She had to call Sam. She had to warn Sam.
“Is there a phone somewhere?” she asked—she spoke the words before she even thought them.
The lady set the tray down on a small table by one of the armchairs. She straightened and looked at Jennifer. “Well, there is,” she said, “but you’re only supposed to use it at certain times . . .”
“I . . .” Jennifer tried to think of an answer—and the answer came into her head as if out of nowhere. “I want to call my friend. He hasn’t heard from me in days. I want him to know I’m all right.”
The lady hesitated but then smiled, a white angel smile in her brown face, and said, “Well, since you just got out of the secure ward, I guess it’s only right to let you call a friend. You want to eat first or . . . ?”
“No,” said Jennifer, the right words just coming to her. “I’m afraid it’ll get to be too late and he’ll be asleep.”
“Okay. Well, let’s see what we can do.”
The lady led her out of the common room. Down the hall. As Jennifer walked behind her, she heard whispers, whispers, whispers but couldn’t make out the words they said. She thought they were laughing.
“Here we are,” said the lady. “Just go back to the common room when you’re done and your sandwich will be waiting for you.”
The lady unlocked the door of a small room. Inside there were several desks with dividers on them—walls that rose out of the desktops, protecting them from the other desks. On each desk there was a telephone. No one else was in the room.
“No more than five minutes, all right?” said the lady in white. “That’s the rule.”
“All right,” said Jennifer.
The lady in white left her there alone. Jennifer sat down at one of the desks. She lowered her head low, low, low, almost pressing her cheek to the desktop so she was hidden away, so no one could see her over the dividers, and she couldn’t see anyone, couldn’t see the rest of the room.
She reached for the phone. Her hand was trembling. She was trying to stay calm. She dialed Sam Hopkins’s number. She knew it by heart.
“Hello?” Sam said.
Jennifer was so happy to hear his voice. She said his magic name. Said it twice.“Sam Hopkins. Sam Hopkins.”
“Jennifer?” said Sam.
“I have to tell you what’s going to happen next,” she said quickly. She had to talk quickly before the demons found her. “I can see. I can see with my eyes. Through the lies. I see who dies. I see what’s going to happen, Sam.”
There was a pause. Then Sam asked, “What do you see, Jennifer?”
She tried to tell him. About the bodies in the common room. About the moving clock. Tomorrow. It was going to happen tomorrow. She began to grow excited as she tried to make him understand. She lifted her head. Holding on to the phone, clutching the phone in her shaking, quaking, sweating hands, she stood up.
Her breath caught in her throat.
There it was again. Death. Everywhere. The bodies. Everywhere. The blood in pools. Bodies splayed over the desks and sprawled on the floor. And the clock on the wall, spinning.
Tomorrow.
Jennifer tried to cry out, but her voice would not rise higher than a whisper.
“So many dead, Sam!” she whispered. “So many dead!”
“Jennifer.” Sam’s frightened voice came back to her. “Who’s dead? What’s happening? Tell me what you see.”
“Tomorrow!” The words would barely come out of her. “Tomorrow! So many!”
“Jennifer, tell me what you see!”
She was about to try to explain it to him, but now the door to the telephone room opened. The lady in white, the angel lady, came in.
Jennifer looked at her and then looked around the room. All the dead were gone. Everything was back to normal. Jennifer could only stand, staring.
“Time to go,” the angel lady told her.
And she walked over to Jennifer, took the phone from her slack hand, and gently hung it up in the cradle.
19
The Worst Night of My Life
Suddenly the phone went silent.
“Hello?” I shouted. “Hello?”
But there was no answer, nothing. Jennifer had hung up. She was gone.
I lowered my cell from my ear and stared into space. I thought: So many dead. Tomorrow. So many dead.
Something on my computer caught my eye.
JOE: Sam? U still there?
I hesitated for only a second, then I typed in quickly:
ME: G2G.
And I dashed out of the room.
“Dad! Dad!” I shouted.
I plunged down the stairs two at a time, so fast I nearly tripped and fell headlong to the bottom. My feet skittered over the floor as I came off the last step. I had to grab hold of the banister post to keep from falling.
“Dad! Da—”
“Whoa, Sam. What’s happening? What’s wrong?”
Dad was there, right in front of me. He took hold of my shoulders to keep me from going down.
“Jennifer called me,” I said to him. I could barely get the words out, they were jumbling together in my mind and in my mouth. “Jennifer . . . she . . . on the phone . . .”
“All right, all right, slow down. Tell me what happened.”
My father—so much taller than I was—blinked down at me through his glasses from high above. My mom had also come into the room at the sound of my shouts and she was standing behind him. John was at the top of the stairs now, looking down. They were all watching me, waiting to hear what I was about to say.
I took a breath, trying to slow down my racing brain so I could get the words right. “Jennifer called me on my cell.”
“From the hospital?” said my father.
“I guess. Yes. I don’t know. Yes, probably. She said she’d had another . . . another vision.”
My father straightened a little in surprise. He was still holding on to my shoulders. “A vision. What do you mean?”
