Abattoir (14 page)

The day had been quiet and uneventful. She couldn’t remember the last time she didn’t get at least one call from the hospital concerning a patient.

So quiet . . .
strange, considering her fellow tenants, not to mention recent events.

The only sound in her flat was the ticking of the mantle clock. Sharon didn’t notice when it stopped, grew silent for a few seconds, then resumed.

She couldn’t get her mind off Anna’s drawings. Healthy children invariably drew pictures of happy things—trees, birds, mom and dad, flowers, circuses and houses with crooked chimneys. They were simple and innocent, just like the artists who had created them.

She thought back to her own pictures that she’d drawn at Anna’s age. A smile lit up her face as she remembered showing off a picture of Tawny, the family dog, rendered in new Crayola. Her mom and dad beamed when they saw the crude picture; the pride she felt at that moment had stayed with her all these years . . .

Sharon’s smile faltered. It had been so many years, so much pain . . .

Her mother’s favorite meal was Sunday night. Roast chicken, squash, mashed potatoes, green beans, always a pie for dessert. The menu seldom varied, simply because no one ever complained. Everyone loved it, but little Sharon particularly longed for Sunday afternoons, when the entire house would be filled with the delicious aromas of cooking.

Sharon’s eyes turned to her own kitchen as her reverie deepened. She saw her mother—dead these 20 years—still young and strong, busy at work, rattling pots and pans, selecting spices and stirring. She was short, hair tied back neatly in a bun, and she always wore a red smock when she cooked.

The kitchen in that lovely old house in Des Moines was old-fashioned and impractical—ancient linoleum on the floor, battered wainscot on the walls and an old gas stove that seemed to take up half the room—but to little Sharon, it was heaven on earth. Especially on Sundays.

Even now, she thought, here in this strangely silent apartment building, she could smell her mother’s chicken wafting through the air.

Crazy
. That was so many Sundays ago. Her mother was long gone. The aroma of her cooking would never fill the air again.

Sharon unconsciously bit her lip as another memory surfaced. Once again, her mother was cooking, but this time she was not at home. She was in the nursing home, the place Sharon was forced to send her after the repeated “wandering” episodes made independence no longer possible.

More than once, Sharon had been forced to call the police after her mother had gone missing. Once they found her wandering zombie-like through a park 20 blocks away from her home. Another time, she was in a mall, in her bedclothes, staring aimlessly at window after window.

At the home, she could no longer wander. She’d been placed in a special section, reserved for people just like her—those in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s. The windows were barred, the doors routinely locked, along with myriad precautions which kept her “safe and sound,” as the head nurse liked to put it.

Although there was no kitchen in her new home, Sharon’s mother was often busy cooking. She would lift imaginary pots and pans onto her fantasy stove, stir imaginary stews and soups in them, and then smile as she offered her daughter an invisible taste.

She kept it up for hours at a time, maintaining the strange ritual until a week before she died.

Sharon awoke from the memory with a start. She was in her flat at the Exeter, standing before her own stove, stirring a pot that wasn’t there, with a spoon that didn’t exist.

She gasped.

“Oh God . . . ”

But the smell was unmistakable—apple pie, spiced with cinnamon, baking. In her oven.

In spite of herself, she flung open the oven door and was blinded by a brilliant flash of white light.

She was no longer in her flat. She was in a place she didn’t recognize. An antiseptic, sterile place, with pastel green walls, pristine white borders outlining the windows and door.

An Alzheimer’s facility, her mind whispered.

The faint sound of soothing Muzak came from somewhere. The soft hiss of air conditioning was barely perceptible. Everything was cast in the soft glow of indirect lighting.

All of it was designed, she knew, to keep people like her calm. To keep them from the powerful urge to wander. To keep them safe from themselves.

She touched the softly rounded corner of her table, placed safely in a little nook against the wall. She walked to the bathroom and saw how the toilet seat stood out in brilliant red.

Contrasting colors are easily discerned by Alzheimer’s patients
, her mind whispered again. The furniture is padded for obvious reasons. The designs are simple and clean, so as not to confuse the mind.

She had to get out of here, her mind now screamed.

I don’t belong here. I’m not one of them. I’m a psychiatrist. I am not my mother!

Sharon made for the door, then stopped. Before her was something black, rectangular.

What was it? Some sort of hole; a door before the door, but to
where
?

A hole? A deep, bottomless abyss to keep her from crossing the threshold to freedom?

No . . . just black tiles, designed to confuse. Alzheimer’s sufferers saw the color black as a vacuum, an empty space, an impassable barrier.

But it looks so forbidding. So deep. So terrifying.

It’s nothing but fucking black tiles!

She lifted a foot tentatively above the abyss, then pulled back. How could she be
sure
?

She ran her fingers through her hair, perspiring heavily. She took a deep breath.

Would you rather die, or spend the rest of your life in this place? Putting it like that, there really was no choice at all.

She stepped out into the void.

There was a brief sensation of falling, similar to what she sometimes felt shortly before falling asleep. A chill ran the length of her spine.

The room disappeared, as did the doorway, as did the black hole.

Above her was blue sky; below, three stories down, green grass. In her face was a fresh autumn breeze.

Sharon found herself standing on the stone railing of her balcony at the Exeter, inches from death. One of her feet was suspended in the air. Her entire body was leaning forward. She felt gravity trying to pull her like a groping hand.

I don’t want to die . . . please . . .

She teetered, a clumsy tightrope walker, for what seemed like a very long time; the difference between death and life too small to measure. The sudden spark of survival instinct dragged her back from the brink; balance slowly returning, allowing her to inch back, back towards the building.

