Speed Dating With the Dead (30 page)

Emily Dee paints herself into one last corner.

She heard her name again. God must have figured out she was hardheaded and had to be told several times. Might as well go in with attitude blazing.

“Who turned out the lights?” she whispered with a scant scrap of air.

“Whew, thought you’d knocked your noggin,” Cody said. His hands moved over her, unhurried and confident. “Any broken bones?”

“It hurts too much to tell.”

“Well, at least we’re out of the clutches of Demon Child up there.”

Cody helped her sit up, and she brushed the plaster dust from her face and shoulders. She could just make out his face, and only a dim square of distant light from a window broke the blackness.

“The electricity must be out,” Cody said.

“Did the demons do it?”

“So you’re a believer now, huh?”

“Nothing says ‘bone-chilling horror’ like floating kids with bloody red eyes,” she said. “So, now what?”

She could barely make out Cody’s silhouette as he glanced back up at the ceiling. “Sure you don’t want your sketch pad?”

Something fluttered down from the torn gap and Kendra ducked, thinking it was a bird or a flock of bats. Or a flock of flying dead kids.

The pad landed at her feet and she swooped it up. “Thanks, Bruce,” she whispered.

A thump came from the service closet, as if the flashlight had bounced down the attic stairs. Then the floor quivered beneath her feet, wood groaning. Broken glass tinkled in the distance. The motion stopped as suddenly as it began.

“Whoa,” Cody said. “Earthquake.”

“No. The Appalachians are stable. Oldest mountains on Earth.”

“Bummer. So we can rule out natural causes?”

“Better hit the control room and see what’s going on. There’s nobody on this floor.” Kendra tucked her sketch pad under her arm and headed down the hall, wondering if any guests occupied the rooms. If so, they were staying put, and since most of them were participating in the hunt, they should be prowling around and enjoying the darkness.

As her eyes adjusted, she was better able to see the hole in the ceiling. A wisp of shadow appeared there, and she was about to mention it to Cody, but it faded fast enough for her to chalk it up to imagination. Wishful thinking worked two ways in the paranormal game: seeing things that weren’t there, and not seeing things that were probably there but you hoped weren’t.

Rochester, Bruce, Dorrie. How many other kids were hanging around the hotel when they should be off playing in the Great Playground in the Sky? And what about you, Mom? What’s here that’s better than wherever you’re supposed to be?

“No flashlight, no walkie-talkie,” Cody said behind her.

“And no weapons,” Kendra said, knowing how silly the declaration sounded. You couldn’t suck ghosts up into a vacuum cleaner and dump them out on a stiff breeze. You could give them the paranormal version of talk therapy and convince them to go toward the light, but they had to be willing to listen.

If Cody was right and these entities were demonic, then they would have no reason to check out. After all, they’d probably been here so long they had metaphysical squatter’s rights.

Which means Mom is a demon?

Cody reached out, touched her back, and let his hand trail down until he found her hand. They walked side by side, limping a little, moving carefully in the gloom.

“Why here?” she asked Cody, feeling a little safer now that they’d moved some distance from the attic access and the hole in the ceiling. The sense of security was illogical, because spirits didn’t need doors, but it was instinctive and reassuring nonetheless.

“You could spend years researching,” Cody said. “But at some point, somebody invited one in. And the others probably showed up like sharks at a bloodbath. They feed on weakness and depravity. The idea of ‘sin’ is not just something invented by priests to control people’s behavior. It’s about knowing right and wrong and still choosing wrong.”

“So demons sniff out a broken soul and come set up shop?”

“Something like that.”

“How do you explain the kids?”

“It’s a shell game. Demons use whatever façade does the job. And the job is to create doubt and confusion, to weaken all they encounter, to disturb the structure and rules of this world. This is God’s turf, and nothing makes them happier than to piss in the shrubbery.”

The rumbling came again, and this time Kendra steadied herself against the wall until the quake passed. They were near the window, and they could see the lawn and the dirt road leading to the White Horse. “No traffic,” Kendra said.

