Speed Dating With the Dead (13 page)

“You’re fired,” she said into the phone, barely controlling the tremor of rage in her voice.

“Fired by the forge below, Miss Mays. The sweetboy tried to tell you, but you only believe what you want to believe, right?”

No one else had been around when Cody had mentioned demons to her. She gripped the phone and glanced into the closet. The shadows had crept closer to the bed.

No, not possible
.

She was letting Cody’s imagination get to her. If she believed the shadows belonged in the corners of the room, then they had to stay there.

Paranoia. Pending change. Fear of the unknown.

It all boiled down to loss of control.

“I’m coming down,” she said. “You better be clocked out and gone or else I’ll have you arrested for trespassing. And there better not be so much as a teaspoon missing or you’ll be up for embezzlement, too.”

Embezzlement was a simple threat. She could alter the hotel inventory and hold any employee accountable: Violet for petty cash, Rosalita for sheets and towels, and this nameless crud for kitchenware. And just like an accused child molester was ruined whether the charge was bogus or not, an employee with such a black mark would never work in the area again.

“A little white lie never hurt anybody,” said the voice on the phone. Except the voice sounded like
voices
—a chorus talking in unison.

The shadows now covered the floor. Janey eyed the bedroom door. Even if she made it, she’d still have to cross the rest of the way to the hall. The floor no longer looked solid, the carpet roiling and undulating.

“Come on down, Miss Mays,” said the voices. “What are you waiting for?”

She let the phone drop onto the bed. The darkness on the floor was like an abyss of ink, and she expected the bed to sink into it at any moment. Instead, the ink began to rise like a tide.

Janey clicked the phone signal dead and punched the extension for maintenance. The phone rang twice, and then the line crackled.

“Maintenance.”

“J.C. Thank God.”

“Nobody’s ever said them words together before, Miss Mays.”

“There’s a leak in 226,” she said. “Hurry.”

“What kind of leak?”

Sewer? Water? A crack in hell?

“It’s staining the carpet,” she said.

“You know that boiler in the basement?”

“Don’t worry about it.”

“I think that’s the problem.”

“What’s that got to do with a leak on the second floor?” The leak was rising fast, at least a foot above floor level.

“It’s stored up a whole lot of dark over the years, and it finally blew a gasket.”

“When can you get here?”

“Oh, two days or so.”

 ”J.C.?”

“
That’s one of our names.”
The voices had blended together again. Janey cut the connection.

The dark, oily shadows were now a couple of feet from the bottom of the mattress. She imagined how cold the water was–
no, it’s a shadow, not water
–and what it would be like to wade across it to escape. Assuming the floor was still there beneath it. The shadows had also swelled out from the corners and were
closer
now, as if forming solid columns of darkness.

She was afraid of what the phone would do to her next, but she couldn’t release the handset. Risking her balance, she leaned over and reached into her night stand drawer. She tried to keep her eyes away from the darkness, but she couldn’t help glancing down. The shadowy sea robbed her of her focus, and she recalled that saying about staring into the abyss until it stared back. Finally she blinked and realized her hand was inside the drawer.

She felt past the paperbacks, vibrators, jewelry, and cigarette packs until she found the gun.

Its cool grip gave her comfort, and she drew the weapon into the room. It was a .38 revolver, simple to load and use, but she couldn’t remember if she’d put bullets in it. She fished several from the drawer and laid them on the night stand. One rolled free and fell into the black haze. It didn’t hit bottom.

Janey shoved a couple of bullets into their round slots inside the cylinder, and then clicked the weapon closed. She wasn’t sure what she would shoot, though. She played the gun around the room, hoping a real target would emerge. After all, what good would a bullet do against the absence of light?

The ink was now six inches from the top of the mattress. It made neither a gurgling sound nor the hiss of escaping air, and its silence was more terrifying than an odd liquid noise would have been.

Feeling a little safer with the gun in her hand, she dialed the in-house connection again. Rhonda was at the front desk, smacking and chomping her gum.

“Ya?” Rhonda said, in her usual distracted fashion.

