Page 76 of Going Home in the Dark

However, they stayed faithful to the route they had chosen, and soon they arrived at the hospital. Although vehicles were acquiring a coat of snow in the staff parking lot, the visitor lot was empty at that hour.

The lobby door might well have been unlocked, but the amigos took direction from a sign that guided those who were making deliveries to the hospital kitchen located in the southeast wing. Large flanking dumpsters indicated the entrance they sought. In addition, the extra-wide door was boldly labeledkitchenand well illuminated by an overhead lamp.

The chilly air outside the entrance smelled of tobacco smoke, suggesting someone had recently stepped from the kitchen to have a cigarette. At 10:10, patients’ dinners had long ago been served. Edible items had been eaten, trays returned, banks of industrialdishwashers loaded, and clean trays removed. All the cooks and other food-prep staff had surely departed. Breakfast would consist of something like orange juice, toast, commercial prescrambled eggs reheated in microwaves, and solid blocks of home fries produced in Poland and shipped to the US on a refrigerated freighter. It would be served at seven o’clock. The culinary staff wouldn’t arrive for maybe six hours.

During the months since he’d used a glass cutter and blue painter’s tape to gain entrance to Saint Mark’s rectory, Bobby the Sham had indulged his writerly curiosity and talent for dogged research to find a source for a set of lockpicks, acquire them, and learn the techniques with which to make the best use of them. As noted when previously he engaged in an illegal entry, we should not think less of Bobby for what is technically a crime, because in fact he had no criminal or malicious intent. If we must take offense at—and place severe blame on—someone, let us look no further than Mr. Werner von Grappenfokker, a retired locksmith, who was bitter about both the meager nature of his pension and the fact that his wife, Theda, had twice attempted to poison him. Bobby had paid von Grappenfokker for the picks and instructions with fees earned from writing why-I-want-to-go-to-Harvard and equivalent essays for college-bound seniors. If it seems to you that a misdemeanor or even more serious offense was committed by Bobby when he paid for the burglary tools and knowledge of how to use them with money received for defrauding Harvard and other similar institutions, then it is suggested that you try to imagine it had beenyoufostered by the Pinchbecks and required to live in that House of Tedium with Mr. and Mrs. Zero Personality, where the loudest sound was the drip-drip-drip of a leaky faucet. Without a source of income, your adolescence wouldhave been bleak, and you would probably have engaged in every nefarious activity from beating up smaller kids for their lunch money to carjacking. So get off your high horse, and for God’s sake let’s get on with what happened on that Thanksgiving night.

Using the Grappenfokker tool set (which sounds like the title of a novel by the late Robert Ludlum), Bobby expertly picked the lock of the door to the hospital kitchen. The four amigos boldly entered a large, chilled chamber that served as a receiving center for perishable foods but also as long-term storage for canned and bottled goods. The lights were off. However, Ernie had brought a small flashlight. The beam traveled over many hundreds of linear feet of shelving that contained large cans of stewed prunes, fruit cocktail, artificially flavored chicken soup, fat-free lard, boxes and boxes of Jell-O, enormous eighty-ounce cans of pudding, and other delectables.

The one other door in the chamber proved to be unlocked. With caution, they passed through it, into the vast kitchen. Half the room was revealed by overhead light panels, although not every panel glowed as they would during working hours. The second half of the room lay in shadows. Rows of worktables, ovens, microwave ovens, refrigerators, cooktops, industrial mixers, and other equipment of arcane and suspicious purpose divided the space into a maze.

Somewhere in the lighted area, out of sight, two men conversed as they worked. Because their voices waxed and waned, they could not be clearly heard; although they seemed to be talking about football or soccer, the wordsbitchandbastardwere spoken several times with such hatred and volume that perhaps they were discussing their unfaithful wives and how best to murder the men who poached their women.

The conversation was continually punctuated by a disturbing crisp metallic sound that might have been produced by a saw blade carving through the bones of a murdered womanizer, rendering the corpse into pieces that could be disposed of more easily than an intact body. The amigos listened intently, nervously, not sure if they should venture farther. Then Bobby whispered, “They’re opening lots of pull-tab cans with enormous lids.” This revelation relaxed everyone, because there was nothing to fear about angry foulmouthed men if they were merely opening five-pound cans of pudding.

The amigos wended single-file through the shadow-swathed half of the kitchen, in search of an exit. As they moved, they peered between the ranks of equipment that partitioned one aisle from the next, expecting to glimpse the duo they could hear, but the men remained unseen, as if they were haunting spirits of workers who died here in a tragic can-opening incident. The air wasn’t woven through with cooking odors; even if it had been, they would not be described. The place smelled like a pine-scented disinfectant, and that’s that.

