Speed Dating with the Dead

by Nicholson, Scott

  Her onyx pupils absorbed the flashlight beam and there was no glint reflecting from her eyes. She was a stolid statue, carved from rock by a civilization long gone, except her full lips lifted in a grin that showed most of her teeth. Her breath washed over him in a sulfuric wave.

  “Power’s out,” he said, in an excuse to move past her, lowering the beam from her face.

  “Power’s in,” she said in a taunting voice.

  “Excuse me?” One of Digger’s rules was that every guest should be treated with respect, no matter how odd or flaky, because the paranormal community was small. The customer was always right, even the psychotic alien love child.

  “I took it,” she said.

  He aimed the light at her name badge. Eloise Lanier. He tried humor. “Do you mind giving it back?”

  Her smile dropped. “I’m not finished with it yet.”

  “Okay, Miss Lanier. Did you lose your group?”

  “They’re down there.” She rolled her eyes toward the floor.

  “Yeah, that’s where I’m headed. Do you have a flashlight?”

  She reached out and snatched his away before he could react. “Now I do.”

  She held the flashlight over her head like it was a chunk of meat and she expected him to leap for it like a dog. Her face was steeped in shadows.

  “Ma’am, this is an emergency,” he said, biting back his irritation.

  “More than you know.” She brought the flashlight down in an arc, crashing it on top of Burton’s skull. He grunted and staggered away, stunned by the blow, sparks of purple and electric lime jumping across the backs of his eyelids. He touched his head and felt the wetness of blood.

  As he recovered, anger surged through him, joining the pain to give him a burst of energy. “What the hell was that all about?”

  “Bad attitude,” she said.

  He tried to place her, wondering if she were one of the unstable drama queens Digger had warned SSI about. He recalled her name from the program as one of the speakers on a panel he hadn’t attended. If she were an aspiring para-celeb, going psycho at a paranormal conference might get her some infamy and the ensuing Internet hits.

  He decided to give professional tact one more chance. “I’m sorry you’re not enjoying your stay—”

  The flashlight swung again but this time he was ready. His experience as a rock ‘n’ roll roadie paid off as he ducked the blow and came underneath, jabbing his fist toward her elbow. He’d been raised never to hit women, but preservation instinct overrode it and he smacked her hard enough to force her to drop the flashlight. As it hit the carpet, its batteries jostled free and the hall went utterly dark.

  And she was on him, sour breath oozing across his face. She was six inches shorter than he, but in her dark fury she seemed to have grown two feet. She knocked him back against the wall, and her weight bore him down.

  “Christ, lady,” he yelled, but he no longer had any restraint. As she pressed him against the floor, he wriggled to escape, feeling along her shoulders until he found her face. He’d claw her eyes out—

  “Yarggg,” he squealed, as she bit one of his fingers hard enough for a tendon to pop. He yanked his hand free and balled it into a fist, then pounded it against her back. It was like beating a sack of sand.

  Her hair scratched Burton’s face. Her smell was metallic and smoky, as if she’d been sweating in a foundry all day. Her weight crushed his lungs. He fought for breathe, still startled by the suddenness of the assault.

  “Get off, bitch,” he said, throwing an elbow against her. He’d been in a few bar brawls, but rolling around in the neon-lighted beer and piss seemed almost normal compared to this struggle in the dark.

  “I’ll make you my bitch,” she said, and her voice seemed far too large and distant to have come from her foul mouth.

  He gave a twist and felt her body shift, and then he rolled the opposite way, using her momentum to toss her aside. He shoved her away with his feet, drawing sick satisfaction from the cracking of her skull against the wall. He rose to his knees, not sure whether to look for the flashlight or find the stair banister and flee. Before he could act, cold rivers of pain sluiced along the length of his left arm.

  He touched the wound and his fingers came away wet. Blood? Did the lunatic have a knife?

  Then she was on him again, only now she seemed heavier, more solid. He raked at her, caught the turgid tendons of a flexing wrist, but her strength had grown. Barroom bad-asses sometimes freaked out on meth or angel dust, taking on the strength of ten in their panic. But Eloise Lanier had gone from zero to eighty without even hitting the pedal.

