Castle on the Edge (6 page)

“Yes, but maybe we’ll run into Doctor Calloway on our way down, or, he’ll be in his office when we get there, Alex.”

“You may be right. Let’s go.”

The Search

Doctor Lederer and I went to Doctor Calloway’s office, but we didn’t see him on the way. When I opened the door, the room was still empty with the blinds and curtains closed. The air was more stifling than before, if possible, because now I could barely breathe. How strange. Since we were in here only a few hours ago, it was like a Hermetic tomb. This time I went up to the curtains and pulled them widely apart, raised the blinds high up, then unlocked and pushed open the center window, all the way out. The sunlight burst in like a tidal wave and a soft westerly breeze filled the room with a combination of scents from the surrounding pine trees and the salt air from the sea.

I inhaled Neptune’s nectar deeply, several times. I heard Doctor Lederer’s nasal gulps competing with mine. “Ah, that’s much better,” I said.

I proceeded to open the second drawer of Doctor Calloway’s desk. It was where he’d told me he kept the ring of master keys, but they were not in there. Then I went through all his desk drawers and still couldn’t find them. Doctor Lederer and I continued to look around the room, in the file cabinet, on the bookshelves, behind the books, in his cloakroom, even, in the vase holding the limp American Beauty roses on top of his desk. They were nowhere to be found.

By that time it was three o’clock. I said to Doctor Lederer, “I’ll call Mary. Maybe she’s seen Doctor Calloway in the last couple of hours.” I picked up the in-house phone that automatically connects to the main floor switchboard operator, to page Mary and have her call me in Doctor Calloway’s office.

Within half of a minute Mary rang. When I told her that I still hadn’t been able to locate Doctor Calloway, she replied with the same news on her end. I told her that the third floor green room door was locked, and about the missing key and missing spare ring of keys for that floor, and that Doctor Lederer and I were back in Doctor Calloway’s office looking for the master set of keys, which were missing as well.

“That’s strange,” she said with a sense of curiosity, “as I was walking past that door, I thought I heard something inside.”

I was taken aback upon hearing this and Doctor Lederer could also see I was troubled with some new situation, by the expression on my face. So after a slight pause, I rebounded by asking Mary, “What kind of noise do you think you heard?”

“I’m not exactly sure; but I knew it wasn’t voices. It was very brief.”

“Just try to relate the sequence of events,” I said.

“Well, as I was walking past the door, I thought I heard some kind of a thump. So I immediately stopped to listen, because I figured Doctor Calloway might be in there with the new patient. But, I didn’t hear any voices—then I heard the thump again, but this time there was another sound after it.”

“Please tell me, what was the other sound?”

“Well, it was sort of like…sort of like…”

“Yes, yes; go on,” I said impatiently.

“Well, it was like something being dragged…dragged along the floor, I believe. Then there was another thump and then the dragging sound again. In other words, I heard a thump, a drag, a thump, a drag. I heard it three times like that; then it stopped. I waited for about thirty seconds then I knocked on the door; there was no answer. Then I called out—still no response. Then I turned the doorknob, and as I was about to push it in, Nurse Jenkins ran up to me. She said Miss Hopkins was having another violent encounter with Mister Strutmire, in the recreation room and she needed my assistance at once. So I stopped what I was doing and attended to the immediate crisis.”

“Wait…wait, you said you were ‘pushing it in,’ was the door unlocked?” I asked with focused attention.

“Yes. I was about to go in when Nurse Jenkins approached me.”

“And what time did this happen?”

“Not long ago. When I heard it—you’ll have to excuse me now, Alex, this battle between Miss Hopkins and Mister Strutmire is still smoldering and…”

“That’s all right, Mary. I’ll talk to you later,” I said and hung up the receiver.

I told Doctor Lederer the latest developments. Then we hastily made our way upstairs to the previously locked, but now apparently opened green-room door on the third floor. As I was about to open it, Doctor Lederer grabbed my hand, put his finger on his lips and whispered, “Wait, Alex, I think you should listen at the door first…very quietly, very attentively and don’t talk. Listen.”

