Midnight Solitaire (11 page)

Trying to remain low as possible, Greer moves carefully around the sizeable vent, squinting through the snow and pawing at her eyes as she circles around it. Just as she reaches the backside she hears a quiet high-pitched grunt followed by a flash of something dark coming at her through the snow and darkness.

It isn’t until it makes impact with her chest and vaults her away and onto her back that she realizes someone wearing a fairly rugged boot has kicked her. She lay in the snow stunned and trying to catch her breath, the flakes tumbling down at her like beautiful swirling razors. She feels her hair becoming wet, and bits of icy snow sliding along her neck. Her hands are cold and stiff, but she remembers the knife Doc gave her, and as she rolls over onto all fours, she grips its handle.

Through the storm, Greer sees a small female figure stumbling across the roof toward the lower, longer roof in the distance that runs the length of the units. She can’t call out, but knows if she doesn’t stop her she may never get another chance to save her. Visibility is bad wherever he is too, she thinks, and risking it, Greer stands and breaks into a full run, determined to catch Kit before she drops off this roof and onto the other.

She knows she won’t make it. “Wait!” she calls out, hoping her voice carries far enough to reach her but not enough to reach the lot below.

Kit staggers to a stop near the edge of the roof and looks back with equal parts terror and confusion.

Greer holds her hands up. “Stop,” she says breathlessly, chest heaving. “It’s OK, it’s—I promise it’s OK, I’m not—my name’s Greer. I’m here to help you.”

Kit’s face hints at relief, or perhaps it’s only disbelief, Greer cannot be certain. She stands in the whirl of snow, hands at her sides, looking drenched and freezing, her eyeglasses dotted with moisture and smeared with snow.

“There are two others down in the office,” Greer says. “Come with me. Please, we can’t stay out here. He’ll see us.”

Kit nods hesitantly, as if she doesn’t quite understand but comprehends enough to know she needs to listen. “He killed Carlin,” she says in a small voice.

“Please.” Greer reaches a hand out. “Come with me. Now.”

“He…killed him.”

Greer closes the gap between them with two quick strides and takes Kit’s hand. It’s cold as ice. “Come on, honey, it’s going to be OK but we have to get off this roof.”

Kit nods again. “I…I know, I…OK.”

Behind her, Greer sees something moving in the snow. At first she can’t be sure what it is because it’s a distance away on the roof of the units, but within seconds she can see that it’s moving fast.

A silhouette running toward them…duster flapping behind him…

Greer tightens her grip on Kit’s hand. “Run!” She turns and bolts back toward the vent, dragging Kit along with her. “Don’t look back! Just run!”

They reach the vent quickly.

“Get back down into the office!” Greer tells her. “I’m right behind you!”

Kit climbs in and is gone.

Although she knows she shouldn’t, something forces Greer to look back over her shoulder. Having just leapt from the lower roof to this one in a single bound, the man in the duster lands on the edge of the roof in a crouch, head bowed. He rises to his feet.

Everything in her being screams for her to follow Kit into that vent. But she cannot move.

He slowly raises his head. She still cannot make out his eyes.

Come to me, little lamb, as you know you want to. As you know you must. I can set you free of this world and all its horrors. Come to me, Greer. Come.

She grips the knife at her side. “How do you know my name?”

You told me your name in your dreams…your nightmares. Don’t you remember, little lamb?

He pulls open the duster, holding it apart like great leather wings extended out on either side of him. And inside, things move and writhe and whip about, slimy appendages and bloody tentacles. Dark things drop free of him and scurry through the snow, rushing toward her in waves like a living blanket as his rumbling laughter cuts the night.

I can smell the blood running through you, lamb. I can taste it.

Greer turns and vaults into the vent, sliding down on her stomach into the darkness, only cognizant seconds later that something has followed her into the shaft. Several things. Small and fast and closing on her even as she crawls toward what she can only hope is at least temporary safety.

