They ran along the corridor until they reached Gerald Maitland's room. There was no police guard outside, only an empty chair, an untidy newspaper, and two empty coffee cups. Decker tried to open Gerald Maitland's door, but it was jammed. It felt as if a chair had been wedged underneath the handle, but he couldn't tell for sure because the blind was pulled down.
"Jerry!" Decker shouted. "Jerry, are you okay?"
He banged on the door with the flat of his hand. "Can you hear me, Jerry? Are you all right in there? Can you get out of bed and let me in?"
Sandra looked up at Decker worriedly, biting her lip. "Do you think something's happened to him? You don't think he's hurt him, do you, the So-Scary Man?"
"Let's hope not," Decker said. He grasped the door frame with both hands and gave the door a kick, and then another. "Jerry! Can you hear me, Jerry? Open up, Jerry, come on!"
Sandra pressed her index fingers against her forehead, as if she were concentrating very hard. "It's that wrong feeling again," she said. "It's that wrong feeling!"
Decker kicked the door again and again, but it still wouldn't budge. At that moment Hicks and Eunice came running along the corridor—and, from the opposite direction, the cop who was supposed to be guarding Jerry Maitland's door.
"Where the hell have you been?" Decker shouted at him. By way of explanation the cop lifted up a bag of donuts
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and said, "I'm sorry, sir, I was only a couple of minutes. What's wrong?"
"Help me get this goddamn door open. It's jammed, and Maitland's not answering."
Hicks and the cop both put their shoulders to the door, while Decker kicked it.
Eunice protectively put her arm around Sandra's shoulders, while Sandra herself stood with her eyes wide and her hands over her mouth, making a thin mewling sound under her breath.
Inside the room, Jerry was still being held upright, although his head had fallen back onto his invisible attacker's shoulder so that he was staring blindly at the ceiling. He was suffering such waves of pain that he could hardly think, and there was a high-pitched singing in his ears. He was still trying to keep his intestines inside his sliced-open stomach, his left hand desperately gripping the slippery sides of his wound like a man in a storm trying to hold a thick rubber raincoat together.
"Now who's the martyr?" whispered a thick voice, close to his ear.
He didn't answer, couldn't. He just wanted it to be over with. Anything to stop the pain. Anything to end the horror of what was happening to him.
"Now who's making the ultimate sacrifice?" the voice demanded. "Now who's giving everything for honor and glory?"
He let out a gargle. He wanted to beg for mercy, but his attacker's arm was pressing too hard against his larynx. He thought he could hear knocking and somebody calling his name, but it seemed to be coming from very far away.
The room began to darken, as if a cloud had passed over
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the sun. As it did so, he felt a dreadful tugging sensation in his abdomen. His head dropped forward and he saw that an unseen hand was pulling his small intestine out of his stomach cavity. It rose up in front of him in spasmodic jerks, like a huge white worm.
It rose higher and higher, and then it started to slide around the bedrail, around and around, and coil itself into a knot. "No," choked Jerry. He couldn't bear any more agony.
There was a moment's pause, and then he was lifted clear of the floor, and heaved up onto a shoulder that he couldn't see. He screamed, and coughed up blood, and the knocking grew more and more frantic.
"Jerry! What's happening? Open the door, Jerry, for Christ's sake!"
But Jerry was helpless. He feebly tried to struggle but he was carried across the room, toward the window, and as he did so his intestines were dragged out of his body, yard by bloody yard, even though he scrabbled wildly to keep them in.
He reached the window. He was lifted even higher into the air, with his arms and legs flailing, and then he was flung through the glass. There was an explosive smash, and he felt himself tumbling through the air, colliding with the side of the building as he did so. But then there was a hideous, agonizing jolt, and he spun around and found himself hanging in midair, suspended by his own guts.
He didn't scream. He was too shocked and winded to scream. But he gripped his large intestine with his left hand and tried to pull himself upward. The peritoneal coating was far too greasy, and he had no more strength, but he kept thinking, I'm alive, I'm still alive, and as long as I'm still alive I can survive. He saw horrified faces staring at him and he thought he could hear people shouting. He thought: They've seen me, that's good, they'll send somebody to help. He twisted his intestine around his hand to give himself some
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more purchase, but he was much too weak to pull himself any higher.
"Alison?" he said. Then darkness flooded into his head and he died, dangling, slowly spinning around and around in front of the third-story windows, on the end of twenty-eight feet of bloody, stretched entrails.
As the window smashed, Decker gave the door another kick and it flew open as if it had never been jammed. He yanked out his revolver and stepped into the room. The first thing he saw was the grisly scarlet rope that was tied to the end of the bed, although he didn't understand what he was looking at.
"What the fuck?" the uniformed cop said.
"Looks like Maitland's escaped," Hicks said. "Tied some sheets together and broken the window."
Decker looked across at the blood-spattered bed, and then down to the zigzag pattern of blood on the vinyl floor. "Cut himself real bad, by the look of it."
He cautiously approached the window. As he did so, he became aware of an odd distortion in the air. The buildings opposite the hospital appeared to ripple and melt, as if he were looking at them through the rising heat from a corrugated iron roof. Even the window frame wavered, which gave him an unexpected sense of vertigo.
He took one more step forward, and then he was violently pushed in the chest. He was thrown sideways against the end of the bed, hitting his shoulder. Hicks, bewildered, said, "Lieutenant?" but then he was pushed, too, and promptly sat down in the armchair in the corner. The uniformed cop was turning around to help Decker when he, in turn, was slammed against the doorjamb. "Holy shit," he said, as blood burst out of his nose.
Decker shouted, "The door! Shut the door!" but it was al‑
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ready too late. From the corridor outside, Sandra shrieked, "It's him! It's him!"
Decker pushed his way past the uniformed cop, his revolver raised in both hands. Sandra was clinging on to her mother and pointing along the corridor. "There he goes! Look! Can't you see him? There he goes! He's there!"
All that Decker could see was a fluid, transparent wobble at the very end of the corridor. He was about to shoot at it when a side door opened and two nurses stepped into his line of fire, laughing. "Get back!" Decker yelled at them. "Get out of the way!" but before they could react one of them was thrown to the floor and the other was pushed on top of her.
Decker ran down the corridor and kicked open the door that led to the elevator bank. An elevator opened, and he lifted his revolver and shouted, "Freeze!" but it was only an orderly pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair. There were three other elevators, but two were at lobby level and the third was on seven. Not only that, the stairs were right at the other end of the hospital.
He said, "Shit," under his breath and holstered his revolver. There was no point in putting out an APB on somebody who couldn't be seen. He walked back toward Jerry Maitland's room, stopping to help up one of the nurses.