Witch and Wizard - James Patterson [17]
The Visitor looked down his long, hooked nose at us. “I will be back periodically to check on you,” he said in his deep zombielike voice. “If you misbehave in any way, well”—he paused and gave a smile that would have made a crocodile look cheerful—“I will mete out punishment.”
Sssst! The riding crop slashed through the air, missing my eye by a whisker. “I’ll see you soon…. Promise.”
Then he was gone, and the lock turned behind him.
“I don’t much care for him,” said Wisty. “You?”
Chapter 27
Whit
WISTY THEN SUMMED UP our situation with typical offhanded precision.
“This totally sucks,” she said.
I considered that. Between our various bruises, bumps, cuts, welts, and torn clothes, it looked like we’d been in a cage match with a wolverine.
I also had less than a month to live.
“Much too optimistic,” I said. “You always see the bright side, don’t you?”
I wandered around the room, trying to distract myself from the burning pain of my injuries. But I was having trouble forming thoughts… other than self-torturing ones about juicy burgers and black-and-white milk shakes… and cheese fries. I’d never been so hungry in all my life.
Then I noticed Wisty sitting on the mattress, moving her lips silently.
“Talking to yourself already?” I asked.
“Why not? We’re in an insane asylum.” She smiled, then looked a little bit sheepish. “Actually, if you need to know, I’m trying to come up with a spell. You know, to get us out of here. If I’m a witch, I ought to be able to go ‘shazam’ and blast the door open.”
“They said we had no power here. You weren’t paying attention to The One With The Bullwhip.”
“Really? Then tell me that my little radioactive moment was just a weird dream,” she said.
“Okay, you win, glowgirl,” I said. “So, you think ‘shazam’ will do it? Go for it.”
She waved her hands at the door. “Shazam!” she yelled.
Snick! It popped right open.
Chapter 28
Whit
“HERE. BOTH OF YOU!” The Matron’s bigfoot-size body filled our doorway. “Come with me, vermin. I suppose it’s time you learned how to get food and water.”
In the woman’s massive hands were two beat-up plastic pails, which she flung out to us. Call it a hunch, but this already didn’t look good. I’d have done anything to get a drink of water, though. The sink in our bathroom didn’t work… and what was in the toilet wasn’t exactly, um, potable.
We each took a pail and followed the Matron as she noisily clomped down the dark hall, her keys jangling with each lurching step and her preternaturally huge feet sausaged into chunky white shoes.
I started to make out noises ahead, and they were vaguely… animalish. Snarls, growls, and high-pitched whines filled my ears.
“What is this?” Wisty croaked. “Now what?”
The Matron gestured toward the end of the hall. “There’s food way, way, way down there. And water. Use your pails.” She looked down at her enormous steel-banded watch. “You have four minutes. If you’re not back by then”—her black eyes shone and her mouth stretched in a horrible approximation of a smile—“then I’ll know you’ve passed to the other side. Violently.”
Turning, she clomped her way back to the nurses’ station fifty yards behind us. “Take care,” she called.
My palm was already sweaty where I held on to the thin metal handle of my pail. The hallway in front of us was lined on either side by… canine animals of some sort. Mad dogs? Wolves? Black-furred hyenas? Hungry, angry, hostile animals, chained to the walls up and down the hallway.
Somehow we had to get past them—and back—in four minutes… but only if we wanted food and water.
Only if we wanted to live.
Chapter 29
Wisty
ANYONE WHO’S EVER BEEN on the verge of a major disaster, possibly even death, will tell you that the most mundane things can go through your mind. Just before I was about to sacrifice my life to the animals, I thought about a really mean dog that used to live on our block. When I was little, my friends and I always rode our bikes on the other side of the street,