Destroyer 126: Air Raid by Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir

Author:Warren Murphy & Richard Sapir
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

The sunrise was new.

He had been in this place many times now and it was always night. But there it was. Or nearly was. Although the sun had not yet actually peeked over the horizon, Mark Howard knew on some instinctive level that it was coming even as he walked along the empty Folcroft corridor.

Through the closed and barred windows he could see the sanitarium grounds bathed in the purple of predawn. The same color streaked the sallow sky.

It was always winter in this place. It remained the same even as the rest of the world enjoyed the change of seasons. Dark shadows painted the land. The tree trunks were arms, their dead branches fingers. Grasping, clawing for the dawn that had been so long coming. Finally, almost here.

Mark was used to the dream by now. It had started the first week he'd come to work at Folcroft. For months it was a nightmare, but he'd had it so frequently now that he had built up a callus in his mind.

When he passed the same window at the end of the hall, the same owl sat in the same branch of the same tree. Its eyes glowed the same color as the sky and the land. He saw for the first time that the swollen moon was gone.

Mark was looking out the window when, with a loud hoot, the owl suddenly flapped its big wings. His heart tripped when the night bird took flight. It vanished in the pale darkness of early morning.

That was new, too. He had gotten used to everything being the same. The changes in the dream this time were bringing back some of the earliest feelings of dread.

He pulled his gaze from the window.

Mark could see now that the hallway was not as misshapen as it usually was. The angles were normal, not twisted. The lines of ceiling and floor led straight to a single door at the far end of the dusty corridor.

It was like any other hospital door at Folcroft. Wires crisscrossed the off-center Plexiglas window. The Beast lived beyond that door. For a year now Mark had almost glimpsed it in his dreams. It was a thing that lived on fear and in shadow. It played at the fringes of his unconscious mind, never stepping into the light, never taking a form that Mark Howard could fully understand.

He was only happy that the Beast was trapped. The door was a prison that kept it locked away.

As Mark approached the heavy door, he expected to feel the chill that always came at this point in his dream. Along with it, the same inhuman rasping voice he always heard.

They never came.

More changes. A corruption of the familiar that made all of the old terrors seem as fresh as that very first dream all those months ago. His steps growing more cautious, Mark approached the door.

Before he even reached it, he saw that it was ajar. Another first. A small security chain hung slack in the space between door and frame.

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