“She said, ‘So many dead. So many dead.’ She kept saying it. She said it was going to happen tomorrow.”
I don’t know what I expected to happen next. I guess I thought my dad would leap to the phone and call the police or something. But instead of getting more excited—as excited as I was—he seemed to sort of relax. He let go of me. He put his hands in his pockets. His mouth kind of bunched up all on one side.
“Look, Sam,” he said, “we talked about this. Jennifer is a very sick girl. She has hallucinations . . .”
“I know, but . . .”
“She’s not a prophet, Sam. She’s not seeing into the future. That’s not the way things work. It doesn’t make sense.”
“But last time her hallucinations came true.”
“Her hallucinations didn’t come true . . .”
“Harry Mac . . . ,” I started to say.
“Harry Mac was killed by his fellow criminals after he informed on them to the police. That had nothing to do with demons or coffins or prophecies. It was just a crime.”
“But Jennifer saw it! She saw it was going to happen!”
My father smiled kind of painfully. He glanced over his shoulder at my mother. She sort of shrugged.
“She didn’t see Harry Mac get murdered, Sam,” Dad explained patiently. “You know she didn’t. What she saw was some demons and a coffin and all kinds of crazy stuff: a hallucination. I admit that somehow that made you think of the place where Harry was killed. But that doesn’t mean . . .”
“But it couldn’t have been a coincidence!”
“On the contrary,” Dad said. “I think it was obviously some sort of coincidence. I don’t think there can be any other explanation. And anyway, the people who are responsible are in jail. They’re not going to hurt anyone else.”
I couldn’t believe I was hearing this. I couldn’t believe my dad was saying it. I stared at him with my mouth open. Why couldn’t he see what was happening? Jennifer had had a vision—a vision of death coming tomorrow—“
so many dead.” It was going to come true just like the other one. I knew it. I was absolutely sure.
Someone had to find out what it meant. Someone had to stop it from happening.
“Dad . . . ,” I started.
“Sam,” he said, “what is it exactly you want me to do?”
“Well . . . shouldn’t we maybe call Detective Sims at least? Shouldn’t we tell him what Jennifer said?”
“I don’t think we should bother the detective,” my mother said quickly, a worried look on her face. “He almost charged you with murder, Sam. We should stay away from him as much as we can. We don’t need any more trouble today.”
But my dad, after a minute’s thought, said, “No, I think that’s fair. I think Detective Sims would want to know about this. I’ll call him in the morning.”
“In the morning?” I nearly shouted. “We only have till tomorrow!”
“Well, Detective Sims has probably gone home for the night . . .”
“Well, can’t you call 911?”
“I’m not going to call 911 to report a hallucination,” Dad said, starting to sound impatient. But then I could see him think the whole thing over some more. And he said, “But I’ll call the department now and tell whoever’s there.”
My mom and I stood in the living room and listened while my dad called the police. We heard him ask for Sims. Then we heard him say, “Well, is there some other detective on duty?” After a wait, I guess someone came on, because my dad explained it to them: exactly what I’d told him about the phone call and what Jennifer said. He spoke in his usual quiet, reasonable voice. He didn’t sound panicked or even concerned. He just sounded like he thought it was something they ought to know.
Finally, he hung up.
The minute he did, I asked him: “What did they say? What did they say?”
“It was another detective. Brody. He said he would tell Detective Sims about it in the morning.”
“In the morning?”
“He didn’t sound very concerned.”
“But Jennifer said . . .”
“I know, I know what she said, Sam. But this Detective Brody was familiar with Jennifer’s case. He says the doctors are now fairly certain she’s suffering from schizophrenia. He says it’s unlikely anything she says has any relation to reality. And frankly, Sam, I have to agree with him.”
“But she knew about Harry Mac!” I insisted.
This time my father only looked at me without saying anything. He didn’t have to say anything. I could read what he was thinking right there on his face. He didn’t believe for a second that Jennifer was having visions of real things that would really happen. He thought it was just madness. Schizophrenia.
“Don’t worry, all right?” he said. “The police are on it, and they’ll take care of it in the morning.”
But I did worry. I worried a lot. In fact, for the next couple of hours, that’s pretty much all I did: worry. I went back up to my room. I paced around. I lay down on my bed. I stared up at the ceiling. I got up and paced around some more. The whole time, all I could think about was Jennifer—Jennifer whispering. I could hear her, almost as if she were standing right there next to me.
“So many dead. Tomorrow. So many dead.”
My dad hadn’t heard that. He hadn’t heard the fear in her voice. I had. And I couldn’t stop hearing it. Jennifer’s words brought all these pictures into my head. Pictures of dead people lying all over the place. Bodies. Blood. And okay, some of these pictures, I guess, were from horror movies I’d seen on TV, but all the same, they were pretty realistic looking. And the more I thought about them—the more I paced back and forth—the more I remembered Jennifer whispering over the phone—well, the more realistic these pictures started to seem.
It was after ten o’clock now. I heard my parents come slowly upstairs. I head their voices on the landing.
“What a week,” my father said heavily.
