Fire Devil

by J L Bryan

  Naturally, a small part of me wanted to argue that not all ghost hunters are crazy...but it really didn't seem like a very strong argument, thinking about myself and others I'd known.

  Besides, I didn't want to pointlessly antagonize our witness.

  “Did she give any indication of where she was going next?” I asked. “After she left Ardmore?”

  “Not to me. She just asked if there was a...” He shook his head. “A pet store in town.”

  I felt sick, thinking of the burned little bones. I remembered the pet-store charge on the credit card, too, but I still asked: “What did you tell her?”

  “Perky Pets, just a few blocks over. And I guess...she went there.” His face was pale, like he was going to be sick.

  “I don't suppose they're open this late, are they?” I asked.

  “Oh, no.”

  “Any idea how I can get in touch with the owner or manager of that place?”

  He sucked his tooth for a long, slurping moment, then said, “You might find Beryl down at Daddy-Q's. They got billiards, beer, and barbecue. But I wouldn't eat the food if I was you. I made that mistake a time or ten.” He touched his stomach and winced.

  “Did Melissa go anywhere else while she was here?”

  “Could be, but she didn't mention it to me.”

  My phone beeped. Stacey and Jacob had caught up to us again; Stacey was asking whether to meet us at the hotel or elsewhere.

  “Thank you, sir, you've been very helpful,” I told the clerk.

  “Aw, forget the 'sir.' My name's Willmore. You can call me Will, I don't mind, but most people end up settling back on 'Willmore.' You want a room, I can get you in on the ground floor. No need to haul your luggage up and down all those stairs.”

  “We'll take whichever one Melissa had,” I said. “Did she leave anything there?”

  “I cleaned the room already, so you won't find anything.” He looked from me to Michael. “I'll rent you the room, but no weird stuff. No ghost stuff. And stay out of this room.” He gestured at the chilly, dark space around us. “It'll be locked, but that didn't stop your sister. I swear, if y'all break in here, I'm calling the police. I don't approve of...any of this.” He gestured at the pentagrams and such inside the fireplace. “The Devil is not welcome at this hotel.”

  “We'll stay away from this room,” I said, though I was pretty sure I was lying. “We've just had a long drive and might as well stay here, since you've been so helpful. Maybe we'll get some idea of where she went, and then we'll know where to go in the morning.”

  “Let's get you checked in, then. And out of this room. It gives me the willies.” Willmore gestured for us to leave.

  “But you don't believe in ghosts?” I asked as I stepped out into the hall.

  “No, ma'am. I just believe in bad memories.” He seemed to take extra care in locking the door to room 33 behind us. I could have told him not to bother; I had my lock picks with me, down in the van.

  “We have some friends joining us, so we'll need another room,” I said. “Something up here with us.”

  “There's the royal suite,” he said. “Room 31, right over here...king-sized bed, sitting room, pretty big antique bathtub. Got a picture window looks over downtown, too. Quite a view.”

  “Sounds good,” I said. “We'll probably take it.”

  “Come on down and we'll get y'all checked in.” He started down the groaning, creaking stairs. “I just can't see why anyone would want to stay up here, going up and down all these stairs, when there's perfectly good rooms on the ground floor...Tomorrow I'll have to come all the way back up here and clean up the rooms after y'all go...” He shook his head, as though it were all an unbelievable burden.

  We stopped at the front desk to fork over my credit card—Michael's having been stolen—and then we carried our luggage inside. I couldn't be too obvious about bringing in a bunch of ghost gear from the van, so we smuggled a few essentials in our suitcases. Including those lock picks, of course.

  I made it back to the lobby in time to meet Stacey and Jacob checking in.

  “Nifty place!” Stacey said, without a trace of irony in her voice, as she looked over the faded yellow oil-well pictures decorating the brick wall. “It's so authentic!”

  “Yeah...” Jacob looked around, warily rather than cheerfully. He was the one who could sense spirits; I was eager to know what he was picking up about the place. From his expression, it didn't seem like positive vibes at all.

