The Haunted Halls (9 page)

Chapter Nine

Meghan Murphy felt like she was going to faint. Stars were dancing before her eyes like the celebrities from that terrible contest show her mother used to watch; tumbling and crashing into moons from an impossible galaxy. She stumbled into the darkened bathroom intent on splashing some cold water on her flush face. Her bare feet went numb on contact with the tiled floor as cold as a cracked blacktop in the middle of February. She high-stepped out of the refrigerated room as if crossing over hot coals.

Something caught her eye as she glanced into the chilled lavatory. Even without the lights on she could read the frost-covered mirror. Two words were sketched into the frozen glaze:

He’s coming

…..

As the metallic door slid open, Eric stalked out into the hallway; the light’s all dimmed in his presence. He passed room 231. Beyond its door, the blood and brain matter from Jimmy Curran still dressed the carpeting and wall beside the broken entertainment stand. Eric was wrenching his large mitts together in anticipation of his next directive. His gait was that of a machine–decisive and steady. The new beast beneath his flesh was starving.

“Eric, Eric.”

He turned to find the rain-drenched form of Kenneth McGowan shuffling up from the stairwell behind him, covered from head to foot in mud and filth. Combined with the wet strands of brown hair slapped across his elongated face, he looked like a sewer rat.

“What is it?” Eric said, trying to mask his irritation.
She
had deemed this sorry mess of a man worthy of her gift, all Eric saw was someone pathetic and weak.

“The storm, the storm is making a mess of my holes,” Kenneth said.

A door opened farther down from where the two incongruous men stood, and a middle-aged gentleman and his son stepped into the dimmed corridor. The boy, dressed in a Red Sox rain slicker and a tall pair of goulashes, moved behind his father at the sight of the two awkward characters down the hall.

“It’s okay, Joey. They’re just staying at the hotel, like you and me,” the man with the tan Carhartt jacket and shoulder-length dark hair said to his son.

“Come on,” Eric said. He pushed the wet rat back toward the room still registered to Jimmy Curran. As they stepped inside, he slammed the door behind them.

“Did you see the way those two were looking at us?” Kenneth said.

Eric grabbed his giddy accomplice by the collar of his store bought army jacket, yanking him up off the ground until they were nose to nose. “You mention our business out in the open again, before
she
tells us it’s time–you’re going in the dirt next.”

…..

Down the hall, the door to room 209 opened. Meghan stumbled out into the hallway. Driven by the compulsion to get away from her cooling room as quick as she could, she made her way to the stairs, taking the steps two at a time. She was nearly to the bottom when a phantom shape appeared before her. Looking into the black eyes within its skeletal face–she fell. Her head slapped the concrete with a loud smack, sending Meghan into the arms of her vision.

…..

The lock to room 209 flashed green, and then clicked. The door smashed against the rubber doorstopper on the wall behind it as Eric Gentry charged his six-foot-six frame into the cold room. Kenneth the rat filed in behind him.

“Where the hell is she?” Kenneth said.

Eric turned, shoved the rat into the wall by the door, and headed back into the hallway. “She’s gone.”

Chapter Ten

Rhiannon was still screaming as a group of doctors and nurses pushed past her into Kurt’s hospital room. Urgent voices filled the suddenly cramped space of the cold hospital room. No one looked in her direction. Through her tears she saw someone standing in the back of the room.
A girl
. She watched the figure with the long brown spiral locks slowly maneuver around the hectic scene of medics–none of whom seemed to notice her–as she began to make her way across the room. Their eyes met, Rhiannon’s body went cold–she was nauseous. There was something heavy, something evil in this girl.

She bolted down the fluorescent-lit hall, feeling her life hanging in the balance, like whatever had gotten Kurt wanted her next. It was crazy, but something inside told her it was right. She ran past the elevators, to the stairwell, and began her descent; a cold chill pulling at the fine hairs on the nape of her neck the entire way down.

Chapter Eleven

Christmas Eve, 1983

“You ungrateful little cunt, how dare you fucking put your hands on me,” Sarah’s muffled voice seethed with hatred above the water’s surface. Below and out of breath, Christina tried to focus her flailing mind on one thing–survival. She brought her hands up to the backs of her death dealer’s arms and sunk her lengthy fingernails into the taught flesh.

“Ahh! You fucking bitch!”

Free from Sarah’s grip, Christina popped above the surface gasping for the air she thought she’d never breathe again. Her victory was short lived as Sarah dove at her, taking her back under mid-breath, causing her to take in a mouthful of pool water. The two girls, completely submerged and entangled, scratched and clawed, kicked and pulled at one another as their combined weight moved them to the pool’s floor. 

