Speed Dating With the Dead (32 page)

The hotel gave a deep shudder, settling on its framework. Outside, shingles tore loose and rained down past the windows. The floor was warm beneath them, the carpet steaming. Some of the people were groggy and bleary-eyed from the carbon monoxide.

Sleep tight, my valued guests. Enjoy your stay.

Jonathan Holmes threw his shoulder against the massive door. He bounced off with a
thrunk
, cursing, while a couple of people joined Jonathan and put their weight against the door.

“The windows,” someone yelled.

The lobby featured large bay windows set with old-fashioned ripple glass. Like most of the windows, they were painted tight in their casings. The smoke now hung in a solid, roiling sea just beneath the ceiling, and a dim red glow blossomed from the far ends of the halls. The hotel was like a great ship going down, and Violet lifted her chin against those who would abandon it.

“Don’t break anything,” she shouted, knowing they’d ignore her. Few understood the soul of this old place. To them, it was just wood, carpet, and glass.

One guy picked up a settee and hurled it against the window. It bounced away, but the glass cracked. A couple of people had dropped to their hands and knees to dodge the smoke. Even the torchlight did little to penetrate the murk.

“The couch!” Jonathan waved a few people over. Two men joined him and they bent and lifted the furniture to their waists.

“You’ll have to pay for damages,” Violet said, but no one was listening.

If Janey were here, they wouldn’t dare.

She could sense them—she wasn’t exactly sure what
they
were, only that they’d always been here and they had something to do with Janey’s disappearance—hovering around the corners, their laughter mingling with the distant crackle of flames and the cacophony of destruction.

“Heave,” Jonathan commanded, as the three men rocked the sofa backward. On “ho,” they hurled it into the window and the glass exploded. Cool night air poured through the jagged opening and the frantic crowd rushed to escape.

“Women first,” Cody yelled, carrying his injured patient to the window.

Rhonda made a move toward the window, but Violet grabbed her by the back of her blouse.

“Lemme go,” Rhonda said.

“You haven’t punched your time card.”

“You’re crazy.”

“Where’s the cash drawer? At the desk?”

“How should I know?”

Cody passed the injured woman through the window, and she was reluctant to let him go, clinging to his neck with tapered, skeletal fingers. He finally passed her to Jonathan, who was standing outside in the hedges. A man in a toboggan was helping women over the lip of the window, but not everyone was as chivalrous. Violet smirked as a chubby young man in T-shirt and jeans shoved his way through the crowd and clambered out, revealing the fleshy swell of his upper buttocks.

“Kendra?” Cody called, looking around the rapidly thinning crowd. He was just like the rest, calling a woman’s name like she was a possession.

Well, no one is going to possess me.

Now that the curtains were yanked wide, the lobby was filled with moonlight and was almost beautiful. Smoke curled around the piano as if it were on a nightclub stage and some music-school dropout were about to peck “Heart And Soul.”

But the audience was vanishing. Violet grimaced at the thought of guests leaving before they’d checked out. Had they no respect?

Janey would never stand for it.

But Janey’s no longer in charge. Now they’ve made me caretaker. And what am I supposed to do about it?

Good question.

But one thing she knew, there was no sense letting good money go up in flames. She elbowed through the chaos and headed for the office.

Chapter 48

Wayne opened his eyes to dirt, his head like a bowl of mashed potatoes with blood gravy.

Moist, forest-scented air wafted over his face, but smoke boiled from behind him. He tried to stand but couldn’t feel his legs. He remembered the darkness, the basement, and then....

He was lying on the ground just beyond a concrete pad, the wooden door split and sagging to one side. Behind him came screams and the rending of wood. He rolled over just enough to see the outside of the hotel, the back end with its sloping addition and a tin-roofed maintenance shed. The November night chilled his skin but the warmth of the fire crept along his spine like a molten snake.

“Yo, you okay?” someone asked. It was a college-aged man in dirty chef’s whites, obviously a cook who’d fled the kitchen. He stood near the edge of the forest, at a safe distance, nervously puffing a cigarette.

