Winter at Death's Hotel (47 page)

He was reaching up, pulling on her left arm, his left hand reaching higher and higher toward the pipe.

She plunged her right hand into the pocket at the back of her skirt and felt the gun. It wasn't the way it should have been, upright and pointed so that all she would have had to do was close her hand around the grips; instead, it was upside down and backward so that she got hold of the barrel when she tried to grasp it. He was trying to put the open manacle over the pipe; she jerked her left hand, tried to bend her weight toward the floor, her right hand feeling over the gun, feeling for the hard-rubber grips.

He pulled her up, having to use both hands. “Bitch.” He pushed her face first into the wall and bent his knees and pressed his body against hers, lifting with his legs, trying to push her higher. His hands carried the manacle toward the pipe.

She found the handle of the gun. She found the trigger. She couldn't pull the gun out of the pocket because he was pressing against her too hard. She pulled the trigger with the gun still inside her pocket.

The sound was muffled, rather disappointing, but he screamed and moved so fast she almost fell coming away from the wall. He backed half a dozen feet away, screaming at her, bent, holding his right thigh.

She was out of her safe place now. There would be no going back. Now there was a great amount of pain. And the gun. And the smell of burned cloth.

She raised the gun. His face was contorted. He reached toward her and she fired again. She had forgotten the lesson in Madison Square Garden: she held the gun in only one hand; she fired at his head, not his body. The shot missed him and one of the bottles on the shelf exploded, and a putrid, penetrating stench gushed into the closed room. Galt turned, saw the smashed bottle, screamed again and went toward it in time to have something gray and soft slither off the shelf and fall on him. He screamed once more, and Louisa shot him in the back, recovering enough this time to aim at the mass of his jacket.

“You cheating shit! You cunt bitch!” He had hunched forward, his head turned toward her, but he was scuttling away toward one of the doors. His left hand was trying to reach over his right shoulder to get at his back. He got to the door and she thought with a surprising return of clarity that he was too far away now and the little bullets weren't doing enough damage. Still, she pointed the gun at him.

He screamed one more obscenity at her and went through the door. It slammed behind him and she heard a key turn in the lock. His shouts were muffled; then they diminished as if he were running away.

She was shaking again. Her teeth were chattering. She was talking to herself. “Get away—must get away—must—” She limped to the door he had gone through and shot the bolt on her side.

“Help me.”

She whirled to look at Ethel. Her eyes were open again. “Shut up, Ethel. I've got to get us out of here…get out…got to get out…” She began to totter around the room, looking for help, for succor, for escape.

She opened the room's other door. She screamed.

Old Mr. Carver, or what was left of him, was sitting in his invalid's chair. The top of his head had been skinned, so he was hairless and bloody bone showed where his scalp had been. His diseased red face was pasty yellow and gray. His eyes were gone. His mouth was stuffed with something that Louisa realized was her stolen, soiled drawers.

She was sick.

She slammed the door and fell back against it.

“Help me.”

“Ethel, oh, Ethel…” She thought that Ethel wasn't showing any spine. Surely she must see what the situation was.

But
it's up to me. She can't help me as she is. I must help her.

She staggered to the table and undid a leather belt. She went down to Ethel's feet and undid the buckle down there. She raised the brown blanket that covered Ethel.

“Oh, Ethel…” Blood had dried on Ethel's thighs. An oval cut had been made in her abdomen the size of a child's head, not deep enough to penetrate the abdominal wall but deep enough to show yellow-white fat. Her breasts had been stabbed half a dozen times. Ethel raised her arms like a child wanting an embrace.

Louisa cradled her head and thought of her own children. She whispered to her. She kissed her forehead. “We must get ourselves out of here, Ethel. You must walk. Yes, yes, you must. If we don't get out, he will murder us.”

Ethel was weeping without making sound. She said in a numb voice, “It's Mr. Galt.”

“I know, dear. Now come along, I'm going to put your feet down and you're going to try to walk. Come on—a little more—Ethel, please, we must get out! Come—put your weight on my arm—good…” She draped the blanket over the naked woman and was encouraged when she saw Ethel automatically hold it closed at her throat.

