Counting Wolves by Michael F. Stewart

Author:Michael F. Stewart
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Publishing House via Indie Author Project
Published: 2017-04-08T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

When we leave the room, I expect to hear sounds of shouting, maybe laughter, but there’s nothing.

Vanet pops into the shower, pretty sure it’s to hide, but it’s not like we did anything really wrong. The washroom’s marked “In Use” already. So to hide I’d have to join Vanet, but he’d get the wrong idea.

It’s then that I turn and see—the door leaving the ward is propped open. I peer out. A huge newsprint-winged fairy thumps down the hall on his eagle-talon cast. The lunch lady walks out of the cafeteria pushing her big trolley of trays and kicks the doorstop away as she passes into the hallway. It begins to shut.

Peter’s loose.

I’m counting to race after him. But this is bigger than me. Fear burns through my stomach.

It’s my OCD.

It doesn’t help!

I run for it, but I only make it to sixty before the door closes. At the end of the hall, Peter has disappeared through a fire exit.

Peter escaped. I check the nursing station, but no one’s there. I can’t decide what to do.

. . . “Nurse?” I call, but cackles of laughter erupt from the rec room and cover the sound. There is no one at the nursing station.

Why would Peter go? The mirror. He needed a mirror to see himself. And what else did he say about the mirror? The witch tells me to jump. The wicked witch. What if I fall?

I race to the rec room door. All the staff is inside except Nurse Abby. Tink and Doctor Balder’s paddles are a blur as the ping-pong ball whizzes back and forth. Staff and patients cheer another point for Tink. She’s really good.

I’m through the door and rush over to knock the ball away. A calm smile spreads across Doctor Balder’s face.

. . . “Peter’s escaped,” I shout. “He went through the fire exit at the end of the hall. I’m sorry.”

The doctor swivels to Stenson. “Call the code.” Then he sprints out the door. We all follow.

Nurse Abby comes out of the washroom to a crowd of patients clustered in the hall, all watching the door close behind Doctor Balder.

“What’s happened?” she asks.

“Code gray,” blares the overhead PA. “Code gray.”

The nurse, her face now matching the color of the code, races to her station.

I slide down the wall and wait on the cool linoleum floor.

Rottengoth, Pig, Tink, and Red mill in the hallway as if not sure what to do. Vanet peeks from the shower door, straightens, and then mingles with the crowd.

“What’s going on, what’s happening?” he asks, all innocent.

Twenty minutes pass before Peter is dragged, wingless and wandless, back through the doors. He’s bawling and looks more clown than fairy.

“I’m a fairy. I’m a fairy,” he cries and then, seeing where they’re headed, digs his heels in and twists around. The security staff—four of them now—lift him bodily and carry him through to the room that I stayed in when I first arrived. Nurse Abby follows them, gripping a needle like a SWAT officer holds a handgun.

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