The Haunted Halls (13 page)

Chapter Twelve

Lying next to the faint trace of an invisible form, Timothy was brought through another doorway in his mind that he thought was nailed shut for good.
Sarah
unlocked the gate and ushered him back to his darker past…

January, 2011

Beth Marston was his saving grace. The guilt that had haunted his daydreams since dumping the body of Shannon Huber at the Grayson Quarry had eaten him alive. He moved from Gilford, Colorado to Meadville, Pennsylvania two days after the act of rage. Nestled into this dull little town, he tried to find his way back to a normal life. It took nearly four years to do so. He met Beth at a party held by one of his co-workers from Big Lots.

They hit it off and dated for almost two years. In that time, she encouraged him to work on his horror blog. They were both into horror movies and other things of a macabre nature. They attended the
Bodies
cadaver art exhibit in Philadelphia and would often picnic in cemeteries. Beth was a darker type of girl and he felt she better suited the post-Shannon version of himself.  He began to feel like he could tell her anything and finally, one night, he did. 

They were enjoying a documentary on Charles Manson and had worked their way through half a bottle of whiskey, most of which he’d consumed. Beth took a swig and turned to him with a sly grin that usually meant she had something fun on her mind.

“Do you think you could ever kill somebody?” she said.

The question would have made him nervous if not for the booze in his system. “I don’t know,” he said.

“Come on, you have to answer.” She handed him the liquor bottle.

“Could you?” He took the whiskey.

“Oh yeah, I’d kill somebody…for the right reason.”

He took a pull from the bottle and smiled.

“What?”

“Nothing, I would too,” he said.

“”You would too? Kill someone for the right reason?”

“Yeah,” he said, and for some reason added, “I already have.”

He told her about how he had caught Shannon fucking another guy in their bed, and then how he had just lost it and smashed her head in.

“Very funny, Tim.” She grabbed the whiskey back from him.

“Beth, I’m serious. I know it sounds fucked up, but I mean, you know me. You know I’m not some cold-blooded psychopath. I just couldn’t stand to look at her lying face,” he said.

“Okay, now you’re starting to creep me out a little,” she backed away from him and looked in his eyes. She saw the truth in them. “What the fuck are you saying–you
killed
your ex-girlfriend?”

“Beth, I thought you of all people would understand.  I mean you said you wanted to kill Bryan after you caught him cheating.”

“My God, Tim, I said I
wanted
to kill him. Jesus Christ, I was pissed, I was hurt. What the fuck did
you
do?” She moved farther away from him.

He reached out a hand to ease her worries. “Beth, come on, it’s not like that.”

She yanked her arms away from him, “Don’t–don’t touch me.”

“Beth…”

She ran to the bed, grabbing her coat up off the edge.

“Beth, wait a minute.” He grabbed her upper arm as she passed him on her way toward the door.

She pulled free, went to the door, and turned the knob.

As she began to open the door, he drove his forearm into the back of her head, smashing her, face first, into the heavy wood. She crumpled to the floor. He paced back and forth running his hands through his hair. She slowly turned around. Blood ran down from her upper lip where her front teeth had punctured the soft tissue.

“Uhhh…” she moaned, placing her hands on the floor. She was trying to get up.

“Fuck, fuck,” he said, pacing back and forth. She struggled to get her feet under her.

“L-let me go,” she said, her mouth painted in crimson.

“I thought you loved me,” he said.

“Love you? I don’t even know who you are.” She lunged for the door.

“No!” Timothy backhanded her with a closed fist, spinning her around .She slid back down to the floor. Tears fell from his eyes as he walked over to the corner of the room. “I’m sorry.” He grabbed the electric guitar she had bought him for Christmas.

“Tim…what…what are you going to do…no…no–” Her words were halted as the solid body of the Gibson Les Paul smashed into her face. On the second strike, she was dead. He dropped the instrument and fell to his knees, sobbing at the feet of the girl who had loved a killer.

…..

Present Day

“I think this was the room Kenneth went in.” Jeff stood before the door to room 230.  Rhiannon stayed back as he stepped up and placed his ear to the door. The room was quiet, the hallway too. They continued down to the stairwell at the east end of the building. Satisfied that no one was partying or getting beaten, Jeff led Rhiannon back downstairs.

Once they were at the front desk they finally had a chance to catch each other up on their wild night of events. By the end of the conversation, both were at a loss for words.

“So, how much do you believe the old stories?”  Rhiannon said.

“What stories?” Jeff leaned against the desk and scratched at an itch on the back of his neck. “You mean the ghost of the Bruton Inn or whatever?”

Rhiannon picked up her coffee cup with both hands. “Yeah, I mean, you’ve been here a lot longer than me. I remember when Kurt and I got hired, the maintenance guy mentioned how the other workers had quit because they were so afraid.”

Jeff gazed at her. He’d heard all of the rumors, but waited for her to finish.

“I thought they were dumb broads who watched too many ghost hunter shows. Now…” her voice trailed off.

Jeff had never believed the ghost stories. He knew there had been some deaths at the hotel, but he never thought they were related in any way. This night, in all of its fucked up glory, had burrowed beneath his flesh. He looked to her and said, “And now?”

“Now,” she said, “I’m starting to wonder.”

Chapter Thirteen

Rhiannon slept, making uncomfortable faces against the soft pillow beneath her head. She had every right to whatever horrible dream she was probably having. She’d stayed with Jeff downstairs until his relief came on at six. Now, they were up in his room. She had the bed, he agreed to just take the couch. They could have grabbed a room with the beds, but he didn’t want to have to move his things. Jeff grabbed his backpack of clothes and moved into the bathroom. He took off his hotel uniform and threw on his pajama bottoms and an old faded t-shirt. He looked at the tired, tested face staring at him from the mirror.

