Creepers

by David Morrell

  “It’s been years since I’ve read a thriller as good as CREEPERS.

  Crack this novel and it’s like an alien abduction of your brain—forget resuming your normal life until it’s finished. Mark my words:

  this will be a classic.”

  —Douglas Preston, co-author with Lincoln Child of BRIMSTONE and DANCE OF DEATH

  THE DARKEST SECRETS LIVE…IN PLACES YOU’RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE

  On a cold October night, five people gather in a run-down motel on the Jersey shore and begin preparations to break in to the Paragon Hotel. Built in the glory days of Asbury Park by a reclusive millionaire, the magnificent structure—which foreshadowed the beauties of art-deco architecture—is now boarded up and marked for demolition.

  The five people are “creepers,” the slang term for urban explorers: city archeologists with a passion for investigating abandoned buildings and their dying secrets. On this evening, they are joined by a reporter who wants to profile them—anonymously, as this is highly illegal activity—for a New York Times article.

  Frank Balenger, a sandy-haired, broad-shouldered reporter with a decided air of mystery about him, isn’t looking for just a story, however. And after the group enters the rat-infested tunnel leading to the hotel, it becomes clear that he will get much more than he bargained for. Danger, terror, and death await the creepers in a place ravaged by time and redolent of evil.

  Creepers, David Morrell’s gripping joyride of a thriller, depicts every harrowing second in eight hours of relentless suspense. It will haunt readers for many nights to come.

  ALSO BY DAVID MORRELL

  FICTION

  First Blood (1972)

  Testament (1975)

  Last Reveille (1977)

  The Totem (1979)

  Blood Oath (1982)

  The Hundred-Year Christmas (1983)

  The Brotherhood of the Rose (1984)

  The Fraternity of the Stone (1985)

  Rambo (First Blood, Part II) (1985)

  The League of Night and Fog (1987)

  Rambo III (1988)

  The Fifth Profession (1990)

  The Covenant of the Flame (1991)

  Assumed Identity (1993)

  Desperate Measures (1994)

  The Totem (Complete and Unaltered) (1994)

  Extreme Denial (1996)

  Double Image (1998)

  Black Evening (1999)

  Burnt Sienna (2000)

  Long Lost (2002)

  The Protector (2003)

  Nightscape (2004)

  NONFICTION

  John Barth: An Introduction (1976)

  Fireflies: A Father’s Tale of Love and Loss (1988)

  American Fiction, American Myth: Essays by Philip Young

  edited by David Morrell and Sandra Spanier (2000)

  Lessons from a Lifetime of Writing:

  A Novelist Looks at His Craft (2002)

  Copyright © 2005 Morrell Enterprises, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from CDS Books or the respective copyright holders.

  For information please address:

  CDS Books

  425 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  ISBN: 1-59315-237-X

  Orders, inquiries, and correspondence should be addressed to:

  CDS Books

  425 Madison Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  (212) 223-2969 FAX (212) 223-1504

  Design by Lisa Stokes

  Printed in the United States of America

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

  To Jack Finney and Richard Matheson,

  whose imaginations never fail to inspire.

  “…places you’re not supposed to go.”

  —subject of the website infiltration.org

  “…Hell is empty,

  And all the devils are here.”

  —Shakespeare, The Tempest

  CONTENTS

  9:00 P.M.

  10:00 P.M.

  11:00 P.M.

  MIDNIGHT

  1:00 A.M.

  2:00 A.M.

  3:00 A.M.

  4:00 A.M.

  CREEPERS.

  That’s what they called themselves, and that would make a good story, Balenger thought, which explained why he met them in this godforsaken New Jersey motel in a ghost town of 17,000 people. Months later, he still would not be able to tolerate being in rooms with closed doors. The nostril-widening smell of must would continue to trigger the memory of screams. The beam from a flashlight wouldn’t fail to make him sweat.

