Amber and Liz looked at each other in the flickering light.
“Test him?” Liz asked.
Amber sighed and then shook her head. She waved at Alan and Liz to join her.
Under her breath, she said, “I swore I wouldn’t do this.”
Then, out loud, “Get in position,” Amber said.
The two of them moved the bureau a few inches while Amber peeled the tape from the lock. None of them had particularly liked the plan that they had devised, but it was the best that they could come up with. Liz put the glass of sesame seeds on top of the bureau and gave a nod to Amber.
With the lock disengaged, Amber turned the handle. The door swung until it thunked into the bureau.
“It’s blocked,” the voice whispered.
“I know,” Amber said. “Put your hand through.”
There was no reply and then the whisper asked, “What?”
“You heard me. Put your hand through the gap.”
Amber held the flashlight at the ready, but didn’t turn it on until the hand appeared all the way through the gap between the door and the frame. It looked like the hand flinched a little when the light clicked on, but she wasn’t completely sure. Liz picked up the glass that held the seeds and looked to Amber for the signal.
Amber shook her head. She had something else she wanted to try first.
Raising the stake like a javelin, she thrust it towards the hand. An instant before the stake would have struck flesh, the hand slipped back through the gap, out of sight. Amber was so shocked by the speed that she didn’t react for a moment.
Wood creaked as pressure against the door tried to push the bureau out of the way.
“Close it,” Amber said.
Liz and Alan were already struggling against the bureau, trying to shove it back into place. Amber dropped her flashlight and put her own shoulder against the corner of the thing. With the three of them working, they started to make progress.
Tapping reverberated through the door.
Liz was ready with her phone. While driving her back into the bureau, she used a thumb to start the music. It wasn’t much in comparison, but the sound seemed to upset the rhythm of the tapping and the door slid another inch towards being closed.
Amber dropped her stake so she could use her other hand to push. Alan counted to three and they synchronized their effort. The latch clicked. While Liz and Alan turned the bureau enough to wedge it into the space between the door and the wall, Amber reset the lock and taped it shut again.
Panting, the three of them backed away.
“What did we learn?” Liz asked.
“They might be able to sense motion with their hands,” Amber said.
“The music worked, I think,” Alan said. “They’re not tapping anymore.”
“They got Ricky,” Liz said.
“Maybe,” Amber said. “It’s hard to tell one person from another by a whisper. I’m not sure it sounded that much like Ricky.”
“Let’s hope not. Because if they can convert someone that fast, then we’re all doomed,” Liz said.
# # #
Shutting the door behind himself, Ricky realized that Nick had made a good point. Regardless of whether or not the thing in the stairwell had been Aaron, it would be stupid to go back that direction. The elevator was still dead, but based on the layout of the building, there had to be another stairwell at the opposite end.
The emergency lights were basically gone in the hall, but Ricky kept his flashlight off. The last thing he wanted to do was advertise his location. Sticking to one of the walls, he crept silently, pausing at the slightest noise. He heard someone snoring through one of the doors. From another room, he heard a dry, scratching sound. Ricky kept his thumb on the button of the light and his other hand clenched around the stake. Every muscle was tensed as he crept.
The EXIT sign above the stairs was still giving off some red light.
Ricky pushed against the bar to release the latch and eased it until he heard the click. The hinges croaked even though he was pushing it as gently as he could. Ricky listened to the sound reverberate in the stairwell and waited to see if it would draw anything.
Through the open doorway, in the blackness of the vending machine room, he heard water dripping into a puddle. Ricky slipped through the doorway and eased the stairwell door shut. When it latched, he had a horrible premonition.
The door had locked behind him.
Ricky gritted his teeth, angry with himself. It would have been easy to find something to block the door and leave himself an escape route. Now he was stuck. It was likely that the only way out was through the door on the bottom floor.
He stood there in the darkness trying to assemble a map of the hotel in his head. At this end of the building, there was the kitchen, the bar, a big dining room where they had held the reception, a hallway, and a couple of conference rooms.
The only working light in the stairwell was up above him. As he descended, he left that light behind and the dark swirled around his feet like he was descending into black water. Ricky’s thumb itched to activate the flashlight. He resisted the urge. Stealth was important, as was the element of surprise.
Feeling with his foot, he took the stairs one at a time.
There was more dripping. This time, the sound was coming from below him. It was different from what he had heard earlier—that had sounded like water dripping into a puddle. These drops were hitting a flat surface and splatting. Ricky reached the landing and followed the wall around the next flight.
He paused to listen before he continued.
One slow step at a time, he worked his way down the last flight. The sound was right next to his left side. He felt like if he reached out his hand, the water might drip directly onto him.
Assuming that it was water, of course.
A memory