  He grabbed her face again, but her skin was slick and scaly, not like flesh at all. As he gouged for her eyes, his fingers stung as if he’d grabbed a fistful of barbwire. He wrapped his bleeding hand around a hank of her tangled hair, tugging at it to pull her filthy mouth away from his. But he was weakening, and her cracked, grimy lips pressed against his. He tried to scream, but she bit his tongue.

  Commotion and lights down the hall....

  “What’s going on?” someone shouted, but the words sounded as if they’d poured through a wall of cotton. The agony in his mouth was indescribable—mostly because he could no longer form words.

  A flashlight beam swept over and past him, and he turned to see Eloise—no, not Eloise, not a human, but something scaly and lumpy wearing her clothes—skitter away and down the stairs, trailing a reptilian tail behind it.

  Burton almost smiled at the illusion, understanding the grim trickery the mind played when the body went into shock. But the pain in his mouth was too intense, and the spreading pool of liquid beneath him had probably leaked from his blood vessels, and the hunters from the room must have heard the noises and come to investigate.

  “Shit, what was that?” said one of the hunters, and a woman screamed, and another said his name, and a flashlight beam bobbed across his face, then another, and he wanted to open his eyes and he realized they were already open.

  “Eloise,” Burton tried to say, but all that came out was a fresh gush of salty, stinging hurt, and he shut up.

  Now that his eyes were open, all he wanted to do was close them and block out the pain, the lights, the gasps and whispers and frantic chatter.

  “What happened to his mouth?” somebody said.

  Burton wondered the same thing, but somehow he couldn’t narrow the words into a cohesive thought, and even with his eyes closed, the image of snapping dragon’s teeth burned into his brain, plunged in the feverish forge where the flames went white-hot.

  Go toward the light.

  It was the corny joke of all paranormal investigators, though some took it more seriously than others. But Burton didn’t have much choice, nor was he laughing now, because the light was a distant spark dimming to yellow and then to red, finally blinking out and giving way to a rapidly cooling darkness.

  Chapter 43

  “We can’t bust the door down,” Gelbaugh said. “It’s two inches of solid wood.”

  “The hinges are on the other side, too,” Wayne said. He jammed a screwdriver into the catch, but even if he managed to trip the tumblers, the upper deadbolt was secure. His tool kit would do no good.

  The two men stood shoulder to shoulder on the stair landing, having felt their way up the banister in the dark. The rest of the group waited below, talking in low, frantic whispers. The furnace was now behaving itself, but Wayne didn’t trust it. Gelbaugh had posited a theory on the cumulative telekinetic powers of the group, a magnified form of wishful thinking, but even Cappie had dismissed that one.

  “The work of demons,” Amelia George said. In the dark, her disembodied voice took on a creepy authority.

  “Get us out of here, Digger,” a woman said, in a near panic.

  “Be reasonable,” Gelbaugh said from his perch, as Wayne continued rattling the lock. “If demons were here, why would they play tricks with pyrotechnics? Why not just turn the basement into a boiling puddle of Napalm and b
e done with it?”

  “Because they want you to believe,” Amelia said.

  “Then their work is half done, because half of you seem to be buying into the foolishness.”

  “I don’t care what it is, I don’t want to be down here another minute,” the unseen woman said.

  “I’m getting claustrophobic,” a man said, his words clipped by gasps.

  Wayne slid the screwdriver back into the tool pouch on his belt. “There’s got to be another way out,” he said.

  He spoke with more confidence than he felt, because he hadn’t conducted a thorough survey. The basement had been Roach’s turf, and Cody was in charge of logistics. Because the walkie-talkie was dead, he wasn’t sure if either had shown up in the past hour.

  And Kendra is with Cody. I hope. Or maybe not.

  “Get me out of here before that furnace blows up,” said the claustrophobe.

  “Stay calm,” Wayne said, feeling his way down the stairs.

  “Yeah,” Gelbaugh said. “Enjoy the atmosphere. You don’t get this on ‘TAPS.’“

  Something rumbled in the far end of the basement, and the floor timbers creaked above their heads.

