“He was such a good man,” Wilson said. “From the beginning when I first got here, and when Drummond wanted to deny my tenure, he fought for me every time. He wasn’t afraid of the politics. He just did what he thought was right.”
Helen stroked the back of Wilson’s neck. She had to find Thompson and Giles and talk to them alone. She had to see inside the office.
“They said his office was a mess. Do you think someone was looking for something?”
Wilson looked up. “No one cared about his research project except him.”
“But he thought someone was trying to go through his stuff. He talked to me.” Helen hated to confess it, but she had to. “He said someone had been going into his office, going through his papers. I didn’t believe him. I just thought he was old. He was getting forgetful. I told physical plant not to go in his office without telling him. I left it at that.”
Wilson looked shocked but not accusatory. “You think he was killed for something in that office?”
“I have to find out what it was.”
Wilson wiped her eyes. “I can help you.”
“I don’t want you anywhere near this.”
From somewhere in the mesh of wisteria a bird cawed. A breeze rustled the vines, bringing the smell of fall. Before Helen realized what she was doing, her hands were in Wilson’s hair and her lips on Wilson’s. She could feel the tears drying on Wilson’s cheeks, and she kissed her harder for the tears, as though she could drink away the horror around them, as though she could lift them out of the present moment, into a bower where there was only Wilson’s skin and their kiss.
“I want you safe. Get out of here. Go home. Go away.”
Helen heard Drummond calling for her, and pulled back and stood up. She drew her hand across her lips, as though Wilson’s kiss would leave a visible stain. She straightened her ascot and hurried into the harsh sunlight.
****
It was six o’clock and nearing dark when Helen finally headed back to Meyerbridge Hall. Patrick had gone home and the office was dark, except for the security lighting. Helen rubbed her eyes. At Drummond’s request, Hornsby managed to keep the press off campus. Everyone else was in an uproar, waiting for the police report. Please, let it be a heart attack. Helen knew it was not.
She switched on the lights in the foyer and then in the hall. Since she had spent the night with Wilson, she had not seen one hallucination. Even outside Lebovetski’s building, overwhelmed with the injustice of his death, she had kept her calm, both outside and in. Now, the visions came back with increasing vividness.
In the center of her office, the familiar, horrible stain covered the floor. Blood. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. It’s not real. She took a step forward. Then another. She rubbed her eyes. Blood covered the hardwood. She could not clear it from her vision. Scarlet lapped against the moldings. In the center of the floor, leaning against her desk, Eliza rested, stiff–legged, her eyes turned into gaping holes.
It’s only a dream. Helen tried to bring back Wilson’s words. You know people hallucinate after they’ve seen horrible things. She pinched the skin on the back of her hand, closed her eyes, and took a breath. The air smelled like drying paint.
“There is nothing there.” She spoke out loud, opening her eyes.
The legs. The legs were gone! It was just a torso. No legs. No eyes. Just enough of the body left to know it had once been human.
It’s not real. It’s not real. The blood was everywhere, reaching for her, growing. Screaming.
Helen ran from the building, stumbling down the front stairs. She was almost to the Barrow Creek when she finally got a hold of herself and sank onto a bench. Lights blazed over the rugby field. The students played a late game. A cheer went up. She took her phone out of her pocket and called Thompson on his personal line. A woman’s voice answered. She heard a baby laughing in the background.
“May I talk to Officer Thompson?”
The panic in Helen’s voice erased any reservations Thompson’s wife might have had about fielding police calls at home.
A moment later, she heard Thompson’s voice on the line. “Yes ma’am?”
“It’s Helen Ivers. I need your help.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am. The chief has unofficially taken me off the case.”
“It’s not about the case.” She told him where she was. “I need to go to the hospital.”
****
Fifteen minutes later, Thompson arrived with a paramedic. The young woman took Helen’s blood pressure.
“Are you dizzy? Do you have pain?” The woman wore the serious face of young people with large responsibilities.
“I’m…” Helen hung her head. “I’m seeing things. In the hall over there. I thought I saw my sister’s body. She’s been dead for almost a year.”
“Could you tell what triggered this?” the paramedic asked.
“It’s happened before.”
“Did you see anything unusual in your office?” Thompson asked.
“There’s nothing there.” Helen heard her own voice, lost and far away.
“I’ll go lock up the building,” Thompson said.
The paramedic put a hand on Helen’s shoulder and offered her a packet of sugar water. This was the end. Helen had feared it would stem from Wilson revealing their sexual encounters, but ultimately the fault was hers. She simply could not hide anymore. She was no better than Eliza.
****
When Thompson returned, his face was grim. He spoke into a radio on his shoulder. “Chief? Listen, I know you don’t want me at Pittock, but I need you over here. By Meyerbridge Hall.” To Helen, Thompson added, “I don’t know who would pull such a sick prank.”
“A prank?”
“You’re not seeing things. Someone put a dummy in your office. Big holes where the eyes should be. Straitjacket wrapped around it.”
“But I saw blood!”
“It’s stage blood. Halloween stuff.”
“How can you tell?”
