The Arrival | The House of Voices #3

Seventeen - List

List

 

Darren:

Dr. Larkson wasn’t in the institute for most of the morning. She’d called in sick, Patty told Darren, and rescheduled her sessions with Jakob and Bethany for later in the evening.

This suited Darren fine, because he couldn’t ignore the nagging feeling in the back of his mind for much longer. He needed to know who she’d been speaking to last night. He strongly suspected that it was probably just Dr. Lipnicki, but he needed to be sure. Which is why, after he wrapped up his sessions with Sid and Kara, Darren snuck into Larkson’s office, hoping to find out what exactly she was up to.

He snuck into her office at twelve-fifteen, when all the nurses and patients were downstairs in the kitchen, having lunch. The door squeaked open, the wood at the base lightly scraping the unvarnished hardwood floor.

Shutting the door softly behind him, Darren took the room in, not surprised to note that she’d actually cleaned up after her tantrum last night. She couldn’t have anyone finding out about it, could she? If he hadn’t been searching for the signs, he wouldn’t have even known that something had happened last night.

But her usually neat desk was slightly cluttered, the pen holder and paperweight that had sat in the corner were missing. The framed diplomas and certificates that she displayed proudly on the wall behind the patients’ couch had been taken down. Darren noticed a few shards of broken glass on the floor by the sides of the couch. There was a rip in one of the couch cushions as well the little cushion she kept on her armchair. Her desk was missing its little green lamp.

He walked over to the desk and began looking through the various sheaves of papers scattered across it. Memos, letters from the board, her personal notes… Darren couldn’t find anything of use; until he stumbled upon a little notepad hidden under a pile of empty admission forms.

Scrawled in Dr. Larkson’s bad, slanting handwriting was a to-do list. There were five items on the list.

      1. Keep Feltman’s capture out of press. Father may interfere.

      2. Get Lipnicki to get Grimmes’ location from the boy.

      3. Find the girl

      4. Find her

The last item was so badly scratched into the paper that Darren had a hard time understanding what it meant. He squinted at the blue lined paper and, when he finally realized what the scratches said, almost dropped the notepad in fear. 

      5. DRAIN HER.

He felt fear wash over him. Drain her? What did that even mean?

Pulling out his cell phone, Darren took a picture of the list before putting it back exactly where he found it. He shuffled the papers around the way he’d found them, leaving the desk in its original state of disarray as he’d found it.

And then he slipped out of the office and started heading downstairs, typing frantically as he walked.