They came to a pair of swinging doors, each with a porthole, and proceeded into the ground-floor corridor of the southeast wing, which was as quiet and deserted as a passageway in a pharaoh’s pyramid that remained undiscovered beneath Egyptian sands. According to the designations on the doors, here were offices of second-tier executives, a records center, and other rooms where no one worked at night.

At the northeast and southeast corners, lighted signs announcedexit.With their snow-wet sneakers squeaking on the vinyl-tile floor, the amigos went to the southeast end of the corridor. Rebecca opened the fire door below the exit sign. Beyondlay a vestibule. Directly ahead of her was another fire door under a glowing exit sign. To the right, stairs led to the higher floors.

For a group that sometimes seemed to talk incessantly, the four friends remained admirably disciplined as they ascended the stairs in silence. At the third floor, Rebecca eased open the door and peered into the corridor. No one. She led her amigos out of the stairwell.

At this hour, most of the patients were asleep. Others no doubt were lying awake, worrying about the future or wishing they had been able to go to church to participate in the Spanksgiving orgy. The hallway lights were dimmed. The quiet felt eerie. For most of this shift, the nurses would be at the central station for this floor, except to check on those few patients who needed late-night meds or other attention.

Hornfly had informed Bobby that Alpha, whatever it might be, was doing “absurd things to people” here. Logic supported the conclusion that the nurses of County Memorial were not involved in conducting experiments on their charges. If absurdities were being perpetrated, they were occurring at the Keppelwhite Institute.

The three floors of the hospital joined the institute at the southeast and southwest wings, a total of six connections beyond which strange things might be happening. Hornfly had specified the third floor of this wing, and though monsters were seldom helpful and trustworthy, the amigos could see no reason why their colorful acquaintance and would-be executioner would lie to them in this matter. He seemed capable of showing up anywhere without notice, eating them from the head down, and getting away with it, which suggested that he had no need to set a trap for them.

At the south end of the hallway, a formidable-looking metal door advisedno admittance / credentialed personnel only.Even if the amigos had not been induced to come here, on seeing that stern advisory emblazoned on a mysterious door, they would have been motivated to breach it. Indeed, there wasn’t a nerd in the world who wouldn’t scheme to find a way to get past that barrier; more than mundane people, nerds were quick to imagine—and be overtaken by a fierce certainty—that beyond any forbidden door must be the bodies of extraterrestrials recovered from a crashed starship or the first android that could pass for human, or proof of Bigfoot’s existence, or a genetically engineered golden retriever possessing human-level intelligence, or compelling evidence that JFK had been assassinated by a robot terminator from the future and that the historic events in Dallas had been fabricated, or all of the above. Nerds were nerds because they were very intelligent, but we must also understand that, in spite of their intelligence, they were willing to believe in an array of the most fantastic things because they didn’t much believe in themselves. A void will always be filled.

Now, in the southeast corridor, with the lights dimmed to the graveyard-shift level, with patients dreaming of miracle cures or inescapable doom, Bobby used his set of picks, acquired from the unscrupulous and bitter Werner von Grappenfokker. (The naive amigos were unaware that Grappenfokker was the cousin of Adolph Klanghoffer IV, whose great-great grandfather was Senator Adolph Klanghoffer, that the senator had been the brother of Reinhard Klanghoffer of the law firm Klanghoffer, Knacker, Hisscus, and Nork. Nor did the amigos have a clue that, in 1891, Reinhard Klanghoffer represented Gustoff Keppelwhite in the latter’s successful attempt to get a patent on the hinge, which wasthe basis on which the Keppelwhite fortune became the largest in America. All of that might have nothing to do with the events of this narrative or the fix in which the amigos found themselves, but you must admit it’s interesting and perhaps even suspicious.) So as the witching hour fast approached on Thanksgiving night, Bobby picked the lock on the door that riffraff like him and his pals were forbidden to open, and he opened it.

Beyond lay a vestibule so featureless that it almost seemed not to exist. The palest-of-blue walls were so smooth that corners were not discernible, yet the friends had no sense of being in a circular chamber. Of a blue precisely matching the walls, the floor made no sound underfoot and conveyed no impression of support, as if they were standing in midair, at risk of a mortal fall. The eye failed to perceive a ceiling. No source of light could be seen; it seemed to issue from every surface. As a seed of panic began to sprout in each of the amigos, they turned to discover that the door by which they entered had vanished. If it waited to be opened, it couldn’t be because it had transitioned seamlessly to the walls and floor, without a visible knob or handle. Worse than pitch darkness, this soft but omnipresent light exposed no smallest detail of the space, and the sense of standing in a void suggested that the next step would plunge them into a blue abyss.