In a last ditch attempt to not have these be her final living moments, Christina flung her body backwards pulling Sarah with her, managing to knee her in the solar plexus. She felt the hands at her throat loosen as air bubbles flumed from the girl’s mouth.  Christina swam toward the surface. Sarah’s hand caught her ankle and yanked her back down. Face to face with her insane roommate, Christina screamed out into the water as she spun and struck her palm up into the more aggressive girl’s nose. Blood, spread from the wound—as if Jaws had just taken a chunk out of another careless swimmer—and contaminated the pool. Sarah’s arms and legs floated like seaweeds–a subtle dance propelled by the motion of the water and nothing more.

Christina tried willing her way upward, but the life was draining from her body at a breakneck speed. The lights above calling her home, taunted her as the black border surrounding her blurry vision drew inward. Her arms quit first, her legs followed. Two strokes from life, the darkness closed in–complete and eternal.

Present Day

Lee Buhl, having just finished up his book signing event, made his way over to the Hollis Oaks public library.  Initially, he’d only planned on doing some research but the tremors that had been shuddering through his body since he arrived here demanded he stop fucking around. Over the years, this ritual had yielded a good many tales for his books.  Although he was only about one-fifth Native American, and that was being generous, Lee Buhl embraced the tribal part of his heritage and turned it into a great money-maker. He made a good living from his books and from performing shaman ceremonies at the “haunted” sites he wrote about.

As the heavy rain pounded the large glass panes of the recently renovated Hollis Oaks Public Library, Lee was glad he’d decided to drive over from the Barnes and Noble rather than walk. The intensity of the weather kept him digging around through the library longer than usual. The added time spent investigating uncovered an interesting piece of history from a nearby town.  For a property relatively new, having been built in 1977, The Bruton Inn had a bit of an enigmatic history. Back in the eighties two young woman were found dead in the hotel’s indoor swimming pool. The article he found in a local paper,
The Coral County Sentinel
, went on to say “the two young women were said to have been staying together in a room rented to a local man, Gordon Kilpatrick, who himself has been missing for two months.” There were also quotes from past workers who claimed the place was haunted.  The whispers of ghosts appeared to dry up over the nineties and early 2000’s. Lee couldn’t find a single related blurb. Then, he came across a piece
the paper
had run this past summer about a man named Edward Young who was found drowned in the Bruton Inn’s new swimming pool. This is what was pulling at him. He was certain. The wheels of Lee Buhl’s always ready and open mind began to churn. He scribbled down the address of the out of the way inn and placed the little black notebook in his messenger bag.

A pretty little brunette with short spikey hair, chewing on the tip of a pen, caught his attention. She looked maybe eighteen, more likely sixteen. He flashed a smile her way causing her to redden as she bit her pen and looked at him the same way “Sexy” Lexi had just a couple days ago. Turned out Lexi was eighteen and
ballsy.
Her phone call led to a nice night of fun for them both. This one across the way looked ready to play, as well.

Not tonight, Lee
.

Still, he couldn’t resist walking past the pretty young thing as he made his exit, dropping one of his business cards next to her biology book.

The strange currency flowed through his stomach again as he stepped out into the storm. His instincts–or the spirits, as he often referred to them before his hosts–often brought him to grounds fertile with supernatural possibilities. After shutting out the heavy rain pounding down from the heavens, Lee started his car and heard a voice.
A fan, from the book signing?
He looked around the lot, but had trouble believing anyone would be waiting out in this crazy weather. 

Lee sat behind the wheel of his Shinari staring at a puddle being riddled with a black rain. He thought of the Bruton Inn and its indoor swimming pool. A deep chill sunk into his marrow. He drove out of the library’s parking lot thinking of mermaids and devils.

VOLUME III

A Change Has Come

She delighted in the hurricane of chaos and devastation sweeping through the hallways of the Bruton Inn. The malevolent creature, formerly known as Sarah Ford, smiled. It was a long time coming. She was nearly at full strength and ready for her resurrection.  The autumn chill, and a magnificent rainstorm punishing the earth, set the evening up for a crescendo that would bring an end to a very successful chain of events, and birth a new beginning.

Her boys, Eric and Kenneth, were playing their parts like a couple of seasoned pros. Eric,
brutal Eric
, was intimidating and stifling the life from various guests, while little Kenneth discarded the bodies that aided in feeding her power. Meghan, only slightly stronger than she had originally given her credit for, was running, but her avoidance would only make her transformation that much more satisfying.

The two hotel clerks, Jeffrey and Rhiannon, providing a great many opportunities for her to flex her awakening abilities, were in for a reckoning of sorts.

