Ch.13 The Face at the Window

Wilton Read's Institution for the Criminally Insane was not exactly what Travis had expected. Of course as he walked into the seemingly abandoned building he didn't know what to expect; a skeletal figure of a dead nurse sitting behind a steel desk with cobwebs covering her bones and spiders residing in her ribs...maybe. But, whatever it was that he did expect, this institution did not fill it.

To his surprise, he was rather impressed by the cleanliness. Not a cobweb could be seen, not a single spider scurried across the floor and if there was a skeletal figure to be found, Travis could not see it.

What he did see went against all his logical reasoning. The building was not abandoned as he had previously thought. There were only a handful of people around him and passing him in the halls but there were people and Travis had to stop himself from staring as he passed them in the well lit corridors.

"Stop staring." Adadora grabbed his t-shirt and pulled him along. "We have a place at the end of the hall and if you would stop gaping at everybody we see, we might get there before the sun rises."

Travis did stop staring but he couldn't help but notice that everyone in the hallway stepped aside allowing them to pass. It was if Adadora was someone of utmost importance here and everyone else knew who she was. A few of them even saluted her.

They continued down the hall taking a left here and another left here and going up two flights of stairs and a left then a right and another right and before Travis knew it, he had no idea where he was or how to get back to the front door. He was completely and hopelessly lost.

"Are you lost yet?" Adadora stopped at a door at the end of the hall and turned around.

He did not want her to know, to see how helpless he really was. "No. I have a great sense of direction."

Adadora laughed. She wasn't fooled. "I think you are the worst liar I have ever met. To begin, you were literally grinding your teeth. And you twitched. Just faintly but I did not miss it." She unlocked the door and held it wide open. "I am going to leave you here for a moment. I have...some business to attend to. Never fear, I won't be long."

Once she closed the door, Travis found himself engulfed in darkness. There was little light to see by and Travis groped in the dark along the wall for a light switch or a lamp or something. But his search proved worthless. There wasn't enough light shining through the open window to be very helpful, but what little light there was revealed a face, a persons standing behind him. And Travis froze. It wasn't Adadora's face. It was a man's face.

"So...do you trust her? No, don't turn around. It'll be easier if you don't see me."

Travis remained where he was. He couldn't see specific features of the man's face but he had heard that voice before.

"What do you want with me?"

"I don't want you exactly. But you and I, we have a mutual friend. And she is keenly interested in you. And I do want to know why."

That was a question Travis had been asking all day. "If I knew, I wouldn't be here. And I don't think I'd want to tell you."

"Ok. That's all I wanted to know. Now the question still stands. Do you trust her? And the answer I want to hear is...no. Will you give me the correct answer?"

Travis clenched his fists. Trust wasn't something everyone threw around the table the way they threw around money. And he didn't trust anyone.

"I don't have any reason to trust you."

The face at the window shrugged. "Oh, well. At least I tried. That makes my job a little easier. You can call me Wedge."

Author's Note: For reference to Wedge read the chapter entitled "Wedged into Darkness"