Two things happened at once: Louisa heard Galt come back to the door, and Ethel saw the opening into the tunnels. Louisa turned back and pointed the gun; Ethel screamed.

“I can't go in there! I can't!”

“You must. It's the only way out.”

Galt was trying to push the door open. The bolt was holding, but Louisa could see its moorings in the door beginning to loosen.

“Ethel! Go through that opening!”

It was, Louisa thought, the greatest act of courage she would ever see. Ethel had been tortured; she had been dragged through those same tunnels to her torture. She had suffered worse than Louisa had, and she had had no revolver to give her hope. Yet Ethel did as she was told.

Louisa pushed into the tunnel behind her and put herself on Ethel's right so that she could take some of the weight on her good foot. It was black in there. All she could do was feel her way with her right hand. When she put her arm around Ethel, the woman said, “I can't,” but she went on, and Louisa said, “You can, dear; yes you can,” and it made it easier for her to have somebody else to think about.

They were, she knew, on the penthouse floor. Marie and her “summoning” would be three floors below them. It was illogical of her to think of going back to Marie's, except that she knew that Marie's would have people in it—people to help Ethel, people to help her.
No, not people—women.
People to go for the police. Many rooms lay between them and Marie's, to be sure, but who was in them? How many people? And how would they react to two women coming out of the wall—if, indeed, Louisa could find the way through the wall?
And
there
would
be
men.

And Marie, she thought, would fight for them.

They reached the first ladder; which Louisa felt not as a ladder but as the hole it stood in. She whispered, “You must go down.”

“Oh, I can't!”

“You must. Galt's behind us now. He won't let us go if he can catch us. You must, Ethel—you must!”

“I shall fall.”

“I shall be right behind you. If he comes close, I shall shoot him.”

Still weeping, Ethel lowered herself into the darkness. When they reached the floor below, Louisa held her there, listened. Could she hear Galt? Or could she see a brightening of the dark from his lantern? She went back up far enough to put the top of her head above the floor; there, indeed, was the first glow of Galt's lantern, casting a faint shadow of a distant ladder as he came down. She ducked back and forced Ethel into the hole. “We'll go down two floors. He'll think we've gone one.” She said that out of hope. Mad or not, Galt was no fool. And the tunnels were his warren. The thought led to one of old Carver; her stomach churned. Had Galt killed him simply for his scalp, or because he was sick of the old man, or was he now simply living to kill?

She let herself down to the rungs of the ladder and went down using her left foot and her arms. It was hard to say what part of her hurt most. Her abdomen, her vagina, her back…

Where were they now? They were crouching partway along a tunnel, listening for Galt. They should be on the fourth floor, she thought, almost to one of the corners where the legs of the centipede met the body. At the corner, there should be a ladder; they would go down and be on Marie's floor.

“Oh!” Ethel wept again. They had both heard it—a sound on the ladder they had just used, then hoarse breathing and a cough.

“Come on.”

Louisa pulled her maid down the tunnel. Once, she tripped, almost fell; feeling with a hand, she found the kind of trapdoor through which Galt had first forced her to climb from Marie's room. According to the hotel plan, there should be three of these on each side of the building for each floor. This would be the middle one—right above Marie's?

She looked back and saw the lantern's glow picking out the square hole where the ladder was.

They hurried on. Now, dimly, they could hear him coming down the ladder.

“Go down, Ethel.”

“No—”

“Go!”

Louisa lay on the floor on her belly, her toes over the edge of the hole. She had the gun in both hands, extended in front of her, her elbows steadied on the floor. When she could see Galt in the light of his own lantern, she would shoot him.

The light grew. She could see movement as he came down, the lantern on the floor above; then he must have reached up for it because suddenly she could see his head in the brightness of the light. Fear raced through her, trying to make her freeze, surrender.

