Kendra dropped her pencil.
Bruce stepped from the shadowy bathroom, still wearing his too-short trousers and dirty green shirt. “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare ya.”
“That’s exactly what you meant to do, you little creep. What kind of game are you playing, anyway?”
“Hide and seek.”
“It’s way past your bedtime. Your dad is going to kick your butt.”
“He’s busy.”
“What if I’d been changing into my pajamas?”
Bruce grinned uneasily. “Rochester said he saw you in the bathroom.” He giggled. “He saw your noonie.”
“Crap.” She clenched her fists and rose from the bed as he retreated into the bathroom.
“Just wait till I—”
The bathroom was empty. She clicked the light just to make sure. She checked the cabinet under the sink, expecting him to jump out and yell “Boo.” Nothing but spare rolls of toilet paper and the rank, musty smell of moist pipes.
The shower curtain was pulled closed, opaque enough to hide him, but there was no way he could have ducked in without the curtain swaying. He might be lying down, though. She yanked the curtain back with a flourish, anger tightening her jaws.
The giggle came from the bedroom.
Creak creak creak.
The creep was bouncing on the bed. If he stomped her sketch pad, that would be one dead kid. Except it wasn’t just a creak, another sound accented it, as if he were brushing the ceiling with each leap.
Creak flup creak flup creak flup.
His singsong rhyme was syncopated by his bouncing.
“Stay—”
Creak.
“—and play—”
Flup.
“—with Mommy—”
Creak.
“—and me.”
Flup.
She raced into the bedroom, more intent on rescuing her precious sketch pad and its cast of characters than on mashing the little brat’s teeth down his throat.
The creaking had stopped, and Bruce dangled in midair, a piece of fiber-coated electrical wire wrapped around his neck and tied to the light fixture. His black tongue protruded, and his blank eyes bulged, the flesh around them sunken and purple. Flies buzzed around his head and his skin was the color of cottage cheese.
Christ—
Before she could decide whether to touch him or if he was too far gone, the lights went out.
Christ and back again.
She didn’t know whether to retreat or feel her way forward. The afterimage of the light burned orange blobs behind her eyelids, but the image of the dead boy burned just as brightly.
You’re cracking up, kiddo, just like Bradshaw said you would. Too much imagination. Too much fantasy. Too much believing in the monsters you make.
Too much being the Digger’s daughter.
Her cracked laughter sounded too loud in the dark room.
It wasn’t real. She could make it to the light switch, get the room back in working order, and find some way to jam the lock so Bruce wouldn’t bug her anymore. And as soon as Dad came in, she’d make him report the little twerp to the hotel staff. Surely they had some sort of security, even if it was just that old mummy of a manager. One scowl from her wrinkled, witchbag face would scare any kid straight.
Yeah. Logic and reason. Much better than the koo-koo choo-choo to Nutsville.
One hand in front of her, she took brief steps forward across the carpet, mapping the room in her mind. The beds were over there, coffee table and TV cabinet to the left, an open path in the middle, right where Bruce would be hanging--
He’s NOT hanging, damn it.
Still, she slowed a little and waved her hand in front of her. Despite the lamps outside that girded the walkway to the hotel’s front entrance, the room was way darker than it should have been.
She thought of that screwy line the ghost hunters used when they were ushering a restless spirit to peace in the Great Unknown: “Go toward the light.”
Count to three and do it.
Count to three....
Stay and play with Mommy and me.
“Kendra?”
The woman’s voice froze her heart in mid-beat.
She couldn’t quite place it, but she couldn’t quite forget it, either. The familiarity was stored in her cells, at a genetic level, and she’d heard it on a few of Dad’s home videos on those late nights when he wanted a serious dose of melancholy. She’d heard it as a she sat on a warm, loving lap and painted herself into a hundred corners.
“Mom?” Kendra whispered, which was plenty loud enough in the stillness of the room, practically a scream that tore the faded, rose-patterned paper from the walls and sent gypsum snowing from the ceiling.
Kendra wrapped herself in the shadows of the room, waiting for a response, dreading it and wanting it all the same.
If I’m stepping on the koo-koo choo-choo, at least I’m going with a smile on my face. Reunited and it feels so good. Even if it feels so wrong.
In the solitude of her childhood, browsing through her mother’s artifacts and parental love notes and even the last letter penned on the deathbed, Kendra had often considered the many questions she’d never gotten to ask. All that mother-daughter talk, all the advice and wisdom, all the scolding and conflict, all the wonder and mystery of that special bond—all interrupted, all stolen away by some asshole in the Great Unknown, a punitive, sociopathic little Wizard of Oz hiding behind the curtain and pulling strings, giggling all the while.
Digger said she was here. But when can you ever trust Digger?
“Mom?”
No response.
Thirty seconds.
Someone was breathing in the corner of the room.
Which made no sense, because dead people didn’t breathe.
Games. More goddamned games.
Bruce.
Feeling silly now for thinking her mother would actually come back as a ghost like some trucked-up “Touched By An Angel” episode, she marched across the room, steady, steady, steady. Lunatics likely felt no shame, so her embarrassed rage was proof of her sanity.
The light switch would set things right, make it just another room, just another lonely hour with her sketch pad, painting herself into corners.
Before she could reach it, the door handle clacked and the door swung open, something thumping heavily against jamb. The wedge of light that cleaved into the room lit up the person crouched in the corner. Not Mom, not Bruce, not the Wizard of Oz.
It could only be Rochester, and he was even worse than she’d drawn him.
Then the light flicked on, Rochester was gone, and the real horror began.
Dad staggered in drunk as a senator, mushing out an atonal jumble of song. “...shaw her faysh...muuuh bweever….”
The koo-koo choo-choo had just derailed.
Chapter 30
“I haven’t seen him in a couple of hours,” Burton told Ann Vandooren.
She blinked at him as if waking from a nap. “This is important.”
“He had something come up,” Burton said. “Trust me, Digger wouldn’t bail on a conference without good reason.”
“Do we tell them?” Duncan said.
Burton looked from the woman to her young companion, then at the stack of video gear on their desk. “Tell us what?”
Cody, who had been with Burton in the control room when Duncan burst in, glanced at the computer and the various firewires and cables that protruded from the machine’s ports. “Nice system.”
“What’s the deal?” Burton asked. Ann looked like she’d aged a couple of decades since he’d last seen her, or maybe she’d taken off her make-up. She was hollow-eyed and evasive, a junkie without a fix.