Gran helped Grace with her backflip and then stepped back. “One never knows what may happen; you meet all kinds of people when you least expect it.” She glanced over toward the hotel, where Lissette was just walking across the driveway to a car. As if she felt the eyes on her, Lissette turned a penetrating stare toward Gran. Rose shivered at the look, then scratched at the back of her hand; she didn’t stop until Lissette’s car was out of sight, but didn’t seem to notice that her hand was inflamed.
~
Mrs. Jordan poked her head into the dining room, where Kelly and Rose had their heads bent over their phones, showing pictures to their cousins.
“Girls, we’re off – no ghost hunting while we’re gone!” She had said the same thing the previous day, when she and their father headed out to the flea market, so neither girl paid any attention.
“Have fun, Mom — where are you guys going this time?” Kelly poked at the screen of her phone and handed it to Chloe.
“The Bakelite museum. We won’t be late.” Mrs. Jordan sailed toward the lobby, where her husband was waiting.
“God, I should hope not,” muttered Rose. “Bakelite?” She shook her head.
Chloe squealed. “Look, Kelly, it’s you holding our feet. Look at your face!” She turned Kelly’s phone back toward her.
“Ugh, look at my hair!” Kelly grimaced. “Let’s see that one with—” She stopped. “That’s weird. I thought…” She scrolled forward in her pictures, and then back. Then she glared at Chloe and Grace.
“What?” Chloe asked.
“What did you do with my pictures of Gran?”
“I didn’t do anything to your pictures!”
“Well, who else, then? You just had my phone. You don’t delete things from my phone!”
Chloe’s eyes teared up, and her lip began to tremble.
Grace jumped to her defense. “You don’t talk to my sister that way! We didn’t touch your pictures. We wouldn’t delete pictures of Gran, so you just be nice. You probably did it yourself.”
“Kelly, they weren’t doing anything,” Rose said. “Here, let me send you the pictures I took of Gran.” She scrolled through her phone’s photo gallery. “Hmm. That’s funny. I know I took… I don’t see any…” She looked up at her little cousins. “Are you sure you didn’t mess with anything? Mine are gone, too.”
Chloe and Grace both got up and ran out of the dining room, crying.
Rose looked at Kelly, and then at her phone. “You know, Kelly, the pictures I took are all here. But Gran isn’t in them. And I took pictures of her. I know I did.”
“Yeah, mine too.” Kelly’s eyes were wide. “How could that happen?”
“I dunno. Do you think we should ask Gran?” Rose got up to go outside, scratching at the back of her hand.
A sudden wind arose, slamming branches against the side of the hotel, lashing the windows next to Rose with a sideways rain. She flinched and took a step back.
“Maybe later,” said Kelly. “Let’s go find the cousins.”
~
Lissette watched Hank at the table across the room, holding that woman’s hand, smiling and laughing, and her blood boiled. How had this happened? She had told him his Lizzie was dead — shown him an obituary, for chrissake — and she had also made certain that Elizabeth would see her Henry’s obituary; the two of them should never have had any reason to cross paths here. And yet, here they were.
And what could she do about it? What, indeed. Her eyes strayed across to where the granddaughters sat at a discreet distance from their Gran, pretending to be deeply engrossed with their phones and not spying on the romantic couple. Lissette might not have power over the two lovebirds anymore, but there were ways. Oh, yes.
~
Deep in the heart of the hotel, footsteps resounded off the walls as if a herd of elephants was passing through.
“Shhhh!” Kelly glared back at her little cousins, and Rose behind them. “Do you want everyone in the place to wake up?”
“Yeah, you’ll scare off the ghosts,” said Rose, prodding Grace in front of her and eliciting a small scream.
“Stop that!” hissed Grace, bumping into Chloe and making her squeak in terror too.
“You stop that!” retorted Chloe, as she caught herself on the stone wall of the passage. The girls had slipped out of their rooms after bedtime to try one of the secret passages the hotel was infamous for in ghost-hunting circles. Sure enough, in the downstairs hallway with all the pictures of old, dead people in antique clothing, a panel behind a statue had opened at Kelly’s request (push on the statue’s foot, kneel on this board here, and slide the tongue-in-groove paneling to the right), and they had all giggled their way into a stone passage that opened up to standing height after a few feet.
