He snapped his head left.
The walls were excreting some slippery liquid. At first glance it looked like blood. But the smell was wrong.
It was oil. It seeped out invisible pores above the trapdoor.
Somehow the house had known that Chiun would attempt to grab on to something when the passage opened beneath him. It had prevented him from doing so by greasing everything within reach.
Remo hopped to his feet. Thoughts only on Chiun, he raced for the opening they had used to enter the passage.
He'd start his search on the first floor and move to the basement if necessary. To find Chiun, he would tear the entire house down brick by brick.
When he reached the spot where the opening had been, Remo froze.
It was gone. Somehow the jagged hole he'd torn in the paneling had healed itself.
And on either side of the narrow passage, the walls began to thrum, as if with a pulsing life force all their own.
Whatever was happening, it wasn't good. Remo slashed out a hand at the wood. It absorbed the blow.
He tried again. Still nothing. The paneling that had shattered so easily two minutes before now seemed impervious to his attacks.
A click and a whir behind him, followed by a low rumble.
Remo didn't turn. He didn't need to look to know that the walls were closing in.
There wasn't a sense of hydraulics. Just the inexorable move of the wall toward his back.
And as the passage constricted, threatening to crush Remo to paste, a single camera winked on at the far end of the corridor, its somber lens focused on the dramatic final moments of life of the younger Master of Sinanju.
Chapter 22
At first he had an impossible time orienting himself. All around him the world was shaded in black.
But after a time, shapes began to form. Angled shadows rose right or left, indicating where walls and ceiling were.
Mark Howard was at Folcroft. As usual. That much he knew. But he couldn't quite place exactly where. He started walking.
As he headed down the long hallway, each footfall was thunder only he could hear.
When he felt the first kiss from the icy rush of air, he knew what it preceded.
Come for me....
The disembodied voice echoed forlornly off the shadowy walls. It seemed to be inside his head, as well.
He had heard the voice before. In this same place. But as far as he knew, it wasn't a voice he recognized. The hallway grew longer with each step. He passed a window. In the tree beyond, an owl blinked inquisitively, its eyes washed in purple from the strangely deformed moon.
Release me....
A door. Mark had seen it before. Each time he visited this hallway, he managed to get this far. With growing dread he knew that it would soon be over.
It was a patient's door. Crisscrossing wires were buried in the small Plexiglas rectangle.
Mark crept forward. The thudding of his shoes faded, overwhelmed by the pounding of his own heart.
The door was solid, unbreakable.
He touched the handle. As usual, no sense of cold or warmth. For a moment he considered turning it. Some unexplainable inner dread held him back. He released the knob.
The instant he let go, there issued a timid scratching from inside, as from a dying animal. Whatever it was, it gave the sense that captivity was sapping its vitality.
Holding his breath, Mark moved to the window. Though it was dark inside, he could still glimpse a few familiar shapes. A bed. A dresser.
The rustle of movement.
He leaned in close, his heart beating a chorus in his ears.
Movement no more. For an instant he thought it might have been imagined.
And in that moment of doubt, it sprang at him. When it shot up from the shadows, Mark fell back. It pounded the window, cracking the reinforced mesh. "Release me!" the beast shrieked.
The features were feral. Not human, not animal. It was all hatred and rage.
Howard skittered back on all fours, slamming the wall. He blinked. The instant he did, the darkness turned to gray, quickly fading up to white. And even as the light returned, the beast continued to slam the door, demanding release.
Pounding, pounding, pounding...
KNOCK, knock knock.
Mark opened his eyes.
It took him a moment to realize where he was. Four walls. Close enough to touch.
Folcroft. This was where he worked now. A dream. The dream. Again.
He rubbed his head where he had bumped it against the wall. His office was so small that his chair barely fit behind his desk. During his first month here, he had hit his head against the wall at least twice every day.
Knock, knock knock.
"Mr. Howard?" a timid voice called from the hall. Okay. He was back. The dream was rapidly becoming nothing more than a disturbing memory.
In the battered oaken desk before him was a raised computer screen. Howard felt near his knee, depressing a hidden stud beneath the desk. The monitor whirred obediently down below the surface.
"Come in," he called, clearing the gravelly sleep from his throat.
The wide face of Eileen Mikulka, Harold Smith's secretary, peeked into the small room. "Good evening, Mr. Howard," she said cheerily. "I was just passing by on my way home and I thought I'd remind you about your meeting with Dr. Smith."
Mark smiled. "I know. Thanks, Mrs. M."
She warmed to the familiarity. Assistant Director Howard was such a nice young man. Not that her employer, Dr. Smith, didn't have his good qualities. It was just that it was nice to have such a pleasant young fellow at Folcroft.
"He's a stickler for punctuality," she said. "Which isn't a bad thing. It's just the way he is. Anyway, I wouldn't want you to get in trouble."
"You're a little late for that," Mark said quietly, sitting up. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Standing in the doorway, Smith's secretary smiled.
"You'll do fine here," Mrs. Mikulka promised. She cast a glance at Howard's desk. "It seems funny to see that again after all these years," she commented. "That was Dr. Smith's desk for such a long time. I was surprised when he had me send workers to bring it up from the cellar for you. I didn't know he'd kept it. It isn't like Dr. Smith to be sentimental over something like a dirty old desk. I guess it just shows that you can never know everything there is to know about a person. Good night, Mr. Howard." She backed from the small office and shut the door. After she was gone, Mark Howard nodded silent agreement.
"Not if you want to live to tell about it," he said softly.
Shaking the cobwebs from his brain, Mark got to his feet, struggling around the desk that was far too big for the cramped room.
THE SUN HAD SET over Folcroft. Outside the sanitarium windows it was almost dark as Mark made his way through the administrative wing of the building. He met only one other employee, an elderly janitor with a bucket and a mop.
As far as staff was concerned, night wasn't much different than day. Dr. Smith limited the staff in this wing of the facility to a skeleton crew. The fewer eyes to see what was going on, the better.
The way Smith told it, either he or his secretary could handle Folcroft's affairs virtually alone. When he had mentioned this fact to Howard, it was the only time Mark had seen the old man express real pride in his work.
So while the doctors and nurses and orderlies worked in the medical wing, Mark Howard generally walked alone through the empty second-floor hallways.
This night, the emptiness was unnerving.
As he made his way up the hall, he tried to soften his own footfalls in an attempt to keep from reminding himself of his disturbing recurring dream. He was grateful for the muffling effect of Smith's drab reception-room carpeting.