Speed Dating with the Dead

by Nicholson, Scott

  “It’s a shell game. Demons use whatever façade does the job. And the job is to create doubt and confusion, to weaken all they encounter, to disturb the structure and rules of this world. This is God’s turf, and nothing makes them happier than to piss in the shrubbery.”

  The rumbling came again, and this time Kendra steadied herself against the wall until the quake passed. They were near the window, and they could see the lawn and the dirt road leading to the White Horse. “No traffic,” Kendra said.

  “It’s after midnight in the offseason,” Cody said.

  “Nobody comes, nobody goes, huh?”

  “That’s your dad’s decision. He’s still in charge, after all.”

  A stocky form stepped from the shadow of a doorway in front of them. “That’s what you think,” the woman said.

  Kendra jumped back, nearly dropping her pad, and Cody stepped in front of her. Give the guy points for macho heroism in the face of danger.

  “Who are you?” Cody asked.

  “One of the hunters,” she said, in a husky alto, though her tone was flat.

  “Have you seen any of the SSI people?”

  “I ain’t seen anybody since the power went out.”

  “We should gather in the control room,” Cody said. “We’re headed that way. Want to come with us?”

  “There ain’t no more control,” she said. Kendra’s eyes had adjusted enough to make out the woman’s shiny eyes and ebony skin. She recognized the woman from check-in but couldn’t recall her name.

  “We apologize for the inconvenience, but I’m sure—”

  “Cool it, Cody,” Kendra interrupted. “This isn’t about Haunted Computer Productions anymore. Weird crap is going down.”

  “Going down,” the woman said, as if she liked that idea.

  “Have you tried your cell phone?” Cody asked her. “I think every battery in the place is dead.”

  “Dead.”

  Kendra didn’t like the woman’s zombie monotone. “Well, I’m sure the lights will be back on soon. Be careful.”

  She grabbed Cody’s arm and tugged him down the hall.

  The woman called after them. “You be careful, too. Your momma said to tell you that.”

  “Your momma?” Cody asked, confused. “But your momma’s—”

  “Dead.” Kendra ushered him toward the control room. “Like a cell phone. You call and get no answer.”

  “You’re not telling me something,” he said.

  “I’m not telling you lots of somethings,” she said. “Mostly because I don’t know what they are.”

  The woman was now lost on the shadows behind them, though she might have chuckled. At least, Kendra hoped the woman had chuckled. Otherwise, the floating kids from the attic were tracking them.

  They traced the camera cable running the baseboard of the hall, following it around a corner and to the opening of the control room. The interior was utterly dark, having no windows.

  “Damn,” Cody said. “A couple of the pieces have battery back-up, but it looks like they got drained, too.”

  “I can’t believe the hotel doesn’t have emergency generators, especially for the exit signs. What if there was a fire?”

  “Nobody’s here. We’d better head downstairs and look for your dad.”

  Just as they were about to turn, one of the camera monitors blinked to life. The sudden green light threw dots behind their eyelids, but they welcomed the illumination.

  “Guess some of the batteries still have juice,” Kendra said, entering the room.

  “Kendra,” he said, putting out his arm to bar her entry. “That one doesn’t have back-up.”

  As they watched, the monitor image focused on a scene in the attic, where Rochester and the others had taunted them. They saw themselves on the screen, Kendra speaking to nothing, then jumping to slam down on the gypsum. That was followed by Cody landing beside her and the ceiling giving way beneath them in a flurry of dust.

  “No Rochester,” Kendra said.

  “If they’re making the monitor tape run, then editing themselves out of the image would be no problem, right?”

  “You’re the expert.”

  The loop replayed two more times as they watched. In the last one, Kendra thought she could just make out a misty form in the background, but it could just as easily been her imagination.

  “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,’ Cody said.

  “What do you call it when you watch insanity on TV?”

  “Time to pull the plug.” He led her from the room, the flickering images still playing behind them.

  Chapter 45

  The scream had come from the edge of the group, as if a shark had sliced from the dark depths and taken prey.