  Later, as he convalesced, sedatives loosened the steel barriers he’d imposed on his memory, allowing frenzied sounds and images to dart out. That chilly Saturday night in late October. A little after nine. That was the moment when he could have turned around and saved himself from the mounting nightmare of the next eight hours. But in retrospect, even though he’d survived, he surely wasn’t saved. He blamed himself for failing to notice how hyper everything felt. As he approached the motel, the crash of the waves on the beach two blocks away seemed abnormally loud. A breeze scraped sand along a decaying sidewalk. Dead leaves rattled across cracked pavement.

  But the sound that Balenger most remembered, the one that, he told himself, should have made him retreat, was a mournful rhythmic clang clang clang that drifted along the area’s abandoned streets. It was harsh, as if from a fractured bell, but he would soon learn its true origin and how it represented the hopelessness he was about to enter.

  Clang.

  It could have been a warning to ships to stay away and avert disaster.

  Clang.

  Or it could have tolled for a funeral.

  Clang.

  Or it could have been the sound of doom.

  The motel had twelve rooms. Only unit 4 was occupied, a pale yellow light seeping past its thin curtain. The exterior was run-down, as much in need of paint and repair as all the other buildings in the area. Balenger couldn’t help wondering why the group had chosen it. Despite the hard times the community had suffered, there were still some decent places in which to stay.

  The cold breeze made him tug the zipper on his Windbreaker all the way to his neck. A broad-shouldered man of thirty-five, he had short, sandy hair and an experience-etched face that women found appealing, although there was only one woman he cared about. He paused outside the room, wanting to control his thoughts, to prepare his emotions for the role he needed to assume.

  Through the flimsy door, he heard a man’s voice. It sounded young. “The guy’s late.”

  A woman’s voice, also young. “Maybe he isn’t coming.”

  A second man, much older. “When he contacted me, he was enthused by the project.”

  A third man. Young, like the first two. “I don’t think it’s a good idea. We never took a stranger with us before. He’ll get in the way. We shouldn’t have agreed.”

  Balenger didn’t want the conversation to proceed in that direction, so he decided he was as focused as he was going to get and knocked on the door.

  The room became quiet. After a moment, a lock was freed. The door came open the length of a security chain. A bearded face peered out.

  “Professor Conklin?”

  The face nodded.

  “I’m Frank Balenger.”

  The door closed. A chain rattled. The door came open again, revealing an overweight man of sixty silhouetted by light.

  Balenger knew the man’s age because he’d researched him thoroughly. Robert Conklin. Professor of history at the State University at Buffalo. Vietnam war protestor during his graduate-school years. Jailed t
hree times at various political events, including the 1967 march on the Pentagon. Arrested once for possession of marijuana, the charge dismissed for insufficient evidence. Married: 1970. Widowed: 1992. One year later, he became a creeper.

  “It’s after nine. We began to wonder if you were coming.” The professor’s gray hair matched his beard. His glasses were small, his cheeks heavy. After a careful look outside, he shut and locked the door.

  “I missed the earlier train from New York. Sorry to hold you up.”

  “Quite all right. Vinnie was late arriving also. We’re getting organized.”

  The professor, who looked out of place in jeans, a sweater, and a Windbreaker, indicated a thin man of twenty-four, who also wore jeans, a sweater, and a Windbreaker. As did the two other young people in the room. As did Balenger, who’d followed the instructions he was given, including the directive to make certain the clothes were dark.

  Vincent Vanelli. B.A. in history: State University at Buffalo, 2002. High school teacher in Syracuse, New York. Unmarried. Mother deceased. Father unable to work, suffering from smoker’s-related emphysema.

  Conklin turned toward the remaining two people, a man and a woman. They too were twenty-four, Balenger knew from his investigations. The woman had ponytailed red hair, a sensuous mouth that some men would have worked not to stare at, and a figure that the sweater and Windbreaker couldn’t hide. The good-looking man next to her had brown hair and a solid build. Even if Balenger hadn’t researched his background, he’d have known that the man enjoyed exercise.

