Deadfall Hotel

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  And maybe that was the attraction that might draw a crowd. A beautiful, well-adjusted young girl. A father adoring his daughter. Normal life. For some, it would be the only place they could witness something like that.

  He took his eyes away from the cats and scanned the room slowly. Jacob saw what he was doing, but made no comment. Richard noted how thick with dust everything was. Except the chairs, the seats and backs and arms of the chairs. Clean and almost shiny from continued use. He considered this as he pressed his eyes against the peepholes once again.

  Involuntarily he cried out. Dragon had come up behind the gathering of kittens, killing each with a bite to the back of the neck. Even at this distance their cries were piercing. Was that possible? Their screams were the agonized screams of young children. The worst sound on earth: babies dying in pain.

  The monster cat stood up on his hind legs and grinned with his teeth, his contorted face tilted up toward the Deadfall. “He knows we’re up here!” Richard said. “My God, he can find us anywhere!”

  “Eventually, yes. We cannot know for sure he knows about this place, but eventually he will, I have no doubt. So far he’s worked his way into every other nook and cranny, places I’d not thought possible.”

  Richard rubbed his face. “So is that where you were while my daughter was in danger? Taking the tour?”

  “It was important to gauge the extent of their infiltration, to find out if there were places they wouldn’t go. Unfortunately I see no area they’ve avoided, in any deliberate way.” If Jacob had taken offense at Richard’s tone, he wasn’t betraying it. “Besides your station wagon, his cats have rendered the Deadfall’s pickup inoperable, as well as my old Ford. They even managed to remove key parts of the riding lawnmower.”

  “This is unbelievable. I’ve questioned my decision to bring my daughter here, despite your fanciful reassurances. And now her greatest danger comes from her pet cat?”

  “None of us is entirely safe in this world. It’s understandable when a father cannot accept that. We do what we can. Our guests here know these things better than anyone. I’ve also spent a couple of hours this evening checking up on those guests – you may recall that we have a certain responsibility to them, however alien and invulnerable they might appear to our more elementary sensibilities. Many have left, or hidden themselves in ways I cannot detect, but I’ve found three dead in their rooms, marked and unmarked, with perfectly innocent-looking kittens posted nearby.”

  Richard tried to keep his voice under control, not wanting Serena to know how wrong everything had become (And how ridiculous was that? How crazy had he become?). “Then tell me what to do, Jacob. Tell me how to protect my daughter.”

  “Serena,” Jacob said softly, his eyes sad, “is the only one capable of protecting anyone here today.”

  “HOW CAN YOU ask me to put my daughter in that kind of danger?” They’d moved back down the corridor, leaving Serena asleep on a blood-colored corpse of a couch in the sitting room.

  “She’s already in danger. We’re all in danger. Deadfall guests we can control, for the most part. I know very little about what to do in this situation, except to keep my eyes and ears open, and pay attention to what my senses tell me. And what they tell me here is that we are simply more toys to this monstrous cat – and what he eats and what he plays with are all pretty much the same to him. He’s going to tire of us, and then the play’s going to become much more violent, and then he’s going to get rid of us. He’d already be tired of us, if it weren’t for Serena. Whatever he’s become, he remembers what he used to be, and what he used to be has much to do with Serena.”

  “Does the hotel have anything to do with what’s happening here?”

  “Not directly, but one of my predecessors had this saying, ‘The Deadfall makes you live up to your potential. Good or bad – it’s all the same to the Hotel.’ I think this little kitty just may have achieved its ultimate potential.”

  “She’s just a little girl. How is she supposed to handle this?”

  “She’ll handle this by being who she is. She needs to turn that cat into her pet again. Those other cats aren’t anything without their king. She’s going to have to get him away from the others. That’s when the two of us will take over the job.”

  “And what will the two of us do with him once she delivers him to us?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Great plan.”

  “It is the only one we have. I suggest we improvise from there.”

  Serena’s eagerness to pursue the plan appalled him. “We can always find another way,” he told her. “You know how clever Jacob is. Remember how he organized things for the cleaning? Pretty amazing, I thought, the way he figured everything out. He’ll come up with another way – I should never have even told you about this crazy idea. I’ll go ask him right now.”

