Night Runner (8 page)

“You can do that?”

He smiled. The muscles on either side of his jaw twitched. He looked strong enough to rip the place apart, brick by brick. “I feel sorry for anyone who'd try to stop me,” he said. Then he slipped the photo of Everett Johansson back into the folder. “Pack a bag,” he added. “Just essentials. Be ready at sunset. I will get here as soon as I can.”

I nodded.

He placed a hand on my shoulder, smiled again, then slipped out the door. I heard him cough again in the hallway. Then his footsteps faded and I was alone.

M
y uncle had said he'd come back at sunset.
Sunset.
What a beautiful word.

Sadly, that was about eight hours away. I wasn't sure I could go back to sleep, so I started fishing under my bed for another set of clean clothes. They were all hospital scrubs. In the end, I decided the only thing I really needed were my books. I picked up
The Hobbit
and started reading. After some riddles in the dark, my eyes started to droop, so I put the book down and fell asleep.

I woke up in a panic about a half hour before dusk. Something wasn't right. My heart was pounding, for one. And the air just felt wrong. Tense. Sort of like the feeling you get when two people start having an argument.

I sat up in bed and looked about the room. Sunlight was peeking in around my blinds so I had to squint. Everything looked normal, but on instinct, I forced myself out of bed.

Then I heard someone shouting. It was coming from the hallway. If you've ever spent time in a mental ward, you'll understand that this is about as unusual as a cow eating grass. This shouting was different, though. It was the nursing staff who were raising their voices, which was rare. I stuck my head into the hall.

Two police officers were standing in front of the reception desk. A man was with them. With the light behind him, all I could see was a silhouette. He stood behind while the nurses and the officers argued. I tried to get a better look at everyone, but sunlight was reflecting off the floor. It hit my eyes like a handful of pins, so I couldn't see anything. Fortunately, one of the police officers raised his voice.

“I know he's here and I need him up now. He's got to be moved right away. Not tomorrow, not in an hour. Now.”

“It's not that simple,” one of the nurses explained. “If you don't take the necessary precautions, he could die. He's allergic to practically everything. Food. The sun—”

“I don't care if he's allergic to his own skin. He needs to come with us.”

Well, as you can imagine, this got my attention. Even with cottage cheese for brains, I'd still have known they were talking about me. Then the man I couldn't see very well stepped closer to the others. He was dressed in an overcoat and he had a cane in one hand. He turned around and saw me. For a split second we stared at one another. When he took two steps towards me, I noticed that he walked with a limp. And even though the sun was bright enough to melt my hair, I could see the scar under his eye. It was like a thick, pink stripe. His eyes widened for just an instant, and then they narrowed as we acknowledged one another.

It was Everett Johansson. And he had the police with him.

I slammed the door shut and backed away from it. My hands and face were hurting from the sunlight that had been bouncing off
the floor and walls. Ten seconds' worth, maybe twenty, and already every inch of my exposed skin was covered in red spots.

I started looking for my uncle's business card. I couldn't remember where I'd left it. As I was rummaging through my bedsheets, I realized it wasn't going to do me any good. The only phone I could have used to call him was at the nurses' station. The house phone in my room worked only inside the building. I was done for. The police were just outside the door, and I had nowhere to hide but under my bed. I was a little too big for that.

I pushed the bed in front of the door and threw my chair on top for good measure. The door opened inward, so that would slow them down for a few seconds. But I had to find a way to hold out for at least a half hour or so. Then, once the sun was all the way down, I could run away. Or maybe I wouldn't have to. My Uncle Maximilian had said he would be here. But the bad guys weren't going to wait, and there wasn't anything between us but a few inches of wood and a single bed. So I did what a lot of people do when they get into trouble and don't have a clue what to do. I looked up.

Footsteps were right outside my door now. I heard a knock.

“Zachary, are you in there?” The voice belonged to Nurse Roberta.

