The Haunted Halls (17 page)

Chapter Eight

“I haven’t read any of your books,” Jeff said. “What is it exactly that you do?” This guy seemed like a grade A prick so far, but if he was legit, they might need him.

“I’m an urban shaman.”

“Like a magic man or an Indian voodoo guy?” Jeff cringed, realizing how stupid he sounded.

“Not exactly, but sort of. We’re healers, for the most part. Defenders of the mind, body, and spirit,” Lee said as he buttoned up a dry shirt. In his first real act of kindness, the guy threw Jeff sweatpants and a t-shirt. “Put those on. They’re the only non-dressy clothes I have with me.”

“Thanks.” Jeff peeled off his soaked sweatshirt and undershirt. The t-shirt Lee had thrown him had the words
One of these days I’m gonna get organezized
scrawled across the front. Jeff recognized it instantly. “
Taxi Driver
, right?”

“Sure. I guess. A fan left it in my room in Denver a few weeks ago.” Lee sat on the edge of the bed, replacing his socks. When he was finished he shook another smoke free from the pack on his bed and lit it.

That figures. He doesn’t seem cool enough to know who Travis Bickle is anyway
. He held the sweatpants Lee threw him and considered how he was soaked all the way through. “Uh, I don’t have any dry underwear,” Jeff said.

“Keep ‘em,” Lee said, waving his hand at the sweats. “You go commando in ‘em, they’re yours.”

“Thanks,” he said. He shuffled by Lee and went into the bathroom. The guy must have been the cheapest bastard Jeff had ever encountered, and working in the hotel business, you run into more than your share of tightwads. This guy took the cake, no doubt. Jeff wondered what the girls would think about the guy. They’d probably think he was attractive.  For the first time today, he thought about Kurt. What if this, whatever it was, had affected Kurt?

Kurt’s dead.

He still couldn’t believe it, but Rhiannon had said she heard him flat lining before she was chased out of the room by…something. Maybe it was possible that they had saved him. Maybe he was–

Bang, bang, bang

“Hey, what are you doing? Jerking off in there? Come on.”

Jeff regained his composure, and opened the door. “Sorry, I was thinking about someone.”

“That’s usually how it works,” Lee said, lighting another smoke.

Jeff ignored the comment, moving toward the kitty-cornered desk. There was a wicker basket sitting on top. He reached for the lid.

“Don’t touch that!” Lee said.

Jeff jumped, startled by the sudden outburst. “I… I wasn’t. What’s in it?”

Lee placed himself between Jeff and the basket. “Those are my tools of the trade, so to speak.”

“Sorry,” Jeff said.

“Here, hold this.” Lee handed him the cigarette. Jeff took hold of it, not quite sure how to handle it. He’d never smoked cigarettes. He went with the pinching technique, holding it between his thumb and forefinger like a joint. They hadn’t allowed smoking at the Bruton Inn since the early nineties. These rundown, side of the road motels always had a handful of ashtray smelling rooms. It finally dawned on him why Lee would choose the dump.

“Let’s talk a little more about that inn of yours.” Lee carried the basket over to the bed. Setting it down, he lifted the lid and produced a bundle of green stuff. Jeff thought it looked like a bundle of grass and weeds. Lee slipped his lighter back out of his pocket and flicked the wheel. A flame burst to life. Lee watched it burn for a few seconds before blowing it out. The earthly aroma immediately began to search its way through the room.

“Is that incense?” Jeff said, feeling less stupid, but having a feeling he was wrong again.

“It’s a smudge stick.” Lee watched the trail of smoke pirouetting up into the air. “It’s a collection of herbs–sage, mugwort, and some others.”

“What’s it supposed to do?”

“It’s not what it’s
supposed
to do. It’s what it does,” Lee said. Jeff sensed he had stepped on the guys feelings again. “Since I arrived here for the book signing, I’ve felt something trying to get to me.” This got Jeff’s attention. “I haven’t determined whether it is good or evil, but there’s definitely something that knows I’m here. Either way, this is my protection.”

Jeff wasn’t sure if it was the collective of incidents or all the shaman mumbo jumbo, but at the moment he felt something bad, too. He thought of the dead guy in the new swimming pool, the elderly couple from the other day…
Kurt
. He thought of Rhiannon and Meghan alone at the hotel. “We have to go,” rushing over to the phone by the bed.

“What are you doing?” Lee said.

“I have to call Rhiannon. I have to tell her to get her and Meghan out of that place.”

“Hold on,” Lee grabbed his arm. “Settle down. Breathe. How far is it from here?”

“It’s only like half an hour or so, maybe longer in this weather.” Jeff pulled his arm free.

“Listen to me,” Lee said, grabbing him again before he could pick up the phone. “You’re panicking, you’re not thinking straight. You need to clear your mind.”

