Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (159 page)

The cook looked dubious, though he was in a hurry to retreat from the burning structure. “You won’t sue me?”

“Never saw you,” Wayne said. “And this didn’t happen.”

The cook lifted Wayne from beneath his armpits. Tingling needles of ice worked down Wayne’s thighs as blood began flowing through his legs. When the cook dragged him out of the doorway, Wayne at last saw what he’d left behind. Red light limned the entrance, revealing Rodney’s prone form on the basement floor. A steel pipe protruded from his chest.

“Don’t look back,” the cook said.

“Too late,” Wayne said.

“Least he don’t have to worry about burning to death.”

By the time they were 20 feet from the building, Wayne had regained some feeling in his feet. He raised himself up, wobbling, as smoke crept from the basement and drifted toward the trees.

“You ain’t paralyzed,” the cook said.

“Guess not.”

“Man, I hope I turned off the gas to the deep fryer. Janey Mays would have my balls in a blender.”

“So everybody evacuated?”

“Yeah, they’re out front. You’re one of them ghostbusters, right?”

“I guess.”
But we’re the ones that got busted.

“Sorry about your friend there,” the cook said, already lighting another cigarette. “You must have been the last two in the building.”

The flames had just begun to penetrate the first floor. Wayne swayed on his numbed legs and took a trembling step toward the hotel. “I have to find my daughter.”

The cook grabbed his arm. “Hold on, man. I told you the place was empty.”

“I have to be sure.”

“Hear that?”

Wayne listened beyond the crackle of the flames, the whisper of the Blue Ridge wind in the trees, and the groan of straining timbers. A wail poured over the valley like the scream of a wounded dragon.

“Sirens,” the cook said. “We’ll get you an ambulance.”

Wayne nodded, wondering if Kendra was worried about him. He glanced up at the window of the room where he and Beth had conceived her—

And there she stood.

Chapter 49

Bad move
.

Kendra had ducked into 318 because it was the first open door she’d found while feeling her way down the smoky hall. She’d hoped to escape through the window, but it was jammed tight and the lattice framework was too narrow. Even if she broke the glass, she wouldn’t be able to slip through. She looked down at the crowd milling on the front lawn, hoping to spy Cody, but also hoping he’d noticed she was missing.

Dad must have escaped. If he’d been in the basement, he’d probably been one of the first to spot the flames. No doubt the same short-circuit that had caused the power outage had also ignited the hotel. The place was a real tinderbox and wouldn’t withstand the flames for long.

She ran to the other window, saw two forms on the lawn behind the hotel.

A row of red strobe lights made a wash across the treetops, emergency vehicles rolling in from Black Rock. If she could only hold out for a couple of minutes, trucks with ladders and firefighters would arrive on the scene. She’d wave and some hunky hero with an ax would climb up and smash the glass and chop apart the frame, then escort her down to safety. Dad and Cody would be impressed and—

The door slammed shut behind her.

In the darkness came the unmistakable sound of bedsprings. Then came the rhythmic creak made by jumping feet and a soft whisper:

“
Lock the door and throw away the key, stay and play with Mommy and me
.”

“Bruce,” she said, not turning around.

The boy repeated, with more insistence:
“Lock the door and throw away the key, stay and play with Mommy and me.”

His jumping grew more violent and she expected to hear his head thump against the ceiling. He repeated the line again, nearly shouting.

And the rain began. Kendra squinted and sputtered against the deluge, realizing the sprinkler system had activated. A little late, perhaps, but working nonetheless. Except she now believed something else controlled the White Horse Inn, a malevolent brat that abused its toys and pouted when things didn’t go its way. And now it was taking a whiz, letting loose all its frustration and rage, drenching her so that her clothes stuck to her body.

“It’s no good, Bruce,” she shouted against the spray.

“
Stay and play...stay and play...stay and play....
”

“I can’t stay,” she said.

The beating red rays of light were closer now, pushing up from beneath the trees and down the lane that led from the highway.

“Stay and play,” it said, but it was no longer Bruce’s voice. A woman’s.