I put my ear on the door. I couldn’t hear anything inside. I waited for a minute. Doctor Lederer was looking up at the transom. Then he pointed his finger and again whispered to me, “Alex, it seems to be lighter in there now, more than when we were here earlier. Isn’t that strange? I mean, I take it that this room has a window?”

“Yes,” I answered. Why do you ask that now?”

“Well, since the room faces east, there would be a window on the east side, right?”

I got what Doctor Lederer meant when I looked at the transom. Since the sun rises in the east and sets in the west and the fact that the window was on the east side, so normally, it would indicate that there should have been more light in there this morning, and less light in there now but it was lighter in there now.

“There must be a light on in there,” I said.

“That would be my guess, Alex.”

I put my hand on the doorknob, turned it and pushed it open. This time it was unlocked. Upon entering the room it looked quite normal except that the lamp on the nightstand by the bed was on. It accounted for the light Doctor Lederer had seen through the transom. Obviously someone had been in this room since we were standing on the other side of the previously-locked door. The question is who? The room had been vacant since Mister Lunsford left three months ago. Nevertheless, we looked around the room and there was no sign of anybody having been in it. While I looked in the closet, Doctor Lederer was going through the chest of drawers and the dresser. Except for several clothes hangers, the closet was empty. Doctor Lederer found nothing in the dresser drawers either. I opened the two drawers of the nightstand; there was only the Gideon Bible in the top drawer, which all the rooms have. We even looked under the bed—nothing, save for some dust.

After our thorough combing of the room, Doctor Lederer looked at me and said with concern. “Alex, something bizarre is happening and I think it’s going to be dangerous.” Now, I was really getting unnerved because for the first time I saw in Doctor Leader’s eyes, the frozen look a deer has when it stands in the middle of the road, not moving away from an oncoming car.

Trying to rationalize the situation, I said to Doctor Lederer, “Mary heard someone in here within the last half hour and whoever it was, left the light on. And the door that was locked before is now open. There has to be an explanation about this room, the missing keys, and the new patient and Doctor Calloway’s evasiveness and disappearance.

Doctor Lederer looked me straight in the eyes, almost hypnotically, and murmured, “Don’t you feel it, Alex?”

“Ah…feel what, Doctor Lederer.”

“The atmosphere, Alex, the heavy, quiet atmosphere like the silence before a great earthquake, or storm.”

“I know I’m very distressed. So I’m going to search every corner of this sanitarium, inside and out.”

Doctor Lederer responded affirmatively, “Yes, we must do that, Alex,”

Pointing to my wristwatch, I said, “Look, Doctor Lederer, it’s almost four o’clock. It will be dark in an hour. I think we should go outside and search the grounds—now, while we still have some light left.”

Doctor Lederer agreed and we were on our way to search the grounds. The Castle was completely surrounded by a silver-barred metallic fence with an ornate Victorian design, which stood eight feet tall and was fifty feet out from the structure itself.

The main gate was on the west end and always posted with a watchman.

It was killing two birds with one stone, because Doctor Lederer and I were not only looking for Doctor Calloway, but I was giving him the tour of the outside grounds that the now missing Doctor Calloway, was supposed to do this morning. We exited the building and walked fifty feet west to the front gate. I asked the watchman if he had seen Doctor Calloway today and he replied that he hadn’t. I told him if he should see the doctor to call the switchboard, immediately.

Then Doctor Lederer and I began our search in a clockwise direction around the fenced-in section. The area itself was filled with an impressive array of foliage. Shrubs, vines, flowers of many varieties, sheltered by an evergreen hedge with a maze design, which snaked around the grounds. Although high, Mrs. Dudley’s husband kept the hedge well manicured.

Along the circular path, and placed all the way around the Castle, was an assortment of benches, for patients and visitors to sit on.

