The Red Hotel

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Vanessa!’ Sissy called her, when she had reached the kitchen entrance. ‘Why don’t you come on back? We can find a way to sort this out without killing any more people. I know about spirits, and how to help them to find peace.’

  Vanessa Slider shook her head and stayed where she was. Sissy shrugged and pulled the little figure back into the kitchen.

  Shem and the head chef and the kitchen assistants were all clustered close together, in between the counters. There were zombis now at both ends of the kitchen, so there was no way for them to escape.

  Aunt Epiphany looked down at the little figure in the black sheet and said, ‘Well . . . you sure have some nerve, Sissy! What do we have here?’

  ‘You leave him alone!’ Shem shouted at them. ‘That’s my brother you got there! You leave him be or I’ll cut your tits off!’

  ‘Your brother?’ said Sissy. ‘And so why does your brother always hide himself under a sheet?’

  ‘You leave him be! You leave him be, or I swear that I will cut your tits off and push them down your throat!’

  Aunt Epiphany said, ‘You hush up, ugly boy. You in no position to be making no threats to nobody. Let us take a look at this brother of yours.’

  She grasped the sheet and pulled it upward. At first, the little figure clung on to it tight, but then Aunt Epiphany twisted and twirled it, like a bullfighter’s cape, and gave it a double-shake, and he had to let go. She threw it on to the floor, and there was Shem’s brother, exposed for all of them to see.

  As Sissy had guessed, he was around four or five years old. He must have been quite a beautiful child, when he was alive, but like Vanessa Slider he was obviously dead. He was wearing an all-in-one sleep suit that must once have been white, but was now patterned with green and yellow stains. His face was gray and his eyeballs were milky and there were green tinges around his mouth.

  ‘You bastards!’ Shem foamed at them. ‘You bastards! That’s my brother!’

  ‘He is decomposing,’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘Look at the poor boy, Shem. He is rotting away.’

  ‘That’s because Momma couldn’t take him to the mortician!’

  At that moment, Vanessa Slider reappeared in the kitchen entrance.

  ‘So now you know,’ she said. ‘Now you know why I cannot forgive.’

  The little boy tottered over to his mother and she bent forward and kissed his forehead. ‘There, bebette, everything will soon be well. Momma promises you.’

  While she was standing there, however, trying to calm her long-dead child, three of the zombis had slowly but silently crept around behind her, and were now staring at her with their bloodshot, lidless eyes.

  ‘Vanessa—’ Sissy cautioned her.

  But Aunt Epiphany laid her hand on Sissy’s shoulder and said, ‘No, Sissy. This has to be finished here tonight. Otherwise, it will happen again and again, and Everett and T-Yon will always be in mortal danger. This woman has stained the fields with the blood of innocent people. Now she must harvest the crop that has grown there.’

  ‘But Epiphany, I can’t just stand here and watch this. It’s against my nature. I was put on this earth to help spirits, not destroy them.’

  ‘If you cannot stand here and watch this, my darling, then with the greatest respect I suggest you leave, and go back through the wall, and I will meet you there when this all finished.’

  Shem was shouting again, a hoarse barrage of swear words and sadistic obscenities. ‘You’re dead, you fuckers! I’ll cut your fucking heads off and stick ’em up your fucking ass!’

  The zombis were advancing on him and the rest of the kitchen staff from both ends of the kitchen and he could see that he had no way to escape. They glided forward, the zombis, their heads swaying hypnotically like cobras, and with their fleshless faces and exposed shoulder blades, Sissy found them utterly terrifying.

  Vanessa Slider screamed. Two of the zombis had jumped on to her back from behind and one of them was trying to bite into her neck. The little boy screamed, too, but the third zombi seized him by the wrist and swung him around, hitting him against the wall. She didn’t let go, though. She pulled him back and swung him around a second time, and then a third, until his skull cracked with a sound like a breaking jug. His putrescent brains, as pale green as his mother’s evening dress, were spattered in lumps up the wall.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said Sissy. ‘Oh my dear God, this is just awful.’

