Evil to Burn

by Lisa Klink

  So when Matt saw a red pickup truck coming, he planted himself beside the road and waved. He told Ryan to stay back, though. No point in making them both an easy target. As the truck got closer, Matt prepared to dodge out of the way. But this time, his faith in humanity was rewarded. The driver stopped and got out. He was a thin, middle-aged man, deeply tanned from years of working outside.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  They didn’t look all right, exhausted and filthy from the walk, any exposed skin burned deep red by the sun. Matt just nodded. “Got a little turned around on our hike. Are you heading into Battle Mountain?”

  “Passing through there,” said the man. He caught sight of Ryan, who was barely keeping himself upright. “I can drop you off at the hospital,” he offered.

  Matt knew that Ryan needed a doctor and a few gallons of IV fluids. But it was already past five o’clock and the Washakie Lodge was scheduled to open at seven. They had no time for the hospital.

  “No, thanks,” said Matt. “We have friends waiting at the Washakie Lodge. Can I borrow your cell phone?”

  The driver handed it over. Matt called 911. He directed emergency services to Karen and Daniel as best he could, based on the time and route he and Ryan had traveled.

  He returned the phone to its owner, who had given Ryan a bottle of water. The kid looked positively blissful as he chugged it down. The driver gave Matt a bottle, too. He had space for them to ride in the truck bed, and there was a tarp they could use for shade.

  Matt and Ryan thanked him and climbed into the back. They found room to sit among piles of boxes and car parts. They hung the promised tarp across the stacks and settled back in relative comfort as the truck got moving.

  Ryan grinned at him. “We made it.” With that guileless smile, he looked so very young. Matt didn’t have the heart to remind him that they were nowhere near the finish line. The Dark Man was waiting.

  “Yeah, we did.” He’d let the kid rest. For now.

  Ryan had been sleeping for about a half hour when Matt noticed the blisters on his face. He immediately feared the worst. Matt realized he’d been assuming that the arrowhead would protect the kid from the Dark Man’s evil influence, but maybe that was wishful thinking.

  Matt made sure his ax was within easy reach as he leaned in closer, trying to detect the foul odor of decomposition in the whipping wind of the open truck bed. Nothing. He examined the big blister on Ryan’s forehead, just below the white tan line left by the bandanna. The liquid inside was clear. The young man was afflicted with nothing more sinister than a really bad sunburn.

  What a relief, Matt thought darkly, I don’t have to put an ax through his skull after all. He was starting to consider Ryan a friend. Even better, he was one of the few people Matt could actually be honest with. Most of the time he had to lie constantly, making sure not to let anything slip about evil clowns, walking corpses, or the fantastic new skills he’d acquired since returning from the dead. It was exhausting.

  He also appreciated having a real ally in the fight against the Dark Man, someone who actually made the creature worry. Those had been rare, too. He shook Ryan awake. They had to prepare.

  He told Ryan about the excavation on Blood Mesa and the stone altar they had unearthed there. It contained an ancient evil that had turned the archaeology grad students into vicious killers. They had tried to sacrifice a fellow student on the altar, believing that would expand the range of its evil influence. Who knew how far it would reach, or how many people it would change into bloodthirsty monsters? With a few sticks of dynamite and some help from the dying student, Matt had destroyed it before they found out.

  Ryan listened, then spoke quietly. “Grandpa said something dark was going to cast a shadow across the land. Was he talking about another altar? In Battle Mountain?”

  Matt nodded. “I think so. But I want you to stay away from it.”

  Ryan was confused. “From what? The altar? Aren’t we going there to destroy it?”

  “I’ll take care of that,” said Matt.

  The truck jolted over an uneven patch of road. “So what am I supposed to do? Cheer you on?” asked Ryan.

  “I was immune from the altar’s effect. I don’t know if you will be,” Matt explained.

  “I will.” He pulled out the arrowhead. “I have this.”

  Matt wasn’t reassured. “It might protect you. It might not.”

  “It has so far,” Ryan pointed out.

  “Yeah. So far,” Matt began.

