by G. G. Andrew
“How?” Mina repeated, shaking her head.
“I’ve been meeting people like you for so many years,” Adele said. “Some of them taught me how to guard my thoughts, even from psychics as powerful as you.”
“He’s going to take us all.” Mina’s voice had gone hoarse. “He doesn’t play fair.”
Laney’s body gave an involuntary shudder.
The footsteps grew louder and Lucas appeared at the top of the steps under the threshold. She could make out his pale face and dark hair in the dim light.
“Lucas, don’t come any closer!”
“Laney?” he said.
“She’s had a fall,” Adele said quickly. “Banged her nose. She’s confused. We need your help.” She gestured for him to come down the hallway.
Laney thrust out a hand. “Lucas, don’t believe her. She’s lying.” She scrambled to her feet, her purse swinging against her body. A strong wave of dizziness made her lean against the wall. “Oh…”
“Laney.” He rushed forward, his arms outstretched.
Once he entered the hallway, it was like a wire was tripped—or the final domino fell. The heat of the room rose so quickly Laney felt feverish, and along with it came a reeking smell of heat and rot. It reminded her of the smell from earlier, but ten times worse. She wasn’t so sure it was a bug anymore.
Lucas had just reached her and put his arms around her when all the candles sputtered out.
“What the…” she began into the pitch black, just as Mina started talking in a voice that was almost singsong in its childlike terror.
“Silas, Silas Bolton. Pocket Bolton. He’s come.”
Lucas’s arms tightened around her. “No.”
From the far end of the hall, tiny flames began dancing along the ceiling.
“I am sorry about this, Lucas,” Adele began, and her disembodied voice in the dark scared Laney almost as much as whatever was happening down the hall. “He wanted you, all those years ago. So young and fresh. He didn’t like being thwarted. So I’m giving him what was snatched out of his hands. I’m trading your soul to get my Bill back.”
“But Mrs. Lyons…” Lucas’s confused features—all of their features—were growing more visible as the red light of the flames grew at the end of the hallway. The fire rimmed the ceiling and came halfway down the walls, crackling and licking the plaster. “Mrs. Lyons, you sent me birthday cards every year.”
“I don’t regret that,” she said. “You were such a sweet boy.” She stepped behind them, but fear made the rest of them unable to move.
There was a dark shape approaching from beyond the flames—too far, farther than the spot where the hallway should have ended.
“What’s happening?” The strange sight and smell made Laney woozy. She moved closer to Lucas, whose strong arms held her fast.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s happening again. She’s right; it wants me.”
She shook her head.
That thing in that tunnel—tunnel?—at the end of the hall was shaped like a man, but it didn’t move like one. It walked on two limbs—but no, it lurched—their way. It moved heavily, its stomps echoing down the hall, its body pulling to the left like it was weighed down. The sound of coins jangling followed it, but in an incongruous way, like a movie with the audio slightly off. The noise was an echo, perhaps a memory of whatever the thing had been when it was alive.
“What…is…that,” Laney breathed.
The dark shape was indistinct, and the top looked funny until Laney realized it was wearing a hat. Its head was bowed, the brim hiding whatever features it may or may not have had. If this was Silas “Pocket” Bolton, who’d sold his soul to the devil—she couldn’t believe she was considering it—maybe greed had followed him into the afterlife, where they used a different sort of currency.
And now it wanted Lucas.
It must’ve known it had them mired in fear, sticky in the tar of their own doom, because it was in no hurry. Things that moved quickly were undoubtedly scary; a creature that could rip out your throat before you had breath to scream was the stuff of nightmares. Yet as the milliseconds ticked by, Laney learned firsthand that there was a more exquisite terror in monsters that crept towards you at their own slow, torturous pace.
Mina made a low keening sound. “So hungry,” she whispered. “You’re not safe.”
Lucas inhaled sharply.
