the middle of the night.”
“That's why it has to be now. There are too many people around during the day.”
“And this is what you meant when you said you could arrange it?” I asked.
“Yeah. Look, I promise we won't get caught, but we have to go now.”
I considered his request. It was insane, of course. The last thing I wanted was to get in trouble and find out how much worse life could get in a nuthouse, but my interest was more than piqued.
“Then I guess it's a good thing I'm already dressed,” I said.
I followed Taren to the door. He peered out, made a beckoning motion and then darted off. I hesitated for only a second, a rush of adrenaline propelling me down the deserted hallway. We paused in the recessed doorway where meds were handed out. The sound of a late night talk show drifted out from behind the nurses' station a few feet away. Taren crouched low and dashed past, motioning for me to do the same. My heartbeat drummed in my ears and I questioned the intelligence of what I was doing.
I crept toward the nurses' station, my breath held tight in my chest. I ignored the look of impatience Taren was shooting me, and edged close enough to peek around the doorjamb. A male nurse reclined in a chair, his back to me. Two steps and I would be once again hidden from view. Just two steps, yet I couldn't make myself take them.
Keep going.
It was the push I needed. I reached Taren and exhaled as quietly as I could. Now out of view, we both stood and padded farther down the hall to the double doors that separated our wing from the others. Taren slipped his hand beneath the shielded keypad. How had he gotten the code?
The doors opened with a soft hiss and we slipped through. I remembered this corridor from when I had met with Dr. Shaw, and I wasn't surprised to see it deserted at this late hour. A moment later we were at the end of the hallway and reached a door marked, “Stairwell.” Again, Taren's fingers moved deftly behind the plate that hid the keypad. With a click, the door unlatched and I found myself climbing a set of stairs. At the next landing he paused, and for a moment seemed unsure of himself.
“What is it?”
Him being nervous made me even more nervous.
“Nothing,” he said. “It just gets a little tricky from here.”
I would have laughed if a shred of self-preservation hadn't prevented it. Now it would get tricky?
It didn't take long to see what he meant. The door opened easily enough, but immediately I could tell we were in a different world. Instead of the tomb-like quiet of downstairs, this floor echoed with strange sounds. As we stood pressed against the doorway of the stairwell, I heard a low moaning drift down the hall. It mingled with a metallic tapping sound and a woman singing a lullaby in a disturbing monotone. And there were footsteps—multiple footsteps. They would stop for a second and then resume, thankfully getting quieter as they moved farther down the hall.
This is the part where he will make sure I want to go through with this, I told myself. What seemed like an adventure a few minutes ago—had it really been only a few minutes?—now seemed colossally stupid. As I tried to formulate a polite way to tell him he'd have to calm his friend, age-inappropriate girlfriend, whatever, down himself, Taren took off down the hall. In my shock I froze. I couldn't breathe, let alone move. Seconds ticked by and necessity forced me to inhale. I tilted my head a few inches, peering down the corridor.
Taren crouched in a doorway about ten feet away. Fifty feet away, a nurse and an orderly made their rounds, stopping at each door and making checks on a clipboard. Taren motioned for me to join him. I gave a slight, but firm shake of my head. He nodded, still beckoning. My jaw clenched. No, I mouthed. He pressed his hands together in front of himself, as if in prayer, and mouthed, please.
I watched as the pair made their way to the last door and realized the hallway was a dead end. They wouldn't be rounding a corner, they would be turning back around to face me. I cursed under my breath. Taren's eyes were pleading. He held up a key and pointed to the door he crouched in front of.
I sprang from my hiding place. The nurse and orderly began to turn. I would have slid right past the door but Taren grabbed me, hauling me through the now open door. It shut with a soft click behind us.
My heart felt like it might leap from my chest. I took small sips of air, afraid that if I indulged them, my gasps would drown out the other noises.
My eyes adjusted quickly, and the first thing I did was fix Taren with a hard stare. The rational part of my brain reasoned that I hadn't exactly asked him how he had planned to get us here before I agreed to come, but the part of me that was panicked needed someone to blame.
“What the hell is the matter with you?” I said.
But he wasn't looking at me. I followed his gaze to the corner. Curled into a tight ball, rocking back and forth, was Callie. Taren moved closer and I followed cautiously behind.
“Callie.” His voice was more than soft, it was tender.
Callie didn't respond, didn't even seem to be aware we were present.
“She wasn't like this earlier,” he said.
He was worried, and with good reason. Callie looked terrible. In less than a day she'd gone from looking mousey to feral. Her eyes remained vacant even when Taren passed his hand before them.
“What do you think happened?” I asked.
At the sound of my voice, Callie growled. Without thinking, I stepped back. As frail as she looked, I remembered her strength when she was on top of me.
“This might not have been a good idea.” Taren spoke what I was thinking, leaving out a few expletives.
