Peter, of course, was wrong about that. Obsession truly lay with Lucy, but he did not want to see that.

He leaned his head back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment. He felt fatigue running through his veins, parallel to excitement. He understood that much was about to change in his life, that night, the following morning. Within him, Peter pushed away many memories, and he wondered what was next in his own story. At the same time, he continued to listen carefully, waiting for a signal from Lucy.

He wondered if, after that night, he would ever see her again.

A few feet away, Francis lay rigid on his own bunk, perfectly aware that Peter had silently moved past him and taken up a position near the door. He knew sleep was very distant, but death was not, and he breathed in slowly, steadily, waiting for something he could feel was utterly inevitable to occur. Something that was set in stone, planned and plotted, measured out, deciphered and designed. He felt as if he was caught up in a current, dragging him someplace far closer to who he was, or who he could be, and that he was helpless to swim against the tide.

We were all exactly where the Angel expected us to be. I wanted to write that down, but did not. It went beyond the idea that we had simply taken up places on a stage, and were feeling that last rush of anxiety before the curtain rises, wondering whether our lines were memorized, whether our movements were choreographed, whether we would hit our marks and follow our cues. The Angel knew where we were physically, but deeper still. He knew where we were in our hearts.

Except, perhaps, for me, because my heart was so confused.

I rocked back and forth, moaning, like a wounded man on a battlefield who wants to call for help, but can manage only some deep sound of pain. I was kneeling on the floor, the wall space dwindling in front of me, as were the words I had available.

Around me, the Angel roared, his voice like a torrent, drowning out my protests. He shouted, "I knew. I knew. You were all so stupid… so, normal… so sane!" His voice seemed to rebound off the walls, gain momentum in the shadows and then pummel me like blows. "I was none of those things! I was so much greater!"

Then, as I lowered my head and squeezed shut my eyes, I yelled out, "Not me…" which made little sense, but the sound of my own voice contending with his gave me a momentary burst of adrenaline. I took a breath, waiting for some pain to be sent my way, but when it did not come, I looked up, and saw the room suddenly bursting with light. Explosions, star bursts like phosphorous shells in the distance, tracers racing through darkness, a battle in the dark.

"Tell me!" I demanded, my voice raised above the sounds of fighting. The world of my little apartment seemed to buckle and sway with the violence of war.

The Angel was around me, everywhere, enveloping me. I gritted my teeth. "Tell me!" I called out again, as loudly as I could.

Then a softly dangerous voice, whispered in my ear. "You know the answers, C-Bird. You could see them that night. You just don't want to admit to them, do you, Francis?"

"No," I cried out.

"You don't want to say what C-Bird knew in that bunk bed that night because it would mean Francis has to kill himself now, wouldn't it?"

I could not answer. Tears and sobs wracked my body.

"You will have to die. What other answer is there, C-Bird? Because you knew the answers that night, didn't you?"

I could feel spiraling agony throughout my body when I whispered the only reply I knew that might quiet the voice of the Angel.

"It was not about Short Blond, was it?" I asked. "It never was."

He laughed. A laugh of truth. An awful, ripping noise, as if something was being broken that could never be repaired.

"What else did C-Bird see that night?" the Angel asked.

I remembered lying in my bed. Beyond stillness, as rigid as any catatonic frozen in some terrible vision of the world, unwilling to move, unwilling to speak, unwilling to do anything but breathe, because as I lay there, I saw the whole world of death that the Angel had woven together. Peter was at the door. Lucy was in the nursing station. The Moses brothers were upstairs. Everyone was alone, isolated, separated, and vulnerable. And who was most vulnerable? Lucy.

"Short Blond," I stammered. "She was just…"

"A part of a puzzle. You saw it C-Bird. It's the same this night as it was then." The Angel's voice boomed with authority.

I could barely speak, because I knew the words I grasped right then were the same that came to me that night so many years earlier. One. Two. Three. And then Short Blond. What did all those deaths do? They inevitably brought Lucy to a place where she was alone, in the dark, in the midst of a world that was ruled not by logic, sanity, or organization, no matter what Gulptilil or Evans or Peter or the Moses brothers or anyone in authority at the Western State Hospital might think. It was an arctic world ruled by the Angel.

The Angel snarled and kicked at me. He had been vaporous, ghostlike before. But this blow landed hard. I groaned in sudden pain, and then struggled back to my knees and crawled back to the wall. I could barely hold the pencil in my hand. It was what I saw in the darkness that night.

Midnight crept closer. Hours that slowed to a crawl. Night that seized the world around him. Francis lay stiffly, his mind searching through everything he knew. A series of murders that brought Lucy to the hospital, and now, she was just beyond the doorway, her hair cropped short and colored blond, waiting for a killer. All sorts of deaths and questions, and what was the answer? It seemed to him to be within his grasp, and yet was a little like trying to pluck a feather out of the breeze that carried it past him.

He turned in the bunk and looked over to Peter, who was resting with his head down on arms stretched over his bent knees. Francis thought that exhaustion must have finally grasped the Fireman. He did not have the advantage that Francis did, of panic and fear that held sleep at bay.

Francis wanted to explain that it was all very close to being clear to him, and he opened his mouth, but no words came out. And in the silence of despair, right at that moment, he heard the unmistakable noise of the lock that had been opened earlier, clicking shut.

Chapter 32

Peter's head snapped up at the sound of the door being locked. He shook himself to his feet, leaping up, wondering how it was that he could have dozed off and failed to hear muffled footsteps just on the other side of the wall. He slipped his hand over the doorknob and placed his shoulder to the door, hoping, in that second, that the noise that had stirred him was something belonging to some half-sleep dream, and wasn't real. The handle turned, but the door would not budge, and he could feel the deadbolt lock holding it in place. He released the knob and stepped back a single pace, filling with some wild torrent of emotions, something different from fear or panic, distinct from anxiety, shock, or surprise. He had been filled with simple expectations based on reasonable suspicions about how the night would pass, and abruptly he realized that whatever he'd imagined was going to take place had evaporated, replaced with some terrible mystery. He was initially unsure what to do, so he took a deep breath, reminding himself that more than once he'd been in situations that demanded calm when all sorts of danger suddenly buzzed about his head, or tugged at his clothes. Firefights when he was a soldier. Fires when he was a fireman. He bit down hard on his lip and told himself to keep his wits about him and remain quiet and then he thrust his face up to the small window in the door, and he craned his head, trying to see down the corridor. Nothing yet had taken place, he reminded himself, that made this night any different from any other.