The Inn (26 page)

I
n the darkness of the locked closet, Annabel tried to keep her wits about her, but this was too much. She tried to hang on to the reality of the present, but she was fast sliding down a very slippery chute into the past. She was a little girl, locked in the closet by Daddy Ron, and Tommy Tricky was somewhere in the darkness behind her, waiting to devour her with his sharp blue teeth.

She saw a little man in the basement eating a human arm.

“No, no, no,” Annabel moaned, and commenced banging on the door. “Jack! Let me out! Let me out! Oh, please, let me out!”

Behind her, she heard something scurrying in the darkness among her husband's shoes.

“He's not real,” she said out loud.

“Don't get him mad,” came Daddy Ron's voice through the door.

The closet seemed to be getting smaller. It was closing in on her. It was like that time she'd been trapped in the elevator. The walls had been moving in on her from all sides, and Annabel had feared she would be squeezed to death. She had utterly decompensated then, ending up in a puddle on the floor. She needed to fight that—stay clear in her mind—if she was to survive this. Because being locked in the closet wasn't the worst horror. Beyond the door her husband had become a madman, and surely he would kill her like the others.

But it was hard to resist panic when she heard the scuttling behind her.

The closet was almost completely dark. Annabel could not even see her hands in front of her face. The only light came from the small space between the door and the floor. She got down as close to the space as she could, irrationally terrified that she'd breathe up all the air in the closet and suffocate. She could see out into the room through the space. She could see one of the boots on the floor that Jack had removed from her feet. She could see the bottom of the dresser.

Annabel leaned in close to the space to gulp in some air.

What was Jack going to do to Chad? Maybe Chad had gotten away. Maybe he'd gone to get help.

That wasn't likely. Not in this storm.

Annabel heard the scuttling again. Except this time it wasn't behind her. It was right beside her. Right beside her face as she pressed it to the bottom of the door, gulping in air.

She moved her eyes.

Beside her own hand was another. A very small hand, with fingers that resembled the claws of a squirrel or a raccoon. It was hard to say for sure in this darkness, but Annabel thought the hand was blue.

She screamed.

R
ichard slammed down the phone. “Nothing,” he grumbled over at Adam. “The town doesn't have any snowmobiles and the county can't get any to us until the storm lets up. We won't need them then!”

Adam shook his head. “I haven't had any luck, either. A friend of mine has one, but I can't reach him.”

“Do you even know how to ride one?” Betty asked the chief.

“I've been on one,” he told her.

She smirked. “That doesn't mean you know to steer it.”

“We didn't have much need of them in Boston. But several years ago we were helping search for a missing girl up in New Hampshire. I . . . I rode a snowmobile then.”

Betty's smirk deepened. “You rode one?”

“Yeah.” Richard sighed. “Right into a tree.”

Betty laughed. “Our great hero to the rescue.”

“Is your son good with his?” Richard asked her.

“Sure. But as I said, it's just a beginner's model. Frank and I bought it for Danny last Christmas. It's just a small Ski-Doo.”

“Ask him if he knows who else might have one in town,” Richard said.

“I'm one ahead of you there, chief,” Betty told him. “I already called him, and he's trying to find you a good-size one.”

“Thanks, Betty.”

The window of the police station was now completely covered with snow. A couple of officers were out front, digging a passage out the front door. It felt as if they were inside an igloo.

“Have you tried the Blue Boy's phone again?” Richard asked Adam.

“Yup. Still no answer, chief.”

“The phone at Millie's store still works. I just called her. So why wouldn't the Blue Boy's still be working?”

“Beats me, chief.”

“He's disconnected it,” Richard said.

Adam looked up at him. “Who has?”

“Jack Devlin. I feel certain of it.”

In his mind's eye he saw Amy, so small in her hospital bed. The snow had been piling up outside the hospital much as it was accumulating outside the station now. Richard couldn't shake the feeling of déjà vu helplessness. The longer he remained trapped in the station, the greater likelihood that he would let Annabel die.

