Checkout #4
Avery stared toward the shadow where the jacketed figure had stood beside them.
Nothing remained there.
No jacket.
No cap.
No person.
The desk bell rang behind them.
Avery turned.
Someone stood behind the counter.
Burgundy uniform.
Black gloves.
A blank white mask covered the face.
The mask had only one feature: a narrow brass slot where the mouth should have been.
The Night Clerk pressed one finger against the bell.
Then the ballroom lights went out.
* * *
Someone struck Avery hard enough to spin her.
She hit the front desk and caught the edge before her head struck the floor. Bodies moved around her in the dark. Shoes slipped over broken glass. Maya screamed Felix’s name. Malik shouted for everyone to get down, which only made three people collide near the staircase.
The desk bell rang inches from Avery’s hand.
She swung toward it.
Her fist struck fabric and something solid beneath it.
The Night Clerk caught her wrist.
The glove felt smooth and cold. The pressure increased until the bones in her hand ground together.
Avery drove her thumb toward where an eye should have been.
It struck the hard edge of the mask.
The Clerk released her.
Footsteps crossed behind the desk.
“Phone lights!” Nina shouted. “Turn on your fucking lights.”
White beams appeared across the ballroom.
Avery’s found the empty space behind the counter.
The Night Clerk was gone.
Felix remained suspended above the dance floor.
His blood had reached the carpet.
Maya stood beneath him with both hands over her mouth. A red drop moved down her forehead.
Malik swept his flashlight across the staircase, mezzanine and ballroom entrances.
“Count.”
“Tessa.”
“Jude.”
“Cass.”
“Nina.”
“Avery.”
“Maya.”
Malik looked around.
“Seven.”
Jude stared up at Felix.
“Eight with him.”
“Don’t,” Maya said.
“I’m making sure no one else is missing.”
“You don’t count him like equipment.”
“I’m not.”
Cass lifted her camera.
The flash illuminated Felix’s open abdomen.
Maya slapped the camera from her hands.
It struck the floor and slid beneath a table.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Cass looked stunned.
“I wasn’t—”
“You photographed him.”
“I didn’t mean to.”
“You put the camera up and pressed the button.”
“It fires when I—”
“Stop.”
Nina stepped between them.
“Cass, leave it.”
Cass looked toward the camera.
Nina said her name again.
This time Cass obeyed.
Tessa moved beneath Felix.
“We need to get him down.”
Nina caught her arm.
“He is dead.”
“I know.”
“Then we don’t destroy whatever the police need.”
Tessa looked at the luggage strap beneath his jaw.
“You think the police are coming?”
“We’re calling them.”
“There’s no signal.”
“We go outside.”
Maya refused to move.
“I’m not leaving him like this.”
“We come back with police,” Nina said.
“What if he’s gone?”
Nobody told her that bodies could not leave buildings.
Maya looked at Avery.
“You saw the other one.”
“The Clerk?”
“You saw him beside you.”
“I saw someone in the jacket.”
“You thought it was Felix.”
“The cap covered his face.”
“He pointed at the stairs.”
“He never spoke.”
Jude looked toward the shadow beneath the mezzanine.
“We all assumed.”
Maya stared at Felix’s body.
“How long was he gone?”
Avery thought of the service stairs. Twenty minutes before they noticed. More before the figure reappeared.
Long enough.
Tessa said, “We move now.”
The bell rang again.
Everyone turned toward the desk.
Avery’s hand rested several inches away from it.
“I didn’t touch it.”
The sound had come from beneath the counter.
A black telephone sat on the floor.
It rang a second time.
Jude moved toward it.
Maya blocked him.
“No more phones.”
“It might connect somewhere.”
“The last one asked how many of us were staying.”
“And Felix wasn’t the one who answered.”
Maya looked at him.
“That’s supposed to make it better?”
The phone continued ringing.
Malik picked up the receiver.
“Who is this?”
A mechanical click sounded through the earpiece.
Then Felix’s voice said, “At your service.”
Maya folded forward as though punched.
The recording continued.
“Front desk closes at midnight. Unclaimed property will be discarded.”
The line went dead.
Malik returned the receiver to its cradle.
“That came from the building.”
“Or someone reconnected the internal system,” Nina said.
“The lights are out.”
“Some circuits work. We saw the refrigerator.”
Avery moved behind the desk.
The old switchboard covered most of the wall. Dozens of cords hung beneath rows of dark sockets.
One red light glowed beside 413.
The rest were dead.
“Someone has power in here.”
Jude joined her.
“Can you shut it off?”
“I don’t know what it’s tied to.”
“Pull everything.”
“And kill our generators if they’re connected through this panel?”
Malik looked toward the kitchen.
“We don’t need lights. We need the vehicles.”
They crossed the ballroom together.
No one wanted to pass beneath Felix.
Maya stopped at the kitchen entrance and looked back.
Nina touched her shoulder.
“Come on.”
