CHAPTER ONE

John Hutchinson was asleep. His school books, a writing pad, and several pencils were scattered around him on his bed.

The steel door made a whooshing sound as it retracted into the wall of his room at the Saint Augustine Surrogate Care Facility. He incorporated the sound into his dream. He envisioned a dark figure, edges trimmed by the dim light from the hall, moving across the threshold of his room. The door closed, and the figure almost disappeared. He heard his wardrobe door creak, papers being rustled, then a few minutes later, soft, quite footsteps.

He knew he had to wake up. In the distance he heard a faint whimper. His nostrils filled with the smell of stale breath. He felt a hand close over his mouth and nose. He couldn’t breathe. He realized the whimper was his own.

He tried to break free but couldn’t. Everything started to go black.  His fingers ran across the sheets and plunged into the pile of books and papers. He grabbed a pencil and jabbed at the intruder and felt the splatter of warm blood on his face. He stabbed again. The intruder stood up, flailing his arms and knocking over a shiny black desk lamp that rang as it hit the hard tile floor. John Hutchinson was now fully awake.

Across the hall, John’s best friend, Taylor Guilford, heard the noise and sat straight up in bed.

The intruder, staggering, put both hands around his neck trying to stop the blood spurting between his fingers. His eyes widened, and he whirled in front of the closed door. The light from the window illuminated his face. It was the superintendent of the facility. John froze. The door opened. The superintendent stumbled into the hall.

Taylor got out of bed and jumped to his door. He wiped the sleep from his eyes and pressed his face against the small window. In the hallway, the superintendent wobbled and began to fall. Reaching out with both hands to catch himself, his left hand pressed against the activation pad for Taylor’s door. The door quickly moved sideways into the wall. Taylor spilled into the hallway just as the superintendent was falling through the doorway. They crashed into each other. Taylor, still half asleep, instinctively pushed him away. The superintendent lost his balance and fell backward. The back of his head hit the floor with a dull thud. His eyes were open, fixed on the ceiling. He didn’t move. A pool of maroon blood leaked out from behind his head creating a thick, dark, velvety-like puddle.

Taylor looked up from the superintendent’s body to see John standing in the doorway of his room, shaking.

“What’s going on?” asked Taylor.

“I don’t know. I was asleep. I mean, I really don’t know. He was just there. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know who it was. I stabbed him with a pencil. Twice.”

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Taylor, taking short, quick breaths in between words. Beads of sweat appeared on his forehead.

“How?” said John, starting to panic.

“Help me,” said Taylor, grabbing the superintendent by the collar and pulling him toward the staircase door.

Together they dragged the body behind them through the door and down the stairs. A smeared red streak of blood marked the path of their retreat.

At the bottom of the stairs, they exited the stairwell into the small front lobby of their dormitory. They propped the superintendent up and slapped his hand against the activation pad for the exterior door. The thick glass door swiped into the wall.

A woman said, “Goodnight, Mr. Dorney.”

They whirled around to see who was there. Instead, they saw a small speaker on the wall next to a ten-digit keypad.

The boys dropped the superintendent. A scanner picked up their images as they started toward the door.

“Visual confirmation rejected. Voice recognition, please,” the speaker said. They looked at each other.

“Voice recognition, please, ten seconds.”

John cleared his throat and moved in close to the speaker.

“Goodnight,” he said in the deepest voice he could muster.

“Unrecognized,” said the speaker.

“Voice recognition, please, five seconds.”

“You try it.”

“Goodnight,” said Taylor.

“Unrecognized. Voice recognition unsuccessful. Please enter manual code.”

John rushed to the keypad and randomly pushed buttons. The entrance door started to close. Taylor grabbed John by the arm and dove through the shrinking opening. They rolled onto the hard concrete sidewalk and popped up onto their feet. The alarm sounded. They ran across the parking lot and started down a steep slope leading to the creek. They slipped on the wet grass and then scrambled to their feet as the sound of the alarm chased them. Lights on the side of the building started to flash. Red then green, red then green.

Reaching the bottom of the slope, they ran fast on the path that paralleled the winding creek. With every other step they anxiously looked back over their shoulders. The wail of a police siren cascaded over the hill.

“That’s not good,” said John.