The Devil in Silver

“Stay with me,” he told her.

Pepper’s plan was simple: Enter this room, then slip back into the hallway that ran right above Northwest 2. Book it until they reached the hallway directly above Northwest 1. Find the air duct marked on Dorry’s map. The one mentioned by Mr. Mack. Climb up, climb out, escape.

Now that she was inside the room, too, Loochie’s eyes adjusted. She could see that the big metal thing blocking the doorway was just a filing cabinet. An old-school model. Back when they made everything out of lead or something. When even forks and knives weighed five pounds each. Loochie pulled her hand from Pepper’s grip so she could feel around the dark room and get her bearings.

There were four of those enormous filing cabinets in here. Two desks that had been stacked in front of the boarded windows. How many typewriters on the floor. Ten? Twenty? All this in one room.

The second floor had been turned into a warehouse. Storing the office equipment of decades past. It occurred to Loochie that all this stuff might be valuable in an Antiques Roadshow sort of way. She even tried to lift one of the typewriters, like some brave knight from a fairy tale, trying to take just one piece of treasure out of a dragon’s cave. But that machine seemed to weigh fifty pounds, and Loochie couldn’t see how she could haul it easily. She set it back down, and when she turned, Pepper had crouched down right beside her.

“I thought of doing the same thing,” Pepper whispered, patting her shoulder consolingly.

But now, down that close to the floor, another thought occurred to both Loochie and Pepper. In a space like this, so dark and full of nooks, there should’ve been pests everywhere. Pepper had seen one giant rat, so why wouldn’t there be thousands more? Wasn’t that how rats rolled? In great numbers?

But there were none.

Nothing scurrying underfoot. No roaches moving along the walls. No spiders spinning webs in the corners. No flies. No mosquitos. The room was cluttered and chaotic, but lifeless.

Then a howl came, from the landing. A man.

“What if they’re hurting Frank Waverly?” Loochie asked.

Pepper rose to his feet. “They’re definitely hurting Frank Waverly,” he said. He patted his surroundings, feeling for the nearest wall.

“What should we do?” Loochie asked, still crouched.

Pepper had found the door he wanted. Not the one they’d just come through, the one that led back onto the landing. The other one. The one that would take them farther away. It led out into a hallway. Pepper opened it.

“This is what we should do,” he said.

He held it open for her, and Loochie, after a moment’s hesitation, followed Pepper’s lead. Once they both stepped through, Pepper shut the door behind him. Now the two stood right above Northwest 2. The staff, on the first floor, could they even imagine what was going on above their heads?

The lights worked here. At least a little. One bulb lighting the hallway.

Maybe it was left lit as a basic safety precaution. Maybe some idiot had just forgotten to unscrew it.

Loochie and Pepper walked down the hall now, following the same floor plan as the level below. They left Mr. Mack and Frank Waverly’s room. They passed Wally Gambino’s. Then the empty room. All these doors were closed. And finally they reached room 5. Pepper’s room. This door sat half open. As if someone (something?) had recently been inside. Had been stalking across the floor right above Pepper’s head.

Pepper couldn’t help it. He had to look in. Unlike the last room, this one was almost empty. Only one piece of equipment, but it was a beast. A reclining chair, like you find in a dentist’s office. This one had a small crane attached at the top. The crane hung over the seat and had five metal attachments hanging down. The crane was like a wrist, the attachments enormous fingers. Pepper imagined a patient strapped into this device. Someone on his back, looking up at that rusted hand. The digits reaching down to do what? He pictured the giant, inorganic hand slowly, methodically plucking out the patient’s eyes. One at a time. Say you’re having trouble with your eyes? Bet you won’t have that trouble now.

Pepper moved around the chair, circling it, as Loochie watched from the doorway. Whatever this machine used to do, it had once been the height of modern medicine. Ophthalmologists probably heard about it and drooled. The chance to use a PX-1000! And now it was entombed in a dark room. He doubted anyone even knew it was there anymore. I will decay, Pepper thought touching the abandoned machine. I will be buried. I will be forgotten. What was my life worth?