I Am Phantom (6 page)

The
lights died again. And this time people really freaked.

Let
me tell you, I thought college was for adults. But when it went dark people
panicked like little kids scared of the Boogeyman under their beds. Maybe it
was because the backup generator had just failed, which wasn’t supposed to
happen, or maybe it was because the doctors, who were supposed to be
professionals, weren’t acting all professional and were in about as much disarray
as the students.

Either
way, chaos ensued.

The
huge group pushed against me in one big wave fleeing from the darkness and I
tried to resist getting swept away.

Cody
yelled at everybody to go forward. “Get out of the way! Man, you are all are
stupid! We have to go the other—watch my eyes!”

Somebody
stumbled in front of me and a hand shoved me back through the now open doors to
the treatment area. I slipped on the ground and smashed my elbow against the
floor. From somewhere way ahead of me I heard Cody say, “Drake! Where’d you
go?”

I
scrambled on my hands and knees but only managed to slam my head against the
wall. Hard. The darkness was impenetrable. And the lack of windows wasn’t
helping. Cody’s voice was growing more faint as if the whole tour group moved
away, back towards the front.

I
stood and tried to orient myself, but things had gotten so quiet now I wasn’t
sure if they were still there. The wall ended at another set of electronic
sliding doors, open just a bit. I couldn’t tell if they were the ones I had
come through or not. Obviously they were useless now with the generators off so
it was easy to pull them open and slip through.

It
was even darker, if that was possible. I moved painfully slow, partly to make
sure I didn’t hit my head and partly because any second I expected a pair of
arms to shoot out of the shadows and strangle me. That last thought was a real
downer.

My
feet caught something and nearly tripped me up. I bent down and picked up a
flashlight and swept the powerful beam around me. Now, where was Sykes being
held?

 
The place was deathly silent. That
creeped me out. You’d think there’d be somebody back here, like some doctors or
orderlies.

I
passed through a treatment area. At least I think it was. It looked like a
hospital, with clean white beds held in rows on each wall. Dollies were
stationed in each corner. I couldn’t help noticing the arm and leg straps on
the side.

“Aghh!”

My
flashlight beam passed over another door in the direction the scream had come
from. I carefully pushed the door open and waded into the blackness. I didn’t
hear the scream again, but there were howls and dull thumps echoing up and down
the hallway, like somebody beating their head against the walls. I couldn’t see
farther than ten feet. It would be all too easy to sneak up on me.

I
saw a guard lying unconscious, or dead, in front of me.

Blood
caked his head and stained his uniform but he was breathing. His injury looked
superficial. I rolled him onto his back to get a better look.

The
swirling air was my only warning.

My
instincts took over. A chair, or part of a chair, maybe a leg, clubbed the
ground with a splintery CRACK where I had been crouched a moment before. I
swung the flashlight around and blinded a man holding another chair above his
head. He let out a startled yell and shielded his eyes. The number 1146 was
stitched on his orange jumpsuit.

It
took him two seconds to recover, spin on me and screech like a brightly colored
banshee.

I
did the manliest thing I could think of: ran the other way.

I
heard him stumbling after me. The hallway in front of me was clear and I
flicked off the flashlight so the most he could do was bump off the walls
behind me. At least I was leading him away from the hurt guard.

 
Since it was so dark I had no idea how
far I ran. I think the building was a semi circle because I took a lot of right
turns. I passed another treatment room and finally stopped when I was sure I
was far enough away.

I
heard footsteps through a door to my left. I turned the flashlight on and
peeked inside. It was a small room with a single barred cage at the other end.
There was a man inside the cage. This room seemed much more prison-like than
anything I had seen so far.

“Hey!”
the man said. “You with the flashlight, get over here!” I hesitated. The man
was obviously a patient, and I didn’t have time to mess with him. I needed to
find Sykes and—

“Sykes
escaped!” I froze, then turned back and shined the flashlight into the cell. It
was an orderly, his white uniform practically glowing under my light. “Get that
out of my face, idiot! And get me out of here.”

“I’m
looking for Sykes.”

“What
are you doing back here?” He seemed to reconsider. “Whatever, just get me out
of here. Sorry to ruin your fun, kid, but Sykes isn’t some monkey to gawk at.
He’s a killer.”

“I’m
not here to gawk, I’m here for answers.”

“Is
that right?” The orderly rested his hands against the bars. He seemed to be
thinking.

I
looked over the bars of the cell. “How the heck did you get in there in the
first place?”

The
guard sighed exasperatedly. “I came in here to check on Sykes.”

“And
he trapped you in there?”

“Geez,
are you the freaking chief of police? We had just given him his medication for
the day and I wanted to make sure he wasn’t having a negative reaction to it.
It’s potent stuff.” The guard put his hand to his face, like he was almost too
embarrassed to admit the next part. “I didn’t see him in here so I opened it to
check and…well the door closed on me.”

I
snorted. “Fine. Where do I—”

“On
the wall,” the guard said. He held out a card. “This room has its own power
source, but this should unlock it. Hurry up!”

I
found the panel on the wall and swiped the card. There was a small beep and I
heard the door slide open.

Then
the lights turned back on. The cage was suddenly empty. The orderly stood
inches behind me. A faint smile lay dead on his face as if amused by the whole
situation.

He
wasn’t an orderly. It was him. Sykes. The man who had sent me the note; who had
claimed to be like me.

There
was a body in the corner of his cell, contorted and twisted like it had been
roughly yanked and broken to fit between the bars.