“Janey here. Everything okay?”

Because if it is, then
I’m
the one who needs a little rewiring.

“One of the guests walked out of the bar and took a whiz in the potted plant, but other than that, nothing unusual for a Friday night with a special on Coronas.”

The shadow was lapping at the top of the mattress, its persistent tide working the edge of the bedspread. She smiled. This couldn’t be happening, because things like this were impossible. And in the world of Janey Mays, the impossible had no place.

And—

Drugs
.

It would be just like those vengeful, snot-nosed slaves to spike her coffee with LSD or Ecstacy or whatever mindblower the kids used these days. And that would make every cracked piece of the puzzle fit. Hallucinations, disorientation, paranoia, cold sweats, heart palpitations.

“Do you know what happens in two days?” Janey asked as a test.

“Sure, I’m off, but then I’m scheduled the rest of the week until Friday.”

“Good,” Janey said.

“The only trouble is the goddamned hotel is going to be bulldozed,” Rhonda said. “What’s going to happen to me then?”

“How did you—”

“I know everything.” The voices blended into the unwholesome chorus. “Battle Axe.”

Maybe the hotel wasn’t a living thing, with its own memories and desires. Maybe those belonged to something deeper, something that dwelled in the basement.

“That’s one of our names.”

Maybe more than one thing lived in the basement.

Janey let the phone slip into her lap. She leaned forward and gazed into the abyss. Now it was staring back.

One last try, one last test, one last link to the sane, real world.

She dialed 9-1-1.

The phone made a strange noise and she looked at the digital readout on the handset. 6-6-6.

She punched the “9” and the “6” appeared.

Janey giggled, pointing the gun across the room as the shadows crept over the edge of the mattress. A little inner voice–remarkably similar to that of the demented kitchen worker–whispered “
Swim for it, Janey
.”

She let out a cracked laugh and rose on the bed, the bedsprings groaning beneath her. She took a long step, the cold gelid blackness oozing around one ankle, and then she launched herself, a crippled swan dive, the gun clenched in one fist.

She hit without splashing, flailing her arms for traction, but there was nothing to push against.

Nothing.

And then she was under.

Chapter 18

Dad would never find her here.

He probably wouldn’t even notice she was missing until it was Sunday afternoon and time to pack up. That took some of the steam out of her anger. No need to waste a good temper tantrum.

She wedged into the tiny break room, plopping her sketch pad on the scarred wooden desk. A glass ashtray overflowed with wrinkled, yellowed butts. A stack of magazines leaned precariously—
Sports Illustrated, Motor Racing Digest
,
People
, magazines for people who couldn’t read. An auto parts store’s calendar on the wall was three years out of date, and a shelf was piled with cleaning supplies, oily hardware, and dented cans of paint.

Mom, looks like we’ve painted ourselves into a corner.

It was an old game, one they played in those early years when “Mommy was okay, but the doctors just want to make sure.” They’d get out the color pencils, oil pastels, and watercolors, create strange houses and gardens, and then work all the way up to one corner of the page. When only a little white was left, Mom would give the trademark “Looks like we’ve painted ourselves into a corner. Two choices: stay stuck, or more paper.”

Kendra opened her pad.
No choice. Only more paper
.

“Hey.”

Kendra nearly knocked over the magazines. She calmed herself, because she didn’t want the little twerp to know she was startled. She remembered the name his dad yelled at him.

“Bruce, don’t you know it’s rude to sneak up on people?”

“I didn’t sneak up. I was already here.”

Now she smelled the licorice, so powerful that she didn’t know how she missed it. Probably because of the rank, tarry odor of the cigarettes. Bruce sat on a worn plaid couch, cotton oozing from its arms like clouds exiled from a summer sky. He had a black eye, and the eyeball surrounded by the puffy skin was bloodshot and dewy.

“You bump your head?”
Or did your daddy bump it for you?

“Yeah. On Rochester’s fist.”

“Rochester?”

Bruce shrugged. “Ah, he’s a big bully. Never mind him.”

“This place looks like a good hideout,” she said, her annoyance subdued by sympathy.