“Hey buddy,” he said. “You look as strung out as I feel.”

He looked at his blood shot eyes, hanging features, and tousled hair. This day had been way too long and way too fucked up for him to relax. He crept back out into the room, snagged a couple bottles of beer from the fridge, looked for something to read from his messenger bag– not in the mood for horror, he passed up
The Narrows
for a classic Heinlein–and took a seat at the room’s desk. After a few pages, even
Stranger in a Strange Land
felt too close to the moment. He downed the beers, closed the book, cuddled up on the sofa under the extra blanket from the closet, and waited for the slight buzz to do its trick.

His last thoughts, silently spoken to the sandman, were from the last thing he read:
There is no safety this side of the grave
.

….

Lee Buhl saw her. He woke up clenching the figurine necklace his grandfather had given him. The little Native American wood carving was of a faceless Native capped in an intricate and detailed headdress, the tiny body held no characteristics save for the dark feather held between two small hands. Lee had always worn the piece, more for esthetics than any real spiritual purpose; his dream changed that.

In it, he was performing one of his cleansing ceremonies when the smudge stick in his hands burst into flames. He dropped the burning stick; its normal earthly scent was defiled into one of iron and rot. The flame exploded upward from the tile floor of the room. The pool beyond began filling before his eyes. A crimson puddle rose to the lip of the pool’s concrete sides, overflowing and stretching out, threatening to flood the suddenly shrinking pool room. A naked woman with long dark curls hanging over a perfect form emerged from the red lake beckoning him to join her. He felt the hypnotic power of this thing–for it was not a woman. The eyes of the creature before him bled black from the emptying sockets. A scream, like nothing Lee had ever heard before, pierced the moment and knocked him from his feet. He fell backward into the knee deep room of blood. He caught a faint whiff of saline just before he opened his eyes.

Now, sitting up in the bed of his cheap motel room, clutching the wooden figurine hanging from his neck and drenched in sweat, Lee Buhl could still smell the awful pool from the vision.

…..

The girl in room 209 opened her eyes to a new dawn. The eyes no longer belonged to Meghan Murphy. The Ice Queen had arrived in the flesh.

VOLUME IV

Dream, Girl, Dream

Rhiannon walked down the corridor of the Bruton Inn. Dressed in a t-shirt and panties; the hallway before her like a tunnel without end. Black and white portraits hanging along the walls watched as she passed. She stopped before the likeness of Nathaniel Ford. This picture should be hung just past the front desk in the lobby, but instead was now mounted outside the pool room. Mr. Ford had built the Inn back in 1977. She’d been forced to endure a video regurgitation of the history of the inn during the training course. In the portrait, Mr. Ford was staring back at her with the eyes of a pedophile–lingering over her in all the right places, smirking like he could care less if he was caught.

“Rhiannon…”

She turned from the creepy portrait in time to catch a glimpse of Kurt through the pool room door. She walked over and turned the knob. Frost covered the plastic chairs and the little towel rack next to the door. There was no sign of Kurt. She turned to leave. Something splashed in the pool. Slowly, feeling her heart accelerate, she swiveled around to see who was there.

Bodies in various states of decay floated throughout the water. Some were grey and swollen, others nothing more than bloodless skin suits clinging to the bones beneath. She brought her numbed hand up to quivering lips. Something moved beneath the surface of dead and bloated forms. She backed away, horrified at the gruesome sight and what else was there.

A man emerged at the end closest to her
–Kurt
. “Rhiannon, wait for me.”

She pulled on the door, but it refused to budge. “Let me out! Let me out!” her voice strained. A hand touched her shoulder. Beneath its touch, an incredible cold sunk into her body, numbing her lungs, her voice…

“Wait for me,” Kurt repeated.

Tears rolled from her eyes, freezing on her cheek. The door opened and she fell through, spilling into the hallway. She rolled over expecting to see Kurt, but he was gone.

“Wait for me…”

“Leave me alone. You’re dead,” Rhiannon said.

“Wait for me.”

Climbing to her feet, she ran toward the lobby, the carpet beneath her disappeared. The slapping of her bare feet against the cold, tiled floor echoed. And still, his voice:

“Wait for me.”

She ran faster; her breath coming harder, her lungs burning. The doors to rooms that shouldn’t have been there opened one by one as she approached. In the frames more dead bodies waited: A man and his son, a husband and wife, a young man she remembered checking in with a tall guy, one of the college girls. She ran. More doors, more bodies… the elderly couple that Kurt had been with when she found him, the man from the hospital with the bad arm and milky eye, and
Kurt
.

She stopped. Out of breath, low on will, and ready to give up. Kurt’s eyes were closed; he was grey with death and dressed in his hospital johnnie. Rhiannon walked like a zombie–mindless, simply going forward–toward the body of her friend standing like a statue in the impossible doorway.

She reached out for him, tears falling again. She thought of their date and how she had left him standing in the theater lobby. He had been nothing but genuine with her and that had scared her.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, her hand inches from his face.

His eyes shot open, startling her and sending her flailing backward.

“Wait for me,” he said. Blood, thick and dark with death, drooled from the corners of his mouth and then his eyes, “Wait for me.”

She hit the wall behind her as laughter erupted from the end of the corridor where the nightmare began.

She dared a glance at the awful sound of joy in this place of cold death. She recognized more faces…Kenneth–the weird kid that heard voices, the big guy–Aaron or Eric, a well-dressed gentleman she couldn’t place, and a girl. The girl slipped behind the others before Rhiannon could identify her.

A voice spoke within Rhiannon’s spinning mind, “The Ice Queen is here.”