“Where the hell were you?” he shouted across the lot.
“Yardwork.”
“At night?”
Zach shrugged. My stupid parents. He knew Temple wouldn’t buy the excuse for a second, and with a hard glance he dared his friend to pose a theory. But Temple only threw an arm in the air in a gesture of frustration, then said, “Get in the car.”
Zach climbed in the side door. Kaitlyn was in the front, munching on a cheeseburger; Fairen sat on the bench seat beside him, while Scott and Tally were thigh-to-thigh in the back. Scott had his arm around her shoulders. He did not acknowledge Zach’s wave of greeting. Being around Tally always made Scott so self-consciously cool that Zach felt clownish in contrast; he always felt the impulse to make an ass of himself in a way Scott couldn’t help but acknowledge, to throw him off-base. He grinned and faced the front of the van, trying to ignore the slightly nauseating smell of mass-produced cheeseburger.
The engine rumbled and turned over. “So about this hospital thing,” Tally said. “Are you sure this place is safe?”
“Actually it’s extremely unsafe,” Zach told her.
“And illegal,” Temple added.
“Then why are we going?”
“Because it’ll be fun,” said Scott. “It’s trespassing. Therefore, it’s fun.”
Fairen reached over and rubbed Zach’s forearm. For a moment she laced her fingers into his, then let her hand wander onto his thigh. He looked down at his leg in surprise.
Tally asked, “Have you ever actually seen this Bunny Man person Scott was telling me about?”
“Nope,” said Temple. “And we won’t tonight, either. But Fairen’ll get some good photos for our report.”
Kaitlyn began to sing, “‘One night in my ramble I chanced to see, a thing like a spirit, it frightened me—’”
Scott threw a balled-up receipt at her head. Fairen snickered, but Temple said, “Hey. Don’t throw shit while I’m driving.”
Fairen let her hand come to rest on the inside of his thigh, her fingers tucked between his leg and the upholstery. She wasn’t particularly high up, only a bit above his knee, but it didn’t matter. He put his arm across the seat back, slid his hand under her hair, and stroked the nape of her neck.
Temple pulled into the parking lot of the town house complex, and Zach regretfully disentangled himself from Fairen. He would rather have sat with her in the van all night than gone looking for some guy in a rabbit costume, as entertaining as that search could be. Something about her touch felt restorative just now, when he still felt dirty from his tryst with Judy. Why had he even shown up? When the hell had he started feeling so obligated to her, as though she were some sort of girlfriend he couldn’t shake loose? And in the end it had been so pointless, so remote from the allure that had once felt infinite to him. He itched to take a shower.
Fairen slung her camera around her neck and hopped out of the van. They hurried through the forest, past the swamp that gleamed like obsidian and smelled like rot, and emerged in the shadow of the hospital’s towering main building, all the while peering around for cops. Scott—Indiana Jones all of a sudden, now that they had his girlfriend in tow—led the way toward the black gap that formed the building’s front door. Tally hesitated at the entrance, her slim fingers on the moulding, and peered cautiously around inside.
“I’m not so sure about this,” she said.
Temple jostled her from behind. “Get in, quick, before the cops see us.”
They gathered in the broad center hall, each switching on a flashlight. Pale green paint peeled off the walls in sheets; Zach’s narrow light fell on a constellation of spotty black mold growing along the plaster. A smell of wet rot permeated the air, hanging heavy as moss. Jagged rings of water stains dotted the ceiling, and a jumble of iron water pipes lay on the floor near the crippled staircase. The white light from Tally’s flashlight lit up Fairen’s face with a ghostly pallor. She shifted her place in the circle to stand beside Zach, and clutched for his hand.
“I feel weird about this,” she said under her breath. “There’s broken glass all over the place. We should have brought gloves.”
“Don’t pick anything up and you’ll be fine.”
“What if I catch tuberculosis?”
“You won’t. That was fifty years ago.”
Scott turned his back to the group and shone his flashlight up to the balcony of the second story. Zach couldn’t resist the opportunity to mess with him. He handed his light to Tally, then rushed up behind Scott and twisted his arm behind his back, uttering a loud “Yah!”
Scott’s light clattered to the ground, spinning the beam into a twist of brightness and shadow that, for a moment, disoriented Zach. In that time Scott gained the advantage, releasing himself from Zach’s grip and forcing Zach into a headlock. Zach, calling upon ten solid years of judo experience, immediately realized Scott wasn’t playing.
Zach jabbed an elbow into Scott’s side and grasped his wrist. But Scott—in a blatantly illegal move—jerked Zach’s head back and threw him to the ground. Zach broke his fall with his hands and coughed reflexively. Before he could gather himself Scott was on his back, holding him down with his body weight. He locked his arm around Zach’s neck again and jerked his arm behind his back, sending a lightning bolt of pain from Zach’s wrist to his shoulder. Scott was taller, heavier, and—Zach understood—angrier. He held on.
“Get him off the damn floor, Scott,” Temple yelled.
“Let him up,” urged Fairen. “That’s disgusting. There’s glass.”
In the darkness, the others couldn’t tell that Zach could barely breathe. He felt Scott twisting him against the gritty floor and desperately coached his own mind. Scott’s fighting skills were shit. His own were superb. He wasn’t being overcome; he was being psyched out.
“Stop playing, you idiots,” said Fairen.
Zach gathered what little oxygen he could and surged up from the floor, throwing Scott to the ground and, at long last, rising to his feet. He took two steps back as Scott got up and squinted when Temple shone a flashlight on them. Scott walked back to Tally, leveling a cool-eyed gaze on Zach. This time Zach understood that what he felt was not paranoia. Scott knew.
He returned to Fairen’s side, recoiling as she reached for his hand. His wrist felt as though it had been crushed beneath a school bus. She touched his shoulder and asked, “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.”
They followed the others around the staircase and entered a long hallway. The light from their Maglites was entirely ineffective. Circles of brightness swirled on the walls, bringing out hanging black wires and inkblots of mold, crumbled plaster and more loosened flaps of sickening green paint. When Temple’s light turned onto a broad doorway, they passed through it into a cavernous room.
“Is anyone keeping track of the way we came in?” asked Kaitlyn.
Fairen said, “I’ve been dropping bread crumbs all along.”
“That’s not funny,” Kaitlyn replied. Her voice wavered.
“There’s something stuck in the bottom of my shoe,” whined Tally. “Can we stop for a minute?”
Scott shook his head. “Don’t pull it out. It could be glass and cut you. Or a nail with tetanus.”
“Tetanus?” asked Tally. Her voice had risen by an octave.
They shone their lights on the walls. Graffiti was everywhere: trios of meaningless letters, curse words, the occasional swastika. The room was empty of furniture except for a desk that sat askew beside the farthest wall. But the floor was littered with napkins and fast-food containers, a filthy blanket, two garbage bags and a snow boot.