“I
need
to warn my friends.”

“They’ll be all right.”

“You don’t know that,” Jeff said.

“We need to be prepared. If the presence I’ve been feeling around me is there, it’s powerful. For me to be picking it up this far away, it may well take all that we can manage to stop it. You called her, your friend, when we got here. You told her we were coming.”

“Yeah, but I wasn’t…I wasn’t convinced we were really up against something. I mean, I thought–”

Lee gripped his shoulders tighter and shook him, staring into his eyes.  “You are walking the right path. There is something supernatural going on at your hotel. Okay? What I need to know from you right now, this very minute, is what you intend to do.”

Jeff felt dizzy. Thinking of the rumors, the ghosts, the shadows housekeepers whispered about seeing in the corners of rooms, guests complaining about knocking and voices from rooms next to them that were supposed to be empty…

“Jeff, are you willing to stand up to this, or are you going to run.”

“I…want to help Rhiannon and Meghan.”

“I’m going to need more than that.”

Jeff’s stomach was twisting in a swell of anxiety and fear. Horror books were one thing, dealing with this shit in real life… He broke free from Lee’s grasp, making it to the toilet just in time to watch his morning coffee splash into the white bowl. He’d been scared plenty of times in his life, but he‘d never considered himself a coward. Part of him wanted to go home and just start searching for a new job on Monday. There was a tiny voice in his head just below that one saying that he didn’t really know Rhiannon and Meghan all that well. That he should just call them, warn them, and let them decide what they wanted to do for themselves.

“Jeff, I’m going to need your help,” Lee said from the doorway behind him.

Jeff stared into the brown pool of coffee and stomach fluids. He wanted to run. He knew it was wrong, but he didn’t want to go back there.

“I know it’s hard to believe, but there are things that are
not
of this world. Whatever resides at that hotel has been around for a while. I’ve read up on some things. The Bruton Inn has been cursed since it first opened.

Jeff wondered how this was supposed to sway him.

“You are already stronger than most. You have accepted its reality. You know it is there. Some of these spirits prey upon nonbelievers, the ones who lie to themselves even in the face of such things. That weakness is what feeds these spirits.  I sensed in you an inner strength. I can feel it now. Come with me. Stand with me.”

Jeff closed his eyes, took a deep breath and stood up. “What do we have to do?”

Chapter Nine

Eric hurried up the stairs and down to his room. He saw the look on her face. He couldn’t tell if she knew what he’d done or not, just that his Ice Queen was not pleased to see him drenched to the bone, dripping all over the lobby. Her stare had been one of intent. She would be coming to see him. As much as he’d been longing for and dreaming about it, he had a feeling this would not be a pleasant visit.

Just as he finished the thought, there was a knock at his door. He knew it was her. Outside his window, beneath the violent thunderstorm, the day was dying. For the first time since his change, Eric wondered about his own mortality.

He opened the door. Kenneth the Rat stood dripping water and mud all over the floor. His eyes were nothing but black orbs. He grinned behind a dirt-covered face. Eric wasn’t sure how the weakling was standing before him and not buried in the grave he had made, but he was damn sure going to put him back in it.

“You can try,” Kenneth said, stepping forward. “But I wouldn’t if I were you.”

How he had just read his thoughts, Eric wasn’t sure, but he didn’t like that he couldn’t do the same.

“You’re services are no longer needed,” Kenneth said.

“What the fuck do you think you’re going to–”

Kenneth grabbed Eric’s wet shirt and threw him backward, taking the big guy off his feet, and sending him sailing into the far wall.

“How…what…” Eric tried to say. Kenneth stepped aside as a man in a dress shirt and slacks with shoulder length blond hair entered the room. The temperature dropped as if
she
were here. Something erupted inside Eric that he hadn’t felt in years–
fear
.

“Who the hell are…?” It took a second for Eric to recognize him. It was the guy with the shaved head from the pool, the one that
she
was toying with. Timothy.

“As young, obedient Kenneth stated, you’re services are no longer needed.”

In a blur of movement, the chosen one was at his throat. Eric felt a strange and painful sensation rush through him. He watched the room go red and then fade back to normal. His chest hurt, his eyes burned, his muscles went numb. He knew he was no longer one of them. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll do whatever She wants. I’ll–”

“Too late,” Timothy said.

He pulled Eric to his feet and threw him. Eric’s body smashed through the window. He thought of Jimmy and knew he had this coming. The pavement below rushed to meet his face. His neck snapped on impact.

“Should I put him with the rest of the bodies?” Kenneth said.

“Just drag him out of sight,” Sarah said from the doorway. Both of her boys turned to her from the shattered window now being assaulted by the torrents of rain whipping in from the storm. “After tonight, there will be no one left but us.”

