“Oh my God, oh my God.”
He moved to cut the ropes with his scissors, but then stopped himself. This was a crime scene, and he’d better not disturb it.
At this proximity, Dan could finally make out the details of the man’s face. He recognized this man.
Sal Weathers.
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CHAPTER
No 33
Dan ran headlong through the rain, no longer caring that he was soaked to the bone. He needed to get back. He needed the safety of other people. He needed to tell the police what he’d found.
But they’ll suspect you. You know they will.
Dan pulled up short, a final sprint away from the front doors of Brookline.
It was true. They would. They would think he did it.
Hadn’t Mr. Bittle just told him that Sal Weathers was spreading news around town of his little visit? And wouldn’t Officer Teague find it more than coincidental that once again Dan was the first at the scene of a crime? It hardly mattered that Dan hadn’t blacked out or anything at all this time; the circumstantial evidence would be more than enough.
Play it cool, Crawford. No one knows where you were.
Oh God, in his panic, he’d dropped his scissors back in the forest. Should he go back and get them? No, too late.
He waited for his pulse to slow as much as it possibly could, barely even noticing the rain by now. With a last deep breath, he jogged through the front doors at exactly the pace any other student might run in from the rain.
Second floor. Third floor. 3808.
Dan opened the door to his room as calmly as he could, then slammed it closed when he realized Felix wasn’t home. Thank God.
You’re fine, you’re fine, everything’s going to be fine.
Dan dried himself with a towel, still shaking violently, then slapped his face with both hands, trying to think of what to do next.
Where did you go? What’s your alibi? Will anyone think to ask Mr. Bittle if he saw you?
Mr. Bittle.
Relative of a murderer. Could he have been the copycat all this time? What was he doing at the church tonight with the doors locked anyway? Why had he wanted to keep Dan out of the sanctuary?
Oh God, Dan thought he was going to be sick.
A sudden pounding at the door nearly gave him a heart attack.
“Who is it?” he shouted, his voice cracking on the last word.
“It’s me,” Jordan said. “Open up.”
With one final glance in the mirror, Dan fixed his hair and tried to look something like normal.
Out in the hall, Jordan was no better, a flustered ball of energy, scarf, and spectacles.
“Come quick,” Jordan said breathily. “Abby’s a total wreck.”
Abby? A wreck? Of course. The phone call. Her father. Lucy.
“I take it the call didn’t go as planned?” Dan said, following Jordan out into the hall.
“Not even a little bit. Hey, why are you all wet?”
Tell him you were in the shower.
“I was outside.”
Why were you outside?
“I went to scrounge for food. I was still hungry after the pie.”
Nice save, Dan.
“Bring an umbrella next time, doofus.”
They found Abby sitting on her bed, knees tucked up to her chest. Dan noticed the portrait of the girl that had once hung over Abby’s bed was gone.
“Hey, hey,” Jordan said, rushing in and taking the spot beside her. He put one arm over her shoulders. She was shaking uncontrollably as a fresh wave of sobs hit her. “Calm down, Abs, and tell Dan what happened.”
“I c-called him … I called him and … Dan, he was so mad! I’ve never heard him yell like that. He was yelling and yelling, and then he got so quiet, which was worse.” She paused, out of breath, and then sniffled, her sobs slowing for the moment. “Maybe I got it all wrong.” Abby peered up at him, brown eyes glossy with fresh tears. “Should I have just kept my mouth shut?”
“I don’t know. I’m not sure, Abby, really. I don’t know your dad.”
Abby stopped crying just long enough to stare at him. Jordan gave him a look like he had lost it. If only he knew.
“All I know is that you had the best intentions, and you can’t get mad at yourself for that.”
“Exactly,” Jordan chimed in. “Your dad will come around eventually.”
“P-pops’s refusing to talk about it again. Understandably, I guess. I mean, I tried to explain but he s-said I was sick. Delusional for even bringing it up …” Jordan pointed to the box of tissues on her desk and Dan retrieved them. “He doesn’t understand! I didn’t do it to be m-mean. It’s his sister.… I thought he would be happy.”
Abby took a tissue and started shredding it.
“You tried,” Jordan said gently. “You tried and that’s all that matters. He probably just needs some time to think it over.”
“Jordan’s right, it’s— What the hell was that?” Dan had gone to sit on Abby’s desk, but he stopped, hearing a rustling outside the door.
“Shh-hh.” Dan pressed his finger to his lips.
A tiny square of paper appeared under the door.
“That’s not possible,” he babbled.
You were the one writing the notes. No one else. It was you all along. Who the hell is this?
Dan threw open the door, but he was a second too late. The corridor outside lay empty. He bent down and picked up the note, unfolding it with a familiar sick feeling in his stomach. At least the handwriting on this note wasn’t the spidery script of the warden. Dan hadn’t completely lost it.
“What does it say?” Jordan asked from the bed.
Dan read the note.