“It’s here,” Mina said. “It’s here, it’s here, it’s here…”
It was now entering the actual hall, its head still bowed and the sound of coins clanking in its wake. Its outline became clear with the light from the flames nipping the walls behind it. As it came closer, the stench grew. Charred wood and rotting corpse, like the very breath of hell.
Lucas stirred. “Laney—Laney, you’ve got to run.”
But how could she when she couldn’t even feel her legs?
It was almost halfway down the hall now.
“Silas Bolton!” Adele called behind them. “I have brought you something you want.” Her voice was ringed in fear, but her tone was clear and strong. Determined.
“Years ago, you wanted this boy,” she continued, “but he got away from you. Here, take him now. I have brought him to you as a trade.” Her voice broke off in near-sob. “Take him and give me back my Bill.”
The heat grew, and flames moved towards them like hungry tendrils, and the thing stopped in the middle of the hallway.
It wore a pair of pants and a shirt, tarnished and old. The clothes seemed to fit the body in a peculiar way, like underneath it was just bones and melting flesh.
Lucas shoved Laney behind him. They stumbled backwards, to the wide area near the top of the stairs. “Go,” he said, pushing her toward the steps. “All of you. Run.”
Mina’s face was awash in firelight and contorted in pain. “I’m making it worse. He’s using me. I—” She cried out, slamming her hands over her ears.
“Go!” Lucas shouted again, and the young woman barely nodded before turning to trip down the steps.
“I’m not leaving without my Bill,” Adele said, standing firm on the other side of the hall, her red-washed cheeks stained with tears.
Laney didn’t move. “You think that thing is actually going to give you what you want?” Laney shouted at Adele. She grabbed Lucas’s arm. “Come on, let’s both go.”
“No, it wants me. Go!”
In response, a wave of heat and stench washed over them and the sound of clanking began again. In the midst of their arguing, it was approaching, and soon it’d be too late for anyone to escape.
“Don’t be such a damn hero,” Laney snapped. She grabbed him again but it was as if he’d turned to stone. Every inch rigid in fear, and yet the look on his face was something like—acceptance?
“No,” she said. “No, no, no.”
Her purse was still slung across her body, and she unzipped it quickly, digging in the contents until she found what she wanted. The paycheck from the magazine, the only money she had left.
Laney knew greedy people. She’d been raised by two. She knew what they needed even before they knew it themselves. This guy obviously hadn’t evolved much in the afterlife. Hungry indeed.
She stepped out in front of Lucas and Adele, between them and the inferno. “Hey, Pocket Bolton.” She waved the paycheck in the air. “You ever see one of these?”
Chapter Fourteen
Lucas
“Laney, what are you doing?” Lucas’s voice was dry from the heat and the fear that gripped him. He reached out to pull her back, but she dodged his grip, moving closer to the monster.
“This is money,” she said. “It might not look like the money you’re used to, but you can still use it like money.”
“Don’t listen to her,” Adele hissed. “That’s not the trade. A soul for a soul.”
“Are you sure?” Laney said to the thing. “Because this is a lot of money. You can take it, gamble with it, and make even more money with it. W
hat do you need with some guy’s soul when you can have that?”
The spirit stopped. Its face was still bowed, but with jerky movements, it began to raise its head, its features revealed from underneath the brim of its dark hat—or what was left of them.
Its face was blackened, burnt to a crisp, the nose and ears all but burned off. The eyes were the most alive thing in that face, and they were terrible. The orbs were black, and instead of irises, they housed endless pits of flame.
“Oh, shit,” Laney said, but then added, her eyes holding the creature’s, “Lucas, I’m going to give it this paycheck so we can leave, so I’d appreciate it if you could let go of whatever it is that’s keeping you from getting the hell out of here. Like immediately.”
Something of life—a sick, twisted life—had kept Silas Bolton still animated and with a greedy desire beating in his breast. He survived in a shadowy place—maybe through the devil’s design, maybe his own—but kept his left hand reaching into this world to grasp what he still could.