“Kendra... the others....”

“Get out of there, man, the place is going to blow,” the cook said. His face was streaked with grease and soot and his eyes bright with fear.

“My daughter’s in there.”

“They’re all out except—Jesus, there’s a dead guy behind you.”

Wayne’s first thought was “ghost.” But ghosts didn’t exist. That meant—

Wayne reclaimed the glimpse of Rodney Froehmer’s deranged face. He tried to turn but he couldn’t. Somehow it didn’t matter, whether it was a ghost or just a normal, everyday corpse.

Kendra is safe. I can just lie here and rest
. “I can’t move.”

“Just my luck,” the cook said, tossing his cigarette aside and approaching Wayne.

“Never mind me,” Wayne said. “Other people are in the basement.”

“You must have hit your head. They all evacuated when the power went out.” The chef bent over Wayne. “How come you’re still here?”

“We were hunting in the basement.”

The sputtering flames licked light along the chef’s moist face. “Don’t know if I’m supposed to move you or not. What if you’re paralyzed or something?”

“Well, I can lay here and burn to death or lay over there and still be alive,” Wayne said.

The cook looked dubious, though he was in a hurry to retreat from the burning structure. “You won’t sue me?”

“Never saw you,” Wayne said. “And this didn’t happen.”

The cook lifted Wayne from beneath his armpits. Tingling needles of ice worked down Wayne’s thighs as blood began flowing through his legs. When the cook dragged him out of the doorway, Wayne at last saw what he’d left behind. Red light limned the entrance, revealing Rodney’s prone form on the basement floor. A steel pipe protruded from his chest.

“Don’t look back,” the cook said.

“Too late,” Wayne said.

“Least he don’t have to worry about burning to death.”

By the time they were 20 feet from the building, Wayne had regained some feeling in his feet. He raised himself up, wobbling, as smoke crept from the basement and drifted toward the trees.

“You ain’t paralyzed,” the cook said.

“Guess not.”

“Man, I hope I turned off the gas to the deep fryer. Janey Mays would have my balls in a blender.”

“So everybody evacuated?”

“Yeah, they’re out front. You’re one of them ghostbusters, right?”

“I guess.”
But we’re the ones that got busted.

“Sorry about your friend there,” the cook said, already lighting another cigarette. “You must have been the last two in the building.”

The flames had just begun to penetrate the first floor. Wayne swayed on his numbed legs and took a trembling step toward the hotel. “I have to find my daughter.”

The cook grabbed his arm. “Hold on, man. I told you the place was empty.”

“I have to be sure.”

“Hear that?”

Wayne listened beyond the crackle of the flames, the whisper of the Blue Ridge wind in the trees, and the groan of straining timbers. A wail poured over the valley like the scream of a wounded dragon.

“Sirens,” the cook said. “We’ll get you an ambulance.”

Wayne nodded, wondering if Kendra was worried about him. He glanced up at the window of the room where he and Beth had conceived her—

And there she stood.

Chapter 49

Bad move
.

Kendra had ducked into 318 because it was the first open door she’d found while feeling her way down the smoky hall. She’d hoped to escape through the window, but it was jammed tight and the lattice framework was too narrow. Even if she broke the glass, she wouldn’t be able to slip through. She looked down at the crowd milling on the front lawn, hoping to spy Cody, but also hoping he’d noticed she was missing.

Dad must have escaped. If he’d been in the basement, he’d probably been one of the first to spot the flames. No doubt the same short-circuit that had caused the power outage had also ignited the hotel. The place was a real tinderbox and wouldn’t withstand the flames for long.

She ran to the other window, saw two forms on the lawn behind the hotel.

A row of red strobe lights made a wash across the treetops, emergency vehicles rolling in from Black Rock. If she could only hold out for a couple of minutes, trucks with ladders and firefighters would arrive on the scene. She’d wave and some hunky hero with an ax would climb up and smash the glass and chop apart the frame, then escort her down to safety. Dad and Cody would be impressed and—

The door slammed shut behind her.

