Frankenstein

that what he overheard wasn’t evidence of any ordinary crime committed by a mere psychopath. He had heard something more profound, more mysterious, and more terrifying even than mass murder.
    And he didn’t know what he should do about it. If he recounted his experience to anyone, he most likely would not be believed. At seventy-two, his mind was as sharp as ever, but in this tyranny of youth that was the modern world, an old guy with a strange story would more often than not raise suspicions of Alzheimer’s. And when a long-married man became a childless widower, wasn’t he more likely, in his pitiable loneliness, to seek attention even with an implausible storyof the voices of distant victims echoing to him through a maze of ductwork?
    Bryce’s pride restrained him from rushing to share his story with a nurse or doctor who might patronize him, but more than pride fettered him. A primitive survival instinct, of which he’d had no need in decades, warned him that speaking of this to the wrong person would be the end of him and that the end would be swift.
    His shakes subsided. He went to the sink and washed his hands. The haunted face in the mirror unsettled him, and he turned away from it.
    When he stepped out of the lavatory, two nurses had nearly finished changing the sheets on his bed. The breakfast dishes were gone. A pill cup stood on his nightstand, and he suspected that the carafe was filled with ice water.
    He thanked them.
    They smiled and nodded, but there was none of the breezy chat with which most nurses put their patients at ease. He thought their smiles seemed forced. They had about them an air of urgency, not the bustle of women intent upon their work, but an eagerness to be done with the task at hand and to be off to another endeavor that was the true purpose and passion of their day. As they left the room, one of them glanced back at him, and he thought he saw hatred in her eyes and a fleeting triumphant sneer.
    Paranoia. He needed to guard against paranoia. Or perhaps embrace it.

    
chapter
27

    From downtown to Nummy’s neighborhood, the big storm pipe led uphill. The rise never grew steep enough to make them breathe hard.
    Nummy could walk as tall as he was. Mr. Lyss was a little too tall for the drain, but he always stooped anyway, even in the open, so he didn’t bump his head.
    Because of the way he stooped, Mr. Lyss sometimes reminded Nummy of a witch he’d seen in a movie, bending over a giant iron pot as she mixed up some magic soup. At other times, Mr. Lyss made Nummy think of old Scrooge in a different movie, mean old Scrooge hunched over a pile of money, counting and counting.
    Mr. Lyss never reminded Nummy of any nice people in the movies.
    At any time, having a flashlight was a good idea when you used the storm-pipe shortcut, but you could get by without one during the day. Evenly spaced street drains overhead, covered with gratings, made waffles of sunshine on the floor.
    Between the sunshine waffles, the dark was plenty dark enough for Nummy, but there was always another waffle ahead.
    Smaller drain lines opened into the main one. Nummy couldn’t always see them, but he could hear his footsteps echoing off to the left or right when he passed another pipe. If Mr. Lyss cursed the dark just then, his words spun away, hollow and spooky, into other parts of town.
    Sometimes when Nummy was in the storm pipe alone, he felt like something lived down here—something not someone—but he didn’t know what it might be, and he didn’t want to find out. When the feeling got really strong, he stayed out of the storm pipe for weeks.
    A few times, when he had a flashlight, he saw a rat—once dead, three times alive. Never more than one, no packs of them. Anyway, rats weren’t the unknown thing that maybe lived down here. Each time Nummy saw a live rat, it seemed to be running scared from something, and not from him.
    No rain in two weeks meant the pipe was dry. There wasn’t a bad odor right now, only the smell of concrete all around.
    As he had done before, close behind Nummy, Mr. Lyss said, “Don’t try running away from me.”
    “No, sir.”
    “I’ve got a bloodhound’s nose.”
    “Like you said before.”
    “I’ll track you down by smell.”
    “I know.”
    “And tear your guts out.”
    “I never would leave you here, sir.”
    “I’ll wrap your guts around your neck and strangle you with them. Would you like that, Peaches?”
    “No.”
    “I’ve done it