He found the correct key, locking the mechanism just seconds before the creature itself arrived at the landing. Sam stepped backward, seeing the doorknob shake.
“It's me, guys,” came Al's voice from behind the door. “The thing is dead. We can get out now. Come on, open the door.”
Though his mind was still affected by a haze of alcohol, Sam recognized the significance of “it's me, guys.” The reference of “guys” implied that the voice behind the door was not Al, as the real Al would have known that Sam and Sarah had separated and were on different floors. It was therefore also likely that the creature had not been able to extract that information from Al, which meant that Al had either been too drunk for the creature to read his mind, or Al had died before it could.
“Open up,” Al's voice called again.
Sam had just seconds to consider his next move. There was a chance the creature was bluffing, and did not know Sam was behind the door. If Sam did not respond, it might give up and try another level, perhaps even finding Sarah. For the moment, Sarah was relatively safe, as long as the creature thought they were both on this level.
“Come on, Sarah,” Sam said, in an audible voice but not conspicuously loud. “We'll hide in here!”
The bluff seemed to work, as the pounding on the door continued.
Sam's eyes darted between the Apothecary side and the Gameroom, trying not to notice Vaughn's body by the elevator door. The Apothecary would provide little protection with its glass windows, one of which was already broken. He couldn't imagine finding a drug that could harm the creature, and he knew there was nothing that could be used as a weapon, as Janet couldn't even find a simple crutch, having to resort to a pool cue. He ran into the Gameroom instead, also wondering if he could make use of a cue, but realized that if a gun provided little protection, a stick of wood was rather worthless. Sam briefly fantasized that he could cover the hallway in billiard balls, and the creature would slip and fall down the elevator shaft.
The hallway door was being hit with greater force now, as if the creature was ramming his entire body against it. It wouldn't be long.
Sam closed and locked the Gameroom door, providing a bit of extra protection, though he thought that it only made his coffin smaller. He wasn't going to get out of this. The Eaton was too strong, and too insistent on Sam's capture, to be stopped or outsmarted. But it could still be slowed.
There was a small bathroom in the corner of the Gameroom, and Sam wondered if the toilet and sink water might be mineral water as well. It was worth a shot, he knew. Buying Sarah more time had to be his fundamental objective. She still had a chance. The problem was, Sarah didn't yet know about Sam's deduction about the Transit level. He had to get her the message, or she, too, would race up to the Mastersuite, and be trapped.
The small dumbwaiter on the far wall caught his eye. Could he send Sarah the information that way? There was indeed a dumbwaiter door on the second floor, but it was in the laundry room, not the maintenance room, so even if Sam had sent a note, there's no way Sarah would know to look there. He cursed at his inability to call or text her, but as he knew well, there was barely any cell reception in the train station itself, let alone underneath it.
A crash in the hallway seemed to announce the collapse of the stairwell door. The Eaton was one door closer.
Sam considered barricading himself in the small bathroom, perhaps buying a few more minutes, but there was something so horrible about the thought of dying in a bathroom that he couldn't bring himself to accept the plan. He did, however, think he might be able to use the bathroom as a ploy for more time, if he could convince the creature that he was keeping Sarah safe behind the door. But, sacrificing his life for Sarah's only made sense if Sarah could make it out.
Like many couples, Sam and Sarah had a “special song.” The song's chorus had been playing on a loop in Sam's head since he locked himself in this room, grief and longing churning inside him the more certain he became that he would never see her again. Sam realized that there might be a reason his subconscious was blasting this particular station. He took out his phone, checking to make sure the song was in his library. It was.
“Let me in, guys,” called Al's voice from beyond the Gameroom door. “We have to get out of here!”
Sam suppressed a chuckle. Did the creature think Sam would be fooled by that ruse, after just breaking down the stairway door with inhuman strength?
