Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set (160 page)

Works for vampires, but it won’t reach the heart.If this creature’s even got one.

She flipped up with her hips, which drew Demon Thing’s mouth closer but allowed her to yank the pencil free. Hot slaver spilled on her neck, erasing the chill of the spraying water.

The creature’s grip eased just a little and she opened her eyes. Dad had Demon Thing by the shoulders, trying to pull it away. The creature had gotten even uglier, with wrinkled grayish skin and eyes burning toward blue-white intensity.

As the teeth closed, Kendra drove the pencil into the creature’s ear.

“Draw blood!” she yelled, as Big Fattie’s sharpened tip plowed through the fragile chambers into the demon’s ear.

The creature’s shriek drowned out the latest wave of fire sirens, and it stiffened and jerked upright. The spotlight swept the window, revealing the creature in silhouette as it wiped at the wound. Black ichor gushed from the thing’s head. It swung an arm out, knocking Dad from the bed.

Kendra called his name and reached for him, expecting him to be gone, just as Gruff had gone, down into a dark hole in the heart of God. But the floor was solid now, and he came up with the bed’s broken poster.

“Go back to hell,” he yelled, driving the jagged tip into the creature’s chest.

Another shriek shattered the room, and the demon’s face contorted, shifting rapidly to Ann Vandooren’s, Rochester’s, Eloise Lanier’s, Gruff’s, Rodney Froehmer’s, then dozens of others, shuffled like cards, moving back through time until at last it settled on the woman in the first-floor painting.

“Margaret Percival,” Dad said.

Margaret looked down at the chunk of wood protruding from her chest. “You should never make promises,” she said, her voice no longer deep and demonic.

She pulled the bedpost from her chest. She looked happy in the rain.

“This way,” came a voice from the door.

Cody
.

Chapter 52

“Get out,” Wayne said, shoving Kendra out the door. “Now.”

Smoke roiled in the hall, and flames flickered in eager fingers of golden heat.. Cody had yanked his shirt up over his face so the cloth acted as a filter, but his eyes were red and narrow. The ceiling joists groaned overhead.

“Service stairs,” Wayne shouted.

Future of Horror, I hope to God you’ve got a future.

He slammed the door behind them and flung the deadbolt. Kendra screamed at him but he offered no answer. She yanked on the door handle, but Cody must have had enough sense to lead her away before all hope of escape was lost.

Satisfied that now his daughter had a chance, he turned to face his demons. All of them.

The sprinkler system gave one final gush and then fell to dribbles. Steam curled above the carpet, and Wayne’s boots conducted heat up through the soles of his feet. For an absurd moment, he wished he had his top hat. The prop would have given him a little courage, as if playing a Victorian undertaker conferred an indifference to death.

“You’re not Margaret.”

“I’m way older than that,” it said. “She is just another vessel.”

“I didn’t believe in you, and now I do. Isn’t that enough?”

“Faith is never enough. You need proof. That’s why you’ve been looking so hard.”

Wayne glanced at the bedpost that lay on the bed, a gooey slickness coating its tip. It hadn’t worked the first time, but it was all he had.

Unless
....

“How long have you been in the basement?”

“As long as people have needed me.” The demon touched the hole in Margaret’s chest, as if curious about the ephemeral nature of flesh. “As long as God asked me to be.”

“Look. Only two ways this can go. You kill me, or I die when the hotel caves in. So either way we’re stuck together.”

“More than you know.”

The smoke grew thicker. Boards detonated from stress. A huge piece of roof sheeting slid past the window. The heat was palpable now, and each breath carried pain to the bottom of Wayne’s lungs. Outside, the forest glimmered with the reflection of the rising conflagration.

The fire fighters had probably reached Kendra and Cody by now. No reason to wait any longer. It wouldn’t do any good for him to stay here forever, too.

“I kept my promise,” he said.

The demon reached up and yanked the pencil stub from its ear. “Took you long enough.”

“We just said we’d meet again. We didn’t say when.”

“I went to a lot of trouble for you.”

“You
caused
a lot of trouble, you mean.”

