Safely away from the hellish scene of Room 719, a question formed in his mind.
Why didn’t she kill me just now? A gust of wind would’ve easily knocked me off. Why did she hold back? Why now?
The answer would have to wait. Gavin took a mental inventory of all that he’d abandoned in the room and decided that everything was replaceable and not even worthy of trying to get the resort to send to him later. He’d made it to safety away from Torri Barta, and it was time to flee this mess as quickly as possible.
Eleven
GAVIN WAS GRATEFUL THAT THE SLIDING DOOR of the neighboring suite was unlocked. He rushed into the room, gasping, “Hello, is anyone in here?”
Wiping the gunk from the desk onto the perfectly made bed, he noted that the suite wasn’t as nice and roomy as his was.
“Hello? I’m just walking through. Don’t shoot me or anything.” The announcement trailed off once he realized there were no personal items anywhere, just a room prepped to receive resort guests.
He picked up speed as he rushed for the front door. He flung it open. A shocked bellhop wheeled a brass-plated luggage valet up to the entrance. They exchanged dumb looks for a second.
A preppy man in his mid-thirties forcibly emerged from behind the bellhop, complaining, “Room 717 is supposed to be empty.”
The bellhop’s shrug was interrupted when a blonde trophy wife shrieked, “Look at him! He’s been shot!”
Gavin realized that he must’ve been a sight, out of breath and dripping wet, but the kicker was the frog blood on his trousers from the knees down and the blood oozing from his forehead.
He decided to go with it.
“Yeah, that’s right. You’ve gotta get out of here. It isn’t safe!”
When the men didn’t respond, Gavin pushed his way through the door. He shoved the towering luggage cart, causing some of the smaller bags to fall. “I said go!”
Preppy Man protested, “Hey, what are—”
Gavin cut him off. “We gotta go now! There’s no time to explain!”
The blonde was already jiggling down the hallway to the elevator.
“Marcia, wait!” the man yelled, starting to trot.
Meanwhile, the bellhop was returning the fallen luggage pieces to their original places on the valet. He pointed to something on the floor.
“You dropped something there.”
“Huh?” Gavin looked at the ground at a faded sticky note, a note that had lost its adhesiveness many years ago. He slowly crouched to pick it up.
The bellhop start heading down the hallway, leaving the valet next to 717. He still eyed the wet, bloody man suspiciously.
Gavin turned the note over and saw the small printed image of a unicorn, its horn impaling the stick man that he’d drawn what seemed like a lifetime ago.
“Aren’t you comin’, mister?” the bellhop asked from the open elevator compartment.
Gavin turned the note over and saw the small printed image of a unicorn, its horn impaling the stickman that he’d drawn for what seemed like a lifetime ago.
He didn’t look up. “You go on, kid. I’ll take the next one down.”
Gently rubbing his fingers over the handwritten note, which read, “This one is you, Gavin. Love, Jo,” he muttered, “I love ya too, baby.”
He’d gazed at it a thousand times before, but he couldn’t peel his eyes off it now.
From nowhere, he remembered Torri’s words—that she would use him as a pathway to get to others. He’d witnessed firsthand how her power had amplified from taking the life of exotic dancer Misa Kawaguchi, the kid on the bike, and finally, Monica. He suspected she’d be unstoppable if she had the chance to feast on the dying energy of a few more lives.
Staring at the note in his palm, he sluggishly moved to the elevator.
He extended a finger but hesitated to push the elevator call button.
He couldn’t do it. He had to finish this.
He pictured Ms. Hodges, Thad, that annoying Theo guy from the bar and grill, Billy C., and even that Puma-jacket-wearing jerk—every one of them at risk, everybody an unknowing target of the vindictive spirit whom he was fused to and who would be manifesting soon. Though he didn’t see or hear her, now that things had settled down a bit, he could feel the time of the transformation drawing closer. It wouldn’t be long now—of that he was sure.
And there was Josephine. Why should she be punished for his mistakes? Hadn’t she paid enough already?