He set the song to loop, keeping the phone volume low for now but preparing to raise it to maximum once placed in the dumbwaiter. To make sure that Sarah got his message, he had to improvise. She had to be able to read it the moment she touched the phone. Sam decided the fastest way would be to compose a text message, even though he knew it wouldn't get through, and then take a screenshot of the text message, which would create a photo he could set as his phone's background and lock screen. That way, the moment Sarah touched or picked up the phone, even without unlocking it, the message would be there.
The Al creature had given up on verbal entreaties and was beginning to pound the door with its fists.
Sam hurried to the dumbwaiter, set the looping song to maximum volume, double-checked that the message did indeed show when the phone was touched, and closed the inner and outer dumbwaiter doors. He was relieved to observe that the sound, while muffled, was still quite audible through the doors, and with luck would resonate from the laundry room into the hallway, in the silence of an empty hotel. He pressed the “2” button beside the box, and the message in a bottle began its descent. The music faded slowly, deeply away.
The creature's fists had begun to crack and splinter the center of the Gameroom door. Sam was almost out of time. He ran to the bathroom, found it could only be locked from the inside, and so closed it and looked around for a barricade. The nearby billiards table was the only suitable candidate, so he raced to the far side of the table and hefted it across the room. At a suitable distance from the bathroom door, he picked up one side with significant effort and tipped it ninety degrees. It came down with an enormous thud, several billiard balls bouncing out of pockets and rolling across the floor around him. He shoved it flush against the bathroom entrance, then turned around just in time to see a hole form in the far door, the blackness of The Eaton behind it. It no longer had any interest in pretending to be Al.
The creature bent down to peer at Sam through the splintered hole. Sam backed into the overturned pool table, then tried to look as protective as possible of the covered up space. The Eaton had to believe Sam was trying to protect Sarah, or none of this would matter. It smiled a toothless smile, then backed away from the opening. Sam was sure the creature was preparing to ram the door a final time. But then, inexplicably, it didn't.
Sam took a cautious step forward. He could no longer see or hear the thing at all. Had it figured out the truth about Sarah? Had it left him for the second floor? If so, what could she do? What could Sam do? Should he stay put, in case the creature came back? Should he run after it, and try and attack it before it reached Sarah? Or, should he abandon Sarah and escape out the tenth floor himself?
Sam was paralyzed with fear. He realized it was not fear of the creature, but in not knowing what to do, feeling helpless, powerless, with every option before him impossible. He had to act, yet could not.
A memory crept up on him, bleeding into his mind, demanding attention and respect. Sam shuddered, trying to shoo the image away. He hadn't thought about that day for a long time, as it was the only traumatic experience he had never shared with another person, not even Sarah. It was the only other time in his life he had felt this level of terrified indecision and helplessness. Even that awful night at Venue A with the gun-wielding nut job hadn't left him frozen with indecision, as the correct path had been obvious: stay down and shut up. But that day at Aunt Eleanor's was different.
“Oh God,” Sam whispered. “Why am I thinking of this?”
And then he could hear it, at least he thought he
could, from a great distance. As it had been, it was still the weakest, most pathetic little kitten mew imaginable. But was it in his head, or in the hallway?
Sam listened, stepping closer to the broken door. He tried not to breathe, demanding total silence of himself, convinced the sound had been real, then equally convinced that it hadn't been.
Sam tried to make sense of the situation. He stared at the hole in the door. The Eaton was either waiting out there, or it wasn't. If it was still in the hallway, then it was toying with him, trying to smoke him out. It would surely kill Sam the moment he stepped outside the Gameroom. But why would it do that? The door had already been breached, and the thing could enter whenever it liked. Was there something special about the Gameroom itself? Some magical force that kept the thing at bay? Seemed unlikely. There wasn't even any mineral water. Perhaps it had indeed read Sam's mind, despite the alcohol, figured out Sarah's location, and ran to attack her first. But this, too, seemed unlikely, as The Eaton would know that left Sam with an escape route, and Sam didn't believe for a moment that the thing would allow one of them to reach the surface without a fight. Unless it was counting on Sam being unable to abandon Sarah, which meant chasing after the thing was precisely what it wanted.