  ‘Remember that boy long dead already,’ said Aunt Epiphany. Her tone was surprisingly ferocious. ‘This zombi is doing him a favor.’

  The zombi kept on smashing the little boy against the wall until his arm tore out of its socket, and he was little more than a shapeless lump of flesh in a green-stained sleep suit.

  Vanessa Slider’s eyes rolled as she saw what was happening to her bebette, but she couldn’t speak. One of the zombis had buried her teeth in her neck, and was tearing the flesh away from her windpipe, while the other was ripping her dress off her back.

  Between them, the two zombis stripped her down to her cream-colored teddy. She could barely stand, and so much muscle had been bitten away from her neck that her head waggled loosely from side to side. Her knees gave way and she twisted around and dropped on to the floor. As soon as she fell, all three zombis crouched down beside her and started biting at her. The only sound was the tearing of skin as they wrenched it away with their teeth.

  ‘Remember this Slider woman, she is dead, too,’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘It is only the dead, feeding off the dead.’

  As she spoke, Sissy felt a deep tremor shaking the basement. Several pots and ladles dropped from their hooks above the kitchen counters.

  ‘Earthquake?’ she said. ‘Do they have earthquakes in Baton Rouge?’

  ‘No,’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘It is the Slider woman. The zombis are devouring her spirit, and when her spirit is gone, all of this hotel will be gone, too. So you and me, Sissy, we must hurry.’

  Shem was surrounded by a crowd of seven zombis. The head chef and his assistants were terrified, but it had become apparent to them now that the zombis had no interest in them at all. They may not have realized it, but Sissy knew that they were nothing more than Vanessa Slider’s memories, and that they would disappear when the last spark of Vanessa Slider’s spirit winked out, just like the Hotel Rouge and everybody in it – the revelers up in the lobby, the waiters, the jazz band, the arguing guests in the upstairs rooms, everybody.

  Shem, however, was alive. Shem was flesh and blood, and that was just what these seven zombis craved, along with their revenge.

  ‘Get the fuck away from me!’ he screamed, and struck out wildly with his cleaver. He knocked the hand off one of the zombis, and it flew across the kitchen, but that didn’t deter her at all. She kept coming at him with one raw hand and one bony stump.

  Panting with terror and effort, Shem hacked and slashed at the zombis as they came close enough to tug at his clothes. He hit one of them diagonally, embedding his cleaver right across the middle of her face, but after he had levered his cleaver back out she continued to reach for him, even though her lips were hanging open at one side of her mouth in a leering double-grin, and one of her eyes was now an inch lower than the other.

  ‘Gaston!’ Shem shouted. ‘Gaston, throw me over that can of cooking awl!’

  ‘What you say?’ the head chef shrilled back at him, in panic.

  ‘I said throw me over that fucking can of cooking awl!’

  Bewildered, the head chef picked up a two-gallon can of peanut oil, swung it backward and forward, and then heaved it in a tumbling arc so that it landed with a dull bang right at Shem’s feet. Shem set down his cleaver on the counter and bent down to retrieve it, all the time continuing to jab his kitchen knife toward the zombis as they inched ever closer.

  ‘Come on, then!’ he challenged them. ‘Come on, then! You’re dead – let’s see if you’re ready to be cremated!’

  He unscrewed the cap and then flung huge dollops of pale yellow oil all over the
zombis, one after the other, until they were drenched in it. They didn’t flinch, even when it splashed straight into their lidless eyes, and kept on coming. One of them seized his sleeve, and then another caught at his collar. He hit back at them furiously with the empty cooking-oil can, so that they had to release their grip. Then he reached across the counter for the kitchen blowtorch, lit it, and turned around to face them.

  The sharp blue flame of the blowtorch was reflected in the zombis’ eyes but they didn’t hesitate. They snatched at Shem’s shirt again, and one of them tried to claw at his face. He pointed the blowtorch directly at them, and the nearest zombi abruptly burst into flame. Then another, and another. Within a few seconds, all seven of them were pillars of rippling fire.