“Well, it’s either so fresh that someone dumped it while I was driving over, or it’s drying bright red. Blood dries black. Can you think of anyone who would want to scare you like this? You said you thought it was your sister. Why did you say that?”
“My sister committed suicide, last year, in her kitchen. She put her eyes out, but no one knows about that except…”
Stage blood. Easy access to the campus. Someone who knew about Eliza and was angry with Helen. Someone who played chess with other people’s lives.
“This prank, it looks like my sister’s suicide. The only person I’ve told about that is Adair Wilson.”
****
Helen did not want to return to the Pittock House that night, but Drummond—summoned at Thompson’s insistence—urged her to go back.
“Escaping to a hotel suggests there’s a real danger on campus. We’re still not sure there was foul play. We have every reason to believe it was just a heart attack or seizure. If it weren’t for the legs, we wouldn’t think anything of an old, old man dying in his office. You were right when you went searching for the body,” he said. “We can’t run away. We have to be here for the students.”
They sat in the library, the only building open at that hour.
“I’ve hired a security guard,” Drummond added. “He will patrol the area around the Pittock House. You may not see him, but he’ll be there. Are you comfortable with that?”
Helen nodded. She was too tired to complain or appreciate.
“Let’s get you home.” Drummond checked his phone. “I got a text from the guard. He’s in the area.”
Chapter Forty-six
A bright moon illuminated his way as he crossed the clearing between the forest and the asylum. In the distance, the Berkshire Western blew its horn. As he approached the main entrance, he withdrew the crowbar from under his coat. This time, the front door was too obvious. Instead, he used a service entrance in one of the smaller courtyards. Ivy covered the plywood
door. It was easy to snap the wood, pry the door open, then prop the panel in the tangle of ivy. He switched on his flashlight.
On either side of the foyer, rows of cells disappeared down long corridors, mirror images of each other, except that the walls on one side were a bilious pink and the walls on the other side pale blue.
He took a sheet of heavy vellum from his pocket and shone the flashlight on it. Everyone in Pittock believed the asylum was full of trapdoors. They were the stuff of urban legends: tunnels that filled shoulder–deep with water every winter, the morgue where the asylum staff had left bodies to rot in their steel boxes. Tonight, for the first time, he had the map.
“Too bad, Josa,” he said to the ghosts in the silent hall. “You really should have returned your materials to the library when I asked.”
He hurried along, careful to walk near the walls, lest the sagging ceilings give way in the middle. Eventually, he came to the end of the farthest wing. There, he found the narrow staircase leading to the boiler room. At the back of the boiler room was a door. He could still make out faint, red lettering. Staff Only. He tried the latch. It opened. Beyond the door, the corridor looked unfinished. Wooden beams were visible in the stone wall, like supports in a mine shaft. The floor was packed dirt.
His flashlight flickered. He hit it across his palm. He could not go back now. He had only a matter of days. Days before Alisha Hornsby arrived at the hospital unexpected, and his power over Hornsby waned. Days, maybe hours, before Helen Ivers put the pieces together. And the need was growing stronger. He had to make her tonight.
He began to run. It had to be there. The doorway and then the staircase. Corridors led off the main tunnel. He thought he made out the word Laundry over one passageway. The other side read East. A cold drop of water released its grip on the ceiling and slid down the back of his neck. It had to be there! He raced down another tunnel. The light from his flashlight bobbed on the walls. He was panting now, his hands sticky from sweat.
He came to a heavy, wooden door and used the crowbar to pry it open. Beyond, a narrow flight of stairs, barely more than a ladder, led up. He tucked the flashlight under his arm and climbed. At the top of the stairs, another door blocked his progress, but its lock had disintegrated into rust. It snapped like a brittle tooth. He pushed it open, revealing a basement.
A few dusty suitcases lay in a pile on the dirt floor. He picked his way toward another flight of stairs. He put his ear to the door at the top. Nothing. He turned his flashlight off and pushed the door open a crack. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the light. He recognized the hallway. Yes. There was the parlor, the long hallway, the filigreed wallpaper.
****
At the Pittock House, Helen had taken four sleeping pills. For several hours, they cast her into dark dreams. She was in a car that had gone over a bridge. In the water below, she sank and sank, then wrestled with the door, trying to free herself from the black reeds holding her legs.
Suddenly her eyes flew open.
Her heart pounded. The sleeping pills made the covers feel like lead, a childhood nightmare of being trapped in the dentist’s chair, the product of some gruesome story Eliza had told. She looked around. Everything was as it should be. The curtains were drawn. Her laptop purred on the desk, a single, blue power light flashing on and off.
Then she heard something: a creaking footstep deep within the house. Familiar panic rose in her chest, and she willed it back. Go look, there is nothing there. But there had been something back at Helen’s office. A gory scene, staged for her alone. A promise.
She got up and looked out the window to see if she could spot the security guard, but he was out of sight. She pulled a sweater around her shoulders and tiptoed down the staircase. At the bottom, she stopped.
The basement door was ajar. A voice in Helen’s mind told her it was a hallucination. It was Eliza, a mirage, a vision. The door opened another inch. It’s not real. It is not real. Now the door opened fully, a black maw in the filigree of wallpaper. A figure stepped out, dressed in black, the head shrouded in a dark mask. It was all cloak and gloved hands. A shadow moving in shadows. The figure turned.