It’s time for treatment. Come to the basement at midnight.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
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CHAPTER
No 34
“Dan, this is ridiculous,” Abby whispered urgently. “Why are we going down to the basement if there’s someone dangerous down here?”
She and Jordan were trailing him on his warpath to the old wing.
“You and Jordan don’t have to come. In fact, you probably shouldn’t. But I have to do this. I have to confront him.”
“I, for one, am not going back down there,” Jordan said. “And for the record, I think you’re nuts for even considering it. Please … Can’t we just go to the cops with this?”
“No,” Dan growled, scaring all three of them. “No. I can’t. You have to let me go. I’m not asking you to join me.”
“And I’m not letting you go alone,” Abby said stubbornly. She shot Jordan a look, but he just put his arms up to say his hands were tied.
“Seriously, you guys, I love you both but I just can’t do it. I wish you’d listen to reason and stay out here with me.”
They’d reached the door to the warden’s office. It was unlocked, just as Dan expected. Whoever had sent him the note was already down there.
“It’s fine,” Dan said, pulling open the door and taking one step inside. “This isn’t your fight anyway, Jordan. It’s mine.”
Before following him inside, Abby darted after Jordan, giving him a squeeze and then a kick in the shin. This gesture seemed to sum up their trio nicely.
“I’ll be seeing you soon, butthead,” she whispered over her shoulder.
“You better,” Jordan called back.
Dan tugged Abby along, anxious to confront whatever was coming. One way or another they would find out who had been terrorizing them, be it ghost or copycat or what. Reception was, of course, deserted, silent and cold.
They walked the now familiar path to the warden’s office. Dan remembered the weird email he’d received during his date with Abby: �
��RE: Patient 361—question about Thursday’s session.” For two more hours, it was Thursday night.
“Dan?”
He looked up to find Abby staring at him, a tiny worried smile on her lips. He shouldn’t have been involving her in this. She should’ve been upstairs in bed, safe and warm, away from whatever madness lurked down here. But he couldn’t think of anyone he’d rather have at his side.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He shivered, convinced someone was just on their heels, breathing tendrils of hot air down his neck. Whenever he glanced behind there was no one there, yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched and followed.
Dan and Abby ducked behind the filing cabinet and through the gap in the wall. The darkness was heavy, impenetrable, but Dan tiptoed ahead, turning to make sure she made it safely through the passage. He squinted into the shadows. There was nothing unusual about this room either—the alphabetized cabinets were all in their correct places, and the familiar moldy chill blustered up from the stairwell to the right.
Abby put her foot on the first stair, looking braver than Dan felt.
“Was it always this dark?” Dan wondered.
“Yes,” Abby replied wryly, tapping her cell phone against her head. “You just have to point your flashlight up instead of at the floor.”
“That doesn’t do much.…” Dan swung the beam of his light around to emphasize his point. “I still can’t see a damn thing.” Dan joined her on the stairwell, shining his light down into the bleak tunnel below. Abby grabbed his hand and they took one step at a time, stopping halfway to pause and listen. There was nothing to hear but the hushed sounds of their own breathing.
This was part of the killer’s plan, he thought, as they turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs and continued into the long hallway of empty cells. The descent was its own torment. He could feel his body wanting to go faster, rush, adrenaline flooding his senses, but he knew they could be ambushed at any moment. Vigilance might be their one line of defense.
They moved back to back down the row of abandoned cells, each of them casting their glances in every direction. This way, they could make sure they weren’t being followed and weren’t going to stumble over any of the gurneys and debris littering their path.
Dan peered into each room as they passed, taking mental stock of what should be in each one. Near the end of the row he stopped, staring at a floor that was empty but shouldn’t be. Not only did he distinctly remember an object of some sort, there was a spot in the dust where that object had been.
What is it? What’s missing?
Dan held his breath, a fragment of a memory—a delicate song—returning. The music box was no longer where he’d left it. He didn’t even see shards of porcelain. Someone has been here.
“Shit,” he whispered.
“What?” Abby whirled to face him. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone was here,” he said. “Or someone is.”
No sooner had he spoken the last word than he heard a shrieking metallic scrape overhead. They froze, and for a long moment Dan wondered if it was a pipe bursting in the ceiling or else … Abby snapped into action, sprinting back the way they’d come. He followed, realizing a second later what must be happening. It was the file cabinet—someone was trying to trap them inside.
Abby raced ahead, scrambling up the stairs as she took them two and three at a time. But they reached the top too late. The cabinet was already blocking their way out. Abby ran over and shoved herself against the cabinet, scrabbling for purchase with her fingernails. Dan could hear her gulping for air just above the deafening thunder of his own pulse.
Trapped. They were trapped, locked up in the dark of their final cell.
No, they couldn’t be trapped.… Dan thought of Jordan out there, first hoping for a savior and then wondering darkly if Jordan was the one who had done this. Dan could hardly trust his own mind—it stood to reason that his “friends” were no better.
“Come on! Help me!” Abby grunted, giving another push with her shoulder.
