To his surprise, the hallway was empty. He was expecting a group of people with suitcases and steamers, waiting impatiently, for he was later than he had promised. Were they all still in their rooms? He knocked on the first door to his right. No answer. He knocked on another. Still nothing. What the hell?
He began trying the doors. Most were locked. One was open, but was empty, the bed neatly made. Another door was open, this one with an unmade bed and a steamer trunk open on the floor, packed in haste, but no room occupant in sight. Something was wrong.
Oliver backed into the hallway, then sharply turned around, as if trying to catch someone hiding in the shadows. No one was there. And, he noticed, there were no shadows in the evenly lit space. The soft vignetting of his vision, which he presumed was due to the alcohol, were the only shadows in view. A dark paranoia was creeping over him, and again his stomach gurgled in a threatening manner.
The clanging sound of the steam boiler, this time from below his feet, caused a momentary sense of disorientation, and Oliver drew a sharp intake of breath. He put down the quarts of whiskey, reached into his jacket pocket, and retrieved the loaded revolver. Although he had loaded it mere minutes earlier, he checked the cylinder to assure all six chambers were filled. He closed it with a flick of his wrist, then pat his vest pocket to check for the additional cartridges. Everything was in order. Of course it was.
Finally, it dawned on Oliver what must have happened. He had told his staff they were going to meet on the transit level, hadn’t he? Well, then, when he had been detained, his staff likely just assumed they were supposed to meet him up there. Sure, Oliver didn’t remember telling them that was the plan, but since that had been the plan, Oliver must have mentioned it. It was the only thing that made sense.
Relief swept through his mind and calmed his nerves. He gingerly holstered the revolver, picked up the two bottles, and made his way toward the stairwell door.
As he made it to the fourth floor landing, he began to hear excited utterances above him, and a woman’s scream. Alarmed, he quickened his pace to the eighth floor, where he saw the door was open, with a few people standing in the hallway.
A bit out of breath, Oliver approached the nearest man, Brett Miller. “What happened?”
“Well sir,” said Brett grimly, “there’s been a suicide.”
Oliver’s mouth dropped open. A suicide? He pushed past those on the landing and into a group crowding the first part of the hall. He recognized some of the guests as those from the fourth floor, and some from the sixth they were on, which meant Jon and Clem must have already succeeded in evacuating the fourth floor and were moving up as a group. But where was Jon?
And then he saw the poor man, on his knees in the doorway to his room, weeping in front of his wife’s dangling corpse.
“Oh, Christ,” Oliver whispered.
He didn’t know what to do. He felt ridiculous still holding a quart of whiskey in each hand, and put the bottles down on the floor, approaching Jon from behind. “Is it…” Oliver began, thinking to ask if it was real, and not one of the strange hallucinations, but he could tell from Jon’s agony that it was. Or at least, Jon knew it was, and that was good enough for Oliver.
He became aware of the murmurs in the crowd. There were whispers about “this terrible place.” And the tone was accusatory, too, and Oliver could feel words of anger and disgust boring into him from all sides. Although no one said it directly, the mood of the crowd was clear. They were blaming him for this tragedy. Not this place, not the magnetic mineral baths, but him.
Clem approached Oliver with a nasty expression. “What are you doing back down here so soon?”
Oliver blinked, confused. “Back…down?”
“We saw you going up with your guys. You can’t be done with the top floors already.”
Oliver was baffled. And then his face went white.
It must have been quite an obvious change in his expression, for Clem’s face changed as well, from a look of annoyance to one of worry, almost sympathy. “What? What is it?”
Oliver didn’t answer, not even when he saw Jon turn around to face him too, tears wet on his cheeks, sending the same confused, worried glance Oliver’s way. He just backed away slowly, turned for the stairwell, then sprinted toward it, knocking Jasper Hayden off balance and stumbling into the wall.
“Hey!” shouted the toppled man.
But Oliver didn’t hear him. He kept sprinting up the steps, even though it was making him physically ill, the alcohol sloshing through his insides and his brain, until he reached the transit level.
He opened the door in a panic, just in time to see the end of the slaughter.
The entire staff and building crew of The Eaton were there, most of them on the tracks, including Matthew, or what was left of him, his body ripped in two like a broken doll, still gasping and gurgling blood from the half which contained his face. Solomon was running down the tracks into the darkness, but something was chasing him, and then caught him, breaking his neck. One of the housekeepers, Sally Lorent, was screaming but frozen as the creature approached her, not even raising her hands to protect her face when the thing lunged, smothering her mouth and nose with a large black arm and seeming to crush her bones into powder against the curved brick wall.
Oliver was frozen, too, staring at the back of the black monster before him. He had still not seen its face. He needed to see its face.
As if reading Oliver’s thoughts and wishing to oblige, the creature allowed Sally’s destroyed body to crumple, and turned around.
Oh, sweet Jesus. Oh God.
Though an inky ape-like creature in all other respects, the thing still wore the face of Oliver Stanton.
The staff never had a chance, thought Oliver in horror. They were sober. They followed it willingly. They followed… me.
