Eerie - Crouch Blake - Страница 36

He put the side of his head on the floor and reached for the dust ruffle.

Some remote part of his brain screaming at him to stand up, turn around, get out, but its voice was growing quieter every second.

Under the bed.

He was staring under the bed.

He’d walked into his sister’s house thirty hours ago, and since then he’d been fighting this moment. Why had he resisted?

The light in his hand spilled into the darkness.

Dusty hardwood floor.

A pile of blankets.

Grant pushed the light forward, dragging himself behind it.

As his head passed beneath the bed frame, he registered a peculiar smell.

Vinegar and electrical burn.

The blankets shifted.

Grant reached out, took hold, pulled them aside.

The light eked onto two sacs of spider eggs—rust colored clusters that resembled the overripe drupelets of blackberries.

As Grant stared at them, a translucent membrane slid over one, and then the other, and retracted simultaneously.

The pressure in his head vanished. He dropped the knife.

Not spider eggs. Eyes. He was staring into a pair of eyes.

From behind the blankets, a long, slender arm shot out, and fingers encircled his neck.

• • •

It is dark and he is not alone.

There is nothing before, nothing after.

It is all and only now.

The floor beneath him rushes away. His stomach lifts. He’s gripped with the sensation of falling at an inconceivable speed, hurtling through darkness at what has been pulling him toward this room since he first set foot in the house.

He crashes into a terrible intellect.

For the first time in his life, he is aware—truly aware—of his mind. Its weakness and vulnerability. His skull is a pitiful firewall. The invasion effortless. Everything he loves and hates and fears is unhoused, his private circuitry torn out and laid bare.

Before Grant can even wonder what it wants, it is unrolling his mind like a parchment.

He feels the synaptic structure of his brain changing, being rebuilt, reprogrammed.

The tingle of neuron fire.

Thoughts he’s never had materialize as if they’ve always been.

A sequence of directions take shape.

Right turns and left turns.

Street names.

All at once, his mind cauterizes shut, and he is left with the absolute knowledge of what he must do next.

The eyes blink again.

The floor returns.

He is no longer under the bed but standing beside it and cradling something in a tangle of blankets.

Chapter 36

At three o’clock in the morning, Mercer was empty enough for Sophie to burn through red lights at full speed.

She hit the I-5 and screamed north to 520.

Dialed Art halfway across Lake Washington and stuck him on speaker so she could keep two hands on the wheel while she did ninety-five over wet concrete, the windshield wipers frantically whipping across the glass.

Art answered with, “Hey, Sophie.”

“Where are you?”

“Still on the four-oh-five, couple miles south of Kirkland.”

“They may be going to the Evergreen Psychiatric Hospital.”

“How do you know that?”

“Long story, but I’m on my way, about five minutes behind you.”

“Why are they going to this hospital?”

“No idea, but Grant’s father lives there. Seymour had drawn a weird picture of him on a receipt. Didn’t connect the dots until a few minutes ago.”

“And you think they’re going after him?”

“Possibly. I’m calling the hospital right now and putting them on notice so they can scramble security.”

“I’ll call for backup.”

Sophie depressed the brake pedal as she veered onto an exit ramp, nearly lost control of the TrailBlazer at the end as she whipped it around, tires skidding on the wet road, the SUV tipping up on two wheels for a terrifying instant.

She managed to right the car and stomp the gas, now accelerating north up Lake Washington Boulevard.

The city just a foggy glow across the water.

“Art,” she said. “I have no idea what these men are all about.”

“You and me both.”

“So do me a favor, huh?”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t get yourself shot.”

Chapter 37

Grant opened the door and walked out into the corridor.

Paige stood several feet away, tears streaming down her face.

“I tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. I thought something had—”

“I’m okay.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

She looked down at the blanket in Grant’s arms.

“Is that what I think it is?”

He nodded.

She brought her hand to her mouth.

When she reached toward the blanket, Grant took a step back.

“I just want to see,” she said.

She took hold of the end of the blanket.

Raised it.

“Oh my God.”

Chapter 38

The Evergreen Psychiatric Hospital on the outskirts of Kirkland was a four-story brick monstrosity that stretched across twenty acres of conifer-studded lawns.

Sophie’s TrailBlazer raced up the narrow drive.

The buildings appeared in the distance.

Through the rain-streaked windshield, she could see a smattering of glowing windows, but most of the facade stood dark.

She whipped into the circle drive at the front entrance, killed the engine.

3:13 a.m.

She pulled her Glock, checked the load.

Out into the cold and pouring rain.

She jogged over to Art’s Dodge Diplomat—a pimped-out relic from the old days. The driver’s side door was open, the interior dome light on, but the car empty.

Just prior to the roundabout, the driveway had branched into a vast parking lot, and on the far side, under the dripping branches of a Douglas-fir, she spotted the black van.

She ran toward it. The rain had escalated from a drizzle to a downpour since she’d left the house, gusting sideways across the desolate parking lot, the light poles swaying.

She moved along the edge where the eastern perimeter of Douglas-firs offered cover from the streetlights.

Twenty feet away, she came out of the trees.

The van wasn’t running.

The front seats were empty, but from the side, with its deeply-tinted windows, she couldn’t see anything in the back.

She approached it head on, Glock aimed through the windshield.

No lights on inside.

No movement.

She tried the driver side door, but it was locked.

By the time Sophie had returned to the main entrance, she was soaked. She climbed the stone steps and pushed through the front doors and, finally, out of the rain.

In the vestibule, she stopped, jacket dripping on the linoleum, and took out her phone.

Tried Art for the third time in the last five minutes.

Same result.

It rang four times and dumped her into voice mail.

Sophie pushed through the inner doors into a large reception area bathed in the punishing glow of high-wattage fluorescent lights. Moved quickly toward the front desk where a nurse in blue scrubs was scribbling on a patient chart.

The smell of the place was insidious—notes of Clorox, Lysol, stewed green vegetables, desperation.

Sophie had her shield out by the time the woman looked up.

Mid-thirties, attractive despite the total absence of makeup, and surprisingly clear-eyed for the late hour.

“Detective Benington, Seattle PD. Did another detective come through here? Fifties, little overweight, balding—”