“Well, the only folks who know about it are those who been around a while.”

“How long have you been here?”

He shrugged again. “I’m a kid. It feels like forever.”

“Does your dad work here?” She couldn’t believe she was actually tolerating the twerp, much less making conversation. But after being around grownups for so long, the change was a little refreshing. Plus he looked like he could use a friend.

“Yeah. My mom’s dead, too. How come you draw so much?”

My mom’s dead, too?
“It’s what I do. Everybody’s got a gimmick, right?”

“Can I see?”

Kendra slid the pad over to the edge of the desk. “Knock yourself out.”

Bruce moved from the couch, the licorice aroma stronger now, and behind it came that rank, fishy stench. The boy could stand a bath.

“It looks like the third floor,” Bruce said. “Those kids look funny, like they’re from a cartoon.”

Kids?
Kendra checked the rendering of the hallway. It was a pretty quick perspective job, the angles of the hallway receding toward the horizon to the vanishing point. No great shakes, even with the decorative table, vase, and plastic flowers on them. She’d fuzzed in some lines to capture the shadowed areas, planning to cross-hatch them with ink later and throw in some sort of spook for the fun of it, or maybe Emily Dee with a samurai sword or something for the manga crowd.

“It’s just a hallway,” she said. “I’m not finished yet.”

“Do you always put faces in your pictures?”

“Another gimmick. I want to do my own comic books when I grow up. I figure since my dad already has a name in the paranormal world, it will be easier to get a publisher. Go out as ‘The Digger’s Daughter.’“

Bruce leaned closer. Kendra usually didn’t let anyone see her work in progress, but she figured the kid would be good for some ideas. Except the fish smell was overpowering now that he was an arm’s-length away.

“So, got any ghost stories?” she said, expecting the same urban-legend crap the front desk had dished out. “Anything weird happen to you here?”

He touched the paper with his fingertip and traced out a shape. Then she saw it, the deeper shading where she had turned her pencil lead sideways and raked out a series of zig-zags. It looked like two small figures standing at the back of the hallway, waiting in the shadows.

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” he said, with a shudder in his voice.

“Smart.”

“Will you draw a picture just for me?” One corner of his mouth lifted in a weak attempt at a smile, and his pale, injured face looked so forlorn and pitiful that Kendra felt ashamed for thinking of him as a twerp. After all, if her mother hadn’t died, she might have had a little brother and–

She looked away from the hollow eyes and the glistening, bruised flesh around his nose. “Sure thing, Bruce. You want Spiderman or Batman?”

“I don’t believe in heroes, either. Draw something scary. Like the two kids.”

Kendra flipped the sketch pad to a clean sheet and began roughing in the end of the break room. “Sure. I’ll have them sitting on that couch like they’re going to bite the legs off whoever comes in the door.”

Bruce giggled, and the sound gave a flat echo off the walls. The kid had moved a little closer, and the room was too small for such intrusion on her personal space. But probably he just wanted to see her work.

“I don’t know what they look like, so I’ll make one fat and one skinny,” she said.

“Dorrie’s the fat one,” he said. “She eats all the cupcake crumbs when everybody’s asleep.”

The kid’s got a good imagination. He’s probably like me— his dad leaves him to entertain himself so he escapes into his own little world.

“Is this fat enough?” She squiggled out a peanut shape. “Man, she’s totally breaking the couch in two. Whoever walks in the door is going to lose their legs
and
their arms.”

Kendra rounded out the figure and went to the next, glancing up so she could get the perspective right. “There’s Dorrie, fat as a donut hole,” she said. “Now for–”

Jesus.

For a split second, Dorrie was sitting there, pouting in a plain brown frock, hair in a terrible page cut that made her face look even rounder. Her fists were clenched on her knees, as if she were going to spring up from the couch and punch somebody. Twelve, maybe, swollen with her first period, confused about the changes of her body, chunky boobs already sagging.

Kendra blinked and the vision cleared. “Man, I hope Dorrie doesn’t mind being ugly.”

“I wouldn’t say that if I were you.”