The Resort (48 page)

A woman with a pearl necklace shifted slightly away from her husband, and it became clear what was being prepared.

Lying at the chef's feet, ready to be rolled into the water, was Ryan.

Lowell felt as though he'd been kicked in the gut, as though all of the life and air had been instantly sucked out of him. His eyes were watering, but not enough to block the view of his son, bound like a pot roast, apple stuffed in his mouth, waiting to be thrown into that hellish soup. He could no longer see Ryan's eyes through the onrush of tears, but he would be seeing them in his mind for the rest of his life, wide open and staring, hurt and terrified, filled with the knowledge that his parents had not arrived in time to save him, that he was going to die alone.

He was not going to die alone, though.

He was not going to die.

If Lowell had a machine gun, he would have killed them all at that moment, would have swung the weapon around the room, spraying bullets until every last damn one of those worthless fucks was too dead to ever come back. But he didn't. He had only a gift shop tomahawk. And the concierge had only a rusty sword. They'd be overpowered before they'd taken out more than three or four of them.

But it would be worth it if they could give Ryan a chance to escape.

Wiping his eyes angrily, he turned back toward Jim, and his blood ran cold. The old man was staring raptly at the water, and Lowell realized that the concierge was where he wanted to be. He'd expected to be taken to this place with the rest of the senior staff in order to stave off his inevitable demise, and had drunk himself into a state of almost complete despair after finding himself abandoned in the lobby. But though he'd been left behind, he'd finally gotten here, he'd finally arrived. By hook or by crook, he'd made it, and now he had the chance to join the rest of them, to partake of the waters and live for a long, long time.

That was why he hadn't wanted to give up his sword, that was why he'd accompanied Lowell here.

A shudder passed through the room like a wave, a physical tremor that palpitated the air about him and caused the gathering to gasp as one. Lowell swiveled around. Jedidiah Harrison emerged from the darkened area behind the chef as though he'd stepped through some hidden doorway or portal from another place. He looked as terrifying as he had in his various portrayals—only more so. For this was no mere rendering, no two-dimensional drawing or inanimate carving. This was the living, breathing Founder himself, a man more than two hundred years old, an evil entity so powerful and focused that he had singlehandedly created this community out of the desert, attracting America's wealthiest and most self-absorbed to his sick cabal, offering them lives lengthened immeasurably in exchange for their participation in his sadistic revels. There was a grisly smile on his face, the inexplicably joyous grimace of a skull, but his eyes were dead and cold, satiated with the years of violence and debauchery, jaded beyond measure and incapable of feeling love or joy or even fear, so far beyond the range of ordinary human emotion that it was impossible to fathom the terrible desires in that depraved brain.

Lowell thought about his first experience at the exercise pool, Rachel's encounters with the psychotic gardener, all of the bizarre incidents they'd experienced at The Reata. He and Rachel had come to think of the resort as an entity unto itself, as a sentient being. But it was not. It was an extension of the Founder. Whatever
he
was,
it
was, and while Jedidiah Harrison may have discovered the fountain of youth here two centuries ago, he had corrupted it and it had corrupted him, and the two were now so inexorably intertwined that it was impossible to tell where one left off and the other began.

The steam was suddenly thicker, stronger, the candles lighting the pool room dimmer, more faint. White figures emerged from the murk, skinny wraithlike forms with no discernable faces, only strangely blurred visages where their features should have been. Conjured from the waters, they were gliding across the top of the shiny black liquid, back and forth, forth and back, across the length of the pool, and Lowell knew instinctively that if any of them touched him, he would die.

The men and women began chanting, and, though foreign, the words they recited sounded familiar. He'd heard them before.

At the Grille.

Yes. They'd been part of one of those strange karaoke songs, and even as he thought it, the Founder started singing. He had a horrible voice, harsh and raspy with no hint of rhythm. But that was not what made it so difficult to hear. No, it was the age of his voice, the endless years and the terrible knowledge that that voice held, the aural manifestation of the man's evil unnatural existence.

