McGrave's Hotel (14 page)

“You’re her
sister
?” said James. “There are
two
of you?”

“
Two
of us?’ said the spider. “Don’t make me laugh. I am of the class Arachnida. There are
hundreds
of us. We are all in the employ of the Third Reich, loyal supporters of
der Fuhrer
. The money we will make from this marriage will greatly benefit our cause. Indeed, the money made from similar marriages tonight around the planet will benefit our cause. Now, before you make me angry,
where
is my sister?”

“She was in the hotel wine cellar the last time I saw her,” said James, bristling that this vile creature was not only a spider but also a Nazi spider. “Someone had just cut off her head.”

The spider’s entire body vibrated. She shook her head from side to side, and her enormous fangs emerged from her wide mouth.

“Which of you ith rethponthible for that?” she said. Her eyes darted back and forth from James to Fawn.

“That would be me,” said a female voice behind the spider. It was Queen Siti who had slipped open the door. Her sword was at the ready. “I thought you youngsters might need an escort back to your rooms,” she added.

Like pieces on a chessboard, the figures in the room moved from square to square. James and Fawn sidled over to the wall beside the bed. The spider made a knight move toward the window. The well-armed mummy warrior took two steps forward, kicking the door closed behind her.

The spider was trapped.

“Curtheths,” she said, then turned, skittered across the floor, and hurled herself through the window to the accompanying cry of shattering glass. A blast of cold air entered the room.

“Oh my gosh,” James said. He raced across the room and peered out as far as he could. Looking down, he couldn’t see where the spider had fallen, only the distant lights below. He flipped over on his back and looked straight up. There he saw her, scampering up the side of the building like King Kong.

“She’s headed for the roof,” he said. “We have to follow.”

James slid back inside and turned quickly to Queen Siti. “Thank you for saving us again. You’ve been super. Still, you shouldn’t risk being seen. We’ll take it from here.”

On the rooftop, prior activity had attracted a considerable crowd even
before
James and Fawn arrived. Mr. Nash was already there with a half dozen men in black rain slickers. Walter Quinn was there with his camera, and Dr. Otto stood by with his attaché case. The gargoyles gazed skyward.

The cause of all the interest floated thirty feet above the rooftop. There hovered a medium range German airship, a massive dirigible with swastikas painted on its rudder. It looked like a large silver sausage hanging in space. The latest addition to this spectacle was Frau Grimm’s sister, dangling below the crew quarters from a silken strand, like a pocket watch from a fob.

Strong ropes had kept the ship tethered to the building, but the crew was disengaging them as everyone watched. The great airship was about to depart.

“Jim, boy,” shouted Mr. Nash. “We can’t let her get away. According to these gents, she’s a German spy, and she’s already stowed secret government documents on that ship.”

Even higher in the still-dark sky, the ever-present black cloud erupted in lightning flashes, as though it were photographing the activity on the roof.

“The ship has been in New York for days,” said Mr. Nash. “It was hiding in our little rain cloud up there.”

James thought back on all his parents had taught him. Then he remembered that it was almost morning, and that stirred a favorite memory. “I’ll be right back,” he said to Fawn. “Wait here.”

Using the stairwell, James ran down two flights, skipping the penthouse floor in which Death himself was no doubt cooking up an apocalyptic retribution for a boy who has kept his only daughter out hours past curfew. There was no point facing
that
scene until absolutely necessary. A boy may as well deal with a Nazi airship first.

On the next floor, James found what he expected: a copy of the morning newspaper outside each guest room door. He snapped one up and hurried back to the roof.

“You will all bow to the might of the Third Reich,” the spider-woman screamed as she dangled in the night. “And Egypt will burn for killing my sister.”

James had already knelt on the roof and spread out a two-page sheet of the newspaper. He carefully gathered each of the four corners and brought them together, pinching them between his thumb and forefinger. By giving the paper a little shake, he caused it to take on the form of a ball or globe. Fawn looked on, fascinated.

“I need something to hold these bits together,” he said, looking up at her. “May I have your hairclip?”

Fawn removed the spider clip from her hair and handed it to him. It crushed James to know he was about to destroy it.

“Someone else?” James said. “May I borrow a match?”

One of the men in black jackets obliged him. Everyone on the roof seemed intrigued by the boy’s take-charge attitude and watched to see what would happen next.

James struck the match, then used it to set four different parts of the paper globe ablaze.

For a few seconds, the four sections burned separately, and then all at once the paper became one solid fire globe, the size of a basketball. Next, in a surprising turn of events, the blazing sphere began to rise in the air. It looked like a magic trick.

“The hot gas inside is lighter than air,” James explained. “My dad and I used to make these all the time.”

The fire ball rose and rose, eventually seeming to target the dirigible. It shot right up into the airship’s midsection. There was a brief spell of blackness during which everyone assumed the newspaper fire balloon had expired, and then all at once
KA-BOOOOOM
as the entire airship erupted in flame. The ship had apparently been filled with hydrogen, not the best gas to use if the sky is subject to fire balloons. The great yellow-orange flame revealed the fragile metal framework that had defined the ship’s shape, as though the craft had been x-rayed. By sunrise, it would be a massive red-glowing cinder hissing under the spray from the fire engines parked between the buildings.

Meanwhile, as the fiery spectacle lit the sky over New York City, the crew of four leaped one by one to the safety of the roof. The spider Nazi herself had to choose between a fiery end and lowering herself down on her silken lifeline. She grumpily chose the latter, and the men in black coats rushed to arrest them all. They used
lots
of handcuffs.

