There was something not right about how he was lying there; the way his feet stuck out over the bed like that, lying over the footboard. It couldn’t possibly be comfortable; sleeping with a thin piece of wood jutting into the tops of his feet. And the way the tips of his fingers touched the floor, he looked as if about to fall out of bed. Natasha just figured he was exhausted from fighting the large fire.
She loaded up her cart and left the room, locking the door behind her. She gripped the cart but remained where she stood, staring at the door. It nagged at her, as if her mind were a ball of yarn and he held the thread. She needed to see what was wrong, had to. The position of his body puzzled her too much to simply head back to the laundry station. Natasha stepped around her cart and held out her hand, holding it an inch from the door while she built up some courage. She timidly knocked twice, so softly she herself could barely hear it.
“Housekeeping,” Natasha announced as she opened the door.
The fireman lay there without movement, either asleep or completely unaware of her presence. Natasha saw something piled on the floor, like ashes from a cigarette. She pulled a napkin from her pocket and bent down to wipe it up, walking over to the bed on tip-toes. The small pile was just below his hand, but the cigarette itself was nowhere to be found. Natasha found it so very ironic that a fireman of all people would be so careless with fire. While on her knees, she looked up from the pile of ash to the man’s hand, getting her first real glimpse.
Natasha dropped the napkin as her hands began to tremble, moving up through her body like an earthquake. The ashes hadn’t come from a cigarette or pipe. The fireman’s flesh had gone dry, cracked and flaking like a lakebed in the desert. She wanted to scream, to stand and bolt from the room, but she was frozen, as if her mind had lost communication with her extremities. All she could do was tremble in horror, shaking her head as tears ran down her cheeks. This wasn’t happening. It couldn’t be. There must have been something all over him, some kind of ash off of some tree. But Natasha knew better. The state of the fireman’s face was enough to get her moving. His nose had crumbled and fallen into a fine pile of ash at the base of the pillow, his eye sockets bare and black. The color of his flesh had gone from normal olive brown to a light gray. Natasha stepped away from what was left of his face, bumping into his foot. The contact made his right foot crumble to the floor before her very eyes, leaving nothing but his skeletal foot up to the ankle.
Something was watching her, grinning even. She could feel it. Every fiber of her being told her not to look, to run and hide, but she couldn’t help it. Her actions were now under the control of numb panic, not rational thinking. Natasha turned her head slowly and looked into the closet. Two green eyes were staring at her from the top corner, peeking out through the small opening. They were fastened on her, pinning her to the wall with malice. Natasha felt her sanity slipping, pulled from her into those eyes. It let out a deep snarl, resonating from the darkness of the closet. Natasha had seen enough. She slid along the wall to the door, screaming at the top of her lungs, producing a shrill sound she herself didn’t know she was capable of.
Natasha pulled open the door and ran out into the hall, running straight into her cart, flipping over onto her back, spilling all her cleaning supplies. Ignoring the pain, she scrambled along the floor and got to her feet, screaming and crying hysterically. Jessie came out from behind the desk, startled and frightened by the scene. Natasha saw the huge girl and ran straight for her, nearly knocking her over.
“Calm down,” Jessie told her, patting the back of her head nervously as Natasha cried into her bosom. “Just calm down, please.”
Jessie was close to tears herself. The emotional outpouring from this poor girl was almost too much to bear. She trembled beneath Jessie’s arms, shivering as if she’d been pulled from the ocean. Jessie was a nervous person by nature, not the comforting type, and holding this girl was sending her into a panic of her own. People began to gather from the restaurant and the gift shop, looking to her for answers. She furrowed her eyebrows at them and shook her head, feeling small despite her height. Jessie wanted to understand this poor girl’s rant, but she was rambling on in Polish.
24
“W
hat the hell happened here?” Joe asked from the doorframe, looking over Dr. Emilio Cartman’s shoulder to Cameron’s remains.
“It appears to be a fireman.” Dr. Cartman turned on his knees, looking back to Joe. “It’s always a pleasure, Ranger Rand. Of course, our meetings never seem to be under happy circumstances.”
“What happened here?”
“Completely unknown. From what we’ve been told, this young man here fell down a hole out in the woods. He stated that he felt ill and so they brought him in for a rest.”
“Yeah, but what could do that to a person?” Joe grimaced, turning his head as the man’s skin fell from his arm, exposing his humerus bone beneath. “Is that contagious?”
