The Red Hotel (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (30 page)

She kept on rotating her thumb for a while, and in spite of his obvious disgust, Everett’s penis began to rise. Vanessa Slider rubbed it up and down a few times, and then said, ‘Shem . . . why don’t you take off young T-Yon’s blanket and fetch her over here. You can spread the blanket on the floor. Give them something to lay on.’

Shem pushed T-Yon roughly forward, until she was standing right next to his mother, and then he dragged the blanket away from her. She stood there, still shivering, still dazed, her hands crossed over her breasts.

‘There now,’ said Vanessa Slider, stepping back. ‘Why don’t you take T-Yon in your arms, Everett, and show her just what a loving brother you can be?’

Everett hesitated, but Shem gave another grunt and loose-wristedly swung the cleaver from side to side as if to warn him that he had better do what his mother wanted him to do, or else the disemboweling would come sooner rather than later.

Sissy said, ‘Go on, Everett. Hold her. Everything’s going to be all right, I promise you.’

Everett took T-Yon in his arms and the two of them clung to each other, shaking with fear and helplessness – two abandoned orphans rather than lovers.

‘Now touch her,’ said Vanessa Slider. ‘Slip your finger in and see if she’s ready for you.’

Everett turned his head and gave her a look of such hatred that Sissy could almost imagine his eyes flaring red, like a demon’s. But the banging and clashing of kitchen utensils grew louder still, and it seemed to take on a rhythm, urging Everett and T-Yon to get down on the blanket and start copulating.

Everett kissed T-Yon and whispered something in her ear that Sissy couldn’t hear. The two of them awkwardly knelt down on the blanket, and then lay side by side, and all the time the saucepans and skillets went clatter-
crash
! clatter-
crash
! clatter-
crash
!

T-Yon reached across for Everett. She said something, but the noise was so loud that Sissy couldn’t hear what it was. It looked like
I love you
.

Clatter-
crash
! clatter-
crash
! clatter-
crash
! went the saucepans and skillets, like a locomotive gradually gathering momentum.

Sissy looked away. She knew what a sacrifice that T-Yon and Everett were both making to give themselves a chance of survival, but she didn’t want to demean herself by watching them.

Clatter-
crash
! clatter-
crash
! clatter-
crash
!

And then – abruptly – the clattering and crashing stopped. A deathly quiet fell across the kitchen, and all Sissy could hear was the bubbling of chowder and the surreptitious rattling of saucepan lids.

She turned around. The head chef and his assistants were staring down the kitchen to the white enamel door of the cold store, their mouths open in disbelief. One of the girls started to weep – high, panicky yelps of sheer terror.

The door had been flung open wide, and out of it stepped Aunt Epiphany, holding up her black leather head in one hand and a thick cluster of multicolored beads in the other. She had a triumphant look on her face, her thinly plucked eyebrows raised in arches, her eyes glittering, and her lips drawn back across her big white teeth as if she were ready to take a bite out of anybody who dared to challenge her.

But it was the figures who were following her who had stunned the kitchen staff into silence. There were nine or ten of them at least, stumbling a little as they approached, as if they were drunk, and occasionally jostling each other. But this was hardly surprising because they were nothing much more than bones and bloody ribbons of raw flesh, held together only with tendons. Three of them still had their faces intact, but the rest of them had exposed cheekbones and jawbones, and grinning teeth, and triangular holes where their noses had been.

Their eyeballs bulged out of their sockets in a fixed, glassy stare because they had no eyelids or eyebrows to give their faces any expression. But what was even more frightening than their grisly appearance was their silence. Their feet shuffled on the green-tiled floor, but they made no other sound at all. They weren’t even breathing.

‘You stay back, whoever you are!’ shouted Vanessa Slider. ‘You stay back! Those women can’t get up and walk! They’re all of them dead!’

Aunt Epiphany’s eyes opened even wider, and even more triumphantly, and she pointed the black leather head at Vanessa Slider and crowed out, ‘So are
you
, my dear! You are passed away too! But you do not even have a body! Ha! ha! ha!’

