by Katie Berry
Copyright © 2021 Katie Berry
All rights reserved.
ASIN: B08W1SN1S9
No portions of this book may be reproduced without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by Canadian copyright law.
Published by Fuzzy Bean Books
Cover Art Copyright © 2020 Fiona Jayde Media
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For Craig Charles, may you be at peace.
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Acknowledgements:
Special thanks to Paulina, Maggie, Riel, Betty, Jen, Gord, Gary, Bob, and Michael. Your support, enthusiasm and good humour has meant so much to me as I have put this story together. The insights and input that you provided have helped immensely in the crafting of this tale of dark and lonely places and I thank you most sincerely.
-Katie Berry
FOREWORD
Hello, Dear Reader. Thank you for booking your stay at the Sinclair Resort Hotel. Please make sure to enjoy everything the resort has to offer. You don’t want to miss a thing!
If you have any concerns during your stay here, please contact the concierge service in the lobby, [email protected].
All kidding aside, the novel you hold in your hands has been in the works for several years now. Disappearances, mass and otherwise, have always fascinated me. Growing up, I read about the usual suspects, such as Flight 19, the Mary Celeste, the Roanoke Colony, and of course, the Anjikuni Lake Incident (which is in dispute in some circles).
My mind has always run rampant with the thought of what may have happened at the scenes of these mysterious occurrences. And so, after a lifetime of reading fantastic fiction crafted by the likes of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, Michael Crichton, and hundreds of other amazing authors, I decided it was time to tell the tale that has been floating around in my head for the last few years.
What you hold in your hand is the result of those musings, and I sincerely hope you enjoy ABANDONED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel Book 1. Stay tuned for Book 2 coming in spring of 2021.
Good health and great reads to you all,
-Katie Berry
February 19th, 2021
ABANDONED: A Lively Deadmarsh Novel
Book 1
Katie Berry
“Sometimes, a place is just born bad.”
-Author Unknown
CHAPTER ONE
December 31st, 1981, 2359 hours
Esmeralda Cruz tugged her serving cart back from the elevator doors, a brief flash of recollection making her suddenly anxious. Magnums of Dom Perignon Champagne near the cart’s edge jingled musically from the sudden motion.
After what had happened here a couple of weeks ago, she now stayed well away from this elevator’s doors, and thankfully, had almost forgotten as a result. And that was because part of her didn’t want to remember. She shuddered, her chestnut ponytail bouncing lightly along the nape of her neck, still in disbelief about what she thought she’d seen.
The brass indicator arrow above the doors inched toward the letter ‘B’ on the left-hand side. She sighed and looked at her wristwatch. The second hand on her Timex was sweeping far too rapidly around the dial toward twelve. She was supposed to have this cart of refreshments to the grand ballroom before midnight, but it looked like she might be delayed by a few seconds due to waiting for the elevator. It was something she hadn’t expected and had left the kitchen with very little time to make it upstairs.
With a ping, the elevator arrived. Her breath hitched in her chest as the doors slid apart. It was empty inside, or so it seemed.
A wall of arctic cold rolled from the service elevator’s cramped confines to greet her, embracing her in its frigid folds. Her skin tingled, suddenly gooseflesh. The basement of this resort was usually several degrees cooler than the upper floors, but she’d never experienced anything as extreme as this. The thin fabric of her polyester serving uniform did little to protect her from this bone-chilling cold, and she released the cart handle to rub her hands up and down her arms to gain warmth.
Her heart began to pulse within her chest as she moved toward the doors, each beat feeling as if it might be her last. There were several areas inside this resort that gave her the willies — places where she hated going and avoided if she could at all costs. Number one was the grand ballroom on the main floor, number two was the royal suite on the third floor, and number three stood open just before her.
With a deep inhale, she pushed the cart into the elevator. The champagne jangled as the cart’s wheels bumped across the narrow, black gap leading into the car. Her eyes were locked onto the gap, her knuckles white from the strength of her grip on the cart’s handle. Always slightly panicked in tight spaces, she generally hated going inside any of the elevators at the Sinclair Hotel. But she hated going inside this particular one most of all. After what happened here last time, she’d hoped that she would never have to use this elevator again, especially at night.
It had been her first shift at the resort, and she’d been making a late evening delivery to a catered party in the royal suite. Much like tonight, not wanting to spill anything, she’d been pushing the cart ever so slowly over the small black gap between the shaft wall and the elevator car.
A faint, almost inaudible voice, suddenly came to her, whispering something over and over.
