Hotel of Madness Page 9

  “And you're saying the blood mist will give that to me?”

  “Oh yes. But the offer to escape this plane still stands.”

  Though the book doesn’t say it, I can still see them, the images of another world, one where my friends and family are still alive. One where I am safe.

  “No.”

  “Excellent. Please hurry. The other presence you have observed is approaching. He will take me and no doubt murder you.”

  The book is right.

  “So step one, stack at least two bodies.”

  Susan B

  “Couldn’t you like...Accio the book?”

  “This isn’t Harry Potter, Vee.”

  “So you can raise the dead but can't summon a book?”

  “Jacob, do you think I’m risking all our lives for a signed copy of Tolkien’s Silmarillion?”

  I can feel his brain trying to come up with something to say, but he thinks better of it.

  Although Vee does have a good point, the problem is the Necronomicon is sentient. Dragging something across space-time is very doable, although circumstance, lack of precision, and bad timing can fuck it up. Dragging something self-aware that doesn’t want to be moved across space-time… Well, I’d have an easier time pushing the Moon closer to the Sun with my bare hands.

  “Hey, why don’t you just shoot ligh—”

  I show Rico my burnt hand, which promptly seals his mouth shut.

  “Look, guys, this isn’t Harry Potter or a shitty YA novel. Doing magic is like running barefoot through a glass door. Even if you manage to get through, your feet won’t thank you.”

  And hopefully, that is the end of the dumb questions. One more, and I might consider murdering one of them to set an example. Ok, not really. We’ve been walking towards where I think the Necronomicon is hiding and doing so slowly to avoid catching any zombie attention. However, it appears the hotel staff did the intelligent thing and barred most entrances to their staff area, which means no zombies for now. But also means enough downtime for idiotic questions, usually revolving around how many spells from Harry Potter I can use.

  The book should be close. The girl who has it was trapped by Derek’s goons. But with the Necronomicon? With this much time and a seemingly willing Holder, the likelihood of walking into a really bad way to die is exceptionally high.

  “Find the book, save the world.” Or something like that. Shit’s accelerating faster than I calculated. For all I know, the White House is fighting off the evil dead right now. And let’s be honest, my current plan is pretty shit even by my standards. I can’t help but look at the group and wonder if they're not better off just making a run for it on their own. Not too late to compel them. With my Lings trashing the hotel, they may have a shot. Or maybe most of them are betting their chance of survival is infinitely better with Susan and me. Susan probably tipped the balance of whether to wait for help or leave. But if Susan can’t be convinced to make a run for it, I doubt any of them are confident enough to make it on their own. Susan may have unconsciously compelled them to her cause without knowing it. A really good compulsion is something that can be passed off as the target's idea. The more convincing, the less power needed.

  If that’s the case, Susan is already pretty dangerous without realizing it…

  “Hey, Susan.” She is taking her turn holding the rear, so I wave her to me.

  “Hey, you need anything?” Giving me water, I touch her shoulder and slow my breathing a little.

  “Yeah, thank you—” I gulp. “Can you hear me?” I make a conscious effort to whisper in her head in the hopes she doesn’t freak out. To my surprise, she looks at my hand, then her eyes trace to my face rather calmly.

  “Y- yes”

  “Good. I need to tell you that this save the world mission is going to end badly for everyone.”

  I watch her carefully. If she freaks out, the rest of them will, and we really don’t have time.

  “You got a plan, don’t you?”

  “Yes, one that was meant for me. You guys are hoping that everything will go back to normal. It won’t. I’m already prepared for that, and to be clear, I mean the dying part, and that's the best-case scenario.”

  She starts to make a face, but I slowly nod my head. The transfer of my feelings, mostly anxiety and ‘please, God, don’t make this harder than it has to be,’ calms her, though only on the surface level.

  “So what! We all die, the world ends, that's it?”

  “No.”

  “So why tell me this then?”