  We clambered upstairs, and we pretty much took over the top floor—room 31, the suite, and room 32, where Melissa had stayed. There didn't seem to be anyone in room 34, and of course, nobody was in room 33. Nobody living, anyway.

  “Oh, sweet! A suite!” Stacey said as she and Jacob entered the room. I followed close behind, entering a sitting room with a hard-backed couch on feet carved to look like hooves. Buffalo hooves, maybe, because they were pretty big. A painting on the wall showcased horse-mounted Pawnee archers hunting buffalo.

  Stacey pushed open the double doors to the bedroom, looking excited...then horrified. “Ew!” she called out.

  Jacob and I moved closer to look over her shoulders.

  The bed was indeed huge, as promised; three people could have sprawled comfortably atop it.

  Unfortunately, the buffalo theme continued here, too—with an actual buffalo head mounted on the wall facing the bed. The thing was big. Like the size of a motorcycle.

  “What's wrong?” Jacob asked, managing to keep a straight face. He still wore the worried, troubled look he'd had since entering the hotel, but now he fought to keep down a smile. “Looks great. Very Western. Very authentic, like you said.”

  “Are you kidding?” Stacey whirled on him, and his restrained smile broke loose. She grunted and hit him playfully in the chest. “You are. You know I can't sleep with a giant dead herbivore just staring at me all night.”

  “So we'll blindfold it,” Jacob said. “Then it can't see you.”

  “That...would be even weirder.” Stacey shook her head. “I'm sleeping on the couch. Or maybe the other room. How's that look, Ellie?”

  “It definitely has fewer giant dead animals on the walls,” I said. “Come on.”

  I took Stacey over to room 32, where Michael and I had put our luggage. It was, naturally, much smaller than the suite, with a sagging double bed, where Michael currently sat looking at his phone, and also a spare single bed against one wall. The only dead-animal feature was a painting of a cow skull in the desert.

  “Better,” Stacey said, sinking to the single bed. Rusty springs screeched under her weight.

  “Any updates?” I asked Michael.

  “No new charges on the card,” he said.

  “Maybe something will show up soon.” I sat next to him and rubbed his shoulder. I knew there was nothing I could really do to make him feel better.

  “Is this where we're hanging out?” Jacob asked, stepping into the room.

  “Close the door,” I said. “We'll catch you up on the story so far. Just as soon as you tell me what you think of this place.”

  “I think nothing good,” he said. “This hotel has some unhappy, troubled spirits. I can hear them... like whispers in the walls.” He closed his eyes, concentrating. “Nobody wants to come forward and speak, though. I think the strongest presence is across the hall, the room we passed. I can feel them in there, like heavy, cold shadows.”

  “Can you tell us anything about them?”

  “It's hard to separate them into individuals,” he said. “Maybe they died as a group? None of them are coming forward to speak with me. Maybe if I should get closer to them...if I could just go into that room...”

  “Later,” I said. “The hotel owner is very opposed to any ghost hunting activity.”

  “I'm not surprised,” Jacob said. “The place feels very churned up, like a lot of people have tried to contact the dead here. That might be why the dead are holding back from me—they've had negative experiences with other liv
ing people looking for ghosts, who haven't necessarily been that respectful in their approach.”

  “That fits,” I told him. “Some amateur ghost hunters deliberately antagonize spirits, just trying to get a response.”

  Jacob sat quietly with his eyes closed for a long moment, his lips moving. Finally he looked at us again.

  “There's a lot of pain,” he said. “Heat. Was there a fire here at some point?”

  I nodded.

  “I can hear them screaming as they burn,” he said, shivering. “I can feel...their pain. It was intense. This wasn't a quick and easy death, it was agonizing. No wonder the place is haunted.”

  “Can you try to identify individuals?” I asked, ready to jot notes on my trusty little pocket pad.

  He sighed. “Okay. There's at least one adult male, maybe two...one adult female. One child. I'm not sure that's all of them, but...that's what I think so far.”