At last, her fulcrum shifted. Gravity finally became her ally. She fell back onto the hard floor of the balcony, weeping for an hour before she could stand again.

=§=§=§=

It felt nice here, like something from long, long ago; almost, but not quite, forgotten.

This shape was pleasing,
familiar
and had a temperature that did not hurt. It posed no threat; it helped, tried to
understand . . .

But the temperature was rising. Something displeased this shape, frightened it. This was different; this one oscillated, as if it were riding, or suspended in the air.

It began to fade, then returned. Departed, returned, departed . . .

Fear, growing . . .

This one, the soother, was afraid. This one traveled, not knowing the destination, fearing the journey. This one made a great vibration.

And it was terrifying.

Solid forms allowed passage away from this fear, from this
undulation
. Darkness and cold again, obliterating comfort.

Again, solitude.

=§=§=§=

13

Cantrell should have been dreading the meeting, but he wasn’t. The news would be bad—of course it would—but being away from the place had somehow given him a sense of calm that he hadn’t felt in months.

He chose to take side streets instead of the highway, actually enjoying the ride downtown. The leisurely pace gave him a little time to think.

His destination, the office of his lawyer, was still 20 minutes away. The sky threatened snow, and the streets had little traffic in mid-afternoon.

So much had changed since his last meeting with his attorney, when the business of the Exeter was consummated and formalized. That had been a time of excitement,
of creation,
of what appeared to be a boundless future, based on his dream and his hard work.

Now, only nine months later, his entire world had turned as bleak and hopeless as the sky above.

The past two weeks had been the worst. The Exeter had become his Titanic, her tenants the passengers scrabbling for the lifeboats.

Each day saw another departure; another moving van and broken lease. Only a few of them had actually said goodbye. Even fewer had stated their reasons. All of them, however, had the same look of relief on their faces when they exited the front door for the last time. One of them even made a sign of the cross upon heading out into the cold December morning.

They were terrified, all of them, and Cantrell had no problem understanding why: They believed that the building had turned against them, that it had murdered two people, drove another two to insanity; almost killed another. They wondered when their turn would come.

Cantrell knew that he’d been living in a state of hardcore denial about the whole thing. He could no longer hide behind that cloak. Nor could he blithely reassure nervous tenants that everything would be just fine; that everything that had happened in that building was a product of coincidence, imagination, confusion or structural adjustment. Not that he had any better idea as to why the ship was sinking so fast. Was the place cursed? Lousy with demons and murderous poltergeists? The very notion made him want to laugh, but he couldn’t.

Even so, as its captain, its
creator
, he could not desert the Exeter.

§

He parked his car in the bowels of his lawyer’s building and made his way up to the 15th floor, noticing how modern and sterile the building looked in comparison to his own.

Josh Billings looked grim when he rose to shake his client’s hand.

Not a good sign
. But not terribly surprising.

He sat before his attorney, beginning the conversation with a simple question:

“How hopeless is it?”

The lawyer grimaced before replying. Billings asked Cantrell if he would mind if he lit a cigarette.

He’s nervous
. Another bad sign.

“I’m not going to sugarcoat this, Alex,” he began, exhaling a long plume of blue smoke. “Are there any tenants left? Who’s still living in the place?”

“Besides me, there’s only one. Two, actually; a mother and her daughter.”

“I see. Are they staying?”

A look of concern briefly passed over Cantrell’s face.

“I don’t know.”

“Okay then, let’s establish a bottom line: what are your prospects of drawing
new
tenants to the building?”

“Next to nil,” Cantrell laughed. “To be honest, Josh, I don’t think we could draw tenants with the promise of ten years’ free rent. The media has had a field day with all of this. Those who aren’t laughing are scared shitless. The place can’t attract flies.”

The lawyer grimaced again. He paused, as if mustering up the courage to ask his next question:

“Be straight with me, Alex: Does this place have a curse on it or something? Is it fucking haunted or what?”

Cantrell could see that the lawyer didn’t believe any of it. And why should he? He was a black and white guy, interested only in the facts. But when it came to the Exeter, the facts were strictly in the gray zone.

“I don’t know. You’ve read the papers, heard what they’re saying on TV. To be honest, I’ve seen things myself that don’t make any sense. I honestly don’t know what to make of it.”

He looked at Billings directly, skepticism apparent on the lawyer’s face.

“I do know this: whatever it is, it’s real as hell.”

“Okay, Alex. I’m not saying that I doubt you, but let me ask you a question: Is it possible that somebody is setting you up? A prank or shakedown of some kind?”

Cantrell watched Billings’ smoke rise to the ceiling.

“Trust me on this, Josh. Whatever it is, it’s bad, and it’s
real
. I doubted it for a long time, but I can’t anymore.”

The lawyer waited a minute before going on:

“Okay. Let’s leave that for the time being. Let’s look at the practical side.”

He opened a thick file filled with notes and accounting sheets.

“How long can you last? Financially, I mean.”

“Thirty days, at the outside. After that, the reserves are gone.”

“Have you talked to your partners?”

“They’ve all called, of course. I’m trying to delay a meeting, at least for the next few days. I mean, I have no idea what to say to them.”

The lawyer snubbed out his cigarette and bit his lip. “You know we’re going to have to talk to them, Alex. And pretty soon. Do you want me to set something up?”

“Yeah. But
what
are we going to tell them, Josh?”

“The same thing I’m going to tell you. There are three basic options here. The first is the most obvious: We can go Chapter 13; turn everything over to the bank and walk away. Two, there might still be time to sell the place. That is, if there’s anybody willing to buy it after all the shit that’s gone down.