Shem had backed away almost as far as the kitchen entrance, his eyes darting from side to side with fear and indecision. When Aunt Epiphany laughed at his mother, however, he brandished his cleaver at her in a show of false bravado, and called out, ‘Get this, OK? These girls belong to us! We killed ’em, we cut ’em up. They’re ours! You take ’em right back to the storeroom, you hear, else I’m going to do the same to you!’

Completely unabashed, Aunt Epiphany continued to walk toward them, until she was so close to Vanessa Slider that she could have struck her with the black leather head. Vanessa Slider was clearly unnerved, but she was defiant. ‘Whoever you are, this is no business of yours! This is
my
business! This is my hotel! Just like my son told you, these girls are all ours! This is my day for retribution and you ain’t going to interfere with it!’

The small figure in the black sheet had been standing close to the edge of Everett and T-Yon’s blanket, but now it came over and clung to Vanessa Slider’s left leg.

Vanessa Slider patted it on top of the head, and said, ‘It’s all right,
bebette.
This woman is going to take all of our girls right back to the cold store, and then she’s going to go right back to where she belongs, which I hope is hell.’

‘Oh, you think?’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘You can talk all you like about getting your revenge, lady, but these girls want their revenge, too. They want their revenge on you, for what you did to them, and these are zombis, and there is nothing you can do to stop them. These are not zombis from the movies, my dear. These are not the living dead like you see in a George A. Romero picture. These are the children of Adjassou-Linguetor, brought to life with the walking powder. Look at them, and look what you did to them, and be afraid!’

The zombis said nothing. They stood behind Aunt Epiphany, swaying slightly, their flayed and mutilated bodies glistening with connective tissue and bodily fluids.

Vanessa Slider began slowly to step backward, gripping the black sheet that covered the small figure beside her. She turned quickly to see where Shem was, but Shem had circled around to stand next to the head chef, putting the kitchen counter in between himself and the zombis. He had picked up a large kitchen knife, as well as his cleaver, and he was holding them both up in front of him. He was trying to look aggressive, but Sissy could tell by the way he was grinding his few brown teeth together how frightened he was.

Aunt Epiphany crossed over to Everett and T-Yon and laid her hand on Everett’s shoulder. ‘
Go
,’ she said, gently but urgently. ‘Go now, as quick as you can. Go back through the wall and don’t look back.’

Everett and T-Yon scrambled hastily on to their feet. Everett picked up the blanket and flung it around T-Yon’s shoulders and scooped up his own shirt and pants from the floor.

Vanessa Slider was standing in the kitchen entrance now. Her face was taut with rage, her smudgy eyes even blacker than ever.

‘You can’t do this! You can’t let them go! They have to pay!’

But Everett shouldered her aside and pulled T-Yon out of the kitchen. As they hurried away, heading for the elevators, Vanessa Slider let out a scream of pain and frustration.

‘
You can’t go!
You have to pay!
Your mother killed my Gerard!
Your mother
destroyed my dreams, and all for you!
’

Now, however, the zombis began to shuffle forward, lifting up their raw, meatless arms to seize her. Vanessa Slider took three deep breaths, as if she were about to scream something more, but then she clearly saw that these living dead wanted to punish her just as much as she wanted to punish Everett and T-Yon, and that they couldn’t be stopped.

She pushed the little figure in the black sheet out of the kitchen ahead of her and started to walk as fast as she could along the cinder-block corridor. But the little figure kept tripping and losing its balance, and letting out little cries of dismay as it did so, and she had to stop every few feet to renew her grip on its sheet and tug it along.

Sissy hesitated for a moment and then went after her. The zombis would never be able to catch her, and in any case they had Shem to deal with. Sissy wished to God that she didn’t smoke so heavily, because she was wheezing after only the first fifty feet, but the little figure in the black sheet tripped again, and again, and it wasn’t long before Sissy caught up with them.

Vanessa Slider turned around and confronted her. ‘Why did you have to interfere?’ she demanded, her voice hoarse with hatred. ‘This could all have been finished with by now, and I could have gone to my rest
.
’

Sissy coughed, and coughed, but at last she managed to catch her breath. ‘Spirits like you, Vanessa, they never get rest. Believe me, I’ve talked to more than my share, although not one of them was anything like as troubled as you are.
You
– you’ll be tossing and turning until the end of time.’