  “We'll go exploring a little later,” I said. “Hopefully the owner won't come up and check on us. He seems to hate coming up here.”

  “Sure. I bet he's experienced a lot of activity,” Jacob said, glancing toward the closed door.

  “He says he's never seen a ghost in here, not in twelve years,” Michael told him. “I think he just hates climbing stairs.”

  “And actually Willmore seemed annoyed by the idea of ghosts, more than anything else,” I said.

  “Weird,” Jacob said.

  “Maybe some people just don't feel ghosts,” Stacey said. “Like they're immune or something.”

  “Immune?” Jacob asked.

  “Sure. If some people are extra-sensitive—like you, my sweet, sensitive guy—then some people are probably less sensitive than average. Right?” Stacey looked at me as if to see whether she was right.

  “Possibly,” I said. “If it follows a bell-curve distribution.”

  “Which most human traits do,” Jacob said, nodding. “Somewhere out there is a guy who could walk through an active haunted house, at midnight during a full moon on Halloween, and not even feel the slightest chill, or the slightest feeling of being watched...sounds like a lucky guy.”

  “We may have just met that guy,” I said. “Okay, our next stop is a barbecue place called Daddy-Q.”

  “Sounds great, I'm starving!” Stacey hopped to her feet.

  “We've been told to avoid the food. We're looking for a pet store owner.”

  “Huh? Why? You looking for a catnip treat for Bandit?”

  “No...” I took a deep breath and told Stacey about the blackened little bones that Clay had left in the fireplace of the haunted room.

  Stacey didn't take it well—in fact, she turned chalky pale and looked like she would be sick. Jacob didn't take it much better.

  I could sympathize. At least none of us would be tempted to eat at Daddy-Q's that night.

  We locked up our rooms and headed down. Willmore wished us a nice evening as we left, but he stared after us warily, probably wondering what new horrors we'd introduce to his hotel.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The street outside was even darker and quieter than when we'd checked in, if such a thing was possible.

  “You take us to such exotic places, Ellie,” Stacey said, looking into the empty storefronts. “How come we never get ghost cases in Paris? Or Venice? Or even New Orleans? You know that place is loaded with ghosts, right?”

  “This town has a lot to offer,” Jacob said. He was looking at his phone. “There's a racetrack...casino...oh, look! A farm with a hay maze—”

  “No,” Stacey, Michael, and I interrupted, all at once.

  “Okay, well the Daddy-Q's place is this way.” He pointed up the street.

  The four of us passed a couple of antique stores, now dark and locked up for the night.

  “Look,” I said, pointing at a sign. “There's Perky Pets.”

  We slowed to look in the display window. A couple of chubby golden puppies rolled around in a large cage inside. When they saw us looking at them through the glass, they stopped tussling with each other and pressed their noses against the wall of their cage, wagging their little tails.

  “Aw, they're so cute!” Stacey said. “I wish my apartment allowed pets.”

  The inside of Perky Pets looked like a zoo, the sad old kind with lots of cages and concrete floors. There was nothing perky about it at all.

  “You shouldn't buy dogs from these places, you know,” Stacey said. “They support puppy mills.”

  We resumed walking.

  It was a cold, windy night, and it was only going to grow colder. The barbecue-slash-billiards bar was several blocks away, too. We could have driven there, but all four of us were tired of sitting in automobiles all day. We didn't even discuss driving.

  “I really do like this town, though,” Michael said, gesturing to some old brick buildings as we passed. “It's clearly got personality. And history.”

  “A history of deadly fires,” Jacob said.

  “You just like it because we're way out west here,” I said. “A thousand miles from home.”

  “It's nice,” Michael said. “Open spaces, big sky...”

  We reached an area that was a little busier, with a few restaurants and bars that were open later than the shops closer to our hotel.

  Daddy-Q's was off on a side street, as though the town had nudged this less reputable spot out of view. The windows were dark and curtained, illuminated by a couple of neon beer signs.

