Speed Dating with the Dead

by Nicholson, Scott

  The boiler clanged again, and J.C. shifted the light toward the bed, getting a glimpse of something slick and red tangled in a foggy spiderweb.

  Creakflupcreakflupcreakflupcreakflup

  The red thing was pulsing like a raw heart, and J.C. squinted, backing toward the stairs, wondering if a pack of possums had given birth all at the same time, or if–

  His flashlight blinked dead.

  He banged it once against his hip, but it was still dead, and the creak flup creak flup grew louder like–

  The BED is walking.

  He flung the flashlight toward the noise and fled for the stairs, boots slipping in the mud as he threw himself on its rough wooden planks, dust flying in his face. His knees throbbed where they’d banged and one fingernail had been ripped to the quick, but that was okay, the light was waiting above, and the ground floor, and cool air and sunshine and ghosthunters in clothes and the three cans of lukewarm Busch Lite in the maintenance shed.

  He wriggled halfway up, his hips rising and falling like he was creakflupping the steps, unable to get traction. He could taste the sweet hotel air with its rug cleaner and cigarette smoke and—

  creakflupcreakflupcreakflup.

  The basement door slammed shut and darkness draped him like a thunderstorm.

  Pegleg playing a gag, pulling my leg, that’s all...I’ll yank HIS fucking leg off and beat him over the head with it.

  A molten band of iron girded his ankle, yanking him back down into the basement.

  The creakflup had given way to raspy boiler breath, the hungry panting of a pulsing red thing.

  Chapter 4

  Kendra wouldn’t look there.

  No, not a glance, he doesn’t exist, he’s Ghost Boy to me.

  He’d jumped out of the van with its stylized “SSI” logo on the panels and cut across the lawn, grinning above that Brad Pitt soul patch that hadn’t quite filled out. The Future of Horror had his own Web site, Internet radio show, and fan club, and it didn’t hurt that he looked drop-dead hot in his black jump suit. At 17, he was in the range as a lust object without it being sicko, though Dad had already given her the lecture about “boys like Cody McKenzie.”

  He was headed for the door and the adulation of the ghost hunters, who were all certain he’d have his own television show in a season or two. Kendra would ignore him. That was the best strategy, and if nothing else, she’d sleep better tonight. Fewer bits of Cody roiling in her fevered brain.

  But he wasn’t headed for the door.

  Kendra glanced into Cody McKenzie’s eyes. Mistake.

  They were the green of oceans and Lime Jell-O and other things that could drown you, salty or sweet.

  She kept her sketch pad by her side, not hiding it exactly, but not shoving it in his face, either. She was simply offering him the opportunity to express curiosity if he wished. She didn’t have much in the boob department, not yet, but her art was weird enough to be awesome.

  “How ya doing, K-Babe?” he said. “I haven’t seen you since the Carolina Inn.”

  “The inn was lame,” she said. “That was urban-legend crap. The armchair ghost of an eccentric professor who smoked a pipe and occasionally ruffled the pages of the New York Times. Hardly what you’d call ‘bone-chilling terror.’“

  Cody grinned, like she knew he would, like she was afraid he would. Those big, brilliant Chiclet teeth were the stuff of Hollywood. He probably had groupies all over the country mailing their panties for autographs. Even the boys.

  But she could out-cool him any day. She just needed to keep her head, which was hard to do when he leaned close and his breath moved across her cheek like a warm sea breeze. When–

  Enough. Emily Dee died a virgin.

  “Yeah, it’s a high-priced gig, all right,” Cody said. “What was your dad charging for that one, $400 for an overnight?”

  “Basic package. And an extra hundred to go in with the team and hold an EMF meter.”

  “My thermograph got nothing,” he said. “I think that place is deader than Bob Dole’s dick.”

  Kendra teenybop-giggled despite herself. “You’re the only person alive who thinks a place is dead if there are no dead people banging around.”

  “Besides your dad.”

  Kendra rolled her eyes and immediately regretted it. That’s sooo Hannah Montana. I need to bring my Megan Fox moves or he’ll ignore me.

  “Maybe this place will be luckier,” she said.

