Fire Devil

by J L Bryan

  All four of us stayed quiet anyway, though. Stacey held a finger to her lips. Suddenly the four of us were like teenagers at a slumber party, hoping our parents wouldn't walk in and catch us in the middle of being delinquent.

  Willmore's footsteps clomped up the hall.

  I looked through the little lens in the door.

  Outside, Willmore walked to room 33. He hesitated a moment, then grasped the doorknob and gave the door a shake, as if checking to see whether it was still locked tight.

  I held my breath. The door was locked...but our thermal camera was still in there. If he saw it, he would know it was us—the hotel wasn't exactly crawling with other suspects—and he would also probably figure out we were, in fact, ghost hunters studying the haunted room in his hotel. Which we had specifically told him we weren't, after he'd made it clear how much he hated ghost hunters.

  Willmore grunted and looked toward the door to room 32, which Michael and I had originally rented.

  Then he looked toward the suite door, his eyes seemed to meet mine through the peephole, which was disconcerting. I was sure he was just looking at the door, maybe even right at the little lens. Maybe he knew someone was watching him. People are pretty good at detecting that, even when it seems impossible for them to know.

  He stepped closer, squinted at the door that I stood behind.

  Then he turned away, took a keyring from his pocket...and stepped toward room 33.

  “Uh-oh,” I whispered. “We need to distract him.”

  With no plan in mind, I opened the door and stepped out into the cold hallway.

  Willmore turned to look at me, his key almost to the lock.

  “Howdy,” I said. “I thought I heard someone out here. And with all this talk of ghosts...”

  “Uh-huh.” He lowered the key a hair. “I told you, there's nothing here. Just old rumors.”

  “Exactly what old rumors?” I asked, letting the suite door lose behind me.

  “It doesn't matter.”

  “Because I was looking this place up on the internet,” I said, “And this one site claims that Hugh McClaskey was having an affair with a married woman. Or at least a one-night—”

  “I told you, I don't appreciate that kind of gossip,” Willmore said. His face turned red, and for the first time, I saw what he looked like when he was angry. “That's our family you're talking about.”

  “Okay, I'm sorry,” I said. “I was just curious—”

  “You sure you're not here to look for ghosts?” Willmore said.

  “No, I just—”

  “I knew I shouldn't have rented to y'all. Known associates of the crazy girl.” He rattled the door to room 33 again, checking that it was locked. “Y'all ain't bothered this room, have you?”

  The door behind me opened.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” Jacob said. “But your wife has a message for you, Willmore.”

  “My....?” His face grew even redder, as if Jacob's statement had deeply offended him. “Get out of here. All of y'all, just take your junk and leave my hotel.”

  “You should probably hear what she has to say,” Jacob said.

  “Get out!” Willmore stepped toward Jacob with his fist raised, and I thought he was going to punch Jacob, but instead he pounded on the suite door behind us. “Everyone out! Y'all are no longer welcome at the Gatwich Inn. I told you no ghost hunting! Now get your bags and go, or I'm calling the police. And I happen to have more than one cousin in the department, so they'll come quick, and they'll listen to me.”

  Michael opened the door to the suite, Stacey hanging just behind him.

  “Excuse me?” Michael said. He was slightly taller than Willmore, and moved closer to loom over him a little. I had no doubt he could win a fight against the obese man, but that definitely wouldn't stop Willmore from kicking us out of the hotel. If Willmore had family on the local police force, then Michael beating the pudding out of him would probably land us all in jail, too.

  “You're gone. You're all gone.” Willmore jabbed a pudgy finger into Michael's chest. “You know why. I don't appreciate this kind of thing going on here, trying to talk to the dead. It's unnatural. It's unholy. It's...where are you going?”

  Jacob had walked past him and was heading for the stairs.

  “You want to grab your suitcase on the way out!” Willmore shouted after him. “Or I can throw it out the window if you want.”

  Jacob paused at the top of the stairs and looked at Willmore.

  “Your wife,” he said. “She has something to show us. Come on, everyone.”