“It’s after midnight in the offseason,” Cody said.

“Nobody comes, nobody goes, huh?”

“That’s your dad’s decision. He’s still in charge, after all.”

A stocky form stepped from the shadow of a doorway in front of them. “That’s what you think,” the woman said.

Kendra jumped back, nearly dropping her pad, and Cody stepped in front of her.
Give the guy points for macho heroism
in the face of danger
.

“Who are you?” Cody asked.

“One of the hunters,” she said, in a husky alto, though her tone was flat.

“Have you seen any of the SSI people?”

“I ain’t seen anybody since the power went out.”

“We should gather in the control room,” Cody said. “We’re headed that way. Want to come with us?”

“There ain’t no more control,” she said. Kendra’s eyes had adjusted enough to make out the woman’s shiny eyes and ebony skin. She recognized the woman from check-in but couldn’t recall her name.

“We apologize for the inconvenience, but I’m sure—”

“Cool it, Cody,” Kendra interrupted. “This isn’t about Haunted Computer Productions anymore. Weird crap is going down.”

“Going down,” the woman said, as if she liked that idea.

“Have you tried your cell phone?” Cody asked her. “I think every battery in the place is dead.”

“Dead.”

Kendra didn’t like the woman’s zombie monotone. “Well, I’m sure the lights will be back on soon. Be careful.”

She grabbed Cody’s arm and tugged him down the hall.

The woman called after them. “You be careful, too. Your momma said to tell you that.”

“Your momma?” Cody asked, confused. “But your momma’s—”

“Dead.” Kendra ushered him toward the control room. “Like a cell phone. You call and get no answer.”

“You’re not telling me something,” he said.

“I’m not telling you
lots
of somethings,” she said. “Mostly because I don’t know what they are.”

The woman was now lost on the shadows behind them, though she might have chuckled. At least, Kendra hoped the woman had chuckled. Otherwise, the floating kids from the attic were tracking them.

They traced the camera cable running the baseboard of the hall, following it around a corner and to the opening of the control room. The interior was utterly dark, having no windows.

“Damn,” Cody said. “A couple of the pieces have battery back-up, but it looks like they got drained, too.”

“I can’t believe the hotel doesn’t have emergency generators, especially for the exit signs. What if there was a fire?”

“Nobody’s here. We’d better head downstairs and look for your dad.”

Just as they were about to turn, one of the camera monitors blinked to life. The sudden green light threw dots behind their eyelids, but they welcomed the illumination.

“Guess some of the batteries still have juice,” Kendra said, entering the room.

“Kendra,” he said, putting out his arm to bar her entry. “That one doesn’t have back-up.”

As they watched, the monitor image focused on a scene in the attic, where Rochester and the others had taunted them. They saw themselves on the screen, Kendra speaking to nothing, then jumping to slam down on the gypsum. That was followed by Cody landing beside her and the ceiling giving way beneath them in a flurry of dust.

“No Rochester,” Kendra said.

“If they’re making the monitor tape run, then editing themselves out of the image would be no problem, right?”

“You’re the expert.”

The loop replayed two more times as they watched. In the last one, Kendra thought she could just make out a misty form in the background, but it could just as easily been her imagination.

“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result,’ Cody said.

“What do you call it when you watch insanity on TV?”

“Time to pull the plug.” He led her from the room, the flickering images still playing behind them.

Chapter 45

The scream had come from the edge of the group, as if a shark had sliced from the dark depths and taken prey.

All Wayne could do was cling to the wall and wait for the clamor to die down.

“What the hell?” Gelbaugh shouted.

“It touched me,” a woman said.

“I thought you wanted it to touch you.”

“Not like that.”

“Are you hurt?” Wayne shouted across the basement.

“I can’t tell,” the woman said. “It was all slithery.”

The group members talked over one another, and one of them must have braved the stairs again, because the door shuddered with dull blows. Someone else fled the group, smacking into a stone wall and groaning in pain.

“Stay where you are,” Wayne said.

“Easy for you to say.” Wayne recognized the voice as Cappie’s. “You’re way over there and something’s probing around.”