  The younger man cut him off. “My grandfather asked me to come here to help him stop the Dark Man. He wouldn’t have done that if he didn’t know that this would keep me safe.”

  “We have no idea what he knew,” argued Matt. “He didn’t tell you.”

  “I trust him,” Ryan said simply. While Matt certainly thought it was nice that Ryan had such confidence in his grandfather, that didn’t mean the old man hadn’t made a mistake.

  Matt told the kid, “There’s only one way to find out if you’re wrong, and if you are, it’ll be too late.”

  “I understand,” Ryan insisted.

  “You don’t understand.” Matt held up the ax. “If you’re wrong, l will have to kill you.”

  “I get it, okay? The altar and the Dark Man are really, really dangerous. But you said it yourself: he wanted to stop me from getting here because I’m a threat to his plans. That’s why I just walked across the goddamn desert. I know I can help.” Ryan faced him, challenging him to disagree.

  For a bleak moment, Matt was sure the Dark Man had been right. He was going to lead this kid to his death. The hateful creature was making Matt question himself again. He thought, Fuck that.

  “All right,” said Matt. Ryan was a grown man, capable of making his own decisions. “We find the altar and we destroy it.” How that was going to happen, Matt didn’t know. He doubted there would be stray dynamite lying around the hotel.

  The pickup driver—they never did find out his name—dropped Matt and Ryan in front of the Washakie Lodge at a quarter after seven. Matt felt it immediately, pulsing like a second heartbeat in his chest. There was evil here.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The Washakie Lodge was a high-end resort trying to look like a rustic cabin. A ten-story cabin with carefully weathered timbers, huge windows, and an artfully “natural” landscape. After reading the National Enquirer article, Matt had researched the place. It was the latest project of wunderkind real estate developer Gregory Nash, built on the Shoshone Reservation just outside Battle Mountain. There had been the usual controversy about preserving native lands versus economic revitalization for the tribe. Nash, as he seemed to do with everything, prevailed. Which was what angered the ancient spirits, according to the Enquirer. Matt wished that was all they were dealing with.

  The hotel was brightly lit and people were heading in through the front door. The grand opening party had already begun.

  “So, we’re looking for a big stone slab?” asked Ryan.

  “Maybe,” said Matt. “Whatever it is will be marked with symbols. A snake eating its own tail, and the face of the Dark Man.”

  Ryan, of course, had never seen the Dark Man. Matt continued, “He looks like a demented clown, with white skin, a red nose, and…” He wondered how to describe the pure malice in its expression. “Really fucking ugly. That face is what we need to destroy.”

  “Right.” Ryan gripped the arrowhead in one hand. To Matt, it looked pathetically small. They went through the big wooden door and into the lodge.

  The lobby was an open, two-story space. Huge windows faced west toward the beautiful sunset. The faux rustic style continued in here, with “rough-hewn” wood furniture and overstuffed distressed leather chairs in front of a cavernous stone fireplace. In August, the fire wasn’t lit.

  There had been a less successful effort to incorporate a Native American motif into the decor. The knotty pine reception desk was flanked by fake totem poles. Coyote-skull wall sconces dotted the w
alls. The elaborate inlaid pattern of the floor included “Native” images including feathers, bear tracks, and arrows.

  Then there was Chief Washakie himself, the great Shoshone leader and namesake of the lodge. A huge figure of the man, carved from a hundred-year-old piñon tree, stood just to their left. With the base and headdress, he was nearly eight feet tall. The statue was a gift of the Shoshone Nation, perhaps as a reminder of who really owned this land. A big, ugly reminder.

  Thirty or so guests wandered the lobby, chatting and admiring the sunset. Waitstaff circulated with trays of hors d’oeuvres. A live band played. No one seemed remotely interested in tearing one another to pieces.

  “Everything’s okay,” said Ryan, relieved. “Maybe we were wrong…”

  Matt squelched that idea. “It must not be close enough to affect the people in this room. But it’s here.” His skin was crawling and his nerves were screaming. Just like they had on Blood Mesa. “Don’t you feel it?”