A tear wet the sticky note, and Gavin sniffed.
How many people had he met over the years at movie premiers and book events? Were those people in danger, too? The toll would be in the thousands. Could he just walk away and allow this spiteful being to destroy all of them?
Clenching his fingers into a ball, he lowered his fist to his side and turned to look down the hallway.
“Aw, Jo,” he said, returning his eyes to the unicorn and stick man. “I really need your help here. You always help me, always know just what to do and how to fix what I screw up.” He laughed as he sniffed and leaned against the metal threshold of the elevator. “So how do we go about fixing this one?”
Though Gavin imagined himself having a dialogue with his ex-wife, Billy Cavanaugh’s voice butted into his head. The imaginary response from the old man was two chilling words: “Reichenbach Falls.”
“Hell’s bells, Billy. Who invited you into my head?”
Then, all at once, he knew the reason why Torri hadn’t pushed him off the balcony with a gust of wind—why she hadn’t killed him.
He knew her weakness. More importantly, he knew how to exploit that weakness.
Gavin slowly shook his head from side to side. It was an awful solution.
Addressing the imaginary editor, he pleaded, “You said it didn’t even work when Doyle did it in The Final Problem.”
He studied Josephine’s note in his hand, staring at the last two words: “Love, Jo.”
The bad idea grew stronger and took root. In his mind’s eye, Gavin pictured the scene as if it were straight out of a Damien Marksman story.
It was the worst idea he’d ever had, but he couldn’t argue with the logic of it, and what else was there to try? Imaginary Billy, just like the actual Billy, was annoyingly right. And who knows? Maybe Gavin could keep all those people from being harmed.
Maybe he could protect Jo.
Twelve
ADRENALINE COURSED THROUGH HIS VEINS as Gavin slid his key card into the door mechanism one last time. He’d wheeled the cart with the preppy couple’s bags up to his room. When the lock clicked open, he stacked their suitcases against the open door. He definitely wasn’t going to be trapped in his suite a second time.
The air in the room was moist as the storm raged outside. Most of the frogs had pursued Gavin and fallen off the balcony, but a few stragglers hopped toward him. Ignoring their advances, he wheeled the luggage cart around them, stopping at the bed.
He paused, wondering if Torri knew his plan from reading his thoughts. She’d been wrong about the frogs, assuming that he was afraid of them rather than sympathetic to them. Maybe he could misdirect her now. By force of will, he’d think about anything but his newly devised plan, just to be safe and throw her off the scent.
He took in a slow, deep breath. This was the final round. This was for all the marbles. He exhaled even more slowly.
The room was a mess. It was the kind of destruction that would have made legendary rock stars like Keith Moon envious.
So much for staying at the Droverton Resort ever again. Not that it matters.
He clutched the sticky note with the unicorn and stick man in his hand.
Other than the remaining frogs jumping at his feet and the violent weather outside, the room had an eerie calm to it.
He’d expected Torri to have typed something when he entered, some kind of snarky welcome back message or something, but the typewriter was motionless, still displaying its last message—threats of how she’d kill everyone Gavin kn
ew.
Was she lying in wait? Was this a chess game and his was the next move, or was it something else?
Suspicious of the antique in the middle of the collapsed bed, he slowly bent and positioned his hands to the sides of it. He didn’t touch it yet.
He took in another deep breath.
“I love you, Jo.” As he said the words, Gavin grabbed the device and heaved, expecting it to still be impossibly heavy. It was its normal weight again, and he stumbled, spinning, and the device landed on its side with a loud crash.
It hadn’t shocked or burned him.
Keeping a wary eye on it, Gavin picked up the sticky note that he’d dropped. This was too easy. Something was wrong. Where was she?
He took a pillowcase from one of the pillows on the floor and rammed it between the platens to keep it from typing.
Seconds later, he wheeled the cart to the front of the suite, bulldozing the luggage that propped the door open.
“Sir, I’m going to need you to come with me,” a uniformed man said, approaching from the bank of elevators at the other end.