“Who’s out there? Stop being a coward and show yourself!” Dan shouted.
He moved to Abby’s side, adding his own strength to hers, but the cabinet wouldn’t budge. He beat his fists against the metal, shouting, “Let us out, let us out,” until his voice went hoarse. He heard Abby suck down a shuddering breath before collapsing in tears against the wall.
She checked her cell phone.
“No reception,” she said, wiping a tear out of her eyes. “Who would do this, Dan?”
“Shh! I hear something.…” They fell silent and listened. Behind the cabinet Dan distinctly heard the shuffling of footsteps. He thought he heard a click, maybe the soft tap of a woman’s heel. But then nothing.
They listened as the footsteps moved away from the office and became faint. Abby pushed against the cabinet one more time, digging her legs into the ground, but it seemed to have been wedged into place from the other side.
Dan aimed a kick at the cabinet and then stumbled backward, grabbing for the wall to keep from falling over. “I can’t believe it.… Why would he lead us down here just to trap us inside? Unless he has further plans, and he needed us out of the way.…”
“Who’s ‘he’?” Abby said. “You’re really scaring me, Dan. Let’s just give ourselves a second to catch our breath, and then we’ll try to push it again together, okay?”
Dan nodded. She was right, panicking wouldn’t help anything. They’d get out of here and they’d punish Dennis—or whoever was copying him—once and for all.
Then Dan heard a sound like the soft scrape of a shoe over wood. It was coming from the stairs behind them.
“What was—” But he didn’t get to finish his question. A dark shape emerged, hurtling toward them.
He heard a hollow thud and Abby toppled into his arms. Dan’s last thought before he fell was of her, of how pretty she looked just then, poised as if dancing, her lips parted and her dark braid coming undone.
Then he felt the blow on the back of his head.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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CHAPTER
No 35
He came to under the light of a harsh white bulb. The filament twinkled and the old electricity was humming loudly, ready to cut out at any second. Dan groaned and tried to move.
He couldn’t.
At first, he thought it was the pain in his head that was trapping him, but as consciousness and feeling returned, he could tell that there were straps buckled tightly over his chest, head, waist, and ankles.
He screamed, and the sound echoed back at him. The straps held him fast, and his struggles only increased the pain and the fear that were making him frantic. The most he could do was turn his head a fraction of an inch from one side to the other.
The operating amphitheater. That’s where they were. The tables, the gurneys … That meant there was a tray of sharp surgical instruments mere inches from his skull.
“Let me out!” he shouted. “You can’t do this to me!”
Dan twisted his neck the other way. Abby was strapped to her own table, and she had a gag in her mouth. A metal gurney was set out next to her. The white light reflected the stainless steel tray at her side, illuminating drills, scalpels, hooks—the horror show of tools needed to perform a lobotomy.
The overhead light flashed as if there’d been a power surge, forcing Dan to blink. When the electricity stabilized again, a shadow oozed from the dark perimeter of the amphitheater. Dan could just make it out in the blurry spots of his vision, but he couldn’t see who it was. The man with the crowbar? Ted Bittle? Jordan? Dan was shaken enough to believe anything.
Then, in the light, the reality shocked him.
“Felix?” His voice was almost drowned out by the bouncing echoes of the chamber. “What the hell is going on? How did you get down here?”
>
“I never left,” said Felix slowly.
“Untie us, you idiot! Get us out of here.”
“Oh, you’re not going anywhere, Daniel Crawford,” Felix said with a snicker. As Felix came closer, Dan saw that he was barefoot and wild-eyed. He wore a white doctor’s coat over a pair of boxer shorts.
“What do you think I should call my masterpiece? I was thinking: Revenge.”
His mouth twisted freakishly when he talked, moving too much over every word. And his voice didn’t sound like Felix’s; it was high and mocking, like a clown’s. He walked strangely, too, lurching from side to side as if he were tied to puppet strings and being manipulated by someone high above.
“Felix, what are you talking about?” Dan said. This was Felix, quiet, unassuming Felix. Why the hell would Felix of all people want revenge?
But deep down, Dan knew that this wasn’t Felix anymore. This was his roommate’s body, but the man inside—the man wanting revenge—was someone else. Someone who didn’t want revenge on Dan, but on Daniel Crawford. This was the Sculptor.
Felix slunk up to Dan’s table and leaned over him. “You’re all so easy to mold, fleshy clay fools,” he sang.
His eyes were completely black. He moved his thumb almost tenderly down Dan’s nose. “The first was too easy. I found him alone on the stairway, thinking he could watch over you all. But I was watching over him, and he didn’t even see me coming. That one I called Prelude. The only tricky part was finding another fool to pin it on. That’s where I needed Felix’s help. A late-night biology lab to mix a little chloroform, and poof! We were ready for anything.”
Dan thought he could see the real Felix fighting on the inside, trying to take back control. The lights in his eyes brightened and darkened, as if the power in his body was blinking on and off. He needed to give Felix enough time to win.
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