As Mitt had imagined, his interest and flattery were particularly well received, and Tomás was more than eager to satisfy Mitt’s professed curiosity. To that end, the supervisor had carried on nonstop for a good half hour, and Mitt did learn much more than he expected. What he found particularly interesting were the intricate details of the complicated HVAC system involving HEPA filters and a continuous monitoring of the ambient pressures in various parts of the hospital to guarantee proper airflow. It was something Mitt had had absolutely no knowledge about yet knew was obviously of vital importance, particularly keeping constant negative pressure within “infectious” isolation rooms so that the “bad bugs” could not escape into the hospital proper.
When Tomás had come to the end of his monologue, Mitt said that where he’d gone to medical school all the buildings in the complex were connected by passageways, which he had occasionally used in inclement weather. He then asked if that was the case at Bellevue.
“Absolutely,” Tomás had exclaimed, as if he needed to defend Bellevue.
“So, you can essentially walk to any of the buildings in the complex underground?”
“Of course,” Tomás had said as if it had been a ridiculous question. “We have to provide utilities and the tunnels provide access.”
At that point Mitt had switched the conversation to the most distant building, namely the old psychiatric hospital, which Tomás immediately referred to as building #16. As if taking the cue, Tomás spontaneously went on to say that although building #16 was now mostly empty, a small portion of its northeast wing remained in use, so the tunnel connection was still functional to provide the section with power, water, and HVAC. After a bit more banter and a few pointed questions, Mitt had found himself in the tunnel system following a map hastily drawn by Tomás that brought him face-to-face with building #16’s fire door.
In preparation to pass beyond the door, Mitt first pocketed the map. He then peeled off the backpack that he’d slung over his shoulder and took out his flashlight. Although the rather dingy Bellevue tunnel system was fully illuminated by a series of bare bulbs in ceiling-mounted sockets above all the piping, he knew from Tomás’s explanation that on the other side of the fire door, it was going to be pitch-black the moment the door closed. Mitt also knew that his point of entry was going to be the psychiatric hospital’s southwestern wing, which meant he would have to walk around to the northwestern wing to reach the housekeeping storeroom. To do that, he certainly needed the light.
With the backpack returned to his shoulder and the flashlight in hand, Mitt faced the door. Now he just needed to boost his confidence. To that end he was mightily thankful that Lashonda had brought him in earlier and shown him how to deal with the slew of Bellevue ghosts who haunted the building. The key was to make a conscious effort not to look at them, even briefly. But perhaps even more important, if they seemed to block the way, he needed to pretend they were not there and merely walk through them, thereby denying their existence. This latter injunction had been the most difficult lesson for Mitt, but he was confident he could handle it from having experienced Lashonda having so effectively done it that very morning. What he had to remind himself repeatedly was that the spirits were unable to interact with him physically and could only do so indirectly via intermediary objects.
When Mitt thought he was mentally prepared, he audibly counted down from ten to zero. He then reached out, grasped the fire door’s vertical handle, and began to pull. At first the door resisted, so he increased the pressure. Finally, it cracked open, and once it did, it swung open easily. The closing mechanism mounted on the top mildly squeaked. Out of the inky darkness ahead wafted chilled, damp air. Switching on his flashlight, Mitt stepped over the threshold and let the door swing shut behind him with a hushed thump.
For a few minutes, Mitt stood where he was in a short side corridor. Ahead his flashlight beam hit up against the whitewashed wall of the psychiatric hospital’s basement corridor that extended the length of the southwest wing. He listened intently, as he fully expected to hear distant wailing or other sounds of torment from either the surgerized masses or the souls of the corpses who had been dug up from their graves, just as he and Lashonda had heard when they first entered on their recent visit. But there was none. There was no sound whatsoever. It was as if he’d suddenly been cut off from the rest of the world even though he was in New York City in the middle of a busy summer holiday afternoon. Aboveground, maybe as little as a hundred or so feet to the west, he knew that heavy traffic worked its way north on First Avenue. But where he was standing a heavy silence reigned, almost oppressively so.
Surprised but also ultimately relieved, Mitt started forward and turned to the right down the main corridor. After a short walk, he followed the hallway to the left and came to where the main basement corridor joined those of the two west wings. There he stopped again to listen as he directed his flashlight beam down the main corridor. It was then that he realized just how much more powerful his flashlight was compared with Lashonda’s. From where he was presently standing, he could see all the way down to the ornamental central stairway.
Once again, he strained his ears for sounds, but there was nothing, making him wonder if the time of day had any bearing on the Bellevue phantoms’ activity. It suddenly occurred to him that perhaps they only came out at night, but then he quickly nixed the idea, remembering he’d seen both Charlene and the surgerized group in daylight hours in the high-rise building.
Progressively encouraged that his current visit was going to be even easier than he’d envisioned, Mitt pushed on. He made one more turn to the left and then soon arrived at the housekeeping supply room. Turning his attention to the door opposite, he got the key from the upper rail. A moment later, he had the supply door open. After returning the key and before entering the room, he shined his light back up the hallway, half expecting to see a bevy of ghosts, or at least Charlene or John. But again there was nothing. He listened intently, even holding his breath for a moment, but he still heard nothing. Although he was pleased, he was also mystified as to why he was being spared. With a shrug, he entered the storeroom. He didn’t bother to close the door to the hallway, as he intended to make this a short visit.
After putting his flashlight on the floor of the main part of the storeroom, Mitt first opened the toilet-room door and then the closet. He then spent a minute gazing at the stack of records. His original plan had been to take at least one box and maybe two back to his apartment. But since his visit inside the psychiatric hospital was turning out so different from what he’d expected, he reconsidered his plans. There was a definite downside to going all the way back to his apartment as part of a multiple-visit plan, including traveling back and forth. There was also the risk of raising suspicions by appearing on multiple occasions in the engineering spaces to access the tunnel system. Suddenly it seemed much more sensible to remain in the psychiatric hospital. He could simply take the boxes he wanted to study upstairs to the first floor. He distinctly remembered seeing some furniture in one or two of the offices. He also assumed there would be more than enough ambient light coming in through the windows even though most, if not all, were boarded up.
“Let’s do it,” Mitt said out loud to encourage himself. He knew if the circumstances changed and a problem arose, he could always go back to plan A. With that decided, he moved quickly. First he took one of the top boxes, which he assumed were mostly Clarence’s lobotomy cases, and put it aside. He then separated out the three lowest boxes to evenly represent the one-hundred-year interval when Homer, Otto, and Benjamin were professionally active.