The Haunted Halls

by Glenn Rolfe

  “Then how do you know it’s watching us?”

  “It left the door open. It wants us here. Think about it.”

  Jeff didn’t want to think about it. Thinking about this whole fucked up situation was giving him an ulcer.

  “Where would your friend be, the one that works here. At the front desk?” Lee said.

  “Yeah, down at the other end.” Jeff pointed ahead.

  “And the other one?”

  “She should be up in her room. I hope.” Jeff glanced up the stairwell to his right.

  “Okay, first we need to do something.” Lee crouched down next to his wicker basket (the outside of which was dripping wet). He pulled the lid off. Jeff expected the contents to be soggy and ruined, but they seemed to be perfectly dry. Lee hauled out another smudge stick and a fat piece of chalk.

  “What’s that for?”

  “We have to block this exit. We’re going to bind it within this building.”

  “Bind it? You mean lock it in here…with us?” Another icy wave went through Jeff’s stomach.

  “That’s exactly what I mean. This is its home. More than likely, it won’t want to leave, but in the scenario where we’re running like hell for our lives, I don’t want the fucking thing following me. Plus…” Lee looked down the hallway. The lights along the corridor dimmed. “I don’t think we have much time.”

  …..

  Sarah watched the half-hearted magic man draw his useless little lines. He was right about one thing, this was her home. This was her heritage. She wouldn’t be going anywhere and neither would they. It was time to have a little fun.

  She pulled back within the body of Meghan Murphy and opened her eyes. Standing before the mirror hanging over the bathroom sink, she watched her reflection. Her hair went limp–the bouncy brown curls returning to Meghan Murphy’s perfectly straight, black locks. She wondered if Jeff had missed her. She would have to get him alone and find out.

  …..

  “Help,” yelled the voice.

  Jeff recognized it instantly. “Meghan?” He rose from his dripping perch next to Lee.

  “Jeff? Is that you? Thank God.”

  “Meghan–”

  “That’s not her,” Lee said from behind him. Jeff was already on the move, but stopped a few feet away, and turned back to Lee.

  “You don’t know that. You said so yourself.” Doubts about Lee’s abilities suddenly flooded his thoughts, washing over the small amount of trust built on the ride over.

  “I’m telling you, that’s not her,” Lee said, replacing the lid on his basket and standing up.

  “Jeff?” She sounded much closer.

  Jeff spun around and saw Meghan Murphy hobbling toward him, using the wall for support. His heart made the choice. “Meghan, stay right there.”

  “Jeff!” Lee said.

  Jeff ran toward her, no longer listening to what Lee had to say. He scanned her body for injuries. Outside of the wounded expression on her face and the slumped shoulders, she looked amazing. Her brown eyes met his, filling his head with water, his thoughts swimming accordingly. Faint footfalls approached as if from a dream. The world around him shrank–Meghan was in his arms.

  “Are you all right?”

  Her eyes flashed from red to black, then back to brown, the visual display nearly knocking him from his trance. She laid her freezing head upon his shoulder.

  Lee shouted from the outskirts of the dream, “Jeff, get the fuck away from her.”

  “You were supposed to come back to check on me,” she whispered in his ear.

  Jeff tried to turn his head back, tried to look at her again, but couldn’t. The door to the room behind her flew open and she pulled him inside.

  “Jeff, don’t–” Lee’s voice was silenced as the heavy door slammed shut.

  …..

  Lee tried the handle. To his surprise, it opened. Only the light from the dimmed hallway penetrated the darkness within. Cold air wrapped around him. His nostril hairs threatened to freeze. Lee slipped his hand inside, searching the wall for the light switch and pulling back at the touch of frost in its place.

  “Why don’t you come in and join us,” the demon spoke.

  “Jeff, are you all right?”

  “He’s just fine. Come see for yourself.”

  Lee peered inside trying to spot them. There was a closed door to the right, maybe the bathroom, maybe a closet. The black beyond was impenetrable. He stepped back glancing down the hall and cursed himself for leaving his basket at the back entrance. If he could get to his tools he could–

  “You could try, but do you really want to leave your friend alone with me?”