  “Daddy.” She sounded so much like her mother, struggling to find patience. “It must be the only way, or Jacob wouldn’t have suggested it. Besides, he is my cat.”

  Richard reached to squeeze her shoulder. “Honey, don’t you find it a little… difficult to think of Dragon as a housecat anymore?”

  She let go of an embarrassed little smile. “I guess so. But I’m supposed to take some responsibility, I think, whatever he is. You taught me that, Daddy.”

  Richard tried to think of what stupid little homily he might have let slip that would encourage her to risk her life. “And Dragon still likes me, sorta, I think, and I guess that’s all we’ve got going for us right now. And pretty soon, who knows, maybe he’ll change so much he won’t care anything about me anymore, maybe he’ll even have forgotten how to care.”

  Her analysis was so close to Jacob’s that Richard felt defenseless, foolish for trying to argue against it. She stood up and put an arm part way around his waist. “Let’s go talk to Jacob, Daddy. I guess we should do this pretty soon. I’ll be too scared if Dragon changes much more.”

  As they made their way down the staircases they discovered a few cats no doubt left behind because they were either too tired or too wounded to travel with the rest of the pack. Richard and Jacob and Serena avoided even these non-threatening felines, detouring through abandoned rooms and dusty passageways. Everywhere there were signs of carnage, of cats having attacked other cats: scattered fur patches and rags of scalp, tears and scratches so numerous in the woodwork and walls that Richard feared some sort of collapse. So much for Spring cleaning. Light fixtures dangled from the ceiling: here and there chewed electrical wire hung down above electrocuted cat corpses. And everywhere noxious yellow painted over the furniture.

  Richard went with Serena out onto the porch. He tried to follow her down the steps but she pushed him back, urging him with her eyes to remember the plan.

  Serena stepped out on the front lawn. She wore her hair pulled back into a ponytail, the same way she’d had it the day they brought Dragon to her. She hadn’t remembered that, nor had Richard, but Jacob was sure. Richard stayed back on the porch: Serena’s idea, and it made sense. She had to establish the contact with Dragon, recall the relationship. No one else could be involved.

  He didn’t see Dragon at first. There were a number of cats around: slow-moving, fattened, somnolent. They pretty much ignored him: too tired, too preoccupied with the pleasures of digestion. He thought about the possibility that Dragon might be in very much the same state, but surely that was too much to hope for. Then Richard saw the large yellow dog sprawled out to one side, recognized it as the poor old stray that sometimes dropped by the kitchens, waiting until someone – usually Jacob – fed him. The dog appeared to be asleep, but then he saw the cat’s paw rising and falling, batting at the lifeless head. Dragon’s face suddenly appeared to one side of the dog’s, grinning. Richard looked at Serena: she’d spied her old pet as well.

  Dragon gazed into the dog’s empty eyes. Trembling, Richard could easily imagine the cat looking into Serena’s eyes that same way. Serena was crossing the lawn slowly, avoiding p
iles of sleeping cats. “Kitty, kitty,” she called softly. Suddenly the plan seemed ridiculous.

  Dragon’s purr drifted across the lawn, rising in volume. Mesmerized, Richard didn’t want to move.

  Serena stopped at the dog’s carcass. Dragon gazed up at her, tilting his head quizzically. “Oh.” He could hear the shake in her voice. “There you are, kitty.” Dragon became very still. “Come with me, kitty. Wanna play?” she asked musically. Dragon tilted his head in the opposite direction. Richard held his breath as his daughter turned, began walking slowly back up the lawn toward the Deadfall entrance. After a few moments, she paused and peered back over her shoulder. Dragon took up the old cue and bounded after her like a kitten.

  Serena left the front door open as she entered the Deadfall, Dragon by this point trotting in beside her. Richard followed at a discreet distance, staying just close enough to get a feel for Dragon’s attitude, ready to call the whole thing off if the cat became the least bit threatening.

