The Devil's Cauldron (22 page)

A vague feeling of alarm spread through him. He was looking at something going wrong. Whatever the man was doing, he was UP TO NO GOOD. If only Wesley were here to explain what. Eric would have to use deductive reasoning. Like Sherlock Holmes.

Then suddenly, he understood. The man was pushing down on Meggie’s face. He must be covering her mouth and nose. Keeping her from breathing. She wasn’t moving, wasn’t fighting back, because she couldn’t.

Eric flew into action.

#

He burst from his room and raced down the hallway to the first of the covered walkways that connected his habitat to the others. His bare feet thumped on the wood, so loud that he was sure someone would hear. He didn’t know if that was good or bad.

What if everyone at Foggy Mountain was UP TO NO GOOD? The bad man and woman were walking around and nobody told them they didn’t belong. Nobody told them they were not nurses or aides or janitors or kitchen staff or administrators. Nobody told them to go away. Instead, they could come and go and murder people. What if everyone knew already?

And so Eric didn’t yell for help. He didn’t know who he could trust.

He reached Meggie’s habitat, and then he got confused. There were five doors in the hallway. Which one was hers? He stood puzzling it over and trying to think which side it would be on to face his own balcony. But as soon as he tried to picture the building in his head it was like one of those impossible jigsaw puzzles with a thousand pieces, all confusing shapes and colors.

“Stop wasting time.”

He threw open the first door and flipped on the light. It was an old lady. She opened her eyes and glared at him. The next one had a girl named Angela—pronounced An-
hela.
She was from Argentina, they said. They spoke Spanish there, too. Angela or An-hela wasn’t who he was looking for. At least she didn’t wake up.
 

When he threw open the next door he knew it was the right one. There was already light in the room, coming from the single bulb on the covered porch on the far side. It reached inside and left the bed and its linens in a soft white glow like from the light of the moon. It was what he’d seen from his balcony.

Meggie lay on her back in the bed, staring up at the ceiling. She wasn’t moving. Her eyes didn’t turn to look at him.

That was called being TOO LATE, he realized sadly. Too late was when they didn’t push the button in time and the bomb went off. Too late was when they pulled the kid out of the frozen lake and the ambulance came and they breathed in his mouth and pushed on his chest. Then they stopped and shook their heads. Too late.

A deep sadness sank into his belly. He didn’t want her to die. The poor woman, trapped inside a prison in her own mind. She wanted so badly to get out and if he had come faster maybe he could have helped before that bad man killed her.

“He suffocated you to death because I was too slow.”

Her eyes moved toward him. He jumped back with a little cry of horror, then let out another cry, this one of joy. The pretty lady was still alive!

“I couldn’t do it,” a man’s voice said.

Eric turned so fast he almost fell. A man stood in one corner, his arms folded and one hand rubbing at his chin. He looked troubled. Guilty.

“You’re a bad man.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have it so easy here. Everything taken care of. Never have to pay a bill or learn how to run a business. Or know anything about dealing with brothers riding your case.”

“Leave my brother out of this!”

“I’m not talking about your brother, I’m talking about mine. They think I’m running the company into the ground. They want Kaitlyn out. Idiots. You can’t get her out.”

“Who is Kaitlyn, the witch?”

“Witch?” He let out a harsh laugh. “Yeah, maybe. Or a devil. Once she gets inside you, you can’t get rid of her. You don’t understand, do you?”

Eric shook his head. He kept himself between Meggie and the man in the corner.

“I didn’t mean to turn out like this, you’ve got to believe me. I’m a good person who sometimes does stupid things. Like that time in college. I never would have slept with her if I’d been sober. And then there were those government contracts in Guatemala. I wasn’t going to pay the bribe. Somehow I did. And this poor idiot who stumbled in here tonight. She knifed him and made me help her throw the body down.” His voice caught and he cleared his throat, like he had something stuck in it. “Then there was Meggie and the cave.”

“What cave?”

“The thing is,” the man went on, sounding shaky, “every single time I get in trouble Kaitlyn has something to do with it. If she hadn’t been there, it never would have happened.”

“So why don’t you go somewhere else?”

