Midnight Solitaire (9 page)

The bells over the door sound and Luke whirls around, gun leveled.

Greer stands just inside the door, pale and drawn, hands raised and eyes teeming with panic and fear.

Luke lowers the gun. “Where’s Doc?”

“Getting something from his car.” She brushes snow from her shoulders and arms but continues shaking, her face a tangled web of emotion and shock. “It’s just like he said. They’re all dead. One in one room, two in another, and…” Greer hesitates, struggling with what she is about to tell him, as it’s still difficult to believe. “Luke, there’s a dead body hanging from the flagpole. Decapitated.”

Luke’s response is barely audible. “Jesus.”

Greer hugs herself. “It’s a goddamn bloodbath out there and he—that man he—he had a knife right to my throat, the same knife he probably used to—”

“Take it easy.”

“Take it easy? Take is easy? You fucking take it easy!”

This time it’s Luke who holds his hands up. “I didn’t mean anything by it, all right? Just stay calm, try not to freak. You don’t want to lose it. Not here. Not now. You go off that edge, you might not make it back. You feel me?”

He’s right, and she knows it. Greer nods and does her best to release some of the tension in her body.

Before Luke can say anything else the door opens again and Doc enters along with a burst of snow and cold wind. He carries a small black leather bag. “You’re supposed to be watching the road.”

“I am, I—”

“Stay on it.” Doc leans his shotgun against the front desk, places the bag on the counter and begins rummaging through it. “He’s close, I can feel him.”

“Something you need to look at.” Once he has Doc’s attention, Luke taps a finger on the sheet of paper marked with the shoeprint then subtly cocks his head in the direction of the vent.

Doc responds with an equally subtle nod. He thought he’d accounted for all the vehicles parked outside, but if the van The Dealer was driving came from here as well then the little Honda out front belongs to someone else. Due to where it’s parked he assumes it’s another employee, someone who was manning the front desk when The Dealer arrived. From the small size of the print it is most likely a woman, and if she’s escaped up into the vent shaft, has survived and is still hiding somewhere in the ductwork, she poses no immediate threat. “Watch the road,” he says evenly. “I have to secure this place best I can then we’ll deal with that.”

“He tries coming through that door he won’t make it.” Luke holds the .38 up for effect. “Between the two of us he can’t—”

“That might slow him down. It won’t stop him.”

“I put one in his head it’ll stop him.”

“No. It won’t.”

“He ain’t Superman, bro.”

“I already told you what he is.”

“I’m not scared of the Devil.”

“Well you should be.”

In a misguided battle of wills, they hold each other’s stares for several seconds. Luke breaks first, looking away before limping back over to the front of the office to resume his guard duty.

Unsure of what to do, Greer wanders about between them.

Doc removes several items from the leather bag, including a squat white candle, a container of black pepper, a jar containing cloves of garlic, a small wooden bowl, and two small plastic bottles, one filled with water, the other with olive oil. He first takes a pinch of pepper and sprinkles it at the inside threshold of the front door.

“Beware those outside the light who break this bond or attempt to cross this threshold,” he mutters. “You will find neither welcome nor refuge here, and are forbidden entrance.”

Luke and Greer exchange their second troubled glances of the evening.

“What is this?” Luke asks. “More of your of voodoo bullshit?”

“Witchcraft,” Greer says. “I think.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?”

Doc quickly returns to the counter. “Watch the road.”

“I been watching the motherfucking road,” Luke snaps. “Only thing out there’s some snow and ice. I think your boy’s long gone.”

“He’s closer than you realize.”

“All I see is you acting a fool and throwing shit on the floor.”

Doc mixes water and oil together in the bowl. “You have no idea what you’re dealing with or what he’s capable of.”

“I know no matter how crazy he is he’s still a man just like anybody else.”

“He is crazy, you’re right about that. He’s completely, hopelessly insane.” Doc lights the white candle. “But he’s not a man.”

“Yeah? Well I don’t believe in that mumbo-jumbo, supernatural bullshit.”

Doc opens the jar of garlic cloves. “Says the man wearing a crucifix.”

“That’s right, I believe in Jesus. You don’t like it? Fuck you.”

“I don’t give a rat’s ass what you believe.” Doc places nine cloves of garlic on the counter. “I’m just trying to keep him out. These purification and protection spells will accomplish that. They won’t work indefinitely, his magic is far more powerful than mine, but they’ll make due for now.”

“Dude got a bag full of guns and he’s playing with spells and candles. Fuck you think this is?” Luke looks to Greer for support but she shrugs and turns away. “All right, fine. Whatever.”

One at a time, Doc holds the cloves over the flame. The moment they ignite he drops them into the bowl, one after the next. As they’re extinguished, a scented smoke is released. He holds the bowl higher, allowing the smoke to crawl higher and across the office area. “Evil, I repel you and purify this space.”

After several seconds, Doc goes to the door, opens it and pours the contents of the bowl onto the ground. He then returns the items to the bag, takes up the shotgun and looks up at the vent.

“What?” Greer asks.

Luke leans close, tells her about the shoeprint and whispers, “Think there might be someone up there, maybe another employee that got away, hid up in the vent.”

Doc searches the items scattered on the couch from the knapsack until he finds a canvas wallet. He opens it, locates a driver’s license. “Kit Piper?” he calls out, walking back toward the vent. “Kit, if you’re up there it’s all right, we’re not going to hurt you. If you can hear me you need to come down from there.”

“Kit,” Greer chimes in, thinking perhaps another female voice might comfort her, “it’s all right, just let us know if you’re there, OK?”

“We have to find out if she’s up there,” Doc says. “It’s a vent, which means it leads to a way out.”

“And another way in,” Luke says.