Sound carried exceptionally well along the basement’s network of concrete service passageways. At first, she’d thought it had been a co-worker conversing in a low voice with someone, just out of sight, around another turn in the corridor. And yet, she hadn’t seen anyone nearby on her way to the elevator.
Halfway onto the lift she heard the voice again and paused, peering out into the hallway a final time, but saw no one there. She’d continued pushing the cart inside, then glanced downward as the second set of wheels rolled with a bump across the small gap.
And then she’d screamed.
There, just for the briefest of moments near the cart’s wheels, fingers appeared. The nails were raw, broken and bloody, clawing forth from the black gap as if some damned soul were seeking purgatory’s escape.
Not caring if she spilled anything now, she thrust the cart the rest of the way in, turning it to fit in one panicked motion. She turned back to the door, about to shriek again, but the fingers were gone. Esmeralda was pressed back against the cold steel of the elevator car, her eyes riveted on the black gap. Had she only imagined the fingers? Leaning reluctantly toward the narrow slit, she called out in a timid voice, “Is anyone down there?”
There had been no reply, and she’d pounded the third-floor button to close the doors as quickly as she could, hoping desperately not to see the fingers reappear as the doors slowly squealed shut.
; On the ride up that afternoon, she’d vowed to avoid this elevator at all costs in the future, and yet here she now stood. With a shudder, she returned to the present. There were no fingers tonight, and she was thankful for that. The lift doors slid closed with a squeal like long fingernails scraping across a chalkboard.
She shuddered again, watching her breath steam from her parted lips. Loosening her death-grip on the cart handle, she jabbed the lobby call button several times with her thumb, trying to hasten her trip to the main floor. With each hand crossed to the opposing arm, she rubbed herself, trying to keep warm. After a moment, the lift’s ancient electric motor kicked in, and it began raising her to ground level.
For whatever reason, this hotel was cold in the strangest of places, but not consistently so. The cold spots had a habit of coming and going. One day she would feel a chill while working in a particular part of the hotel, but other days she’d be back to the same spot and not feel it at all. There seemed to be no rhyme nor reason to it. But she’d never experienced a cold like this in any other areas inside the hotel before, except perhaps the kitchen’s walk-in freezer.
She wrinkled her nose slightly at the serving cart’s other occupants. Chilled mounds of beluga caviar, flaky snow crab meat and piles of jumbo shrimp glistened in the elevator’s dim light. Esmeralda was eager to deliver this aromatic cargo to its final destination, the smorgasbord in the main ballroom. Though she envied the people who would soon partake of this repast, she was more preoccupied with thoughts of her own late-night dinner date with the handsome new maintenance man she’d just met last week.
A cheer went up, and with loud fanfare, Baby New Year 1982 toddled onto the scene. The first, bass-heavy blasts of Auld Lang Syne bounced down from the ballroom above, courtesy of the swing-pop band, the Glenn Millers. She began humming along with the music.
Sudden darkness consumed her world, and the elevator lurched to a squealing stop. Esmeralda held her breath for a moment, waiting. A loud click came from the ceiling above, and the emergency power came on. Behind yellow glass, an ageing bulb struggled to light. It buzzed for a moment, brightening to an almost eye-shielding level of brightness, and then it dimmed to the colour of concentrated urine, doing little to dispel the gloom inside the small space. Esmeralda let out another breath she didn’t realise she was holding, and it plumed from her mouth like she’d just exhaled after taking a puff on a cigarette.
The resort had been suffering electrical blackouts over the last few weeks, starting just before Esmeralda began her employment at the Sinclair. She’d bumped into Elmer from electrical maintenance the other day, and he’d told her he’d been looking into the problem, but obviously, he’d yet to solve it. She never knew when the resort would be plunged once more into blackness.
Trying to reassure herself, she was about to begin humming along with the music when she realised there was none. At the Christmas eve gala last week, another blackout had occurred at a banquet and dance she’d been working. There’d been the expected murmurs of discontent when it went dark, but it had all been accompanied by the continuing music of the band as they played.
Tonight, she strained to hear anything, any sound at all, but there was nothing — no music or drunken shouts of dismay at the unexpected darkness, absolutely nothing. The musicians working the event at the last outage were the same ones as tonight. That time, they’d continued to play until the power came back on. It made sense they would do so since most of that band was not on any sort of electric amplifier, except the keyboard and bass player. Plus, the music had kept the partygoers relatively calm. But not tonight; tonight was different. The music had just ended, suddenly turned off like a radio in mid-tune as if the band had never really been there in the first place. It was quiet as a morgue above her head.
