Page 67 of Going Home in the Dark

“It shames me even to let the doctor look at it.”

“Then we’ll talk about something else.”

“I will tell you it’s the big toe, and it’s the one on my right foot. But that’s all I’m saying, so don’t ask to look at it.”

“What you’ve said is more than enough to satisfy my curiosity,” Rebecca lied. “That was very sharing of you.” The look she shot Bobby was meant to say,Help me with conversation here.

The Sham stood with his back to the window, leaning against the sill, backlighted by the dazzling orange radiance of the late-day sun. “I’ve been wondering how many of those helium balloons would have to be tied to Butch to lift him off the bed.”

Butch beamed. “So happens I have the calculations. A friend did research. One balloon lifts three ounces. I weigh two hundred fifty pounds. That’s four thousand ounces. Assuming every balloon lifts the same, you need one thousand three hundred thirty-three balloons. It would be kind of fun, but I don’t think it’s worth the cost.”

To Rebecca, Bobby said, “That’s all I’ve got.”

She was spared from having to pick up the conversational ball when Spencer threw open the door. He bounded into the room and declared, “I found it! It’s at the end of the southeast wing.”

Bobby put a finger to his lips, and Rebecca covered her mouth with one hand, and Butch said, “Found what?”

“Uh,” Spencer said. “Well. Found. You know. The bathroom. The public restroom.”

“There’s a bathroom right here,” Butch said, indicating a door at the far end of the room.

“Well, but that’s your bathroom.”

“They don’t want me on my toe, so I have to use a bed potty.”

“Well, but it’s still your roommate’s bathroom.”

“He’s dead,” said Butch.

Determined not to give up his looking-for-a-restroom alibi, Spencer said, “It’s still his bathroom.”

“What’s a dead guy need a bathroom for?”

Looking as if he had walked into a tar pit, Spencer stood in silence, and everyone watched him expectantly, and at last he said, “It’s a religious thing with me. During the month the person died, I’m forbidden to use the bathroom where the death occurred.”

“He died in that bed,” Butch said.

“Then I’m forbidden to use that bed during this month or any bathroom within seventy feet of it.”

Rebecca waited for Butch to ask the name of this religion, but the big guy had a soft spot for people of faith. “Everybody’s got a right to believe what he thinks God wants him to believe.”

Bobby appeared to be disappointed that the issue had been resolved while it still had a lot of potential entertainment value. He said, “I’m going downstairs to meet the Adorno guy, make sure he doesn’t deliver the pizza to the wrong room.”

no admittance / credentialed personnel only

Bobby had lied about going downstairs to look for the pizza-delivery guy. It wasn’t such a significant lie that he feared being condemned to Hell for it, but he was about to engage in even further deception. From end to end, Maple Grove seemed to be a terrible lie that concealed a sinister purpose. He regretted participating in that dissimulation even by telling little falsehoods in order to find and expose the truth. Some of you might feel his sensitivity in this matter is excessive. However, when it comes to abhorrence of lies and a profound desire always to tell the truth, that’s just how novelists are.

With an anxious expression, Bobby paced back and forth at the end of the southeast wing, as if a loved one somewhere here on the third floor must be in critical condition. When none of the staff was in sight, he drew from his jacket the lock-release gun that he had used at the church the previous night. He stepped to the fire-rated extra-wide door, slipped the automatic pick into the keyway, and pulled the trigger four times until the deadbolt disengaged. He opened the door. An empty room.

He crossed the threshold and closed the door behind him. He had the curious feeling that this room was a machine of some kind, that it currently wasn’t turned on, that it might be a security vestibule where visitors were held until their identity could be verified, and that it would be a very different and frightening space if someone threw the switch to activate it. He could only suppose that his uneasiness arose from an experience he’d endured here years earlier.

He opened another door and crossed the threshold. The chamber in which he stood was large, windowless, and white. Maybe forty feet on a side. The glossy white-tile floor featured four drains, each six inches in diameter, placed like four dots on dice. White tile wainscoting to a height of about four feet. White plasterboard above. Light panels inlaid in the white ceiling. In the far wall, another extra-wide closed door stood directly opposite the one by which he’d entered. As bland a chamber as could be imagined, the place appeared to be a surgery not yet equipped.

He stepped to the nearest drain. Instead of a standard grid strainer, a solid plate covered the mouth of the opening. Yet he knew these four holes must be drains, because he clearly recalled that no coverings like this one had capped them twenty-one years earlier. There had not been grid strainers, either. On that long-forgotten night, they were just openings to ...

Openings to what?

For several minutes, Bobby stood in the center of the room, each hole equidistant from him. He turned slowly, staring at one drain and then at the next—if theyweredrains. He strained to recall more of what he had seen back in the day. He was deeply frustrated, as are we all, that his memory remained locked tight. The far door offered further penetration of the institute but also the chance that he would disappear into its depths, never to be seen again. The longer he lingered, the greater the risk. He stepped out of the chamber and let the door close behind him.

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