  She’s making me regret the two-way communication full… ok partial… disclosure thin

  “Because your probability of surviving this is similar to mine.”

  “Which is?”

  “About less than 10%.”

  “Oh, that boned, huh?”

  “You're taking this well.”

  “I’m not.”

  Well, at least she’s honest.

  “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “Well, the world ends, and we’re still in it.”

  “Meaning?”

  “We get to be a part of hell’s ecosystem until destiny spits us out after the four thousandth death loop.”

  “What the fuck!”

  “Ok, too much too soon. But I’m trying to be very honest here. Death isn’t preferable, but I’m prepared for it if it means avoiding that.”

  “Why me?”

  I feel a tinge of regret here, not from me but from the geas, which is partially sentient and thus is prone to have a little bit of PTSD drip down my noggin. I know what it’s regretting in this situation. It remembers a certain King of a prehistoric civilization that may or may not have been called Atlantis, doing something unthinkable for the sake of a planet his people were ready to burn to save themselves. He could have let them do it or even die a warrior's death against the daemonic horde that crossed space-time in their full glory. But instead—

  “You chose to do something incredibly brave. With the world ending around you, you didn’t cower. You didn’t try to save yourself. Fuck, you didn’t even know you were doing it. But you did it, destiny recorded it, and now you're stuck with me.

  She thinks my words over. Her mind is a logical beast of burden, no religion, no spiritualism, no weird assertations of faith. She is an atheist but not as a belief system, as a practical understanding of the universe, what is strictly observable and what isn’t. She doesn’t begrudge faith though, she merely doesn’t see a personal application.

  Now take someone like that and introduce them to zombies, werewolves, Daemons, and nasties just beyond the stars. A perfectly reasonable universe now hides the secrets to hell and her demons and principalities. In many ways, I’m surprised she recovered so fast from coming face to face with true fear. Granted, I gave her a healthy push back to the straight and reasonable, but that’s it. I could be introducing new stress factors before she even has time to heal the first ones.

  “That’s how it works. You stand out. Reality remembers you. And when you don’t-“ I let the implications sit before I continue, “Susan, I know this is a lot for you to take in, but I need you to understand that there is a 90% chance that this is a one-way trip.”

  “So... it’s safe to assume destiny isn’t a God or anything?”

  “Yes. What you understand as reality is simply a computer doing pattern recognition, you match the profile, and the computer assigns you a number.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “Just another random .txt awaiting deletion.”

  “That’s fucked up. And why aren’t you zombie food? Am I immune too?”

  “Not mutually exclusive. You're not any more immune than your friends are.”

  “So what, I'm just quirky?”

  “Basically…Yes.”

  I let go of her and leave her to her thoughts. Hopefully, there is enough there to make an informed decision. Regrets and heroism don’t mix.

  Blood Mist

  The Multiv
erse has many rules, and one of those is, if you endeavor to find something, you will inevitably find it. Or it finds you. From the perspective of the alien entities living in a state beyond life or death, the human propensity for knowledge, or, to be blunt, our death wish, is the most redeeming part of our species. Some even postulate for that reason alone, we were encouraged to evolve.

  So when I see that the hallway leading to the Necronomicon is covered in horror movie mist that glows independently of any light source, I stop the party in their tracks. Now a little bit of condensation wouldn’t bother me, but the swirling miasma is giving me the chills. And I do mean the chills. I didn’t find it strange that the lights were flickering as we make our way down the Gaylord’s underbelly. With the rest of the hotel out of power, I assumed it was the backup generator. But now, watching that mist slowly coils its way down the hall, I’m getting other less innocent ideas.

  How could I not have noticed? As I back up slowly, the group remains silent, half mesmerized but also sensing on some instinctively level that the mist is bad. Very bad. As we back away, the mist spills lazily into the hallway. Only a few centimeters at a time, but it feels like it's reaching for something. What that something is, I really don’t want to find out.

  “What is that…” Jacob begins as his eyes grow as big as saucers reflecting the eldritch light emanating off the mist.