The demon’s face shifted from Margaret Percival’s to Beth’s as fire leapt across the attic and lit up the gash in the ceiling. “Well, I didn’t want Kendra to see me like this.”

Even with her damp hair, the bloom of blood on her chest, and the reflection of the encroaching flames in her eyes, she was beautiful. Digger’s half-dead heart twitched in his chest, revived enough to ache. “She’s not ready to know what she is.”

“She’s almost a woman, Wayne. Haven’t you noticed?”

“I’ve been trying not to.”

“Thanks for bringing her. It was so good to see her.”

“Sorry I waited so long. I was just—”

“Scared. I don’t blame you.” Beth sat on the soggy, gypsum-covered bed as smoke and steam swirled around her face. “We knew something was here. Dumb as we were, we somehow knew.”

A gutter banged against the windowsill and glass shattered. Another chunk of the ceiling fell down, and the attic rumbled and copper roofing flapped from the heat of the updraft.

“Go now,” Beth said, looking at the sketch pencil in her hand. “Get her away.”

“I can’t lose you again.”

“Somebody’s got to fit her for wings.”

“I’m not much—”

“But you’re all she’s got. Dying is the easy way out. I should know.”

“The hotel....”

“Ashes to ashes and all that. Get out of here. I’m tired of goodbyes.”

“Six demons against one angel. Odds are not good.”

“When God gives you a job, you just do it. Come hell or high water.”

Wayne wished he had Beth’s faith. He struggled to leave her with something, even as the walls crackled, but all he had was doubt. “How will I know who wins?”

“See me in heaven and you’ll know.”

He staggered through the smoke and kissed her. She was already gone, air, ether, mist, a cloud in heaven. All that was left was crackling flames, a cacophony of splintering wood, and the filthy sketch pencil lying on the bed.

He grabbed the pencil and ran for the door. The deadbolt blistered his fingers as he racked it loose and swept the door wide, then entered a hall of hell.

“I love you,” he shouted, words lost in the roar of Belial’s fury.

Chapter 53

Violet’s fingers played over the petty cash. A few hundred. Not so hot, but it would do until the unemployment checks came through.

Outside the office, windows shattered and the fire fighters sprayed their futile hoses. They must have thought everyone was out by now, because no hero types were barging through the lobby looking for lost souls.

The real pity was that there was no time to raid the cash register in the bar.

She folded the rumpled stack of bills and slipped them in the waistband of her pants. She wasn’t worried about the fire, not yet, because most of the damage had occurred on the two wings. The front door was barely 50 feet away. She played the flashlight around the office, glad she’d found one that worked.

Violet wondered what else Janey might have stashed away. Maybe there was a lost-and-found drawer, with jewelry, watches, and wallets. She opened the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and rifled through papers. Aside from a half-empty bottle of Merlot, there was little of interest.

She tried the one above it, now conscious of the smoke collecting in the office. The cabinet was empty except for a photograph of a young woman. The photograph was yellowed with age and chipped at the edges, and Violet would have disregarded it except the face looked disturbingly familiar.

She retrieved the photograph and peered at it.

“Margaret,” Janey said.

Violet turned, nearly dropping the flashlight. The round cone of light framed the manager’s face as she sat behind her desk, smoking a cigarette.

“We couldn’t let her leave,” Janey said. “She was pregnant.”

“We don’t have much time.”

Violet started toward the door and saw it was closed. When she spotlighted Janey’s face, the woman’s eyes were utterly black and no light reflected from them.

“We have a lot of time,” Janey said, except her voice was deep as graves, as cold as a winter tombstone. “And the White Horse needs a new manager.”

Violet tried the door but the handle was so hot that the flesh of her palm sizzled. She yelped and banged on the wood with the bottom of her flashlight, now desperate for heroes.

Chapter 54

Almost....

The floor had nearly fallen away, but Wayne managed to reach the service stairs. Her energy had sluiced before him like a cool winter storm, pushing the flames away, parting the red sea of hell. The demons grabbed at him, claws curled, their howls of rage melding into the larger scream of the dying hotel.

