by JL Bryan
Heat rushed out in all direction as I hosed Zagan down. The room turned bright red, and my view of him was obscured.
I raised my thermal goggles off my eyes and found the room filled with steam, like one of those saunas where fat old mob guys are always hanging out in movies, waiting to get assassinated.
Jacob howled, then abruptly stopped. A loud thud told me he might have dropped to the floor.
I found Stacey by her shouts and grabbed her by the sleeve, since I couldn't see her. We staggered toward where we'd last seen Jacob.
The floor quaked as though an earthquake tremor rocked the city. We stumbled and fell over each other just as we reached Jacob, and the three of us tangled momentarily in a battered, burned heap of very confused and frightened human beings.
We managed to regain our feet, and we found our way back to the double doors through the blinding steam, using the hose to guide us.
When we ran into the hallway, the double doors slammed behind us, and everything fell silent. No whispering, no white faces floating in the dark. Steam drifted out toward us, under and between the doors. I hurried to turn off the water before it flooded the hallway.
“Everybody alive?” Jacob asked, checking us out.
“You got the worst of it.” Stacey touched his reddened skin through a gaping burn hole in his sleeve.
“Ow!”
“Sorry.”
“How did you not realize that would hurt?”
“I said sorry.” Stacey moved close and kissed him. He seemed to accept this form of apology, slipping his hands around her waist.
“Hey, I'm glad this is taking such a pleasant turn for you two, but we should probably—” I began.
The hotel shook again. It wasn't a single tremor this time, but a deep shuddering that seemed to build and build. Paint flecks and chunks of ceiling rained down around us.
“Let's go!” Stacey shouted, pulling Jacob down the hall with her. I was already on the move myself. We ran, fighting to maintain our balance as the floorboards shifted back and forth beneath our shoes as if we were running through some kind of carnival funhouse. A mirror on the wall shattered, spraying glass shards all over us.
Then the furniture began to levitate, old armchairs and end tables that had gathered cobwebs for a hundred years. These smashed against the walls, one after the other, and the broken chunks of nineteenth-century wood, glass, and nails flew at us, whirling as if carried by a cyclone.
“Take cover!” Stacey shouted.
“No, run!” I countered. “Don't stop.”
The wave of psychokinetic energy was faster than we were, and within seconds we were battered by the debris as we ran. Glass shrapnel scraped across both my hands, and I couldn't help screaming in pain. And fear. Mostly fear.
As we passed the doors to the little bedroom cells, more furniture flew out at us. Antique chairs, a rolltop desk, entire beds, some of which shattered into debris as they hammered their way out the doorframes. Stacey shoved me aside at one point, trying to protect me, and took a bedpost to the elbow for it.
We passed through the next jib door we could find, into the inner service area, and I heard a tremendous crash as all the broken furniture fell to the floor.
The floor itself shook even harder, floorboards popping out of place as if trying to trip us up. The walls in the dark inner rooms cracked and bled plaster dust. I tried to open the doorway to the service stairs, but it was jammed shut. Stacey jabbed at the elevator button while the pressed-tin ceiling bulged down from above. I yanked her aside before a chunk of old copper pipe, tangled in wires, swung down and grazed her head.
An icy calm darkness filled the middle of the room, even as the walls and floor continued to shake around it. The white mask-faces faded into visibility again, their bodies as indistinct as the shades of the dead way down in pagan Hades.
They moved toward us, their voices arriving first, a cloud of voices urging, threatening, cursing us under their breath. My Benedictine chants didn't seem to deter them at all this time.
Stacey added her own music—a mingling of gentle, drowsy electric guitars and a man singing about love backed by an 80's synthesizer sound.
“What is that?” I asked her.
“Uh, Stryper?” she said.
“Seriously? That's what you picked right now?”
“I thought it might be fun to try Christian metal, you know, so I had it set—”
“Get back!” Jacob shouted, in a voice that was so deep, intense, and masculine that I almost developed a crush on him for maybe half an eyeblink. He stomped forward with one foot, and the mob of ghosts hesitated.