  “I’m Cora,” the woman said, her voice pleasantly deep, “and this is Rick.”

  Again, only first names, although Balenger knew that their last name was Magill. They had B.A.s in history from the State University at Buffalo, 2002, and were now in the graduate history program at the University of Massachusetts. Met in 2001. Married in 2002.

  “Pleased to meet you.” Balenger shook hands with everybody.

  An awkward moment ended when he pointed toward objects laid out on the worn bedspread. “So these are the tools of the trade?”

  Vinnie chuckled. “I guess, if the wrong person came in here, he’d get suspicious.”

  It was an amazing array of equipment: hard hats with battery-powered lights attached to them, flashlights, candles, matches, spare batteries, work gloves, knives, knapsacks, rope, duct tape, water bottles, hammers, a crowbar, digital cameras, walkie-talkies, trail mix, energy bars, and several small electronic devices Balenger couldn’t identify. A Leatherman all-in-one tool (pliers, wire cutters, various types of screwdrivers) sat next to a first-aid trauma kit in a red nylon bag. The kit, labeled Pro Med, was the equivalent to what SWAT teams and military special-operations units carried, Balenger knew.

  “Anticipating trouble? Some of these could be considered burglary tools.”

  “The furthest thing from our minds,” Professor Conklin said. “Anyway, there’s nothing to steal.”

  “As far as we know,” Cora said. “Not that it would make a difference. We look but don’t touch. Of course, that’s not always possible, but that’s the general idea.”

  “To quote the Sierra Club,” Rick said, “‘take nothing but photographs; leave nothing but footprints.’”

  Balenger removed a notebook and pen from a Windbreaker pocket. “How long have you been creepers?”

  “I hope you’re not going to use that word in your article,” Vinnie objected.

  “But it’s part of the slang, isn’t it? ‘Mice’ are law-enforcement officers, right? ‘Ball busters’ are large pipes you’re forced to straddle to get over. ‘Poppers’ are the crowbars you use to pry up manhole covers. And ‘creepers’ are—”

  “‘Infiltrators’ is an equally dramatic term, with a less harsh connotation, although it does imply we’re breaking the law,” Professor Conklin admitted. “Which, strictly speaking, we are.”

  “Why not call us urban explorers or urban adventurers?” Cora said.

  Balenger kept writing.

  “City speleologists,” the professor suggested. “Metaphoric cave investigators descending into the past.”

  “We’d better set some rules,” Rick said abruptly. “You work for—”

  “The New York Times Sunday Magazine. They brought me on board to write features about interesting cultural trends. Movements on the fringe.”

  “On the fringe is exactly where we’d like to stay,” Cora said. “You can’t identify us in your article.”

  “All I have are your first names,” Balenger lied.

  “Even so. This is especially important for the professor. He’s got tenure, but that doesn’t mean his dean won’t try to take it away if the university finds out what he’s doing.”

  Balenger shrugged. “Actually I’m way ahead of you on that point. I have no intention of using your names or specific details of your backgrounds. It’ll add to the supposed danger if I make it sound like you’re members of a secret group.”

  Vinnie leaned forward. “There’s no ‘supposed’ danger about this. Some creepers have been seriously injured. Some have even died.”

  “If you identify us,” Rick emphasized, “we can go to jail and pay heavy fines. Do we have your word that you won’t compromise us?”

  “I guarantee none of you will be damaged because of what I write.”

  They glanced at each other, uncertain.

