With no particular plan in mind, Susan rushed up to one of the wide but low doors leading into the first amphitheater. It was the door through which patients were wheeled for demonstrations. As Susan closed the door she heard running footsteps on the marble hall behind her. She moved away from the low door into the center of the amphitheater. The banks of seats rose in regular tiers until they were lost in darkness. She mounted the steps leading up one aisle from the pit.
The footsteps got louder and Susan hurried upward, afraid to look back. The footsteps passed and became less audible. Then they stopped altogether. Susan moved higher and higher. Behind her the pit of the amphitheater became more and more difficult to distinguish. Susan reached the upper tier of seats and moved laterally along it. She heard the footsteps on the marble again. She had a few moments to think. She knew there was no way she could cope with this man directly; she had to lose him or hide long enough so that he would give up and leave. She thought about the tunnel to the Administration Building. But she wasn’t one hundred percent sure that it would be open. Occasionally it had been locked when she tried to take that route home from the library in the evening.
She froze as she heard the door open into the pit of the amphitheater. The shadowy figure of a man entered. She could barely see him. But she was dressed in the white nurse’s uniform and she feared that she was more easily visible. She slowly crouched down behind a row of seats, but the backs of the chairs only rose eight to twelve inches above the level she was on. The man stopped and did not move. Susan guessed that he was trying to scan the room. She carefully lay down on the floor. She could see between the backs of two of the seats. The man walked over to the podium and seemed to be searching. Of course. He was searching for the lights! Susan felt panic again take control. Ahead of her, about twenty feet away, was a door to the hall on the second floor. Susan prayed that the door would be open and not locked. If it were locked she would have to try to make it to the door on the opposite side of the amphitheater. That would take about as long as it would take D’Ambrosio to get from the pit up to her level. If the door ahead of her was locked, she was lost.
There was a snap of a light switch and the lamp on the podium went on. Suddenly and eerily D’Ambrosio’s horrid pockmarked face was illuminated from below, casting grotesque shadows and making his eye sockets appear like burnt holes in a ghoulish mask. His hands groped along the side of the podium, and the sound of a second switch reverberated in Susan’s ears. A strong ray of light sprang from the darkened ceiling, illuminating the pit in a brilliant beam. Now Susan could see D’Ambrosio clearly.
She crawled forward as rapidly as she could toward the door. Another light switch snapped and a bank of lights lit up the blackboard behind D’Ambrosio. At that point D’Ambrosio noted the switches for the room lights to the left of the blackboard. As he walked over to the switches, Susan got up and broke for the door. She turned the knob as the lights went on in the room. Locked!
Susan stared down into the pit. D’Ambrosio saw her and a smile of anticipation came to his thin, scarred lips. Then he ran for the stairs, taking them in twos and threes.
Susan shook the door in despair. Then she noted that it was bolted from within. She threw the bolt and the door opened. She flung herself through it and slammed the door behind her. She could hear D’Ambrosio’s deep breaths as he neared the top row of seats.
Directly across from the second-floor amphitheater door was a CO2 fire extinguisher. Susan ripped it from the wall and turned it upside down. She spun around, hearing the metallic click of D’Ambrosio’s shoes coming closer and closer, and got set just as the knob turned and the door swung open.