She is only a few feet into the shaft when she hears squeaking noises behind her, along with a ticking sound similar to fingers tapping a keyboard. Scrambling through the dark shaft, she tries desperately to remember where she put the Zippo. As she drops down into the final length of vent, she remembers and manages to pry it from her jeans pocket. Flipping it open, she flicks it on and the tunnel is illuminated enough for her to see that Kit is already gone and most likely safe in the office with the others.

Greer continues on fast as she can, twisting and turning until she is on her back and sliding. She lifts her head, and with the aid of the flame is able to see what has followed her into the shaft.

The largest rats she has ever seen, sneering at her with their pointed teeth and glowing eyes. A wave of the creatures pour through the shaft, so many she cannot tell where one creatures ends and the other begins, all of them swarming over her even as she kicks and screams and stabs at them with the lighter.

She continues desperately backing down the shaft as they bite and claw at her, gnawing at her hands and neck and face, tearing free chunks of her flesh in agonizing bloody sprays, her screams echoing like thunder along the metal walls surrounding her. She drops the lighter, the flame is extinguished, and in darkness, she covers her eyes in the hopes of protecting them.

Sliding along, she feels their claws on her throat, their whiskers tickling her fingers, their teeth nibbling her knuckles, eating their way through her hands to her eyes. Fear has become unthinkable terror so profound her body and mind can no longer process it, and Greer feels herself starting to shut down.

But then, through the blood and darkness and excruciating pain, she sees a faint bit of flickering light.
The candle on the front desk
, her shattered mind tells her.
I’m almost there.

* * * *

“Keep an eye on the front,” Doc orders, hoisting the shotgun up in one hand and reaching for the vent with the other to help guide the small young woman down.

Luke stands before the door, watches the night.

Kit Piper is disheveled, soaking wet, freezing and terrified, but appears to be physically unharmed. “It’s all right,” Doc tells her, taking her hand as she drops down onto the front desk and then to the floor.

Screams follow from deep inside the shaft, and Greer’s kicking reverberates out through the open grate like drumbeats. Kit stumbles over to the far wall and squats down, hugging herself as Doc cocks his head for a better look up into the vent.

“Greer!” he calls out. “Keep moving! Just keep moving!”

What is only seconds but feels like hours pass, and finally Greer appears at the edge of the opening, still lying on her back. She spins and falls out, landing hard on the front desk before rolling off onto the floor, swatting and kicking and flailing about in a panic.

“Get them off! G-Get them off get them off!”

Doc climbs onto the desk, swings shut the grate then hops back down as Luke turns from the door and tries to figure out what Greer is reacting to.

“There’s nothing there,” Doc tells her. He lays the shotgun on the desk and grabs hold of her by her shoulders. “Greer, look at me. Look at me!”

She does, eyes wide with terror and her entire body trembling.

“There’s nothing there. It’s not real. Whatever he’s showing you isn’t real. Look. Look, there’s nothing there, nothing on you.”

Greer inspects herself as if for the first time, and her horror becomes confusion and disbelief. “But I…I saw them, I…I felt them.” She looks at Doc helplessly. “Rats. Hundreds of them, they…they were all over me.”

“It’s all right now. You’re all right.”

“He’s in my head, isn’t he?”

“Fuck is this shit?” Luke mumbles.

Doc looks away, turns to Kit. “Miss, are you all right?”

“I think so.” Kit pulls her glasses off, wipes the lenses with her shirttail then slides them back on and looks around, able to truly see again. She points to Greer. “You saved my life. I’m sorry I kicked you.”

Greer touches her chest, as if to make certain that pain is real.

“When I heard someone coming, I closed my eyes and kicked when you sounded close. I never even saw you until you called out and I looked back.” Kit slowly gets to her feet. “If you hadn’t stopped me I would’ve run right into him.”

“How long have you been up there?” Luke asks.

“Seems like forever. The man out there killed Carlin. He really killed him.”

“Who’s Carlin?”

“He works…worked here with me. I work the front desk nights. We’d just switched shifts and Carlin was on his way out when…I knew I had to get out of here and the only other way out fast was into the shaft. I didn’t think he’d be able to fit. Eventually I went up on the roof and hid, I—I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t have time to get my jacket or my keys and I knew with the storm I wouldn’t get far on foot so I just…” Kit’s horrified gaze slowly glides between them, one to the next. “What’s happening? I…I can’t believe this.”