“How do I do that? She knows everything I’ve done. One word and I’m ruined. Prison, or worse. That’s why I have to do what she tells me.”  

“Did she tell you to kill the pretty lady?”

The man frowned. “What do you know about that? Yeah, that’s what she wants. And she’ll be back in a few minutes. She’ll want to know what happened, why I didn’t do it. What do I tell her? I have to do it or she’ll destroy me. But I can’t.” He cocked his head. “Maybe you could help me.”

“I’m not going to help you. I’m going to rescue her!”

“That’s what I mean,” he said hurriedly. “You came in and stopped me. I couldn’t do it. Then she’ll have to do it herself.”

Eric stared. This man was even stupider than he was. And what would the witch do to Eric when she found out that he’d got in the way? Kill him, too, that’s what. Stab him dead like she did to Diego. That’s what they called MEDDLING. And bad people took care of meddlers.

“Hey!” a woman’s voice called from below, like someone trying to be loud and quiet at the same time. It was her. It was the bad lady.

The man froze and his eyes widened.

“Benjamin!”

He inched to the open doorway and poked his head out.

“Where the hell is she?” A blue light flashed up from the ground, cutting through the rain and flashing on the ceiling of Meggie’s room. “Throw her down, quick!”

It made Eric furious. That was
Diego’s
flashlight. They killed him. That woman took a knife and stabbed Eric’s friend dead. Then they stole his light.
 

Kaitlyn. That was her name. And his was Benjamin. Stabbers and murderers. He looked at the back of the man’s head with rage building inside. His hands formed fists.

“There’s someone here,” Benjamin called down.

“Who?”

“A resident. I think he heard the noise and came to investigate.”

“What?” Kaitlyn said. She sounded outraged.

“Don’t worry about it. Just some retarded guy. But he interrupted me. You’ll have to come up and help me deal with it.”

Some retarded guy. Some retarded guy.
 

Eric snapped.

He bellowed in rage and charged. Head lowered, he slammed into Benjamin’s back. The man flew forward. The two of them staggered onto the porch and slipped on something wet.

Eric wasn’t a good puncher. Wesley told him to never get in fights, to control his temper. So he didn’t hit people. But he couldn’t control anything now and when he came up he found that he was sitting on the man’s chest. His fists were like hammers and he slammed blows down on the man’s face.

“Get off of me. Kait!”

He was crying for help and Eric remembered the nasty woman down below. She would be coming up. And she had a knife, which she’d already used to murder one person. Eric had to get out of here or he would be the second person.

He climbed to his feet and staggered backward. Blood streamed from Benjamin’s nose, which looked funny, like a Mr. Potato Head with the wrong body part stuck into the middle of his face. It dawned on Eric that he’d been the one to do that. He didn’t feel bad. His hands hurt from punching. He didn’t feel bad about that, either.

Eric ran for the door, then stopped. Meggie lay on her back, still facing toward the ceiling. But her eyes rolled as far to the side in their sockets as they could move, watching him.

“I need to help you,” he said. “But she’s coming. What do I do?”

Benjamin struggled to his knees on the porch. Blood streamed down his face and then Eric saw there was already blood all over the decking. Diego’s blood. It must have run out when they were throwing his body over the edge. That made him angry all over again.

“No,” he told himself, only just stopping himself from attacking the man again. “Help the pretty lady.”

Eric grabbed Meggie under the armpits. He heaved, struggled to get her up over the bed railing, then slung her over his shoulder. He thought she would be heavier. Maybe it was like in the movies, where people got agitated and then lifted up cars and pried open elevator doors. They called that adrenaline.

Whatever it was, Eric had plenty of it. He burst into the darkened hallway and let Meggie’s door swing closed behind him. He turned right. No, that was wrong. Left was back toward his room—that’s where he wanted to go.

He stopped again. “That’s the
first
place they’ll look.”
 

But if he ran toward the main building, the nurses station and all the rest, he’d see Kaitlyn, coming back from outside. And that was very bad.

A door slammed down the hall. Eric stood frozen, Meggie over his shoulder. She wasn’t moving. Why not? Was she . . . no, she
couldn’t
move. Duh!
 