  Ryan shook his head weakly. The kid didn’t look so good. Matt had recovered much of his strength during the two-hour truck ride. Ryan, like any normal person, would need more time. They didn’t have it. Matt grabbed two glasses of watery punch from the tray of a passing waitress and gave them to Ryan. There was little more than a gulp of liquid in each.

  Matt led the way through the lobby, surveying the layout of the place. He passed the reception desk, then an open hallway, which presumably led to the guest rooms. On the back wall, a set of French doors opened out to the swimming pool behind the hotel. A few guests stood around the pool, drinking and laughing in the pleasant evening air. They appeared no more homicidal than the people in the lobby. Which was good, of course, but Matt couldn’t bring himself to relax. Something bad was going to happen here. He knew it.

  “Matt.” Ryan had stopped. He looked down. Beneath his feet was the image that had brought Matt here in the first place: the Ouroboros, built right into the lobby of the Washakie Lodge.

  “I feel something now,” said Ryan. “Something bad.”

  Matt stepped onto the snake. He immediately felt it, the same terrible dark energy that had radiated from the black stone altar on Blood Mesa. Matt knelt down and touched the floor of the lobby. It was painfully hot. Just like the altar.

  He jerked his hand back. Ryan asked, “What?”

  “We’re standing on it,” Matt realized. “This floor, this room, is the altar.”

  Ryan looked around at the peaceful guests. “But they’re not turning evil.”

  Matt’s mind was racing. “So the Dark Man’s face must be somewhere else in the building. Which means the whole goddamn building is the altar.” He tested this theory by touching the nearest wall. It was hot, too.

  “Wow,” concluded the kid. Matt couldn’t have said it better himself.

  “We have to find the face. That’s where this bad energy is coming from.” He could feel waves of it radiating through his body, from his feet to the top of his skull. “It’s below us. Somewhere downstairs.”

  “Okay.” Ryan headed for the elevator, only now noticing the Out of Service sign.

  “Wait.” Matt stopped him. “First, we have to get these people out of here.”

  Ryan looked around, making the connection to Matt’s story and what the altar on Blood Mesa had been used for. Human sacrifice. Between the guests, the band, the caterers, and assorted hotel employees, there were at least forty people in the room. “Shit,” he muttered. “Oh shit.”

  Matt kept his voice low. “Start moving people outside, nice and calm. Tell them there are going to be fireworks or something.”

  Ryan nodded. He headed toward a young couple, preparing to lie his ass off. That’s when the front door started to burn.

  Nobody noticed the first small flames along the bottom edge of the big wooden door. The fire quickly spread upward, fueled by the surprisingly flammable acrylic paint. A waitress saw this and screamed.

  Panic. Some people ran for the French doors, out to the pool. But the large area rug in front of the doors was already on fire. It would soon spread to the wood paneling, and to the tall bookcases in the cozy reading area by the windows. The two main exits had been cut off.

  It was even worse than Matt had feared. They were all sacrificial victims, to be burned alive inside the massive altar. He couldn’t imagine how powerful its evil influence might become if that happened. But he wouldn’t worry about that right now. He’d worry about saving a lot of people from a horrible death.

  Ryan saw a woman with a walkie-talkie on her belt directing guests toward the hallway leading to the guest rooms. He started urging people that way, too. Suddenly, a line of flame raced from the front door along the wall to the authentic Shoshone canoe mounted directly above the entrance to the hallway. The preserved old wood caught quickly. Eight of the guests managed to dash past it before the cheap pegs holding it to the wall cracked in the heat, then gave way. The woman stepped back just as the whole flaming mess crashed to the floor, blocking the hallway.

  That’s why the canoe had been placed there, of course. Everything in the lobby, from the wood floors to the furniture and the area rugs, had been selected because it would burn.

  Matt had seen the little moving flame. Not only had someone set this fire, but he or she was still controlling it. Right now, the how seemed less important than the who. Matt scanned the crowd of terrified faces, looking for the person who wasn’t scared.

