There was, in fact, a thunderous round of applause, and Margot could almost be seen to blush as she took her place at the podium and signaled for quiet.
Nina had no idea what Margot was going to say, but she was not at all surprised at the aplomb and confidence which her friend showed with even her first words. This was Margot Gavin at the microphone—tall, striking, highly articulate, and experienced in public speaking.
She said all the right things.
Then she went farther, and delved a bit into the history of Candles.
Then she went farther still.
She signaled for the lights to be lowered in the dining room, and when they were, she told the story of Sarah Morgan.
“You are all spending the next few days in a haunted plantation house!” she began, and she followed up with what Nina thought was a dramatic, detailed, and immensely moving account of burning-haired Sarah, who had perished in flames, and who still continued to haunt The Candles, refusing ever to leave, and appearing each time the plantation changed hands.
The room was silent after Margot finished.
She gestured for the lights in the room to be turned up again.
All of the cozy writers had their heads on the tables and were sound asleep.
All except Rebeccah Thornwhipple, who stood up, walked to the podium, and said, neck craning to look up at Margot:
“It was a good story, my dear. But it was a ghost story. It wasn’t a cozy.”
With that, the writers began to wake up.
In ten minutes the room was empty.
Margot’s staff was as good at cleaning as they were at cooking, and there was very little left for Nina to do in the latter part of her evening except retire to her room, read (she read a Raymond Chandler novel, perhaps out of a strange sense of cozy defiance) and began, shortly after ten o’clock, to think about dozing off.
She was prevented from doing this by a knock at the door.
She got out of bed, crossed the room, opened her door, and stared somewhat groggily at two women who stood before her.
“Yes?”
“You’re Ms. Bannister?”
“I am.”
“And you’re a friend of Ms. Gavin?”
“Yes.”
“Then we need to talk to you. It’s terribly important.”
“All right; come in.”
“No.”
“What?”
“We can’t. We can’t come in.”
The pair before her were an odd coupling. One was precisely twice as tall as the other, who came up barely to her belt. They were dressed in fringed leather vests, brightly-colored patchwork maxi-skirts, beads, bandanas, and other late Sixties regalia, making them appear to have stepped out of time and been shooped back half a century or so.
Though they were obviously a couple, they did not finish each other’s sentences as the Hersheys had done. Rather, they spoke in short, distinct phrases, one at a time. After each phrase had been uttered, they looked around, three hundred and sixty degrees, up, down, in, out—as though worried that something invisible, hanging in the air, was about to spring into visibility and attack both of them.
“My name is Ruby Smathers.”
Look around, look up, look down––
“And my name is Lacy Smathers.”
Look over there! Look up there!
Nothing?
Well, not obviously.
Which is, after all, the most that any of us can ever say.
“Our cats are Mephisto,” said Ruby the Tall, “and Lestat. You will get to meet them tomorrow.”
“I look forward to it.”
Lacy took two steps up the hall and stared at the doorway leading to the stairs.
Apparently nothing was there.
She retraced the two steps, then looked Nina up and down and said, quietly:
“If you survive the night.”
Nina thought about that for a time, decided perhaps that she should look around her for a bit, and then responded:
“I beg your pardon?”
Both women looked at each other, then looked over each other’s shoulder.
Some unseen force prompted Lacy the Short to break from their phrase-by-phrase formula and speak at length.
“We’re cozy writers. We write the Hazeltine Winters mysteries. Hazeltine is a retired psychic who lives in a small cute coastal town in Massachusetts.”
“I see.”
“There was some trouble with the Guild, since our original town, Emerald Bay, had more than four thousand people. Harriet and several others said that we were treading dangerously near suburbia, so we had to change it. But that isn’t the worst.”
This was as much as either of the two sisters ever spoke without a thorough examination of the ether. This was done, along with a bit of smelling, and Ruby the Tall continued the tale:
“The worst is that we have a secret life, which we’re trying to hide from the Guild.”
“A secret life?”
“Both nodded, and both spoke simultaneously.
“WE WRITE PARANORMAL ROMANCES!”
This was said with approximately the same degree of guilt that might have accompanied the phrase: “We molest small children.”
And it was followed by the original ‘phrase by phrase be careful what creature is listening and what crevice it might leap from’ format.
“We write them for a different publisher.”
Look here, look there!
“But if Harriet would find out, she would still be upset. She wants the Guild’s authors to maintain a kind of genre purity.”
Is there something over there?
What about behind Nina, back in the middle of the room?
No?
Well, not now anyway.
But that window––
“At any rate, our heroine—or Trope as we say in the business—is a vampire.”
“And our Alpha is a Werewolf.”
I must be dreaming this, thought Nina.
But no, the two women were there.
And nothing else was.
Despite the constant squints, stares, and investigations.
“We were the first to write about inter-creature sexual intercourse.”