“Joy comes in the morning,” said my mother, which was something she always said when someone was having a hard time.
“I sure hope so,” said my father. “Because, really—what a terrible week.”
Then I heard their bedroom door close and their voices became muffled and were finally silent. The house was quiet around me. I felt alone. Really alone. Like maybe I was the last person left in the world.
And I was scared too. More scared, I think, than I had ever been in my life. Because somehow I had managed to convince myself completely that Jennifer was telling the truth. I felt absolutely sure that the bodies and the death she had seen were real, real things that were really going to happen in the future. Tomorrow. I felt sure that Jennifer was having visions like the prophets in the Bible did.
The dead—so many dead—tomorrow.
Somehow this disaster already seemed real to me. There was not a doubt in my mind that it was going to happen. You have to understand that. You have to—because that’s the only way you’ll be able to understand what I did next.
20
Thief in the Night
Do right. Fear nothing.
I waited till everyone else was asleep, then I crept out of the house. I took two things with me: a flashlight and the Buster—the lockpicking tool Jeff Winger had given me. I wore my autumn coat with the two big pockets. I put the flashlight in one pocket and the Buster in the other.
It was cold outside. Cold and dark. There was only a sliver of a moon, and mostly it was buried under a steadily moving blanket of clouds. My bike had a light on it, but I kept it off at first. There were streetlights to see by, and I thought if the police spotted me—a kid out on his own at that hour—they would stop me and ask me questions. That was one thing my mom was right about: I didn’t want to deal with the police any more than I already had.
I pedaled fast, taking the back lanes. The town was asleep. The lights in the houses were out. There were very few cars on the road. There were no pedestrians.
St. Agnes Hospital was a long way away. I had looked up the address online. It was a good hour’s ride at least on Route 33. When I reached the two-lane, I switched my lights on and set myself to pedaling as fast as I could.
I tried not to think, but I did think—and everything I thought of made me more and more afraid. I thought of the dead people Jennifer had seen. I thought of what the police would say if they caught me on the highway. I thought of what my father would say if the police picked me up and brought me home. I thought of what my mother would say. Then I thought of the dead again and what would happen if I didn’t get to Jennifer in time.
They weren’t happy thoughts.
I rode on. The forest closed around me, edging up to the highway on both sides. I sensed the depths of its darkness and began to imagine lurking presences among the trees, watching me pass. At one point, out of the empty horizon, a pair of lights shone suddenly. A big truck passed me, heading back toward town. I saw the driver in the lighted cab. I saw him look at me as he went by, his eyes narrowing. I thought about him getting on his radio and calling the police: There’s a kid out here on the road . . .
Then the truck passed, its backwash of wind making my bike waver back and forth unsteadily.
I kept pedaling. It was a good thing I’d been running so much, practicing for track tryouts. My legs were strong, but even so, they ached like crazy. My wind was good, but even so, I was panting pretty hard. I needed to rest, but I kept thinking, No, go a little farther, just a little farther . . .
Then, all at once, there it was.
As I came around one bend in the highway, the trees parted on my left. There was an entranceway. Just a small space. A gate. No lights. The opening was nearly hidden by the forest shadows and I almost went right by it. Then I caught sight of the sign: St. Agnes Mental Health Facility. That was the place.
I stopped my bike, my feet on the ground. I looked through the gates. There was nothing visible but a long driveway leading over a hill and out of sight. In the darkness it didn’t look like an inviting journey. Not
at all.
I thought to myself: There’s still time to turn back. If you’re quiet about it, no one will even know you left.
Then I thought to myself: Do right. Fear nothing.
Man, right then I was sorry I’d ever seen that little statue of the archangel Michael on my father’s shelf. I was sorry I’d ever seen those Latin words.
But it didn’t matter whether I was sorry or not. I knew I couldn’t turn back. I had to try to get to Jennifer. I had to try to stop whatever was coming.
I got off my bike and walked it into the trees. I laid it down in the woods, out of sight of any traffic that might pass. Then I kept walking, hoping to find a way around the gate.
I had imagined there would be all kinds of obstacles: high walls, electric fences, even guards and dogs patrolling the place to keep the mental patients from escaping. In fact, it was nothing like that. When I came out of the trees, I was on a little lawn. A driveway ran beside it. I stayed on the grass but followed the drive. When I came over a small hill, I saw the hospital. It was that easy.
As I approached the building, though, my stomach did that thing again, like I was going down in an elevator too fast. The hospital was a broad structure of brick. It was only two stories tall, but there was a castle-like roof on the front of it, giving it an extra two stories. Then the walls went out on either side a long way. There were lots of large windows in the walls and lights on in some of the windows, but a lot of them were dark. The building loomed black against the silver sky. The darkened windows stared down at me emptily like a skeleton’s eyes. The big central door was closed tight and made the place look forbidding. Now and then, I saw a shadow passing through a lighted window upstairs, and I knew that there were people inside and that they were awake, moving—and would be watching for intruders.
I moved carefully through the night. I moved close to the building and then followed its wall around to the side. I was looking for a way in—some way aside from barging right through the front door.