The Haunted Halls (23 page)

Chapter Eight

Rhiannon grabbed Lee’s wicker basket of supplies and moved back down the hall toward the pool room, knocking on doors along the way–no one answered. Christina said she had to get things rolling, and that the spirit would make sure Sarah was where she was supposed to be. Rhiannon wondered what life with the real Sarah must have been like. She shuddered. Two doors from the pool room, she found the maintenance office. She tried the knob–it was locked.

Of course it is.

She wanted to check on Jeff, but didn’t think she’d get more than one crack at what she had planned. She hurried back down the hall to the front desk, went into the back office and moved to the big red box where they kept all the hotel keys. She found the maintenance key and grabbed it. The lost and found box by the housekeeping office caught her attention. She fished out some jogging shorts and a raggedy, red hooded sweatshirt. The clothing helped to ease her sense of vulnerability. She also grabbed what looked like a reusable shopping bag from Jenner’s Grocery and threw it over her shoulder. She slipped the maintenance key in the sweatshirt’s pocket and was ready to run down the hall when an idea struck her. She moved to the fire security panel and scanned the system’s operating menu on the inside of the small grey door. She found the alarm silence button and pressed it. The system functioning indicator turned from green to red. The curtains hanging in each window of the back office gave her another idea.  She reached into Lee’s basket for his lighter, crouched at one curtain, zippo in hand, then the next, setting fire to each of them one by one. She left the room–already filling with smoke and flames–and hurried down the hallway looking like Red Riding Hood.

Steve, the maintenance manager, had an amazingly organized office. Tools, signs, ladders, and spare parts all labeled and neatly tucked in their own spaces. She found the bright yellow cabinet that read “flammable liquids” tucked away next to his small, black desk in the back. She opened it to find more than enough fuel to do the job. She grabbed soda-sized bottles of white-labeled green and black liquids. Their labels read:
Total Alkalinity Indicator
,
Silver Nitrate Regent
, and
Sulfuric Acid
. She also grabbed a metal canister of something called
Handi-Strip
and a couple small cans of enamel. The smells assaulted her nose, promising to do the deed. She used a screwdriver to pop the tops off the cans of enamel, and exited the room. Smoke filled the lobby toward the east end of the floor.

It had begun.

She sat the wicker basket at the start of the carpeting and tilted the small cans, one in each hand, making her way down the corridor, pouring out their contents. When they emptied, she started with the Handi-Strip. She reached the exit door at the far end of the hall, satisfied that this would do the trick then ran back to the wicker basket and pulled the Zippo out. The pool room was diagonal from the maintenance room; she dared a glance, and noticed the frosted glass pane to its entrance. It was in there, and so was Jeff. She wondered where Christina had gone. She hoped the spirit was ready.

She flicked the wheel, igniting the lighter, and held it to the carpet. The blue flames came to life, racing down the cold hallway. She tucked the Zippo in her pocket, picked up the basket, and moved to the pool room door.

No turning back.

The thought crossed her mind with an air of finality. She grasped the frozen silver handle and opened the door. What she saw tilted her universe.

The pool was filled with blood and decaying bodies, lots of them. Her stomach turned threatening to cripple her. She followed the blood-soaked corpses with her eyes to the opposite end of the pool and then forgot all about them. Jeff, eyes open and staring off into another dimension, lay naked, slumped against the far wall, his mouth, neck, chest, and exposed manhood covered in blood. The girl next to him looked dead, too. Dark hair covered her face, but Rhiannon recognized her as the girl with the broken air conditioner.

She had called herself Sarah. If the dark presence was no longer making her home in the young girl, then where the hell was it? Rhiannon glanced around the room, the hairs on her body reaching out in terror, pleading with her to run the other way. Lee had told her what she had to do. She opened the basket and pulled out the candles, the smudge-stick, its plate, and the notebook he had told her to read from. She lit the smudge and let it burn a few seconds before blowing it out and letting its positive aroma spread up into the air dancing with the trail of smoke. She carefully laid it on the plate and began to light the other candles. With each one lit, she stood and placed them around the pool remembering to align them in the shape of a star, or pentagram, as Lee had referred to it.

Fight fire with fire.