“But we can write these stories because we––well, we’re different.”
Oh really, Nina found herself thinking.
But don’t be sarcastic.
That would accomplish nothing.
“We are ourselves psychic.”
“We sense the presence of––well, of creatures unseen by everyone else.”
“That’s why we were so interested in your friend’s story tonight.”
“You mean,” said Nina, “the tale of Sarah Morgan?”
“Yes! The other writers all went to sleep.”
“Margot and I noticed that.”
“Yes, that’s because it’s not really a cozy, you know.”
“I know.”
“To be a cozy it has to––”
“I’m becoming aware,” said Nina, “of what makes a cozy.”
“But we, being aware of the spiritual world as we are, were very interested, because––”
Lacy stood on her tiptoes before she continued; Ruby, listening hard and still looking around for hidden presences, scrunched down as though to be better grounded.
“Well, from the moment we entered The Candles we sensed the presence of the Beyond Earthly!”
“You mean a ghost?” asked Nina.
“Yes. Yes, definitely. But it’s more complicated than that, much more!”
“How?”
Ruby took over the narrative, unscrunching a bit as she did so, thus allowing Lacy to come down from tiptoes, so as to maintain the two-woman height ratio that previously had been established.
“Sarah Morgan is here. Perhaps in the very room where you are sleeping. That’s why we can’t go in there—she would sense our awareness of her presence, and be resentful. The spirits don’t appreciate mortals wh
o show awareness of their presence.”
“But Ms. Bannister,” Lacy continued, “Sarah Morgan is not your chief worry.”
“No?”
“No, Sarah is a benevolent presence. She wishes only to remain in her beloved home. No, there are other presences in Candles. We feel them constantly about us.”
Ruby:
“And these presences are quite a different thing entirely.”
“How? In what way?”
“They are demonic presences. Monstrous incarnations. They are evil, Ms. Bannister. And terribly dangerous!”
“Dangerous to whom?”
“Any human! They are Satanic Beings. Once they choose a victim—well, they might well tear him, or her, to pieces!”
Nina knew very little to say to that, except, finally:
“I don’t really know what to say to that.”
“Well, there is, we should think, only one thing to say. Or do.”
“And that would be?”
“Go to your lovely friend, Ms. Gavin, and tell her of the threat. Tell her that the conference must be cancelled, moved to more hallowed ground!”
“All right, I see your point.”
“No, that’s just the problem: you can’t see it! And by the time you do see it, it will be too late!”
“The problem is, Ms. Smathers and Ms. Smathers, that a great deal of money has been invested here. Very complicated plans have been made. The representative from HBO is flying in tomorrow morning. The Candles will make as much in the next three days as it normally might make in a year. And one cozy writer will become the recipient of a very rich, very lucrative, television contract.”
The two women appeared horrified:
“You don’t understand us, do you?”
“Well, I can see that you’re worried––”
“You don’t believe us at all!”
“I do believe you! At least, I believe in your sincerity.”
Some hope seemed to creep back into their expressions.
“So––will you at least try to warn your friend? Make her aware of the dangers?”
Nina thought about this for a time and finally nodded:
“Of course. Of course, I will.”
“Tonight? Now?”
“Yes. Right now.”
“Oh, thank you! Thank you ever so much! Lives are depending on the two of you!”
“Yes, I see that; but, one thing I need to ask.”
“Go ahead! Ask!”
“Why did this monstrous demon-like thing choose Candles?”
Two looks of astonishment:
“Why, the OPEN DOOR of course!”
“What door?”
“The psychic door, the spiritual opening, the cosmic crack as it were!”
“Opening? Crack?”
“Of course! It was opened by the benign soul of Sarah more than a century ago when her spirit took possession here; but it remained in place for all supernatural entities to use, despite what may have been her own wishes to the contrary.”
“And so this demon…”
“Simply followed her inside, like a thief in the night.”
“And why haven’t any other ghastly crimes been reported? Why has this horrible thing been—well, inactive?”
Two shakes of two heads:
“And how do you know that it has been inactive? How do you know there have been no previous ghastly crimes? Given the demon’s power and the intensity of its hatred…any body found would have been a horrible sight indeed. How do you know there were no unspeakable murders, that were simply covered up?”
“Well, I guess that’s a point.”
“So, do we have your promise?”
“Yes, you have it.”
“You will go to Ms. Gavin now, and tell her of the dangers?”
“Yes.”
“Wonderful! We shall go to our room and pack. It’s our feeling that everyone may be safe for one night at least. If we can all leave by tomorrow morning, why––”
“Like I say, I’ll do what I can.”
“We can ask for nothing more! Good bye then!”
“Good bye!”
And the Smathers sisters disappeared down the corridor.
Nina waited inside her own room for at least five minutes, giving the women enough time to get out of the hallways and back to their own rooms.
Then she put on a robe and slippers, opened her door, entered the corridor, walked down it, and located Margot’s room.