A spotlight tracked across the front of the hotel, momentarily illuminating her face. It was Ann Vandooren, the woman Cody said had rigged a prank camera.

“I’m not staying and I’m not playing,” Kendra said, trying to sound tough, though it came off more Dr. Seuss than Emily Dee.

“You should have been mine,” Ann said, moving closer to Kendra, hands upraised, ignoring the falling water.

“I didn’t do anything to you.”

“Besides getting born, you mean?”

Kendra backed to the window, flipping wet hair out of her face. All she could make out of the woman was her sinister silhouette, but the form didn’t matter that much, whether it was Bruce’s, Burton’s, or Eloise Lanier’s. They all drew water from the same well, and they all wanted her dead, for some reason.

Christ, what a comic book this is going to make. Assuming I ever get out of here
.

But “here” was where it had to end, right?

According to her mother’s ghost, she’d been conceived in this very room. Her first spark of life had glinted when Digger’s stone had struck her mother’s flint. She’d crawled out of the mysterious pool of spirit matter and became the quirky kid with the crooked smile and a talent for doodling, the sad kid who watched her mother waste away at an age when her biggest worries should have been soccer and long division, the troubled kid who had to grow up way too fast because her father needed a parent.

This was where it all started.

The spotlight swept by again, the sirens blaring nearby, and the carpet was warm under her feet, the falling water mixed with smoke and steam. The room was fog, and she could be left here and lost forever, to wander the seams between living and dead, or maybe this was the dream an infant had suffered in the womb of Beth Wilson on the way to being stillborn.

Maybe she was already dead.

And had never been.

A memoir writ in invisible ink.

“You’re the life he never had,” Ann said, but it wasn’t Ann. It was Margaret Percival. It had always been Margaret Percival.

“Kendra!”

Dad was just outside the door, banging, kicking, screaming her name.

Her
name.

Kendra Wilson.

She had been born after all, and she was alive.

“You took his life,” Margaret said.

“I didn’t take anything that wasn’t mine,” Kendra said, water streaming down her face, eyes stinging, the tears flushing away as fast as they escaped.

She flung her arms out in the fog, knowing Margaret could see her, because Margaret saw everything in the hotel. Margaret
was
the hotel.

“Because you still have this,” Kendra said, shouting over the hissing of the water and the pounding on the door and the creaking of imploding lumber. “All yours.”

She lunged toward the door, bracing for the collision, wondering if Margaret would be as yielding and suffocating as damp cotton, as sharp and brittle as an iceberg, as splintery and hot as a burning hotel. No matter the material, or the immaterial, Emily Dee was kicking ass and taking names and writing it all down in a little book.

The room was suffused with a sudden glow, as if a thousand candles had been struck to life, the water drops sparkling like amber and rubies. Ann Vandooren’s face emerged from the exotic mist and she swiped out with a hooked stack of talons, going for Kendra’s face. But someone—some
thing
—caught Ann’s wrist, twisting it behind her back, yelling at Kendra to run.

Chapter 50

Wayne fell into Room 318 when the door flew open.

Spitting, coughing, crawling, he forced himself forward, though his body was one big bruise and numbness enervated his legs. The climb up the dark, smoke-filled service stairs had sapped him.

And he’d almost given up hope when he found the door stuck tight, as solid as the wall, and in a burst of frustration and fear, he’d slammed himself against it, calling Kendra’s name. But then—if he believed in miracles, he’d give it that name, though other names were possible—the room allowed entry.

Water cascaded down, stirring the air enough for him to fill half his lungs, not enough to carry a shout but enough to make the next lunge forward.

The door...allowed...entry.

The room had let him in. Not because the lock yielded or the stubborn hinges gave way or structural damage had loosened it from the jamb.

No, the door had said, “Come in, Digger. We’ve been waiting.”

The same room where he and Beth had booked a second honeymoon, making serious love and silly promises, and 17 years on, he was right where he’d never wanted to be again. In many ways, he was deader than Beth would ever be.

Wayne squinted into the steam. He made out two shapes near the window, silhouetted against the backlit window. One was large and hulking, with wild, stringy hair, towering over the smaller figure, who was crouched in a stance of self-defense. Her Emily Dee act.