  Once inside, Serena headed toward the library. Dragon seemed suddenly excited, started racing up and down the carpet as if chasing an invisible companion, the typical kitten.

  When Serena opened the library door, Dragon raced ahead into the dark chamber. She stole a nervous glance back at her father, then reached in by the door to flip the switch that controlled the reading lamps: the green glass-shaded lamp – gorgeous and oversized – that sat in the center of the cherry wood study table, and the brass floor lamp by Serena’s favorite Queen Anne chair. These lamps were just the thing for some cozy late night reading, but provided only two pools of illumination, barely enough to see to make it across the room. The rest of the vast library was completely missing, swallowed by the darkness. Yet you could still feel the massive weight of all those books, and the dust that lay upon all those volumes (the weight of a few large men in and of itself), and the centuries of learning, just out of reach, a burden of possibility in the shadows.

  Serena followed Dragon into the dim chamber, leaving the library door open slightly, just wide enough for Richard to slide through. The cat would be blocked from seeing him by the bookcase by the door. He brought his head around one edge of it, and saw Serena sitting herself down in the Queen Anne, and Dragon pacing back and forth before a low bookshelf beneath the tall windows. Suddenly the cat pounced at a volume on the bottom shelf, his claws catching it at the top of its spine, his weight tilting the book out of the bookcase and tumbling to the rug below. The book lay opened, the cat rubbing his head into the trough of pages as if reading closely, before circling the book and lunging as if at sleeping prey, clamping his jaws into one corner of the thick leather cover, then dragging the tome across the library toward Serena in her chair.

  Richard considered the jaw strength required, and found himself gazing up, at the narrow second floor gallery hugging the walls of books, knowing that Jacob was poised somewhere there in the shadows, ready with one of the ancient fishing nets he’d retrieved from the basement walls. Don’t wait long, he prayed, and looked back at his child as she leaned forward in her chair to retrieve the book where Dragon had brought it. It was an old, well-used book, the words on the cover in large gold script: CAT LORE. Dragon took his place, erect on his haunches by her feet, as Serena began to read.

  “Cats have seven lives. Cats have nine lives. For three they play, for three they stray, and the last three they stay. A cat isn’t accepted into Heaven or Hell until he uses up all nine.”

  She looked up from the book and down at Dragon then, as if gauging his reaction. The cat swayed and leaned forward, as if needing more.

  “On Christmas Eve, the cats get on their knees to pray. On New Year’s Day, all the cats in Ohio kneel down to pray.”

  The repetition and variation seemed a bit strange to Richard, then he realized Serena must be reading from a catalog of cat beliefs, not all of which would be consistent. But all of which, he thought now, the great King Dragon might understand to be true.

  Then Serena took a deep breath, and Richard tensed, knowing what was to come. There was a slight shifting in the shadows overhead, the tiniest glimmer (Jacob’s buckle?), but before Dragon’s attention could be drawn away, Serena’s recitation rushed out of her straining lips, “A pink-eyed cat brings bad luck. A three-colored cat is good luck. A five-colored cat is good luck. A white cat is good luck. A white cat is bad luck. A white cat at night is bad luck. A six-toed white cat is good luck.” She gasped, as something fluttered in the dark. “See a one-eyed cat, cross and uncross your fingers three times if you don’t want bad luck. See a one-eyed cat, spit on your thumb, push into your palm, make a wish that will come true. A sneezing cat is good luck. A black cat is good luck.” As the net came down, the weights along its edges clanking against railings and bookcases. “A black cat is bad luck. A black cat seen before breakfast is bad luck. If you see a black cat, oh, Daddy!” she cried, leaning away from the net as it covered the floor in front of her. “Spit three times to avoid bad luck!” Which she did, right into the net.

  For a few moments Richard remained in the shadows, staring at the tableaux: the net spread across the library floor, dust rising in a haze, the scattered corpses of books ripped from their shelves during the net’s descent, his sweet child leaning over the net, her fists balled, screaming. “I was good to you! You had no business hurting us! It’s not right!” He ran and grabbed her, held her close. “Oh, daddy, he’s dead, he’s dead.”