  It could read his mind.

  “Yes, I can. I can also taste your fear.”

  His grandfather had taught him exorcises for such spirits. He only hoped he could remember the techniques. Lee hung his head, clenched his fists, and cleared his thoughts. The hallway was relatively warm–the cold was in the room with this thing and Jeff.

  “What have you done to my friend?”

  “I told you to come in and find out.”

  The TV in the room came to life, illuminating the form sitting on the bed. Lee gasped. The thing dressed in the girl’s body held a ball in its arm. Lee’s eyes dropped to the body lying motionless on the floor. He looked back up at her. Two blood-red orbs stared back.

  “Jeffrey should have listened to you.” It rose to its feet. Lee watched, clutching at the wooden pendent around his neck. Praying his grandmother’s gift would protect him. The thing inside rolled the prize in its arms toward the doorway.

  After what he’d seen in the parking lot when they arrived, Lee was afraid he knew what was coming.

  Jeff’s dead eyes stared up at him from the severed head. Lee stumbled backward, his lips trembling as he hit the wall. He looked away unwilling to believe the horror at his feet, unable to accept the evil. After a few quick breaths, he dared a glance back into the TV-lit room for the monster responsible–it was gone, and so was Jeff.

  Chapter Two

  Rhiannon stood in the corner of the elevator clinging to the chrome rail within. Her heart hammered so hard and fast it hurt. She wanted to scream but couldn’t find the breath to do so. Instead, she wondered where the hell Jeff and his friend were. How dare they leave her here in this fucking hotel hell to face these monsters alone? She would kill them both…if she got the chance.

  Bing

  She prayed for an empty hallway. The doors crawled open with all the ambition of a blue hair on the interstate. She bit her lip so hard she tasted copper. Watching the door slide open was akin to witnessing the live reveal of the winner on American Idol. She could hear Ryan Seacrest now: “All the votes are tallied…for one of these two, a dream of a lifetime is about to come true. This is it, America. And your. 2014. American Idol. Is …we’ll find out, right after this break.” Rhiannon stepped out of the elevator and slipped in something thick and wet. She fell backward, landing half inside the elevator squirming as though covered with roaches. The carpet was spongy with a dark fluid. She looked down at her hands–blood. It was everywhere. The whole damned floor must’ve been flooded with it. She propped up on her elbows and then turned to reach for the chrome rail she had been clutching on the way up.

  Bing

  The elevator jerked, threatening to descend even with the door ajar.

  “Nooo!” she cried moving forward. The elevator floor dropped two inches. “Arrgghhh!”

  The whole contraption convulsed, dropping half a foot, and then another. She lost her balance and slid back into the death trap.

  “Noo!” she cried again as she got to her feet. The elevator bucked and clanged. I’m going to die right here, right now, she thought watching more important inches give way. She jumped up grasping at the second floor, her fingers slipping through the blood. The crimson swamp began to pour into the elevator. She jumped up, trying again, but was still unable to gain any traction from the slick rug above.

 
I’m going to die here, I, I…

  Bing

  “No, No, No!” she said, her voice reclaiming its resolve. She backed up, gaining a little space for momentum, targeted the edge of the door–the door began to close.

  “No,” she grunted. She took two full strides and propelled her body upward, catching the unmoving edge and the closing chrome door. It was going to close on her. “Ahh!” She pulled her skinny frame up and through, her sneakered feet clearing the door just before it shut. Her exposed flesh and work shirt were covered in crimson. She looked like a survivor at the end of those gory B movies.

  Nice thought, Rhiannon.

  Getting up and creeping to the corridor, the spongy floor squished beneath her sneakered feet. She tried not to think of what she was stepping in. The lights up here were dim, like the pale-yellow of a full moon behind gray clouds. Her eyes moved to the stairwell she’d stumbled down earlier. She couldn’t help but wonder if either the man or the woman chasing her were waiting for the elevator to drop or if they had taken the stairs and were on their way to capture her. Maybe they were already up here. Fear crawled up her spine like a thousand creepy crawlies in the dark.