The creature smiled with hate at Oliver, human blood trickling down from its stolen visage and onto its ample, heaving chest. In silence, it began to inch closer to Oliver, and the two stared at each other intently, Oliver with horror, the creature with glee.
A survival instinct kicked in, somewhere deep inside Oliver’s psyche, and on impulse his right hand thrust itself into his jacket, retrieving the pistol and pointing it outward in a single motion. It surprised the creature, as Oliver saw the dark parody of his own face register shock, then alarm.
Still running on instinct, Oliver fired. The bullet hit the creature straight in the chest, and the mask of Oliver’s face flickered darkly, replaced with sputters of what must have been the creature’s own revolting countenance. He fired again, but this time the creature’s reflexes had improved, and it whirled its body backward with impressive speed, dodging the lead. For an instant, Oliver thought he saw the creature’s face smiling—a horrible, rotting, toothless smile—and then the thing faded out somewhat, still visible in low-opacity spurts of darkness but no longer distinct at all times. Oliver knew he was in grave danger, and his survival instincts kicked in again, his feet sprinting toward the stairwell door before he felt his mind give the order to.
He made it through the door, and ran as fast as he could up the stairs, knowing his only chance of survival was into the Mastersuite, where he could access the elevator, reach the surface, and never return. He could hear his name shouted by someone a couple flights down, but didn’t respond. With the speed of a much younger and more sober man, Oliver made it to his door, thrust his key into the lock with minimal fumbling, opened it, thrust himself through, and closed and locked it from the other side. For now, at least for a moment, he was safe.
Christ, Oliver thought for the first time, all those people… they’re all trapped with that thing. And then, from a darker place inside himself, I’m ruined.
But there was no time to think about either concern. He had to get out of here. And right now, it didn’t matter that he was the only one who could.
Keeping a firm grip on his gun with his right hand, Oliver rummaged for hi
s billfold with his left, stuffing it unartfully into his pants. There was a ledger here, too, that held information on his investments and his business transactions, including some of the quasi-legal tricks he had pulled in constructing this hotel. He grabbed it as well, tucking it first under his right armpit, then realizing that might affect his ability to aim, shifting it to his left armpit instead.
“Oliver!” shouted a voice from the stairwell door, followed by loud pounding. “Let us in!”
Oliver didn’t recognize the voice, but could tell whoever it was wasn’t alone. There was more pounding, and another man’s voice shouting his name. It sounded like Terry Laurent, the obese banker who had been one of the first on Oliver’s guest list.
Are they real? Is one of them the monster? Are they all the monster?
Oliver surveyed the space, seeing nothing additional of importance, and raced to the other side of the large room for the other exit door, the one that led to the small elevator lobby.
For a brief, terrifying moment, Oliver felt convinced that when he opened the door, the creature would be there, smiling at him, towering over him, ready to strike. But when the door swung free, all Oliver could see was the empty little lobby, the open gate, the elevator car’s warm glow, and the chair which he had used to keep the elevator from running.
Far behind him at the other end of the Mastersuite, four men were using the force of their bodies, including Terry’s ample form, to bash and weaken the door lock into the room. On the third rush, the door jamb cracked and gave way, Terry's body tumbling comically into the luxurious space beyond. Oliver turned to see Jonathan Wesley, Peter Barclay, and Cecil Bickenbach jumping around the fallen man toward the elevator room.
They’re trying to stop me. They’re not going to let me escape.
“Stand back!” Oliver shouted shakily, pointing the gun at the approaching men.
Jon, whose face was still twisted by grief, looked dumbstruck. “Oliver, what the hell are you doing?”
“I said stand back!”
Peter Barclay, who ran much of the nearby Horner Mill, was an athletic man who under normal circumstances could have overpowered Oliver and beaten him into a pulp. But when he tried to lunge toward Oliver through the open doorway, Oliver shot him dead, a hole ripping through his chest as if he’d caught a live grenade.
From a distance, down the stairwell, Oliver could hear a woman scream. What did that scream mean? Had someone discovered the bodies on the floor below? Or had the creature escaped and was on its way up to finish what it started?
Everyone here is going to die.
“I said…I said, stand back,” Oliver croaked in desperation. Jon and Cecil remained still as Oliver backed into the elevator, gun still aimed on them from his right hand, as he closed the gate with his left. But the awkward arm movement caused the ledger tucked under his left shoulder to fall to the ground, and Oliver took just a quick second to scoop it back up before reaching to press the button marked “12,” the button that would assure his successful evacuation.
Oliver realized in a horrible instant that he was too late. A floor below had called the elevator before his own button could be registered.
Oh God. Which floor?
But Oliver knew.
There was a bustle of commotion behind Jonathan—someone had undoubtedly heard the gunshot—but he could not look away. As others began flooding into the Mastersuite, Jon stared through the iron gate in awe as the great Oliver Stanton punched the 12 button, over and over, screaming in abject terror, not ascending into freedom as he had planned, but in his final moments of life, descending into hell.
Cecil shook Jon's shoulder. “Come on, man, I need help!”
Jon blinked and pivoted around. A dozen people were now in the room, some with luggage, some in their coats, all sporting the terrified expressions of wounded children. They didn't know what to do.
