Midnight Solitaire (15 page)

Before the chaos things were so different, but he can barely recall those times. They come to him sometimes, faded and blurred, lost somehow over so many years, so many tears, so much blood and horror and death. He thinks it must be similar to how elderly humans try so desperately to remember distant childhoods. There was once a time, very long ago, when he would watch the sunrise and hear the music of his home, and he would be moved as nothing else could move him. Basking in the glory of His love, he could still see true beauty then, feel it down to his core. Before darkness became his beauty. Before the wars and the death and destruction, before The Fall. He truly had been there once, hadn’t he? Not the home he’d been banished to but his original home.

Although he no longer has any connection to those times, and who he was then is no more, somewhere inside he at least retains some fond memories. Doesn’t he? And aren’t those memories as real as anything else? As real as this body, this snow and ice and cold, this blood, these cards, his rituals and sacrifices, his rage, his nightmares. It’s all so devastatingly real. Isn’t it?

What if he’s wrong? What if none of it’s real and he really is one of them?

He’s so tired. It might help if he could better feel the cold.

For just a moment he wishes he could drop to his knees and cry and beg for forgiveness and a way out of this horrid darkness. He wishes he could grasp the faint glimmer of what he once knew, what he threw to the wind and has lost forever. But he cannot.

His home is in darkness, along those blackened hills where the sky is alive and roiling with terror and mayhem and the air is thick and hot and smells of death and decay, of rot.

Hell is calling. The curse is almost over, his time here almost done. But there is a final move to be made, one more drop of a card to finish the game before he can finally make his true escape. The one hunting him must die, along with the others. And then he will sit in the snow, perched along the roof of the motel, and watch the night. He will watch it recede and become daylight, and when the sun has risen in the sky, he will be no more. He will finally be gone from here. The story will be over.

So many years…so much blood…so much death and destruction…and all of it leading to this. It scarcely seems possible that his freedom could be so close. He has dreamed of this moment, and finally, it is within reach.

He will sit upon a throne of human skin and bone. He will drink their blood from a golden chalice and his slaves will gather obediently at his feet. He will again be the great warrior he once was. Revered. Feared. But never will he bow before these inferior creatures as instructed by the one who once loved his kind more than any other then took it away and gave it to them. He has slaughtered His precious creations for thousands of years, and now he will be their god, and they will bow before him, as it should be.

He pulls a bottle of vodka from his knapsack, unscrews the cap and tosses it aside. Clothes from the latest victim have already been removed and carefully torn into strips. Methodically, he prepares his deadly cocktails.

Very soon now the curse will be lifted.

Arms full, he steps into night. The storm conceals him in a sea of flakes.

I’m going home.

EIGHTEEN

To Kit, it looks like an alien planet out there, a desolate planet of ice and snow, where they could all die and no one would notice or care. They are alone in this wasteland, abandoned by everything but the faintest glimmer of hope. The cold is no longer a potential threat. It is real, and a part of them now. The diner provides limited shelter, but like everything else it is slowly being consumed by snow and ice. Through the blown out windows it comes, steadily accumulating across the furniture and floor, across them. Now and then one of them shakes off the flakes the way one might swat away a bug, but it does little good, they’re simply going through the motions while trying to ignore the inevitable. The storm is slowly devouring them. And all the while, somewhere out there The Dealer skulks about in the darkness, waiting for them to die.

If they remain here he won’t have long to wait.

And yet this night feels different somehow from all the rest. She feels different, as if she’s experienced some sort of awakening. Despite the mayhem and horror, there is something more here. Something divine. Something that makes her realize there are deeper forces at work on this stormy night.

Greer wipes snow from her eyes and shivers. Luke’s death replays in her mind on an endless loop, and though she tries her best to dismiss it, the harder she attempts to ignore it the more vivid it becomes, as if her own mind has turned on her, or as if it’s been infiltrated by something beyond her ability to resist.

Like some sick game, she thinks.

Huddled on the floor, shoulder-to-shoulder with Doc and Kit, she subtly takes them in. Kit sits staring straight ahead, eyes wide behind her eyeglass lenses, knees drawn up to her chest, arms wrapped around her calves, chin resting on the tops of her knees. Her lips move but she makes no sound. At first Greer mistakes this for prayer, but then realizes it’s merely something similar. She’s doing her best to remember and convince herself of what, in her mind, is real and what is not. There is something about the young woman that doesn’t sit right with Greer, but she can’t quite put her finger on it. Years in sales have taught her how to effectively read people, and something with Kit seems off, as if she knows or suspects something she hasn’t yet revealed. It’s subtle but it’s there. But then, fear does strange things to people, so who can be sure?

Doc, on the other hand, is laser-focused on the storm, mumbling incoherent spells and incantations only he seems to grasp.

As Greer returns her attentions to the night, an odd feeling comes over her, something akin to calm. She can only hope it is not acceptance. They have to fight. If they don’t they’ll surely die. Even if they do, odds are they won’t survive the night, so why not go out on their own terms rather than submitting to the storm and allowing that ghoul to come and pick their bones?

Yet she and the others remain on the floor, backs to the lunch counter, watching the front of the diner, the snow blowing in as inside gradually becomes one with outside. They wait, but for what? The inevitable?

“I don’t want to die here,” Greer says just above a whisper, her breath tumbling from her mouth and nostrils like smoke.

No one answers. Maybe they didn’t hear me, she thinks. Or maybe there is no answer. Maybe there’s nothing left to say.

She thinks back to her office, remembers standing outside her boss’s office and gazing out over the sea of cubicles. She remembers the people, soulless drones shuffling through their lives, joyless and broken, and is reminded why she so preferred being on the road.

