The Vivisectionist (36 page)

“That’s it, Jack. That’s a free one. But if I hear language like that again, you’re going to get grounded for the summer,” she warned.

Jack turned and stomped up the stairs to his room. Stephen followed quietly behind him.

Up in Jack’s room, they grabbed books and conspired.

“We could go in the middle of the night again,” said Jack.

“That’s going to be tough from up here,” Stephen responded. “I’ve heard your dad wake up just from me going to the bathroom. His snoring stops until I go back to the room.”

“Yeah, dad always was a light sleeper. Unless he’s on his Xanax,” said Jack.

“What does he take that for?” asked Stephen.

“He used to get panic attacks,” said Jack. “He only takes them now if he’s got a lot of stress from too many jobs at once.”

“Maybe he should take one tonight,” said Stephen.

“He’s only going to take it if he’s stressed though. I think my mom’s the one who’s stressed right now, and she never takes the stuff.”

“No, I mean like maybe we should slip both of them some when they’re not looking. Then they’ll both be asleep and we can go whenever we want,” said Stephen.

“Jeez, I don’t know how we would pull that off,” said Jack. “Like put them in a drink or something?”

“Maybe we can just crumble them up in part of dinner, then we just won’t eat whatever that is,” offered Stephen.

“Sounds complicated,” said Jack. “Can’t we just hit them over the head with something?” he laughed.

“I thought you really wanted to get back to the hotel and figure out the maze?”

“I do, but I don’t think we’ll be able to drug my parents. We should just wait until tomorrow and I’ll apologize to my mom,” said Jack.

“Okay,” said Stephen. “I hope that works.”

“We better read these things,” said Jack, holding up his book. “My mom will know if we don’t.”

**********

Jack apologized before dinner and then let the subject drop. After breakfast on Friday, Jack decided the time was right.

“Hey mom,” Jack began, “do you think Stephen and I can play outside today?”

“What do you think?” she asked, and then continued before he could answer, “Do you think that one day of penance was enough for questioning my decisions yesterday?”

“I’m sorry,” said Jack. “I was just so worried about Ben, I guess I just overreacted.” Jack and Stephen had planned this line the night before. They hoped she would go easier if she thought they were upset about their friend.

“Yes, you did,” she said. “Regardless, I think you still need another day to cool off.”

“Okay mom,” said Jack. “We’ll be upstairs reading until lunch.”

Jack’s easy defeat confused Stephen. They got up to Jack’s room and Stephen asked his question—“What happened? I figured you would have worked on her some more.”

“I was going to, then I happened to see the calendar,” said Jack. Stephen was still confused, so Jack continued: “She had this day circled in red. That means she’s going to consult with the tax guy today, and it said eleven AM, so she’ll be gone from ten until three at least.”

“Oh cool—that gives us five hours,” said Stephen.

“Right, so we’ve got to finish a whole day’s reading and writing in just a few hours,” said Jack. “Let’s get going.”

The boy limped down the halls in a blind panic. The incision on his right thigh throbbed and oozed bloody pus. He could barely see as the batteries of the otoscope started to fail. He lost track of the turns. He paused at a door and wondered: had he come this way before? When he reached for the handle, he could barely see it beginning to turn on its own. He backed up slowly at first, and then picked up speed. When he saw the door begin to swing towards him, he turned and ran in earnest. The slippers on his feet offered no traction. He managed to kick them off and ran even faster.

At the end of the corridor, he crashed into the wall and pushed off, throwing himself down left the passage. This was new—he was certain. Ahead, an iron gate with a big padlock blocked the way. The vertical bars, topped with sharp points, had several cross-members holding the bars in place. The boy started climbing, hoping to squeeze between the top of the bars and the ceiling. Desperation drove him forward—he threw his knee up and got a foothold on the waist-high brace. He grabbed two of the points and pulled, climbing the gate like a ladder.

The boy squeezed his chest over the top of the gate and heard the approach of heavy footsteps.  He had to concentrate. He pushed and pulled with all his strength. One of the points dug into the side of his right knee. Instead of pushing away from the bars, he managed to wrangle his panic and figured how to lift his leg off the snag.

From what he could see, the hall on this side of the gate was not in very good shape. The walls were discolored and unpainted, and the floors were littered with scraps of drywall, dirt, and dust. He rounded another corner and found a set of decrepit stairs, leading up. Thick, rough-cut planks with protruding nails took him up to a small landing and then turned left before ascending again. The boy suspected he had gone up at least two flights, maybe more.