Special Delivery

From outside the door to Death’s penthouse suite, standing in that dismal corridor of despair and regret, James and Fawn could hear what sounded like an intense thunderstorm. The floor shook from the gigantic rumbles emerging from the room, not from any storm, but from the storm preceding Noah’s flood, fierce end-of-the-world cracks of anger and discontent.

Neither wanted to knock on the door and face the consequences. They both stared straight ahead. Fawn’s shoes and dress were still sticky from her being wrapped up as a spider’s midnight snack.

“I had the best time tonight, James,” she said. “I want you to know. I seldom have a nice time anywhere. But tonight, wow. I had a lovely dinner with a boy in uniform. I watched you scold a second-rate Casanova. I helped you find a lost mummy and put her back together. I jumped into some misty afterworld with you. I saw ghosts and vampires. I was chased and almost eaten by two insane spider monsters. I got to see you set a Zeppelin on fire. You really know how to show a girl a good time.”

“I’ve broken a promise to Death,” James said. “You, fortunately, are safe except for a well-deserved scolding. I, unfortunately, am doomed.”

He had to get it over with, so he reached forward and knocked on the door.

As the door opened to Mr. Wu’s touch, the thunderclaps ceased instantly. The silence was almost more frightening than the noise.

Mr. Wu nodded briefly to them.

“Master James, Miss Fawn,” he said. “Dinner is concluded?”

“Uh, yes, sir,” James said.

“Master James, Miss Fawn’s father would like to speak to you, please.”

“Yes, I thought he might,” said James.

Mr. Wu directed James into the master bedchamber.

The draperies were closed, cloaking the nightscape, and although there was a lamp burning on the nightstand by the bed, its light was almost too feeble to see by. Death was sitting on the edge of the bed, at least that was the best James could make out, for Death was so dark he seemed to consume light.

An arm of pale ivory protruded from Death’s robes and gestured for James to be seated in a chair near the bed.

“Fawn enjoyed her night?” Death wheezed. It was the sound of an old man gasping for air.

“Yes, sir,” said James. “I believe she did.”

James became a little more comfortable. For a boy who had lost his entire family, and who had faced all manner of peril on any given night, perhaps Death was not so frightening after all. Still, the special effects were impressive.

“Yes, I thought she might,” Death continued, still almost breathlessly. “Thank you for giving her that. It is both my fortune and misfortune to know who will live and who will die. I knew that neither of you was in such danger tonight. Of course the night would have been less thrilling for you both if you had the confidence of that knowledge.”

“It was indeed thrilling, sir,” said James. “It still is.”

James guessed that Death must have been aware of everything that happened during the night.

“You have seen me before, yes?” Death said. “Before tonight?”

James had been trying to work that out throughout the night, ever since Death had first walked into McGrave’s. Now he remembered clearly at last: Death had been the apparition in the mirror. James had once thought it was a ghost, then later decided it was only his imagination.

“Yes, sir,” he said. “The night my parents died.”

“I had almost visited you that night,” Death said. “Your parents composed a message for you. Alas, such visits are frowned upon in my charter, and so I changed my mind and turned away.”

James’s heart leaped.

“I think you have been looking for this,” Death said. “It is the least I can do for a boy who has spent the night protecting my daughter.”

Death reached into the folds of his robes and produced a small piece of parchment that glowed in the dark. He passed it over to James with a skeletal hand.

The glowing sheet bore writing that James recognized at once as his mother’s. The sheet itself, delicate in his grasp, was not of this earth. James instinctively knew it was from the world beyond the living.

The note read:

Darling boy,

It is with heavy heart that I am writing to you in this manner. If you ever receive this, you will know by now that we are no longer with you.

Something must have gone wrong with our mission to have created this situation. It is odd that your dad and I can no longer recall what that mission was, as priorities are different here. All we know is that no mission, not even one that had vast consequences for the well-being of nations, should have been as important as our number one mission: to share life with you.

You were our greatest joy and always will be.

Your dad and I wish you a long and adventurous life. We hope you find love and surround yourself with it.

Remember us, but don’t feel too sad if you don’t. Life is best lived in the present, and time is too precious to waste dwelling on the past or worrying about the future. The present we enjoyed with you was the bee’s knees.

Hang in there, kiddo.

Love,

Mom and Dad

A tear fell from James’s face and landed squarely on the word
Love
. When it did, the word glowed extra bright on the page.

The page in James’s hands then fell slowly apart, like tissue paper when it is soaked, until it disintegrated into tiny glowing bits sifting to the floor. James felt as if his hands had betrayed him, that somehow he had caused the note to vanish. The note was gone but the words lingered, for James was a boy with a snapshot memory.

For the first time in nearly a year, he wept. His shoulders shook as he let his feelings go. How alone he felt. He still remembered his mother and father, but someday he knew he wouldn’t. Already their images were fading in the photo album of his mind.

A cadaverous hand reached out and patted him on the shoulder.

James didn’t recall when or how Death left the room or when and how Fawn arrived. All he knew was that she was with him.

“James?” her voice said.

James quickly raked his forearm across his eyes, trying to wipe them dry. A painful lump burned in his throat. He flushed with embarrassment.

“Are you okay?” she said.

“Oh, sure. Sure. It was just … dusty in here.