Beth’s ether enveloped him, proving the permanence of devotion, yet he couldn’t touch it. The substance was like mist, white vapors that pushed against the darkness and chaos.

The womb of God....

This is how it feels to be reborn.

But even now, clambering down the stairs, he couldn’t surrender to the mystery. If God had taken Beth just to have another warrior on the front lines, Wayne saw no grace or mercy in it. Just the endless cycle of desire, merry-go-rounds of good and evil, little games to validate the fallibility of mortals.

You’re saving my ass, but you’re a sorry bastard, God.

He almost wished God would summon his wife home and grant her peace, even if it meant his death. At least then he would have sacrificed something. And it would prove God was listening.

But all he had was the will to live, and a daughter to raise, and a second chance—

“
Lock the door and throw away the key,

Stay and play with Mommy and me.
”

The kid stood below him, on the first-floor landing, his back against the door.

As he squinted through the angel haze and black smoke, two more kids emerged from the walls. They were dressed in ill-fitting, archaic clothes.

They chanted in unison as he descended, knowing Beth’s shield couldn’t long withstand the pressure. If he hesitated, they might yet win.

And Kendra would never know....

“Play with your goddamned selves,” he said, plowing toward the door, throwing his shoulder into it. The wood yielded and the door creaked open, the night pouring in and feeding the flames, pulling Beth away in the updraft of flames, screams, and the vanity of God.

DECEMBER

“Too bad all the equipment burned up,” Cody said.

Wayne didn’t think it was bad at all. Some things were better left as mysteries. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life reviewing audio files and video clips, trying to determine what was real and what wasn’t.

The inn was a brittle, black skeleton, wobbling on a few support beams as if a strong wind would push it over. December was underway, a few snow flurries twisting in the air among the ashes. That should do the trick.

Nine bodies had been found in the wreckage. All were considered victims of the fire, including three staff members and the manager, Janey Mays. Rodney Froehmer’s injuries had been caused when a pipe burst from the basement ceiling, and the initial investigation pointed to Rodney as the cause of the fire. He’d been messing around with accelerants, and for some unknown reason had been trying to start a fire in the old rusty furnace below.

“The court would take everything anyway,” Wayne said. “Once the civil trials start.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Kendra said.

Sure, it was. In ways you’ll never know.

“That doesn’t matter, honey,” he said. “People always need somebody to blame.”

He should know. He had God to blame. Not that it was getting him anywhere. Maybe one day he’d get on his knees, or get out an Ouija board and look for Beth again, make a few more promises.

The three of them stood behind the yellow tape that marked off the investigation scene. The fire had scorched the lawn, and the wind played through the surrounding trees, bare branches clashing and tangling.

They were sequestered at the Holiday Inn in Boone, waiting for the authorities to finish identifying the victims. It could take a while. They might even be spending Christmas in the mountains.

“Do you think it was Margaret?” Cody said. The investigators had discovered the bones of an adult woman walled off in the basement. In her abdominal cavity were the tiny bones of a fetus. The bones were old, and the DNA tests conducted on them had yet to return a match.

“Probably.”

“Why don’t you guys let it go?” Kendra said. “All we know is what we saw. Everybody thinks we sucked down too much carbon monoxide.”

“They have a way of covering their tracks,” Cody said. “They’ve been doing this awhile.”

“Demons,” Wayne said. “What do you expect?”

Two members of SSI had been killed, and the group’s Web site had been visited so many times the server had crashed. Three networks had already called with offers, but they were more interested in Cody than Digger. Paranormal enthusiasts around the world had posted their own theories about what had happened at the White Horse Inn. All of them were wrong.

“Let’s roll,” Wayne said. He climbed behind the wheel of the SSI van and closed the door. Kendra got in the passenger seat and Cody bounded into the cargo area.

Kendra was already opening her sketch pad. He’d bought her a new one the day after the fire, while she was recovering. She was busy with Big Fattie, wearing out the last of the lead. She had developed a new set of characters with gruesome, demonic faces, and she could hardly wait for Emily Dee to kick them back to the far side of hell.