The White Horse had his daughter.

He roared in rage, throat raw, and launched himself from the floor. He didn’t understand the forces here, and all the tiny paths that had led back to Room 318, but he understood that Beth had trusted him with this job.

It was time for Digger to shovel shit.

He caught the woman’s arm as she clawed at Kendra’s face. She turned and snarled at him like a feral animal. He barely recognized her—Ann Vandooren, the hoax artist—and the fierce glow in her eyes reminded him of the pulsing furnace in the basement.

“G-get out.” His words came in a spasm of coughs. “Run.”

“Dad,” Kendra said, sounding scared, but he couldn’t reassure her because he was scared, too. The strobing emergency lights outside threw a red wash across the walls, making a chaotic kaleidoscope of the room.

Ann shrugged free from his grip and thrust her hand toward his neck, nails slicing flesh as fingers locked around his throat. Kendra gave a flying side kick, but her sneaker bounced off the woman as if she were made of rubber-coated steel.

Wayne glanced around for something to use as a club. The bedside lamp had a heavy base, but it was out of reach. Ann’s fingers clung with unnatural strength, and the drumming water blurred his vision.

The floor shuddered, signaling a portion of the building had collapsed. The eastern wing had been the most engulfed, and Wayne figured the flames were chewing their way down the hall. The firelight pulsed in syncopation with the emergency lights. If Kendra didn’t escape soon—

She leaped onto Ann’s back, wrapping her arms as if going for a piggyback ride. The attack was just enough to throw Ann off balance, and they all fell onto the soggy king-size bed. As Ann writhed on top him, pinning him to the bedspread, Wayne couldn’t help but think of Beth and how their long-ago wrestling had created Kendra.

Ann raked her fingers down his chest, ripping his skin and shirt collar, but at least he could now suck enough air to scream.

He wallowed for traction against the sodden cloth. Ann had turned her attention to Kendra, but her face was close to his, sulfuric wind oozing from her mouth. He drove his forehead into her nose and she shook, flinging water from her hair.

Blood gushed from her face. Whatever she was, she wasn’t invincible. Her flesh was still human.

Wayne didn’t know if there was anything left of Ann inside the hissing, flailing form, but instinct compelled him to hurt her in any way he could.

But before he could punch her, the ceiling fell, chunks of gypsum pounding his face and delivering him to darkness.

Chapter 51

Kendra bounced on the bed—
stay and play
—and grabbed the sprinkler pipe, planning to swing until she could kick the crazy woman off of Dad. But the pipe came loose from the ceiling, yanking jagged sheets of gypsum with it.

Kendra fell, snapping off one of the bed’s posters, then sprawled backward with a
spluff
,
her fall softened by the wet blankets.

Ann hovered over her, and in the strange flickering light, her eyes were bright as embers, pulsing with the rage of the world.

“You can’t have it,” Ann said, grabbing Kendra’s hair with one hand. The woman grinned, and her teeth were impossibly long, far too big for her mouth. She was no longer a woman, really. More like a badly drawn creature from the imagination of some sicko cryptozoologist.

Rat face
.

Dad moaned from somewhere miles away in steamy jungle night.

Kendra rolled until she was halfway off the bed, but there was no floor below, only a deep, inky blackness that looked like it would suck everything down into the dead belly of the world. The walls were still there, the bulky outlines of furniture still revealed by the emergency lights outside, but the abyss below was big enough to swallow it all. The water drops fell on and on until their reddish silver glints vanished forever.

Even if she escaped the clutch of the demon, she wouldn’t dare leave the bed and touch that bottomless morass. It looked cold enough to kill.

Ann tangled her fingers in Kendra’s hair and jerked. The demon wallowed on her, hot breath on her cheek. The mouth descended and teeth scraped the soft skin around her jugular.

Kendra squirmed and felt the pressure in her pocket. Pencil.

“You should never have been born,” the demon hissed in her ear.

Kendra dug her hand in her pocket, fingers settling on the solid thickness of Big Fattie.