“Zachary,” said another voice. It sounded all crackly. “It's the police. We know you're in there. Please open up. We need to have a word with you.”

The next knock was loud and hard.

“I hope you're decent,” Nurse Roberta said.

I was too frightened to say anything. A few seconds later, someone tried to push the door. It opened just a crack before the bed got in the way. One of the police officers said something in a loud voice and tried to force the door while Nurse Roberta asked me to “Please open up” over and over again. A few seconds later they had pushed the bed back far enough that one of them could slide it completely
out of the way. The chair toppled to the floor. Everett Johansson was the first one in.

“Where is he?” I heard him say.

But Nurse Roberta didn't know. None of them did. I was gone.

P
erhaps you don't believe that I really am a vampire. It is a stretch, I'll give you that. But if you do believe I am a vampire, well, you can't be a numbskull about it, either. I'm not a storybook vampire like Count Dracula. I can't do supernatural. My escape wasn't all that impressive. Check the ceiling of your school someday. Or an office. If it's like mine, it's really a false ceiling. It's made of rectangular foam tiles that sit on a plastic frame. You can poke them up with a broom. Up above, you'll find the plumbing and ducts for heating that run every which way.

That's it. That's how I got out. I just stood on my desk, pushed up the tile, slid it backwards, jumped up and grabbed one of the black pipes hanging overhead. Then I pulled myself up and slid the tile back in place underneath me.
Ta-dah
!

Are you impressed? Maybe not. But I tell you, it was awfully nerve-racking hanging there, hoping the police would leave.

Everett Johansson was furious. “Where did he go?” he asked again.

“I don't know,” the nurse answered. “There's no way out of here but the window, and it's barred.”

The bed was moved and moved and moved again. The mattress was lifted and the sheets pulled off. The room was only about eight feet wide and twelve feet long. It didn't take them long to search it.

“I'll check the next room,” the nurse said.

“No, he's in here somewhere. There's no way he could have gotten out.”

I listened while they moved the bed again.

“Wait a minute,” Johansson said. “Give me that chair.”

I heard the sound of people shuffling around, then the tile underneath me popped up just a hair. That got a reaction. I had to get moving. Pipes ran in every direction. So did the metal heating ducts, but they didn't look as strong. I took my best guess and slid, hand over hand, foot over foot, along the pipes in the direction of the kitchen.

“Get me a light,” Johansson continued. “I can hear him. He's in the ceiling.”

An instant later the tile disappeared. Johansson's head and shoulders rose through the space. He had a small flashlight in his hand.

I got lucky. There was dust everywhere, and the beam of his flashlight didn't penetrate very far into the darkness. He scanned straight ahead first, then on one side and the other. By the time he looked behind him I was even farther away.

“He's heading that way,” Johansson said.

A tile to my right popped up and then disappeared. Then another one off to my left. The two police officers joined the search. The beams of their flashlights lit up the dust all around me.

“Over there,” said a voice. I tried to speed up, but it wasn't easy hauling myself along. Unless I found a way to turn invisible, they were going to catch me.

I kept moving in the direction of the kitchen. I was starting to slow
down because my wrists were getting tired. I was breathing heavily. All the dust made it difficult to get a full chest of air. I couldn't hang on much longer.

Then a tile popped up right in front of me. I waited for the officer underneath me to look up, but he didn't, because someone started yelling at him. It was Nurse Roberta.

“You can't do this!” she shouted. “This is a mental ward. Anything out of the ordinary throws these people for a loop. Our job is difficult enough. Tearing the ceiling apart like this is out of the question.”

I could have dropped to the floor and kissed her. Instead, I slid, as quietly as I could manage, back the way I'd come.

The officer ignored her. He tossed the tile to the floor and removed another. It gave me a better view of him. He was standing on something. A chair, or a ladder, maybe. I thought he might turn his flashlight on me, but he didn't even have it out any more. I scanned the darkness above the remaining tiles. The other officers must have stopped using theirs, too. The beams were no longer shining through the dust. They were simply tearing down the ceiling one tile at a time. Soon, the whole network of ducts and plumbing would be exposed. And so would I.