  Then Jacob started down the stairs, and he was out of sight a moment later, the creaking sounds of the stairs tracking his descent.

  “Hey! You get back here! Where are you...hey!” Willmore cast an angry glare at me, then started down the stairs after Jacob.

  “Come on,” I said to Michael and Stacey, and the three of us hurried after them.

  I glanced at the dark oval mirror as we passed it. I thought I glimpsed a face looking back at me from the shadows within it, but when I turned, I only saw myself in there.

  We followed Jacob and Willmore down the stairs. Jacob continued on below, ignoring Willmore yelling at him to stop.

  Chapter Twenty

  “Where are you going?” Willmore bellowed as we reached the first floor. Jacob was moving much faster than him, and Willmore was panting as he struggled to keep up.

  We reached the now-familiar lobby area. Jacob walked past the front desk and into the first-floor hall, where Willmore had originally tried to get us to rent out rooms.

  Jacob grabbed the handle of a door marked EMPLOYEES ONLY and tried to open it, but it was locked. He rattled it.

  “Get away!” Willmore snapped. “Can't you read the door?”

  “Your wife wants me to walk through here,” Jacob said. “She's basically screaming it in my ear.”

  “You...you're crazy,” Willmore said. “You're all crazy. Nobody can talk to the dead.”

  “Are you sure?” Jacob asked. “Because Josette says you talk to her when there's nobody here. She says you've see her plenty of times, especially up on the third floor, where the curtain between life and death is already thin from those who died in the fire—”

  “Shut up!” Willmore reached out and seized Jacob's throat in both of his meaty hands. “This is my home! You can't just...just come in and...”

  I launched a hard kick right into the side of Willmore's knee, making his leg bend inward in a direction it wasn't really designed to go.

  Willmore howled and toppled sideways into the wall, but he kept his double grip on Jacob and pulled him to the wall, too.

  Stacey pounded Willmore's back with her fist, screaming at him to let Jacob go.

  Michael, who'd been at the back of our little group, grabbed Willmore's shirt with one hand, and landed a solid punch to his nose with the other.

  Willmore finally released Jacob, and Michael slung Willmore across the hall, slamming him into the opposite wall, then punched him again.

  “Ahhhh!” Willmore screeched. He held up his hands defensively in front of his face. He made sobbing, sucking noises like a rooting hog. “Don't kill me!”

  “Hold him there,” Jacob told Michael, who obliged him, pinning Willmore's shoulders against the wall. Willmore was weeping now, a long ribbon of bloody snot drooling from his left nostril. He didn't try to fight back against Michael, which was smart of him.

  I was already imagining trying to explain this to the local police. Yes, he told us to leave his property...no, we stuck around and beat him up instead...this was not going to end well.

  “Ellie,” Jacob said, rattling the maintenance door again. “Can you pick the lock?”

  “Of course.” I knelt and got to work.

  “You can't...” Willmore said, between sobs. “You can't just...break in wherever you want.”

  “Is there something in here you don't want us to see?” I asked while I worked at the lock. “Dark secrets among the mop
s and brooms?”

  Willmore kept blubbering. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, turning it blood red.

  The lock gave—nothing special about it, really—and opened the door.

  Mops and brooms waited within.

  Beyond those lay another door.

  “Interesting.” I stood and put away my picks. “What's behind door number two, Willmore?”

  “None of your business,” he said, but his voice was quiet now. “You're all going to jail, you know that? For a long dang time. You can't just attack a man and rob his home.”

  “We're not trying to rob you,” I said.

  “She says to go through the door,” Jacob told me, rubbing some red streaks on his throat where Willmore had choked him.

  “I'm on it.” I pushed aside a stringy, dirty mop that was leaning against the closet's rear door. It wasn't locked, so I pushed it open.

  A cold darkness lay beyond. The light switch didn't work, so I clicked on my flashlight.

  Old wooden steps led down into a basement. Cobwebs and dust were everywhere. It looked like it had been months, if not years, since anyone had walked down there.

