“Well,” the lady cop says, “she ain’t turned up yet, but tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you my phone number and maybe you can give me a call and check in with me from time to time, in case she does turn up. How long you in town for?”
“Not long,” says Ron. “Any other children gone missing around here?”
The woman looks surprised, then laughs. “You really ain’t from around here, are you?” She glances over her shoulder, then looks back at Ron, serious now. “There’s a lot of people around here who don’t turn up,” she says.
Ron’s heart flutters. He leans in. “Yeah? How many kidnapping cases do you have open right now?”
“None,” she says. She greets Ron’s confusion with another bout of laughter. “I never said anybody got kidnapped. I said a lot of people just don’t turn up. Maybe they move someplace else to get better jobs. Some of them maybe ain’t happy with their home situations so they hightail it outta here. There’s lots of reasons to leave. Kids run away from their parents all the time.”
Ron says: “My daughter didn’t run away.”
“I didn’t say she did,” says the woman. “My name is Janet. Deputy Janet to you.”
“How many kids, or people, are missing right now?”
“None,” Janet says, “but lots of people—maybe hundreds—might have left.”
“You’re telling me hundreds of people have disappeared in this area, and I haven’t read it in any of the papers, I haven’t seen it in the news, I haven’t heard a word about it from anybody in the two years I’ve been combing this county looking for my little girl?”
“Ron—it’s Ron, right?” she says. “There ain’t no paper in this town. And nobody is going to go to Panama City or someplace and blab to their paper about it because if they do, then maybe they might be the next one to get lost. You get me? People are dumb, you know. They’re superstitious. A lot of them think there’s a witch stealing the kids.”
“And what do you think? Haven’t you done a little investigating, seeing as you’re the law enforcement around here? Haven’t you come up with some kind of evidence, some kind of theory?”
“Sure.” She shrugs. “Sheriff says people move away. Kids run away from their parents. Husbands run off from their wives. There ain’t no laws being broken.”
“My daughter was stolen from me. There’s no law against that?”
“Well, Ron, if you’d like to file a report, we’ll be glad to—”
“I already filed a blessed report!”
“Then when something comes up, we’ll be in touch.” She smiles. “I’ll give you my number, just in case.”
She starts writing on a scrap of paper. Ron is livid. His face feels hot and flushed. The light in the room seems to be growing brighter, then dimmer, to the beat of the blood pulsing through his head. He puts his hand, his good hand, on the counter and presses it flat to steady its shaking. He’s learned to watch all the trappings of his rage as a spectator, to distance himself from his own emotion. Otherwise things get ugly. It’s amazing how well it works. There was a time when he’d have punched a hole in the wall by now.
Deputy Janet presents the slip of paper to him. “You feel free to call me if you need anything,” she says.
Instead of taking the number with his good hand, he reaches up with “the hook,” as he likes to think of it. It splits along its length, following the prompts of his readapted forearm muscles, and clamps down on the little slip of paper.
Janet frowns. The hook has that effect on people.
“Jeez,” she says, “what happened to your hand?”
“It’s missing,” he says. “Maybe it ran away.”
She laughs, but instead of a flirty laugh, it’s an uncomfortable one.
Ron hears a click behind him. Light floods the entryway and a figure steps in the door. It’s the brawny-looking sheriff with that Neanderthal forehead. He stands very erect, clearly an ex-military man, and clearly the boss around here, judging from Janet’s reaction.
“Everything alright, sir?” asks the sheriff.
“No,” says Ron. “I hear there are hundreds of people missing from this town, and nobody’s doing anything about it. Well, I am going to do something about it, because one of the missing children is my daughter. What are you going to do to help me?”
The sheriff glances at Janet, then nods slowly, studying Ron. When he speaks, his words are slow. “Well, we can take a report, keep our eyes peeled.”
“What if that’s not good enough?” says Ron.
“Well,” says the man, whose name tag reads Sheriff Johnson, “it’ll have to be.”