  Shem yelled, ‘Burn, you sluts! Burn! Got what you fucking deserved, yes? Hurt my momma, would you? Kill my baby brother? This is what you get! A preview of hellfire, that’s what!’

  But even though they were all blazing, their faces barely visible behind masks of flame, the zombis didn’t cry out, because they had no breath to cry out, and they didn’t show any sign of pain. They were dead, and their souls had long since left their mutilated bodies. Sissy knew that they were walking only because of Aunt Epiphany’s walking powder, and the holy rage of Adjassou-Linguetor.

  Shem tried to pull himself away from them, and his hand scrabbled across the kitchen counter in search of his cleaver. One of the blazing zombis gripped his wrist with her bony, fiery fingers, while another started to tug at his shirt, so that the cotton was scorched. Shem howled in pain, twisting himself around and trying to heave himself up on to the counter to get away.

  ‘Gaston! Gaston! Help me here, will you! Gaston you grand salaud, help me!’

  Gaston stayed where he was, on the opposite side of the counter, with his assistants clustered around him.

  ‘Gaston! Give me your hand, you fucker!’

  But there were seven fiery zombis, and they were overwhelming. Between them they all dragged Shem away from the counter, and down to the floor. Amongst the flames, Sissy could see his feet kicking, but the kitchen was starting to fill up with smoke as the last remnants of flesh on the zombis’ bodies began to blacken and crisp.

  ‘Oh God in heaven help me!’ screamed Shem, as the zombis tore at his flesh. ‘Not my eyes! Not my eyes! I never took your eyes! No!’

  The basement trembled once again, more violently this time. A whole rack of saucepans and colanders fell from the ceiling and crashed on to the floor. Sissy looked around and saw that Vanessa Slider was lying motionless now, her arms and legs spread wide, her face dead white, although she was sure that she saw her blink. The three zombis were still crouched over her, biting the flesh away from her bones.

  ‘How can they eat her?’ said Sissy. ‘She’s only a spirit.’

  ‘Of course she does not have real, living flesh, like her son,’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘But her anger was so terrible that her anger gave her flesh, so that she could take her revenge. What she has is the memory of flesh, just like this hotel is just a memory. And even the memory of flesh is enough to satisfy these women that she killed and butchered and fed to her guests.’

  The kitchen was completely filled up with smoke now, and the eye-watering smell of burned meat. The floor trembled again, and it was clear that Vanessa Slider’s spirit had nearly gone.

  ‘Now we must leave, and quick,’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘It is all done now.’

  The two of them hurried silently to the elevators. Sissy prayed that they would still be working, and that Vanessa Slider’s spirit wouldn’t be extinguished before they reached the second floor. Like everybody and everything else in the Hotel Rouge, they would simply cease to exist.

  The elevator chimed and they stepped inside. The hotel shook again, and this time they heard a deep, threatening rumble, and the groaning of girders, as if the whole building were about to collapse around them. But Sissy pushed the button and the elevator began to rise quite smoothly, although now and again it shuddered a little and gave a disconcerting rattle.

  A thought suddenly occurred to Sissy as they passed the first floor.

  ‘Luther – what about Luther? Was his body down in that cold store, too?’

  Aunt Epiphany nodded. ‘He was there. I was not going to make him walk because of the way he was, cut open like that. And he was family.’

  ‘But how are we going to explain what happened to him?’

  ‘We do not explain. So far as we know, he was stabbed by some person unknown, and he was taken away in an ambulance, and we do not know where.’

  ‘And you think that the police are going to believe that? What about poor Shatoya?’

  ‘You know and I know, Sissy, that Luther is departed from the real world for ever. Nobody can ever find him. I will say prayers for him, and light candles.’

  They reached the second floor and the elevator came to a jarring stop. For a very long moment, the doors remained closed, and Sissy started to think that she and Aunt Epiphany, too, would soon depart the real world for ever. Yet another deep rumble made the hotel shake, and Sissy heard glass breaking and people shouting. But faintly – very faintly – the sound of jazz. She recognized it: Saint James Infirmary Blues.

