They entered the maternity ward, and suddenly the gurney slowed to a crawl.
“Be quiet,” the nice man whispered. “We can’t wake them.”
Christopher squinted in the darkness and realized where they were.
The nursery.
Row after row of babies. Some in incubators. Most in glass bassinets. All of them sleeping. The nice man pushed the gurney through the nursery like a boat through a swamp. Inch by painful inch. Christopher saw one baby stir as if having a nightmare. Then, another. They started to twitch like the first kernels of popcorn on a skillet. Pop. Pop. Pop. The nice man picked up his pace. More babies twitched. Christopher could feel the room waking up around them. The babies would begin crying soon. Sounding the alarm. As if left on a porch. One baby opened its eyes. It looked around in the darkness. It began to whimper. Another opened. Another. Christopher felt the gurney go faster. And faster. Racing to the other side. The first baby began to cry.
“Waaaaaaaa,” it said.
It woke up its neighbor.
The sound traveled around the room like a pinball, waking up neighbor after neighbor. Baby after baby. The babies began to wail.
“WAAAAAAAAA!”
“It’s the alarm,” Christopher said.
“No. It’s the dinner bell.”
The lights turned on. Christopher saw them. Little babies with glowing eyes watching them. Drooling. Their mouths filled with sharp baby teeth. The babies began to crawl. Out of the bassinets. Cracking the walls of the incubators like serpent’s eggs.
There was nothing left to do but run.
The nice man picked up the gurney on two wheels and raced to the exit. Babies climbed down from the glass and scurried on the floor like little spiders. The nice man crashed through the exit doors and aimed the gurney right at the end of the hallway. Christopher looked up and saw a laundry chute sitting in the wall like an open mouth. He felt the nice man pick up the pace. Three more thundering steps. Then, he climbed on the gurney behind Christopher like the anchor of a bobsled team.
“Hang on.”
The gurney hurtled toward the wall. Christopher braced himself for impact. The laundry chute opened, and in a flash, the gurney went through it like a mat on a waterslide. Twisting and turning in darkness. Christopher screamed. Part fear. Part joy. Like the best and worst of all roller coasters. He looked up ahead and saw something dancing.
A reflection. Of stars. In water.
“Brace yourself,” the nice man said, tensing his body.
Christopher clutched the nice man the way he used to cling to his mother after he saw Dracula. The water got closer. And closer. And then…
SPLASH!
The gurney hit the water like a skipping rock. It sliced through the creek bed, slowing, then stopping. The freezing water felt soothing on his feverish skin. For a moment, he thought that maybe the water was his mother putting ice cubes on his body. Christopher looked up. He saw the shooting stars in the night sky and the stones of the billy goat bridge.
They were back in the Mission Street Woods.
“What was that?” Christopher asked.
“Escape tunnel,” the nice man said. “We have to get you out of here. They can see you at night.”
The nice man is…
The nice man is…terrified.
“Hi, Christopher,” the voice said.
It was the man in the hollow log. He was standing. Wide awake. His eyes black as coal. His face still scarred from the time Christopher saw the deer eating it.
“I’ve heard so much about you,” the man said.
Then, he lunged at Christopher.
“Get me out of this!” he screamed.
The nice man grabbed Christopher’s arm and ran. The man in the hollow log dropped and rolled after them. The nice man took a hard turn down a narrow trail. The man in the hollow log was about to run over them when he hit a thicket of branches and stopped like a fly in a web. The nice man jumped Christopher through a small space in the trees. Christopher heard the man in the hollow log’s screams echo through the woods.
“GET ME OUT OF THIS!”
“He’s sounding the alarm. Others will follow. Go!”
Christopher and the nice man reached the clearing. They raced to the tree house.
“How did you find me?” Christopher asked.
“Your mother,” the nice man said. “She was right there with you. I just followed her light. She promised to get you out of here. And that’s what I’m doing.”
The nice man helped Christopher to the tree. It was warm like a mug of his mother’s coffee.