  Jacob walked slowly past them and stood by the net. He leaned over to examine the wreckage.

  “Stand over by the chair, honey,” Richard said, leading her away. He returned and helped Jacob search. They tugged on each link in the net, lifting and peering through the still-flying dust.

  “He’s not here,” Jacob said simply.

  “Impossible! He was right under the net! I saw! It swallowed him whole.”

  “You can see it as well as I, Richard. The cat is not under here.”

  “Then where is he?” Richard pulled on the net – it was so heavy it hurt his fingers. So he kicked at the net, ran into the net and stomped wherever he could. Jacob said nothing. Finally Richard looked up at him, and past him to the chair where he had left Serena. But Serena wasn’t there.

  “Serena!” Richard ran across the net, stumbled, grabbed the chair for balance, moved it aside, knocked it over, looking. “Serena!” He looked wildly around the library, ran up and down the shadowed areas. “Is there a secret passage, Jacob? Tell me!”

  “Hold on, hold on,” Jacob raised both hands. “Listen.”

  Richard tried to silence his breath. He had limited success, but he could hear a faint, descending tapping. Serena’s shoes. Jacob jerked his head toward the child-sized door in the darkness behind the chair. “I don’t know why they put it here,” he said, “but it’s another way to the basement.”

  The miniature door splintered in his hand. He threw away the doorknob. There were tiny stairs going down. He thought about Alice in Wonderland. He required the pill that makes you small. The opening was no more than five feet high, and only slightly wider than his shoulders. Pitch black interior, a cloying mildew smell. He pushed himself inside, feeling like a ragged cork one size too large. He half-fell to the first tiny landing. A change in the air told him that Jacob had squeezed in after him. Now we’re both in the dollhouse, he thought, and it did not reassure him. We’ll never get back out. A rapid tapping down the steps below him, an oppressive cat’s purr that shook the walls pressing against him, and he plunged forward again without a word.

  The passage seemed to shrink even further as they went down. A few feet more and he was crouched so far he had to be careful not to ram his knees into his chin when he moved. He could hear Jacob huffing and puffing behind him, and it worried him thinking that the old man might have a heart attack. How will I find Serena then? he thought uncharitably. But he hadn’t the time to indulge his guilt – Serena’s shoes sounded closer, and the rumbling purr of the cat so loud he felt as if Dragon had swall
owed them all, and they were descending the creature’s esophagus into its belly. “Serena!” he called, but she didn’t answer, and after a few moments more he could no longer hear her shoes, or the cat’s purr – just the close thunder of his own panicked breath.

  The steps ended before a smallish window. Without stopping, Richard hauled himself up into the frame and pushed his head and torso through. They were in the Deadfall basement. In the dim light, beyond rows of dusty cartons and abandoned furniture, he saw a flash of Serena’s dress, and a flash of fur. He forced himself through the window and landed hard on the slightly damp floor. A scurrying in the surrounding gloom, but he had no time to look. He still could not hear Serena’s footsteps, but off in the darkness, things were being bumped against, things were being displaced. He moved as fast as he could, dim light from some unknown source illuminating the edges of columns and wreckage, but not much more. He heard Jacob drop to the floor behind him, but did not take the time to turn around.

  Things were stacked so high down here that he could not see above them. There appeared to be enough old furniture to equip several homes. Now and then, bits of paper flapped or crackled with his passage. He pressed past shelves full of oddly-shaped glassware, dinnerware of unknown function and origin. They rattled musically when he bumped them, and he feared they might spur some desperate maneuver from the cat, so he quickened the pace. The fact that Jacob was right at his back, sounding equally urgent, did not reassure him. He rushed past an intersection of lanes, not realizing he’d seen Serena at its end. He stopped and stepped back, peered around the edge of a gigantic antique sideboard – how’d they get this down here? – and saw Serena standing motionless, staring at something he could not see. Then she began to step backwards, out of his frame of vision, and then Dragon crept into view, advancing, back raised, tail up and whipping side-to-side like an agitated snake. Then Dragon, too, moved out of view.