  The interior was dim and smoky, reeking of cigarettes and grease. A couple of small groups drank beer, idly watching an arm wrestling contest at a small table near the back of the bar. Two grayhaired bikers had paused their pool game to watch it, too.

  The sparse crowd was made up of people in denim and motorcycle leather, their ages spanning a range from late forties to early sixties, I'd guess. The bartender was on the older end of this, with a long and tangled gray beard over a faded Megadeth t-shirt, though the jukebox was currently playing David Allan Coe.

  A number of the patrons turned to look at us, but only briefly, because they were more interested in the arm-wrestling thing.

  The bartender was more interested in us. He nodded as we approached, weaving our way through the stained old billiard tables.

  “What can I get for you?” the bartender asked, looking past me at Michael, though I was leading the group. It was like he'd looked over the four of us and clocked Michael as the alpha male, the guy who had to be in charge.

  “Ellie, I think we're in the wrong place,” Stacey said loudly, though in a whispering tone of voice, as if that would keep anyone from overhearing. Between the shouting at the arm-wrestling table, and the jukebox, and the general indifference to our presence, I doubt anyone would have heard or cared, anyway.

  “There's an Applebee's by the interstate,” the bartender said. “But we got better drinks.”

  “I'm sure you do,” I said. “We're looking for whoever owns the pet store with those puppies for sale.”

  “Uh-huh,” the bartender said. “So you looked all over town, and you figured this was the place to go. For pet shopping.”

  “See? I told you!” Stacey said, still in the loud-yet-whispery voice. She elbowed me, too, just in case I missed it.

  “That's what the guy at our hotel told us,” I said. “That we'd find her here. I think her name was Beryl?”

  “Which hotel?” the bartender asked.

  “Gatwich Inn.”

  “Oh.” He snorted. “You looking for the ghosts?”

  “Is it supposed to be haunted?” I asked, as innocently as I could manage.

  “Only reason that place is still open is tourists looking for ghosts,” the bartender said. “If Willmore had any brains at all, he'd play it up with Halloween decorations and stuff. Charge extra for that haunted room. Instead, he runs off the only people who'd ever pick his place over the Best Western.”

  “Maybe some people just prefer a little authentic local color in their hotels,” Stacey said. />
  “That'd be the Shiloh Morning Inn, over on Ponderosa,” the bartender told her. “That's where you'd be happy staying. The Gatwich is just...sad.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, by now you've seen the outside and you've seen the inside, so you know what I mean. Are you folks ordering anything or what? The kitchen's closed, but I could throw something in the deep fryer.”

  “I'm not hungry anyway,” I said. I felt like I should order something, since I was asking the guy so many questions. But the state of the dishes and glassware behind the bar raised a number of questions, too. Like whether the place even had a dishwasher.

  “We'll take four of your finest bottled beers,” Jacob said, pulling out some cash. “Something imported would be great.”

  “Imported, huh? I don't carry much...” The bartender fished out four brown medicine bottles of Jamaican Red Stripe. Jacob paid him, with a generous tip.

  “So what can you tell us about the ghosts in the inn?” I asked.

  “They say people got trapped on the top floor back in the fire of '95. The same fire just about wiped out the whole town.”

  “Which people got trapped?”

  “One of the owners and a few travelers. Little girl, that's the one most people see. They say she comes into your room at night, when you're sleeping. They say her eyes are hollowed out, with little flames inside 'em, like a jack o' lantern. She'll beg you for help. She'll touch you. And her touch is hot, like fire.”

  A small roar went up from the folks watching the arm-wrestling competition. The victor stood up, a broad-shouldered woman with her blond hair set in a perm, wearing an orange and blue hockey jersey that read OILERS. Her opponent, a wiry guy with a red bandanna tied down over his long graying hair, sat back, shaking his head and reaching for his wallet while other patrons jeered at him.

  “Hey, Beryl!” the bartender called. “You got some people asking about puppies over here.”

  “Is that so?” She threw us a quick smile, then scowled as she turned back to Bandanna Man. “Pay up, Rolly.”