Chapter Seven
“SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT,” BEAN SAYS. “Based on this clichéd phrase that anyone might use, that in fact I have used on many occasions, namely: ‘the clock is ticking—’”
“Clocks are ticking,” Caleb corrects.
“Whatever. Based on this, we are going to break into an insane asylum and kidnap your emotionally unstable childhood girlfriend. That is what’s going on, right?” Shadows race across Bean’s face as they drive past the few streetlights that demarcate downtown Hudsonville.
“You can wait at the house,” says Caleb. “I don’t want you to do anything you don’t want to do.”
“Yeah, I’ll just go ahead and wait for you at the abandoned house with the psycho living in the attic. You know, I’m going to write a letter to the Nobel Prize committee; I don’t know how they overlooked you last year.”
Caleb laughs in spite of himself. “Okay, maybe it’s a coincidence that she said that. Maybe you’re right. But I couldn’t fly back to LA right now without knowing for sure what’s going on here, or at least that she’s okay, could you?”
Bean doesn’t say anything. A moment passes, and the guys both laugh.
“You’re a total jackass,” says Caleb, and he cuts the car’s headlights as they pull into the driveway of the Dream Center.
“Wait,” says Bean, “back out. We should park along the street and walk up. Somebody might hear us.”
Caleb smiles as he clicks the transmission into reverse. Bean is in.
They step out of the car into the balmy night. Just out of range of a streetlight, Caleb sees the silhouettes of little bats reeling in tight circles, darting and weaving like birds gone mad.
The two friends turn up the driveway. Neither of them says a word, and neither of them has to. They played Little League together—Bean was the catcher and Caleb played center field. They double-dated at their first high school dance, taking a couple of weird upperclassmen girls who Bean decided he didn’t like at the last minute. So they took them out to dinner at Pizza Hut and ditched them after the dance in favor of video games and beer in a football players’ guest house.
They rode bikes together and dreamed of owning cars.
They watched porn and dreamed of touching girls.
They crammed for tests and dreamed of outgrowing work.
They dreamed of being grown-up, and now, somehow, Caleb realizes suddenly, they are. As they creep down the shadow-barred driveway, both mindful to stay close to the tree line, both as silent and attentive as Indian braves, they have somehow, perhaps, found their way outside the realm of adolescence at last, and into the terrifyingly stark world of . . . what? Reality? Surreality? Caleb wonders when they crossed that threshold, and how he missed it when they did. Even now, right at this moment, they might be Christine’s only hope. The thought makes him feel dizzy. And excited. And empowered. If he and Bean could steal Calabasas Christian’s famous “warrior” statue on the night before the state championship, then they can do this. They can do anything.
The trees part and the Dream Center rears its massive flank, silver with moonlight. Bean stops. Caleb shivers. They both stare up.
“This is a bad place,” Bean whispers.
Caleb looks over at his friend, startled by the sobriety of his statement. He doesn’t see the sarcastic smirk he was looking for. Bean’s face is stone
.
Caleb gives him a slap on the back. “We can handle this,” he says, but the tone of voice is utterly unconvincing.
Bean flashes a lopsided grin. “Sure we can,” he says. “We just have to find a window without bars, give it a smash, wiggle in, find Christine, and wiggle out. Nothin’ to it.”
“No,” Caleb says, “I have another way. Come on.”
Shadows. Tree branches, dewy-moist and groping. Clinging webs of forest spiders as big as your fist. There’s a lot of quiet in these woods, so when a branch snaps, it screams.
Caleb whispers as they go:
“We used to play here all the time.
As kids.
We knew every inch of the forest,
But we never went in the asylum.
That wasn’t allowed.
But we heard stories about it all the time.
About why it was shut down.
Ghost stories, you know?
Kids in cages.
Some pregnant woman jumping off the roof,
Killing herself,
Or getting pushed,
However you like to tell it.
