I can’t go for them too, I thought in despair. All those children whose parents don’t know they’re still alive.
The lights dimly came back on, and the doors down the hallway started to beep again. Down to the first floor, then the tunnel. I reached the staircase door and turned the handle.
A panel underneath the “Staircase” sign flashed red. I yanked the handle again, and the red flash repeated. They lock them in, all of them on this floor. The staff can come in, but no one goes out without the code.
“What’s wrong?” William asked.
I looked at my hand, my writing now completely smudged.
“Honey, is there another way out of this hallway? Another staircase?”
William shrugged. “I think so. I remember seeing it once. Don’t know where, though.”
I moved us down the hallway. Most of the patients didn’t appear to even notice us. I checked the sign next to every door, hoping one might to lead to a staircase, anything to lead us out.
Five doors down from us, there was a long beep, and three men in white scrubs emerged from a room. I swept William into the crowd of patients.
“Jesus, they’re all out!” said the first man. “Round them up and hurry, before the power goes out again. Tony, go right to room 220, make sure she’s still in there—”
The building shook and the lights dimmed, but the power stayed on. I guided William slowly towards the wall, thankful for the slow-moving, clogged group around us. I watched as one of the workers stuck his clipboard in the door to keep it from closing and then hurried down to the other end of the hall, followed by the two others, who began to usher the patients into rooms.
I lifted William into my arms. Please don’t turn around, please don’t see us.
I reached the door, caught it with my foot and held the clipboard. I quietly slipped through the door and put the clipboard back in place. Through the slight gap, I heard one of the men call out from down the hall, “She’s not in the room!”
I ignored my throbbing knee and hurried down the hallway. This wing was just as stark, but with no windows and no patients wandering about. I frantically scanned each of the nameplates.
The building rocked, and William cried out as the lights went off. We’ll never know which door leads to a staircase now.
He began to cry, and I held him close, my arm beginning to ache with his weight. “Don’t you worry, I’m with you,” I whispered in his ear. “Won’t you walk with me? Hold my hand?”
Keep moving. Put as much distance between you and those men as you can.
The hall was almost pitch black. I took William’s right hand and used my other hand to feel along the wall. I reached one door, opened it and could tell immediately from the smell of cleaning supplies it was a closet. I moved on, opening the next, and again could sense it wasn’t open enough for a stairwell. I slid my hand along the wall and came to a sharp turn. Oh God, another hallway, we’ll never find our way—
I almost fell on the first step, and yanked William back.
There’s no door. There must be no patients on this wing.
I lifted him again. “Nanna’s going to carry you, baby, down the stairs.”
“I’m not a baby,” he grumbled.
“No, you’re Nanna’s big boy, but I don’t want you to fall,” I said, feeling out with each footstep.
After several stairs, the floor stopped dropping, and I followed the railing to another landing and another flight. I knew if we moved too fast, we would tumble into the dark.
When the railing ended, I reached out with my foot and felt no more decline. I set William down and reached out for the wall, following it to an angle and then a slight crevice. Finally, I reached a cold door handle.
“Don’t go out there,” whispered a voice from the dark.
I whirled around, a protective hand holding William back.
“Don’t do it,” said the voice again, originating from under the stairs. The light from the screen of a phone flashed briefly across the face of Deanna Ruck.
“What are you doing?” I whispered back.
“They’re out there. They’re in the hospital.” The panic in her voice was so thick that I squeezed William’s shoulder.
“What do you mean?”
I heard it then, the click of a safety going off on a handgun. In the light of the phone, I saw her pointing her gun directly at us.
“Stay away from us,” I said.
I hear her cock the pistol. “Don’t go out there!” she begged.
I opened the door and rushed William through.
“Why is she hiding under the stairs?” he asked.
I began to hush him when I nearly tripped, reaching out to steady myself on the wall. In dim, pulsing lights coming from down the hall, I could make out a shape on the floor. A long semiautomatic weapon lay just beyond the motionless body of the soldier who had come into the room to summon Deanna.
To the left of the body was another soldier, bent in an unnatural way, his face turned towards us, eyes open but not blinking. Crouched over that second soldier, something turned towards us.
At first, I thought it held the tip of another rifle, for something long extended from its arm. Then it twitched—too long and too curved to be a barrel. Several other membranes then moved alongside it.
William started to scream.
It rose to its full size, about a foot shorter than me. If it had a color, I couldn’t recognize it, for it seemed to constantly change. For one moment, it was the camouflage of the soldier’s uniforms; for the briefest of seconds, it bore the face of the dead man sprawled before it.
“The people in the sky change color,” my five-year-old self had said in the video.
Then, that face was gone, morphing into almond eyes under a large, smooth forehead. It lacked a nose, had only a tiny lipless mouth above a pointed chin.
It was a face I had seen drawn by people all over the world.
Its head tilted sharply, its eyes without pupils, and for a moment, William’s terrified face reflected in its inky eyes. Then it turned to me, made a clicking sound, and it gave me the same stare.
I began to feel it. A numbing in the back of my head. It was an almost calming feeling, all of the anxiety I had felt for days starting to drain away. William wasn’t screaming anymore, either. My shoulders relaxed, and my fingers let go of his hand—
I immediately reached back down and snatched his fingers, shaking my head, trying to clear my suddenly cloudy thoughts.
I felt the numbness again, this time stronger than before. The creature had moved closer to us now, making the clicking sound more intensely.
A kind of comfort I hadn’t felt since childhood swept over me, and the hallway around me vanished in a wash of white light.
From the light came Daddy.
He held my left hand so firmly that I could feel the calluses on his skin. In my other hand, I carried a purple balloon that danced above us. I could taste the cotton candy, smell the diesel fuel from the rides, hear the laughter from the crowd
“I knew you’d love the fair,” Daddy said.
I tugged at him to leave the midway, pointing towards the livestock tent. He happily obliged, laughing as I wrinkled my nose at the scent of hay and manure. I shooed away the goat that chewed on the hem of my dress, and grinned at the baby pigs squealing and running in circles around their slumbering mother. We wandered over to the cows, and I reached over the divider to pet the coarse, white hair—
In a flash of light, a cow was on its side, split open. Not the cow from the tent, but a different one, lying on a vast sea of grass. In its open mouth, I could see its tongue had been removed. Other incisions riddled its body.