Maya wiped Felix’s blood from her face with the heel of her hand.
It spread across her skin.
She followed.
The loading entrance remained open.
Cold air moved through it.
The generators should have lit the parking area.
All three were silent.
The rental van’s headlights were on.
Both front doors stood open.
Malik went first.
Nina tried to catch his sleeve.
“I’m checking the vehicles. Stay in the doorway.”
“No one separates,” Tessa said.
“I’m twenty feet away.”
“Felix was one floor below us.”
Malik continued.
They followed.
The van’s four tires had been cut along the sidewalls. Long, even slashes opened the rubber.
The keys remained in the ignition.
Jude leaned through the driver’s door and turned them.
The engine clicked once.
Avery opened the hood.
The battery tray was empty.
“Removed,” she said.
Malik walked toward the box truck.
Its cab was locked.
“Keys?”
Felix had carried them.
Everyone looked toward the hotel.
Maya shook her head.
“I’m not going through him.”
“We don’t need the truck,” Malik said. “We walk.”
“The dam office is three miles,” Nina said. “Maybe four.”
“We have flashlights.”
Tessa looked toward the dark road.
“What about Felix?”
Maya’s voice broke.
“We leave him.”
Tessa looked at her.
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know.”
Maya picked up Felix’s flashlight from the van floor.
“Let’s go.”
They took bottled water, two additional flashlights and the cordless drill. Malik found a tire iron beneath the rear bench. Jude carried a metal speaker stand.
Avery expected Tessa to tell them to bring the cash box, the archive drives or the liquor.
She did not.
They followed the drive downhill.
The hotel remained visible through the trees.
Avery kept looking back.
The ballroom windows were black.
One window on the fourth floor glowed red.
Room 413.
“You see that?” she asked.
Jude turned.
The light went out.
They walked faster.
Gravel shifted beneath their feet. Water dripped from the trees. The reservoir appeared between the trunks, flat and black below the hill.
Cass moved beside Nina.
“Are you mad at me?”
Nina did not look at her.
“Right now?”
“For the picture.”
“Maya watched Felix hanging from a rope, and you photographed it.”
“I was documenting what happened.”
“You always say that like the camera made the decision.”
Cass lowered her voice.
“You know why I do it.”
“I know why you tell yourself.”
Cass reached for Nina’s hand.
Nina moved the flashlight into that hand before Cass could take it.
Avery had suspected they were sleeping together since winter.
They had never announced it. They did not need to. Cass started leaving parties when Nina left, and Nina had stopped pretending she hated being photographed.
Tessa knew. Tessa always knew.
Maya probably did too.
Jude remained oblivious because no one had formally explained it to him.
Tessa walked ahead with Malik.
“You met Hollis where?” he asked.
“Morrow’s.”
“When?”
“Last month.”
“What did he look like?”
“I only saw him twice. Older. Beard. Baseball cap.”
“You checked that he worked here?”
“Felix handled him.”
“Meaning no.”
“He had keys.”
“He had one key.”
Tessa looked back toward the hotel.
“Felix believed him.”
Malik stopped walking.
“Felix is dead.”
Tessa’s face changed.
The control slipped only briefly.
“I know.”
“Then stop talking like we lost a deposit.”
“What would you like me to sound like?”
“Human.”
“I watched him hanging from a fucking ceiling.”
“You’re worried about everyone seeing you react.”
“I’m trying to keep seven people moving.”
“Six,” Maya said behind them.
They all looked at her.
She pointed toward the hotel.
“The tag said seven check in, six check out.”
Malik lifted the tire iron.
“There are seven of us now.”
“The sign was there before Felix died.”
“It counted the original crew,” Cass said quietly.
Malik turned.
“What?”
“There were seven OFF CAMPUS founders.”
Avery, Tessa, Jude, Cass, Nina, Felix and Maya.
Malik joined during sophomore year. He handled sound, security and anything heavy, but the name had belonged to the seven of them first.
Malik laughed without humor.
“So I’m extra.”
“That is not what she meant,” Nina said.
“The room upstairs had my wristband.”
“Whoever did this knows all of us.”
“Apparently not well enough to include me in the prophecy.”
Tessa said, “It isn’t a prophecy.”
A car horn sounded behind them.
They turned.
The van’s headlights flashed through the trees.
The horn continued in one long blast.
Jude checked his phone.
“No signal.”
“Keep moving,” Malik said.
The horn stopped.
A moment later, every hotel window illuminated.
The building blazed above the reservoir as though it had never been abandoned.
Music began playing inside.
Bass reached them through the trees.
It was the opening track from Black Valentine.
Felix had made the mix.
Maya began crying silently.
Tessa faced the road.
“No one turns around.”
Avery agreed until they reached the gate.
The chain they had found cut earlier had been replaced.
A new padlock held the two sides together.
The chain was thick enough to secure construction equipment.
Malik tested it.
“Drill.”
Avery handed him the cordless drill.
The bit spun against the lock and slipped away.