Under normal circumstances, I'd have had a sarcastic retort, but these weren't normal circumstances and I felt fairly certain that the sound of my voice would set Callie off and cause a chain of events I'd rather not experience. I took careful steps backward until I ran out of floor space, my back pressed against the door.
Taren sat next to Callie, cradling her in his arms. “Callie, find your way back. Everything is OK. Find your way back. Remember what I taught you. Look for the pinpoint of light and follow it.”
There was nothing romantic in what I was seeing, and yet it seemed so intimate. It felt uncomfortable to witness. Listening to Lauren binge and purge might have given me a perverse pleasure, but this felt wrong. I was watching a psyche that had come unraveled and Taren was trying desperately to will it back together. I stared at the floor.
“Taren?” Callie's voice was bewildered and shaky. I looked up in surprise. “I got lost in the dark place again, Taren.”
“I know you did, kiddo. But you made it back. That's the important thing.” Taren's voice was reassuring, big brother to kid sister.
“I still can't do it on my own, though. I need you.”
“That's why I'm here,” he said.
“But then you go away, and I'm lost again.” She clung to him as though her life, or apparently her sanity, depended on it.
“I know, I'm sorry. That's why Monday is really important. Your doctor will be back then and he's going to decide whether you need to stay here or can come back downstairs where I am.”
“I want to come back downstairs, please. I'll be good. I didn't mean to hurt anyone. Did you tell her? Did you tell Ember I didn't mean it?”
“I did, and she knows you didn't mean it. She forgives you.”
“You're just saying that,” she said. “I was awful, she'd never forgive me.”
Taren lifted his head to look at me. I took a hesitant step forward.
“I - I do forgive you, Callie. And I'm fine. See?” I stepped into a small pool of light that cascaded in from a high window.
Callie looked up, disbelieving. She stared at me for a moment and then her whole body relaxed as she slumped against Taren's chest, her eyes closed.
“Thank you.” It was barely a murmur. Her chest began to rise and fall in a rhythmic pattern almost immediately.
“She's asleep?” My head spun. I had no context for what was happening.
“Yeah,” Taren replied, “for the first time in a few days I'd imagine.”
“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” It came out more forcefully than I had planned, but was a valid question nonetheless.
Taren leaned his head against the wall and sighed. He studied me for a long moment. He looked exhausted, but it seemed natural that he would be holding someone, watching over them.
“I'm not sure how much to tell you,” he said finally.
“I'm not sure how much I'll believe.”
He gave the tiniest of smiles and it made me want to think of ways to see it more often.
“Fair enough,” he said.
I came to sit across from him, Callie still snuggled into his chest.
“Callie hears… voices.”
Who doesn't? I kept my sarcasm to myself and let him continue.
“Usually they want her to do things to herself.”
He carefully lifted one of her sleeves, revealing a line of scars, some old, some fresh, made by a blade. I winced.
“I'm not sure why she got violent around you, to be honest. I thought I might know, but…”
“But I don't have any birthmarks?” I asked, half-joking.
“But you don't have any birthmarks,” he repeated, completely serious.
A distant alarm sounded. Taren and I locked eyes.
“Is that for us?” I asked, more than a touch of panic in my tone.
He shook his head. “It shouldn't be. Even if they'd noticed we were gone they'd do a full sweep before sounding an alarm and panicking the whole hospital.”
As if on cue, another alarm sounded, this one closer.
Callie stirred and opened her eyes. “Taren? What's going on?”
“Don't worry. It's just a fire drill.” From the look in his eyes, he was trying to convince himself as well as her.
Before I could ask what we should do, the door to Callie's room opened of its own accord. The door to the room across the hall had opened as well.
“The locks have been disarmed,” Taren said in bewilderment. “What would—”
Figures raced past the door in hospital gowns. Screams and wailing could be heard, mingling with the shriek of the alarms. A nurse, eyes wild with fright, raced in the direction of the stairwell.
Taren motioned for me to stay back as he rushed to the door, scanning both directions.
“We need to get out of here.”
He didn't need to say it twice; fear had turned my veins to ice. I struggled to help Callie to her feet.
“Which way?” I asked.
I peered past Taren into the hallway. In both directions chaos reigned; patient fought orderly, nurse fought nurse. Others were simply fleeing. A petite woman in a hospital gown swung at a large man in an orderly's uniform. Seemingly impossible given her size, she sent him crashing into the wall. With a thud his head reverberated off and he slid to the floor, motionless. She turned, a trick of the light making her eyes seem to glow. A vacant-eyed woman, her clothing in shreds, stumbled down the hall, moaning. Her hand dripped with something red and sticky-looking, streaking the wall as she went.
I backed away from the door, shaken. “Why is this happening?”
“I don't know,” Taren shouted above the sirens, “but we have to get out of here. Now.”