The officer removed another tile, and another. As the tiles disappeared, more light danced up through the dust. I was going to be in plain view very soon.

Then I heard another voice shouting, “He's in here! He's in here!”

It was Jacob, my red-haired neighbour from across the hall. I could hear him giggling.

The officer in front of me stopped pulling out tiles. A second later, I heard the heavy sound of his feet as they hit the floor. Then he ran off in the direction of Jacob's room.

This bought me a few precious seconds. I considered what to do. The dining hall would still have a few patients lingering in it.

So would the kitchen. So would the common room. There was nowhere I could drop where I wouldn't be seen.

Another voice started shouting, too. It was Sad Stephen. He had chronic depression and came in a few times a year for shock treatment. Sounds horrible, but it might have been working, because he was laughing too, just like Jacob.

“No. I see him. He's in my room!”

I nearly started laughing myself. A few seconds later, every person on the floor who could talk was shouting.

“He's in my room!”

“No, my room!”

“He's in here!”

“. . . right behind you!”

In the end, it didn't make much of a difference. Johansson told his men to go back and keep pulling out the tiles. I felt a twinge of panic until I realized that what he was doing was ridiculous. The ceiling of the first floor was huge. It was going to take them too long. They were never going to be finished by nightfall. But, of course, they didn't know my uncle was coming to save me. They must have thought they'd have all night.

I scuttled back in the direction of the kitchen. My wrists were starting to burn. I couldn't hang on much longer. A few feet away was a heating duct. The metal strips that held it in place looked flimsy, but I was out of options. I slipped my leg over it. The duct seemed to handle the weight just fine. Then I slowly shifted my whole body over until I was settled neatly on top. It made some noise, but with everybody shouting, I don't think Johansson would have heard me if I'd torn the whole thing loose.

Soon the ruckus came to an end. I guess the thrill of screaming “He's over here!” only lasts so long. Shortly afterwards, security and the nursing staff started herding people back to their rooms for lights out.

Johansson and his men continued their work. The bedrooms, the lobby, the reception area, the nurses' station, they were all being done systematically. I didn't care. Dusk was approaching, and my uncle was coming. Or so I thought.

As the police moved closer, I heard the dining room clearing below me. Soon it was quiet, and I decided to make a drop. I slid a tile all the way back and looked down. It was at least twelve feet to the ground.

What was I afraid of? I was a vampire now. Couldn't most of us fly?

I let go and hit the ground with a soft thud. No broken bones. Not even a tingle. I crept towards the kitchen. A few night staff were cleaning up after dinner, rinsing dishes and putting them through the wash. Their backs were to me. Still, I watched for a few seconds to make certain they weren't glancing around. They seemed pretty busy, so I managed to crawl over to the refrigerator without being seen. I opened the door as quietly as I could and grabbed the box of food Nurse Ophelia used to make my brain cocktails.

My uncle had said to pack the essentials. Well, this would have to do. It was time to get going.

I crept back into the dining room, grateful that the lights were off and the area was empty. But the only doors that could get me outside of the building were in the lobby. If I climbed there above the ceiling, which would have been almost impossible with the box I was carrying, I still would have had to drop down right in front of Johansson and his men, assuming they hadn't finished that section completely by now. That wasn't going to get me very far. And even though there were exits at both sides of the building, they were unlocked only if there was an emergency. I had to think of something else.

So I walked to the wall and pulled the fire alarm. Instant emergency.

As soon as it started ringing, I ducked under a table and waited.
Almost right away, the two kitchen staff made their way through the dining hall. Neither saw me. Then I snuck back into the kitchen, grabbed an apron from the wall, tied it around my waist and walked out myself. I thought if I looked casual enough, with all the traffic in the lobby, I'd get out one of the side doors, no problem. I just needed my luck to hold.