The adobe-walled carport with its two dark-brown wooden doors and red-tiled roof was adjacent to the Castle’s north side. The Moorish-style fountain was situated between the front of the structure and the main gate. It had three jets that spouted up geysers to a fleur-de-lis-shaped fall. It crowned the idyllic atmosphere with serene trickling, as it was competing with the wind rustling the boughs of the tall scented pine trees, which stretched up and out one hundred and fifty feet west to the precipice that dropped to the sea below.

There was no sign of Doctor Calloway and it was starting to get dark. Doctor Lederer could see I was beginning to panic when I said to him, “I think I’d better call the Sheriff.“

“Wait, we still have some light left, Alex. I think we should take a quick look around the area on the outside of the gate before you call the Sheriff. We might find something. I should also like to walk to the cliff...it’s only one hundred and fifty feet from the gate, you said?”

“Yes, one hundred and fifty feet. Maybe Doctor Calloway is injured somewhere out there. This path leads to the cliff.”

Much of the landscape outside the gate was inundated with all kinds of wild shrubbery. The intertwining moss and close-grouped live oaks and pines, would make it easy for someone to get lost. There were only two hikers’ paths on either side of the narrow main road and one led west to the cliff. Since we had less than a half hour of daylight left and Doctor Lederer wasn’t familiar with the area, we proceeded on the rough path to the cliff, staying together. I called out to a possibly injured Doctor Calloway, which yielded no response. When we got to the end, there was a vertical drop of three hundred feet down to the sea below.

The waves were brutally attacking the jagged rocks and quickly climbing higher as the tide came in. My high state of fear was now competing with the high tide of the ocean below. If Doctor Calloway had gone over the edge, he would surely have perished. Even if he’d landed on the rocks, his body wouldn’t have lain there long, because of the powerful force of the waves. They constantly washed over the rocks and would have taken him out to sea in a manner of minutes, if not seconds.

I looked at my watch, then said frantically, “It’s almost five o’clock and Doctor Calloway has been missing since eleven, six hours, at least…maybe seven because we last saw him at ten. And if he did go over the cliff, it could have been anytime after ten. It’s almost dark. We must get back to the Castle so I can phone the Sheriff.”

“You’re right, Alex, we’d better move before it becomes pitch black.”

Doctor Lederer and I raced back toward the Castle and because caution was sacrificed for time, we both received an abundance of bumps and scrapes from the many trees and branches overlapping the path. As we approached the west gate, I could tell by the anxious expression on the watchman’s face, we were about to learn some new development.

“Any news about Doctor Calloway?” I asked the watchman, with a focused anticipation for his response.

“No news about Doctor Calloway but our outside telephone communication is out. It went out about half an hour ago, after you and Doctor Lederer went out the gate.” He went on to tell me, the in-house line was working and Miss Holden had left word for me and Doctor Lederer, to go to Doctor Calloway’s office as soon as we returned from our search.

As we were heading toward the Castle, I looked through the open doors of the carport and could see the hospital car parked inside. Harper must have returned and still be in there, I thought, so Doctor Lederer and I went in, no Harper.

As we looked around, everything appeared normal, although it was very curious that Harper would leave the doors wide open like that. We left the carport and I closed and locked the large double doors, then the two of us went directly to Doctor Calloway’s office, where Mary was waiting.

“Did you find Doctor Calloway?” Mary said to me as I was about to ask her the same thing.

“No sign of him anywhere. Doctor Lederer and I searched the inside grounds and then we took the west path to the cliff. I fear he might have fallen over the edge. I wanted to call the Sheriff but the watchman told me the outside phone line is dead.”

“Yes, it’s been out for over half an hour; and some other strange things have been happening all day and…”

“I’ll take the car into town and get the Sheriff myself.” I interrupted.

“Wait, Alex,” Doctor Lederer, said, “what about the other hiker’s path, where does that one lead to?”