The Destroyer 138 No Contest by Warren Murphy

Author:Warren Murphy
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780751560879
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2016-09-28T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23

“The natives are restless,” Mark Howard mentioned when they heard another scream from far, far away, somewhere inside Folcroft Sanitarium.

“The man sounds like he is in pain,” Sarah Slate said in concern.

“He’s dreaming. That’s Mr. Fyster. Old man from a rich family, various emotional problems. He’s been here for years, as quiet and contented as you’d imagine. All of a sudden last night he started having nightmares that woke him up six or seven times. He wasn’t the only one. Lots of agitated patients.”

They were strolling the grounds slowly, hand in hand, enjoying the night air. Sarah looked over her shoulder. “Moon’s not full.”

“Sometimes it happens this way—at least that’s what the doctors tell me. Especially in a place like this, without a lot of disturbing and loud patients that you might find in another mental health facility. I guess one of them starts screaming and sets off the others.”

They walked for a few minutes, then Sarah said, “That doesn’t sound right.”

Howard was grimacing. His leg was hurting slightly, but he had a quota to fill. His wheelchair awaited them fifty feet up the brick path.

“What else could it be?”

“You tell me, Mark,” Sarah said thoughtfully.

Mark settled into his wheelchair. “What do you mean?”

“Something is disturbing you?” she said, but she wasn’t really asking. “You’ve got something on your mind.”

“No. That’s not it. Just something—out there.”

“In the trees? In the ocean?”

“Not really.” Was she teasing him?

“In the night?”

“In the world.”

She was pushing him now, along the brick path. “Are you talking about all the bad blood on the news?”

“What are you getting at?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m sorry. I snapped at you. I’ve never done that before.”

“So why did you?”

Sarah Slate, Mark decided, would make an excellent psychotherapist. “When I start feeling like I’m trying to tell myself something, and I can’t figure it out—I get frustrated. I guess I get grumpy. I didn’t realize until just now that I was feeling that way.”

“Mark,” Sarah said, “are we still talking about international tensions, or the patients of Folcroft?”

“I don’t know.”

Mr. Fyster screamed again. As muted and distant as it was, the sound cut through the peace of the evening and the steady hush of the Long Island tide.

A small bunch of bushes near the path rustled in response to the scream.

“What’s in there?” Sarah asked.

“Probably a raccoon.”

She steered Mark down the path, and they both kept their eyes on the bushes. It was quiet now. Maybe the raccoon had fled in the shadows.

When there was another scream, as quiet as the squeak of the wheelchair axle, the bushes shrieked and seemed to be tom apart. Something big took to the air and soared into the nearby trees, shrieking briefly.

“What was that?” Mark asked in disbelief. “Did you get a look at it?”

“Not a good one,” Sarah said. “It was big.”

“Must have been an owl. They get pretty sizable.”

“Mark,” Sarah said, “I think it talked.”

Lois Larson was so old that the birth year on her official documents included a question mark. “I was born on a farm way back up the hills,” she said.

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