At the top of the stairs, he found another small landing and then the hall continued off to his right. The boy bent over for a second to catch his breath, and in the darkness he saw tiny flashes of white until his heart rate slowed a bit more. With the last light of the otoscope, he saw that the construction looked older here, and even more run-down. The floors were stained, cracked hardwood, and the walls showed gaping holes through the plaster to the lath slats.

He straightened slowly, and started to walk down the hall. The boy waited to hear footfalls ascending the steps at any second.

The otoscope pulsed and then shut off completely. The boy twisted the handle on and off, and slowly realized that he could still see his feet.

He crouched and peered through the vent at his ankles. Set in the wall was a vent with a twisting, looping, pattern to its grate. The room on the other side had a faint blue light. The screw at the top of the grate anchored into nothing—the plaster above the vent had fallen away and the screw didn’t quite reach to the wood. It dawned on the boy that it might be big enough for him to fit through. It looked tight, but anything would be better than staying in the pitch black hallway with the crazy man somewhere behind him.

He tugged at the metal for a few seconds and then sat on the floor and braced a foot on either side of the vent and pulled with both hands. When it gave a little, he doubled his efforts. In a few more tugs he popped off the cover.

The light on the other side came through several windows. He put his left arm through first and then pulled until his head was on the other side. Turning his shoulders, he managed to get his chest and other arm free.

Suddenly, he imagined an unseen axe descending on his naked legs and he struggled to get his legs to safety. He scrabbled across the floor of the new room, desperately trying to free his feet. When he made it, he cautiously looked back but the hallway he had left was empty. The boy screwed up his nerve and then reached for the cover, back in the hall. He did his best to pull it back into position.

Relieved, he tiptoed over to one of the windows. The window was two or three stories up and overlooked an overgrown field bordered with woods. A nearly full moon hung low, just about even with the treeline. He pressed his face close to the window so he could look straight down; the ground looked a long way down. A door on the adjacent wall was open a crack, he walked as quietly as he could and swung it open.

Planning to do extra errands before her appointment, Kate left the house at nine-thirty. She hung a note up on the fridge which told Jack and Stephen to eat leftovers for lunch. They snuck into the front room to listen for the garage door opening, and then they watched from there as she pulled away from the house.

“Let’s go,” said Jack.

They wore their exploring-clothes and already had their bags packed. Once out of the yard and safely out of sight of the neighbors, they moved fast—running to the hotel.

Their ladder routine didn't work well with two people instead of three. Jack helped Stephen carry the ladder, and then doubled back to inspect the fishing line stretched across the path. Up on the porch roof, Stephen was anxious to see if the money had been replaced. He fumbled with the trick clapboard, and yelled at Jack when he tried to help.

When Stephen finally got the section of clapboard loose, the sight of a new envelope delighted the boys.

Stephen grabbed it and tore it open. Squeezing the sides, he shook the contents into his hand. Another seven crisp hundred-dollar bills slid out of the envelope. “Sweet,” he said. “Now we’ve got seven hundred each.”

“What about Ben’s share?” asked Jack.

“Oh yeah,” said Stephen. “Still pretty good though.”

“Is there another letter?” asked Jack.

“Yeah, but it’s the same,” Stephen skimmed the letter folded up with the bills.

“That makes sense,” said Jack.

Once inside the hotel, Jack and Stephen had very little trouble getting back to where Ben had fallen. Jack only consulted his notebook at the beginning. They felt that they could negotiate the hotel’s intricacies without reviewing the diary.

When they got back to the vents, Jack put his hand on Stephen’s shoulder to slow him down—“Hold up—I want to check the map,” said Jack.

“Yeah, okay. What time is it?” Stephen asked.

“Uh, it’s eleven-thirty,” said Jack, consulting his watch.

“Let me see the drawing,” said Stephen. Jack held his flashlight on the map painted on the door. They hunched over in the small passage and their heads nearly touched. Tracing a finger across the drawing, Stephen checked each line and mark on Jack’s reproduction. He asked questions about lines that appeared on the door, but not in Jack’s notebook. Some of them were reference marks, pertaining to ducts or utilities as opposed to corridors, by Jack’s calculations. When they agreed on the accuracy of Jack’s map, Stephen handed the notebook back and then crawled into “the vents.”

Jack pulled duck tape from his pack and they marked the first turn. Only one path didn’t end in a skull and crossbones, so their choice was easy at first. As they had seen two days before, the only viable choice was the second right and then the left turn before the trap Ben triggered. After that, they had two choices that didn’t have a trap, and both ended abruptly. They reached the crossroads and paused.

On the map, the left wound around for a bit and then stopped near the top. The right looked straighter and shorter, and ended near the right-hand side.