“Helen.” Its voice was low and vaguely familiar.
Terrified, Helen launched herself down the hall. She felt drugged. Every step was a trip. She felt the crack of bone against wood as she fell against an end table. Somehow she managed to keep her balance. There was a pair of slippers in the hallway. She struggled into them. Her heart pounded in her ears.
“Helen, you’re mine,” the voice behind her growled. “I love you.”
Helen flew out of the house and down the stairs.
She screamed for help, and waited for the security guard to call back. There was no answer. She ran to the security phone on the side of the alumni house. Her hands trembled so much she could barely hold the phone to her ear. Nothing. No dial tone.
If she waited for another second, the figure in the hallway would be upon her. She could run for campus. Under the streetlights’ high-watt bulbs, the guard would surely see her—if he was nearby. So, too, would the figure in the shadows. She screamed again, but there was no answer.
The only other escape was the path along Barrow Creek. She darted behind the house. The night got darker as soon as she stepped off the path into the forest. Helen considered hiding in the underbrush until the monster had passed her by, but if he could find his way into her house, he would find her in the bushes. Helen. You’re mine. She ran.
Blackberries whipped her arms, releasing the smell of fruit. Only desperation and speed kept her moving. Each invisible root gnarled across the path propelled her forward. She fell twice but rose again, insensitive to any pain. Blood pounded in her ears. It sounded like footsteps. She did not dare look back. With every step she took, she expected to feel an arm around her neck.
After what felt like a lifetime, she reached the narrow footbridge that Marcus Billing and his friends had crossed the morning they found Carrie’s remains. She kept running. Across the silent campus, through the Pittock gates. I too have seen the angels and trembled.
The town’s main street was empty. Helen intended to flag down the first car she saw, but when headlights appeared in the distance, she ducked into one of the narrow alleyways between buildings. Taking a deep breath, she swallowed her fear. She was about to step out, to wave to the vehicle, when a hand clasped her ankle.
Helen screamed and whirled. Behind her, yellow teeth glinted from a sooty face. The hand that had grabbed her was black with dirt. The figure in the alcove hunkered on her haunches like an animal. Helen recognized Sully, and tried to extract her leg. Sully’s grasp was a vise.
“You don’t want a ride in that car,” Sully said. “I should charge you a fiver for that, but you don’t have a fiver. They never do when they need help.”
Helen stared out at the street. She heard the car approaching, moving much more slowly than the twenty–five mile per hour speed limit.
“Let me go.”
“Not that car.”
As the vehicle crossed their field of vision, Sully released Helen. It was not a car. It was a yellow jeep.
“How?” Helen whispered.
Sully sucked her teeth, and then spat at Helen’s feet.
“No one believes, Sully. Crazy Sully. But we’re all crazy, and we all know.” Sully stood up, her face in Helen’s. “Now, run!”
Helen did not question. She ran.
****
Finally, Helen arrived at the police station. She pounded on the locked door, praying the department had enough funding for a third–shift dispatcher, praying it would be Thompson on duty, not Hornsby. Please be there. Be there. She fell to her knees. Her breath came in such ragged gasps that she took in no air at all. It was only struggle, not breath. She beat on the door. Inside, the brightly-lit office remained motionless. She heard a vehicle approaching on the street behind her, then squealing to a stop.
A moment later, Helen felt hands on her shoulders.
Someone lifted her to her feet.
“Dr. Ivers, are you all right?” The whites of Thompson’s eyes stood out against his dark face. “Talk to me, ma’am. Are you injured?”
“Help me,” Helen gasped. “He’s coming. He’s following me.”
“Come on. Let’s get you inside.”
Thompson quickly unlocked the door and guided Helen inside. He locked the door behind him. The front window and the fluorescent lights overhead put them on a stage.
“Let’s go into the back room,” Thompson said.
Helen was vaguely aware of Thompson radioing Giles and draping a blanket over her shoulders.
“What happened?” he said. “Talk to me.”
Helen could not speak. She wrapped the blanket tighter around her shoulders. She was not crying, but she was not breathing either.
“Take your time,” Thompson said. “Giles is on his way. We’re going to take care of you.”
“Someone followed me,” Helen finally gasped. “He was in the house, in the Pittock house, in my basement. He called me by name.”
“You need to tell me if you are hurt,” Thompson said.
Helen shook her head.
“Did he attack you?”
“He was going to. He was going to kill me.” The story poured out in a garble: the footsteps, the creaking door, the figure, the knowledge that it was Wilson who planted the dummy, the yellow Jeep gliding past her on Main Street. “It was Ricky Drummond. It had to be Ricky Drummond.”
“But you said it was Wilson.”
“I don’t know. She knows Ricky. She tried to make me think it was him. I don’t know.” Helen looked up at Thompson. She felt helpless. “I don’t know.”
“That’s okay,” Thompson said. “I’ll call Margie, our dispatcher. She’ll take you home with her. You’ve got nothing to worry about. She’s a tough one. Then I’ll get to the bottom of this.”
The Admirer Page 24
