This was where it all started.
The spotlight swept by again, the sirens blaring nearby, and the carpet was warm under her feet, the falling water mixed with smoke and steam. The room was fog, and she could be left here and lost forever, to wander the seams between living and dead, or maybe this was the dream an infant had suffered in the womb of Beth Wilson on the way to being stillborn.
Maybe she was already dead.
And had never been.
A memoir writ in invisible ink.
“You’re the life he never had,” Ann said, but it wasn’t Ann. It was Margaret Percival. It had always been Margaret Percival.
“Kendra!”
Dad was just outside the door, banging, kicking, screaming her name.
Her name.
Kendra Wilson.
She had been born after all, and she was alive.
“You took his life,” Margaret said.
“I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine,” Kendra said, water streaming down her face, eyes stinging, the tears flushing away as fast as they escaped.
She flung her arms out in the fog, knowing Margaret could see her, because Margaret saw everything in the hotel. Margaret was the hotel.
“Because you still have this,” Kendra said, shouting over the hissing of the water and the pounding on the door and the creaking of imploding lumber. “All yours.”
She lunged toward the door, bracing for the collision, wondering if Margaret would be as yielding and suffocating as damp cotton, as sharp and brittle as an iceberg, as splintery and hot as a burning hotel. No matter the material, or the immaterial, Emily Dee was kicking ass and taking names and writing it all down in a little book.
The room was suffused with a sudden glow, as if a thousand candles had been struck to life, the water drops sparkling like amber and rubies. Ann Vandooren’s face emerged from the exotic mist and she swiped out with a hooked stack of talons, going for Kendra’s face. But someone—something—caught Ann’s wrist, twisting it behind her back, yelling at Kendra to run.
Chapter 50
Wayne fell into Room 318 when the door flew open.
Spitting, coughing, crawling, he forced himself forward, though his body was one big bruise and numbness enervated his legs. The climb up the dark, smoke-filled service stairs had sapped him.
And he’d almost given up hope when he found the door stuck tight, as solid as the wall, and in a burst of frustration and fear, he’d slammed himself against it, calling Kendra’s name. But then—if he believed in miracles, he’d give it that name, though other names were possible—the room allowed entry.
Water cascaded down, stirring the air enough for him to fill half his lungs, not enough to carry a shout but enough to make the next lunge forward.
The door...allowed...entry.
The room had let him in. Not because the lock yielded or the stubborn hinges gave way or structural damage had loosened it from the jamb.
No, the door had said, “Come in, Digger. We’ve been waiting.”
The same room where he and Beth had booked a second honeymoon, making serious love and silly promises, and 17 years on, he was right where he’d never wanted to be again. In many ways, he was deader than Beth would ever be.
Wayne squinted into the steam. He made out two shapes near the window, silhouetted against the backlit window. One was large and hulking, with wild, stringy hair, towering over the smaller figure, who was crouched in a stance of self-defense. Her Emily Dee act.
The White Horse had his daughter.
He roared in rage, throat raw, and launched himself from the floor. He didn’t understand the forces here, and all the tiny paths that had led back to Room 318, but he understood that Beth had trusted him with this job.
It was time for Digger to shovel shit.
He caught the woman’s arm as she clawed at Kendra’s face. She turned and snarled at him like a feral animal. He barely recognized her—Ann Vandooren, the hoax artist—and the fierce glow in her eyes reminded him of the pulsing furnace in the basement.
“G-get out.” His words came in a spasm of coughs. “Run.”
“Dad,” Kendra said, sounding scared, but he couldn’t reassure her because he was scared, too. The strobing emergency lights outside threw a red wash across the walls, making a chaotic kaleidoscope of the room.
Ann shrugged free from his grip and thrust her hand toward his neck, nails slicing flesh as fingers locked around his throat. Kendra gave a flying side kick, but her sneaker bounced off the woman as if she were made of rubber-coated steel.
Wayne glanced around for something to use as a club. The bedside lamp had a heavy base, but it was out of reach. Ann’s fingers clung with unnatural strength, and the drumming water blurred his vision.
The floor shuddered, signaling a portion of the building had collapsed. The eastern wing had been the most engulfed, and Wayne figured the flames were chewing their way down the hall. The firelight pulsed in syncopation with the emergency lights. If Kendra didn’t escape soon—
She leaped onto Ann’s back, wrapping her arms as if going for a piggyback ride. The attack was just enough to throw Ann off balance, and they all fell onto the soggy king-size bed. As Ann writhed on top him, pinning him to the bedspread, Wayne couldn’t help but think of Beth and how their long-ago wrestling had created Kendra.
Ann raked her fingers down his chest, ripping his skin and shirt collar, but at least he could now suck enough air to scream.
He wallowed for traction against the sodden cloth. Ann had turned her attention to Kendra, but her face was close to his, sulfuric wind oozing from her mouth. He drove his forehead into her nose and she shook, flinging water from her hair.
Blood gushed from her face. Whatever she was, she wasn’t invincible. Her flesh was still human.
Wayne didn’t know if there was anything left of Ann inside the hissing, flailing form, but instinct compelled him to hurt her in any way he could.