Outside, he heard the whirr of an engine. It sounded like a buzz saw at first, then like the spinning of tires in snow. He hurried over to the front door, Betty at his side.

“It's Danny!” the secretary exclaimed.

A teenage boy in a bright green wool hat and orange parka riding a yellow snowmobile was stuck in a snowbank in the station lot. The officers who'd been shoveling out the front entrance were rushing over to assist him.

“That boy,” Betty said, shaking her head. “He's so impulsive. When I told him you needed a snowmobile, he offered to come over. I told him under no circumstances did I want him venturing out in this storm. But he came anyway.”

Richard was grinning. “I'm glad he's a disobedient child.”

Betty looked up at him. “But take a glance out there, chief, will you? He's stuck! That's not a very powerful machine. If Danny got stuck in our parking lot, how are you going to make it all the way out to the Blue Boy Inn?”

“Danny made it all the way out here from your house, didn't he?” Richard asked, his eyes on the boy.

With a shove from the officers, Danny was able to maneuver the snowmobile out of the bank, then hopped back onboard and steered it over toward the front door, where he brought the machine to a stop. He waved a big blue-mittened hand when he noticed the chief and his mother watching from the glass door.

“I'm giving that boy a medal,” Richard said, beaming.

“If he wasn't so tall,” Danny's mother said, “I'd give him a spanking.”

C
had climbed the stairs to the second floor.

He'd thought he'd heard Jack's voice, and then someone walking toward the stairs. But no one had come down, and now the house had fallen silent once more. Chad didn't like going up the stairs. He was afraid of what he might find. He was also afraid the exertion would cause him to lose more blood. But he had no choice, really.

The only possible way out of this house was from a second-floor window. And besides, in all good conscience, he couldn't just leave Annabel up here after he'd heard her call his name.

He reached the top of the stairs.

Chad looked around. There was no one. But peering down the hallway, he could see the door to Annabel's room was open. He had to go in there and look for her. If she wasn't there, then he was throwing open the window and making a jump for it. The snow was so high out there, Chad figured he might actually be able to just step out onto it, if it was packed hard enough.

He took his first step down the corridor. Under his foot, the old floorboards creaked.

Chad paused, listening. He heard nothing, so he continued on down the hall.

At Annabel's door, he paused again.

“Annabel?” he whispered, looking inside.

He heard the sound of crying. It was coming from the closet. He hurried to the closet door.

“Annabel!” he called.

If that was her behind the door, she was sobbing uncontrollably. She couldn't speak.

“Hang on, Annabel,” Chad said, grabbing the closet door handle and finding it locked. “I'll get you out of there. I'll get you out and then we are getting out of this house.”

He began to shake the door handle as hard as he could.

A
nnabel heard Chad's voice as if from a very far distance.

“Hang on, Annabel,” he was saying. “I'll get you out of there if I have to break this door down.”

She focused. She brought herself back to the present. She yanked herself out of her childhood, where she was a tiny girl, curled up in a ball in the closet, crying her heart out. Now she was back here, an adult woman, and she was going to get through this.

The door in front of her suddenly shuddered as Chad, outside, threw his weight at it.

Through the space at the bottom of the door, Annabel could see his feet. The black rubber soles of his boots.

“Oh, Chad!' she cried. “Oh, Chad, get me out of here!”

“I will, Annabel,” he called in to her. “Just hang on.”

The door shuddered again.

Through the space, Annabel saw droplets of blood raining onto the floor all around Chad's boots.

She turned her eyes. The little hand that had been beside her was still there. And now a little face emerged from the darkness to join her in peering out through the space under the door.

Annabel was face-to-face with Tommy Tricky.

He licked his blue lips with a snaky blue tongue.

“You're not real,” Annabel told him.

Tommy just smiled, and then withdrew back into the darkness.

For a third time Chad threw himself against the door. It shook in its frame, and Annabel heard something crack. But still it did not open.