Gavin didn’t respond. He just pushed the cart faster.
The olive-skinned man was short but stocky. Since his outfit was dark green, Gavin knew he wasn’t a cop, so he was likely unarmed.
The man mumbled something into a radio on his shoulder and then addressed Gavin. “Sir, leave the cart.”
Even at a closing distance of fifty feet, it was clear that the man was all muscle. Gavin was at a full run now, and the cart swerved to the left and right. He didn’t want to ram this guy, but he’d do whatever he had to do.
The security guard broke into a run toward him. “Sir, I said leave the cart!”
Despite the momentum that Gavin had built up, when the guard grabbed the ornamental brass posts of the cart and dug his heels in, the carrier stopped abruptly.
The typewriter slid forward to the edge, stopped by the brass railing. A clang like a small gong reverberated through the posts.
Gavin also slammed into the cart with his nose and then his forehead. There was a white flash of pain. He feared he’d lose consciousness and wake up in a holding area.
Gotta keep going. Can’t stop.
The guard came around the side of the cart. “Are you okay, sir? I’m sor—”
Before Gavin knew what was going on, there was a loud smack, and he felt a sharp pain in his hand and wrist. To his amazement, he’d decked the guy. The pint-sized Atlas was down on the floor, and Gavin had put him there.
“You broke my frickin’ nose, you crazy son of a bitch!”
Fights in real life are never like movies or TV, but the blow he’d delivered was straight out of a Damien Marksman fight scene. He’d never hit anyone in his life.
His bewilderment was shaken loose when the bloody man on the ground called for backup.
“Look, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… I can’t explain why.”
The words were lost on the guard as he gave a rambling description of Gavin, finishing by calling him a “perp.”
Gavin returned to pushing the cart, accidentally running over the boot of the security officer as he went. “Sorry. Really sorry!”
The elevator came quickly, and Gavin was grateful to see that it was empty.
A few seconds into the elevator’s decent, the cabin lights flickered. Then the lights exploded in the same way the bathroom light had blown.
Gavin was in complete darkness for the second time that day.
The compartment stopped moving. He groped until he located the brass posts of the carrier and braced himself. The all-too-familiar clammy sensation accompanied the strong aroma of lavender.
She’s in here. I’m trapped in here with her.
His heart was in his throat, but he wasn’t afraid to die anymore. He was only afraid of not ending this.
“Torri?” He felt for the sticky note in his damp pockets. “Mrs. Barta? Mrs. Barta, I’m begging you to—”
The deafening strikes from the machine nearly made him jump out of his skin. He covered his ears from the assault as he slammed himself against the farthest corner of the compartment. What had happened to the pillowcase he had stuffed in there?
“No!” he screamed, drowned out by the Gatling-gun rhythm of the typewriter.
He failed to notice the elevator start up, so he was shocked when the doors slid open, revealing light from the resort lobby. Gavin shoved the cart and quickly pushed it by onlookers who froze in their tracks.
The entire lobby gawked at the spectacle, but who could blame them? It was quite a sight. He was wet and haggard from his balcony escape, a dark, viscous substance dripped from his shins, blood dripped from his face, and occasionally, frogs leapt from the cart, but most noticeable was the loud clacking from the typewriter. It sounded like a sequence of long-fuse firecrackers going off at evenly timed intervals.
Adults pulled their children back by their shirt collars, and hobbling retirees scrambled to safety against the walls. Everyone cleared a path as Gavin shoved the unwieldy cart through the area.
He didn’t care what they thought, nor did it matter that each of them avoided eye contact. He had a job to do, and for all he knew, one of them could very well be the machine’s next victim if Torri were allowed to get to them.
The security staff must have abandoned their posts in the lobby to help on the seventh floor. Gavin rolled the cart unhindered through the automatic doors and into the covered valet parking zone.
Looking as dumbfounded as everyone inside, the young men of the area didn’t offer any resistance. Gavin hurried past them and pushed the carrier from under the awning into the hard, cold rain.