It was that hand now that raised. It too belonged to a burnt corpse, the flesh dark, slick, and sticky. Lucas felt a wave of revulsion at how the fingers of its hands were stuck together and curled, like it was partly decomposed. With a series of sickening pops, the fingers pulled apart, straightened, and reached for the paycheck.
The creature that had been Silas “Pocket” Bolton was never satisfied, and he wanted what was Laney’s. For starters.
Lucas knew, as she must have, that it would devour that check and then move on to Laney, then him.
“I need to save you,” he whispered to Laney. “It’s what I do.” He was a firefighter. He was a good man. He had to sacrifice himself to save them.
Didn’t he?
“Bullshit,” she whispered. The paycheck was trembling in her grasp. She was three feet away from it. She was going to give the monster the paper, and then what?
Then Lucas would have jumped in front of her, just as Bill Lyons had stood in front of him. And he would be glad to. Part of him always knew this hour was coming, that he lived on borrowed time. That he was meant to burn in Silas Bolton’s grasp. With a start, he realized that maybe that’s what being a firefighter had been in some ways: not just saving others, but bringing himself closer to this moment because he’d always been meant to die.
Hadn’t he?
He looked at the woman in front of him, dark hair trailing down her back and blood on her face. She was as brave as she was beautiful, and in such a short time she’d made him feel and face so much. He wanted to survive with her.
He stepped forward and grabbed her arm. “Now!” he shouted, and as the thing touched the paycheck and it burst into flame, he grabbed Laney and ran with her to the staircase.
“No!” Adele shrieked as they barreled past her. Her hands reached out to grasp him, her nails raking down his arm. But they were no match for the survival instinct that had finally kicked in.
As they reached the steps, the flames roared. He looked over his shoulder to see Adele Lyons still standing there, her mouth open in fury as she watched him run. The spirit of Silas Bolton grabbed her and she burst into flame, the flesh searing off her body as her skeleton still gaped at Lucas.
“Run!”
Laney didn’t need to hear any more. She darted down the stairs as he felt the fire on their heels. Smoke filled the staircase, choking them both.
They spilled out onto the second floor. The lights were still on, but smoke poured from the ceiling and walls, obscuring their vision of the end of the hall where the final staircase awaited. Cattleman’s Crossing had burned once, and it would burn again.
Lucas breathed in and gagged, wrapping his arm around Laney’s waist. “Put your hand over your mouth!” he sputtered over a coughing fit. “And get down low!”
They were stumbling to the stairs when a form appeared out of the smoke in front of them.
It was Mina.
“The stairs,” Lucas choked out. But the woman didn’t move. She just stared at them.
With fire in her eyes.
“Lucas!” Laney screamed as the woman grabbed at her hair. A length of curls came off in Mina’s hand, singed.
Then the psychic lunged for him clumsily, like she moved by puppet strings.
Lucas dodged her as they rushed to the staircase. She’d been used—first by Adele, now by that thing on the third floor. When they got to safety outside, he’d come back for her. With full-body equipment.
But the fire had gotten to the staircase first. All along the bannister, and the walls where the images of Cattleman’s Crossing Inn were hung, a fire raged. As Lucas watched, it spread across the last two steps, blocking their path.
Just then Tucker Dixon appeared from the library, focused on one of the devices in his hand.
“Holy shit,” he said, and dropped it on the floor.
“Get out of here, Tucker!” Laney cried over her coughs.
A piece of ceiling doused in flame fell down onto the front desk.
Dumbfounded, the kid tripped but sprung up to stumble out the entrance to the inn, leaving the door open to the cool night.
They just had to make it there.
Lucas turned to Laney. Her face was smeared in dried blood and the dark soot that probably covered his own cheeks.
“Do you believe in me?” he asked.
She coughed. “I don’t have a lot of choice right now.”
“But do you?”
“Yes.” Her green eyes caught his and she nodded. “Yes.”