“Highly unlikely.” Dr. Cartman turned back on his knees, picking up some of the dried out skin from the floor to rub between his gloved fingers. It was so fine and smooth, just like ash. “There are cases where a person’s body has dried out, a reaction to a type of environmental agent. Smoke inhalation might have triggered some kind of internal chain reaction that led to a complete cellular breakdown. Maybe he was on some form of experimental medication…who knows.” The doctor shook his head, knowing there wouldn’t be a simple explanation. “I’m truly baffled here. I mean, nothing has ever even come close to this puppy. It looks as if someone took a vacuum to every one of his pores and sucked out the moisture. He’s been completely dehydrated.”
“You’re sure there’s no danger of contamination?”
“No one who has been in contact with the victim here has shown any signs of illness. And being void of fluids makes it hard to spread. But I’m going to take the body back to the hospital here and run some tests, just to be clear.” The doctor laughed. “Hell, just to get some kind of idea.”
“Please, let me know if you find anything.”
The doctor nodded and went back to work, rubbing off the flesh and muscles from Cameron’s arm into the bag he was holding. He came apart so easily. Joe shivered, ending with a head shake to toss the uneasy sensation free and clear. He turned to the room behind him, glad to be away from that horrible smell. But wasn’t there something familiar about that smell? Not that it accompanied every corpse. It was different; something not associated with the rotten odor of human death and decay. Joe put it aside, not wanting to investigate further by sticking his nose over such a nasty corpse. He wasn’t entirely convinced that what happened to that poor fireman couldn’t happen to all of them. New diseases and viral weapons pop up all the time.
Joe stepped across the hall, waiting a moment for some medics to clear the room. A young woman was lying on the bed, her head rocking from side to side. She wept softly, not caring if the tears continually rolled into her ears.
“She’s been sedated,” Andy informed Joe, speaking behind his hand so she couldn’t see. He looked back at the girl with a heavy heart. “She’s really freaked out.” Andy stepped out of the room, knowing he couldn’t take the scene any longer. The young girl had been crying and moaning since he’d gotten there over twenty minutes ago. It wasn’t like he could help her in any way. “I’ll go interview the other witnesses out in the lobby.”
Joe nodded, glad to see him go. Things just seemed to run a bit smoother when he did it alone. Andy was a great guy and a compassionate ranger, but he was a bit slow at times and always said the wrong thing. He had the bad habit of putting his foot in his mouth. Joe didn’t need that right now and neither did she. Looked like they both could use a nice stiff drink. His flask felt heavy in his inner coat pocket, threatening to burst through the seams if he didn’t reach in and take a drink, but he couldn’t. Knowing he couldn’t have even a small sip made him want it all the more. He had to focus now. He owed it to this poor woman lying there with her eyes open only enough to allow her tears to fall. Joe stepped over cautiously, not wanting to start off the interview by startling her. He kneeled beside the bed and smiled, a warm and inviting smile; one that told her he wasn’t there to talk or yell, but to listen.
“My name is Joseph Rand, I’m a ranger here with the park.” Joe spoke calmly and slowly, like he would to a child. “I was hoping I could ask you a few questions, miss…?”
“Natasha Grabowski.” She turned to face him, her eyes twitching.
“Is it okay if we speak for a moment?”
“Are we safe?” Natasha asked desperately, nearly pleading.
Joe nodded, unsure what they should be protected from. If she was referring to the dead “ash man” back there, he really didn’t know if they were safe or not. For all he knew they could all be piles of dust by nightfall, but best to keep her calm and comfortable. Otherwise he’d never figure out what the hell was going on.
“Can you tell me what happened in there?”
“Didn’t you see it?” Natasha lifted up onto her elbows in a panic, settling down as Joe touched her shoulder, easing her back into bed.
“Calm down please, everything is going to be just fine. You’re safe now.”
Little lies never hurt anyone
, Joe thought, holding his breath to keep a calm face. He looked down at her palms and saw four or five half-moon shaped cuts in each hand, the blood beginning to dry. Her fingernails weren’t very long, but they’d done the trick. “Tell me everything that happened. Can you do that please?”
Natasha closed her eyes and took a deep breath, then another. She calmed herself as best she could. The drugs Dr. Cartman had given her were still doing their part to slow her mind. She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, seeing herself from earlier and not the wooden beams above. Joe listened intently as she began her story, keeping his mouth shut so as not to disrupt the flow it had taken so long to achieve. Most of her information was a waste of time. What she was doing, where she was going. How she was feeling and blah blah blah. But he paid close attention to details as she bent down to clean up the ash on the floor.
“Why had you decided to go back into the room if you saw someone in there?”