A sliver of light seeped into the hall from the base of the doorway.
Good, she thought.
Margot must be reading.
She knocked.
“Yes?”
“Margot?”
“Nina?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“What is it?”
‘Can I come in?”
“Of course. The door’s unlocked. Just push it open.”
Nina did so, and spoke to the figure lying in bed before her.
“I thought I needed to come and tell you something.”
“What? What did you need to tell me?”
“The Smathers sisters are insane.”
Margot answered immediately:
“I knew that.”
“How did you know it?”
“Because all these people are insane.”
“Oh.”
“Anything else?”
“No.”
“Well. Good night then.”
“Good night.”
So saying, Nina returned to her own room and went to sleep.
At precisely midnight—she knew this because of the chiming of a large gold clock on the dresser in her room—she was awakened by the sound of screams.
Horrible, piercing screams.
Coming from down the corridor where she had stood not two hours before, conversing with the Smathers sisters.
Aaaaggh! Aaaghh!
The screams were growing louder and were now being punctuated with the sounds of crashing furniture.
Terrible, piercing shouts as though someone were being ripped to pieces.
She lay for a while in the near darkness, aware only of the early fall moonlight seeping through the window opposite her bed—and of the awful carnage going on not more than three or four rooms away from her.
She was paralyzed.
“Aaaghhhh!”
Then:
“My God! My God!”
“Aaagh!”
“No! No!”
Crash! Crash!
There was a terrible urge to simply stay where she was.
Especially when she recalled the Smathers sisters’ warnings:
Demonic Creatures.
Horrible deaths, bodies too mangled to behold.
She could stay where she was.
Why hadn’t she taken the warnings seriously?
She had laughed the women off, called them insane.
And now?
More screams, screams growing louder, pitiable screams, screams of horror unimaginable.
Despite herself, she crawled out of bed.
Despite herself, she put on the same robe and slippers that she had worn to see Margot.
With whom she had laughed about demonic presences.
And now there were screams, unmentionably terrible screams, coming from––
––from where?
From which room?
Who was being victimized?
And by what?
She opened the door and stepped out into the corridor.
“What is happening?” she found herself saying.
There were other people in the corridor.
Other writers, most of whom she had not met.
They were all emerging from their rooms and staring:
At one door.
Room 216.
Two doors down and to Nina’s right.
The screams intensified and now she thought she could hear cursing.
Guttural, vile curses.
They brought t
o her mind The Exorcist.
Everyone stood in the doorways, no one having the courage to take a step forward.
Only, of course, one person did have that courage.
Margot Gavin.
She had exited her room and was making her way down the corridor, a long white candle in her hand.
She glanced at Nina as she passed, whispering:
“The Smathers sisters?”
Nina nodded as she stepped out into the corridor and began to follow Margot:
“Maybe they weren’t crazy after all.”
“Maybe not.”
“Whose room is 216, Margot?”
Margot was approaching the room now, and said over her shoulder:
“The Hersheys.”
Oh God, thought Nina.
But that would be somehow demonically appropriate.
The best couple; the most loving; the most symbiotically unified.
That would be the first couple that a truly Satanic presence would wish to seek out and destroy.
Margot and Nina now stood before the door, others in the hallway a respectful—and somewhat safe—distance behind them.
“Margot––”
“I have to open it.”
“Oh my God––”
“You don’t have to look, Nina.”
“No. I’ll help. Whatever’s going on in there, I’ll help if I can.”
“All right then.”
The door was unlocked.
So Margot pushed it open.
The scene before them was ghastly.
Jim and Pat Hershey were in disarray, clad in torn underwear, their hair completely disheveled, their eyes wide with rage. They stood on opposite sides of the room, glaring at each other, their fists balled, their arms waving.
A small orange and white cat sat hunched in the corner of the room, terrified.
Both of the writers were screaming and cursing at each other, every other second grabbing whatever small object happened to be available at their arm’s length and hurling it at the opposite wall.
The screams could be made out now:
“ARE YOU AN IDIOT! YOU IMBECILE! THAT COULD NEVER HAPPEN! NEVER IN A THOUSAND YEARS COULD THAT HAPPEN! WHAT IN……..NAME IS THE MATTER WITH YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU—YOU!”
“YOU ARE THE IDIOT! YOU CALL YOURSELF A WRITER! IT’S IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK WITH YOU!”
“YOU’RE THE ONE WHO’S IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK WITH! YOU MUST BE DRUNK! SHEILA WAS AT THE DAMNED PARTY HALF AN HOUR AGO, NOW YOU HAVE HER DOWN AT THE PIER!”
“BUT SHE’S GOT TO BE DOWN AT THE PIER IF SHE’S GOING TO SEE RAYMONDO DISAPPEARING AROUND THE CORNER!”
Climate Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 7) Page 10