“Shit,” Sam hissed. Waiting was doing nothing. He had to do something.
He ran for the door, opened it, and raced into the hallway, intending to sprint down the stairs. But his path was blocked by an enormous fourteen-year-old boy.
Sam screamed. It was his cousin, Pete. And the kid stood seven feet tall, his head inches from the hall ceiling.
Pete grinned.
Sam turned on his heels to run the other way, perhaps back into the Gameroom. But now he was facing his other cousin Matt, also seven feet tall, with the chipped front tooth and perpetual smirk Sam remembered, looking down on his younger cousin with amusement and contempt.
Sam shuffled in place a moment, uncertain what to do, his head and eyes darting back and forth at the two cousins. They looked just as they had twenty years ago, only larger. But no, they weren't larger than he remembered, not exactly. They were proportionally correct from the point of view of a short and scrawny ten-year-old. As Sam recalled, they were more than a head taller than him when he would visit Aunt Eleanor’s, and so now here they were, more than a head taller still.
Then Pete hissed the words Sam had spent his adolescence praying to never hear again.
“Here, kitty, kitty.”
twenty-nine
It was Christmas Eve in Mio, and the first time Sammy Spicer and his family would visit Aunt Eleanor in the winter. It would also be their last. Sam’s mom had an intense fear of driving in the snowy season, particularly if it involved the narrow, winding roads which peppered Oscoda County. As a child, she and her father had come within inches of driving off a steep cliff overlooking the Au Sable River, and that precipitation had been only a mild rain. In snow and ice, the risk of driving anywhere, especially north, seemed irresponsible. But Aunt Eleanor had been insistent, as it would be her and the boys’ last Christmas in the old cabin, for they were moving to Oklahoma in the spring. “Come on,” she had pleaded. “I’ll even make an extra batch of fudge!” Even Sam, who hated his summers up there with Matt and Pete, took his aunt’s side when The Fudge was mentioned.
Sam had turned ten years old during the fall, and Sam hoped the important milestone would make him more accepted by the older boys. Somehow, Matt, now thirteen, and Pete, fourteen, didn’t seem so much more mature when they were all in double digits together. Sam had even grown at least an inch since the past summer, and he had hoped to have caught up a bit in height. Alas, the cousins both had apparent growth spurts of their own, and still seemed to tower over Sam as much as always.
Sam’s parents, Paul and Lynn, had brought some sort of eggnog that Sam wasn’t allowed to try, and the three grown-ups had suggested that “the kids” play outside before it got too dark. Sam thought this a terrible idea, for it was freezing outside, and he knew he would get pelted with hard, icy snowballs the moment they were alone. But, he did as he was told, taking his time to slide on his boots and coat and hat and mittens, and counting to five with his eyes closed, just to build the courage to leave the safety of the fire-warmed cabin, filled with safe non-violent adults.
“Come on, slowpoke,” taunted Pete from outside. “What, didja wet yourself?”
This was not promising.
Sam attempted a cool, deliberate stride from the cabin to the center of the snowy yard where Pete and Matt were waiting. He wanted to convey a sense of nonchalance, that of an equal rather than a young kid. But the cousins seemed to recognize his reluctance had been out of fear. Matt and Pete looked at each other, and both laughed.
“Dude, we’re not gonna hurt you,” said Matt. “You’re too old for that shit.”
Sam must have flashed an involuntary look of skepticism, for Pete added “aw, he doesn’t believe us Matty.”
Matt pouted. “And we were going to show him our clubhouse and everything. Invite him to share in our secret place.”
“Guess he’s not ready for that,” Pete said.
“Guess not,” Matt agreed.