Following the straightest path to the bridge entrance on the hill, Gavin didn’t try to avoid the puddles.
Almost done. Almost done.
The barricades were a little over a thousand yards away.
His arms were sore. He did his best to ignore the anguish and fatigue of his legs, but he cursed himself for being so out of shape. Each cumbersome step he took was punctuated by the strikes of the typewriter.
What is she typing?
He didn’t dare to look, not yet—not until he reached his destination.
The dark afternoon sky rumbled and exploded with discharges of lightning. Worse than the pounding rain were the gale-force winds that had picked up. It felt as if the rain was being thrown at him—hurled against his face—and the wind was in a shoving match against the cart.
After making it a quarter of the way up the incline of the hill to the barricade, he abruptly halted when a hot, bright flash of light shot up from the ground only a few yards in front of him. The boom followed instantly, and Gavin fell to his butt, startled and covering his ears. It took a moment for him to realize that he hadn’t actually been struck by the lightning but had come close.
The cart rolled down the slope away from him.
As he pushed himself up, he dropped Jo’s sticky note. He scurried to catch it, but it disappeared in the fury of the wind.
Doesn’t matter now.
In the distance, the rolling cart leveled off on the flattened terrain of the parking lot. It bumped into one of the cars in the last row, setting off an alarm. Gavin wearily headed down to the lot, his heart still pounding. He wiped the rain from his face and looked up to the seventh story. He could barely make out the oversized writing desk connecting the two balconies.
The continual noise of the typewriter grew as he approached. He tore the scroll sheet from the carriage and read it.
It was a list of names. Some he recognized—his twelfth-grade English teacher, the man who had done the yard when he and Josephine had lived together, the guy who owned the motorcycle shop near his home, the female barista at his favorite coffee house, his mechanic. Many were unknown to him.
It was a list of targets.
He scanned the sheet for Josephine, Billy, and Beverly until he remembered Torri’s promise that she’d kill those he loved last.
&n
bsp; Has she already started? Is it happening?
He was horrified. Not knowing what else to do, he wadded it up and tossed it onto the asphalt.
The machine resumed typing.
“Let’s see who has the stomach to end this,” he said, snatching up the device and carrying it.
The lightning strike from before caused him to abandon the luggage cart. He wasn’t sure if the carrier’s brass poles and canopy acted as a conductor of electricity or not. He thought there was something about the rubber tires offering some protection, but he wasn’t about to take the chance—not after what he’d just been through.
The strikes of the keys shuddered through the metal of the typewriter as he cradled it. He considered removing his shoe to jam it in the mechanism but decided against it. What she typed wouldn’t make a difference in a few minutes anyway. He’d be to the top of the bridge soon enough.
Thirteen
GAVIN REACHED THE BARRICADE of the massive bridge. Several five-foot-high plastic barriers were plastered with signage from radio station WHCN 105.9. The notices celebrated the completion of the restoration project, announcing the 5k Fun Walk for the March of Dimes the coming weekend.
There was a gap between two of the barriers, just like Theo had said. The opening was small, but he could squeeze through it.
Placing the typewriter on the shoulder-high ledge of the plastic, he sucked in his gut and shimmied through the crack. The cold rain bouncing off the slick plastic barrier sounded like a continuous round of applause.
Gavin reached for the device from the other side, tore off and discarded another list of names, and proceeded up the four-lane bridge.
Is that all you got, Torri? Threats?
Curiously, the typing stopped.
He was exhausted, but he forced himself to ascend the steep bridge step by step.
Keep going, Gav. Nearly there.
Even through the downpour of rain, he saw faint traces of graffiti that the city had attempted to cover up. Faded spray-painted slogans like “Hungry Waters Bridge – Come on in, the water’s fine,” “Take the Plunge,” and “TKB-Torri Knows Best” ran along the walls of the middle concrete barrier. It was like a twisted shrine to a woman who went nuts decades ago.
Cruel Devices Page 19