The white wraiths in the steam began to move faster, picking up speed, and with the acceleration came increased clarity. For flickering seconds of time, faces appeared on those blank blurry visages.

The chef stepped aside with a small formal bow, and Harrison, still singing, took his place at the head of the gathering, his dusty boots stepping directly in front of the spot where Ryan's body lay. He raised his hands as if to exhort his followers to chant even louder—

—and Ryan rolled into the pool with a splash.

There'd been no warning, and Lowell had been so distracted by the Founder that he did not see it happen. His gaze snapped quickly down, but he was too late. Ryan was gone. His son was somewhere in that roiling water, which had now turned black.

“Ryan!” he screamed, but his voice was lost in the din and no one heard his anguished cry.

His son had probably been watching him as he rolled his bound body into the pool, hoping for some last contact, some connection or acknowledgement, but Lowell's eyes had been elsewhere and he'd missed it. Ryan
had
died alone, and he hated himself for that, knowing that no matter how long he lived, he would always have to live with the knowledge that he had failed his son.

This was clearly unplanned. The chanting faltered, and Harrison stopped singing entirely, his face a mask of incredulous rage.

His son had known that, Lowell realized. He had intentionally sacrificed himself in order to put an end to the Founder's hopes of revivifying the waters, knowing that if he did so at the wrong time, the ceremony could not be completed.

Tears stung Lowell's eyes. The boy was a hero. Ryan had not only been smart enough to figure out what he needed to do in order to throw a wrench in the works, but he'd been brave enough to carry it out. He had sacrificed himself instead of allowing himself to be sacrificed, and in doing so had hopefully put an end to Jedediah Harrison's centuries-long reign of evil.

The Founder stepped forward, glaring down into the agitated black water, his cowboy boots stepping on the spot where Ryan's body had lain. Lowell stared at those boots and the section of cement on which they'd stopped. Grief and fear hardened into anger within him.

That old fuck had lived for far too long.

His grip tightened on the tomahawk. He wouldn't get out of here alive, but if it was the last thing he did, he was going to take that monster down and bash in his head until there was no way he could
ever
be revived. He felt a brief tinge of sadness and regret, the faces of Rachel and the twins passing before his eyes, and he wished there was some way to tell them how much he loved them, how much they meant to him. Then—

Jim moved in front of him, sword extended. Lowell thought that the concierge was going to try to stop him, and he was filled with a bleakness so complete that his weapon arm dangled limply down in defeat as he prepared to be sliced through. But the old man had not turned on him. Either his desire for revenge was stronger than his desire for life, or he wanted to somehow make up for his previous collaboration with The Reata, because he pushed Lowell back, and it was clear that the concierge knew exactly what Lowell had planned to do.

And was going to do it himself.

“I'm dying anyway,” was the only thing he said as he rushed forward, and next to Ryan's sacrifice, Lowell thought it was the most heroic act he had ever witnessed. He wanted to object, wanted to tell the concierge that he didn't have to, that it wasn't really his battle, that Ryan was
his
son, but there was no time for that mealy mouthed posturing, and they both knew the truth of the situation: Jim was old and dying of cancer; Lowell was young with a wife and two boys.

They saw him coming, but none of them were prepared for it. And though these people were old enough to have seen it all and nothing really fazed them, their instincts for self-preservation remained intact, and they scattered, breaking their chain, one old dowager falling into the water, her companion toppling backward in the opposite direction. Jim made a beeline for Harrison, and before the Founder could lift a hand to save himself, the concierge was hacking away at those ancient arms, at the sunken chest. The clothes were rent, the sallow skin beneath them sliced, but there was no blood, only a feeble trickle of liquid that looked uncomfortably like the black water in the pool.

With a mighty roar decibels higher than should have been possible, the Founder swatted at the sword. The move cost him his brittle right forearm, which was sliced by the blade and dropped into the water with a loud plop, but he managed to knock the weapon out of Jim's hand, and the rusted weapon clattered ineffectually onto the cement. The ancient man looked more monster than human as he continued to roar with rage, his features distorted with fury, but before he could act again, the concierge leaped upon him, knocking him to the ground and grabbing his skinny bony neck in a last desperate attempt to finish him off.

