Chapter Ethan
ETHAN
It was the headache that did it. Rather, it was the way Ethan’s headache had disappeared, last night, when his memories had returned.
Yesterday, from the second he’d seen the silver glare at four p.m., a migraine had haunted Ethan until he’d stared at the strange mirror in the old house and felt the past come flooding back.
Kyla had experienced the same thing earlier in the evening: when they’d recovered their memories, their headaches had left them. Just like that.
Last night, Ryan had explained that Penelope had an uncanny skill for voices.
Ethan didn’t believe for a second that Penelope was a murderer, but by coming to this room long after Sarah was dead and feigning an argument between Sarah and some mystery man, she could give the killer a perfect alibi.
By seven thirty, every man at the motel was more or less accounted for.
It created the perfect crime. Or at least an impossible one to solve.
But if Penelope was working with the real killer, when would the pair have had the time to create this plan?
We’ve been safe! We’ve been safe here every night.
And then Ethan had thought of Adeline, Penelope’s strange specter of a sister.
Last night, when he’d found the girls in the water tank shortly before the end, Ethan had realized that Adeline appeared to be immune to the amnesia that affected all the other guests when the ceremony began again.
Maybe it was because the girl was some kind of spirit, a shade—a revenant, his mother might have called it—but Ethan suspected the girl simply went on, night after night, aware of everything that had ever happened to them here.
What a hell that would be.
Hell or not, it meant that if Adeline was immune to the ceremony’s amnesia, she might have been able to enter into a conspiracy to protect Sarah’s killer on another night.
A previous night. By setting a plan in motion in the past, Adeline and the killer could then act independently of each other on all subsequent nights.
Never meet in person. Never risk being seen together.
Never risk betraying that there was a conspiracy at work at all.
But for that conspiracy to succeed, the killer would need to remember the past as well. And unless they were a shade themselves, they would have also suffered the same pain and relief as Ethan and Kyla had felt last night. The headache, and the sudden release when their memories returned.
If that was the case, there was one person here whose head had hurt, every night, until it didn’t.
The waitress had been right, all the way back in Turner.
Mark my words. This man is going to get you into the sort of trouble you cain’t never get out of.
Stepping into room 4, the shotgun braced against his shoulder, Ethan found Hunter right where he’d expected the man to be.
And of all the expressions Ethan had expected Hunter to wear, it wasn’t this one: a soft smile, a sort of pleasant confusion. Pride.
Ethan ignored it. He said simply, “We’re not doing this anymore.”
Hunter didn’t move right away. He remained poised over Sarah, her knife in his hand, his eyes locked onto Ethan’s. He hardly blinked when Kyla came through the back door and down the short hallway, armed with her Glock.
Ethan locked eyes with Hunter. “I said drop it.”
Hunter said, “Did you live long enough to see the world end last night? Have you realized what Jack Allen is like? Do you really know what’s at stake here?”
“I’m not going to ask again.”
“Then shoot me. I don’t think it matters who dies. The ceremony will still keep going.”
Ethan hadn’t considered this. He suddenly felt very tired. “Please, Hunter. Just put down the knife.”
Hunter watched his face a moment longer. “Do you have some kind of plan for how we deal with the mountain? Without the ceremony to seal it away, what are you going to do about whatever the fuck is trying to break free?”
It sleeps.
It wakes.
“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “But I’m not going to spend eternity trapped here.”
Kyla spoke. “Besides, the loop is already breaking down. Jack Allen said it himself. This isn’t sustainable. One way or another, it’s going to end. Seems smarter to me that we break things on our terms before the whole thing falls apart.”
“She’s right,” Ethan said. “And Jack Allen knows where to find Penelope and her sister now. There’s nothing to stop him from killing us all and breaking the loop for himself. He thinks he can merge with whatever’s in the mountain. Eat it or something. Use its power for himself.”
Hunter hesitated a moment longer. “Jack Allen—you know he’s your grandfather, right?”
Ethan didn’t bother asking how Hunter knew this. “Yes. And my mother hated him so bad she never told me his name. Even if I hadn’t seen the crazy in his eyes, that right there would have been enough to tell me I can’t let him get away with this.”
Hunter held his gaze. That look of pride never left him. “So you’re sure? Positively sure?”
“Yes.”
Hunter seemed to tote things up in his head. He nodded.
He stood up off the bed. He bent down, retrieved the knife’s sheath from the floor, slid the blade away.