It only lasted a second, but during that second, I managed to open the door, and from there it only took a few more seconds for us to flee down the steps.
The door slammed and locked behind us. Fine with me, for the moment.
The quaking abruptly stopped as soon as the door closed. We passed Earl the custodian in the third-floor service area. He looked bored and tired, his nose leaking like before. When I asked whether he'd just felt something like an earthquake, he looked at me like I was crazy. The upstairs had shaken hard enough to crack the walls and pop floorboards loose, but the third floor looked completely unaffected. There was no visible damage, and no guests emerging from their rooms in panic and confusion.
We returned to Stacey's hotel room to lick our wounds, though I couldn't say we felt particularly safe there, either. The soldier patrolled up and down our hall, surrounded by his fallen comrades, who were once again awake and groaning in agony, according to Jacob. And maintaining their ceaseless watch over Stacey and me.
Chapter Fourteen
We tore into our first-aid kit, a big EMT-style one Michael had given me. We were all pretty scraped up and beaten down. I mostly averted my eyes as Stacey took off Jacob's burned, soggy clothing. Even his socks had burn holes in them. The guy had definitely suffered for the cause.
We gathered on the huge and highly comfortable bed to treat each other with burn medication and bandages. I couldn't say I was completely comfortable in that bed, though. I doubted I could be comfortable anywhere in the Lathrop Grand Hotel unless the evil-spirit situation were radically revised.
“So Zagan's in charge,” I said. “Jacob, you're telling me Ithaca Galloway was nowhere to be seen? That woman in the giant portrait upstairs?”
“Yeah, I read the little plate,” he said. “She wasn't really a factor. It was all Captain Smokebeard.”
“I kind of do the disarming nicknames around here,” Stacey said. “But I'll allow it.”
“Maybe she was one of the lesser ghosts?” Jacob suggested. “The face-mask people.”
“I doubt it. I think if she were among them, she'd be prominent. She'd make herself known. She doesn't strike me as a wallflower,” I said.
“Sorry I couldn't help more,” Jacob said.
“You helped a ton,” Stacey told him, leaning against him where he sat against the headboard. “So we aren't going to trust Captain Smokebeard's testimony, are we? When he said it was Stabby Abby we're really after?”
“I'm not putting Zagan's ghost down as 'trustworthy,'” I said. “That's just not my policy with anyone who tries to kill me. Considering that Valentino died right there in the necromantium, the exact room Zagan and company seem to want to protect against outsiders, I would put Zagan and his minions at the top of the suspects list.”
“I wonder what happened to Ithaca Galloway,” Stacey said. “You'd think she would be involved here. She built her whole cult around ghosts.”
“Maybe she already had enough of dealing with ghosts while she was alive,” Jacob said. “I know I have.”
“Let's see if any cameras on the fourth floor are still working.” I slid off the bed and crossed to the bank of monitors. A couple of minor ones remained in the hallways. Everything looked calm and quiet now, but it was a jumbled chaos of broken furniture and loose floorboards. “I hope they have ghost insurance.”
“
Pretty sure you've used that joke before,” Stacey told me.
“Well, maybe Jacob hadn't heard it yet.”
“I have,” Jacob said.
“Okay, fine,” I told them. “So we haven't totally narrowed down our suspects list, but it seems pretty clear that those on four, Zagan and the dead cult of psychics, are probably the most dangerous and definitely the most powerful. It's insane how much power Zagan has. I'll ask Calvin what he thinks about it in the morning.”
“Yeah, how would he get so powerful?” Stacey asked. “Usually these 'master' ghosts are people who were killers in life, and have some dominance over the ghosts of the people they killed...”
“I don't know if that's the case here. This seems like something else.” I picked up Stacey's tablet, the one with the scanned pages from Katherine Moore's book. “I'll have to keep reading and see what I can find.”
“We can all read it,” Stacey said. “Or, better yet, I can rip the scan into a text file and then use a text-to-speech program so we can all listen together. A few of the words might be wrong, but it should mostly work.”
