For several hours she made a circuit of the hospital, moving quietly. She was careful; in the dim light she could make out footprints, hundreds of them. She couldn’t tell if they’d been left by Dr. Peters alone or by him and someone else but she was all too aware that she might not be alone.

By the time she’d made it back to her cell she hadn’t found a single door or window that looked promising. Shit. No way out.

Okay, Crazy Megan offers, chipper as ever. At least find something you can use to nail his ass with.

What do you mean?

A weapon, bitch. What do you think?

Megan remembered seeing a kitchen and returned there.

She started going through drawers and cupboards. But there wasn’t anything she could use. There were no metal knives or forks, not even dinner knives, only hundreds of packages of plastic utensils. No glasses or ceramic cups. Everything was paper or Styrofoam.

She pulled open a door. It was a pantry full of food. She started to close the door but stopped, looked inside again.

There was enough food for a family to live on for a year. Cheerios, condensed milk, Diet Pepsi, Doritos, Lay’s potato chips, tuna, Hostess cupcakes, Cup-A-Soup, Chef Boyardee…

What’s funny here?

Jesus. Crazy Megan catches on first.

Megan’s hand rose to her mouth as she too understood and she started to cry.

Jesus, Crazy Megan repeats.

These were exactly the same brands that Megan liked. This was what her mother’s cupboards were stocked with. Here too were her shampoo, conditioner and soap.

Even the type of tampon that Megan used.

He’d been in her house, he knew what she liked.

He’d bought this all for her!

Don’t lose it, babes, don’t…

But Megan ignored her crazy side and gave in to the crying.

Thinking: If a family of four could live on this for a year, just think how long it would last her by herself.

Twenty minutes later Megan rose from the floor, wiped her face and continued her search. It didn’t take her long to find the source of the footprints.

In a far wing of the hospital were two rooms that had been “homi-fied,” as Bett would say when she’d dress up a cold-looking house to make it warmer and more comfortable. One room was an office, filled with thousands of books and files and papers. An armchair and lamp and desk. The other room was a bedroom. It smelled stale, turned her stomach. She looked inside. The bed was unmade and the sheets were stained. Off-white splotches.

Guys’re so disgusting, Crazy Megan offers.

Megan agreed; who could argue with that?

This meant that someone else probably lived here-someone young (she supposed older guys jerked off too but tried to imagine, say, her father doing it and couldn’t).

Way gross thought. From CM.

Then she saw the closet.

Oh, please! She mentally crossed her fingers as she pulled the door open.

Yes! It was filled with clothes. She pulled on some jeans, which were tight around her hips and too long. She rolled the cuffs up. She found a work shirt-which was tight, too, but that didn’t matter. She felt a hundred percent better. There were no shoes but she found a pair of thick black socks. For some reason, covering her feet gave her more confidence than covering the rest of her body.

She looked through the closet for a knife or gun but found nothing. She returned to the other room. Rummaged through the desk. Nothing to use as a weapon, except a Bic pen. She took it anyway. Then she looked through the rest of the room, focusing at first on the bookshelves.

Some books were about psychiatry but most were fantasy novels and science fiction. Some were pretty weird. Stacks of comic books too- Japanese, a lot of them. Megan flipped through several. Totally icky- girls being raped by monsters and gargoyles and aliens. X-rated. She shivered in disgust.

The name inside the books and on the front of the comic books was Pete Matthews. Sometimes he’d written Peter M. It was written very carefully but in big block letters. As if he was a young kid.

Megan looked through the files, most of them filled with psychological mumbo jumbo she couldn’t understand. There were also stacks of the American Psychiatric Association Journal. Articles were marked with yellow Post-its. She noticed they’d been written by a doctor named Aaron Matthews. The boy’s father? she wondered. His bio gave long lists of credentials. Dozens of awards and honorary degrees. One newspaper clipping called him “the Einstein of therapists” and reported, “He can detect and categorize a psychosis from listening to a patient’s words for three or four minutes. A master diagnostician.”

In between two file folders was another clipping. Megan lifted it to the light. It showed Dr. Peters and a young man in his late teens. But wait… The doctor’s last name wasn’t Peters. The caption read: “Dr. Aaron Matthews leaves the funeral home after the memorial service for his wife. He is accompanied by his son, Peter.” Matthews… the one who wrote those articles. So he must have been a doctor here. That’s how he knew about the hospital-and that it would make a perfect prison.

Megan studied the picture again, feeling crawly and scared. The doctor’s son was… well, just plain weird. He was a tall boy, lanky, with long arms and huge hands. He had thick floppy hair that looked dirty and his forehead jutted over his dark eye sockets. He had a sick smile on his face.

Leaving his mother’s funeral and he’s smiling?

So this was his room-the son’s. Maybe Peters-well, Matthews- kept the boy locked up here, a prisoner too.

Her eyes fell to an official-looking report. She read the top page.

EMERGENCY INTAKE EVALUATION

Patient Peter T. Matthews presents with symptoms typical of an antisocial and paranoid personality. He is not schizophrenic, under DSM-III criteria, but he has, or claims to have, delusions. More likely these are merely fantasies, which in his case are so overpowering that he chooses not to recognize the borderline between his role-playing and reality. These fantasies are generally of a sadoerotic nature, with him playing a nonhuman entity-stalking and raping females. During our sessions Peter would sometimes portray these entities-right down to odd mannerisms and garbled language. He was often “in character,” and quite consistent in his role-playing. However, there was no evidence of fugue states or multiple personalities. He changed personas at his convenience, to achieve the greatest stimulation from his fantasies.

Peter is extremely dangerous. He must be hospitalized in a secure facility until the determination is made for a course of treatment. Recommend immediate psychopharmacological intervention.

Stalking… rape.

Megan put the report back on the desk. She found a notebook. Peter’s name was written on this too. She read through it. In elaborate passages Peter described himself as a spaceman oran alien stalking women, tying them up, raping them. She dropped the book.

Tears again.

Then another thought: Her cell! This Dr. Matthews, her kidnapper, had locked her up not only to keep her from getting out but to keep his son from getting in. He was- A creak, a faint squeal. A door closed softly in a far part of the hospital.

Megan shivered in terror.

Move it, girl! Crazy Megan cries, in a silent voice as panicked as uncrazy Megan’s. It’s him, it’s the son.

She grabbed a pile of things to take with her-several of the magazines, file folders about the hospital, letters. Anything that might help her figure out who this Dr. Matthews was. Why he’d taken her. How she might get out.