The Shimmers in the Night

Three

By the time more of them came to get Jax, his eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow. His skin was pale in a way that scared Cara.

Two men slid him off the bed and onto the gurney, a slim, sheet-covered cot with wheels that rattled loudly. Then they were headed out of the room and other adults were converging on them. Cara practically had to jog to keep up.

She hustled alongside the gurney as Mrs. Omotoso and the men-other teachers, she guessed-pushed it quickly down the corridor; kids popped their heads out of doors to watch the hurrying crowd pass by. At the end of the hallway the group turned and went into a small elevator, angling the gurney in through the narrow door and squeezing in around it, pressed up against each other and the walls; but just a few moments after it had dinged closed, the elevator door slid open again and the crowd was squeezing out, Cara tripping and righting herself in their wake.

And in an instant the Institute seemed like a whole different place-dimmer, older, softer. In here the corridors were more like tunnels than halls; she thought of the back stairways of medieval castles seen in movies. It was incredible that this ancient-seeming place was part of the generic office building: there was dark wood everywhere, shadowy corners and niches, ornate light fittings on the walls instead of fluorescent tubes on the ceilings. Barely lit alcoves housed statues, large amber-tinted oil paintings, and faded tapestries hung on the walls.

"Where are we?" asked Cara, but she was still being rushed along as the teachers concentrated on Jax, whose small, skinny body jiggled inertly as the gurney bumped over the well-worn planks of the floor.

Now the place reminded her of a musty, half-neglected museum, she was thinking as she kept up with them. Set into the walls were endless rows and towers of shelves and cabinets lined with artifacts whose nature she couldn't quite discern.... She tried to hear what the teachers were saying, trying to figure out why exactly they thought they should take Jax deeper into this nameless building instead of calling an ambulance.

Trying to figure out if she should be afraid.

So far the teachers were ignoring her. Jax hadn't trusted them-she wasn't forgetting that. She couldn't. On the other hand, they just didn't feel that sinister. The man on the subway had been sinister, but these people didn't have that vibe. And they had to care enough about Jax to be so serious and preoccupied. Didn't they?

She wondered if the way she felt about things was the truth of them, whether instincts could be trusted more than the reasons you might think of-the reasons why the instincts might be wrong.

Her eyes lit on objects peeking out of wall niches, looming down from high shelves-a series of porous rocks and minerals, one of which bore the curling, weathered label Pompeii; glass cases of fossils and bones; a fancy gold pocket watch with Roman numerals; what looked like parts of antique machines she couldn't identify, convoluted and graceful with spirals and tubes and wheels of discolored, dented brass; and a peeling, faded old painting of a smiling, proper-looking gentleman in a black bowler hat leaning on a walking stick in a leafy, sunlit garden. That picture looked genteel, until she noticed there was a long and hairy tail curling down onto the ground behind him.

They turned another corner. The gurney pushed through a set of heavy drapes, and she followed, silky tassels brushing over her forehead and eyes.

The room behind the velvet drapes was only slightly less dim and musty than the wood-paneled, winding hallways that had led them into it.

What made it different was its airiness, topped by a high, domed ceiling painted with what reminded her-though it was too far above to be seen exactly-of slides she'd seen of the Sistine Chapel. Far beneath the dome, through which a silvery light filtered, was a raised platform. The teachers trundled the gurney around to the side of the platform and lifted Jax on; then they bent over him, talking, and Cara couldn't understand them.