Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

Karen finished drying off Jessie’s Tupperware, and then checked on her father again. He’d moved into the cushioned easy chair, and was dozing peacefully. She decided to give Dr. Chang another five minutes with Jessie before going to his office and finding out how she was doing.

She glanced outside her father’s window, and once again focused on that beat-up, old black Cadillac. Was someone really following her? Maybe one of her patients? Most of her clients weren’t a threat to anyone, except maybe themselves. Every once in a while she got a truly disturbed new patient. But Karen sent those to a more qualified specialist.

Some of them didn’t like being sent away.

Karen looked at her dad again. He was snoring now. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.

Grabbing her purse, she retreated down the hallway to the side door, and then out to the parking lot. The cold wind hit her, and Karen shivered as she headed toward the old, black Cadillac. She wanted to get the license plate number. She still had a few connections with the police department from when she’d worked at Group Health Hospital, counseling the occasional crime victim or criminal. She could pull a few strings and maybe get a trace on the plates through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Approaching the car, she didn’t see anyone inside. She wasn’t close enough to read the license plate, but started to reach into her purse for a pen and paper. Then she heard a faint, distant wail, and Karen stopped in her tracks. The siren’s high-pitched cry grew louder and louder.

The ambulance sped up the street, its red flashers swirling on the roof. It turned into Sandpoint View’s parking lot. “Oh, my God, Jessie,” she murmured to herself.

Running back to the side door, she ducked inside and raced down the hallway toward B wing, where Dr. Chang had his office. But as she turned the corner, Karen came upon about a dozen elderly residents hovering outside the TV room. Roseann was trying to get them to disperse. “C’mon now, clear the door, folks,” she was saying. “The paramedics need to get to Peggy, and you’re blocking the way.”

Karen approached her. “What happened?”

“Peggy Henderson fell and hit her head,” Roseann whispered. “There’s blood everywhere. I think she might have had a minor stroke, too, poor thing. Dr. Pollard is in there with her now. Help me get these people out of here.”

Karen glanced in the TV room, and saw the frail old woman lying on the sofa, with the other doctor on staff and a nurse hovering over her. Two bloodstained hand towels were wadded up in a ball by their feet. Pollard was checking her vital signs. Karen didn’t have much time for more than a glance. Two paramedics were barreling down the hallway with a collapsible gurney.

Karen turned to Dwight, a tall, spry 85-year-old who was a bit of a know-it-all. Except for his slippers, he dressed as if ready for a round of golf, in a green cardigan sweater and plaid pants. Among those gawking at poor Peggy, he was the least likely to budge. “Dwight, we need you,” she said urgently. “Could you help me get these people to clear the way?”

The old man relished being an authority figure. “All right, let’s give them some room here!” He kept clapping his hands and poking at his fellow residents’ shoulders and backs until they shuffled aside. Of the dozen or so spectators, two had walkers and one was in a wheelchair. Karen helped corral them down the hallway while the paramedics rushed into the TV room.

In the middle of all the commotion, she saw a young brunette in a windbreaker emerging from a nurse’s station alcove down the corridor. Karen froze. “Amelia?” she called.

The young woman glanced at her for a second, then hurried farther down the hallway. Karen started after her. “Amelia? Wait a minute!” She wondered why she was running away. Up ahead, the young woman ducked into a stairwell. The door was on a hydraulic spring, and still hadn’t closed all the way by the time Karen swung it open again. She heard footsteps echoing in the dim gray stairwell. The walls were cinder block, and the unpainted concrete steps went down to a lower level and then to the basement. Karen paused at the top of the stairs and peered over the banister. She could see a shadow moving on the steps below. “Amelia? Is that you?” she called.

Karen rushed down the stairs, pausing only for a moment when she heard a door squeak open on the basement level. A mechanical, grinding noise suddenly resounded through the stairwell, probably from the boiler. She continued down the steps to the landing and pushed open the door. Karen found herself in a long, dim corridor. Two tall metal oxygen cylinders stood against the wall, along with a broken-down metal tray table on wheels. Someone had left an old rusty crowbar on top of it. Straight ahead, Karen saw the open door to the boiler room. She poked her head in. The room was huge, with a grated floor, a big old-fashioned boiler, a furnace, and a labyrinth of pipes and ducts. She didn’t see anyone. Most of the maintenance people went home at 2:00 P.M. on Saturdays.

“Amelia?” she called, over the din from the boiler.

Turning, she glanced back at the corridor. A set of double doors farther down the hall was gently swinging in and out. She would have noticed if they’d been moving before. Had someone just ducked into that room?

Karen hadn’t been down here since Roseann had given her an employee tour of the place months ago. If memory served her right, there was a storage room beyond those swinging doors. Approaching them, she cautiously glanced over her shoulder at the passageway to another part of the basement. She didn’t see anyone, just two large bins full of dirty laundry.

Karen pushed open the swinging doors, and stepped into the dark, cavernous room. The spotlights overhead seemed spaced too far apart, leaving several large, shadowy pockets amid the clutter. To Karen’s right was a graveyard of broken gurneys, metal tray tables and other hospital equipment. There were also about a dozen more tall oxygen cylinders.

“Is someone in here?” she called. “Amelia? Can you hear me? It’s Karen.”

She studied the rows of boxes to her left, some neatly stacked as high as five feet. But others had been torn open, revealing their contents: toilet paper rolls, lightbulbs, paper towels, soap bars, and cleaning supplies. One huge, open carton held bedpans that gleamed in the dim light. Still more boxes were opened and emptied, lying discarded on the floor.

As Karen ventured deeper into the room, she wondered what the hell Amelia would be doing down here. And if it had indeed been Amelia she’d seen upstairs, why had she run away?

Something crunched under her shoe. Karen stopped and gazed down at the thin shards of glass on the floor. Then she looked up toward the ceiling. The hanging spotlight above her was broken. She studied the line of spotlights; most of them had been shattered. No wonder there were so many dark areas in this cellar room. Someone had made it that way.

“Who’s down here?” she called.

Karen didn’t move for a moment. Her eyes scanned the rows upon rows of boxes, some sections engulfed in the shadows. About twenty feet away, she detected some movement amid the maze of cartons. Suddenly, a dark figure darted between the stacks.

Karen gasped. It looked like a man in black clothes, with a stocking cap on his head. She hadn’t seen his face; he’d moved too quickly.

Her heart was racing, and she started to back up toward the double doors. She thought she heard something-a faint murmuring.

“Do it now!” a woman whispered urgently. “Get her!”

Karen turned around and ran for the exit as fast as she could. Flinging open the double doors, she retreated down the basement hallway. As she reached the metal table by the stairwell, she paused and glanced over her shoulder. The storage room doors were still swinging in and out. But no one had come out after her.