“Daddy …Mike…”

Not his son, not live, anyway: a recording. Eli wasn’t speaking to him at all. He was simply answering questions, repeating his parents’ names to some unseen interlocutor. And whoever was on the other end of the police radio was simply playing that taped message over…and over…and over—

Mike held the radio in the flashlight’s beam and pushed the button.

“Who is this?”

“Daddy …Mike…”

Who are you kidding? You’re not going to hear anything more than the recording. That’s all it is. You’re wasting your time.

“Hello?”

Now even the recording had given way to dead air. A cramp of near hysteria cut through his body, piercing his lungs.

“Hello, Lover Boy,” the speaker said.

Mike stared at the radio, the flashlight beam trembling.

“Got your number, don’t I?” The voice was playful, whimsical, but with an edge. “Couldn’t wait to send your wife and child away tonight so you and that nasty piece of tail of yours could get up to the devil’s business, isn’t that a fact?”

Mike swallowed. Now he felt punched in the throat.

“Only problem is, Mike, I come here tonight on the devil’s true business.”

“Please.” He realized he wasn’t holding the button down. He pushed it and said again, “Please, don’t kill them.”

“Kill them? Who, your pretty wife and child?” Snow asked. “That’s not a bad idea. I guess I wouldn’t mind seeing what they look like flayed open all nice and smooth. But I’m here to make a deal.”

“Then make your deal with me instead. I’ll do whatever you want.”

“We already made one deal, remember? I’m glad you decided to stay and party, instead of being a bore and leaving.” Mike thought of the note that Snow had passed him earlier, back in the MRI suite. “But don’t worry, Lover Boy. I like you. When the time comes, I might even give you a chance to make another choice, a courtesy I don’t extend often.”

“Please. Just tell me what I need to do.” He took his finger off the button, waited. Static crackled, then a different voice:

“Daddy…Mike…”

The recording again. The radio fell to the floor—dropped more than thrown—and Mike shined the flashlight up the hall. Nothing to see there. On legs that felt stilted and mechanical, he went back through the waiting room into the MRI suite. Squatting down under the computer console, he groped around for a moment until he found the aluminum bat that Repko had asked about earlier.

He returned to the hallway, holding the bat in one hand and clutching the flashlight with the other. Somewhere something fell, crashed, not too far away but still overly loud to his ears. The size of the hallways, their sheer depth and vacancy, amplified the most delicate noises into the sound of thunder.

Out of nowhere a Bradbury line occurred to him, stuck in his mind from a junior high paper he’d once written on Something Wicked This Way Comes: “They eat the dark, who only stand and breathe.”