  He saw the man standing perfectly still in the panicking crowd. His lips were moving, as if he were talking to himself. No, Matt realized, not talking. Chanting. Like the demented professor on the mesa.

  Matt pushed through the crush of bodies, pulling the ax from his bag. As he got closer, he was surprised to realize that he recognized the guy, from a magazine article about the Washakie Lodge. He was Gregory Nash, the genius real estate developer who had built this hotel. He looked positively happy to be watching it burn.

  Nash looked up at him and smiled. “You must be Matt,” he said pleasantly. “He told me to expect you.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “He…?” Matt was stunned. Nash couldn’t be talking about the Dark Man, could he?

  Nash looked at Matt as if he was being coy, pretending not to know whom he meant. “Our mutual friend,” he clarified. “I think he’ll be especially grateful for your sacrifice.”

  Matt had a lot of questions, but no time to ask. He swung the ax at Nash’s head. The other man brought up an arm to block it, and the blade cut just below his elbow. His hand and a chunk of arm fell to the floor. But Nash didn’t bleed. Fire spurted from the stump instead.

  The flames quickly spread across his body. They weren’t burning him, Matt saw, but changing him. Or maybe, revealing him. Nash was fire, in the shape of a man. Including a fully restored arm.

  Matt had seen a lot of strange things in the past couple of years, including a spider demon in a little girl’s body and a man who could turn into a dog. But this, he had to admit, was impressive.

  Nash reached for Matt, who swatted away his hand with the ax. He half expected the ax handle to pass right through the flames, but Nash still seemed to have some physical substance. Matt drove the blade into Nash’s chest. The blow pushed him back a few steps, but seemed to do no more harm than that. Nash dislodged the ax from his body. The wound was quickly filled by fire. He grabbed Matt’s wrist.

  Matt actually smelled his cooking flesh in the few seconds it took him to wrench his arm free. The burning pain was intense. He backed away from Nash, trying to come up with a strategy. He glanced toward the pool, but the whole back wall of the lobby, including the door, was engulfed in flames.

  A loud crack made him turn briefly, to see Ryan by the big picture window facing the sunset. He had picked up one of the chairs in front of the fireplace and thrown it into the glass. Several cracks spidered out from the impact point. He retrieved the chair and launched it into the window again. More cracks. Hopeful guests gathered to watch the effort.

/>   Nash flicked a hand casually in their direction, as if brushing away a fly. A line of flame sped along the baseboard to the cushy fur rug laid out in front of the fireplace. It spread quickly across the rug to where Ryan was standing. Flames ran up his legs. Ryan jumped off the rug and beat frantically at his burning jeans. Two of the guests helped him smother the flames.

  The would-be sacrifices might stand a chance of getting out if it weren’t for Nash. Matt had to take him down but couldn’t immediately think how. At the least, he needed to distract Nash or get him away from the guests. The guy knew him, seemed to think he was important. Would he come after Matt if he seemed to be escaping? One way to find out.

  Leading Nash out of the hotel wasn’t an option at the moment. He would have to go up, into the hotel. The elevator was conveniently, or deliberately, out of service. He hadn’t seen any stairs off the lobby. There was just Chief Washakie, standing tall and nearly reaching the open second-floor landing.

  As Nash watched Ryan, obviously amused, Matt ran to the statue and started to climb. Nash turned and saw him as Matt stood on the chief’s shoulders and jumped to the second-floor railing. He swung his body over the banister and dropped onto the carpet. Matt looked back down at Nash. It was hard to read the expression of solid fire, but he didn’t seem happy. Follow me, you bastard, thought Matt. He flashed his best “fuck you” smile and headed down the second-floor hallway.

  Ryan observed the man made of fire with surprising equanimity. His capacity for astonishment had been pretty well exhausted over the past couple of days. When he saw Nash climb up to the second floor to pursue Matt, he recognized the opportunity.

  He turned to the woman with the walkie-talkie on her belt, whom he assumed was a hotel employee. She was a tall olive-skinned woman in her early thirties with a name tag that read “Sofia.” She was barely holding it together.