  All Wayne could do was cling to the wall and wait for the clamor to die down.

  “What the hell?” Gelbaugh shouted.

  “It touched me,” a woman said.

  “I thought you wanted it to touch you.”

  “Not like that.”

  “Are you hurt?” Wayne shouted across the basement.

  “I can’t tell,” the woman said. “It was all slithery.”

  The group members talked over one another, and one of them must have braved the stairs again, because the door shuddered with dull blows. Someone else fled the group, smacking into a stone wall and groaning in pain.

  “Stay where you are,” Wayne said.

  “Easy for you to say.” Wayne recognized the voice as Cappie’s. “You’re way over there and something’s probing around.”

  “Belial,” said Amelia George.

  The furnace burst to life again, with a great chuffing of heat. The flames drew sighs and screams from the group, and Wayne could see some of them had fled. The woman, presumably the one who had been touched, was kneeling at the foot of a support wall, holding her bloody head in her hands and rocking back and forth. Another hunter, a short man in a vest, was hammering at the door, shouting against the thick wood. Amelia stood in the middle of the others, arms raised as if calling forth demons.

  And maybe she is.

  An hour ago, he might have believed in telekinetic powers. But now the rules seemed to be changing minute by minute, and the White Horse Inn no longer belonged to the realm of physics and logic.

  This was now Demon Country.

  The flickering flames cast long fingers of light across the basement and onto the scared faces of the group members. Wayne could see the maze of pipes around him, cast iron, lead, and polyvinyl in different sizes. Twenty feet away was a shadowed recess that suggested a door.

  The furnace inhaled—that was the only word Wayne could use to describe the action—and the flames subsided to a dull glow. Wayne took advantage of the lingering glow to move forward.

  “Come to me,” Amelia said. “Use me if you need it. Take me.”

  Amelia’s husband eased a couple of steps away from her, unwilling to be caught in the crossfire of her spiritual recklessness. “Honey, maybe you should—”

  “Kill you,” she bellowed, lowering her hands from their uplifted, summoning position and reaching for her husband with curled fingers.

  “Christ, lady,” Gelbaugh said. “The cameras aren’t working so there’s no need for a show.”

  “Open this damned door,” said the man on the stairs, now yanking on the handle with the force of his ample weight.

  Wayne hurried to the recess, which blended with the larger shadows when the flames weakened. He ducked under a rusty drain pipe that disappeared into the dirt, and came up ready to reach for the door he hoped would be there. His hand struck soft, yielding flesh.

  “Digger,” wheezed a voice.

  The furnace breathed again and the basement flashed orange and red. In the fleeting light, Wayne made out a bruised, bleeding face, the eyes swollen nearly shut and the grin missing a couple of teeth. But it was the uniform, and the night-vision goggles perched atop the soggy mess, that clenched his guts.
/>
  “Rodney?” Wayne whispered.

  The light dimmed again, but Wayne assembled the memory of the glimpsed image: The Roach’s dark jumpsuit was soaked with blood, the equipment belt empty. The Roach held his thumb over the jagged end of a copper pipe.

  Wayne squinted into the shadows. “What happened?”

  “You wouldn’t believe.” The Roach’s voice cracked like an ice sculpture under an axe blow.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “You wouldn’t believe.” A sob in it.

  “Is that a door behind you?”

  “You wouldn’t fucking believe.”

  “You might have a concussion.” Wayne moved closer as the furnace pulsated again, throwing a lunatic sheen onto Rodney’s bloody, sweating, filthy face.

  “I have proof now, Digger.”

  “I know. But right now we need to get these people out of here.”

  With his free hand, Rodney slid his night-vision goggles into place. “They won’t allow that.”

  The basement went dim again, and Rodney released the copper line. Wayne smelled propane. The line must have run from an outside tank to the kitchen stoves. Rodney must have found the ruptured pipe, and maybe he’d stayed down here holding it closed until someone could shut off the tank. That would explain his absence, but not the gashes and bruises.