But there’s one story that’s true,
About a set of tunnels underneath
That lead into the forest.
They say the tunnels were built a long time ago,
In the Underground Railroad times,
Then when they built the asylum they kept them,
Cemented them, shored them up.
Some people say they used to take the bodies
Of abused patients out this way,
Once the shock treatments finally killed them
Or if a lobotomy went wrong.
They’d take them out the tunnel
And throw them into the pond behind the building
In the dead of night.
Those stories scared the crap out of me as a kid.”
“Thanks for sharing,” says Bean.
“I don’t know if all the stories are true,” Caleb says. “But I know there’s a tunnel.” And he stops and points. Bean squints at what seems to be a door, freestanding in the middle of the forest.
“What the hell?” Bean says.
They walk toward it slowly. It’s steel, half obscured with vines and grime and rust-stain tears. Instead of a knob there’s a wheel in the center, like one you would find on a submarine hatch.
Bean walks up to the door and places one hand on its face. He cranes his neck and sees that the door isn’t freestanding after all. It’s attached to a cinderblock structure in the shape of a triangle that could only hold a staircase descending into the ground.
“Wow,” he whispers.
“Let’s go,” says Caleb, and he pulls on the hatch. Only it doesn’t budge. He runs his fingers along the seam of the door. “It’s open,” he says. “I think the hinges are just rusted. Help me.”
They grab the wheel and tug. Bean braces one foot against the block of the door frame, and finally, with a deep, throaty grunt of protest, the door swings open.
Caleb flicks a flashlight on and hands another one to Bean.
“Oh man,” says Caleb.
A rusted, cockeyed steel staircase descends into the murk of what must be waist-deep water.
Caleb looks at his friend in despair.
“We came this far,” says Bean, forcing a grin. “But you’re buying me a beer once you get that fake ID.”
Caleb looks down, taking a deep breath. Bean gives him a little shove, and gestures with mock graciousness. “Ladies first.”
Caleb puts one careful foot on the first step. There’s a metallic “gung” as one side of the staircase gives way, and the whole structure tilts a little. Caleb slips down a couple of steps, but manages to grab a handrail and catch himself, with his footing and his flashlight intact. Now the staircase seems stable enough again.
“Careful, Fred Astaire,” says Bean from above.
As Caleb continues his descent, Bean decides it would be a good idea to close the door behind them, to cover their tracks. He tucks his flashlight in his belt and pulls the door toward him with both hands. The dark greenery of the forest begins disappearing behind the slab of steel, until only a sliver remains.
That’s when Bean sees it. Or thinks he sees it.
A figure in a white gown, pale skin, steps out from behind a tree, then back behind another.
Bean freezes, eyes wide, hands shaking.
“Caleb . . . ” he whispers.
“It’s only waist deep,” says Caleb from below. “It’s not even that cold.”
Then Bean sees the figure again. It’s far away, but it looks like a man, young, with dark hair. The person pauses, turns his head slowly, slowly to face Bean, and begins walking toward him. Just then, the flashlight slips out of Bean’s belt and clatters down a few steps. Bean fumbles, trying to catch it, finally groping and finding it. He stands up, shaking badly, and finds himself staring out into the night, at nothing. No white-gowned apparition. No one at all.
And he almost laughs at himself.
That guy couldn’t have been real, must’ve been his imagination. Because the whole time the guy was walking, even when he turned his head, even when he was walking right toward Bean, his eyes were closed.
Bean shakes his head at the absurdity of his own imagination.
He starts to go down the staircase again, then pauses, thinking twice, and pulls the submarine door shut behind him, just in case.
The steps feel a little uncertain under him and shift once with a great metallic shriek, but they hold, bearing him down one foot at a time into the black, still water. It smells like an unwashed toilet full of tuna fish cans. The air is heavy, clingy, dead.
Bean makes a face as the water hits his balls, wondering what kind of disturbing microbes are tadpoling their way up his urethra.