“Get everyone in here,” Jon heard himself shouting. “Go on, anyone on the staircase still, shout down to the lower levels. Everyone get up here as quick as possible.”
A few men raced out of the Mastersuite and began barking directions down the stairwell. Soon the room was filled with a dozen men and women, with more on the way. Cecil and Jon helped with luggage and shepherding those who were paralyzed with fear.
Jon knew they didn't have much time, as only a minute or two would pass before the creature was finished with Oliver. But in a flash of dread, Jon remembered that it could masquerade as any of them, and so what would stop it from ascending the stairs with the rest of the guests? For all Jon knew, he had already assisted the creature inside this very room. His alcohol-filled insides curdled.
Jon dropped the bag he had been carrying and raced from person to person, sometimes grabbing their faces and staring intently, looking for any clue, any of the strange blackness shimmering beneath the surface which identified the intruder. But everyone seemed real. Panicked, he pushed past a lady entering the room and watched others coming up the final lap of stairs, his eyes locking on an elderly man. Something was wrong about him, Jon knew, and even before he saw the shimmery blackness which confirmed its true identity, Jon remembered seeing this man, the real version, already present and accounted for inside the Mastersuite.
“Stop!” Jon shouted. “Stop that man!”
The people around the old gentleman looked confused, and the creature itself gave an excellent performance as an offended innocent, but within moments it seemed to realize the futility of the charade and lashed out, grabbing the nearest person, Clyde Knapp, and hurling him down the stairs, knocking the man unconscious. The black flickers grew darker, and Jon watched its human-looking hands melt into black claws before his eyes. A young woman tried to race past the transforming mass, and never saw the claw coming as it sliced through her chest, tearing her clothes and flesh with equal ease. She continued to stumble upwards, blood spurting out behind her, and a man grabbed her and helped her up just as the creature reached for her too, to pull her down. But it slipped on the blood and missed, giving the man time to drag her bleeding body to the landing. The hideous, shifting thing tumbled backward, shrieking as it hit the lower landing, but Jon saw it right itself just as the woman's body was dragged across the Mastersuite threshold.
The last man in the landing, Jon stared with fury down at the creature for a second. Still wearing the face of a human but transforming into something far more grotesque, the thing pounced upward, two stairs at a time, and was mere feet from the door to the Mastersuite by the time Jon had sprinted through it and closed it shut. It pounded with its claws on the hard wood, certain it could break through, but on the other side, Jasper Hayden and Cecil had already succeeded in barricading the door with an armoire, and the door would not budge.
On the other side of the great room, several people were at the elevator, including Clem, pushing the “up” button frantically. The car wouldn't come. Clem tried to pry open the iron gate, though it wasn't clear to the others what his plan would be if he succeeded in exposing an empty shaft. Climb the elevator wires? But soon it was too late, as the creature had stopped pounding on the door to the stairwell, which meant it had traveled down a floor and might be coming up in the same elevator they were trying to call.
“Get away from there!” shouted Jon, pushing his way past a dozen guests and stumbling toward the small room that housed the elevator door. “It's going to be coming up in that! We need to barricade this door as well!”
“Then we'll all be trapped,” countered Clem, though he knew Jon was right. If the creature did indeed travel up in the car, they were sitting ducks.
The elevator motor began to whir. Jon ran back behind the Mastersuite door and urged the other men to follow. The fear of what might be coming up in the car trumped the fear of being unable to escape, and they all rushed in. Like they had with the stairwell door, several men pushed furniture in front of this door, too, though nothing was as high and sturdy as the armoire had been on the oth
er side. Within moments, as Jon had predicted, something was knocking on the other side of the wood.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Now what,” Clem demanded.
Jasper, who Jon had met on the first night, pointed to the two men standing on a dresser, attempting to remove the tin ceiling tile, one with his bare hands, and one with a crude tool that Jon guessed was a leg from a photographer's tripod. “You help us dig out of here,” Jasper huffed. “We're right below the entrance lobby which goes in the depot. We just need to bust through the floorboards.”
With what, Jon thought. It seemed terribly optimistic to believe they could tear their way through thick floorboards before the creature could bust through one of the blocked doors. But it was also the only plan. The creature controlled the only known exit, so they had to make their own.
Yet the futility of it all overwhelmed Jon, and the adrenaline which had kept him standing poured out of his body as if someone had pulled the plug on a drain, and he felt the full effects of the whiskey at last. His vision blurred, and his legs became weak. He tripped backward against the nearest wall and slid down it, feeling his insides quiver as his ass hit the floor.
The others ignored him, and Jon became nothing more than an observer, as he had been through so much of his life. “Isn't it nice to be a part of something new,” Niamh had said on their first night here. “Rather than always researching the past.” Jon thought of all the conflicts, disasters and lost civilizations he had devoted his life to studying, and chuckled aloud. He began to ponder if any of the historical figures he had written about had realized, when they themselves were dying, that someday, others would find their bodies, and judge their actions and inactions as Jon himself had done. After all, someday people would discover the victims of The Eaton as well. They would even discover him. The researcher would, at long last, become the subject.
The Eaton Page 25