The little candle flame flickered, almost down to the crumple of paper.
It took Cadence one minute to sprint to the elevator and go to the fourteenth floor. As the door started to open, everything happened at once. The doors froze half-open. The elevator gagged to a stop. She piled out of the doors into a smoke-tinged hallway.
A siren klaxoned an idiot, up and down warble followed by three whoops, again and again. To her right, alternating red and white strobes flashed above the open stairwell door. The hotel manager and another man were in the stairwell, coughing and yelling for her to follow. A sign above the door suddenly lit up and flashed a sequence of “Emergency Exit” and “Do Not Use the Elevator.” On and on. The ceiling sprinkler system was dribbling and coughing, ready to burst but somehow stalled. Her room door was open, and from it the fire, fresh and hot, was having its way. It receded for a moment, keeping one tongue on the doorframe as if inviting her in for a visit. She knew that in there lurked the smoking, apocalyptic man, the one that took her father. Now it wanted her. Ara, the surviving remnants of her existence stashed in the valise, was in there too.
Cadence could see from her angle, as smoke rolled out and flames danced around, that the room had been ransacked. Maybe this Barren had already found the valise. Maybe he had simply left his fiery cohort to cover his tracks and entertain pesky Cadence. But maybe not.
She had never stepped toward a big fire in her life. She quailed, adrenaline dumping thousand-volt juice into her raw senses and psyche. The reptilian complex of her brain was screaming over and over. Run! was all could she hear.
And she found herself at the threshold to the room.
The fire sucked back and she saw him, black and smoldering, almost grinning, with eyes that showed the flickering red flames behind him. He waited for her in the back of the room on the far side of the bed. He made a polite and almost courtly gesture, bowing with his arm outstretched.
The mockery of it all! She lunged forward, knowing that staying low was her only chance. She lizard-crawled to the bed. She squirmed underneath as far as she could, feeling the temperature that here seemed wretchedly, falsely cool. Her feet, sticking out from under the bed frame, felt like they were on a charcoal grill. She stretched for the area behind the headboard, groping, trying to feel anything. Nothing. Just empty space. The heat was growing exponentially. She felt like a stick figure made of tinder wood. In any second she would burst into flame, pirouetting as she rolled on the floor.
Then her fingers felt a leather corner. She pushed herself, reached further. Her hand was getting a grasp when the bed moved. The fire-man was lifting off the mattresses to get her! The bed frame skooched away from the wall and the valise fell into her hands. It was hot and seeped smoke, but it felt intact. She wriggled back, crawdadded out from under the bed, and made for the door.
She looked back and the smoking thing lifted a flaming Hotelier Quality Sleep-Eze King Size Double Coil Top Mattress and flung it across the room like a feather pillow. The thing roared and jumped up and was now astride the bed, standing on the bottom mattress. It was pissed off and coming for her.
Cadence got to her feet and ran blindly. She slammed into the hallway wall and got up and ran for the flashing exit sign. She clutched the valise with both arms, for all the world looking like a somewhat cooked version of the lost Professor Tolkien wandering through Idlewild Airport so many years ago. Behind her, a blast of fire surged out of the room.
She made it three more steps before the ceiling sprinklers came on full force. Then, underneath the sirens, came sounds of elemental struggle, fire and water, heat and cold, vapor and steam, rage and deluge.
Her clothes emitted a smoky steam, her hair felt frizzled, but as she bounded down through the acrid air in the stairwell, she was exultant. She had faced up to her deepest fear, and she was alive. She had beaten the smoldering man! She also had saved Ara, now safely tucked away in the valise under her arm.
Now she was going to get some final answers
She disregarded the evacuation alarms and returned by the stairs to Osley’s room, wired with adrenaline and wanting truth. She threw the valise on the bed as he looked at her, smoky and stinky and wet. His mouth and eyes were big Os and he was dumbstruck … and defenseless. Just what she wanted. She came up close and looked hard at him. Osley, the One-Eyed Jack. It was time to see the other side of that card.
“So, Mr. Osley, now they’re trying to kill me, but I’m not going to let them. And I’ve got some serious questions for you.”
He tried to move away, but the desk and chair and bed hemmed him in.
“You know my grandfather disappeared a year ago today?”
He nodded yes.
“You know these documents, especially this ‘Elf,’ have a power to confuse?”
He nodded again, almost in resignation to the coming third-degree.
“You know that something wants to destroy the documents, and Ara, and if necessary, you and me?”
The nod.
“But you’re not telling me everything, are you?”
Sideways nod. Head down.
“So what is it, Osley, what’s your secret? And don’t try to get all Shakespeary on me!”
He started to open his mouth.
“And don’t tell me I should pack up and go. I’m not leaving till I find my grandfather, and he’s somewhere, somehow hidden in this murk. I can feel it. So, now, damn it! Talk!”
“I am just … Osley.”
“I know that. That’s not all. The truth!”
“I am a fugitive.”
“Cut the crap. The real truth.”
“I am a wanderer.”
“Damn you, fess up. Did you do something to him?”
“I don’t know.”
She did the unthinkable. She slapped him, hard.
At that instant the fire alarms stopped. The sound of the slap ricocheted through the room.
Osley took the deep breath of the penitent and held it. It sighed out as if, finally in his life, there were no place to go.
“Very well, I will tell you.”
At last, she thought, the card is about to be flipped over.
“OK …”
“I am he.”
“What?”
“Him … Jess … your grandfather.”
Her face went blank. Wheels and gears tried to mesh, to comprehend what he just said. Then the gears clenched together and there were storm clouds in her narrowed eyes. Lightning flashed.
“This is no joke, Osley. Quit screwing with my head. It’s not helpful, especially now.”
“It’s true. Just that simple.”
She tried to pick out his lie. “My grandfather had legs of steel. No limp or hitch in his walk.”
“The night I disappeared, a blade thrust into me. It never really healed. I got out through the trap door.”
Cadence thought of the iron ring in the floor, the open trapdoor showing the creek side brush, the cloven doorframe.
“You don’t look like him.”
He looked up. “How would you know? What picture have you seen? Shave off my beard, cut my scraggly hair. I’m him, your dad’s dad.”
“No one ever mentioned the name Osley.”
“No? What’s a name, and what can be more easily invented, or discarded? Why did I wander and hide my identity for years? Why did I, Jess, never get a driver’s license?”
She felt herself sliding down a slope, struggling between doubting him as an extravagant imposter and wanting to yell, “Why did you leave?” Instead, she heard her uncertain voice saying: “But you were a teacher. Here. All the Tolkien stuff.”