  “Keep backing up slowly,” I warn. The edge in my voice brings him back to reality and keeps the group’s feet moving.

  Once a safe distance, I rethink our options. One we could go back; the reanimated corpses I shoved Lings into are still holding off the zombies, though how long that balance will be maintained is yet to be seen. If they gorge themselves too much, they won’t be great listeners, which is a risk I was willing to take while the book was close but seems rather short-sighted now.

  Well, there is option two. I could try to make a run for it, getting these guys to safety and maybe some backup. Which, come to think of it, isn’t the best choice, considering how much time has passed. Even the Feds would have noticed a literal zombie apocalypse less than thirty minutes from the White House. The best we can hope for is being on the wrong side of a quarantine or several tactical nukes.

  And we’re too late for either solution to work… to spell it out, nukes won’t do jack shit against a manifestation of an Old One as it punches its way superman style into our reality. And they probably wouldn’t authorize one unless they were staring DURA’G in the face. Which wouldn’t be advisable. Quarantine wouldn’t be strict enough or fast enough. It would take a mass mobilization of every occult asset we have and convincing most of the international communities of occult boys and girls to help out. The League has a lot of pull, but enough pull to pull that off in a time crunch? Unlikely.

  If I’m going to save the world, it has to be right here, right now.

  “I need that other thing I gave you.”

  They look confused until Vee pulls out her ward. They pass theirs to Susan, who in turn gives them to me.

  “Thank you.”

  I focus on the inscription, taking long breaths to encourage the reinforcement of the Other contained as I forcibly change the wording. Now it reads, “Please evil, don’t bother me.” Which is a simpler, more general-purpose ward than the previous, “Please don’t notice me” inscription. Sounds similar, but ideally, this one should allow them to follow me into the mist. Or they will short circuit instantly, giving them about 0.3 seconds to run.

  “Here you go.” I watch the newly empowered items get passed back while wiping a bead of sweat from my efforts. “Stay close, and please don’t trip over anything.”

  “Is there a reason why this mist is so… creepy?”

  I look back at Vee. “Besides it glowing?”

  “Yes.” A shiver runs down Vee’s spine as she holds on to Susan for dear life. Jacob and Rico bring up the rear, their eyes glued to the floor, breathing slowly.

  “Don’t stare at it, for God's sake!” They look up, acknowledging I’ve spoken, but their faces have blank expressions. I feel disquieted by my growing suspicion that no one's home.

  I look at Susan and, with some effort, mouth the word ‘Sorry’ as we march forward. She shakes her head as if to tell me she sees no sense in stopping now, which is what I was hoping for. Whether I like it or want to admit it or not, I need her help.

  The mist grows denser the further we go, a physical weight added to each step, and the floor is less visible beyond the translucent glow. Every so often, I find my gaze fixating on the mist. At first, it is a lazy curiosity, some shadow or a glimpse of something hiding between the little spectacles of light trapped within the dew. But then that light would step, leap, even, as if dancing between the intervals where the eldritch glow fades, and the twistings shadows begin.

  Not sure how long or even why we’ve been walking, but I’m starting to notice that I’m holding my breath. Is it oxygen deprivation? In awe, perhaps? Well, dazzling lights reflecting from the dew, multi-colored with unusual, unnameable patterns, seem to have dumbfounded me. Transfixed me. I should exhale now, yes, exhale, and let the bad air out and let the good, tainted, putrid, and rancid air with the aroma of fecal matter and rotting meat in.

  Hmm, so goo—

  OH GOD! Gagging, I look around desperately for some sanity, but the only thing that greets me is the realization that I am alone in the mist.

  But wasn’t Susan right behind me? “Shout if you can hear me!” I call out to anyone... Nothing. In the silence, the mist picks up a strong breeze, and I see what I know for certain is a door glowing ominously in the distance. And I also understand that the breeze wasn’t a breeze. The wind was pushing up against the door, and the door bulged and contracted, like something ridiculously heavy exhaling.