But before he could punch her, the ceiling fell, chunks of gypsum pounding his face and delivering him to darkness.
Chapter 51
Kendra bounced on the bed—stay and play—and grabbed the sprinkler pipe, planning to swing until she could kick the crazy woman off of Dad. But the pipe came loose from the ceiling, yanking jagged sheets of gypsum with it.
Kendra fell, snapping off one of the bed’s posters, then sprawled backward with a spluff, her fall softened by the wet blankets.
Ann hovered over her, and in the strange flickering light, her eyes were bright as embers, pulsing with the rage of the world.
“You can’t have it,” Ann said, grabbing Kendra’s hair with one hand. The woman grinned, and her teeth were impossibly long, far too big for her mouth. She was no longer a woman, really. More like a badly drawn creature from the imagination of some sicko crytpozoologist.
Rat face.
Dad moaned from somewhere miles away in steamy jungle night.
Kendra rolled until she was halfway off the bed, but there was no floor below, only a deep, inky blackness that looked like it would suck everything down into the dead belly of the world. The walls were still there, the bulky outlines of furniture still revealed by the emergency lights outside, but the abyss below was big enough to swallow it all. The water drops fell on and on until their reddish silver glints vanished forever.
Even if she escaped the clutch of the demon, she wouldn’t dare leave the bed and touch that bottomless morass. It looked cold enough to kill.
Ann tangled her fingers in Kendra’s hair and jerked. The demon wallowed on her, hot breath on her cheek. The mouth descended and teeth scraped the soft skin around her jugular.
Kendra squirmed and felt the pressure in her pocket. Pencil.
“You should never have been born,” the demon hissed in her ear.
Kendra dug her hand in her pocket, fingers settling on the solid thickness of Big Fattie.
Works for vampires, but it won’t reach the heart.If this creature’s even got one.
She flipped up with her hips, which drew Demon Thing’s mouth closer but allowed her to yank the pencil free. Hot slaver spilled on her neck, erasing the chill of the spraying water.
The creature’s grip eased just a little and she opened her eyes. Dad had Demon Thing by the shoulders, trying to pull it away. The creature had gotten even uglier, with wrinkled grayish skin and eyes burning toward blue-white intensity.
As the teeth closed, Kendra drove the pencil into the creature’s ear.
“Draw blood!” she yelled, as Big Fattie’s sharpened tip plowed through the fragile chambers into the demon’s ear.
The creature’s shriek drowned out the latest wave of fire sirens, and it stiffened and jerked upright. The spotlight swept the window, revealing the creature in silhouette as it wiped at the wound. Black ichor gushed from the thing’s head. It swung an arm out, knocking Dad from the bed.
Kendra called his name and reached for him, expecting him to be gone, just as Gruff had gone, down into a dark hole in the heart of God. But the floor was solid now, and he came up with the bed’s broken poster.
“Go back to hell,” he yelled, driving the jagged tip into the creature’s chest.
Another shriek shattered the room, and the demon’s face contorted, shifting rapidly to Ann Vandooren’s, Rochester’s, Eloise Lanier’s, Gruff’s, Rodney Froehmer’s, then dozens of others, shuffled like cards, moving back through time until at last it settled on the woman in the first-floor painting.
“Margaret Percival,” Dad said.
Margaret looked down at the chunk of wood protruding from her chest. “You should never make promises,” she said, her voice no longer deep and demonic.
She pulled the bedpost from her chest. She looked happy in the rain.
“This way,” came a voice from the door.
Cody.
Chapter 52
“Get out,” Wayne said, shoving Kendra out the door. “Now.”
Smoke roiled in the hall, and flames flickered in eager fingers of golden heat.. Cody had yanked his shirt up over his face so the cloth acted as a filter, but his eyes were red and narrow. The ceiling joists groaned overhead.
“Service stairs,” Wayne shouted.
Future of Horror, I hope to God you’ve got a future.
He slammed the door behind them and flung the deadbolt. Kendra screamed at him but he offered no answer. She yanked on the door handle, but Cody must have had enough sense to lead her away before all hope of escape was lost.
Satisfied that now his daughter had a chance, he turned to face his demons. All of them.
The sprinkler system gave one final gush and then fell to dribbles. Steam curled above the carpet, and Wayne’s boots conducted heat up through the soles of his feet. For an absurd moment, he wished he had his top hat. The prop would have given him a little courage, as if playing a Victorian undertaker conferred an indifference to death.
“You’re not Margaret.”
“I’m way older than that,” it said. “She is just another vessel.”
“I didn’t believe in you, and now I do. Isn’t that enough?”
“Faith is never enough. You need proof. That’s why you’ve been looking so hard.”
Wayne glanced at the bedpost that lay on the bed, a gooey slickness coating its tip. It hadn’t worked the first time, but it was all he had.
Unless....
“How long have you been in the basement?”
“As long as people have needed me.” The demon touched the hole in Margaret’s chest, as if curious about the ephemeral nature of flesh. “As long as God asked me to be.”
“Look. Only two ways this can go. You kill me, or I die when the hotel caves in. So either way we’re stuck together.”
“More than you know.”