This passage, however, was not known for having much in the way of ghostly presences; having her younger cousins along had made Kelly start with something more tame than the one she had in mind for later with Rose. Her mother would have been proud of her restraint, if it weren’t for the fact that she was ghost-hunting and prowling the hotel after bedtime. But at least it wasn’t swimming.
Kelly shined her flashlight ahead, where the passage made a corner. It seemed as though they were going downhill, even though they had started on the ground floor. The passage disoriented her, the way it kept turning: were they spiraling down into the basement of the hotel now, or out under the grounds somewhere? The internet hadn’t mentioned this passage leaving the building. She shook her head and kept walking, listening to the footsteps and giggles and squeaks behind her as she looked into the bobbing circle of light ahead.
“Where are we?” Grace’s voice trembled.
Rose put her arm around the younger girl, who jumped and then leaned her head into Rose’s side, wrapping her arm around her waist and holding tight.
“I don’t know, sweetie, but it’s ok. Kelly, shouldn’t we go back now? What if Aunt Ellen checks and finds them gone?”
The last turn of the passage had taken a distinct turn downhill, and Kelly had a feeling they were definitely under something outside now. A roaring sound came overhead, and the girls all squealed and grabbed each other. A couple of their flashlights went skittering across the ground, making shadows loom crazily in the darkness as they scrabbled after them.
“What was that?” Chloe squeaked, sitting up with her flashlight and shining it every which way.
Kelly stood up, flashlight in hand, and straightened her back. “A car. We must be under the driveway,” she said firmly.
“A car? At midnight?” said Rose, uncertainly, and then she took a deep breath. “Yes, of course. People come in late sometimes, you know. It’s a hotel.” She looked at the younger girls, huddled together, and said, “Let’s turn around and go back before your parents wake up. You don’t want to get grounded on vacation.”
They looked around, bewildered, nobody making the first step, and then Grace ventured, “So which way is back?” The passage was level at this spot, and it was hard to be sure which way they had come, after all the scuffle.
Kelly took a few steps one way, turned, and tried the other way. “This way,” she said, trying to sound decisive.
Rose gave her a look, then backed her up. “Definitely,” she said, putting a hand on each of her cousins’ backs to move them along. “Let’s get back to bed now.”
They rounded a bend in the passage; wasn’t that last turn the other direction on the way here? Kelly thought — and sank up to her knees in muck. She let out a yell, windmilling her arms for balance, and dropped her flashlight. Chloe and Grace screamed, and Rose grabbed at them to keep them from falling, too. Kelly pulled one leg out of the fetid mud with a squelchy noise, and in the beam from Rose’s flashlight she could see that it had kept her shoe. Her own flashlight sank into the stinky mess and disappeared with a burp.
Kelly reached back toward solid ground to get her balance, and Rose stretched out a hand to help while pushing the younger girls behind her. They hudd
led together, tears rolling down their cheeks, keening in terror.
“It’s ok, guys,” said Kelly, squelching her other leg out of the muck with Rose’s help. “See, it’s just mud.” She wrinkled her nose at the smell that accompanied the belching noise as the hole behind her closed up over her other shoe. “We went the wrong way, that’s all. We must be near the lake.”
“That’s right,” said Rose, lending support to her sister’s courage. “All we have to do is go the other way now, and we’re sure to—” She broke off, staring in horror into the beam of her flashlight, as the walls began to move.
Water dripped from the ceiling, and dribbled out of the walls, and everywhere the dirt was softening, things were emerging through the bulging mud: here a long bone poked out of the wall, and there a horde of shiny, many-legged insects poured out of a crack, running from the water, running toward the girls so that the floor seemed alive and writhing.
Kelly grabbed Chloe’s flashlight, which the girl had dropped again, and shined its beam frantically, first at the seething walls, then at the floor, and then grabbed Chloe herself by the hand and ran, barefoot, up the passage.