“Belial,” said Amelia George.

The furnace burst to life again, with a great chuffing of heat. The flames drew sighs and screams from the group, and Wayne could see some of them had fled. The woman, presumably the one who had been touched, was kneeling at the foot of a support wall, holding her bloody head in her hands and rocking back and forth. Another hunter, a short man in a vest, was hammering at the door, shouting against the thick wood. Amelia stood in the middle of the others, arms raised as if calling forth demons.

And maybe she is.

An hour ago, he might have believed in telekinetic powers. But now the rules seemed to be changing minute by minute, and the White Horse Inn no longer belonged to the realm of physics and logic.

This was now Demon Country.

The flickering flames cast long fingers of light across the basement and onto the scared faces of the group members. Wayne could see the maze of pipes around him, cast iron, lead, and polyvinyl in different sizes. Twenty feet away was a shadowed recess that suggested a door.

The furnace inhaled—that was the only word Wayne could use to describe the action—and the flames subsided to a dull glow. Wayne took advantage of the lingering glow to move forward.

“Come to me,” Amelia said. “Use me if you need it. Take me.”

Amelia’s husband eased a couple of steps away from her, unwilling to be caught in the crossfire of her spiritual recklessness. “Honey, maybe you should—”

“Kill you,” she bellowed, lowering her hands from their uplifted, summoning position and reaching for her husband with curled fingers.

“Christ, lady,” Gelbaugh said. “The cameras aren’t working so there’s no need for a show.”

“Open this damned door,” said the man on the stairs, now yanking on the handle with the force of his ample weight.

Wayne hurried to the recess, which blended with the larger shadows when the flames weakened. He ducked under a rusty drain pipe that disappeared into the dirt, and came up ready to reach for the door he hoped would be there. His hand struck soft, yielding flesh.

“Digger,” wheezed a voice.

The furnace breathed again and the basement flashed orange and red. In the fleeting light, Wayne made out a bruised, bleeding face, the eyes swollen nearly shut and the grin missing a couple of teeth. But it was the uniform, and the night-vision goggles perched atop the soggy mess, that clenched his guts.

“Rodney?” Wayne whispered.

The light dimmed again, but Wayne assembled the memory of the glimpsed image: The Roach’s dark jumpsuit was soaked with blood, the equipment belt empty. The Roach held his thumb over the jagged end of a copper pipe.

Wayne squinted into the shadows. “What happened?”

“You wouldn’t believe.” The Roach’s voice cracked like an ice sculpture under an axe blow.

“Are you hurt?”

“You wouldn’t believe.” A sob in it.

“Is that a door behind you?”

“You wouldn’t fucking believe.”

“You might have a concussion.” Wayne moved closer as the furnace pulsated again, throwing a lunatic sheen onto Rodney’s bloody, sweating, filthy face.

“I have proof now, Digger.”

“I know. But right now we need to get these people out of here.”

With his free hand, Rodney slid his night-vision goggles into place. “They won’t allow that.”

The basement went dim again, and Rodney released the copper line. Wayne smelled propane. The line must have run from an outside tank to the kitchen stoves. Rodney must have found the ruptured pipe, and maybe he’d stayed down here holding it closed until someone could shut off the tank. That would explain his absence, but not the gashes and bruises.

“Got a light?” Rodney asked.

As if in answer, the furnace roared again, and the propane fed it.

Whooosh
.

“Mission accomplished,” Rodney said, just before the concussive blast stole the air and shot an expanding fireball across the basement. The heat slapped Wayne like a volcanic tidal wave and shoved him against Rodney, and they fell together against the door as support timbers groaned and splintered.

In the chaos of collapse, Wayne thought he heard Beth’s voice, or maybe it was the muffled screams of Amelia George.

Chapter 46

Kendra was pitched against the stair rail when the explosion sounded, and Cody grabbed at her as he lost balance in the dark.

She took a step forward, but the stairs seemed to give way beneath her, and her stomach took that same queasy somersault as when she’d fallen through the ceiling.