  Cody looked away from her for the first time and took in the ramshackle, sprawling structure. “It’s got game, for sure.”

  The rear door to the van opened and a rotund man in a black jumpsuit like Cody’s–but not nearly as attractively packed–shouted at him. “Come on, Cody, this stuff don’t unload itself.”

  “Better go be part of the team,” Cody said in a conspiratorial whisper she found dead sexy. He swiveled and gave a mock salute to Jonathan Holmes, the overweight, bearded man with a dramatic bald dome and a Fu Manchu mustache. “SSI or die,” he shouted.

  “Get over here, Future,” Jonathan grumbled. “I better get some work out of you before the cameras show up.”

  “Catch you later,” Cody hollered to Kendra, and she imagined his tone meant “Let’s hook up” instead of “Down the road, kid.”

  She tried one bit of spunk. “So, how’s that ‘Future of Horror’ thing working out?”

  It got him to turn and flash another smile.

  Worth it, worth it, worth it.

  “The future’s dead ahead,” he said.

  “You can do better than that. How about ‘The future’s so dark, I gotta wear night vision’?”

  “Sweet. Can I use it for my Web site?”

  “Sure. But you’ll owe me a cut of the T-shirt sales.”

  “You’re just like your dad. Got that entrepreneurial spirit.”

  “Cody!” Jonathan called again, wrestling a metal strongbox from the van.

  “Hey, Holmes, that’s my MAC Attack. You break that and I snap your cinnamon twists.” Cody launched into a run, and Kendra couldn’t help ogling those muscular buns in action.

  Two middle-aged women came up the walk, flanked by brittle shrubbery that was more twig than foliage. They looked like school teachers who’d taken their Thanksgiving break early.

  Séance junkies or psychokinetic spoon-benders? Plain old ghost-chasers? Or maybe they’re in that special class of versatile wingnuts who embrace the alphabet soup of the unknown, from the Abominable Snowman to X-ray vision.

  Whatever their specialty, they fell into that category Dad liked to call “paying customers.” Kendra shot one more wistful glance in Cody’s direction as he loaded his MAC Attack on a dolly, then she headed inside to the registration desk.

  Time to pass out tickets to the freak show.

  Chapter 5

  “How bad do you need the money?”

  Janey Mays leaned back in her cracked leather chair, a cigarette dangling from her lips. The office was hazy with smoke, and the hotel’s owners had been pushing for a tobacco-free policy, but they’d only bought the overgrown outhouse six months before. Since they lived in Florida and Janey had worked her way up over forty years from laundry maid to manager, she felt more attuned to the hotel’s needs and more qualified to set the ground rules.

  “I’m in for a couple of grand,” Violet said, fidgeting on the edge of the metal folding chair.

  Janey made sure the employees were uncomfortable in the office. It wasn’t difficult, since the philodendron had long since choked to death and the potted fern was curled and brown. The office was ensconced behind the front desk like a secret catacomb, with no windows and a bare bulb for light. Two rusted filing cabinets were packed with moldering guest registers, and a pile of outdated menus threatened to topple from above them. Janey’s desk bore a computer that barely had enough memory to type a letter, but it cast a sickly green glow on her wrinkled skin, so it was worth keeping around for visual effect.

  “A couple of grand,” Jane
y said. “Barely a felony.”

  “Please,” Violet said.

  Violet Felkerson was one of the pretty ones. Hospitality hostesses fared better when they were pretty; the guests were more forgiving of cold water, dirty sheets, and overpriced room service when the apologies came from pert, smiling, submissive lips. And Janey enjoyed this part of the job more when they were attractive. They deserved to meet the ugly inside.

  “Normally, one strike and you’re out,” Janey said. “This hotel was built on tradition and dedication and honesty, and anybody who doesn’t buy into that has no place at the White Horse.”

  Violet’s thick eyelashes descended and fluttered. She was about to cry. Janey had chosen well, because this only worked on those who couldn’t afford to walk away.

  “I’ve got a reputation to uphold,” Janey said. “They don’t call me ‘Battle Ax’ for nothing.”

