Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 48

Wayne opened his eyes to dirt, his head like a bowl of mashed potatoes with blood gravy.

Moist, forest-scented air wafted over his face, but smoke boiled from behind him. He tried to stand but couldn’t feel his legs. He remembered the darkness, the basement, and then....

He was lying on the ground just beyond a concrete pad, the wooden door split and sagging to one side. Behind him came screams and the rending of wood. He rolled over just enough to see the outside of the hotel, the back end with its sloping addition and a tin-roofed maintenance shed. The November night chilled his skin but the warmth of the fire crept along his spine like a molten snake.

“Yo, you okay?” someone asked. It was a college-aged man in dirty chef’s whites, obviously a cook who’d fled the kitchen. He stood near the edge of the forest, at a safe distance, nervously puffing a cigarette.

“Kendra... the others....”

“Get out of there, man, the place is going to blow,” the cook said. His face was streaked with grease and soot and his eyes bright with fear.

“My daughter’s in there.”

“They’re all out except—Jesus, there’s a dead guy behind you.”

Wayne’s first thought was “ghost.” But ghosts didn’t exist. That meant—

Wayne reclaimed the glimpse of Rodney Froehmer’s deranged face. He tried to turn but he couldn’t. Somehow it didn’t matter, whether it was a ghost or just a normal, everyday corpse.

Kendra is safe. I can just lie here and rest. “I can’t move.”

“Just my luck,” the cook said, tossing his cigarette aside and approaching Wayne.

“Never mind me,” Wayne said. “Other people are in the basement.”

“You must have hit your head. They all evacuated when the power went out.” The chef bent over Wayne. “How come you’re still here?”

“We were hunting in the basement.”

The sputtering flames licked light along the chef’s moist face. “Don’t know if I’m supposed to move you or not. What if you’re paralyzed or something?”

“Well, I can lay here and burn to death or lay over there and still be alive,” Wayne said.

The cook looked dubious, though he was in a hurry to retreat from the burning structure. “You won’t sue me?”

“Never saw you,” Wayne said. “And this didn’t happen.”

The cook lifted Wayne from beneath his armpits. Tingling needles of ice worked down Wayne’s thighs as blood began flowing through his legs. When the cook dragged him out of the doorway, Wayne at last saw what he’d left behind. Red light limned the entrance, revealing Rodney’s prone form on the basement floor. A steel pipe protruded from his chest.

“Don’t look back,” the cook said.

“Too late,” Wayne said.

“Least he don’t have to worry about burning to death.”

By the time they were 20 feet from the building, Wayne had regained some feeling in his feet. He raised himself up, wobbling, as smoke crept from the basement and drifted toward the trees.

“You ain’t paralyzed,” the cook said.

“Guess not.”

“Man, I hope I turned off the gas to the deep fryer. Janey Mays would have my balls in a blender.”

“So everybody evacuated?”

“Yeah, they’re out front. You’re one of them ghostbusters, right?”

“I guess.” But we’re the ones that got busted.

“Sorry about your friend there,” the cook said, already lighting another cigarette. “You must have been the last two in the building.”

The flames had just begun to penetrate the first floor. Wayne swayed on his numbed legs and took a trembling step toward the hotel. “I have to find my daughter.”

The cook grabbed his arm. “Hold on, man. I told you the place was empty.”

“I have to be sure.”

“Hear that?”

Wayne listened beyond the crackle of the flames, the whisper of the Blue Ridge wind in the trees, and the groan of straining timbers. A wail poured over the valley like the scream of a wounded dragon.

“Sirens,” the cook said. “We’ll get you an ambulance.”

Wayne nodded, wondering if Kendra was worried about him. He glanced up at the window of the room where he and Beth had conceived her—

And there she stood.