Page 76 of Middle of the Night

Yes, there was some weirdness, starting with the fact that everyone but she and Margie wore black suits. Joyce assumed it was to emulate Ezra Hawthorne, who, despite founding and funding the institute, made himself scarce. She’d only glimpsed him three times. The first was to welcome her the day she started working there. The second was a week later, when a group photo was taken in the vast entrance hall.

The third time was when everything went wrong.

Joyce technically reported to Margie, who reported to their boss, who had the ear of Mr. Hawthorne. When Joyce noticed something strange, she knew not to ask. That was the first thing Margie told her: Don’t ask questions. Just keep your head down, do what needs to be done, ignore the rest. Still, Joyce couldn’t help but be curious about the odd symbols tattooed on a visitor she was asked to fetch coffee for. Or the strange music she sometimes heard coming from the second floor. Or that time she spent an afternoon typing up transcripts of Rorschach tests conducted on blind people.

“Why would they do that?” she asked Margie. “It’s such a waste of time and resources.”

“Mr. Hawthorne has all the money in the world,” Margie said. “If he wants to waste it on this silliness, he can be my guest as long as he pays me.”

And pay he did. Joyce’s salary was almost twice as much as similar assistant jobs in the pharmaceutical companies that dotted the area. That alone made up for the weirdness. Joyce enjoyed having money of her own. Money she hadearned. She and Fred had a joint account, which she could tap whenever she wanted, for whatever she wanted. Yet she always felt weird buying her husband Christmas presents or birthday gifts with money he had made. So the first thing she did withhermoney was use it to buy Fred a watch for his birthday, which was coming up on the eighteenth.

Ironic, seeing as how it ultimately led to her getting fired.

Not wanting to risk Fred finding it at home, she kept the watch in the top drawer of her desk at work. She had intended to bring it home with her the night before and then drop it off at the engraver’s on her way to work so it would be ready by Monday. Only she’d forgotten to do that, a mistake she realized while washing dishes after dinner. She grabbed her keys and told Fred, “I need to go to the office real quick. I left something there.”

“Now?” he said. “Can’t it wait until morning?”

It really couldn’t. “I’ll be just a minute,” she said, hurrying away before Fred could ask any more questions.

On her way to the Hawthorne Institute, she worried the front gate would be closed and that all this sneakiness would be for nothing. The gate ended up being open, but the institute itself was completely dark and the front door locked. Not having a key herself, Joyce went around to the back, hoping that maybe one of the rear doors was open.

Halfway there, she heard the chanting.

At first, she thought someone was listening to a CD of those Gregorian chants that are inexplicably all the rage right now. But the sound quality was too clear to be coming from a recording.

This was live.

Joyce almost turned around and left. In hindsight, she should have done exactly that. But curiosity got the best of her, and she tiptoed around the corner of the building to see what could possibly be going on.

Sitting in her kitchen in the bright light of day, she gets a chill thinking about what she saw, even though she still doesn’t understand any of it.

The chanting.

The robes.

The blood.

It was all so unexpected and surreal and, yes, terrifying that she almost screamed. Instead, she forced the sound down and backed away—literally bumping into her boss. This time, she did attempt a scream, which was stifled when her boss slapped a hand over her mouth.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he hissed as he pulled her away to the front of the building. There, he unlocked the front door and led her inside to his office, which overlooked the back garden. Although the blinds were blessedly closed, sparing Joyce from another glimpse of what was happening outside, she still heard the chanting as her boss sat her down.

“What did you see?” he asked.

“Not much,” Joyce said.

But it was enough to make her dizzy. So very dizzy. It dawned on her that she could be in shock.

“What were they doing?” she said. “Whatisthis place?”

Instead of an answer, she was told she was being fired.

Now, eighteen hours later, she sits in her all-too-familiar kitchen, still unable to comprehend just what it was she had witnessed. Not having any answers is bad enough, but even worse is how she’s not allowed to tell anyone about it. Not even her husband. Her boss made sure of that when he forced her to sign that piece of paper before escorting her out of the building.

Joyce remembers staring at the sheet, trying to speed-read all that fine print, confused by, well, everything.

“What is this?” she asked.

“An NDA.”

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