  Actually, “Battle Ax” was only one of her nicknames. She’d overheard “Horse’s Ass,” “The Mayflower Madame,” and “The Warden” as well, and no doubt plenty of other, cruder ones had made the rounds over the years.

  She drew in smoke and let it tumble out of her mouth and across Violet’s blinking face. “Tell you what. I think we can cover that, move around some money from the maintenance budget. An unexpected leak in the boiler system, maybe. Chad and Stevie will fall for that.”

  Violet angled forward even more, hands clasped as if Janey were the ghost of Mother Teresa. Janey jammed her cigarette into her mouth to stifle a chuckle.

  “Thank you,” Violet said. “I can replace it in six weeks.”

  “You won’t tell anyone?”

  Said the spider to the fly.

  Violet almost stuttered. “Will you?”

  Janey stubbed out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray, one of the lipstick-stained butts rolling free and bouncing to the floor. “I think we can work something out.”

  A few thousand, Violet had said. According to Janey’s reckoning, the actual amount of the embezzlement had been somewhere around four thousand dollars, give or take a few hundred. Janey had noticed because she was constantly calculating how much she could steal for herself. After all, a woman had to rely on her own devices. When looks faded, all you had left was cunning. It was a lesson Violet was still at least two decades away from learning.

  Chad and Stevie would never notice the parched till. They’d bought the hotel as an “investment” that was actually a tax loss to offset the millions they were making in Palm Beach condominiums. The one time the couple had actually visited the property, they’d decided to book a room at the Courtyard by Marriott in neighboring Boone rather than sleep under their own leaky roof. So Janey’s accounting was a like a whore’s career in a seaport—tight going in and loose going out.

  Violet looked so exuberant that Janey wished she’d played a little longer. But Janey tended to burn them out too fast, and with the hotel’s new billing as “the Blue Ridge Mountain’s most haunted hotel,” the job had been getting harder to fill, despite the recession and the fringe benefit of occasional free drinks at the bar.

  “We can stick some extra charges on Wayne Wilson’s bill.” Janey stood, the chair creaking with a metallic brittleness that befit the hotel’s reputation. “A set-up fee here, a maintenance surcharge there. We’re giving him the hotel for the weekend, so he shouldn’t be surprised by a few surprises.”

  Janey made a slow, stately trek across the floor, which was difficult because of the travel magazines, electric heater, broken lamp, and mop bucket that created an obstacle course on the floor. She made a ceremony of opening the door, which gave a gratuitous creak. She’d instructed maintenance to quit oiling door hinges. She also added extra mirrors in the hall and reduced the wattage of the light bulbs. All to create atmosphere.

  Stroke of genius, marketing the hotel as a ghost hunter’s getaway. Hype your cobwebs.It’s easier than dusting.

  “Make sure Mr. Wilson gets what he needs,” Janey said. “He’s talking about making this an annual event.”

  “He’s kind of creepy,” Violet said.

  “Play along. Act scared. Let him believe what he wants to believe.”

  “He asked me if I’d ever had any ‘experiences’ here.”

  “A little white lie never hurt anybody,” Janey said, appreciating the irony. She’d busted Violet for embezzling, but here she was promoting dishonesty as simply good business.

  As Violet exited in a waft of lavender and apples, Janey smiled, the parchment of her cheeks crinkling. The pleasure was still spreading across her face when the phone rang. Cell phones rarely worked here on the carapace of the Eastern Continental Divide, another advantage to the new marketing angle. The jangling phones and crackling lines added to the mystique.

  “Janey, it’s Stevie.”

  “Hey, good news. We booked it full for the conference.”

  “Good,” Stevie said, though his tone was ambivalent.

  “Something wrong?”

  “This isn’t easy for me. You know how I much I love the place.”

  Janey didn’t fall for it. Instead, her gut tensed in paranoia. “Yes.”

  “Chad and I had an offer.”

  “An offer? I didn’t even know you were selling—”

  “Two mil an acre. Condo project. They’ll knock off a little for the demolition costs, but they want it fast to catch the good interest rates. We couldn’t pass it up, not the way the hotel has been bleeding red ink.”

