Stephen jumped down from the soda machine and made his way into the dark passage. He paused to look through the peep-hole into the hotel room filled with books.
A distant voice made him freeze. Someone yelled. Stephen willed himself not to run; he knew that he must keep control. The voice continued at a lower tone and he shuffled carefully over to the opposite wall and worked his way down to the next peep-hole. When he got close, it came back to him — this hole looked into an exam room.
Stephen held his breath and put his eye to the hole. He saw Jack, strapped to a chair. The man talking to Jack faced away from the hole, so Stephen couldn’t see much, but he could hear the man’s voice. It definitely sounded the same as the voice from the loud-speaker. That last realization took some time to sink in. If this was the man who had talked over the speaker, Stephen wondered, then who was the dead guy in the hall? Perhaps that guy wasn’t dead after all, he thought.
Stephen began to consider the implications of the scene in front of him. If this man had captured Jack and meant to hurt him, he would be on his own to get out of here. Plus, he’d have this psycho hunting him. However, if Jack somehow escaped, Stephen would have to worry about Jack’s intentions. They hadn’t parted on the best terms.
Stephen couldn't think of a good answer unless something bad happened to both Jack and the man, or somehow he found a way out.
He rocked back on his heels and hoped an idea would come.
Instead of thinking of a clever way out of this disastrous trap, Stephen began to recognize the small number of options still open. He knew that both Jack and the crazy guy were in this room, and that unless there was yet another person here, he just had to avoid that room.
Something still puzzled him though — the crazy man had Jack tied up, but didn't seem at all concerned about finding Stephen. Shouldn't the crazy man be worried that Stephen would call the police? Only one explanation made sense: the crazy man must have total confidence that Stephen couldn't escape.
As far as he could figure, he had only two good choices. He would either explore past the crazy man’s room and look for an exit, or try to find a weapon — maybe get back to the other examination room and look for Jack’s gun. The knife he had left in the closet suddenly jumped to the front of his thoughts.
Stephen emerged from the passage behind the bureau and squeezed into the crazy man’s room. He rummaged around for a few minutes, trying to find any clues to the way out, or even a good blunt weapon. When his search turned up nothing, not even a change of clothes for the madman, Stephen decided to move on. He approached the door and pressed his ear against it. He heard nothing. The door was unlocked.
The hall looked just like the first one he and Jack had found, but with no door at the end. This hall only had doors on the sides of its long expanse. Picturing the layout, he realized that one of the doors on his left probably belonged to the exam room with Jack and the crazy guy. It chilled him to imagine accidentally stepping in on that, so he began with the doors at the far end on the right.
After two locked doors, the third was open, and Stephen pushed it open. He couldn't find a light switch within reach. He could see deep enough into the room to make out the back of a couch several feet away, but he couldn’t see any other details. Desperately wanting to get some more distance between himself and the occupied exam room, he stepped inside.
Stephen went for the couch and forgot about the door behind him. It closed on a spring and clicked shut, leaving him in total darkness. His breath caught somewhere in his throat. He tried not to imagine what could be popping out from behind a corner or sneaking up on him. He was just about to make his way back to the door when he steadied himself and decided to keep going. Once he got to the couch, he could find a light somewhere, he figured.
He continued a couple more steps until he reached the couch and then worked his way down its length. It ended several feet from the wall and just past the back of the couch, Stephen’s outstretched hand struck the upright pole of a floor lamp. He fumbled with the shade and turned the dial.
By the dim light he saw more than he wanted to see. The couch sat in front of a low coffee table and faced a long section of wall. Pictures and documents had been pinned to the wall. He recognized Ben’s family immediately. A picture of Ben’s mom occupied the upper-left, and was followed by Matt, Ben’s dad, and then Ben. He used to wear his hair like a helmet, but this picture showed Ben’s more recent crewcut.
Stephen approached and looked at the documents pinned alongside the pictures. Some looked like invoices from doctors, and others appeared to be printouts of emails. He couldn’t discern the significance of the individual papers, but understood implication of the sum of them. The man must be planning to do, or have already done, something to Ben and his family.
His panic spiked and he spun around to see if there was another wall containing information on him. He expected to see the face of his mother looking back from a eight-by-ten inch photo on the wall behind him, but he found nothing but a blank wall. Still shaken, he returned to looking at the information about Ben. He tore himself away from the wall to look for a solution to his own problems.
Around a corner, a short hall led to another door. Stephen saw that it locked both at the handle and with a deadbolt. Hope sprung up — he remembered one of the doors on the other hall had a lock like this.
He gripped the doorknob with his left hand and the deadbolt with his right. He meant to turn it slowly and soundlessly, but halfway through the turn it picked up speed and made a loud click. Stephen cringed. He tried to turn the door handle, but it wouldn’t move. The knob had a lock as well. He turned the handle-lock and pulled open the door.
The hall was painfully bright, and Stephen recognized it. Across the hall a door stood mostly closed, but he thought it must be the pole room. If he looked to his left he would see a dead man in a pool of dark blood. He didn’t want to see that man again, but looked anyway, to confirm his assumption.
The blood was there, but the man was gone. He saw the open door to the exam room, a big pool of blood, and bloody footprints leading down the hall, but no body. Stephen pulled his head back through the doorway and closed the door most of the way. He wondered if Jack had only injured the man — could that be the same man holding Jack now? He shook his head. Anyone who had lost that much blood wouldn't be walking around.
Stephen took a few deep breaths and braced himself to enter the hallway. He pulled open the door, checked to make sure that it would open from the outside, and stepped into the bright hall. He looked left and right and then headed left towards the puddle of blood. Looking at the bloody footprints which led down the hall he almost ignored the drips that trailed towards the other exam room. He stopped before his feet hit the wet blood and followed the streaks with his eyes. They curved away from the puddle and described a big arc through the door to the exam room.
He wanted to go into the exam room to look for the gun. He managed a shallow breath and smelled the blood in the air. The drips continued through the doorway and over to the bathtub mounted near the wall. From his angle, he could see a single dark sneaker poking up above the lip of the tub.
Taking care to step around the drips on the floor he approached slowly, craning his neck to see over the edge of the tub. His head swam and he felt nauseous; he tasted acrid spit in anticipation of his rising vomit. Stephen turned away and looked at the opposite wall, trying not to think about the dead guy. He imagined the dead man slinking out of the tub to creep up behind him.