  An icy cold draft rose from below, raising goosebumps all over my skin.

  “Do we really have to go down there?” Stacey asked, peeking over my shoulder.

  “She's already waiting for us,” Jacob said. He glanced at Willmore. “Isn't she?”

  “Stop it,” Willmore said, but there wasn't much fight left in him. Plenty of blood left in his nose, though, which he had to keep wiping on his sleeve.

  I started down the stairs, which groaned beneath me, as if they hadn't been stepped on in some time and were ready to snap with decay. That's generally not what you want in a set of stairs leading down into a dark, dirty hole of a haunted basement.

  My flashlight revealed spiders and palmetto bugs that went scurrying away into cracks in the old brick wall. The basement had a damp, rank smell. I can't say it made me feel better about sleeping at the hotel.

  The basement floor was scattered with muddy earth. Old furniture covered in sheets was stored against the wall, along with decades' worth of forgotten rusty tools and dusty cardboard boxes.

  “Over here.” Jacob led me toward the back of the basement, under pipes and loose wires. Of course. Our destination couldn't have been conveniently located right next to the bottom step, it had to be at the far end of the dark, filthy room.

  My flashlight found ever more rusty, ever more archaic tools. A heap of books moldered in one corner, which was a sad sight.

  The air seemed to grow more foul and icy as we approached the back wall of the basement, which turned out to have a sizable recessed alcove requiring us to walk a few more steps into darkness. Mold grew between the cracked bricks back there.

  “Hey, Willmore,” I called back. “You'd better have some cousins in the local health inspector's office, too.”

  Michael walked behind Willmore, gripping the man's shoulders and marching him like a prisoner. Stacey followed behind, lighting their way with a tactical flashlight, which could conveniently double as a weapon if needed. Willmore was quieter now, blubbering softly to himself.

  “Right here,” Jacob said, pointing into the alcove.

  I didn't see anything, but standing in the alcove made me feel sick down to the pit of my stomach. I don't think it was just the mold, either.

  “Don't,” Willmore whispered. “Please. She's all I've got.”

  I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but Jacob spoke before I could ask any follow-up questions: “Here. It's right here.”

  As though in a trance, Jacob stepped forward, reaching out to the moldy bricks.

  “Ew,” Stacey whispered, as he worked his fingertips through the dark, slimy layer of mold. Better him than me.

  Jacob pried out a few chunks of an old, broken brick, letting them spill to the ground. Then he pried out a few more, leaving a dark, mold-encrusted rectangle where the brick had been.

  Willmore slumped. He wasn't struggling at all anymore, or even sobbing. He just stared, blinking, no longer even trying to wipe away the blood and snot that trickled from his nostrils.

  I shone my light into the gap behind the broken brick. There, coated in mud, was a long steel instrument. I took it for a knife at first, but then I pried it loose and held it out where everyone could see.

  When I shook some mud off of it, I realized it wasn't a knife, but... “A spoon?” I said out loud.

  Willmore looked at his own feet, and I understood.

  I drew out the second mud-coated item that had been concealed behind the brick. It was a brown medicine bottle, plugged with a rubber stopper. Liquid sloshed around inside it.

  I passed my flashlight to Jacob. Then, after some difficulty and a great deal of getting some indescribably gross stuff under my fingernails, I managed to pull out the stopper.

  Stacey cringed and covered her nose, clearly expecting a foul or rotten odor to rise from it. That seemed like a reasonable expectation, especially given how bad the rest of the basement smelled, but somehow it wasn't a foul death reek that emanated from the bottle.

  “It's...sweet?” I said, after sniffing it.

  “It's antifreeze.” Willmore's voice was almost too quiet to hear.

  The rest of us turned to look at him.

  “I read it attacks the kidneys,” Willmore said. “So I thought...well, her kidneys were so bad anyhow, maybe they wouldn't look too close. I just put a little in her sweet tea. She didn't even notice.”

  “Wait, what?” Stacey pointed her flashlight right into his face, like the intense light of an interrogation room, making him cringe and shut his eyes. “You poisoned your wife?”