Lowell wasn't about to just stand by and watch and, tomahawk raised, he sprang forward. The men and women awaiting the return of the waters, and, presumably, the birth of a new Reata, had backed against the walls, terrified, trying to stay out of the way and protect their own hides. Lowell jumped over the concierge, whose own neck was being throttled by a strong hand that looked like that of a skeleton covered in parchment, and raised his tomahawk above the exposed head of the Founder. For a fraction of a second, he saw into those cold ancient eyes, saw in them dark depths that he could not even fathom. Then he was bringing the stone edge of the weapon down on the scraggly-haired head as hard as he could again and again and again until the body was no longer twitching and the skull was crushed beyond recognition.

He stopped finally, sweating from the steam and the passion and the exertion, breathing heavily through his mouth. The chef was whimpering, cowering in a corner, and some of the other men and women were still alive too, hiding their hideous faces with their hands or their hats, but most of them had gone the way of all flesh and were little more than rotting corpses and dried dead husks of the people they had been.

Those white wraiths were gone, too, returned to whatever hell had spawned them.

And Jim was dead.

Somehow Lowell had not expected that. He'd thought he'd arrived in time to save the old man, but Harrison's grip had been strong and sure, and it had probably taken less than a minute to crush the life out of the concierge. Lowell felt sad but at the same time grateful, although he could not help wondering if the two of them would have been able to get away with such a slapdash harebrained attack if the ritual had been completed and the waters had been restored. He had the feeling that at full strength, the Founder could have dispatched them both with ease. It was only the fact that the spring had not been revived that had saved them.

Ryan had saved them.

The steam dissipated, the water stopped bubbling, and vegetables and body parts bobbed to the dark surface of the pool, but there was no sign of his son. He was down there at the bottom with the bones, Lowell thought, but as if in response, the brackish water began to be siphoned away, the pool level shrinking inches before his eyes until it was down one foot, two, three, four. . . .

There was no shallow end, Lowell saw now. The entire pool was of a uniform depth well in excess of a hundred feet. At the bottom was a black hole, and somewhere down that hole was Ryan.

He didn't want to think about that now, he
couldn't
think about it, and in a daze he lurched out of the pool room, meeting Rachel and the twins halfway down the corridor. They'd come to tell him that the fat man had dissolved before their eyes, and when Lowell passed through the weight room on his way out, he saw what looked like drips of cooked fat on the metal bars of the weight machine.

They stepped outside.

He told them what had happened.

The resort was dark, all of the lights and torches out. Dead bodies were everywhere, in various stages of decomposition, and among the corpses wandered stunned guests and exhausted employees, confused and frightened.

The sky was lightening in the east, above the mountains, the sky fading from black to dark blue. He knew he should try to find Rand Black or Jose or Laszlo, one of the other Cactus Wrens or one of the employees, knew he should search the once again dead resort for survivors, but he just couldn't do it. Supported by his family, he stumbled across the sand, past the dark lobby and the downed totem poles toward the sunken buckboard wagon. All four of them holding tightly to one another, they trudged back to The Reata, or what was left of it, and when they emerged from the canyon, a helicopter was hovering over the ruins of the resort. On the ground, between the rubble and the palm trees, were the flashing lights of emergency vehicles in the parking lot.

They were saved.

Rescuers had finally arrived.

Other men and women, and more than a few children, were already in the parking lot awaiting transportation, having told their stories to disbelieving policemen, firemen and paramedics. Lowell, Rachel, Curtis and Owen joined the crowd, and when a clearly stunned police officer asked them what had happened, Lowell discovered that he could not speak. Though crying, Rachel jumped in, starting to explain from the beginning, from the night Blodgett stole their room and her underwear, and Lowell sat down hard on the ground. The tears came then, tears that threatened never to stop but to go on forever. Great sobs wracked his body, and he cried as he had never cried in his life. He cried for himself, for Rachel, for the twins, for everyone here at The Reata.