The smoke grew thicker. Boards detonated from stress. A huge piece of roof sheeting slid past the window. The heat was palpable now, and each breath carried pain to the bottom of Wayne’s lungs. Outside, the forest glimmered with the reflection of the rising conflagration.
The fire fighters had probably reached Kendra and Cody by now. No reason to wait any longer. It wouldn’t do any good for him to stay here forever, too.
“I kept my promise,” he said.
The demon reached up and yanked the pencil stub from its ear. “Took you long enough.”
“We just said we’d meet again. We didn’t say when.”
“I went to a lot of trouble for you.”
“You caused a lot of trouble, you mean.”
The demon’s face shifted from Margaret Percival’s to Beth’s as fire leapt across the attic and lit up the gash in the ceiling. “Well, I didn’t want Kendra to see me like this.”
Even with her damp hair, the bloom of blood on her chest, and the reflection of the encroaching flames in her eyes, she was beautiful. Digger’s half-dead heart twitched in his chest, revived enough to ache. “She’s not ready to know what she is.”
“She’s almost a woman, Wayne. Haven’t you noticed?”
“I’ve been trying not to.”
“Thanks for bringing her. It was so good to see her.”
“Sorry I waited so long. I was just—”
“Scared. I don’t blame you.” Beth sat on the soggy, gypsum-covered bed as smoke and steam swirled around her face. “We knew something was here. Dumb as we were, we somehow knew.”
A gutter banged against the windowsill and glass shattered. Another chunk of the ceiling fell down, and the attic rumbled and copper roofing flapped from the heat of the updraft.
“Go now,” Beth said, looking at the sketch pencil in her hand. “Get her away.”
“I can’t lose you again.”
“Somebody’s got to fit her for wings.”
“I’m not much—”
“But you’re all she’s got. Dying is the easy way out. I should know.”
“The hotel....”
“Ashes to ashes and all that. Get out of here. I’m tired of goodbyes.”
“Six demons against one angel. Odds are not good.”
“When God gives you a job, you just do it. Come hell or high water.”
Wayne wished he had Beth’s faith. He struggled to leave her with something, even as the walls crackled, but all he had was doubt. “How will I know who wins?”
“See me in heaven and you’ll know.”
He staggered through the smoke and kissed her. She was already gone, air, ether, mist, a cloud in heaven. All that was left was crackling flames, a cacophony of splintering wood, and the filthy sketch pencil lying on the bed.
He grabbed the pencil and ran for the door. The deadbolt blistered his fingers as he racked it loose and swept the door wide, then entered a hall of hell.
“I love you,” he shouted, words lost in the roar of Belial’s fury.
Chapter 53
Violet’s fingers played over the petty cash. A few hundred. Not so hot, but it would do until the unemployment checks came through.
Outside the office, windows shattered and the fire fighters sprayed their futile hoses. They must have thought everyone was out by now, because no hero types were barging through the lobby looking for lost souls.
The real pity was that there was no time to raid the cash register in the bar.
She folded the rumpled stack of bills and slipped them in the waistband of her pants. She wasn’t worried about the fire, not yet, because most of the damage had occurred on the two wings. The front door was barely 50 feet away. She played the flashlight around the office, glad she’d found one that worked.
Violet wondered what else Janey might have stashed away. Maybe there was a lost-and-found drawer, with jewelry, watches, and wallets. She opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and rifled through papers. Aside from a half-empty bottle of Merlot, there was little of interest.
She tried the one above it, now conscious of the smoke collecting in the office. The cabinet was empty except for a photograph of a young woman. The photograph was yell
owed with age and chipped at the edges, and Violet would have disregarded it except the face looked disturbingly familiar.
She retrieved the photograph and peered at it.
“Margaret,” Janey said.
Violet turned, nearly dropping the flashlight. The round cone of light framed the manager’s face as she sat behind her desk, smoking a cigarette.
“We couldn’t let her leave,” Janey said. “She was pregnant.”
“We don’t have much time.”
Violet started toward the door and saw it was closed. When she spotlighted Janey’s face, the woman’s eyes were utterly black and no light reflected from them.
“We have a lot of time,” Janey said, except her voice was deep as graves, as cold as a winter tombstone. “And the White Horse needs a new manager.”
Violet tried the door but the handle was so hot that the flesh of her palm sizzled. She yelped and banged on the wood with the bottom of her flashlight, now desperate for heroes.
Chapter 54
Almost....
The floor had nearly fallen away, but Wayne managed to reach the service stairs. Her energy had sluiced before him like a cool winter storm, pushing the flames away, parting the red sea of hell. The demons grabbed at him, claws curled, their howls of rage melding into the larger scream of the dying hotel.
Beth’s ether enveloped him, proving the permanence of devotion, yet he couldn’t touch it. The substance was like mist, white vapors that pushed against the darkness and chaos.
The womb of God....
This is how it feels to be reborn.
But even now, clambering down the stairs, he couldn’t surrender to the mystery. If God had taken Beth just to have another warrior on the front lines, Wayne saw no grace or mercy in it. Just the endless cycle of desire, merry-go-rounds of good and evil, little games to validate the fallibility of mortals.
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