  “She didn't have long, anyway, you understand,” Willmore said. “Maybe a few years. But she was going to suffer, you know. And I knew...well, with the, the ghosts upstairs...I read up on ghosts. Someone dies quietly in their sleep, they don't stick around. But if they die in pain, and especially if they get murdered, that's when they stick around.”

  “Oh. Oh, wow.” Stacey backed up from him.

  “I did it because I loved her,” Willmore said.

  “And did your wife...agree to this?” I asked.

  “Wouldn't be murder if she did, would it?” Willmore asked.

  “You killed her so her ghost would hang around and haunt you? Is that right?” I asked.

  “I thought I'd join her before long,” Willmore said. “It's been six long years, just waiting to die. But she's here with me. I see her sometimes. I hear her...”

  The basement, though already painfully cold, grew even colder.

  A dark shadow, the size of a formidable woman, arose beside Willmore, darker than the basement gloom around it, solid black.

  Michael glanced from it to me, and I gestured for him to back up. Michael released Willmore and moved away.

  “There you are, baby,” Willmore said. “Are you still mad I killed you? I done told you why.”

  “How many times did you sneak antifreeze into her food?” Stacey asked.

  “Not her food, her tea,” Willmore said. “I just did it once. Didn't take much to kill her. They didn't even bother with an autopsy, thank goodness.”

  “I guess it helps to have relatives in the local police department,” I said.

  “But you definitely killed your wife? On purpose?” Stacey said.

  Willmore swore. “I done told you I did. Why do you keep asking about?”

  I had a pretty good idea why—Stacey was holding out her phone, recording his confession on video.

  “Oh, no,” Willmore said. “No, you can't tell anyone!” He lunged toward Stacey. Jacob and Michael immediately moved in to protect her.

  It didn't matter, though, because someone else got in Willmore's way.

  His dead wife's shadow covered him in darkness, creating a kind of dark halo around him.

  Then Willmore staggered back toward me. He was off balance, his feet slipping and sliding in a weird way, as tho
ugh the nimbus of darkness around him was controlling him like a puppet. He moved like a stubborn donkey getting dragged forward on ropes.

  Willmore reached one hand toward me, his fingers flexing open and closed, as though pulsing with his heartbeat.

  Michael moved in to grab Willmore, but the darkness around Willmore seemed to resist Michael, slowing him down.

  I raised the bottle, ready to smash the guy in the face if he came any closer.

  Moving much faster than I'd ever seen him move, Willmore reached out and snatched the medicine bottle from me.

  Whispers filled my ears—a woman's voice, the words indecipherable, the tone furious.

  Willmore took the bottle of antifreeze from my hand, held it up, and gazed at it.

  The whispering grew sharper and louder.

  Michael moved closer behind him, but I gestured for him to stop.

  “Okay,” Willmore finally whispered. “Okay, Josie.”

  He put the bottle to his lips and drank it down.

  “Um,” Stacey said. “Did you just...drink antifreeze?”

  “The same bottle I used to bring it in from the garage,” Willmore said. “I had it up in the kitchen cabinet.” He shook the empty bottle next to his ear as if making sure he'd drained every drop. “Couldn't bring myself to throw it out. I guess I was saving it.”

  Willmore showed no more signs of struggling with us. He sat down on the dirt-coated floor and sighed.

  “Stacey, call 911,” I said.

  “Don't bother,” Willmore said.

  “I can't get a signal down here.” Stacey was waving her phone at the ceiling.

  “Go on up,” I told her. “I don't think Willmore's going to give us any more trouble tonight.”

  “I haven't felt this good in years,” Willmore said, his smile shimmering with bright green fluid.

  “You're going to die if we don't get you to a hospital,” Michael said, but he didn't sound too concerned about it. The guy had murdered his wife years ago, and now he'd chosen to kill himself.

  “Good,” Willmore said. “Let's go back upstairs. I've got some Pink Angel Cinnamon Swirls that I may as well finish off. Anybody want one?'