  “Got a light?” Rodney asked.

  As if in answer, the furnace roared again, and the propane fed it.

  Whooosh.

  “Mission accomplished,” Rodney said, just before the concussive blast stole the air and shot an expanding fireball across the basement. The heat slapped Wayne like a volcanic tidal wave and shoved him against Rodney, and they fell together against the door as support timbers groaned and splintered.

  In the chaos of collapse, Wayne thought he heard Beth’s voice, or maybe it was the muffled screams of Amelia George.

  Chapter 46

  Kendra was pitched against the stair rail when the explosion sounded, and Cody grabbed at her as he lost balance in the dark.

  She took a step forward, but the stairs seemed to give way beneath her, and her stomach took that same queasy somersault as when she’d fallen through the ceiling.

  The subdued thump reached them a split-second later, and by then Kendra was gripping the rail, hugging her sketch pad to her chest as if it were a sacred text that would solve the crazy riddles of the night.

  “Dad,” Kendra said, probing a foot out to see if the stairs still remained.

  “Hear that?” Cody said.

  On the floor below, people were shouting and scurrying in the dark. Deeper, the squeal and snap of straining wood mixed with a rumble of loose stones and a faint crackling sound. The hotel shifted again, as if knocked loose from its moorings and sliding down a slope.

  “We need to get out of here,” Cody said. “This place has got a bad case of the shakes, and it was matchsticks and glue to begin with.”

  “I can’t leave without Dad.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

  “Who’s there?” someone yelled from the landing below, a man with a gruff, clipped voice.

  “SSI,” Cody responded.

  “One of your—our guy—I think he’s dead.”

  Kendra and Cody headed toward the commotion, aided by light that leaked from a distant window that had broken open during the tremors. “Please don’t be Dad,” Kendra whispered.

  “What’s going on?” Cody said, trying to project authority, though Kendra could hear the suppressed panic in his voice.

  “This—thing—like a big lizard or something—”

  “It was a black woman,” someone else cut in. “She had a knife.”

  “It wasn’t a knife—”

  “And then all our flashlights went out at once—”

  Kendra couldn’t tell how many people were gathered on the landing, but by the time she and Cody reached the body, five had offered opinions. From the description, the victim didn’t sound like Dad. They bent over him, Cody checking his pulse. Kendra was afraid to touch the body but she forced herself to put her palm near his mouth. She felt no breath of wind.

  “Did anybody report it to the front desk?” Cody asked. “The land line ought to get 9-1-1 even if there’s no cell signal.”

  “You kidding?” said the gruff man who’d originally hailed them. It was too dark to make out his face, but he was tall and heavyset and Kendra remembered he’d put “West Virginia” on his registration address. He spoke with a rural Southern accent. “You reckon any of us wants to wander around in the dark when some nut has a knife?”

  “It was a lizard,” a woman insisted. “I saw its scales and it had...it had....”

  “Had what?” Cody said. “Nothing could be crazier than what we’ve already heard.”

  “A tail,” she finished.

  “Lord, help us,” another said.

  “Ain’t the Lord’s doing,” said Gruff. “Somebody with a knife. See?”

  A metallic skritch was followed by a small flame erupting, and Gruff bent down with the Bic lighter, illuminating Burton’s corpse. “Yuck,” he said, wiping at his ragged moustache. “Took his tongue, looks like.”

  Wet, dark gore surrounded Burton’s lips and his mouth was a torn maw. His eyes were open and staring, blank with death and already losing their luster. His left arm was ripped and his jumpsuit was blotched with dark stains. A rusty, cloying odor hung over the landing.

  “Ah, Burt,” Cody said with a sad sigh. Kendra touched his shoulder in a gesture of compassion. She’d liked Burton, and Dad would be devastated, but right now she was too shook up to feel much grief.

  “It wasn’t one of the ghost kids that did this,” Kendra said.

  “Ghost kids?” said Gruff.

  “How many are in your group?” Kendra asked. And have you seen Digger Wilson?