VOLUME V

Awakening

Rain thrashed the building like a thousand angry insects crashing against an unseen force. The hallway, as dangerously quiet as a path through woods almost remembered, stretched outward. Tan walls, holding portraits perched like gathering crows on a telephone line, waited in silence along the corridor. At the far end, an EXIT sign glowed like a welcoming threat. Voices came to life:

“Should I keep him with the rest?” a male voice said.

“It doesn’t matter. After tonight, there will be no one left but us,” the female responded.

Unsure of who or what any of them were–
Ghosts? Spirits? More? Less?–
and only now cognizant of its own existence, the entity floated down the unattractive hallway. It was, or had been, alive. Now, it was again, in some manner of speaking.

Longing for warmth and communion with someone, something, she–
yes, she, it remembered
– Christina moved toward the
others.

“It doesn’t matter. After tonight, there will be no one left but us.”

The words were clear. The ominous message spewed poison into the air.
That voice
…she knew that voice. Something reached out–something dark. The young spirit, suddenly frightened, moved away, knowing there was something rotten among the group. The hum of a soda machine momentarily stole her attention, its steady drone broken only by a door opening down the hall and then slamming shut. A raggedy looking man appeared, covered in mud, dripping wet from head-to-toe. He paid her no mind as he turned the other direction and vanished through the doorway beneath the EXIT sign.

The smell of chlorine stung her burgeoning senses. Something like a nightmare crossed her waking mind–something with swimming pools and sirens… If a spirit can shiver, she did. Fearful of being discovered by the familiar one, she slipped farther away.

Thunder boomed on the other side of the walls. A wicked night was saying hello.

Chapter One

Kenneth’s blood was alive, pumping through a vengeful heart with an excitement previously unknown. He stared out into the rain. Lightning sparking across the sky lit the lot below. The motionless body of the goon who tried to kill him lay sprawled in an awkward display. Eric had landed face first on the paved lot with the rest of his body flopping over, nearly decapitating him. He lay still–dead and broken.

“What shall we do next?” Timothy said, stepping to her side.

“Why don’t you tend to those left up here, while young Kenneth heads down to my room to wait for his new girlfriend,” she said. “I’m going to go have a little fun with Jeffrey and his spiritual guru.”

Kenneth felt like his moment had arrived. He had managed to topple Eric in their battle for her affection. There was still Timothy, but he liked Tim. He could sense something special behind the man’s eyes, under his skin, something just beyond. There was an admiration, a respect, he felt toward her
chosen one
that validated the man’s presence.  Kenneth stepped next to Timothy, who looked amazing and menacing dressed all in black.

“Kenneth,” Sarah said. “Before you get your prize, I want you to scrape up that mess in lot, but don’t worry about laying him to rest with the others. Just get him off the blacktop. When you’re finished with that, you may go wait in my room. I’ll send your angel right along.”

“I’ll be ready,” he said.

She moved to him, gently sweeping his wet bangs across his forehead. He gazed into her eyes as she said, “I know you will, dear. I am so proud of you.” She kissed him on the lips, arousing every sense in his body. He wanted to weep, even more, he wanted to destroy.
For her, all for her.

He pulled away, slipped into the hallway, closing the door behind him, and left to clean up the mess in the parking lot.

Descending the stairs, his thoughts were held hostage by the cute girl from the front desk. The one
she
would be sending to him. He knew her name was Rhiannon. He could tell she was one of those cute, but tough kinds of girls. He’d been timid in his limited conversations with her throughout his stay, but tonight, tonight would be different. He was different. Everything was different. Shy, pathetic Kenneth was gone. The loser she’d thrown annoyed looks at and given the cold shoulder to was about to make her squeal and squirm. Maybe she would beg for mercy. Maybe she would beg for death. Maybe he would make her like him and she would just beg. 

…..

“Where will you be–” Timothy said.

“Shh...” Sarah placed a finger to his cold lips. For a moment, she felt…
movement
. “Try not to have too much fun without me, my love.”

Taking her hand from his lips, she went into the light of the hallway and closed her eyes. There had been something... Was it the half-hearted shaman? Maybe, but it felt more
familiar
. No matter–it was gone. Timothy was watching her.

“What is it?” he said, standing in the doorway.

She walked up to him, kissed his open mouth and smiled. “I have things to tend to, and so do you.” She moved toward the stairwell, stopped and gestured to the tunnel of doors, giving one last look for the disturbance. “When you finish whoever remains up here, finish off the rest.”

……

Timothy wasn’t sure what had just happened, but he could tell something had bothered her. Having not seen an ounce of weakness slip from her since they met, whatever it was she wasn’t telling him had broken through her defenses. Before he could think on it any further, two women emerged from a room two doors down holding towels and beers.

Time for him to earn his keep.