It was an act of sheer will that made her wait there. At any time, he might catch the glint of the pistol or the pale smudge of her face. He would still be too far away, but she would have to shoot. If he came close and she missed, it would be over. She tensed. He had stopped. Was he looking into the darkness for something he thought he had seen? He bent forward, then coughed.

She fired. This time, the explosion seemed horrendous, and the flash of the gunshot lit up the tunnel for yards. She saw his face, contorted, enraged; she heard him curse and swing the light up; then she was gone down the hole.

He'll blow out his lantern because it makes him a target. I shot too soon.

She tripped over Ethel at the bottom. She was curled against the wall.

“I can't go any farther, madame.”

“It's only a little way now, dear. You must.” She felt with her left foot for the trapdoor that must be there; where was it? Ah, there. She pulled at Ethel and with main force got her away from the ladder and the trap. She had thought of the trick that Galt had played on the police on Mulberry Street, getting the men and boys to come out and open the manholes and the cellar doors. She could do the same.

She pulled at the trap and laid it back against the wall.

Above her, she heard a step on the ladder.

She gathered Ethel up and dragged her down the tunnel. Here, somewhere, somewhere near, must be Marie's room. Must be.
Must
be! Where, where—her foot found the trap. She yanked it open, pushed Ethel to it. “Down, down!”

He was at the bottom of the ladder. She heard his step, then a cough and a thud and a curse; she could feel his fall in the boards under her feet. He had put out his lantern at the top of the ladder, and in the dark he had gone down the hole she had opened. She could picture it: one leg down all the way, the other caught behind him on the boards. Maybe he had broken something, a leg, an arm. The sound had been loud, complicated—limbs and head hitting wood.

If he scrambled out and came to her, she would shoot him. McCousins had said to put it against his vest and pull the trigger. She would do that. If he let her.

She dared to work her way along the low ceiling, fumbling for the spyhole that would look into Marie's room. She tried to picture its location in the corner: she remembered poking it open, then nothing. Where was it? Her fingers found a knob; she pulled. She looked through.

Marie Corelli was sitting at the far end of the library table. Other women Louisa didn't know were sitting around it, their hands joined. Marie had her head back and her eyes closed and she was chanting in a sort of singer's moan, “Azul! Come to us, Azul!”

Louisa stood on tiptoe and shouted. “Marie! Help us! Marie!”

There was a flurry at the table. A woman's voice cried, “An emanation!” Louisa heard Marie shout, “Have I got through!”

“No, no—Marie—help us—!”

She heard the bang of a trap. Galt had picked himself out of the hole and was coming again.

Louisa scrambled to the trapdoor that led to Marie's room. Ethel was at the bottom of the ladder; all that Louisa knew of her was what she learned with her feet, a softness that must be Ethel's rounded back. Ethel was sobbing.

She slammed the trapdoor above them, dropped the gun into her pocket, then kept hold of the trap's curved metal handle above her. She tried to tell Ethel to push on the wall, but it was no good; Ethel was done. Louisa felt with her good foot over what she knew had to be the door into Marie's room. There had to be a lock or at least a latch that held it. All she could feel with her foot was smooth wood. She tried to raise her foot to feel along the top of the door, but then the trap above her began to lift.

She swung her left arm up wildly and caught the handle. The trap came down again. She heard Galt shout an obscenity. He started to lift again.

She swung her legs up and kicked out at what she hoped was the door into Marie's room. Nothing happened. The trap opened farther; she swung again, trying to pull it down and at the same time kick out at the door. A sliver of light appeared near where her feet struck, then closed, as if a door had briefly opened. She heard Galt's feet on the boards above as he tried to get better purchase. The trap opened more slowly this time but wider than before. She could picture Galt's straddling the trap, using his entire upper body to lift her weight. He coughed, went on coughing as he lifted.

She tried to make herself heavier, to hang dead, but the trap continued on up and she swung forward again and kicked, and the sliver of light opened and widened and there was a cracking sound, and she swung again and let go of the handle and flung her whole weight at the door, which flew open and dumped her into the room, Ethel rolling out of the “deluxe closet” below her like a balled, hibernating animal.