Sam couldn’t tell if this was a trick, but was prepared for the worst. As was often the case with these boys, there was no way to win. If he said he didn’t care about the clubhouse, they’d use his rudeness as an excuse to get even. If he said he’d love to see it, they’d attack his naiveté, and either admit there wasn’t a clubhouse, teasing him for falling for a lie, or confirm there was a clubhouse after all, but since he had insulted them, he was no longer invited.
“I’m ten,” Sam offered, which seemed safe. It said nothing directly, but could be interpreted as either an argument of being old enough for whatever they wanted to show him, or an implication that he was too old to be deceived.
Matt looked at Pete. Pete shrugged. They turned back to Sam.
“Alright, we’ll show you,” said Matt. “This way.”
They walked for several minutes, across the long yard and into a wooded area Sam knew well from the summers. It seemed so different now, with all the leaves gone and the trees looking like skeletons. Sam always thought of this area as a sort of dense and endless forest, but today, he could see where it opened into a clearing not far away. Panting now, the three trudged through the snow, a foot high in some spots, until they arrived at a rather impressive sheet of ice.
“Was this lake always here?” Sam didn’t remember it.
“It’s not a lake,” Pete snorted. “It’s a field. But it’s low, so the water collects in it after a rain, and sometimes, it just freezes. It’s totally solid. Like a skating rink.”
“Pete loves to ice skate,” Matt teased, flashing Sam a conspiratorial smile. “He’s a regular Brian Boitano.”
Sam smiled. He had no idea who Brian Boitano was, but he liked that Matt seemed to be sharing a joke with Sam at Pete’s expense. He couldn’t remember a time that had ever happened.
“What?” Pete looked confused. “Who the fuck is that?”
“He’s a figure skater,” Matt explained. “You know, the spinning around and being gay.”
“Fuck, there’s nothing gay about skating,” Pete said. “Steve Yzerman’s a fucking badass. And, let me say you’re the only one here who knew the name of an actual gay-ass figure skater, so fuck you, you gay fucking figure-skating cocksucker.”
Pete had a way with words.
“Yeah, well you got eyes for Yzerman,” Matt retorted. “Got a life size picture of the guy. In your bedroom. By your bed.”
“I told you, he’s a fucking badass.”
“And so dreamy.”
Pete looked like he was going to clobber Matt for that one, but he held back. He was the first one to make it onto the ice, and needed to concentrate. The snow had given the ice a decent amount of traction, but one false step could cause a lot of pain.
Sam was initially nervous to cross
the ice, and so was glad Matt and Pete were ahead of him. He saw how they were able to traverse the slippery sheet at a deliberate speed, and Sam was able to follow. You couldn’t run across it, but you could walk comfortably if you used your arms for balance.
Finally, Sam was able to make out their destination. On the other side of the icy clearing was an unmistakable boy-made structure. It was a sort of improvised teepee, with fallen tree branches tied together in a point with what looked like a hundred feet of tan rope. Abandoned sheets of wood were affixed somehow to the sides, and the floor was lined with brown blankets.
“Wow,” Sam said. “That must have taken you forever.”
“A couple days,” Matt confirmed. “The first one we made was too small. We’d have to take turns in there. So we tore it down and built this one. It’s ten feet tall at the point, and about eight feet by five feet along the bottom.”
“Just the right size for getting down and dirty,” Pete boasted. Then, his face reddened, and he clarified his comment. “I mean, me and a girl, of course, not Matt and me.”
Sam was intrigued. “You have a girlfriend?”
“Nah,” Pete admitted. “But when I do, that clubhouse is where I’m going to see her pussy.”
Sam had no response to that.
“Oh shit, man,” said Matt, peering into the tent. “You got pussy in there, alright.”
“That fat barn cat again?” Pete seemed annoyed. “Why doesn’t that mangy bitch find her own clubhouse?”
Matt was on his hands and knees now inside the structure. He was moving the blanket a bit, feeling around as if he had lost something.
“Hey Pete, I think that barn cat had kittens in here.”
Sam smiled, fascinated. But Pete became furious.
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