Hunter said, “Time for one last adventure, then.”
Sarah was suddenly in motion. She pulled the pillows from her head and neck, sprang from the bed, and made a grab for the knife in Hunter’s hand. When the man easily backed away from her, Sarah turned instead to Ethan.
The woman’s face was all panic. “Listen to me—you can’t do this.
If the ceremony’s been going for a long time, then stopping it now isn’t just going to return things to normal.
We’ve created a loop, a pocket dimension in the fabric of space-time.
We’ve done things that shouldn’t even be possible.
If we were to prevent the ceremony from beginning again, that pocket would start to collapse in on itself. There’s no telling what it would do.”
Sarah’s eyes caught something over Ethan’s shoulder. He turned, just in time to see Penelope Holiday, her hair soaked with water, standing in the doorway of room 4 with Stanley’s massive Desert Eagle in her hand. The gun was aimed at Ethan’s head.
“We’re not going back to Stockton,” the girl said.
She didn’t look quite like Penelope. There was a childish sort of fear on her face, the look of a kid far out of her depth. She held the gun clumsily, like she was startled by its weight. It took her three tries to cock the hammer.
Plenty of time for Ryan Phan to make his move.
Earlier in Ethan’s room, when he’d motioned Ryan inside from the cold, he’d explained that he was worried Penelope—or more appropriately, Adeline—might do something desperate.
Right on cue, Ethan heard Ryan pounding up the front porch.
Ryan slammed into Penelope’s side, a flying tackle.
The gun went off with a deafening boom, and everyone, even Sarah, fell to the ground.
There was a gasp as a chunk of the back wall exploded near someone’s shoulder. Ethan’s head swiveled to the back hall. He hadn’t even noticed Fernanda follow Kyla inside.
No time to worry about that. Springing to his feet and heading outside, Ethan found Penelope—or at least Penelope’s body—kicking and flailing in the parking lot. The girl was bawling like an infant. “I don’t want to go back! I DON’T WANT TO GO BACK!”
Ryan kept her pinned down easily. He shushed her. He seemed to know exactly which of the two girls he was dealing with. “It’s all right, Addy. It’s going to be all right.”
“What in the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
Stan Holiday was standing on the porch outside room 7, clad in a pair of basketball shorts and a white wifebeater, his eyes blurry from sleep.
He looked ready to sprint across the parking lot.
Maybe try to break Ryan’s nose a few more times.
He added, “What are you doing to her? How the fuck are you even here?”
Kyla took care of this problem. Stepping out of room 4, she raised the service pistol in her hand and fired, twice, at the window next to Stanley. One bullet pinged off a metal bar and ricocheted into the dark. The second shattered the glass, rooting Stanley to the ground.
“Turn around,” Kyla said. “Go inside. You have no idea what you’re dealing with here.”
Stanley didn’t seem convinced, however. It wasn’t until Hunter followed Ethan into the parking lot that the big man got his act together.
Hunter said, “Go. Now.”
Stanley went. He turned around, closed his door, and turned off the lights.
Ethan realized, in that moment, that Stanley knew exactly the sort of man Hunter was. That the big man—or the outfit—might have had reason to hire Hunter, once or twice.
And maybe, in the course of that business, Hunter might have met Penelope and Adeline before tonight.
Ethan never got the chance to ask. He heard rapid footsteps—running footsteps—coming from the direction of the office.
Turning on his heel, raising the shotgun, he found Thomas barreling toward them with a fire poker in his hand and a look of pure horror in his eyes.
He didn’t speak. He didn’t scream. He just ran in their direction, looking ready to cave in everyone’s skulls.
Hunter withdrew the Colt .357 Python from where Ethan had tucked it in the back of his jeans. Casually, without even a beat to aim down the sights, he fired a round into Thomas’s kneecap.
Thomas’s leg seemed to detonate. He collapsed into the dirt—now he was screaming—and tried to cradle his knee to his chest. He screamed even harder when the joint let out an awful, wet squelch and bits of cartilage came away in his hands.
“Why?” Thomas screamed. “Why?”
Hunter crossed the parking lot. Kicked the fire poker away. Dug through the man’s pockets even as Thomas still writhed and gasped and moaned. Hunter aimed the Python into the man’s face. “What did you do to the eggs? The ones that were on the office’s mantel?”
So, Ethan thought. Hunter had noticed their absence too.