Her final game piece was ready to be moved; Timothy Laymon’s haunted past was about to bring him home…
to her
.  She recalled lyrics to a more than fitting rock n roll song by one of her favorite bands. “
It’s down to me… a change has come…”

Chapter One

Rhiannon emerged from the side exit of the Hollis Oakes General Hospital. Her heart hammering a Gods of Metal theme within her chest, her body trembling in collusion with her mind, threatening to break her temple. She stumbled onto the cold concrete sidewalk under the moonlit night trying not to scream; she failed to stifle the whimpers flowing at will.

What’s wrong, little girl?
A voice that was not her own whispered from inside her mind, sending chills spiraling down the staircase of her spine.

“No,” Rhiannon screamed into the night, clamping her violently shaking hands over her ears. She spun around, certain the girl giving chase would be standing behind her. There was nothing. She started backing away from the door, unable to stop the tears from falling.

“Hey you.”

The male voice startled her. She turned toward the front entrance to the hospital. It was the old man from the elevator with the milky eye and wounded arm, standing, staring, and calling after her.

“I told you. I told you she got him. I told you she got him.” He began to laugh.

The inappropriate cackle prickled her goose bumps to rise. Flooded with nausea, Rhiannon doubled over.

“She got him–” his voice was still a good hundred feet away. “–Now she’s got you.” He said, suddenly inches from her ear.

She could smell his musky aftershave, the same kind her grandpa used to wear.  She spun around and unleashed a blood curdling scream. There was nothing, no one–just her, the moon, and the shadows of the night. She glanced back to where the man had been taunting her. He was gone.

I’m losing it, I’m fucking losing it
.

She stayed kneeled in the grass just off the sidewalk, her arms lying like two dead branches hanging at her sides, the limp hands at their ends–lifeless in the grass. The towering pine tree at her back, casting a malevolent shadow over her, rustled with the chilled wind. She began crying and laughing hysterically.

She dared a glance upward. From behind the semi-frosted window above, a grinning face disappeared.

“Ma’am, are you okay?”

Rhiannon wiped the tears from her face as a well-dressed man stepped toward her. She noticed, despite the concern in his voice, he had not stepped from the security of the entrance lights.

“Miss?”

Rhiannon climbed to her feet, dusted off her dirt-covered knee, and ran for the parking lot. She had to get to her car and get the hell away from this place.
Kurt’s dead
. The thought brought a fresh set of tears to her burning eyes. She tried to push away the sight of that hospital room. His body, cold and lifeless–so unlike the man she had worked with over the last half a year. She had adored him. And in spite of this and a lack of close friends, she’d kept him at a distance. She cursed herself for not making more of their time together. More glimpses of that desperate seventh grader cracked through her defenses. She crossed into the Emergency Room parking lot, wiped away the tears, and made her way to the little red Escort. She fumbled the car key out of her jacket pocket and worked it into the slot beside the door handle.

“Leaving so soon?”

Rhiannon froze. She raised her eyes above the car’s dented roof and saw the strange girl from Kurt’s hospital room standing four cars away.

This can’t be real, this can’t be real
.

She opened the car door and climbed in not bothering to check the other girl’s position. She turned the engine over and slammed the Escort into reverse. Checking her rearview mirror, the red brake lights illuminated the odd girl behind her in a vision of demonic glee. The devil in the mirror was smiling at her as she drove away.

The car fishtailed onto Jefferson Drive, straightening out as she headed toward downtown Hollis Oakes. She wanted to call Jeff at the hotel. There was no one else who would understand. She had to tell somebody what was happening. She reached into the small space beneath the car’s radio and ashtray, and found her cell phone.

A Subaru Outback followed her onto the road, pulling up in the lane next to her. The driver turned toward her, his milky, white eye reaching out for her, looking into her. The girl from Kurt’s hospital room was riding shotgun.

Rhiannon, keeping an eye on the road before her, tried dialing her work number.

Kkkrrrrrr.

The Outback slammed into the side of the car, causing her to swerve across the yellow line and drop her phone. She screamed as the car came in for another swipe.

“Leave me alone,” she screamed, the tears falling again.

Honnnnk.

Rhiannon veered back toward the green Subaru to avoid hitting an oncoming SUV and saw the set of traffic lights up ahead.

“Why are you doing this?” She looked from the intersection to the Subaru and back–there was no way they were making the green light. The old man behind the wheel began convulsing; the bitch at his side continued to smile. Rhiannon stamped both feet on the brake pedal and screamed.  Her tires screeched into the night.

The Subaru flew into the crossing traffic–a moth to a flame–and collided in an explosion of plastic, metal, rubber, and flesh.