I stood up now. My finger tapped another button on the elevator panel. I extended my hand to him.
“Do we have an understanding?”
Xavier grimaced at my grubby paw, at the filth under my fingernails. He pulled himself up on his own, ignoring my gesture. The elevator groaned and shuddered as it slowed.
A static-filled roar blared from beneath Xavier’s white lab coat. We both looked down, equally shocked by the noise.
“—ach Taylor must not be allowed access to Martin Grace’s room,” my father’s voice barked from the Brinkvale-issued walkie-talkie.
“He’s en route via elevator. Say again: Zach Tay—”
“Aw, shit,” I said.
Xavier’s face went wicked. “Fuck you, Taylor,” he snapped, sidestepping around me, circling toward the doors. “You’re gonna be so fired after I’m done with you.”
The doors slid open. He turned around to check our location.
I snatched the radio from the man’s belt and gave him a quick shove. Xavier yelped, staggering into the hallway of Level 3.
He whirled around, fuming.
“I don’t think you’ll have the satisfaction,” I said as the doors began to close. “Level 3, more than halfway there now. I’ll probably be shitcanned by lunchtime. Meet me topside then. We’ll scrap in the parking lot then grab beers. My treat, pardner.”
Xavier gaped at me, his world turned upside-down.
“You’re mad,” he whispered.
The doors clanked shut. The elevator chugged on. I glared at the walkie-talkie in my hand, sweating. Seconds. I had seconds to come up with something. My Spock side had apparently taken a vow of silence.
And then the answer crackled from my hand.
“Belay that. Hoffacker, listen to me,” Peterson’s voice said. “Zachary has thirty minutes with his patient. You will permit him his…”
Unintelligible barks, off-mic. And then:
“…No, Mr. Taylor. Your meticulous paperwork says noon, and noon it shall be. Hoffacker, I say again: Let Zachary pass. One half-hour.”
I smiled. Heard a manic titter escape my lips.
You’re mad, Xavier had said.
“We’ll see,” I said, “just how mad I can get.” _
The doors opened on Level 5. Max’s hallway was blissfully flicker-free. I strode past the nurse’s station, passing Annie Jackson, the victim of another double shift, and she called my name, waving her radio, wishing me luck with whatever I was about to do. I waved back and kept moving, now nearing Chaz Hoffacker and Room 507.
The guard’s arms were crossed. He gave a surly frown, flabby jowls sagging. He looked like a constipated bulldog.
“Would you feel any better about this,” I said, “if I promise to give ‘Ziggy’ another chance?”
Chaz harrumphed and unlocked the door.
I asked my anti-self for another shot of rabble-rouser indignation, one last trick up my torn sleeve, and stepped inside.
Room 507’s lights were on this morning—whether that was due to the impending transfer or Richard Drake’s nigh-catatonic state, I couldn’t tell. But gone was the ex-spook’s haughty pride and ramrod-straight posture. He sagged in his wooden chair, chin resting upon his chest. His graceful hands, usually folded in his lap, hung at his sides, boneless and swaying. His breathing was thick, sleepy sounding.
The living dead. Just like me.
I turned back to Chaz. “Did they medicate him?”
“What do I look like, Trapper John, M.D.?”
“Damn it, did they sedate my patient or not?”
The guard shrugged.
“Dunno. Don’t think so. Doesn’t look like he needs it.” Chaz closed and locked the door.
And then it was me and Drake and the murals on the wall.
I didn’t tug the second chair and place it in front of him, like before. I stood.
I snarled.
“You cold-hearted son of a bitch,” I said. “I told you I’d help you even if it killed me—and it nearly did. I went up to your boy’s house, just like you wanted me to. Found a letter with a photo, sent to that address a year after you’d abandoned your son. It shot down my pet theory. According to the U.S. government, Alexandrov is dead. Whatever else you wanted me to see is gone. Daniel burned them. Just like you wanted to burn me.
“It tore me to shreds. I couldn’t see in the dark, but the dark could sure as hell could see me. Which you probably expected.”
Drake wheezed something. Gibberish.
“And that leaves me with two options,” I said. “The first is the one you know oh-so-well, the one that pitted me and mine against your monster. Option one? You’re insane. You deserve to be doped up for the rest of your days, haunted by that fucking creature, tormented in your stupor. You think this is bad? You ain’t seen nothing yet, blind man. Yes. Insane. Unsound. Soft in the head.”
The patient gave a high moan. He shifted in his chair.
“That’s right, Richard. You’re not deaf. You heard me. You’re a bowl of soggy Froot Loops. You’re out of your mind.”
Drake began to mutter something. I stopped talking and watched his quivering lips form the words. “Hhhhh,” he said.
White vapor streamed from his mouth.
Oh…
The chill blasted over me like a gale-force wind, and I stumbled a half-step backward, instinctively clutching my arms, suddenly shivering. The air was brittle, so cold it burned.
“…no,” I said. My teeth were chattering.
“Hhhhh.” The vapor swirled around Drake’s face like cigarette smoke now. He chuckled, a manic, broken sound. “Hhhhere. Arrrrk Man. Here. I… can… feel him.”
His head flung back as if he’d been hung from the gallows. His green eyes flashed open and stared at the ceiling, stared at something a thousand miles above. My furor had been supplanted by fear. Chitter-chitter went my teeth.
And the walls themselves replied: Tktktk. Tktktk. TKTKTK…
The light above flickered, buzzed, did what it had done three days ago—but there were new things here now, things that weren’t here during the last light show, the last hellshow, I run the red show, and Jesus Christ almighty, they were moving, turning sour, dying.
I stared in stone-cold terror as the murals’ colorful, manic lines and blobs came to life, swirling, breathing and undulating, rippling like water. The colors withered as I watched, transforming into a charcoal gray, two walls’ worth of Zach sketches, animated like a Disney film, chaotic and beautiful and terrible.
The gray lines were black now. They coalesced into arm-thick scribbles that twitched and jigged, swirling like giant ghoul’s eyes, cinderblock snakes. Some were slow, sliding toward the floor like refrigerated syrup—spoiled, bubbling with black curds.
But much of the dancing blackness was fast. Liquified panther.
The goop, glittering like crude oil in the strobing light, splashed down with a soul-chilling slurp. It became a shifting mass of pain-bringing things as it writhed on the cracked tile floor: barbs, razors, knives, claws, incisors, all black and wet. I lost a little of my mind in that glimmering, shimmering madness.
“Richard…” I whispered.
The cinderblock snakes flopped to the floor now, quivering and gelatinous, leaving ink snail-trails on the walls… and the onyx pool rushed to absorb them, hungry to be made whole. It wasn’t one voice that spoke now. It was legion.