  Rhiannon’s heart seized its incessant pounding at the sight moving across the blood-drenched floor. A tarantula scuttled across the open space no more than five feet from where she stood. Another played in the corner of the room where she spied a web large enough to capture a grown human being–set, ready and waiting for its prey. Waiting for her. The carpeting was slick and made squelching noises as she crossed her arms over her chest and shuffled away from the spiders. Another appeared farther down the hall. Then another one. The arachnids were multiplying by the second. She moved her foot backward, stepped on a thick cord, and jumped.

  Snake!

  “Ew,” Her voice trembled. She felt the ghost of her skin molt from its gooseflesh covering. The floor at one end of the hall now lay blanketed with tons of slithering, and hissing serpents. She did an odd running-in-place/tap dance motion and lost her footing landing on her ass with a thump. Something fuzzy scuttled across her right hand; something small landed on her head–she could feel it creeping through her hair. Another thing fluttered down the side of her face, passed her neck and fell between her breasts, landing on her bare thigh.

  Cockroach!

  A number of the crawling bugs began pelting her head from above, like an insectophobic’s worst nightmare. When the hallway lights died, Rhiannon screamed.

  …..

  Timothy stood cloaked in the darkness (he’d invited) at the end of the corridor. The girl’s screams were delicious, spilling terror into the world. Along the hall, doors began to open, voices–confused and frightened–filled the spaces between the girl’s shrill cries. Under the cover of total blackness, Timothy stepped forward, salivating over the carnage he had in mind.

  “Hello, ma’am?” One male voice said.

  The inquiring guest was followed by more.

  “Hey, what the hell? Anyone know what’s going on?”

  “Hello? Who’s there?”

  Timothy planned to deal with each of them accordingly.

  “Eeek! I think there’s a snake in the hall,” a woman screamed.

  His manifestations served their courage-crippling purpose. With an unmatched grace and swiftness he stepped to the first open door. The man inside stood there wielding an ironing board like a weapon; his eyes squinted above a large, prominent nose. Timothy grabbed the edge of the full-sized board and slammed it through the man’s neck. Before the man could yelp, his decapitated head rolled down the board and thudded against the door frame. His body fell back into the room. A woman with a smoker’s rasp, shouted about calling the cops. She barely had time to register his frozen presence–her throat was slit in one quick swipe from Timothy’s razor sharp fingernails. He continued toward Rhiannon–his scream queen. Timothy gripped his bone thin fingers in the mop of a man’s hair asking what was going on. He tore the scalp from the jostling guy and sent him back into his room screaming then slammed the door shut. The man’s pain and terror continued behind the closed door. The woman who had scrambled out into the hallway squawking about the snake was lifted inches off the ground and smacked like a ragdoll from one wall to the other–her neck snapped on the second hit. One woman fell in the blackness, knocking herself unconscious on a luggage holder. A young gentleman ran for the stairwell and directly into Timothy–his neck twisted in milliseconds, his body, tossed aside. At the height of confusion, Timothy re-lit the corridor, landing a spotlight upon his sixty-second massacre. Bodies lay in various states of murder. The spiders, roaches, and snakes were no longer there. The front desk girl was on her feet and rushing away from him. He took a deep breath and used his powers to pull another portrait from the opposite end of the hall. He smiled as it flew at her head.

  …..

  Rhiannon caught a portrait out of her peripheral vision, and instinctively raised her left arm to cushion the blow. The frame stopped in mid-air, sat suspended, inches from her arm, and fell to the floor. Rhiannon reached the stairwell door, too frazzled to try to comprehend what the hell had just happened. She bolted down the stairs with visions of bugs and blood crawling through her mind.

  Chapter Three

  Lee rushed into the room, found the light switch where it should have been, and flicked it on. The room was spotless, untouched. He searched for the body, for signs of a struggle, for blood, but found none.