“Sounds good to me.” I grabbed a thick, soft bathrobe from the hanger in the bathroom and tossed it to Jacob, since his clothes had mostly burned away. Then I grabbed a bottle of water from the cooler we'd brought—much cheaper than the mini-bar—and sank into an armchair, watching the monitors while Stacey prepared the file.
I caught Jacob up on Katherine's story so far, as quickly as I could, hoping I wasn't leaving out any key details. Then I paged forward on Stacey's tablet until I reached the last page Grant and I had read, where Katherine had described Ithaca and Zagan's expensive, failed attempts to build the “Mortis Ocularum” for speaking with the dead. Between supporting so many people and blowing huge amounts of money on attempts at building that giant theoretical machine, it was easy to see how Ithaca's fortune could have dwindled away by the end of her life.
“My training continued over months and years,” the tablet recounted in a flat robot voice. “By Mr. Zagan's advice, I restrained myself in the company of Mr. Fletcher, and would not allow him even to touch my hand, for fear I would give into my dangerous fancies of him.”
“Any chance we can use a less unsettling voice?” I asked. “A little less Robbie the Robot?”
“Sure.” Stacey touched the tablet, and the narration turned to a slightly-less-robotic female voice.
“I was initiated as a true member of the group in an elaborate rite, for which I bathed in ritual fashion and fasted for three days in preparation. I was made to swear an oath that death itself would not keep me from our work. Mrs. Galloway intended the hotel to be a bridge between the living and the dead, a place where flesh and spirit might work closely together for higher ends.
“In time, Mr. Zagan himself took greater and greater interest in my instruction. He would bring me to his chamber when Mrs. Galloway was away, and there unleashed life-energies from within me, of a kind I can hardly describe. Though I feared him, I found the pleasures of his attention undeniable, as though he had power of mesmerism over my body as well as my mind. He continued to forbid my interest in the young Mr. Fletcher, sadly.”
“Short version, Zagan kept her apart from the boy she liked and then had an affair with her whenever Ithaca wasn't around,” Stacey said.
“Maybe he was just looking out for her best interests. You know, for the sake of her education,” Jacob said, and Stacey smacked him with a pillow. He wiggled his fingers at her. “Careful! I have powers of mesmerism over your body.”
“I hadn't noticed,” Stacey said.
I waved for them to be quiet.
We listened as Katherine recounted the experiments and activities of the group, allegedly summoning the ghosts of notable dead men and women. She claimed to have conversed with the emperor Caligula and the czarina Catherine the Great, among others. She also seemed to distance herself from the young Scotsman as she grew closer to Gregor, taking her lessons from Gregor instead. I also noted that she took to using “Gregor” instead of “Mr. Zagan.”
“A controversy emerged between Gregor and Mrs. Galloway, leading in time to the schism between them. Mrs. Galloway thought of their work in terms of science and education, of gaining knowledge to be shared with the world, or at least 'the right sort of people.' Gregor was a more ambitious man, and read often from the Testament of Solomon and the associated Keys, and spoke of how Solomon had enslaved demons to build his Temple. He wished to learn to bind spirits in servitude and command them. Mrs. Galloway did not share in this desire and forbade him to attempt any rites concerning the enslavement of spirits.
“The Mortis Ocularum, a device Mrs. Galloway claimed was based on ancient designs rescued from the Library of Alexandria, was never to reach completion despite countless attempts. Perhaps the design itself was useless, but Mrs. Galloway would not hear of it. She worked on it always, sleeping little, eating little. Gregor confided to me that she would take no leisure nor pleasure until she saw the machine complete. Gregor lost faith in the machine and urged her to abandon the idea in pursuit of more fruitful aims. She would not take his counsel, wise as it was.
“In time Mrs. Galloway grew frustrated, and seemed to weary of us. Her luxurious apartments had been worn threadbare by use, and she did nothing to restore them. In time we no longer had servants on the fourth floor, and soon after there was less and less for us to eat. Mrs. Galloway withdrew to her own room and was rarely seen.
