by Katie Berry
“Yup. And you know each of the mirrors you saw in those observation areas?”
“Uh-huh?”
“They all open, as well.”
“Eww! So, whoever was back here could wander out in the middle of the night and watch people sleep?”
“Yes, amongst other things, I would imagine.”
It seemed all aspects of the Sinclair’s guest’s personal lives and habits were on full display to anyone who wanted to observe them. When this hotel had been open, she wondered what went on behind the scenes here. Could the disappearance of all those people be somehow connected to these mirrors? Was everybody shuffled out of the ballroom through some secret exit down there? But that was impossible, and she knew it. No amount of hustling would have moved ninety-eight people through any doorway in fifteen seconds.
How many thousands of people had stayed here over the years unaware of this vast hidden surveillance network? It seemed that with the access that unseen people had to each of the suites in this hotel, that there was much more than met the eyes around here. What had it been used for? Blackmail, kidnappings, mysterious disappearances?
Eventually, she found herself standing at the bottom of the spiral staircase on the main floor. This corridor was quite similar to the second floor except it seemingly branched everywhere behind the walls, leading into almost every section. And there were quite a few more of the access points along these gloomy hidden halls as well. These ‘emergency exits’ made her uneasy. Especially now that she knew how many of them lay behind the public corridor’s wall panels and mirrors. With a shiver, she supposed they made it easier for people up to various nefarious activities in the hotel to go about their business undetected. But it also made her wonder how many people just disappeared walking down the hotel corridor over the years, taken from behind, unaware of someone that had just come out of the wall at their back. Like many things around this hotel, she was coming to learn, these mirrors served a dual purpose.
“My God. Someone could move around this entire hotel without ever being seen!”
“I know! Isn’t it great?” Lively seemed to be enjoying himself, at least. “But you still haven’t seen the best part.”
“The best part? You mean there’s more?”
“But of course!” Lively led her down a short corridor, saying, “I think it was just down here.”
“What’s just ‘down here’? A vat of hydrochloric acid, or a pit of lye?”
“No, silly rabbit, this!” He stepped aside to reveal an antiquated-looking elevator. “Step aboard!”
“What? Are you crazy? Isn’t it unsafe to take an elevator around this place? You know, power outages and all?”
“I know, I thought of that, but this has an access panel on the top of the elevator car. If there’s a problem, then we can just pop it open and shimmy up the cables to get out.”
“Oh, is that all? Well, okay then, let’s go!” Minerva said with mock enthusiasm.
“Minerva, it’ll be fine,” Lively counselled. “Trust me, I really don’t think this hotel is out to get us.”
“For the moment, at least. Besides, how do you know this elevator doesn’t descend into a shaft filled with water that would drown us like rats?”
“Cause I’ve already taken it.”
“You are crazy!”
“I only took it up from the basement to the first floor to try it out.” Lively stepped into the elevator car and added, “You really need to check out the control panel in here.” Seeing his sister’s reluctance, he egged her on, saying, “C’mon, you know you want to.”
With a sigh, Minerva stepped into the elevator. But Lively was correct, she really did want to see this control panel inside the elevator. “Huh? What are those? Where’s the numbers?”
“Who needs numbers when you can use pictographs, I always say.”
“You do, do you?” Minerva examined the control panel and shook her head. There were four buttons in a vertical row like usual for a three-story building with a basement. But situated in the spots that traditional numerals would have been located were what appeared to be, as Lively had observed, hieroglyphics. Sitting in the topmost position was the symbol for air. Below was what looked like fire, and the floor that they were currently on seemed to be earth. At the very bottom was a symbol of waves which she presumed to mean water. “Why wouldn’t they have numbers? Were there people walking around back here that couldn’t read?”
“Maybe whoever was using the elevator was unfamiliar with the Hindu-Arabic system that we use these days?”
“But it’s been used in European society for about a thousand years, and for almost another millennia before that in India and the Middle East. Are you saying travellers from beyond time have been riding up and down inside this elevator?”
“I don’t know what to say, except that it operates just like a regular one.” With that, Lively slid the cast iron gate across the doorway. He said, “Want to have the honours?”
“I swear if this descends into water and drowns us like rats, I’ll haunt you myself.” Minerva pressed the button with the waves on it, and they began to descend to the basement.
The machinery that operated the elevator was very quiet. In fact, Minerva had to strain to hear it. With an almost inaudible ‘clunk’ they arrived in the basement.
Lively pulled the gate aside and stepped out first saying, “See? No water. No rats.”
Minerva gave Lively a sisterly ‘stink-eye’ expression as she walked out of the elevator car. “Well, what do you know, more hidden hallways.”
“But you have to see where this one goes,” Lively said enigmatically and moved off down a hallway branching to the left.
Minerva followed, saying, “The water symbol was appropriate for down here. It smells so damp and musty, doesn’t it?”
“Really, I hadn’t noticed,” Lively said with a small smile. “All right, here we are!” He opened a heavy steel door and ushered her inside. They wandered by the embalming table and drug cabinet without a second glance.
“Say, isn’t that table a…”
“Yes, it is.” Lively nodded.
“Gross.” Minerva shivered at the thought of what may have occurred on top of the table’s porcelain surface. She followed her brother into another connecting room where an old mainframe computer clicked and whirred away in its centre. Along one section of wall, dozens of dials, knobs, and gauges glowed dimly. “The power is on in here?”
“Yeah, that was me,” Lively admitted. “I pushed a couple of these buttons.” He pointed to several large, red power buttons running in a row. The buttons labelled ‘Power Main’ and ‘Operating Theatre’ were already activated and glowing red. Next to them, another button labelled, ‘Collection Aggregator’ was still dark. He added, “However, I never pressed this one. I wonder what it does?” He pressed his thumb in the centre of the button and it lit up bright red like the others, followed by what sounded like a heavy-duty relay being flipped somewhere. A visceral, low-level hum began to emanate from somewhere nearby.