And then, because Eric couldn’t think of anything, and because he certainly wasn’t going to wait for Kaitlyn to catch him and stab him to death, he did the first thing that popped into his mind.

He stepped across the hall to the opposite room, opened the door, and slipped inside.

Eric found himself back in An-
hela’s
room. What a funny name.
 

“Angela,” he whispered. “That’s how they say it in English.”

She was a teenager with shiny black hair and a round, smooth face that looked peaceful as she slept beneath the soft glow of a nightlight. Looking at her, you wouldn’t know she was mentally handicapped like Eric, plus she had to use a wheelchair. Someone said she had spinal beef . . . .something like that. Beefeater? Spinal beefeater?

“That doesn’t make any sense,” he whispered.

Then he shut his mouth and froze. Two voices spoke rapidly in the hallway outside. Eric was behind the door and could pick out their words.

“I don’t know where he went,” Benjamin said. He sounded funny and gurgly. “I didn’t see.”

“Well he didn’t go back my way or I would have seen him.”

“Forget about him. He’s a resident.”

“He’s got Meggie, you moron. Was it the blond kid?”

“That’s right. About my height. Really strong arms.”

“Stop making excuses.”

“I’m not. He broke my nose.”

“His name is Eric,” Kaitlyn said. “Not very bright. I’ll bet he took her back to his room. That’s this way.”

Whew, that was close. Good thing he wasn’t in his room. They’d catch him. Then they’d take out the knife. But when they didn’t find him in his room, what then? They’d keep looking, so what should he do? He could carry Meggie out the other way. Go to the nurses station and ask for help. Hopefully, she wasn’t working with these two bad people.

“Can I trust you here by yourself?” Kaitlyn said in the hallway.

“Why don’t I come with you?”

“What if he’s in the bathroom or hiding out somewhere? We can’t let him get out of the residence halls. Here, take this. If you see him, cut his throat. Meggie’s, too. Don’t give me that look. I’m sure he’s gone back to his room. He’s not smart enough to think of anything else.”

“How will you take care of him without the knife? He’s strong. Look what he did to me.”

“With this,” she said.

“Oh.”

With what? Eric almost forgot everything and looked into the hall to see. Just in time, he remembered. Footsteps thumped down the hallway.

Again, he almost threw the door open. Then he remembered that the man was supposed to stay behind and watch for him. Sure enough, footsteps creaked outside. Benjamin sniffled. Muttered some bad words.

Eric was getting tired. He sat in the chair with Meggie in his arms, like she was a big baby. Her hair smelled like peaches.

Angela hadn’t awakened in her bed, but kept sleeping with a peaceful expression, her face lit by the nightlight above her bed. It was the shape of a clown. Eric didn’t like clowns. Their smiling faces looked like they were hiding something. Like they were UP TO NO GOOD. He struggled back to his feet, still holding Meggie, then reached over Angela’s bed and flipped off her nightlight. There, now he didn’t have to look at the clown.

But the dark scared him, too. He kept seeing Diego slumped over Meggie’s bed while the mean woman shoved a knife up under his ribs.

The rain was letting up outside. Moonlight broke through the clouds and filtered into the room. He carried Meggie out to Angela’s porch where he could see better. There, he made an important discovery. It took a minute before he understood what it meant.

This side of the habitat didn’t face the woods. Instead, it looked up the hill toward the outdoor dining area, the butterfly garden, and the hydrotherapy building. There were no stilts outside Angela’s room, because the building was built right into the hill on this side. There were only stilts on the other side. And that meant her room was only six or seven feet above the ground.

Footsteps and voices sounded in the hall again. There was a hammock on the deck that they must have lifted Angela into from time to time, and Eric lowered Meggie in and whispered in her ear that he’d be right back. He crept to the door to listen.

“Then where did they go?” Benjamin asked.

“Got to be in one of these rooms. Probably close. Wait down by the door. I’m going to search the rooms one by one until I find them. Start in this building and work my way down to the other habitats.”

Eric’s throat tightened. If they started in this building, that meant right here. This room. It would be the first they’d check. He backed toward the deck where he’d left Meggie. This was it. This was how they would catch him and kill him like they did Diego. And they’d murder Meggie, too. What had she ever done?