  “How soon?” Janey said, skin tingling, hoping she’d have a good half a year or so to rob the till. Early retirement wasn’t so bad.

  “Sunday.”

  Sunday? Two days from now.

  “I don’t—”

  “We’ll be down next week to deal with it. Don’t worry, Janey, you’ll get a nice severance package. Chad and I aren’t monsters.”

  “What about the staff?” Janey said, not that she cared. She was buying time to give her racing mind a chance to settle down.

  “Don’t say anything so they don’t walk out. Give the ghost hunters their money’s worth. One last hurrah for the old White Horse, eh?”

  You can bet your sweet little tush on that one, Stevie.

  “Farewell, love.” Stevie hung up.

  The hotel was her life, her identity, her playground. She’d imagined keeping her room on the second floor until they wheeled her out in a zippered bag. Janey gripped the dead phone, unable to face the void that loomed in front of her.

  “Two days.”

  Had she said it aloud?

  She had the acute feeling that someone was watching her.

  Janey turned. Nothing.

  Paranoia.

  But that didn’t mean they weren’t watching.

  She wondered if they’d overheard.

  Two days.

  Chapter 6

  Smells like pigeon poop and mummies up here.

  Wayne played his flashlight beam along the narrow strip of decking that served as a crawl space. The attic was insulated with shredded newspaper, so it was a miracle the White Horse hadn’t long since burned to the ground, especially given the shoddy state of the wiring. The rafters were crisscrossed with cables and pipes, evidence of the hotel’s attempt to change with the times. The upgrades had been haphazard, and the tangles created the suggestion that monstrous, hairy spiders would come creeping out of the shadows at any moment.

  He planned to make the attic a hunt location, but he couldn’t picture running a bunch of forty-something TAPS wannabes up the ladder and through the cramped quarters. One of them might wander off the decking in the dark and plummet through the gypsum ceiling. Even though Haunted Computer Productions was a limited-liability company that owned nothing besides its namesake computer, Wayne didn’t want the hassle or legal fees involved with getting sued. Hunters were required to sign waivers, but a waiver would be nothing more than Exhibit A in a court case that could drag for years.

  He backtracked to attic access, deciding to use the main o
ne off the hall closet instead of the one in Room 318. He yelled down through the access hole to the hall. “It’s a no go up here.”

  “How about a couple of IR cams?” answered Burton Hodges, the former rock ‘n’ roll roadie Wayne had recruited as SSI’s tech specialist.

  Infrared cameras would allow people to watch the attic on monitors. Every waft of dust or wind-blown shadow could become proof of the afterlife. The unbelievable became more real if it was on television, and he could edit together clips to create a commemorative DVD and rake in some extra cash on the side.

  The only thing better than sending customers away satisfied is sending them away broke.

  “Sure, let’s rig it with audio, too.” Wayne figured the eaves had enough cracks and gaps to allow moaning breezes, and with any luck the place was infested with bats.

  Wayne sent his flashlight beam bouncing deeper into the attic. Specks of dust swirled in the orange cone, creating the illusion of a thousand floating fairies. Any digital flash photographs taken up here would result in generous orb phenomena, something the armchair spiritualists accepted as paranormal activity.

  Wayne had always wondered why a ghost should choose to inhabit a fuzzy white space the size and shape of a billiard ball when presumably it knew no bounds of time and space. Every professional photographer insisted orbs were the result of lens flare arising from reflections of dust or water droplets, and in the era of Photoshop programs, no digital image was trustworthy anyway.

  That didn’t stop the proliferation of “authentic” photos of ghosts, and Wayne himself had included orb photos taken at the White Horse Inn with his promotional materials. He did add a disclaimer at the bottom, stating, “Orb photography is a controversial field and opinions vary on its research validity,” but it was like a beer-can label that warned alcohol could impair your motor skills. The warning itself was good publicity.

  As Wayne scanned the crawl space, looking for good locations to post the cameras, the shadows shifted at the far end of the attic. A wall vent covered with wire mesh and wooden slats allowed air to circulate in the attic, and thin slices of sunlight leaked through. Passing clouds could cause a change in brightness, altering the quality of light in the entire attic.