“We don’t know that much either,” Greer says, her nerves evening out. “Just that there’s a maniac out there trying to kill us.”

“There’s only one of us that has any real answers to all this,” Luke announces. “Ain’t that right, Doc?”

Doc responds by introducing himself and the others to Kit.

She shakes their hands in turn. “Kit Piper.”

Luke slips into the office, grabs her army jacket and holds it up for her so she can slip into it. “Here, you’re shivering.”

“Thanks,” she says, wrapping herself up tight in the jacket. She notices the papers all over the floor. “My manuscript.”

“You a writer?”

She shrugs. “Hopefully one day I will be.”

Greer paces about like a trapped lioness walking her cage. “It’s time we got some answers, Doc. You need to tell us exactly what the hell is going on here. Because what I saw out there, what I just experienced isn’t possible.”

“There’s a chance we could all die tonight,” Luke says. “Don’t you think if we do we deserve to know why?”

Doc retrieves the shotgun, holds it by his side and watches the snow come down awhile. The wind howls like the tortured soul it is, shaking the motel and sweeping waves of white about the lot and across the front of the building.

Somewhere far away, beneath the wind, Doc can still hear the beautiful chants, the ethereal songs of angels rolling across the heavens. But he hears laughter too, the guttural laughter of the thing on the roof waiting to sate its hunger, its need. Heaven and Hell, hand-in-hand as always, he thinks, all of us slaves to both, forever caught between darkness and the light.

“He’s in human form,” Doc says softly, “but only because he has to be. Underneath it all he’s a serpent, a child of the land of the dead. He’s the thing we fear the most as children. As adults we try to convince ourselves his kind don’t exist, can’t exist. But all the while, you know deep down he really is under your bed.”

Doc closes his eyes, sees it all…the carnage…the beginning…the end.

“I’ve been tracking him for years,” he says. “I call him The Dealer.”

FOURTEEN

Six years ago, my life ended. It died the day he walked into our lives and slaughtered my wife and little girl. I was thirty-four years old when my daughter Jodi was born, maybe a little older than most, but my marriage and family came a bit later for me than most too. I was forty-three when they died…when The Dealer took them from me. Before Karen and Jodi, I was lost. Born and raised in Wyoming, I grew up dirt poor in a little shack of a house with my mother, father and three sisters. Had to work and scrape for everything. Watched my old man break his back working as a laborer for peanuts. Watched my mother on her hands and knees scrubbing floors for even less. And watched them both drink themselves into oblivion. I worked hard at school, got scholarships. Went to college then medical school, became a doctor, a surgeon. No more problems. I had it all. The big house, the summer condo, nice cars, every toy and luxury I could ever want. And none of it meant a goddamn thing. Then I met Karen and everything changed. My life made sense, and for the first time I didn’t feel lost and alone anymore. When Jodi was born I felt love and a sense of family I never even knew existed. We were so happy, all of us, respectable, decent people raising our child and living our lives. Never occurred to me it could all fall apart so easily. I dealt with death and the fragility of human life every day, but I never thought it’d touch me, or those I loved. Foolish, I know, but that’s what happiness does to you. Blinds you in the best possible way. Karen had struggled with some mental health issues since she’d been a child, but she was on medication that helped control it. When she started to become depressed, I blamed it on the meds not working. What I didn’t realize was that I’d become complacent and, much as I loved them, took her and Jodi for granted. That car out there, the Bel Air, it was my baby. Fixing and restoring old cars has always been a hobby of mine. I spent hours in the garage working on that thing, finding the parts, restoring it and bringing it back to life. That’s what I did, I brought things back to life, whether on an operating table or in a garage. Took me more than two years to finish it. All those hours spent fiddling with that car when I could’ve been with my family. It’s why I still drive it, so I’ll never forget that I’d give it all back for even five minutes with them. I just didn’t see it then. I couldn’t understand how Karen could’ve been unhappy. We had a great life and loving family. How could anything be wrong?