“We began to dissolve as a group, some leaving by ones and twos, some lingering but knowing the time to move on had come. Gregor proposed to take the remainder of us westward to find a new direction without Mrs. Galloway. I welcomed this move. I was then twenty-six and frustrated with playing Gregor's junior-wife.”
I listened as Katherine, by way of the text-to-speech program, described how Ithaca eventually wanted nothing more to do with the followers she'd attracted. Zagan and a dozen followers, including Katherine herself, left the hotel on a cold Saturday in January of 1912. By train and then by hiking on foot, living out of bags and tents, they reached the Appalachians. Zagan took them on a cold night hike up to a wide flat area on Blood Mountain with a sweeping view of the mountain range.
“Under starlight, Gregor led us in just the sort of rites Mrs. Galloway had forbidden. Gregor claimed that soon we would have powerful spirits under our command, and then no one could hinder us from any purpose we might hold. He told us he would construct a great Temple there on the ancient mountain, sacred to all the peoples who had ever lived near it, and proclaimed himself lord of all that could be seen from the mountain's peak.
“It was late, and I thought I would die of the painful cold, but Gregor would not be deterred from his vision. He drew circles and figures with chalk on the stony ground. He placed himself within, between the inner and outer circles, and the rest of us outside the circle, our hands extending to touch one another.
“We chanted and envisioned as he instructed. I began to think little would come of it beyond our deaths in the frozen mountain air, but the earth began to tremble beneath us, and the trees to sway and shudder with branches snapping as though blown by a great wind, though no wind touched us.
“Gregor evoked a dark and primordial entity, calling it by names I dare not attempt to recollect, nor would I set such dangerous words into writing if I did remember them exactly. He had once confided in me his belief that demonic entities were, in essence, old human souls from the earliest ages of man, spirits who have grown in power over thousands upon thousands of years and thus transformed into a different kind of Being altogether.
“I do not know whether this is true. I can relate that the entity did indeed arrive, but we were ill-prepared for it.
“A column of black smoke as wide as the outermost chalk circle appeared before us and stretched heavenward, blacking out the stars. It blinded us as it grew, and the smell was more horrid than anything I'd known, a diseased charnel-house stench of fire and flesh. I thought the poiso
ns in the air would cause my death.
“I lost my hold on the hands to either side of me. I ran in a panic. We dispersed, all of us in fear. Most of them I have not seen again since that night, and ten years have now passed.
“Perhaps it was my particular intimacy with Gregor that prevented me from fleeing altogether. I found shelter in a shallow rocky nook, and there waited until the first light of morning. Alone, I returned to the site. The earth was charred in a great circle, the occasional weeds reduced to grains of ash.
“I found him near the center of the circle, and it was difficult to discern him from the blackened earth and stone all around. Only his bones remained, smoke-blackened and twisted into a gruesome position that spoke of great pain. One skeletal hand held forth, as if he had been begging and supplicating before some great force burned him and crushed his bones to the earth.
“Years have passed, and I move restlessly, working where I can, in hotels and other places for the unsettled and unrooted. I welcome no other man into my life, for I am loyal to Gregor. Death is no thick veil, I have learned, and I believe he hears when I speak at night, and waits for my spirit to join with his.
“I have lately heard of Ithaca Galloway's death. Though perhaps misguided near the end, she was my teacher and benefactor, and I hold her in greatest esteem. It is for the both of them that I set out this record, that the world may learn of the great and secret things that happened in the Lathrop Grand Hotel, and the truth shall not be lost.
“Watch for us. Listen for us. Our work has not yet ended.”
The tablet fell silent.
“Well, okay,” Stacey finally said. “Sounds like it was a real freakfest upstairs.”
“It tells us something about your friend Gregor Zagan, too,” Jacob said. “Like he apparently ended up as the cult leader, at least for a few days before he turned himself into toast.”
“And toasting himself in demonfire could explain why his ghost is so charged up and hot. His ghost might be mingled with a much older and more powerful entity,” I said. “Which can only mean fun times ahead for us.”