She sat two at this end, one to the left of the pool, and then circled back around, not quite ready to step near Jeff’s body. Then she placed one on the right side. As she approached her co-worker’s slumped and bloody form, she noticed a stirring among the floating cadavers in the pool. She hurried the candle to its place between Jeff and the girl. With the pentagram complete, she moved back around the way she came, keeping an eye on the movement below the lake of blood and death. She reached into the grocery bag for the other chemicals from the maintenance office. She twisted the tops open and scurried to the moving pool water, emptying the contents and throwing the containers in as well before she returned to the basket. Finally, she grabbed the notebook. A head emerged from the sea of corpses. Rhiannon stood, trembling before the evil that brought this night to a head. Her fingers refused to flip through the pages of the notebook, the thought that she couldn’t do this slammed into the front of her mind.

The girl who emerged from the pool reminded her of the girl from that Stephen King movie. Blood-soaked hair matted to her face; a few dying curls stubbornly hanging down over bare breasts. Her eyes were two hot coals with an orange fire blazing behind them. Her lips curled at the corners in a sinister grin that made Rhiannon want to hide. The girl, the thing called Sarah, stood fifteen feet away, dripping blood into the small puddle of crimson at her feet.

“So,” Sarah said, glancing around at the candles surrounding her home. “Did our magic man put you up to this?”

Rhiannon stood silent. Fear pummeled her courage into complete submission.

“You two managed to stop my sweet Kenneth and my Timothy. I should say that makes me want to tear you to pieces, but truthfully, I’m more impressed than anything. It’s a pity to lose such devoted hands, but they were only the first. My powers are only beginning to reach their full potential.”

“What are you?” Rhiannon asked.

“To be totally honest with you, I don’t really know.”

“You’re a demon.”

“Maybe,” the thing said. “My father built this hotel.  This was his
real
baby,” the demon’s voice sent a chill through Rhiannon. “He was in love with his–”

Sarah looked up as if something was there.

Rhiannon, seizing the moment, focused on the pages before her.

Burning Darkness
; the incantation that Lee had instructed her to read once the demon revealed itself and moved into place. She read the words in her mind, trying to commit them to memory.

Sarah’s dead eyes turned back to her. “Sorry about your boyfriends.” She looked over her shoulder at Jeff. “Jeffrey was the most fun.” Her eyes latched back onto Rhiannon’s. “He had one last good fuck before he went. He tried to think about helping you, but I wouldn’t have that. I needed his full attention.” She stopped and looked down toward the notebook in Rhiannon’s hand. “Why don’t you hand that to me?”

Before Rhiannon could reply the notebook flew from her hands, into the air, and landed in the blood pool behind Sarah.

“No,” Rhiannon cried. Her voice sounded even more desperate bouncing back at her from across the room.

“I can’t have any more of these little hiccups.” Sarah looked to her left. Rhiannon followed her gaze; the frost on the door had melted, the conflagration on the other side blazing against it as if hell had come knocking.

Sarah’s eyebrows furrowed as she glared back at Rhiannon, her eyes now matching the orange glow outside the room.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

“You little bitch,” Sarah said, her voice doubled, sounding like a chorus of evil.  She took a step toward Rhiannon and stopped. The grin from her lips dissolved into a sneer. “You,” the voices said. Sarah’s blazing eyes stared past Rhiannon.

Rhiannon circled to find Christina behind her. The ghost was more solid now. She had short black hair, soft features, and black eyes that had locked onto Sarah’s like a sniper eyeing its mark. Rhiannon stepped aside.

“Little Tina, come back to try and finish what you fucked up before?”

The shadow—Tina—didn’t answer.

“I knew these fucks couldn’t stop my boys without some kind of help.” Sarah stepped forward, her skin crawling, stretching and ripping from her body. “You’re nothing. I helped you become something.”

Tina didn’t respond, or move.

“I gave you freedom. I gave you
this
. Can’t you feel the power? What a waste.”

The form beneath Sarah’s skin was rotten, her blood-darkened hair turned grey and rose around her skeletal features. Patches of skin clung to bones and the browned tissue of her face, her voices taking on a shrill edge. Rhiannon remembered what Lee had said.
You must wait until the demon reveals itself
. She tried to recall the chant.

“This time, it’s my turn to snuff
you
out,” the demon said.

Christina’s features blurred. The blue luminance around her intensified.

“Come here you fucking bitch and take your goddamn medicine,” the Sarah-thing screamed and launched at the blue shadow.