‘I’ll have my revenge one day, mark my words.’

Vanessa Slider was about to turn around and continue along the corridor when Sissy lunged forward and seized the little figure in the black sheet. She pulled it back toward the kitchen with all of the strength she could manage, and even when it tripped she kept on dragging it. She would have guessed by its size that it was a small child, about four or five years old, but unlike a small child it didn’t feel taut and robust. It felt more mushy, under its sheet, and it gave off a faint but distinctive odor like bad chicken.

‘
Bebette!
’ shrieked Vanessa Slider. ‘
Bring me back my bebette!
’

The little figure began to whine and cry, but Sissy refused to lose her grip on it, and pulled it all the way back to the kitchen. For all of her shrieking, however, Vanessa Slider didn’t come after her. She must have been more frightened of the zombis in the kitchen than she was of losing her ‘
bebette
’, whatever it was. She didn’t run away any farther, though. She stood halfway down the corridor in her pale green evening dress, her hand pressed indecisively over her mouth. Do I save myself, or save my
bebette
?

‘Vanessa!’ Sissy called her, when she had reached the kitchen entrance. ‘Why don’t you come on back? We can find a way to sort this out without killing any more people. I know about spirits, and how to help them to find peace.’

Vanessa Slider shook her head and stayed where she was. Sissy shrugged and pulled the little figure back into the kitchen.

Shem and the head chef and the kitchen assistants were all clustered close together, in between the counters. There were zombis now at both ends of the kitchen, so there was no way for them to escape.

Aunt Epiphany looked down at the little figure in the black sheet and said, ‘Well . . . you sure have some nerve, Sissy! What do we have here?’

‘You leave him alone!’ Shem shouted at them. ‘That’s my brother you got there! You leave him be or I’ll cut your tits off!’

‘Your brother?’ said Sissy. ‘And so why does your brother always hide himself under a sheet?’

‘You leave him be! You leave him be, or I swear that I will cut your tits off and push them down your throat!’

Aunt Epiphany said, ‘You hush up, ugly boy.
You
in no position to be making no threats to nobody. Let us take a look at this brother of yours.’

She grasped the sheet and pulled it upward. At first, the little figure clung on to it tight, but then Aunt Epiphany twisted and twirled it, like a bullfighter’s cape, and gave it a double-shake, and he had to let go. She threw it on to the floor, and there was Shem’s brother, exposed for all of them to see.

As Sissy had guessed, he was around four or five years old. He must have been quite a beautiful child, when he was alive, but like Vanessa Slider he was obviously dead. He was wearing an all-in-one sleep suit that must once have been white, but was now patterned with green and yellow stains. His face was gray and his eyeballs were milky and there were green tinges around his mouth.

‘
You bastards!
’ Shem foamed at them. ‘
You bastards!
That’s my brother!
’

‘He is decomposing,’ said Aunt Epiphany. ‘Look at the poor boy, Shem. He is rotting away.’

‘That’s because Momma couldn’t take him to the mortician!’

At that moment, Vanessa Slider reappeared in the kitchen entrance.

‘So now you know,’ she said. ‘Now you know why I cannot forgive.’

The little boy tottered over to his mother and she bent forward and kissed his forehead. ‘There,
bebette
, everything will soon be well. Momma promises you.’

While she was standing there, however, trying to calm her long-dead child, three of the zombis had slowly but silently crept around behind her, and were now staring at her with their bloodshot, lidless eyes.

‘Vanessa—’ Sissy cautioned her.

But Aunt Epiphany laid her hand on Sissy’s shoulder and said, ‘No, Sissy. This has to be finished here tonight. Otherwise, it will happen again and again, and Everett and T-Yon will always be in mortal danger. This woman has stained the fields with the blood of innocent people. Now she must harvest the crop that has grown there.’

‘But Epiphany, I can’t just stand here and watch this. It’s against my nature. I was put on this earth to help spirits, not destroy them.’

‘If you cannot stand here and watch this, my darling, then with the greatest respect I suggest you leave, and go back through the wall, and I will meet you there when this all finished.’