Horror

The corridor beyond the ballroom is dim, narrow, and quiet in the way bad places always are.

At the far end, a flash of red hair turns the corner.

I run.

Behind me, big-band music thumps through the walls like somebody celebrating on the deck of the Titanic.

“Ginger!”

No answer.

I hit the corner fast enough to bruise my shoulder.

Empty hall.

Then another glimpse ahead.

Red hair. Pale arm. A laugh floating back, soft as perfume.

I take off again.

The Marquette has more service corridors than a prison. Laundry carts. Ice machines. Unmarked doors. Exit signs glowing like lies.

Every time I think I’m gaining on her, she’s twenty feet farther ahead, pausing just long enough to let me know I’m stupid.

I pass two kitchen workers making out beside a mop sink.

“Don’t stop on my account.”

Neither of them does.

I turn another corner and nearly collide with a room-service cart.

No Ginger.

Only silver lids, folded napkins, and my own breathing.

Then her laughter comes again.

Farther away.

I follow it down a stairwell, through another hall, past stacked banquet chairs and crates of cheap champagne.

By then, I’m not chasing a woman so much as participating in my own humiliation.

“Soon as I catch you,” I say between breaths, “I’m going to say something extremely clever.”

The laugh comes again.

Outside this time.

I shove through a metal service door and stumble into the rear lot behind the hotel.

Cold night air. Dumpsters. Delivery trucks. A single security light buzzing overhead.

No Ginger.

Just silence.

Then, far off in the darkness beyond the lot, I hear her laughter one last time.

Fading.

Moving away.

“Terrific.”

I turn toward the door and kick something hard enough to curse.

I look down.

My old motorcycle helmet.

I bend and pick it up slowly.

Black shell. A red-haired skull wreathed in crooked flames, painted by Ginger two summers ago.

The helmet disappeared not long after that.

I thought it was gone for good.

I run my thumb across the old crack near the base.

“Huh.”

I turn it in my hands.

“What are you doing here?”

No note. No explanation.

Just my missing helmet waiting behind a hotel where rich men are being drugged out of their pants.

I’m still trying to sort that out when someone screams inside.

High. Sharp. Female.

I know that scream.

Patricia.

I drop the helmet and run.

I don’t think about leaving it behind.

Later, I will.

I slam through the service door and follow the scream into the hotel.

“Patricia!”

No answer.

I take the first corner too fast, catch myself against the wall, and keep going.

The hall is empty.

Then I hear it.

Something wet scraping across the floor.

Slow.

Heavy.

Patient.

I stop.

The sound stops too.

At the far end of the corridor, something moves through a patch of weak yellow light.

Red hair.

Pale shoulders.

Too tall.

The upper half looks like a woman. The lower half stays hidden in shadow, but something long drags behind it with a dry, steady hiss.

It turns its head toward me.

Even from this distance, I see the smile.

Too wide.

Then it slips around the corner.

“Ginger?”

A laugh floats back.

Not soft this time.

Wrong.

I start after it, but the smell reaches me before I make the corner.

Blood.

A man in an expensive suit lies twisted beside a laundry cart. His feet twitch against the floor. The top of his skull has been split open.

Something dark and wet smears the linoleum beside his head.

I stare at him.

“Nope.”

That’s all I’ve got.

No clever observation.

No joke.

Just nope.

Movement comes from the hall behind me.

I spin.

Patricia bursts out of the darkness near the stairwell.

Wild-eyed. One shoe in her hand, the other foot bare. Dress torn at the shoulder. Stockings shredded. Blood streaked across her cheek.

“Patricia—”

She screams and swings the heel like a knife.

It catches me over the eye.

Stars burst across my vision.

“It’s okay!”

She swings again.

I catch her wrists. The splint twists between us, sending pain through my broken pinky and halfway up my arm.

“Patricia, it’s me!”

She stares at me.

Then collapses against my chest so hard she nearly knocks me backward.

For one second, she clings to me.

Then she jerks away in horror.

“No.”

“What happened?”

“No, no, no. You have to get away from me.”

“What?”

“She said.”

“Who said?”

“She said you’re hers.”

Every hair on my body rises.

“Ginger?”

“It looked like her.” Patricia shakes her head violently. “It wasn’t. Not anymore.”

“What was it?”

“Too tall. Scales. Claws.” Her eyes move toward the corridor behind me. “She had a man.”

“The guy back there?”

“She called him Daddy’s accountant. Said Daddy always told her he had the biggest brains in the company.”

Patricia gags and presses a hand over her mouth.

“She opened his head.”

I glance back.

The accountant’s feet have stopped moving.

“Patricia, listen to me.”

“She said to leave you alone.” Patricia backs away, shaking. “Leave him alone or she’ll keep taking people.”

“Who is she?”

“I don’t know.”

I step toward her.

She raises the shoe between us.

“Don’t.”

“It’s me.”

“She says you belong to her.”

“I don’t belong to anybody.”

“You need to stay away from me.”

“Patricia—”

She yanks the fire alarm.

The hotel explodes in bells.

Red lights strobe through the corridor.

Patricia runs.

“Patricia!”

She doesn’t look back.

The front entrance of the Marquette looks like Judgment Day sponsored by a country club.

Guests pour into the night, stumbling and confused.

Half the men have no pants.

Not a metaphor.

No pants.

Boxers. Dress socks. Loafers without trousers.

One county official vomits into a hedge while trying to hold his tuxedo jacket closed with dignity. Another old man shouts that communists stole his slacks.

Women from the Village move briskly through the chaos carrying belts, wallets, phones, trousers, and enough evidence to blackmail half the county.

Cargo van doors slam.

Engines start.

I spot Patricia beside one of the vans, wrapped in a blanket while Henry helps her inside.

“Patricia!”

She looks at me once.

Only fear there.

Then the doors shut and the van pulls away.

I stand in the exhaust fumes, feeling something tear.

Then I see Kristy Lee loading equipment cases and coiled cables into a station van.

“Kristy Lee!”

She doesn’t turn.

I hurry over.

“Kristy, wait.”

A mustached man in a station jacket steps between us.

“She said no.”

“I need thirty seconds.”

“You look like you need stitches.”

“Kristy, please.”

She finally turns.

Her face is calm in the way storms are calm from far away.

“You said Ginger was dead.”

“I thought she was.”

“So you chased her through a strange hotel by yourself?”

“It made sense at the time.”

“Patricia went looking for you.” She points toward the departing vans. “Look what happened to her.”

That shuts me up.

“You disappeared for a week,” Kristy says. “Then you showed up here, ran after a dead woman, and left everyone else to deal with whatever followed.”

“I didn’t know.”

“That seems to happen around you a lot.”

Each word finds something soft.

“I’m trying to explain.”

“No. You’re trying to make it funny enough that I stop being angry.”

I open my mouth.

Nothing comes out.

She climbs into the van.

“Good night, Gene.”

The door slams.

They drive away.

I stand alone beneath the hotel lights while pantless men stagger past me and sirens approach from every direction.

I touch the swelling over my eye.

Look at the road.

Look at the sky.

What else can go wrong tonight?