“Good.” He pulled her down to the ground, to the edge of the rug that covered the entire staircase. They embraced. Her body came flush against his, their legs intertwining and hearts hammering against one another. Her breath came in fast little gasps on his neck.
He grabbed onto the edge of the carpet to pull it over them.
“Hold on tight,” he said, curling her head under his chin. Then he pushed them onto the staircase, holding the carpet so it wrapped around them as they rolled down.
“Oh, my God.” Laney gasped.
It wasn’t a comfortable ride, truly the stuff that concussions were made of, but with their heads tucked under and the thick carpet to cushion the bumps, they rolled down the steps to first floor of the inn like two pigs in a blanket.
The carpet roll thudded to a jerky stop at the bottom, smacking the ground.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” Laney cried.
“I didn’t.”
He’d left enough room for them to squeeze out the tunnel the carpet had created. Emerging on all fours and dizzy as hell, they looked sideways to find the staircase they’d just rolled down engulfed in a blaze.
“Damn.” Lucas hooked an arm around Laney and helped them both to their feet as another piece of burning house crashed into the lobby.
“This way.” He careened them around the debris to the open front door.
In their dizziness and confusion, they fell more than stepped over the threshold.
He picked Laney up in his arms and staggered with her until they’d moved a safe distance away. Then he fell to his knees in the cool night, setting Laney on the ground and gulping in as much air as he could take.
Cattleman’s Crossing was totally ablaze, windows shattering and flames reaching like fingers for the nightsky.
A loud roar shook Lucas’s eardrums. It could’ve been the blaze—or it could have been the agony of that thing that had been unable to satisfy its fiery hunger.
Minutes later, maybe longer, sirens pierced the night.
He lay on the ground, Laney breathing deeply beside him, when he looked over. It was an enormous relief to see the trucks of Dallas Fire and Rescue pull up.
Tucker must’ve called them. Sure enough, as he sat up, there was the boy beyond the smoke standing across the street. He held his phone in his hand and, as Lucas watched, he half-lifted it, as if to take a photo. But he was shaking so hard, he lowered his hand again and wiped the sweat off his brow.
Lucas thought of Tucker’s excitement at the beginning of the night, and the shock when that coin had burned his flesh. He could tell the kid to ask his parents not to rebuild the inn, not ever, but Lucas had a feeling he wouldn’t need to.
Either way, he felt the old fear that had lived so long in his body crumbling with the inn. Though the face of the ghost was still fresh in his mind, he had faced it and survived. Survived by saving himself.
“Moore!” His buddy Jake ran over as Tory and some other firefighters unrolled hoses to contain the blaze.
“Let it burn,” he choked out before a coughing fit burst out of his lungs. He knew they would be okay once they got oxygen. A couple paramedics guided them to their feet and over to a pair of waiting ambulances to attend to them.
He was still woozy from the smoke, the night, and that cursed spirit they’d faced, so when the dark-haired woman exited Cattleman’s Crossing and Jake ran to her, Lucas was confused. Then it came to him.
“Mina,” he whispered.
Somehow she was alive, though the last time they’d seen her, she’d been possessed by that—
“Jake!” he tried to shout, but his voice came out too hoarse.
His buddy approached the psychic, and as he reached her, she collapsed in his arms. Jake lowered her to the ground and took her pulse. “She’s not breathing!” he shouted, and a paramedic rushed over, but not before Jake began doing CPR.
Though he was uneven on his feet, Lucas stood. He walked unsteadily over as quickly as he could, unease tickling his belly.
“Jake…” he croaked.
But Jake was busy. He began doing a round of breaths and chest compressions.
Lucas’s heart pounded.
As Jake was doing mouth-to-mouth for the second time, the young woman sputtered to life.
“Jesus,” Jake said, looking down at her.
Lucas feared the worst, but as he peered into Mina’s eyes from where he stood, they were devoid of flame. She stared up at Jake, wonder in her blue eyes as she breathed into the oxygen mask a paramedic placed over her nose and mouth.