  “Eleven,” said a short woman whose silhouette was barely visible at the edge of the Bic’s light. “Burton told us to wait in the room when the power went out, but then we heard the fight.”

  Cody tried the window, but it was sealed by ancient coats of paint. He yanked the curtain, pulling the rod down with it. A little more twilight leaked onto the landing. Cody wrapped the fabric around the wooden pole and held it out to the man with the Bic. “Torch.”

  “This is going to stink,” Gruff said, but he applied the lighter. The linen curtain burst into a smoldering, oily flame.

  “Are you the only group on the floor?” Kendra tried to remember the list of haunted rooms where the hunts would take place, but they all jumbled together. Digger said it didn’t matter whether the hunt location had activity or not, as long as people got their money’s worth. But he’d assumed there was no difference between a cold spot and a dead spot, and now it appeared the entire hotel was one big open grave, spilling out creepy spirits and things that should have been left buried.

  “The rest went to the basement,” Gruff said. He snuffed out the lighter now that the torch crackled. A bit of curled ember fell to the wooden floor but Cody stomped it out.

  “Smell that?” Cody said.

  Kendra’s nose was full of Burton’s raw stench, but she took a sniff. “Smoke.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not from this.” He waved the torch. “Come on, people.”

  Gruff didn’t like being bossed by a teenager. “Where you going?”

  “Out.”

  “Them stairs are dangerous,” he said in his Southern accent. “Earthquake or something. You could fall right through.”

  “I’m not staying here and waiting for the roof to fall in,” said an elderly woman, in a high tremulous voice. A shawl was draped around her frail shoulders and her darting eyes glittered in the torchlight. She tried to step past Burton’s corpse but slipped in the blood. One leg flew to the side and her bones clattered as she landed and skidded down a few stair treads.

  “Dear Christ,” she muttered, moaning in pain and writhing, holding her left ankle. “Broke it.”

  Ke
ndra was immediately by her side, squinting at the injured limb. A bone appeared to bulge beneath the pale skin and flaccid muscle. “We’d better get her down.”

  “Here,” Cody said, passing the torch to a rotund man in a leather jacket. “Lead them down.”

  Cody stooped and picked up the old lady, cradling her in his arms. “Hang on, ma’am,” he said, as she whimpered at the sudden movement.

  The smoke was thicker now, and undeniable. “Musta had a short,” Gruff said. “Blew some fuses.”

  People who had huddled in the second-floor hallway moved past Gruff and the body, some of them refusing to look down at the mess. The pool of blood had spread so that it now dripped from the landing and onto the lower step in a sickening rivulet. Cody followed the leather-jacketed man, intent on not hitting the old woman’s leg on the shaking stair rail. Kendra counted the group members as they passed to make sure everyone escaped.

  “Eleven,” she said. Cody had already made the turn in the stairs, which creaked under the combined weight of those descending, but enough torchlight lingered that she could see Gruff’s scowl.

  And you make twelve. Did we gain somebody?

  “A nut with a knife,” he said.

  She glanced down at the descending group, and a woman looked up at her.

  Mom?

  The woman—the illusion of her mother, nothing more, surely nothing more—waved at her to follow, and then she made the turn and was gone.

  Kendra took a step but slipped in the blood. The man caught her arm and squeezed hard enough to hurt.

  “Easy,” she said.

  “No, honey, it ain’t easy,” Gruff said. “It’s real, real hard.”

  She looked at him, and his eyes were just as dead as Burton’s, the smoky moonlight pushing gray across his skin, the moustache lifting to reveal blunt teeth and a mocking grin. She recognized him now, though it was only through her artistic talent of sizing up facial features.

  “Rochester,” she whispered.

  “Among other things.”

  She tried to pull away, shouting Cody’s name, but another rumble came and the stairs skewed sideways. The wall broke open at the end of the hall, spilling night into the hotel. The smoke made her cough, and the first flickering flames rose from below. The ghost hunters yelled frantically over one another, now fully aware of the danger.