Passage

Oblivious, Joanna thought. Something about being oblivious to something terrible that was happening.

“Of course it doesn’t drive you crazy,” Tish said disgustedly, “because you’re exactly the same. Did you hear anything I just said?”

“Yes,” Joanna said. “One o’clock.”

“And he said to ask you if you’d been able to reach Mrs. Haighton yet,” Tish said.

Mrs. Haighton. “I’ll go try her right now,” Joanna said and went on to her office to spend what was left of the morning leaving fruitless messages for Mrs. Haighton and staring at her Swedish ivy, trying to remember where she’d seen the tunnel.

Something about being oblivious, and Richard’s lab coat and the way the floor met the bottom of the door. And cohorts gleaming in purple and gold. And high school. It had wooden floors, she thought. She saw in her mind’s eye the long second-floor hall, the waxed wooden floor. There was a door at the end of that hall, she thought. The assistant principal’s office, where Ricky Inman spent half his time. And was that what she was remembering — a memory from high school? Complete with a nice authority-figure judgment image?

It made sense. Those halls were long and lined with numbered doors. The lab coat could be the one the chemistry teacher — what was his name? Mr. Hobert — wore, the sound could be the passing bell, which sounded like both a ringing and a buzzing, and the door to the assistant principal’s office—

But it wasn’t a door to an office. The door in the tunnel opened onto the outside. I need to open that door and see what’s outside it, Joanna thought. When I do, I’ll know where it is.

And at one-fifteen, lying sleepily under the headphones and the sleep mask and waiting for the dithetamine to work, she thought, The door, the answer lies through the door—

And was in the tunnel. The door was shut. Only a knife-blade-thin line of light showed at the bottom of the door. Joanna had to feel her way along the pitch-black tunnel toward it, her hand on one wall.

The line of light was too narrow for any shadows, and she could not hear even a murmuring of. voices. The tunnel was utterly silent, like Coma Carl’s room after the heater shut off. No, not a heater. Some other quiet, steady sound you didn’t notice till it had stopped.

“—stopped,” a voice said softly from beyond the door, and Joanna waited, listening.

Silence. Joanna stood there in the darkness a long minute, and then began feeling her way toward the door again, thinking, What if it’s locked? But it wasn’t locked. The knob turned easily, and she pulled the door open onto a blast of brilliant light. It hit her with an almost physical force, and she reeled back, her hand up to shield her face.

“What’s happened?” a woman’s frightened voice said, and Joanna thought for a moment she meant the light and that it had burst on all of them like a bomb when Joanna opened the door.

“I’m sure it’s nothing, miss,” a man’s voice said. As Joanna’s eyes adjusted, she could see the man in the white jacket. He was talking to the woman with her hair down her back.

“I heard the oddest noise,” she said.

Noise, Joanna thought. Then it was a sound, after all.

The white-jacketed man said something, but Joanna couldn’t hear what it was, or what the woman answered. She moved forward, up to the door, and instantly she could see the people more clearly. The young woman had a coat on over her white dress, and the man’s white jacket had gold buttons down the front. The woman in the white gloves was wearing a short white fur cape.

“Yes, miss,” the man said, and Joanna thought, He’s a servant. And that white jacket is a uniform.

“It sounded like a cloth being torn,” the young woman said and walked over to the man with the white beard. “Did you hear it?”

“No,” he said, and the woman with the piled-up hair inquired, “Do you suppose there’s been an accident?” She had her white-gloved hand at her throat, holding her fur cape closed, as if she were cold, and Joanna thought, That’s because they’re outside, and tried to look around at their surroundings, but the light was behind them, and she couldn’t see anything except the white wall against which they stood. She looked down at the floor they were standing on. It was wooden, like the floor in the hallway, but unwaxed. Some sort of porch, Joanna thought, or patio.

“It’s so cold,” the young woman said, pulling her coat more tightly around her. No wonder she’s cold, Joanna thought, looking at her dress under the open coat. It was made of thin muslin, much too thin for this weather, and hung full and straight to her feet like a nightgown.

“I shall see what’s happened,” the bearded man said. He was in evening clothes, with a stiff-fronted white shirt and a white bow tie. He jerked his chin imperiously at the servant, and he hurried over.

“Yes, sir?” he said.

“What has happened? Why have we stopped?”

“I don’t know, sir. It may be some sort of mechanical difficulty. I’m sure there’s nothing to be alarmed about.”