“That doesn’t sound too encouraging. What did you do, start the countdown for self-destruct mode?”
Lively laughed, then said, somewhat seriously, “No. I’m pretty sure we’ll be okay.”
“Oh, good, as long as you’re pretty sure.”
After a whirlwind tour of the rest of the control room, Minerva found herself in another corridor with a brightly polished aluminum door at its end. As they moved toward the door, Lively looked up, down and all around.
“What are you looking for?” Minerva asked, tilting her head slightly as she watched him.
“I made another friend the last time I was through here.”
“My but you’re the gregarious one! Friends everywhere, it seems!”
“Well, this little ‘friend’ would have had you running at ninety miles per hour in the other direction.”
“What was it?”
“Ever see the movie, Arachnophobia?”
“
Yes, and it creeped the hell out of me.”
“Well, picture something like that, but larger.”
“Okay, I don’t think I need to know any more right now.” Minerva said, her skin tingling with just the thought of an oversized spider sitting down beside her. She really couldn’t understand how Miss Muffet could have survived on her tuffet for all those years with something like that lurking around.
“Get ready to put your shades on.” Lively turned the handle and pushed the door open to show her the way.
Minerva wandered silently into the room beyond, her eyes unblinking as she took in the golden ceiling above as well as the aluminum shielding that covered everything else. The humming was louder in here and seemed to be coming from the centre of the room.
Lively steered her toward the depression where the dish was located. “It reminds me of something, how this room is designed, with these aluminum floors and that conductive gold in the ceiling.”
Minerva looked up at the apparatus over the dish and said, “Where are we, exactly?”
“I was wondering if you’d ask that. We are directly beneath the grand ballroom.”
Minerva stood looking at the device in the ceiling, lost in thought, then said, “That thing looks like it’s straight out of Weird Science.”
Lively had been staring at it silently as well, then said, “Classic movie. Good reference, Sis.” After another moment, he said, “Omigod! That’s it!”
“What’s it?”
“I think I know what this room is,” Lively said, his eyes lighting up.
“What? You’ve figured it out?” Minerva asked, surprised.
“Not quite, but I think thanks to you, I have a pretty good feeling about what this room is at least.”
Minerva looked around once more and then back to Lively. “Well, okay, you’re welcome. So, would you like to share your guess, Amazing Kreskin?”
“Well, when I first saw this thing, I thought that it reminded me of something from high school, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.” Lively walked around the collector dish while he spoke. “However, keeping in mind where we’re situated, with the copper ceiling in the ballroom above and all this gold below, it’s like a sandwich of super-conductivity, especially with all this aluminum shielding the room down here as well…” He trailed off, giving Minerva a chance to ponder things.
Minerva’s eyes lit up as her own inner light bulb finally turned on, and she exclaimed, “This entire section of the hotel is a gigantic Faraday Cage!”
“That’s a big bingo, Little Sister.” Lively said, smiling and nodding, then added, “It’s always nice to see you come up to speed like that.”
“Hey, in my own defence, I told you I didn’t have much sleep last night.”
“True enough. I’ll make an allowance this time.” Lively grinned, then looked around the room once more. “But seriously, if this room is what we think it is, what did they use it for?” He tapped with his toe at the edge of the dish’s large circumference.
Minerva was silent for a moment, then shivered slightly as a single word came to the forefront of her mind, and she said, “I think I know.”
“Don’t keep me in suspense, what do you think they were collecting?”
Feeling suddenly cold, Minerva clasped her arms together and shuddered this time, then said quietly, “Souls.”
End of Book 1
Final Words
Thank you so much for reading ABANDONED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel, Book 1. I hope you have enjoyed the first instalment in this brand-new series.
Please make sure to join my newsletter, The Katie Berry Books Insider, for further novel updates, free short stories, chapter previews and giveaways. To join, click here: https://katieberry.ca/become-a-katie-berry-books-insider-and-win/
Reviews are critical to a book’s success. The more honest reviews a book has, the better it is for everybody, because then, we all win. You win by getting to share your enjoyment with others and introduce them to a new story, and this book series wins through gaining new readers because of the reviews from concerned and engaged people like yourself.
And so, if this novel entertained you and you would like to share your thoughts with others, please leave a review: This is a direct link to the Amazon review page for ABANDONED Book 1 so you can leave a few thoughts while everything is fresh in your memory: http://www.amazon.com/review/create-review?&asin= B08W1SN1S9
I look forward to seeing you very soon for the further adventures of Lively and Minerva in Book 2 of ABANDONED.
Good health and great reads to you all,
-Katie Berry
Current and Upcoming Releases:
CLAW: A Canadian Thriller (Released November 28th, 2019)
CLAW: The Audiobook (Released July 31st, 2020)
CLAW Emergence: Tales from Lawless – Caleb Cantrill (Released September 13th, 2020)
CLAW Emergence: Tales from Lawless – Kitty Welch - (Released November 26th, 2020)
ABANDONED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel Book 1 (February 26th, 2021)
ABANDONED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel Book 2 (Spring 2021)
CLAW: Emergence Book 1 (Summer 2021)
CLAW: Resurgence (Summer 2021)
ABANDONED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel Book 3 (Fall 2021)
ABANDONED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel Book 4 (December 31st, 2021)
BESIEGED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel (Spring 2022)
CLAW: Regression (Summer 2022)
CONTAGION: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel (Fall 2022)
Connections:
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Website: https://katieberry.ca
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CLAW: A Canadian Thriller:
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CLAW Emergence: Tales from Lawless – Kitty Welch:
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Audiobook on Audible: Coming soon
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ABANDONED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel Book 1
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