For a while her thoughts wandered, and then finally she brought them back—to the room, to the night ahead. She glanced down at her watch. To her surprise Phoebe realized that Duncan had been gone fifteen minutes already. She rose from the chair and sauntered down the short hall to the reception area and then out into the main corridor. It was empty and silent, not surprising for this hour on a Friday night. Suddenly there was the sound of footsteps echoing in a nearby stairwell. She waited, thinking it was Duncan, but he failed to appear. She felt a sliver of annoyance at his having left her for so long.
She started to turn, to go back to Duncan’s office. Then suddenly the hall lights went off in unison. Phoebe was standing in total darkness.
18
PHOEBE FROZE, HER mind momentarily blank in surprise. Had the janitor turned the lights off? she wondered, soon grasping that every light along the corridor was out. She spun around in the dark toward the doorway of the pysch department. Duncan’s desk lamp had been on, but now there was absolutely no light seeping into the reception area. There’d been a power failure, she realized. She felt a sudden surge of panic. Take a deep breath, she commanded herself. Just get control.
She swung back around toward the hall again. As her eyes adjusted, she saw that the emergency exit signs above the doors to the stairwells were still lit. They cast an eerie, ghostlike ball of light at each end of the corridor. Where in hell was it that Duncan had said he was going? she wondered. The fourth floor. But why in the world wasn’t he hurrying back now? She quickly began to make her way to the stairwell at the end of the corridor, where she figured she was bound to meet him coming down. She wondered if the power was out over the entire campus.
It turned out the stairwell had emergency bulbs, but they cast only the dimmest light. There was no one on the stairs, and no sound of anyone descending.
“Duncan?” Phoebe called up the stairs anxiously. “Are you there?”
From far off she thought she heard the sound of a door slam, but then nothing else.
She felt annoyed, pissed really, that Duncan had not only left her for so long but wasn’t bothering to rush back. She had no intention of standing around in the dark. I’ll just go outside, she decided, and wait for him in front of the building. But first she needed to grab her purse from his office. She’d left it on the floor by the chair. In fact, maybe the smartest thing to do, she realized, was to call him on her cell. Hopefully, he had his own phone in his jeans pocket.
She reentered the corridor. It was utterly silent there, and her heart rate quickly accelerated even more. Relax, she willed herself again. It’s only a stupid power failure. She made her way back toward the psych department. Peering into the reception area, she saw that it was even darker there than in the corridor because the windows faced the Grove. Phoebe took several tentative steps into the room and turned right, in the direction of Duncan’s office. She edged along with a hand out in front of her, feeling for the open door to the hallway. She found it the hard way, as the left side of her head smacked into the doorframe. Phoebe groaned in pain.
Taking a breath, she corrected her position and entered the hall. Her eyes started to adjust, and she could see a little in the darkness. With both hands now in front of her, she groped her way down the hall to the entrance to Duncan’s office. She stood for a second in the doorway, gaining her bearings. Finally her eyes found the dark shape of the chair, and she moved clumsily in that direction. It was only when she touched the chair and felt the fabric that she realized she wasn’t in Duncan’s office after all. His chair had been made of leather.
Cursing in frustration, Phoebe retreated to the hall and made her way jerkily to the next office down. This one was definitely Duncan’s. Even in the dark, she could see the dull gleam of the yellow Post-its on the computer screen. She moved toward the chair, and felt around by the base until she made contact with her purse.
As she stooped to pick it up, Phoebe heard a sound out in the hall. She rose and spun around in that direction.
“Duncan?” she called out. Thank God, she thought.
But no one spoke back. Phoebe crept out into the hall and listened. From outside the building, probably from the path that ran in front of it, she heard the muffled sound of a guy yelling boisterously to a friend—“Max, hey,” and then, “Wait up, okay?” Inside, though, there was only silence. But then, from somewhere very close to her, Phoebe thought she heard a person sigh—a low, rough sigh like the kind a dog makes in its sleep. Her legs went limp with fear.
“Who’s there?” she said. The words caught in her throat. She turned and looked behind her, where there were several offices beyond Duncan’s, and then back into Duncan’s office. She had no idea where the sigh had come from. Darkness seemed to be throwing sounds, like a ventriloquist. Then she heard the same thing again. It was close, but she couldn’t tell if it was behind or in front of her.
Frantically, Phoebe lurched toward the reception area. Once she stepped into the main corridor and had the emergency exit signs for guidance, she flew toward the stairwell doors and then down the steps to the ground floor. After flinging open the door and bursting outside, she nearly collided with a man in the dark. It was Bruce Trudeau. The moment she recognized him, all the lights inside the building popped on.
“What’s going on?” Bruce demanded as they both looked up at the building. He was out of breath, as if he’d been running.
“I don’t know,” Phoebe said, breathless herself. “Someone . . . where’s Duncan?”
“Duncan?” Bruce asked. “I have no idea. I was on the lower campus and saw the lights go out up here. Figured I’d better investigate.”
“You weren’t with Duncan?” she asked. It was starting to feel as if she were in the tail end of a dream, when everything becomes even more absurd and horses sit down at the dinner table.
“No, why?”
She could see the curiosity in his eyes. The last thing she wanted right now was for the whole world to know she and Duncan were together.
“Um, he was going to show me the rats,” Phoebe said. “He thought I’d be interested. He had to go to another floor first—I thought to meet with you—and while I was waiting in his office, all the lights in the building went out.”
“How odd,” Bruce said. “Let me see what’s going on. Do you want to wait here or come back inside?”
“I’ll wait here,” she said, forcing a smile.
As the front door of the building closed behind Bruce, Phoebe grabbed a deep breath. If Duncan hadn’t gone to meet Bruce, where in God’s name was he? She started to dig around her purse for her phone.
But as if in answer to her question, the front door of the building swung open, and Duncan came bounding out.
“There you are,” he declared and gave her arm a squeeze when he reached her. “Bruce said you were out here.”
“Me?” she said. “What happened to you?” There was an edge to her voice, but she couldn’t help it.
“I’m sorry about that,” Duncan said. “The conversation took longer than I planned, and then just when I started to leave, the lights went out and Miles had an angina attack.”