  ‘I’m goin’ down to Saint James Infirmary . . . see my baby there . . . stretched out on a long white table . . . so cold, so sweet, so fair . . .’

  My God, thought Sissy. How appropriate. A requiem for one woman’s insatiable hunger for revenge.

  Then the doors opened.

  Voodoo Doll

  Sissy returned to The Red Hotel the following afternoon. It was a hot, glaring day, although a slight south-westerly breeze was blowing off the river which eased the humidity.

  She found Everett and T-Yon sitting in the Showboat Saloon with Detective Garrity and young Detective Thibodeaux, drinking iced tea.

  She had seen Everett and T-Yon last night, of course, when she and Aunt Epiphany had stumbled out of the wall on the second floor. T-Yon had told them that Everett had been champing to go back in to rescue them, but she had persuaded him not to.

  ‘Well, you were wise,’ Sissy had told her. ‘Like Epiphany said, we’re just two old ladies, while you have your whole lives in front of you.’

  They had walked hand in hand back along the corridor, but as they had done so, they had heard another rumble – felt it, rather than heard it, through the soles of their feet. Sissy had hesitated and then walked back to the place where they had come through the wall. The others had waited for her as she placed the flat of her hand against the plaster. It had seemed to be solid again, so she had pushed a little harder.

  She had walked back to join Everett and T-Yon and Aunt Epiphany.

  ‘They’re gone,’ she had said, with a rueful smile, because she couldn’t help thinking of Luther and Ella-mae and Detective Mullard, and all of those unnamed good-time girls. ‘Vanessa Slider and Shem, they’re out of your lives for ever.’

  Today, Everett and T-Yon still looked tired, but they were both smartly dressed – Everett in a red-and-white striped shirt and slacks, and T-Yon in a white blouse and jeans.

  Detective Garrity stood up as Sissy came in. ‘Where you at, Ms Sawyer? Gather you’re leaving us today, you and Ms Savoie here, flying back to chilly Connecticut.’

  ‘That’s right. But I’ll be back before too long. From what little I’ve managed to see of Red Stick, I like the look of it, and it would be good to get to know it better. I never even managed to have a gumbo.’

  They sat down. Detective Garrity spooned sugar into his tea and looked across the table at her as he stirred it.

  ‘Why do I have the feeling that our troubles are over and you know why but I never will?’

  ‘I don’t know, Detective. I may have a facility for telling fortunes, but I don’t know everything.’

  ‘It is something concerning this Vanessa Slider woman you kept going on about, isn’t it?’

  ‘Vanessa Slider is dead, Detective. Vanessa Slider i
s long dead.’

  ‘OK . . . but why don’t you leave me a contact number in Connecticut where I can get ahold of you. You know – just in case I have any more queries about ghosts or – what did you call them? – gone-beyonders. I still have more loose ends to tie up here than five plates of spaghetti.’

  Sissy wrote her number on a paper napkin and passed it over. All the time Detective Garrity never once took his eyes off her.

  ‘Just tell me one thing,’ he said, folding up the napkin and tucking it into his pocket without looking at it. ‘Just tell me that – so far as you’re concerned – it is all over.’

  ‘You’re not a believer, Detective. You made that clear enough.’

  ‘Maybe I’m not. But then I don’t believe in God, either, which doesn’t mean to say that I disrespect people who do.’

  Sissy thought for a moment, and then she said, ‘Since I’ve met them, I’ve grown very fond of Everett and T-Yon. They’re almost like my own children. I wouldn’t leave Baton Rouge unless I was sure that there was nothing threatening them any more, either from this world, or the next.’

  ‘OK. I accept that. So what did happen between the time I left last night and this morning, when I came back.’

  ‘What’s your star sign, Detective?’

  ‘My star sign? Sagittarius. Why?’

  ‘I predict that you have a highly illustrious career ahead of you in the Baton Rouge police department, and I’m talking about Chief of Police. But this will only happen if you keep your sanity.’

  ‘Pardon me.’

  ‘It’s like you said, Detective. I know what happened but you never will, and it’s much, much better that way, for all of us. Especially for you.’