Ernie spoke for everyone when he said, “I don’t know what lies beyond death, but maybe it’s this.”

Their tension built toward a scream, but at least a minute before the first of the amigos could go mad, a door irised open in front of them. Beyond the aperture lay light of a different quality from that around them; however, a haze obscured what might wait there. They felt like Richard Dreyfuss inClose Encounters of the Third Kind, when he stood at the foot of the starship ramp,gazing up into the bright mystery of that vessel, but they also felt like Richard Dreyfuss inJaws, when he was leaning over the stern of the fishing boat when a great white as big as a whale rose toward him out of the sea, while simultaneously they felt like Richard Dreyfuss inThe Goodbye Girl, when he realized that he loved Marsha Mason and her adorable little girl more than he loved the idea of being a star on Broadway. In these circumstances, remembering the first two films made sense, but why the third should come to mind was inexplicable, although in addition to being much beloved by general audiences of successive generations, Mr. Dreyfuss had always been a particular favorite of nerds.

Even as brave as they were, the four amigos nonetheless wanted to turn back, feel the nearly invisible wall until they located the door, and return to the hospital. Of course, anyone who is familiar with situations such as this knows that retreat is never possible. There is always and only one option—to go forward into terror, horror, and enduring psychological damage. They had never seen theShriekfilms, because the firstShriekhad not yet been filmed, let alone the sequels, but those of us who have seen those movies can feel pretty sure that what awaited them could not be as frightening as Judyface.

It was worse.

They passed through the aperture and obscuring haze, into a windowless white room perhaps forty by forty feet, with four evenly spaced six-inch-diameter holes in the floor. The holes apparently designated positions for four gurneys, but at the moment, only two were present, one bearing a man, the other a woman. Both patients wore hospital gowns and were draped with lightweight blankets. They appeared to be unconscious or even comatose. The scene itself was odd, although no more frighteningthan an uneventful teeth cleaning or a visit from a door-to-door team of pamphlet-laden folks who are certain they know more about Jesus than you do and are determined to prove it.

What washappeningto the patients was the terrifying thing, the horrifying thing, the disgusting and repellent thing. From out of each hole in the floor next to the gurneys had risen something like a boa constrictor but not a snake, like a dark worm but not a worm. Although they were coherent forms, the substance seemed to be constantly churning, with the amorphous potential to reshape itself into anything it wished. Judging by the appearance of the forms, you would suppose their tissue was thicker than mere slime but thinner than typical sludge. Each dreadful apparition rose above its patient—or victim—and divided into six tentacles; four were the diameter of soda straws; the fifth and sixth were approximately twice the width of a garden hose. Of the thinner extensions, two had inserted themselves into the patient’s ears, two into the nostrils. The fifth and thickest had forced its way into the patient’s mouth and no doubt down the throat. The sixth rose above the others, swaying back and forth as though waiting in case the need arose to probe into the patient by any remaining opening. Pulsations traveled the length of every tentacle and into the comatose pair. It was not possible to be deluded into the conclusion that these two abominations were merely machines; they were organic and more loathsome than any creature that had existed in the history of Earth. Perhaps they were not two distinct monstrous individuals but mere appendages of something far below and more grotesque than anyone other than certified lunatics would be able to imagine. So unless you’re a lunatic, don’t even try.

The four amigos stood tightly grouped in an arc, immobilized and silenced not by terror, but because they were controlled by a power unknown. A soothing voice arose within them, assuring them that they must not be afraid, that they would not be harmed, that all would be well, that their favorite beverage, Coca-Cola, would continue to be produced for decades to come. Although they didn’t believe a word of what was said, their fear faded.

Dressed in white like orderlies, two young men entered through a door that could lead nowhere but farther into the Keppelwhite Institute. The men smiled. They looked nice. They wanted only the best for everyone. Of that the amigos were in agreement, although they were unable to express their relief and confidence to one another.

The abhorrent tentacles withdrew from the man and woman. They retreated through the holes in the floor.

In retrospect, they didn’t seem disgusting or fearsome. In fact, they had been graceful and almost beautiful.

The nice young men wheeled the gurneys and their occupants out of the white room.

In minutes, they returned with two other gurneys, and then they brought two more.

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