Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 43

“We can’t bust the door down,” Gelbaugh said. “It’s two inches of solid wood.”

“The hinges are on the other side, too,” Wayne said. He jammed a screwdriver into the catch, but even if he managed to trip the tumblers, the upper deadbolt was secure. His tool kit would do no good.

The two men stood shoulder to shoulder on the stair landing, having felt their way up the banister in the dark. The rest of the group waited below, talking in low, frantic whispers. The furnace was now behaving itself, but Wayne didn’t trust it. Gelbaugh had posited a theory on the cumulative telekinetic powers of the group, a magnified form of wishful thinking, but even Cappie had dismissed that one.

“The work of demons,” Amelia George said. In the dark, her disembodied voice took on a creepy authority.

“Get us out of here, Digger,” a woman said, in a near panic.

“Be reasonable,” Gelbaugh said from his perch, as Wayne continued rattling the lock. “If demons were here, why would they play tricks with pyrotechnics? Why not just turn the basement into a boiling puddle of Napalm and be done with it?”

“Because they want you to believe,” Amelia said.

“Then their work is half done, because half of you seem to be buying into the foolishness.”

“I don’t care what it is, I don’t want to be down here another minute,” the unseen woman said.

“I’m getting claustrophobic,” a man said, his words clipped by gasps.

Wayne slid the screwdriver back into the tool pouch on his belt. “There’s got to be another way out,” he said.

He spoke with more confidence than he felt, because he hadn’t conducted a thorough survey. The basement had been Roach’s turf, and Cody was in charge of logistics. Because the walkie-talkie was dead, he wasn’t sure if either had shown up in the past hour.

And Kendra is with Cody. I hope. Or maybe not.

“Get me out of here before that furnace blows up,” said the claustrophobe.

“Stay calm,” Wayne said, feeling his way down the stairs.

“Yeah,” Gelbaugh said. “Enjoy the atmosphere. You don’t get this on ‘TAPS.’”

Something rumbled in the far end of the basement, and the floor timbers creaked above their heads.

“Either Beelzebub just farted or the hotel is about to collapse,” Gelbaugh said, the joking tone shot through with nervousness.

Once Wayne left the familiar landmark of the stairs, he was adrift, with no sense of where the walls were. The group in the middle of the basement, still huddled together, had not moved since the furnace had gone out. Amelia was carrying on in strange tongues, and Wayne welcomed the distraction. If the hunters felt the demons were speaking through her, maybe they wouldn’t freak out.

Wayne put out his hand and took short, shuffling steps, careful of the protruding rocks and clutter on the dirt floor. He could be heading toward the furnace, for all he knew. But he had to keep moving. It might be another hour before Burton and Jonathan returned to the control room and figured out Wayne’s group was now among the missing.

The rumble came again, and this time Wayne felt it in his feet.

“It took her,” Amelia shrieked. She was at least fifty feet behind Wayne, so he figured he was nearing the back wall.

“Who did?” her husband asked, ever the willing sidekick.

“Belial.”

Great. My first case of demonic activity and not only is all our gear on the fritz, but I get the biggest baddie of them all.

“The fire,” someone said. “Did the demon do it?”

“It can make more,” Amelia said.

“Where is it now?” her husband said.

“Upstairs.”

“Have it come down and unlock the door.” Gelbaugh had moved away from the stairs and was apparently across the room, near the furnace.

“Channeling doesn’t work that way,” Amelia’s husband said.

“Margaret said it doesn’t want us to leave,” Amelia said.

“Why did it take Margaret?”

“Not Margaret. The angel.”

“A beastie gets lonely?” Gelbaugh said. “I thought all those hounds of hell hung out together in one big pack?”

“You don’t understand theology,” said the claustrophobe, forgetting his panic in the rush of a channeling experience. “In the pantheon of demons and angels, there’s a definite hierarchy, and some are lesser demons.”

“Wonderful. So we can look forward to yet more politics in the next life. That’s comforting.”

Wayne touched the cool masonry with his hand, easing his way toward the newer portion of the hotel, where the kitchen and dining room were. He felt disembodied in the utter darkness, no longer sure of his moorings. He could have been drifting in deep space, submerged in oil, or encased in liquid nitrogen and dreaming of one day having his corpse reanimated.

“Okay, people,” he called, more to reassure himself than to keep them informed. “I’m checking out the new wing.”

“Meet you there,” Gelbaugh called from the other side of the basement.

Amelia continued her spacey, droning delivery, talking about Margaret Percival coming down to the basement through the service entrance and—

Service entrance?

“Amelia,” Wayne yelled. “The service entrance. Where’s that at?”

“She can’t talk right now, she’s channeling,” her ever-helpful husband said.

“I need to know where that entrance is.”

“Behind the kitchen,” she said, then continued recounting Margaret’s visit to the basement. “And Belial found her her here. She never left.”

The boiler gave a dismal sigh but didn’t ignite, as if something in there agreed with Ameila.

Wayne reviewed his mental snapshots of the basement. The kitchen likely lay in the section where the pipes and wires had tangled and multiplied like a nest of snakes. He moved faster, chafing his hands on the crude stonework. A sense of urgency juiced him up.

If Amelia’s right about a demon running loose up there, and Kendra—

He bumped his head on a pipe. Even if he was lucky enough to find a door, it would probably be locked, too, but he might have more luck jimmying it open if it was flimsier than the main entrance.

The rumbling came again. He was nearly to the kitchen when a scream ripped through the dead air of the basement.