  “Christ,” he said, placing his hands on his hips. Movement in the floor length mirror on the closet door to his right caught his eye. He spun around, shocked to find the images in the mirror moving with a noticeable fluidity, like the tide coming in. The demon was still here, but it was not as strong. Maybe it’s farther away, maybe…it’s weakened, he thought. The sliver of hope was grabbed by the throat–the mirror’s reflection brought him back to his twelfth birthday….

  Lee’s grandfather had come early in the morning to take him out for his present. Lee loved his grandfather, but had been annoyed with being taken away from his Saturday morning cartoons, especially to be dragged out into the cold. His grandfather brought him to the old abandoned family home two towns over. His grandfather still owned the three-story house, though after Lee’s grandmother’s passing, the old man left, claiming there were too many ghosts there to live with. On the drive over, he confessed to Lee that there were indeed spirits residing in and around the property and that he wanted to share a special part of his life with his grandson. In the basement of the abandoned family home, Lee’s grandfather introduced him to the ways of the shaman. It was there that Lee reconnected with the spirit of his deceased grandmother. That was the first time he felt the power stir to life within him. Delivering him the wooden pendent, his grandmother’s spirit spoke words he never forgot: This is pure love, the liberation from one’s concepts of this world, and the introduction to another…

  Standing before the perversion reflecting back at him from the hotel room mirror, Lee felt his stomach turn. He thought of his books, his gigs, and the Hollywood-version of shamanism he’d sold to pad his bank account. A shroud of guilt and shame weighed on him like stones at the bottom of a lake over what he’d done with his grandparent’s gift.

  Lee stood, shoulders slumped, listening to the rotten flesh-covered version of his grandfather in the mirror. The old man’s eyes were black holes filled with despair and regret. His mouth spewed crawling worms, his words hitting Lee like body shots from a heavyweight fighter.

  “You are a disgrace to the Buhl shaman who came before you. You are a disappointment to these old eyes, to this old spirit,” the image said.

  “I, I…” Lee began.

  “You are empty,” his grandfather said. Worms, tumbled from his disintegrating jaw and fell down to the ice-covered pond beneath his feet. One of the old man’s hands detached from his arm with a soft tearing, like an old piece of fabric being pulled apart. An ear came loose next, falling to his grandfather’s wrinkled, bare c
hest, before slapping the ice at his feet with a wet thud. Two red eyes, surrounded by a head of dark, curly hair, appeared over the shoulder of his grandfather’s crumbling spirit. A skeletal hand reached out from the red-eyed demon, touched the glass, causing a rippling effect before passing through the barrier and into the hotel room.

  Lee felt the penetrating cold return; his heart–bruised and quiet, like an abused child–wanted to give in. He couldn’t take his eyes from his grandfather–the perversion of the man he’d loved broke apart and fell like ashes in the night. Something singed his chest. Lee looked down expecting to see the death-touch of the thing left standing where his grandfather’s spirit had been, but found the figurine he kept on his necklace throbbing with life. He heard his grandmother repeat what she told him on his twelfth birthday in the basement of the old house: “This is pure love, the liberation from one’s concepts of this world, and the introduction to another. You must be of the light, and through this light, through this love, defeat all evil before you.”

  Lee wrapped his hands around the wooden pendent. “Come to light, demon spirit. Come to light, and be absolved of your burdens. Come to light, demon spirit, and be redeemed in love.” Lee spoke the words he declared to many an empty home, empty hotel, time and time again, but with a spiritual resonance exiled since his youth. His ancestral calling beat within.

  The mirror with the red-eyed creature splintered. The demon in retreat departed with a final blast of arctic air, lifting Lee from the floor and casting him backward. The back of his head slammed against the wall, his hands fell from the pendent and everything went black.

  …..

  Sarah had underestimated the shaman’s power. Not her fault–even the fool had been oblivious to the strengths he possessed. No matter. She would arrange a meeting between him and her Timothy. She had another reunion of sorts in store for the blood-covered girl from the front desk racing down the stairs.