In the darkness came the unmistakable sound of bedsprings. Then came the rhythmic creak made by jumping feet and a soft whisper:

“
Lock the door and throw away the key, stay and play with Mommy and me
.”

“Bruce,” she said, not turning around.

The boy repeated, with more insistence:
“Lock the door and throw away the key, stay and play with Mommy and me.”

His jumping grew more violent and she expected to hear his head thump against the ceiling. He repeated the line again, nearly shouting.

And the rain began. Kendra squinted and sputtered against the deluge, realizing the sprinkler system had activated. A little late, perhaps, but working nonetheless. Except she now believed something else controlled the White Horse Inn, a malevolent brat that abused its toys and pouted when things didn’t go its way. And now it was taking a whiz, letting loose all its frustration and rage, drenching her so that her clothes stuck to her body.

“It’s no good, Bruce,” she shouted against the spray.

“
Stay and play...stay and play...stay and play....
”

“I can’t stay,” she said.

The beating red rays of light were closer now, pushing up from beneath the trees and down the lane that led from the highway.

“Stay and play,” it said, but it was no longer Bruce’s voice. A woman’s.

A spotlight tracked across the front of the hotel, momentarily illuminating her face. It was Ann Vandooren, the woman Cody said had rigged a prank camera.

“I’m not staying and I’m not playing,” Kendra said, trying to sound tough, though it came off more Dr. Seuss than Emily Dee.

“You should have been mine,” Ann said, moving closer to Kendra, hands upraised, ignoring the falling water.

“I didn’t do anything to you.”

“Besides getting born, you mean?”

Kendra backed to the window, flipping wet hair out of her face. All she could make out of the woman was her sinister silhouette, but the form didn’t matter that much, whether it was Bruce’s, Burton’s, or Eloise Lanier’s. They all drew water from the same well, and they all wanted her dead, for some reason.

Christ, what a comic book this is going to make. Assuming I ever get out of here
.

But “here” was where it had to end, right?

According to her mother’s ghost, she’d been conceived in this very room. Her first spark of life had glinted when Digger’s stone had struck her mother’s flint. She’d crawled out of the mysterious pool of spirit matter and became the quirky kid with the crooked smile and a talent for doodling, the sad kid who watched her mother waste away at an age when her biggest worries should have been soccer and long division, the troubled kid who had to grow up way too fast because her father needed a parent.

This was where it all started.

The spotlight swept by again, the sirens blaring nearby, and the carpet was warm under her feet, the falling water mixed with smoke and steam. The room was fog, and she could be left here and lost forever, to wander the seams between living and dead, or maybe this was the dream an infant had suffered in the womb of Beth Wilson on the way to being stillborn.

Maybe she was already dead.

And had never been.

A memoir writ in invisible ink.

“You’re the life he never had,” Ann said, but it wasn’t Ann. It was Margaret Percival. It had always been Margaret Percival.

“Kendra!”

Dad was just outside the door, banging, kicking, screaming her name.

Her
name.

Kendra Wilson.

She had been born after all, and she was alive.

“You took his life,” Margaret said.

“I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine,” Kendra said, water streaming down her face, eyes stinging, the tears flushing away as fast as they escaped.

She flung her arms out in the fog, knowing Margaret could see her, because Margaret saw everything in the hotel. Margaret
was
the hotel.

“Because you still have this,” Kendra said, shouting over the hissing of the water and the pounding on the door and the creaking of imploding lumber. “All yours.”

She lunged toward the door, bracing for the collision, wondering if Margaret would be as yielding and suffocating as damp cotton, as sharp and brittle as an iceberg, as splintery and hot as a burning hotel. No matter the material, or the immaterial, Emily Dee was kicking ass and taking names and writing it all down in a little book.

The room was suffused with a sudden glow, as if a thousand candles had been struck to life, the water drops sparkling like amber and rubies. Ann Vandooren’s face emerged from the exotic mist and she swiped out with a hooked stack of talons, going for Kendra’s face. But someone—some
thing
—caught Ann’s wrist, twisting it behind her back, yelling at Kendra to run.