  This is the moment in a horror movie where the central cast is presented with the option to investigate something weird or leave well enough alone. Though I don’t seem to have a choice in the matter, the Necronomicon is that way beyond all reasonable doubt.

  The hallway is dark but illuminated by an ambient light that is perpetually out of range of discovery. At this point, I doubt I am in a hallway anymore. This is more like a dark chasm where the walls are high enough that I’m effectively trapped in a separate, underground world. And the only way out is through a door that breathes.

  “Fuck me.”

  The mist swirls around me, ebbing back and forth with the respirations of the room ahead. Its eerie glow both beckoning and frightening, like an innocent reminder not to swim in certain lakes or ponds. Irresistible, the pull to just to put one toe in even though decay and ruin lurk beneath the surface.

  Yet I walk, alternatives exhausted, knowing that any other direction at this point is volunteering to explore the rapidly expanding nothing.

  But the lights! Those indomitable flashes of something beyond the sane universe skipping and dancing within the mist, revealing the hungry shadows pulsating along the ground below. To stare at it is to be convinced that the ground isn’t really the ground, but a placid ocean bearing my weight only due to the density of the waters and my inability to comprehend what would happen if I sink below.

  But if that is the case, what are the shadows? I shudder to consider, but the instant thought of something living down there, below the waters so thick traversing above them, is no different than walking on glacier ice and frightens me. More than frightens me, every cell screams at me to run and run blindly. Only the thought of spending eternity in this half void brings me back to my senses and inevitably back to that door. The door that is breathing.

  A small eternity passes, my mind wandering, following the skipping and stepping lights that dance above the dew, while my feet trudge slowly through the mist like it’s heavy snow. The wind billowing in and out of the breakroom rocks me back and forth ever so slightly, and the smell of decay and earthy rot fills my senses.

  When I reach the door, I can feel an energy coming off it in strange waves. As eldri
tch power hits my chest and vibrates my bones, a weird warmth spreads throughout my being. I stand there as the sensation spread to every extremity bring with it pain but also awareness. It is as if I became aware of every blood vessel, every nerve, every organ, and the cells that bind them all.

  I sway with the moving wind, purposely now, closing my eyes to the brilliance of it all. To the—

  “Oh fuck this.” I kick the door hard. It splinters on impact and is sucked away into nothing. The effect is so surreal I have to pause. The break room is even more nothing, like stepping into a cave lit by luminous mushrooms that dot the floor but never hinting at where something discernable as a wall might be. Or stepping into the mouth of something far larger than anything that should walk on earth, and all the glimpses of further nothing are merely one-way tickets to a glamorous exit via lower intestines.

  The book. Only the book matters. I look around for it but see nothing but more abyss. I step further into the room, subconsciously refusing to cross the threshold, and look around again. This time the source of the eldritch glow becomes immediately apparent. In the center of this swirling abyss stands a tree that’s not quite a tree. It reaches above what should be the ceiling of a distance rational world and extends upward and outward. As I look up, its branches don’t terminate with leaves but small, deformed hands, interwoven with each other and often other branches, in a continuous chain climbing up and out. The trunk glows from the inside, detailing that this tree is not really a tree but merely a convergence of one, a similar shape born from similar conditions, though what environment encouraged this, I don’t know. And at the base, there is an opening where the eldritch light glows furiously and wrongly, a wrongness that crawls deep into the skin and disturbs the dreams with visions of sickness and deprivation.

  Without knowing it, I’m on my knees in front of it. My mind, a small delicate thing, compared to what it is! A power, one that would make a nuclear reactor seem like a child's attempt at building a spaceship. Even standing before it, near it, inspires images of its true purpose, of the poisoning effects of just being close to it without believing, without wanting. I need it. Oh, how I need it. The mist curls around me, turning red in response to my need, my desire. I move toward it, crawling on hands and knees before I remember.