The Vivisectionist (50 page)

“Now if you don’t mind,” said the man, “I’m going to get some work done while we wait for Stephen.” He pulled a set of thick goggles out of a drawer and pulled them over his head. The goggles magnified his eyes enough so that his irises looked to be the size of nickels. The man pulled a rolling chair over to Jack’s leg and sat down on the edge. He looked up at Jack again and warned him, “This is going to hurt quite a bit, but it’s something I always do.”

He slid a portable tray up beside Jack and grabbed a knife.

“Hold still,” he said to Jack as he cut through his pants. He started the knee and cut a big patch of fabric out of the thigh of Jack’s jeans. “It probably seems a little backwards, but I always sign my work first. It looks so much better if done on a
 live
 muscle.”

He couldn’t stay on top of the vending machine, he reasoned. Stephen thought that if he went back to the crazy-man’s room, he might find another way out. But someone had locked this door on purpose—probably the guy Jack had killed—and the way out would require going back to that place. Stephen didn't want to confront all that yet. He would start with exhausting his other options. 

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.

Stephen shielded his eyes from the bright lights and bent over. An image of his dad swam before his lidded eyes. His dad said once—“It doesn’t matter if I’m right, because I know how to be loud.” He spun this around in his head, trying to figure out how it might apply to his current situation, but he ended up with nothing.

He opened his eyes and saw that he had one good piece of luck—the gun sat just under the chair in the center of the room. Stephen stole a glance back to the tub to be sure the dead guy hadn’t moved, and then shuffled forward to grab the gun. He flicked the safety back and forth until he was sure it was off and then tucked the gun into his front pocket with the handle sticking out. It felt uncomfortable against his hip, but very comforting. He turned to the door and prepared to go back out into the hall. Another sideways glance confirmed that the man in the tub remained dead. He forced himself to take a step backwards and pick up his pack from where Jack had left it.

First, he poked his head out and then he swung through the door frame, still trying to avoid stepping in the aromatic blood. The only things to his left were the room with the pole, and the supply closet. Stephen thought for a second and then went left to make sure that he hadn’t forgotten anything. He intended to never return to this hotel.

Back at the doorway to the exam room, he had to take a large, diagonal step across the hall to clear the puddle. He found bloody footprints that coursed back and forth to the next door down the hall.

Stephen found himself completely unprepared for the rude pile of fingers below the door. Heaped against the wall, smeared in blood, he saw two severed fingers and a thumb. He hurried past this wreckage and tried the other doors in the hall. They were all locked.

Stephen came back to the finger-door and considered the mess. They were too big to be Jack’s. It was pretty clear, once he thought about it—this door must require a finger scan and Jack had tried these fingers.

He looked at the finger pile again and then squeezed his eyes shut. He tilted his head back. He didn't have many options. He couldn't trust Jack, and probably couldn't get out of the hotel without Jack’s help. Even the gun wouldn't help him climb a pole or get through a locked door.

When Stephen found the will to go on, it came from an unexpected source. He thought of Ben. He wondered if the crazy guy had killed Ben and Ben’s family. Could the crazy guy engineer the disappearance of an entire family? Stephen couldn’t bear the thought of that happening to his own parents.

Stephen took a deep breath and crouched down. One bloody finger sat slightly apart from the rest. When his fingers hit that sticky, dead, skin he instantly wished he had thought to cover his hand in his shirt or something. He shook his head and lifted the finger to the strip at the left of the door.

He touched the finger to the pad and nothing happened. Reaching down to drop the finger and try the next, it occurred to him that he didn’t know how these things worked. He tried touching his own finger to the sensor and got no response. After a second, he got the idea to swipe his finger and the sensor emitted two sharp beeps. Next, he re-tried the severed finger.

A light on the unit flashed green and the lock buzzed open. Stephen pulled the gun from his pocket and aimed it at the handle. The buzzing stopped—he hadn’t moved quick enough. He swiped the finger again and dropped it. He opened the door with his left hand and pointed the gun with his right. The door swung outward, revealing a dim room packed with surveillance equipment lining each wall.