She could hear Chad breathing heavily outside. And she could see now another pair of feet. They appeared to be a woman's feet, in fuzzy pink house slippers. They had come in behind Chad. Facing the closet door, he wouldn't have seen whoever it was come into the room.

Annabel had to warn him.

“Chad!” she screamed. “Behind you!”

“Annabel, I'm—”

But whatever he was about to tell her became a scream.

Annabel watched as the pink fuzzy slippers came up right behind Chad's boots. She heard the sound of a knife plunging into flesh. Chad screamed again, and then dropped to his knees. Annabel could hear the knife, plunging in and out of him, making a horrible suction sound each time. Chad was screaming. Suddenly, as Annabel peered through the space, she saw a river of blood rushing across the floor toward her. Her hands, pressed close to the space, were quickly covered in it. Annabel leapt to her feet and screamed.

The sound of stabbing—suction in, suction out—continued for the next several minutes. Annabel covered her ears, but she could still hear the terrible noise. Chad's screams softened into moans. Finally, after agonizing minutes, he was silent.

Annabel dropped her hands from her ears. She heard the sound of slippers scuffing out of the room.

“Oh, Chad,” Annabel cried, the tears dropping off her cheeks as she leaned against the door. The young man's blood continued to flow into the closet all over her bare feet. Annabel realized she had just listened to Chad's murder.

And now she was certain that hers would be next.

“O
kay, so you grab the handlebar like this,” Danny was shouting over the wind, as Richard watched him closely. The seventeen-year-old's hands closed over the bar tightly and he pushed it up to demonstrate. “Once the key is in the position, you pull the cord out and push the handlebar up. You follow?”

“I think so,” Richard said. “Seems easy enough.”

“It's more than easy. This is a really light-footed sled. You should be able to glide over ungroomed snow without any problem. Just watch out for trees or bushes or anything that's covered that you can't see.”

“That could send me flying, I guess,” Richard said.

“Well, maybe not flying, but it could get you stuck.” Danny turned his red-cheeked face to him. “That's what happened to me on the way in here, when I got stuck. I was fine all the way to the station from my house because I stayed on the roads. The minute I came over the station's yard I didn't know there was a hedge underneath me, and I ran smack into it. If you stay to the roads, you should be okay, because all that's under you is six or seven feet of snow.”

“That should be easy then,” Richard said, his breath freezing in front of his face.

Danny shook his head. “You haven't seen it out there, chief. Sometimes you can't tell where the road starts and yards begin. And not everyone got their cars off the street in time. There are lots of cars buried under drifts of snow. You don't want to run into one of them.”

“No,” Richard said. “I sure don't.”

“How far you got to take this?” Danny asked.

“Up to the Blue Boy Inn.”

The teenager grinned. “That haunted house? What's going on up there now?”

“That's what I aim to find out.” Richard put his gloved hand out and Danny grabbed it. “I can't thank you enough for bringing this over, Danny. If I cause any damage to it, the department will pay for a new snowmobile for you.”

“It's cool, man,” Danny said, getting up off the seat and gesturing to Richard to take his place. “If you crack this one up, I've got my eye on a more advanced model.”

“I think the department may be buying a few of those,” Richard said, straddling the snowmobile and grabbing the handlebars. “If we're going to have more snowstorms like this, we need to have them in store.”

“Oh, we're going to have a lot more of these kind of storms. Lots of extreme weather ahead of us. The climate's changing, chief. Hope you're not a denier.”

Richard smiled at him. “Nope, no denier here, Danny. I've learned that we deny reality at our own peril.”

He checked that his gun was safely secured at his side, and then he revved the motor as Danny had showed him.

Behind him, Adam was shouting over the noise. “As soon as I can round up some more machines, we'll be up to join you, chief!”

Richard gave his deputy a thumbs-up with his right hand. Then he pulled on his goggles, tightened his scarf around his neck, gripped the handlebars, said a little prayer, and took off across the snow.