The fluorescent light panel overhead suddenly flickered back on, and the lift groaned to life. The crystal on Esmeralda’s Timex wristwatch revealed that she’d only been in the semi-dark for about fifteen seconds. She was more than relieved when the doors finally pinged open on the main floor. She stepped out, rolling the cart before her. Breathing deeply, she enjoyed the stale and slightly musty, but gloriously unconfined air of the rear service passageway. And thankfully, it was much warmer up here as well, the bone-chilling cold now gone.
Esmeralda was still getting to know her way around the place. Hired for a room service attendant/bus girl position, she was almost always in awe of the majestic old hotel’s beautiful decor around her as she went about her delivery duties. On several occasions, she’d found herself getting lost within the intricate maze of corridors and rooms that comprised the interior of the massive old brick and stone building. Sometimes, as she made her room service drops, the corridors didn’t lead to where she thought they should, and on more than one occasion found herself at a dead end. But other times, she would come out in a completely different part of the hotel than she’d expected. It seemed as if the corridors changed direction as she pushed her cart through them, turning her around on purpose. She knew that wasn’t possible, however, and figured it was just another example of her poor sense of direction.
Thankfully, this evening, she had been spared all of room service’s mindless mundanities. Tonight, she was serving the West Coast’s best and brightest writers, directors, and actors, as well as their significant others — the TV people, as she called them. They were all attending an award show and dinner-dance at the resort to celebrate the new year as well as the accomplishments of the West Coast’s burgeoning television and film industry. It was an annual thing, running at the hotel since it had first been chosen as the site for the award show back in 1963.
She’d been amazed to learn one of her favourite shows, The Littlest Hobo, was filmed by some of the beautiful people in the ballroom. She smiled as she thought of the television show, and the magnificent dog that starred in it, as well as that American show with the other equally amazing dog, Lassie. Those were two programmes of which she tried not to miss a single episode, whenever she had a chance to watch the TV.
Despite having to work on such a romantic evening of the year, Esmeralda really didn’t mind, since she would soon be spending a romantic late-night dinner date with Fernando from maintenance. They had met while going about their duties at the resort. After pushing her room service cart down yet another wrong corridor, Esmeralda had been in the process of turning around and he’d just been there, behind her in the passage all of a sudden like he’d materialised out of thin air. She’d let out a small squeak of fright and automatically apologised through force of habit in Spanish.
When the handsome maintenance man replied in her native tongue, she’d been surprised. After some kind words to melt her heart, he’d asked her out on a date for New Year’s Eve after her shift, and she’d said yes. She felt quite flattered that such a good-looking young man was interested in her. Esmeralda’s English was quite good, but it was always nice to have a native speaker of her home language around to talk to when she felt homesick. Plus, Fernando was incredibly easy on the eyes as well, more handsome than any other man she remembered seeing in her brief nineteen years on the planet. He should be a star with his dark hair, deep-blue eyes, and straight white teeth. In fact, he was so good looking, she thought he should be inside the room attending the ball with the TV people as well.
All of these thoughts and more were swirling through Esmeralda’s head as she wheeled the cart along the passageway toward the rear entrance of the grand ballroom. The absence of any sound soon came back to haunt her, and she felt a chill scuttle along the nape of her neck as all thoughts of joy and pleasure disappeared.
Pushing the cart through the rear service door into the back of the ballroom, Esmeralda’s first thought was that she must have entered the wrong room by mistake. Perhaps she’d gotten a bit turned around, lost as she was with thoughts of Fernando at the forefront of her mind as he so often was these days. There were three ballrooms at the Sinclair Hotel, but only one of them was in use this evening
, and that was the grand ballroom. She backed up through the doors, meaning to look at the room number, thinking that surely she must have gotten confused.
A deep, rumbling voice at her back gave her a start. “Esmeralda! What do you think you’re doing? Watch where you’re going!” Leonard Hunter, the kitchen and banquet manager for the evening, crowded into the open doorway behind her, agitatedly trying to peer through.
With a shriek, Esmeralda jolted as if electrified, her hands spasming briefly, the frosty bottles of champagne threatening to topple over. She turned to Hunter and said with a tremor, “I’m so sorry, sir! I thought I was in the wrong ballroom and wanted to double-check the number.”
“Why? What’s the matter?” he asked, straining to see past her, eager to get into the room to make sure the guests were not in too much distress after the power outage.
“Something’s wrong in there,” Esmeralda said in a hushed voice. As she finished talking, she saw that Leonard Hunter was already looking over her petite brown head into the room beyond, his mouth now hanging agape. She turned back toward the room, her eyes wide and unblinking.