  “Either Beelzebub just farted or the hotel is about to collapse,” Gelbaugh said, the joking tone shot through with nervousness.

  Once Wayne left the familiar landmark of the stairs, he was adrift, with no sense of where the walls were. The group in the middle of the basement, still huddled together, had not moved since the furnace had gone out. Amelia was carrying on in strange tongues, and Wayne welcomed the distraction. If the hunters felt the demons were speaking through her, maybe they wouldn’t freak out.

  Wayne put out his hand and took short, shuffling steps, careful of the protruding rocks and clutter on the dirt floor. He could be heading toward the furnace, for all he knew. But he had to keep moving. It might be another hour before Burton and Jonathan returned to the control room and figured out Wayne’s group was now among the missing.

  The rumble came again, and this time Wayne felt it in his feet.

  “It took her,” Amelia shrieked. She was at least fifty feet behind Wayne, so he figured he was nearing the back wall.

  “Who did?” her husband asked, ever the willing sidekick.

  “Belial.”

  Great. My first case of demonic activity and not only is all our gear on the fritz, but I get the biggest baddie of them all.

  “The fire,” someone said. “Did the demon do it?”

  “It can make more,” Amelia said.

  “Where is it now?” her husband said.

  “Upstairs.”

  “Have it come down and unlock the door.” Gelbaugh had moved away from the stairs and was apparently across the room, near the furnace.

  “Channeling doesn’t work that way,” Amelia’s husband said.

  “Margaret said it doesn’t want us to leave,” Amelia said.

  “Why did it take Margaret?”

  “Not Margaret. The angel.”

  “A beastie gets lonely?” Gelbaugh said. “I thought all those hounds of hell hung out together in one big pack?”

  “You don’t understand theology,” said the claustrophobe, forgetting his panic in the rush of a channeling experience. “In the pantheon of demons and angels, there’s a definite hierarchy, and some are lesser demons.”

  “Wonderful. So we can look forward to yet more politics in the next life. That’s comforting.”

  Wayne touched the cool masonry with his hand, easing his way toward the newer portion of the hotel, where the kitchen and dining room were. He felt disembodied in the utter darkness, no longer sure of his moorings. He could have been drifting in deep space, submerged in oil, or encased in liquid nitrogen and dreaming of one day having his corpse reanimated.

  “Okay, people,” he called, more to reassure himself than to keep them informed. “I’m checking out the new wing.”

  “Meet you there,” Gelbaugh called from the other side of the basement.

  Amelia continued her spacey, droning delivery, talking about Margaret Percival coming down to the basement through the service entrance and—

  Service entrance?

  “Amelia,” Wayne yelled. “The service entrance. Where’s that at?”

  “She can’t talk right now, she’s channeling,” her ever-helpful husband said.

  “I need to know where that entrance is.”

  “Behind the kitchen,” she said, then continued recounting Margaret’s visit to the basement. “And Belial found her her here. She never left.”

  The boiler gave a dismal sigh but didn’t ignite, as if something in there agreed with Ameila.

  Wayne reviewed his mental snapshots of the basement. The kitchen likely lay in the section where the pipes and wires had tangled and multiplied like a nest of snakes. He moved faster, chafing his hands on the crude stonework. A sense of urgency juiced him up.

  If Amelia’s right about a demon running loose up there, and Kendra—

  He bumped his head on a pipe. Even if he was lucky enough to find a door, it would probably be locked, too, but he might have more luck jimmying it open if it was flimsier than the main entrance.

  The rumbling came again. He was nearly to the kitchen when a scream ripped through the dead air of the basement.

  Chapter 43

  “Kendra?”

  The voice came swimming down to her through a sea of night.

  She grunted, trying to suck oxygen into the brick tombs of her lungs. Maybe this was death, and God was calling her onto the carpet. Time to pay for that Tegan and Sara CD she’d shoplifted, all the movies she’d illegally downloaded, that lie she’d told her teacher when she skipped out on a chemistry test. So it all caught up with you, just the way the televangelists said.

  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?”