“Guess you’re right,” Pete admitted. “If they got themselves raped and murdered while we were in there, boy would we feel like a couple of heels.”
“Exactly.”
“Real cute,” Jean said, borrowing not only Barbara’s phrase but also her disdainful tone.
“What do you say?” Barbara asked her.
“They’ll hold it against us forever if they can’t go in on our account.”
“Admit it,” Pete said. “You’re dying to come with us.”
“Let’s get it over with,” Barbara said.
Larry gave the flashlight back to Pete and followed him into the hotel. In spite of the closed doors and boarded windows, sand had found its way into the lobby. It made soft scraping sounds under their shoes.
“We probably shouldn’t leave the door open,” Jean said. There was a tremor in her hushed voice. “In case someone comes by.” Without waiting for a reply, she closed the door, shutting out most of the daylight.
Light still came in around the doors, spilled through cracks and knotholes in the planks across the windows — pale, dusty streamers that slanted down to the floor. Pete turned his flashlight on, its beam pushing a tunnel of brightness into the gloom. He swept it from side to side.
“Boy, there’s a lot to see in here,” Barbara whispered. “What a find!”
The lobby was bare except for a registration counter. On the wall behind the counter were cubbyholes for mail or messages. Over to the left a wooden staircase rose steeply toward the upper floors.
“Should we check in before we have a look around?” Pete asked.
“Probably no vacancies,” Larry whispered.
“A couple of real comedians,” Jean muttered.
Pete led the way to the counter, pounded its top and said in a loud voice, “How does a guy get some service around here?”
“Creep. You want to hold it down?”
“What’s everybody whispering for?” He vaulted the counter, dropped into the space behind it and ducked out of sight. He reappeared, rising slowly, the flashlight at his chin to cast weird shadows up his face. Where the beam touched him, his skin gleamed with sweat.
Goofing off like a kid, Larry thought. But he sometimes pulled the same gag, especially around Halloween, more to amuse himself than to frighten Jean or Lane. They had come to expect such antics. The old flashlight-on-the-face routine hadn’t scared Lane since she was about two.
It did make Pete look strange and menacing. Larry knew that if he let his mind go with it, he wouldget a shiver. “Mmm-yes?” Pete asked, pitching his voice high. “May I help zee veary travelers?”
“God, it’s hot in here,” Jean whispered.
“A damn oven,” Barbara said.
“Anything back there?” Larry asked, carefully avoiding his friend’s face.
“Only me and zee spirit of zee night clerk, who hung himself many years ago.”
“If we’re going to look around,” Jean said, “why don’t we, and get out of here?”
“I’d like to have a look upstairs,” Larry said.
“Vait. Let me ring for zee bell captain.”
“Oh, the hell with him,” Barbara muttered. “Come on.” She turned around and headed for the stairs. Jean went after her, and Larry followed. Barbara’s legs and the bare part of her back were nearly invisible in the darkness. Her white shorts and blouse, pale blurs, seemed to float above the floor on their own. Jean, in darker clothes, was a faint smudge in front of him.
He heard Pete strike the floor and stride up behind him, sand crunching under his shoes. The flashlight beam flicked across the backs of the women, swung over to the staircase and swept upward, skimming past balusters, tossing their long shadows against the wall. Midway up was a small landing. The remaining stairs rose to the narrow opening of the second-floor corridor.
“You don’t want to go first, do you?” Pete asked in his normal voice as Barbara started to climb.
“If I wait for you, we’ll be here all day.”
The light moved downward, gliding just above the stair treads, and something touched by the low edge of its aura winked like gold. A small, questioning breath of surprise came from Pete. The light skittered backward and down. Its bright center came to rest on a crucifix. “Christ,” he whispered.
“That’s right,” Larry said.
The crucifix, directly below the landing, was attached to wood paneling that closed off the space beneath the staircase.
“What is it?” Barbara asked, leaning over the banister near the bottom of the stairs.
“Somebody left a crucifix on the wall,” Larry told her.
“Is that all?” She leaned farther out, then shook her head. “Big deal,” she said.
Jean stepped around the side of the staircase for a closer look.
“Anybody want a souvenir?” Pete asked. He strode toward the crucifix.
“No, don’t,” Larry warned.
“Hey, somebody just forgot it here. Finders keepers.”
“Leave it alone,” Barbara said from her perch on the stairs. “For godsake, you don’t go around stealing crosses. That’s sick.”
The cross was made of wood. The suspended figure of Jesus looked as if it might be gold-plated. Pete reached for it.
“Please don’t,” Jean said.
He looked at her. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, yeah.” Apparently he had just remembered that Jean was Catholic. He lowered his hand. “Sorry. I was just kidding around.”
“Reason prevails,” Barbara muttered. She pushed herself away from the banister and resumed climbing.
She got as far as the landing.
The wood creaked under her weight, then burst with a hard flat crack like a gunshot.
Barbara sucked in her breath. She flung her arms up as if trying to find a handhold in the dark air as she dropped straight down.
Four
“My God!” Pete shouted.
Jean, racing up the stairs, called out, “Hang on!”
“I’m slipping! Hurry!”
Larry dashed toward the foot of the stairs. He didn’t hear Pete coming. “Where areyou, man?”
“Get up there and grab her!” Pete snapped.
“Oh shit,” Barbara groaned.
Larry swung himself around the newel post. As he rushed up behind Jean he saw the hazy glow of Pete’s flashlight ahead and to the right of the stairs. Hadn’t the guy moved? Was he still down there in front of the crucifix?
Jean sank to her knees at the edge of the landing.
Barbara, her back to the lower stairs, looked like someone being swallowed by quicksand. She was hunched forward, pressing her chest against the remaining boards, bracing herself up with her elbows.
Jean crawled aside to make a space for Larry, then hooked an arm under Barbara’s left armpit. “Gotcha,” she gasped. “I gotcha. You’re not gonna fall.”
“Are you okay?” Pete called up.
“No, damn it!”
Larry dropped against the landing and stairs, looked down into a six-inch gap between the broken planks and the white of Barbara’s blouse. Blackness.
A bottomless pit, he thought. An abyss.
Ridiculous, he told himself. Probably no more than a six— or seven-foot drop, all told, from the landing to the lobby floor. She was already about halfway there.
What if the floor doesn’t extend under the staircase?
Or she breaks through that, too?
Even if she had only a four-foot fall, she would end up trapped under the staircase. And the broken boards might scrape her up pretty good on the way down.
He squirmed forward until his face met the hair on the back of Barbara’s head. He wrapped his arms around her. They squeezed her breasts. Muttering “Sorry,” he worked them lower and hugged her rib cage.
“Pete!” he yelled.
“You got her?” Pete’s voice still came from below.
“Just barely. If you’d give us a goddamn hand!”
He heard a crack of splitting wood. For a moment he thought that more of the landing was giving out. Nothing happened, though.
“Yah!” Barbara yelped, jerking in Larry’s embrace. “Something’s got me!”
“It’s just me, hon.”
For an instant a pale tongue of light licked the darkness beside Larry’s right shoulder. It had risen through the broken boards.