She heard sobs, pressed herself closer to the drawn drapes.
“Not here!” she heard Alex’s mother plead. “He’s not here!”
An Chin should have been smiling and offering her tea, not sounding so scared and desperate.
Call the police!
Sam fumbled the phone from her jeans. She hit the HOME button to no effect. Pressed it again.
Nothing. Not even a NO SIGNAL warning.
Sam thought of fleeing, of getting somewhere to a phone that worked to call the police. But she couldn’t just leave the Chins alone like this, had to help them herself if she could.
And then she heard the crash.
21
WRITTEN IN BLOOD
“DR. TESTONI,” PAYNE GREETED, RECOGNIZING the area code in the caller ID, “thanks for getting back to me so quickly.… Yes, I quite agree. Most unusual, I’d say even unprecedented.… Of course.… No, we checked the machine thoroughly after the first scan and it was found to be in perfect working order.… The second scan?… Yes, that was precisely my impression too.… I considered that, but the spot appears to be too big.… What? No, I never—It’s impossible. The boy couldn’t possibly live with such a … Did you say for—”
A screech of static pierced Payne’s eardrum. The receiver with Dr. Testoni on the other end slipped from his grasp and rattled to the floor. Suddenly Payne’s head was pounding, as if in the throes of a terrible migraine that left him dizzy and nauseous, the room’s light suddenly seeming overly bright even though only the overhead fixture was switched on. He looked up, toward the doorway.
Saw the dark shape of a man standing there, so tall his head stretched to the top of the frame.
“Hang up the phone, Doctor.”
*
Alex passed no one on the trek back to his room, not a single, solitary soul. Sure, it was getting late, but this was a hospital and a busy one at that. Didn’t patients need to be checked? Weren’t doctors and nurses always about patrolling, the way they did on TV?
Apparently not, judging by the two abandoned nurses’ stations and three empty hallways later, including the one on his room’s floor. The hall lighting seemed dim, as if the hospital were trying to save money by turning the power down after a certain hour. But as Alex turned the corner for his own room, the dim lighting from a single lamp allowed him to see flickers of shadowy movement inside. Something, someone, was shifting about, the lamp’s bulb enough to splash a glimpse of its shadow across the hallway floor.
Alex froze, then ducked back behind the bend in the corridor. If a nurse or orderly emerged, he’d know he was suffering from paranoia at the hands of something no more monstrous than a malfunctioning CT scanner. But no one emerged. The flickering shadow disappeared, no nurse, orderly, or anyone else following it out.
Paranoid or not, he knew now that someone was in there, waiting for him. Not just a shadow this time.
So what now? Where to go?
Not where—to whom: Dr. Payne, he of the absolute worst name for a physician. That morning his parents had told Alex they’d just come downstairs from seeing him, which placed Payne’s office on the fourth floor, the one floor in the hospital above this one.
Alex started back toward the elevators, then changed his mind and headed for the stairs instead.
*
The crash sounded like something hitting the floor hard, and froze her hand on the doorknob. Then Sam heard the front door open and slam.
Someone spoke. At least, it sounded like speech. But, eerie, as if …
… they were speaking through some kind of tube.
“We wait.”
“How long for?” another voice answered.
“Until we get what we came for,” said a third voice.
How many of them are there?
Sam wasn’t sure, but it seemed as if the voices were coming from the front, outside the house. She padded softly across the grass toward the back door, eased it open, and tiptoed inside through the kitchen, into the murky darkness of the foyer and then the living room.
Stopping cold in her tracks when she saw what awaited her there.
*
It took a few minutes, but Alex found Dr. Payne’s office located along a row of others that were all exactly the same shape and size taking up both sides of the hall. It smelled different up here, less antiseptic and more like stale aftershave and deodorant that had lost its bite hours before. The door was closed, so Alex knocked, first softly and then loudly when the former produced no result.
“Dr. Payne?” he called, when the same held true for the latter. “It’s Alex Chin, Dr. Payne. I need to talk to you. It’s important.”
He knocked on the door again, trying to be patient. It was late, sure, but wouldn’t Payne hang around to immediately gauge the results of the myriad of tests he’d ordered? Then again, maybe he had a girlfriend as hot as Samantha.
Whoa, did I think that? I meant Cara.…
Alex moved his hand to the knob, surprised when it turned in his grasp, unlocked. He eased the door open, the hallway light spilling inside.