“Exactly. Odds are it comes out somewhere on the roof. And if she’s used it and left an opening up there, he’ll find it.”

“So throw some mayonnaise up in that bitch and say some more of your heebie-jeebie bullshit,” Luke cracks. “We’ll be all set.”

“If she is up there, I’m sure she’s scared out of her mind,” Greer says. “There’s no telling what she saw.”

“We’ve got two options,” Doc says.

“We’re listening.”

“We either check out the vent or we check out the roof. May end up having to do both.”

“If she’s out in that storm she won’t last long,” Luke says.

“But if she made it that far why not try to make it to her car?” Greer asks.

Doc moves into the office behind the front desk. The army jacket over the back of the chair is far too small to have belonged to the man on the flagpole. He checks the pockets, comes back with a ring of keys. He returns to the lobby and tosses them on the counter. “Because when she made a break for it she didn’t have time to get to her keys.”

“So now what?”

“You want to go up there and check it out?” Doc asks Greer.

“Me?”

“You’re the only one that’ll fit.”

“Shit.” She rubs her eyes, hoping to dissipate the slight headache lingering there. “Yeah, I—OK—fine.” She moves behind the counter.

“It’s a relatively short distance to the roof so you’re probably only talking about fifty feet or so of shaft system. Once you can see to the end of it, if there’s still no sign of her then come back down and I’ll go out and check the roof.”

“Hold up,” Luke says suddenly. “We got a bigger problem.”

Doc and Greer turn in unison, drawn to the same thing Luke has seen.

Barely visible in the darkness and heavy snowfall is the silhouette of a man standing in the middle of the road, his duster flapping in the wind.

“Oh my God,” Greer whispers.

Something suddenly ignites and encircles him, leaving him in the center of a small ring of fire, the flames reaching nearly halfway up his body and casting him in an eerie golden hue.

Even as the snow slowly begins to extinguish the fire, he extends his arms out on either side of him, throws back his head and begins to laugh.

TWELVE

They watch as the last of the flames die and The Dealer is returned to darkness.

“He wants us to know he’s here,” Doc explains. “He’s trying to frighten us.”

“It’s working,” Greer says.

The silhouette backs away, swallowed first by snow, then by night.

Luke starts toward the door, .38 raised.

Doc stops him, grabbing him by the shoulder firmly enough to prevent him from easily taking another step, but with a sufficient amount of restraint so that it isn’t perceived as assaultive. “You don’t want to go out there, son.”

“He’s right in the middle of the road. I say we take him down now. He can’t stop us both if we hit him at the same time.”

“You go out there now it’s suicide.”

“None of this lighting shit on fire and magic man bullshit means dick to me, all right?” Luke squares his stance. “You want me to keep listening to you, then you better start making some goddamn sense.”

“Listen to me or don’t, your decision.” Doc releases Luke’s shoulder and motions to the door. “You want to go out there and try to take him out, go. You’ll be dead before you can get a shot off.”

“Then what’s the plan?”

“We hold our ground.”

Luke considers this a moment. “Let him come to us?”

“He will in time. Just not right away, not now. He won’t cross this threshold—he can’t, not yet—and the emergency door off the office is locked with a heavy-duty bolt and a bar, I already checked it. If he tries to come through that we’ll know it. Those are the only ways in, except for the vent, and in his current state he can’t fit in it any better than I can.”

“His current state?” Greer asks. “What does that mean?”

“Means he’s a shape-shifter too,” Luke chuckles. “This dude’s seen too many horror movies. Where the hell are all the plows and sanders? That’s what I want to know.”

“The cop at the roadblock told me all emergency vehicles and plows were being called in due to the severity of the storm,” Greer says.

“But there’s usually sanders and plows out early on trying to stay ahead of this shit.”

“Maybe the storm was too fast-moving. The State can’t risk stranding a bunch of plows out in the middle of nowhere. By now they’ve probably either been called in to wait out the storm or they’ve been moved to roadways closer to higher populated areas. I mean, I don’t know for sure but that’d be my guess.”

“No one’s coming to save us,” Doc tells them. “It’s just us out here. Us and him, and the sooner you come to terms with that the better off we’ll all be.”

“Doesn’t feel like we’re ever gonna be better off again,” Luke scoffs.

“The night’s young,” Doc reminds him. “We have a chance.”

“But not a good one.”

“No, not a good one.”

“I go out, I’m doing it swinging.”

I hope so, Doc thinks. “We need to kill the lights in here.”

Greer blanches. “Why would we do that?”

“Because with all this glass we can see him,” Doc explains. “But with the lights on in here he can see us too. He can see every move we make. Leave the candle burning, it’ll provide just enough light for us to get around but it’ll limit what can be seen from outside.”

Luke finds the appropriate breakers and throws the first, which kills the road sign. The second plunges the office into near darkness.

“So the only relatively safe way to check the roof with him out there is if I go up through the shaft.” Greer eyes the vent again. “But how do we know he won’t already be up there by the time I get deep into the shaft?”

Doc watches her through the candlelight. “We don’t.”

“So you won’t let me go out right at this guy with a gun but she can risk her ass sliding around in a vent shaft looking for somebody who might be on the roof?” Luke shakes his head. “You don’t have to go up there.”

“I know,” Greer says, “but if she’s up there or in the shaft somewhere—”

“If she was in the shaft she would’ve heard us calling her name and she would’ve answered. She didn’t. That only leaves so many options, right? She’s either up on the roof or she’s not. If she is, she’s been out there a while now and who knows what kind of shape she’s in? If she’s not, that means she either made a break for it on foot and took her chances in the storm, or she’s hiding in one of the units somewhere else in the motel. She could be dead too. Why risk it?”