Before I could protest leaving the relative safety of the room for what waited in the hall, Callie clutched her head as if in agony and repeated, “No, no, no…”
Taren grabbed her by the shoulders. “That's good, Callie, fight it. You have to fight it.”
“But there's so many, they want—”
“No, don't listen to them. Block it out. Remember what I taught you?” Taren's tone bordered on frantic.
“I can't think of a song, I can't think of one!” she wailed. She was using a fist to beat at her temple.
“Do the ABC's,” I said, desperate to help. “A, b, c, d, e, f, g…”
Taren nodded and joined in. “H, i, j, k — “
“L, m, n, o, p,” Callie sang at the top of her lungs, “q, r, s…”
“Keep going, say it over and over, don't stop,” Taren commanded. He turned to me. “Come on, we're leaving.”
Is he crazy? Of course he is, he's in a mental institution. Why wouldn't he be crazy? I'm probably crazy, too. The people in the hallway are definitely crazy, which is why only a crazy person would go out there. Wait, does that mean I should follow Taren or I should—
“Ember!” Taren's voice was sharp, cutting through my babbling thoughts. “I don't want to have to leave you.”
My eyes got as big as saucers. Leave me? He would leave me? Here? The thought of crouching alone in the corner of a room without so much as a closet to hide in became more terrifying than facing what was in the hall.
He didn't wait for my answer. “Now!”
He bolted from the room, dragging Callie with him, her still shrieking her ABC's. I leapt to follow. The stairwell seemed farther away than I remembered. Of course, fifteen minutes ago I was only worried about getting caught by an orderly, not a psychotic patient. The door to the stairs stood open and, amazingly, unoccupied. We raced through and continued down the stairs. We'd reached the landing for our floor when the door burst open. We skidded to a halt in front of Lauren and Josh.
“It's coming, it's coming, go!” Lauren babbled hysterically.
Something, some thing large and terrifying appeared in the doorway.
“Run!” Lauren shrieked and tore past us, up the stairs, Josh following.
Callie's eyes widened with recognition. “You said they weren't here, you said—”
She began convulsing, her eyes rolling back in her head.
The creature had eyes like slits and a nose like a squashed bug, but its mouth… Its mouth took up the better part of its face. A gooey red liquid oozed from both corners and when it opened, four rows of jagged teeth gleamed in the fluorescent light.
“Get her out of here,” Taren said, pushing Callie into my arms. “Drag her if you have to.”
He took a step toward the beast.
“What? What are you doing? Run!” I screamed.
“I'll be right behind you,” he said calmly, dislodging a fire extinguisher from its case on the wall.
Whether due to self-preservation or his commanding tone, I left him there, pulling Callie along with me. I don't know how many floors I ran up—I didn't even know how many floors the building had—but when I reached the roof my lungs were on fire and I was gasping for air. I slumped against the doorframe, letting Callie collapse into a heap.
Moments later Taren stepped onto the rooftop.
“How is she?” he asked.
He was barely short of breath, his clothing drenched in a foul-smelling black slime.
It was my shock at seeing him again that made me realize that I'd been certain he would die. Certain he was sacrificing his life, if not for me, then for the young woman in a heap at my feet.
“Ask her,” I said. Not the best way to say thank you—he had saved my life, however incidental—but in the past half hour of sneaking down hallways, then running for my life, I'd begun to wonder, “What the hell is so special about her, anyway?”
He was kneeling, trying to rouse her. “You wouldn't understand.”
“Oh yeah? Try me.” I could hear the hysterical edge in my voice but could do nothing to stop it. “And while you're at it, why don't you explain to me what that thing down there was. And why you seem not at all fazed that a giant bug with the mouth of Jaws is running around a mental institution, or anywhere for that matter—”
“You need to calm down, Ember. Take a deep breath.” Taren didn't spare me a glance, instead he scanned the rooftop.
“Oh, no, you don't get to be patronizing,” I said. “I've put up with plenty of very weird behavior from both you, and now I want some answers.”
“I'm not trying to patronize you,” he said, turning to face me. “But there are things happening right now that are more important than your curiosity. Callie needs the help of professionals. Do you really want me to waste time explaining myself to you?”
I looked back at Callie, still motionless, and knew he was right.
With great care Taren lifted her in his arms and moved away from the stairwell.
“I know a safe place if you want to come with us,” he said.
If? I certainly wasn't going back downstairs, and I wasn't naive enough to think the roof would remain quiet for long.
I followed Taren to the roof's edge and peered over. We were only five flights up. It had felt so much further when I was running for my life and dragging an uncooperative Callie. In the distance, I could just make out two shapes sprinting across the lawn toward the main road. Moonlight glinted off of the bedazzled lettering across Lauren's rump—Juicy. Nice of them to wait for us.