They tangled, resembling a throbbing, dark cancer attempting to attach itself to a healthy cell. Rhiannon ducked down as they flew up and shot around the room from side to side. Unintelligible shrieks burst in quick audible strikes making her cringe and cover her ears. She recalled the chant, but needed to wait. The dark spirit had to be in the center of the star.

They bounced from one wall to another, to the floor, to the ceiling, knocking down lighting fixtures and the rack of towels before dropping into the pool of bodies. A splash of crimson shot up like a geyser, and covered the area surrounding the pool in blood. Rhiannon didn’t hesitate:

“Bind thee, dark spirit, to rest. Let darkness burn and come to light. Let darkness burn and come to light…” she stalled.

Oh my God, what’s the rest of it? 

A charge went off in the pool. Waves of blood rose over the concrete lip and spread out onto the floor. Rhiannon raised her hands to her temple trying to block out the activity and concentrate on the missing line. The thing that tangled with Christina began to rise from its lake of blood. Its eyes–now red and brimming with hatred–zeroed in on her.

Rhiannon was ready to curl up into a ball as the light went off inside her head. She spit it out: “Bind thee, dark spirit, to rest. Let darkness burn and come to light–”

The demon let loose a howl of rage reaching out its skeletal claws in Rhiannon’s direction.

“–Let darkness burn and come to light. Give into the power that rules your fate. Demon, burn, and come to light.”

The demon was at the pool’s edge when the blood ignited into flames. Howls of anguish and defeat filled the room; the cries of a tortured soul. Rhiannon covered her ears, and watched the magnificent flame engulf the demon and pull it back within the pit of fire. Rhiannon stole one last glance at Jeff–sadness sliding in behind her exhausted mind–and lunged for the door. More flames met her as she realized she was trapped. She dropped down on her hands and knees, positioning herself between the red hot door, and the burning pool.

Across the room she saw the changing area. There were windows in the stalls. She got up, ran over and threw the door open, not bothering to watch the shamanic fire morphing from orange and red to purple and green. The demon’s cries had faded. Rhiannon burst through the door of the first stall and saw the open window above the toilet. She climbed the porcelain god, and punched at the screen that blocked her exit. It came free after a couple of whacks. She grabbed the window sill and the side of the stall and pulled herself up. Grasping at the wet grass and clawing her fingers into the mud, she pushed her body through, clearing the window and liberating herself from the inferno.

Chapter Nine

Lee’s body lay motionless farther down the lawn. Rhiannon climbed to her feet and ran to see if he was still alive, praying he’d made it, but not thinking it likely. The entire hotel was ablaze. Flames and smoke billowed out from almost every window. Crackling, loud pops, and shattering glass replaced the serene night that otherwise surrounded the inn. From ten steps away, she could tell he was dead.

Rhiannon dropped to her knees. Lee’s death, a final cheap shot from this God-awful night, landed the hardest blow of them all, sapping the last of her will to fight.

The building sizzled and popped giving off a nonstop, high-pitched whistle that sounded like a scream.

The building’s dying.

The thought would have made her smile if she could. Instead, she got back up (one more time) and stumbled away from Lee and the burning hotel.

“Uhhh…”

Was that?

Rhiannon spun around to find the shaman slowly lifting his head from the ground. “Lee!” She dropped to her knees by his side. His eyes opened.

“Did we, did you…”

“Yes, we did it–me, you and Christina.”

“What about…what about Jeff?” he said, turning his eyes to hers.

Her tears pelted his shoulder as she shook her head and squeezed his hand. “I thought you were dead, too.”

“I had a little trouble getting back to my body,” he said. “Help me up?

“Are you sure you can?”

“No, but it seems we haven’t let that stop us yet.” He tried to smile.

She helped him to his knees, then to his feet. Together, they limped their way across the lawn. With the blazing hellfire at their backs, they watched their shadows limp along as well, stopping at the road. Lee–one arm clutched around his ribs—Rhiannon was sure some were broken–let go of her shoulder, then slid down onto his ass in the dirt. Rhiannon put a hand behind him and helped him lay back. She dropped down beside him.

Waiting for anyone to pass by, she stayed next to him, silent, bruised, alive and staring up at the starry sky watching the old inn burn into the night. Rhiannon prayed that no one would call the fire department until it was too late. She wanted the whole place to burn to the ground.

She thought of Jeff, of Kurt, of a blue shadow named Christina.

We did it.