“Normally I leave the room alone, but there was this smell.” Natasha wrinkled her nose as the memory of the awful fragrance came back to her. “And the way he was lying there, so uncomfortable looking. It just wasn’t right, you know?”
“Tell me about the smell.”
This had piqued Joe’s interest, remembering the other night in the woods, the smell radiating off Doug’s watch. To think the two occurrences might be connected brought a tightness to his chest, an uncomfortable pressure he couldn’t quite put his finger on.
“It reminded me of stale water, stagnant; but way stronger than a pond or swamp. It was just so overbearing.” Natasha shook her head, reminding herself this was a retelling of what had already happened, remembering the keywords of past and happened. “I thought maybe he was smoking; ‘cause the ashes on the floor. But then he started falling apart. His skin…it just fell off.” Natasha began to tear up. “I wanted to leave but I was so scared.”
Joe was having some trouble understanding her through her accent and tears. He held out a hand and shushed her, telling her to take it easy. As far as he was concerned he’d heard the statement, nothing more than what he’d already expected, but there was protocol here. She’d walked in, there was the stiff, and out she went. But before he could stand, to his utter amazement, there was more. Joe acted as if he were shifting on his knees rather than beginning to stand. He didn’t want to lose the level of comfort they’d established.
“Then I felt it staring at me.” Natasha grimaced at the feeling. “It was looking right at me. And when I looked up I saw these green eyes glowing from the closet.”
“What do you mean, glowing? Like a person’s eyes? Maybe a reflection off their glasses?”
Natasha shook her head with a serious look. “No human could have eyes like that. Looking down on me from the top corner of the closet. Then it growled.”
“It growled at you?” Joe couldn’t believe this; more like a story out at the campfire than an investigation.
“It was a deep snarl.”
“Then what happened?”
“I ran out of the room. I wasn’t going to stick around for it to do to me what it did to that man.”
Joe nodded, thanking her for her cooperation. He stood and lingered a moment, wanting more than anything to disbelieve her, leave the building and have a good laugh over these damn kids and their drugs. But her eyes had told him the truth. It may not have been some kind of creature lingering in the closet depriving people of their bodily fluids, but he was dead sure she was telling the truth. Joe turned and left the room, looking down the hall to see Andy talking to a very tall girl, her shoulders slouched.
“All done here,” Dr. Cartman told Joe, watching with curiosity as he crossed the room and opened the closet. “Looking to hang up your coat?”
“Could this have been caused by some kind of animal attack?” Joe asked over his shoulder, looking up into the corner. He saw some very small punctures in the wall, three on each side.
“Nothing I’ve ever heard of. Why would you think an animal had done this?” Dr. Cartman stood as his EMT delicately maneuvered the body bag around and under, careful not to jostle it too much or more skin would fall off. He approached the closet and followed Joe’s gaze to the upper corner. “What are you thinking?”
Joe reached out and touched the holes, nothing too out of the ordinary.
“Looks like screws could have made those holes.”
“Maybe.”
“What is it you’re looking for?”
“The girl said something was in here, snarling at her.”
“I know, I heard the same story. But keep in mind that traumatic events can often play tricks on the mind, blocking out horrific images with monsters or obliterating the event entirely. I bet if you re-interview her tomorrow, you’ll get a more realistic explanation.” Dr. Cartman gave a wink and an elbow to Joe’s side before leaving, following the body out the door.
“What’s eating you?” Andy asked as he entered the room, standing beside Joe while gazing into the closet.
“I’m trying to figure out what ate him.” Joe hooked a thumb over his shoulder to the empty bed, the sheets stained with Cameron’s residue.
“Probably some kind of flesh-eating virus, like the one I read about in that magazine.”
“Maybe.” Joe nodded, not convinced. “What did Long Tall Sally have to say?”
“Not much. Just that the girl came running out of the room, jabbering on in Polish while crying hysterically. She said a bunch of stuff about some kind of closet monster. Is that what you’re looking for in here?” Andy smiled, leaning into the closet with a false expression of dread.
Joe shook his head, slightly annoyed by his antics, but also amused. It was inappropriate to be flinging jokes and flashing wide smiles at the scene of someone’s death, but a little humor felt good right now. There was so much speculation and hearsay he could choke on it. Joe had seen enough of the empty closet, gathering nothing from the holes in the wall other than that they were there. He gave a head jerk to Andy and left the room, keeping his head down so as not to get drawn into any conversations from curious employees or EMTs with nothing better to do. But there was one man Joe knew he couldn’t ignore. The expression on Dale’s face as he entered the Inn had told him loud and clear that he wasn’t going anywhere without an answer.