  “The professor explained to me why he thought the article deserved to be written,” Balenger assured them. “He and I think the same. We’ve got a throwaway culture. People, plastic, pop bottles, principles. Everything’s disposable. The nation’s suffering from memory disorder. Two hundred years ago? Impossible to imagine. A hundred years ago? Too hard to think about. Fifty years ago? Ancient history. A movie made ten years ago is considered old. A TV series made five years ago is a classic. Most books have a three-month shelf life. Sports organizations no sooner build stadiums than they blow them up so they can replace them with newer, uglier ones. The grade school I went to was torn down and replaced by a strip mall. Our culture’s so obsessed with what’s new, we destroy the past and pretend it never happened. I want to write an essay that convinces people the past is important. I want to make my readers feel it and smell it and appreciate it.”

  The room became quiet. Balenger heard the clang clang clang outside and the waves crashing on the beach.

  “I’m beginning to like this guy,” Vinnie said.

  Balenger’s muscles relaxed. Knowing there’d be other tests, he watched the creepers fill their knapsacks. “What time are you going in?”

  “Shortly after ten.” Conklin hooked a walkie-talkie to his belt. “The building’s only two blocks away, and I’ve already done the reconnaissance work, so we don’t have to waste time figuring how to infiltrate. Why are you smiling?”

  “I just wonder if you realize how much your vocabulary is like the military’s.”

  “A special-ops mission.” Vinnie clipped a folded knife to the inside of a jeans pocket. “That’s what this is.”

  Balenger sat on a cigarette-burned chair next to the door and took more notes. “I found a lot of material on the professor’s website and the other major ones on the Net, like infiltration.org. How many urban-explorer groups do you think there are?”

  “Yahoo and Google list thousands of sites,” Rick answered. “Australia, Russia, France, England. Here in the U.S., they’re all over the country. San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis. To urban explorers, that city’s famous for its maze of utility tunnels known as the Labyrinth. Then there’s Pittsburgh, New York, Boston, Detroit—”

  “Buffalo,” Balenger said.

  “Our old stomping grounds,” Vinnie agreed.

  “The groups often flourish in areas with decaying inner cities,” Conklin said. “Buffalo and Detroit are typical. People flee to the suburbs, leaving grand old buildings without occupants. Hotels. Offices. Department stores. In many cases, the owners simply walk away. In lieu of taxes, the city assumes ownership.
But often the bureaucrats can’t decide whether to demolish or renovate. If we’re lucky, the abandoned buildings get boarded up and preserved. In downtown Buffalo, we sometimes infiltrated places that were built around 1900 and abandoned in 1985 or even earlier. As the world moves on, they stay the same. Damaged, yes. The decay is inevitable. But their essence doesn’t change. With each structure we infiltrate, it’s as if a time machine takes us back through the decades.”

  Balenger lowered his pen. His look of interest encouraged the professor to continue.

  “When I was a child, I used to sneak into old buildings,” Conklin explained. “It was better than staying home and listening to my parents argue. Once, in a boarded-up apartment complex, I found a stack of phonograph records that were released in the 1930s. Not long-playing vinyl, what used to be called LPs, with a half-dozen songs on each side. I’m talking about discs made of thick, brittle plastic, easily breakable, with only one song on each side. When my parents weren’t home, I enjoyed putting the records on my father’s turntable and playing them again and again, scratchy old music that made me imagine the primitive recording studio and the old-fashioned clothes the performers wore. For me, the past was better than the present. If you consider the news these days—elevated threat levels and terrorist attacks—it makes a lot of sense to hide in the past.”

  “When we were undergraduates in a class the professor taught, he asked us to go with him to an old department store,” Vinnie said.

  Conklin looked amused. “It involved some risk. If any of them had been injured, or if the university found out I was encouraging my students to commit a crime, I could have been dismissed.” His pleasure made his face look younger. “I guess I’m still marching against the rules, wanting to raise hell while I’m still able.”

  “The experience was eerie,” Vinnie said. “The department store’s counters were still there. And a few pieces of merchandise. Moth-eaten sweaters. Shirts that mice had chewed on. Old cash registers. The building was like a battery that stored the energy of everything that happened inside it. Then it leaked that energy, and I could almost feel long-dead shoppers drifting around me.”