He steps up next to Caleb, and the guys pause for a second, letting their flashlight beams crisscross down the length of the tunnel. It’s a cement arch, simple and smooth, with a reinforced concrete buttress every ten yards or so. Some bear a burned-out lightbulb in a rusted steel cage. There is no terminus, only the place where their lights are too weak to shine.
Neither of them speaks. Caleb takes a deep breath and starts walking.
For the first twenty-five yards or so, they see graffiti:
RANDO RULES!!
(a fairly good depiction of Satan’s head)
~SATAN’S DEN~
Tittie tittie bang-bang
METALLICA
Screw Mike Sanchez!
(a drawing of balls and a penis)
(A big, creepy drawing of a red eye)
Do not enter, or you will die!!
Then the graffiti stops and is replaced by something even more disturbing: places where the concrete has fallen away, revealing rusted rebar. Every so often, one of the guys feels something brush against his leg in the murk, but neither of them says anything. Neither even looks down. Whatever’s down there, they don’t want to know.
There’s a bang and a sound like a metallic cough.
Caleb stops.
Bean wheels around, flashing his light behind him. Vision is a joke. They’ve already gone too far to see the entrance.
“Did you hear that?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think it was?”
“I don’t know. A rat.”
“You think?”
“Yeah, what else would it be? Let’s go.” Caleb starts slogging on. Bean lingers, watching his flashlight beam dissolve into distant blackness.
Bean: “I thought I saw somebody when we came in.”
Caleb is still walking. He calls back: “Yeah?”
Bean: “Yeah. But . . . it couldn’t have been.”
Caleb: “Why?”
“Because he was walking,” says Bean. “But he had his eyes closed.”
Caleb stops. He turns and splashes water at his friend.
“Hell, no!” says Bean. “Don’t splash me with this piss water! W
e have no idea what’s in here! There might be piranha or God knows what.”
“Piranha would have eaten you ten minutes ago.”
“Ebola, then. I don’t care—just don’t splash me with it.”
“Don’t try to scare me then, dickhead,” says Caleb.
“I wasn’t. Dude, I was dead serious.”
“Shut up,” says Caleb, laughing, and Bean does.
But he doesn’t stop looking over his shoulder.
They trudge on. The tunnel seems interminable. The water slows them way down. It’s almost too deep to walk in and the idea of sinking chest deep into it and swimming is far too scary. So they settle for this leg-aching, mind-numbing pace. It gets to be like a weird dream; they keep walking, but the tunnel never changes, the water never changes, and they never get anywhere. All that happens is their legs get tired and their minds turn to mashed potatoes. Once Bean thinks he hears a splash and turns his flashlight behind him—but there’s nothing there.
It’s then that finally something does change: the tunnel splits. Right, or left?
“Which way?” asks Bean.
“No idea,” says Caleb. “As a kid, I never made it past the door.”
“We’ll flip a coin,” says Bean. He pulls out a wheat penny (he sometimes carries them for luck) and flips it. It clacks off the roof and splooks back down into the water, almost hitting him in the head. He shines his flashlight into the dark, opaque water. Light won’t even penetrate an inch down, much less to the penny at the bottom.
“Heads it is,” Bean decides. “Let’s go right.”
They set out again. No more than thirty feet ahead, they reach another cross tunnel. They shine their lights first left, then right, but there’s no end to the tunnel in either direction.
“How far do you think these tunnels go?” asks Bean.
Caleb just shakes his head. “I think the Dream Center is this way,” he says. “As long as we keep going straight, we’ll be fine.” They haven’t gone more than fifty feet when they reach the cave-in. It’s a solid wall of sandy dirt, chunks of concrete, and jumbled rebar.
“Fubar,” says Bean. “Stellar.”
“Maybe we can go around,” says Caleb. “Those other tunnels have to lead somewhere.”
“I don’t know,” says Bean. “Maybe we should just head back.”
The Sleepwalkers Page 10