The roaring sound from earlier returned, deafening in the writhing passage, and definitely not a car. A roil of water came around the lower bend, chasing the bugs ahead of it and bringing along a horrifying maelstrom of decaying flesh and dismembered bones.
Kelly’s light bobbed chaotically as she ran dragging Chloe behind her; despite the fact that she could see nothing in the darkness behind, she looked over her shoulder but couldn’t see Rose and Grace. She turned her head back to see where she was going and ran straight into Gran.
“Oh! Gran, run, the water is coming!” Kelly couldn’t think why her grandmother was here, but she tried to turn her around and make her run with them. She shined her flashlight back, looking for her sister and her little cousin.
Gran, however, was unruffled. “Kelly, dear, get back to bed. I will take care of this. Chloe, take my flashlight. The door to the hallway is just ahead on your right.”
Shocked and bewildered, the girls obeyed. They scrabbled out into the hallway, shoved the passage door closed behind them, and ran upstairs. Chloe clung to Kelly all the way up to the third floor. They piled into one bed and burrowed under the covers together, heedless of their wet and muddy state.
When her heart had stopped pounding in her ears, and her shivers had subsided, Kelly realized that Rose and Grace had not come back yet, and also that she had just abandoned her grandmother in a flooding, mud-sucking secret passage full of horrors in a haunted hotel. But as she tried to force herself out from under the covers, a voice in the back of her head whispered, “Stay, girl.” And she stayed. And she cried.
~
Rose held tightly to Grace’s hand as they ran for their lives. Ahead, Kelly and Chloe were disappearing, and Rose’s light stuttered and then died, leaving them in blackness; behind, the maelstrom of raging water swirled ever closer. Rose held her other hand out in front of her to keep from running into the walls as she dragged her little cousin along. Though the light was vanishing ahead, she didn’t need to see her hand to know that it was swollen, burning with inflammation, and beading up with water that it seemed to be attracting out of the air, the walls and the floor; water was running up her arm, soaking her and chilling her to the bone, but it was doing nothing to ease the heat or the pain. In fact, it only made it worse. She grimaced and tried to run faster.
In total blackness now, Rose could hear faint voices, but it didn’t make any sense. Gran? Here? She must be hallucinating.
The voices stopped.
Grace cried out in pain as she ran into the wall where it curved, and before Rose could react, she ran into something softer.
“Dear girl, it’s ok,” said Gran’s voice, calm and collected as if she were just out for a stroll in the park. Rose felt Gran take her hand, holding Grace’s, and clasp them firmly. “You must be brave,” she said. Grace sniffled, shivering, and held tight.
“Gran, what is it?” cried Rose, trying to look back over her shoulder but failing in the darkness. She hugged Grace tightly to her side, not letting go of Gran’s hand.
“It is an ancient magic, set in motion many years ago, but tonight it ends,” said Gran, grimly. “The crone has played her games with me, and my family, long enough.”
“The gypsy?” Rose asked, confused. Then she shook her head. “Gran, we can’t stand here talking — the water is coming!” She tried to pull them up the passage, but Gran stood firm.
“The water has run its course,” she said. “It has done as she bade it, and brought you here. But now I’m here, too, and she won’t let the water do more. Not yet.”
Rose listened, and sure enough, the water wasn’t roaring up the passage anymore, nor swirling toward her feet. “What does that mean? Who is she? What does she want with me? Or you?”
Another voice came out of the blackness, cold and familiar. “I want what is mine. I have always wanted what is mine. Tonight I take two souls, and no one is left who can stop me.”
“Lissette,” said Gran, in a venomous voice that Rose had never heard before, “these girls are not yours.”
Rose’s blood ran cold. Lissette wanted her and Grace? For what? She squeezed her cousin tight.
Gran spoke again. “And I think you have seriously underestimated what is left to stop you. You, of all people, should know that the mortal coil is not the greatest power.”
Grace wiggled against Rose’s side in the darkness, lifting her face up. “What’s a ‘mortal coil’, Rose?” she whispered.