In particular, Greer remembers an older woman from the accounting department—Brenda her name was—who would always corner her whenever she returned from the road as if she were a glamorous celebrity that had descended upon their otherwise drab and tedious lives. Longingly, she’d ask, “How is it out there?”

Just as empty as it is here.

In her eyes Greer saw the same things she notices in nearly everyone else she encounters, the need to feel something beyond basic existence. People do things to feel alive. Sex, drugs, violence, religion and other vices exist to better help them remember what it feels like to be human. But just like prayer, in some ways these things strand them and save them all at once. Are these real memories then, she wonders, or lies I’ve been told to believe?

If the monster out there truly is of the Devil then where is God in all this? Where is His emissary? Is it Doc, with his shotgun, spells, magic potions, superstitions and prayers? Was it Luke, a selectively loyal disciple and sacrificial lamb? Could it be Kit, the one who doesn’t believe in any of this and claims to have no idea why fate has led her to this place and time?

Or am I the one?

What if there is no emissary? What if God is far away from this awful place and we’re on our own? What if we always are, always have been? What if God abandoned us long ago and something else is in charge of this nightmare, controlling us all like puppets on invisible strings? What if ours is a false god?

“We could hide in one of the rooms,” Kit says, her voice barely audible above the gusting wind. “If we can make it to the rooms we—”

“You’d be cornered there with no way out.”

“And we’re not here?”

“Not if he comes to us.”

Kit looks to Greer. “What do you think?”

“I’m freezing,” Greer answers. “We can’t stay here like this, we’ll die.”

“He’ll come,” Doc says.

“And then?”

“Then you two make your run for it. Because then it’s just him and me.”

Kit reaches over and clutches Greer’s forearm. “I say we try to make it to the rooms now. If he wants to stay here, fine.”

“You won’t make it,” Doc tells them. “And even if by some miracle you do, how will you keep him out? The only chance you have is if he’s focused on something else. Once he comes to us, he will be. He’ll be focused on me.”

“What if we can’t wait that long?”

“If you go now you won’t make it.”

“If we stay here we won’t either. What’s the difference?”

“She’s right,” Greer agrees. “If we try to wait him out we’ll freeze to death. We’ll have no chance. If we try to make it to a room now we may have a slim chance, but it’s better than no chance at all.”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with.”

“Look,” Kit says, scrambling onto her knees, “I know you’ve been through hell with this man, and you’ve said and done a lot of things tonight, many of them quite compelling, but I’ve seen nothing that indicates we’re dealing with anything other than a human being. Granted, a sick and highly dangerous human being that’ll stop at nothing to kill us, but a human being nonetheless.”

“God—”

“There is no God. Not here.”

Doc sighs. “No. There isn’t. Is there.”

“If the snow gets much deeper out there,” Kit reminds him, “we won’t be able to get out of here, much less across the property to the units. We have to make the move now.”

He looks to Greer.

“She’s right, Doc.”

“Then we have to do something to draw him to us.”

“Like what?” Kit asks.

“Like bait.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Not you. Me.” Doc gets to his knees. “While he’s been hunting others, I’ve been hunting him. So if I go to him it won’t seem strange. In fact, he might even be expecting it. He’s waiting us out but sooner or later if I don’t go for him, he’ll come for us. So I’ll go for him now, and I mean straight for him.”

“But you don’t know where he is,” Greer says.

“He dragged Luke’s body around the side of the office, so I’ll head that way. The minute he shows and I have his attention, you two make a break for it.”

“OK,” Greer says. “And then what?”

“You hunker down and hope for the best. If he doesn’t take me down out there, I’ll lure him back here, and once he’s here, well…then it’s just the two of us, and it’s my fight.”

Something changes in the night and catches Kit’s eye. She looks out at the storm. Light…dancing and moving through the darkness, bleeding through the walls of snow…orange flickering light accompanied by an odd rumbling sound barely audible above the wind...

“Jesus,” she mumbles.

Along with the others, she scurries to the front wall and peers through the blown out windows.

The motel, from office to the last unit, is on fire.

NINETEEN

“He’s burning it down,” Greer mumbles. “He’s burning it all down. There’s nowhere left to go, we—”

“The shed,” Kit says. “The storage shed. There’s no heat but we can close it up tight and at least get shelter from the storm.”

Doc turns from the windows and starts for the back. “Change of plans.” He disappears into the kitchen then returns a moment later, grabs something from his bag and sidles up next to Greer. “I’m going to get out there and try to bring him to us. Once I’ve got him, you and Kit head out the back.”

“Once you’ve got him?”

“You’ll understand when it happens. There’s a pair of gas tanks at the rear of the kitchen. Just checked them, they’re a little under half full.” He takes Greer’s hand and thrusts an object into her palm. Until her fingers curl around it and she holds it up closer for a better look, she doesn’t realize it’s a grenade. “On your way out, pull the pin and toss that under the tanks. You’ll have fifteen seconds before it detonates, so make sure that door is already open when you make the throw. Then run like hell.”

“We can’t just leave you behind.”

“You’re not leaving me behind. You’re saving yourselves while I stop this sack of shit once and for all.” Doc forces a sad smile. “From the moment this started tonight, I’ve never had any illusions of leaving here alive.” He looks to the windows. “We’ve got to move. You two get into position and sit tight. If I don’t come back…” Doc reaches into his jacket, pulls free the crystal and holds it out for Kit. “This’ll be your only shot.”

“But I don’t know how to use it,” Kit tells him.