Queen of the Dead

My first clue that that might not be possible was the four guys in the suits. In the dim light from my cell phone, it was hard to catch a lot of detail, but I could see ties that were too short and fat to be modern and big heavy-looking leather suitcases at their feet. Definitely ghosts. They were leaning against the left-hand wall, smoking. Actually, only two of them were leaning against the wall; the other two were half in the wall — one was only a pair of legs, crossed at the ankle, sticking out of the wall at his knees. He was clearly sitting on a chair, probably one from the long-destroyed lobby. The other one stood facing the others at an angle, almost split in half by the wall running down the center of his body. He didn’t seem bothered by it, though. He grinned — his teeth flashing in the darkness — as he nodded at the others in agreement with something one of them had said. Probably the dude in the wall, since I hadn’t heard anything.

Creepy as it was, that made sense. The theater to them wasn’t real. The lobby of the hotel was, and obviously that wall hadn’t been there when they were alive. And unlike Alona, Mrs. Ruiz, and some of the more sentient ghosts, they were trapped in their own time, unaware of anything else. Until, of course, I tried to slip past them, my head down.

“Hey, buddy, you have the time?” one of them called after me.

I paused, hesitating for just a second. If I didn’t answer, they might forget they ever saw me. Then again, at least one of them had seen me in the first place, indicating they might not be entirely blind to events and people outside their own ghostly existence.

“Uh, no?” I offered without turning around. It wasn’t true, of course, but if I looked at my cell phone to check the time, who the hell knew what kind of conversation that would provoke?

I heard the sharp tap of his shoes on the old hardwood floor. “You from around here?” He exhaled with the words and smoke swirled past me in a cloud.

I turned slowly. He, the ghost, didn’t seem suspicious ofme, though he was watching me closely. It struck me as possible that after so many years of reliving their death by fire, some of these ghosts might have started up a hunt for the cause of their death, even if they didn’t realize quite what they were doing. If so, good luck to them. Bernard Shaw, a teenage porter, who’d fallen asleep in the baggage room while smoking, had started the fire. He had survived, waking up in time to escape with his life. He hadn’t bothered to tell anyone about the fire, fearing for his job.

“No, I’m just visiting,” I said to the ghost.

“Didn’t think so. Not in that getup.” He chuckled, nodding at my clothes.

Uh-huh. Right. Okay. “I have to get going. My…” What would make most sense to him? A girlfriend might raise eyebrows if he thought this was a hotel. So might the equally ambiguous “friend” if I seemed too young to him to be wandering around at night. “My dad,” I said finally, “is waiting for me.”

“He part of the convention?”

His words triggered a vague memory. The reason the hotel had been so full that night was because of a traveling salesmen convention being held in town. Duroluxe Vacuum Cleaners.

“We’re just passing through,” I said.

He nodded and flicked his cigarette to the ground between us, and I held my breath. This place with all of its dried up wood, rotting velvet chairs, and dust and junk was a fire waiting to happen.

I stepped on the cigarette butt quickly. Fire was one ofthe most treacherous parts of being a ghost-talker. Being near a ghostly match, cigarette, or, hell, a firework — whatever aspirit had died with — was enough to spark a fire that would cause real-enough damage or death.

“Thanks, kid.” He cuffed my shoulder, and I flinched, waiting for him to make the connection that he’d actually touched me, a living person, but he didn’t. Then again, to him, for however much longer, until the fire started again, he was a living person, too. After that, everything would be up for grabs.

Once my new friend had walked back toward his buddies, I got going again. Ahead, the corridor opened into a widerarea, or so it seemed. All I could really tell was that the light from my cell phone wouldn’t reach beyond the edges of the darkness, and I wasn’t seeing the piles of junk stacked along the sides that had accompanied my journey so far.

I hurried past the last piles of junk in sight, and out into the open. I could sense the ceiling above me lift in that way you can just feel it when the air shifts around you. I’d moved from a tight and cramped corridor to a larger, more open space. Noise carried differently out here. And the floor beneath me had changed too. Every step I took now thumped hollowly.

Lifting the phone up higher, I caught a glimpse of tattered strands of ghostly white fabric hanging from the ceiling, moving in the draft I’d felt earlier. The top of it, what I could see anyway, was far more intact, still holding a bit of the original rectangular shape.

The screen. I’d made it into the theater. Probably on the old stage. That would explain the hollow sound beneath my feet.

But still no sign of anyone else.

Where were they?

In the distance, at what would probably be the top of the aisle in the seating area, a quick flash of light, like a flashlight quickly doused, caught my eye.

“Hello?” I hurried forward, aiming my cell phone farther out, searching for the stage’s edge or maybe even the glint of metal of a not-yet-removed chair in the audience area for an indicator of where the stage might end. There’d be a drop to the floor, not too big, but it wouldn’t take much to snap an ankle or…a neck.

But taking my attention away from the floor was a mistake. Either they’d already begun renovation on the stage floor itself or they just hadn’t gotten around to fixing up the holes where the boards had already given way. One minute, I was moving along just fine, and the next, my left foot caught nothing but air.

My heart lurched into my throat, and I pitched forward, my hands and then head slamming into the wood still in place on the other side of the hole I’d found.

I clawed at the floor to stop my fall before the rest of me followed my feet and legs.

The disruptor flew forward, skittering out of sight, and my cell phone slipped from my hand, glowing all the way down to the ground beneath the hollowed stage, striking what sounded like metal crossbars.

Shit.

My heartbeat pounded in my ears, and my breath sounded as loud as a scream. The edge of the wood floor, splintery and sharp, dug into the underside of my forearms. My fingertips had caught on the side of a slightly raised board, and now my arms were pinned between the weight of my body and the floor as I hung there in a strained and awkward pull-up position.

The board was flaky and dry beneath my sweating fingertips and my arms were beginning to shake. I wasn’t sure which part was going to give first.

I slipped one hand free, feeling my skin tear as I dragged it across the ragged edge, and planted my palm flat on the stage.

With an effort, I forced my shaking and quavering muscles to pull together, and I landed, half on the stage and half in the hole still, panting and breathing in dust and dirt. I could do this. I could make it out.

And then from behind me, a burst of light, the smell of smoke, and dozens of shrieking voices. The Archway Hotel fire had begun.

8 Alona

When I woke, a suffocating blackness — the kind of dark your brain rebels against by creating fireworks and faces out of nothing just for something to see — pressed in on me from every side. I couldn’t move, couldn’t see… couldn’t breathe.

Stay calm. A good suggestion, but it didn’t help with the impossibly tight feeling in my chest and the screaming desire to inhale.

Was this it, the end? The nothingness, nonexistence Will had talked about? I’d had visions of burning pits of flame or watching myself disintegrate like bonfire ash in the wind. Never this darkness and unbearable closeness to something I couldn’t even see. I hadn’t felt this claustrophobic since I was six, and my dad had accidentally shut me