“Shhh, honey, I don’t know,” Rose whispered back, but something in the back of her mind said she did. She pushed it aside, shivering uncontrollably.
Lissette’s voice came out of the dark again, cruel but slightly amused. “You have never stopped me before. What makes you think this time is any different?”
Another voice, also familiar, joined the conversation. “This time is different, Lissette, because this time Lizzie and I know your ways. We are together again, and you will never stop us.”
Lissette laughed. “Hank, you and Lizzie were together before — I put an end to that with no effort at all. Just a simple prophecy: ‘Two are one, two are done,’” she said, mockingly. “And you were.”
The passage seemed to grow colder, as Rose listened for the answer to that. She hugged Grace close to her side as the girl shook in fear.
When the silence was broken, it was not Hank’s voice, as Rose expected, but Gran’s, that rang out. “But you still didn’t get him, did you? He never wanted you. You had to resort to trapping him here, to have what you could for yourself. You may have his soul chained, but it’s always belonged to me.”
There was a sharp intake of breath from Lissette, and Rose cringed instinctively to the floor and threw herself over Grace to try and protect her from whatever was coming. She lost her grandmother’s hand in the darkness, and cried out in panic. Grace began hiccupping in her terror.
Water swirled around them where they huddled on the floor, and a sharp pain shot from Rose’s hand, up through her arm, spreading until her body felt like it was on fire. She screamed, trying to douse the seeming fire in the water, but that only made it worse. She thrashed around in pain and confusion, and lost track of Grace, who screamed and sobbed in the darkness.
“Stop! Now!” commanded Gran sharply, and Lissette’s laughter echoed throughout the passage.
Something crawled out of the water onto Rose’s leg, and it squished when she slapped at it. She shrieked, and Grace’s crying redoubled in the horror of the blackness that was crawling and creeping around them; the smell of death and decay filled their nostrils, and the sounds of scraping and clattering from the walls brought the thought of skeletons forcibly to Rose’s mind. She remembered the skeleton trees looming out of the lake, and the bones they had seen when the water started toward them in the passage, what felt like ages ago. The crone’s cackle was the voice of
Hell itself as it echoed in the darkness.
Then Gran’s voice was joined by Hank’s, and together they spoke words that Rose struggled in vain to comprehend.
“Bujo bi strong na, butji bi gone…”
Lissette’s laughter turned to a scream of rage.
Rose followed the sound of Grace’s sobbing, splashing through the muck and fighting off horrid little creatures that grabbed at her hands with their razor-sharp teeth and claws, until she gripped her cousin tightly once again. She stroked Grace’s hair and murmured reassurances into her ears, though her own mind gibbered incomprehensibly at her.
Lissette’s scream faded, and another noise arose in its place. She was muttering strange words, like the ones that Gran and Hank used, but coming from her they sounded different, evil, hellish.
“Chop dha chavhi bibaxt pin mi cheros—”
She broke in on herself with words that Rose could understand, words which froze her blood.
“You two think you’re clever, you think you’ve figured out the prophecy?”
Hank’s voice responded. “Two are done, now two are one. ‘Lifespan for two.’ Ha — we wasted lifetimes, hers and mine, believing you had power over us, but our souls are our own.”
“That’s what you think,” Lissette shrieked in the darkness, and Rose and Grace ducked again, though their heads were nearly underwater. Even in the dark, Rose knew Lissette was gesturing to her and Grace, but there was nothing she could do.
As Lissette screamed her rage, the blackness became palpable. Rose dimly heard Hank’s voice, saying, “Trading souls,” and Lissette responding with, “Gone, one by one. Two souls are mine to bind, and I will have THESE!” Then a flash of light seared into her eyeballs — Gran’s camera going off — and in the blinding spots at the backs of her eyelids, Rose caught the vision of Hank, handsome, young, funhouse Hank, grimly holding up a mirror to reflect Lissette’s gesture away from her and Grace, and onto Hank and Gran. Then her grandmother’s whisper echoed in the darkness: “My blood is thick. Hold on, children of my blood. She’ll not bind you while I’m here.”
The Haunting of Lake Manor Hotel Page 18
