With his free hand, Rodney slid his night-vision goggles into place. “They won’t allow that.”
The basement went dim again, and Rodney released the copper line. Wayne smelled propane. The line must have run from an outside tank to the kitchen stoves. Rodney must have found the ruptured pipe, and maybe he’d stayed down here holding it closed until someone could shut off the tank. That would explain his absence, but not the gashes and bruises.
“Got a light?” Rodney asked.
As if in answer, the furnace roared again, and the propane fed it.
Whooosh.
“Mission accomplished,” Rodney said, just before the concussive blast stole the air and shot an expanding fireball across the basement. The heat slapped Wayne like a volcanic tidal wave and shoved him against Rodney, and they fell together against the door as support timbers groaned and splintered.
In the chaos of collapse, Wayne thought he heard Beth’s voice, or maybe it was the muffled screams of Amelia George.
Chapter 46
Kendra was pitched against the stair rail when the explosion sounded, and Cody grabbed at her as he lost balance in the dark.
She took a step forward, but the stairs seemed to give way beneath her, and her stomach took that same queasy somersault as when she’d fallen through the ceiling.
The subdued thump reached them a split-second later, and by then Kendra was gripping the rail, hugging her sketch pad to her chest as if it were a sacred text that would solve the crazy riddles of the night.
“Dad,” Kendra said, probing a foot out to see if the stairs still remained.
“Hear that?” Cody said.
On the floor below, people were shouting and scurrying in the dark. Deeper, the squeal and snap of straining wood mixed with a rumble of loose stones and a faint crackling sound. The hotel shifted again, as if knocked loose from its moorings and sliding down a slope.
“We need to get out of here,” Cody said. “This place has got a bad case of the shakes, and it was matchsticks and glue to begin with.”
“I can’t leave without Dad.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”
“Who’s there?” someone yelled from the landing below, a man with a gruff, clipped voice.
“SSI,” Cody responded.
“One of your—our guy—I think he’s dead.”
Kendra and Cody headed toward the commotion, aided by light that leaked from a distant window that had broken open during the tremors. “Please don’t be Dad,” Kendra whispered.
“What’s going on?” Cody said, trying to project authority, though Kendra could hear the suppressed panic in his voice.
“This—thing—like a big lizard or something—”
“It was a black woman,” someone else cut in. “She had a knife.”
“It wasn’t a knife—”
“And then all our flashlights went out at once—”
Kendra couldn’t tell how many people were gathered on the landing, but by the time she and Cody reached the body, five had offered opinions. From the description, the victim didn’t sound like Dad. They bent over him, Cody checking his pulse. Kendra was afraid to touch the body but she forced herself to put her palm near his mouth. She felt no breath of wind.
“Did anybody report it to the front desk?” Cody asked. “The land line ought to get 9-1-1 even if there’s no cell signal.”
“You kidding?” said the gruff man who’d originally hailed them. It was too dark to make out his face, but he was tall and heavyset and Kendra remembered he’d put “West Virginia” on his registration address. He spoke with a rural Southern accent. “You reckon any of us wants to wander around in the dark when some nut has a knife?”
“It was a lizard,” a woman insisted. “I saw its scales and it had...it had....”
“Had what?” Cody said. “Nothing could be crazier than what we’ve already heard.”
“A tail,” she finished.
“Lord, help us,” another said.
“Ain’t the Lord’s doing,” said Gruff. “Somebody with a knife. See?”
A metallic skritch was followed by a small flame erupting, and Gruff bent down with the Bic lighter, illuminating Burton’s corpse. “Yuck,” he said, wiping at his ragged moustache. “Took his tongue, looks like.”
Wet, dark gore surrounded Burton’s lips and his mouth was a torn maw. His eyes were open and staring, blank with death and already losing their luster. His left arm was ripped and his jumpsuit was blotched with dark stains. A rusty, cloying odor hung over the landing.
“Ah, Burt,” Cody said with a sad sigh. Kendra touched his shoulder in a gesture of compassion. She’d liked Burton, and Dad would be devastated, but right now she was too shook up to feel much grief.
“It wasn’t one of the ghost kids that did this,” Kendra said.
“Ghost kids?” said Gruff.
“How many are in your group?” Kendra asked. And have you seen Digger Wilson?
“Eleven,” said a short woman whose silhouette was barely visible at the edge of the Bic’s light. “Burton told us to wait in the room when the power went out, but then we heard the fight.”
Cody tried the window, but it was sealed by ancient coats of paint. He yanked the curtain, pulling the rod down with it. A little more twilight leaked onto the landing. Cody wrapped the fabric around the wooden pole and held it out to the man with the Bic. “Torch.”
“This is going to stink,” Gruff said, but he applied the lighter. The linen curtain burst into a smoldering, oily flame.
“Are you the only group on the floor?” Kendra tried to remember the list of haunted rooms where the hunts would take place, but they all jumbled together. Digger said it didn’t matter whether the hunt location had activity or not, as long as people got their money’s worth. But he’d assumed there was no difference between a cold spot and a dead spot, and now it appeared the entire hotel was one big open grave, spilling out creepy spirits and things that should have been left buried.
“The rest went to the basement,” Gruff said. He snuffed out the lighter now that the torch crackled. A bit of curled ember fell to the wooden floor but Cody stomped it out.
“Smell that?” Cody said.
Kendra’s nose was full of Burton’s raw stench, but she took a sniff. “Smoke.”
“Yeah, but it’s not from this.” He waved the torch. “Come on, people.”
Gruff didn’t like being bossed by a teenager. “Where you going?”
“Out.”
“Them stairs are dangerous,” he said in his Southern accent. “Earthquake or something. You could fall right through.”
“I’m not staying here and waiting for the roof to fall in,” said an elderly woman, in a high tremulous voice. A shawl was draped around her frail shoulders and her darting eyes glittered in the torchlight. She tried to step past Burton’s corpse but slipped in the blood. One leg flew to the side and her bones clattered as she landed and skidded down a few stair treads.
“Dear Christ,” she muttered, moaning in pain and writhing, holding her left ankle. “Broke it.”
Kendra was immediately by her side, squinting at the injured limb. A bone appeared to bulge beneath the pale skin and flaccid muscle. “We’d better get her down.”
“Here,” Cody said, passing the torch to a rotund man in a leather jacket. “Lead them down.”
Cody stooped and picked up the old lady, cradling her in his arms. “Hang on, ma’am,” he said, as she whimpered at the sudden movement.
The smoke was thicker now, and undeniable. “Musta had a short,” Gruff said. “Blew some fuses.”
People who had huddled in the second-floor hallway moved past Gruff and the body, some of them refusing to look down at the mess. The pool of blood had spread so that it now dripped from the landing and onto the lower step in a sickening rivulet. Cody followed the leather-jacketed man, intent on not hitting the old woman’s leg on the shaking stair rail. Kendra counted the group members as they passed to make sure everyone escaped.
“Eleven,” she said. Cody had already made the turn in the stairs, which creaked under the combined weight of those descending, but enough torchlight lingered that she could see Gruff’s scowl.