Sykes’
face was angled like a viper; his eyes never left mine, like a predator’s
stare, hypnotizing its prey before it struck. They were as pitiless as a
wormhole, sucking in light but letting none out, and every movement, every
twitch of his bloodied-meat-pink-tinged skin to his fleshy nostrils gaping open
and taking in my smell seemed calculated and prepared. He took off the orderly’s
shirt and I gasped.

His
chest looked as though it had been grated over a barbed wire fence a hundred
times until there was nothing left but raw, pulpy flesh. But the more I stared
I realized the lines had a pattern; they were tallies, though to record so many
of what I didn’t want to know.

“You’re
not much to look at,” Sykes said.

I
couldn’t respond. I was too afraid that any sudden movement would make him kill
me. I could feel the anticipation his fingers held, twitching as they ran
through his smoky hair. Twitching to get around my neck.

 
“I can’t believe you actually listened to
my note. That’s very brave, or very stupid. Or,” he leaned in closer. Even that
simple movement displayed sheer power and litheness, like a cat. Like a hunter.
I wasn’t sure, even with my enhanced abilities, that I would be faster than
him.

“Or…You
really are the same. You must forgive me. I’ve been waiting so long for someone
with my same abilities that I find it a little hard to believe.” He backed away
and I finally was able to step back and take a breath.

“Wait—you
sent the note? You’re the one who got me the scholarship to Queensbury?”

Sykes
smiled wickedly.

There
was no way, and yet I couldn’t help asking, “What do you mean you’re like me?”

Sykes
was looking past my shoulder. I heard men yelling from down the corridor. A
moment of elation overtook me. But it was quickly squashed. They wouldn’t be
able to stop Sykes. And I didn’t want them to. I needed answers and he had
them.

“Hurry
up and tell me why we’re the same. You know—you know what’s happening to
me?”

“How
naive. You really want to know? Follow the sewer on Rines street East until you
reach it. Two days from now. Midnight.” The men were nearly on us.

Sykes
reached back into his cell, his eyes staying locked on me. He grabbed a jacket
and slipped it over his torn up chest, then pretended to tip a hat to the body
in his cell. “Thanks, Frank. Hope a chiropractor can work out those kinks. And
you, kid. Your assistance is greatly appreciated. Two days.”

He
walked to the door marked Rec Yard and easily kicked it down.

Then
he was gone.

And
I realized the man who was like me was completely, utterly, bona fide one
hundred percent bonkers.

Blazes
of light winked over the doorframe. I hurried out of sight to the side of the
door.

Four
orderlies ran in.

“Frank?”
One yelled. Two of them looked outside in the Rec Yard while the other two
checked the cell. I didn’t stick around to see when they found Frank.

I
dashed down the corridor, trying to fend off how sick I felt. Sykes was more
monstrous than I could have ever imagined. His demeanor, his nonchalant
attitude when he thanked the orderly he killed, like the man had simply been a
part of some game he was playing, like his life had never really mattered…

And
I had let him go. I’d had every intention of finding him and getting answers,
but never this. Never letting the killer free.

I
managed to get almost all the way back to where I’d lost the group before I ran
in to a full blown war between the more violent inmates and the orderlies. The
battle was very one-sided. There were way more orderlies than patients so it
wasn’t fighting so much as roughly getting the patients back under control.

I
made it out the door to another corridor and ran face first into an orderly.

“Hey!
Back it up—!” He froze and looked me over. “What are you doing back here?
Aren’t you from that school group?”

“Yeah,
and you need to go back there! Syk—”

 
He roughly grabbed my shoulder and
dragged me behind him.

“Believe
it or not I was headed this way,” I said before shaking him off. “And I can
walk, thanks.” It didn’t look like there were any more patients around. The
part we were walking through was untouched by the mayhem we were leaving
behind. For a second I forgot about Sykes. “What happened?”

“The
doors went out. They were linked to the power generator.”

“Duh.
I mean why did the backup generators go out?”

Somehow
we had arrived back at the front entrance. The orderly turned on me. “That’s
what I wanted to ask you—”

“Hey!”

The
orderly instantly snapped rigid as though turned to stone. Another man had
burst through the front door, police streaming past him. The orderly looked
nervously between the new guy and the mob of police now rushing towards the
back of the facility. “Um…I found him in the back, sir. I was just about to ask
what he was doing.”

Mr.
New Guy glared at me. “This one’s mine.” He pushed the orderly away. New Guy
was sharp, disturbingly sharp. His mustache was sharp, salt and pepper hair
rigid as syringes, hard, cold eyes, pointed police uniform. You get the idea. I
read his name tag:

K. Ryans: Police Chief

“Who
are you?” Ryans snapped.

Geez,
this guy didn’t screw around. I was still in a little shock but when I opened
my mouth Ryans interrupted.

“Stuff
it, kid. Do you have any idea what kind of fiasco this is? Escaped patients and
then you, in the middle of it, wandering around like a three-year-old who’s
lost his mommy.”

Somewhere
under my numbness and guilt, I bristled. “Watch who you’re calling—”

“What
are you doing here? Why did that orderly find you in the back?”

“I
was with the school group from Queensbury University. We were touring the
facility.”

“That
dense group out front?”

Apparently
this guy was a freaking genius because everyone he talked about was beneath
him.

“That’s
them,” I said through gritted teeth. “Now if you’re done—”

Ryans
put a strong hand on my chest and I stumbled back. He didn’t even push but that
brief pressure was the kind from a man who was used to being in complete
control. A dangerous man.

“In
case you haven’t noticed we had a mass breakout of dangerous patients in a
mental health institute. You are a key witness. You will cooperate and answer
my questions or I will arrest you and haul your sorry butt to jail so fast
you’d think you were in a time warp.”