Devils night, p.6
Devil's Night, page 6
Like that disheveled woman who’d just wandered in, her wide eyes roving across the room in search of someone. She was around Penny’s mom’s age. Probably had a story to tell. A late night, perhaps? A straying spouse?
“Morning.” Krista, Penny’s little sister, slipped into the seat across from her. Krista held out a muffin wrapped in a napkin. “Dora sends her love.”
Penny smelled vanilla, butter and dark chocolate. Dora, the inn’s head chef, was famous for her chocolate chip muffins. Penny took a bite of the still-warm streusel topping and made a mental note to visit Dora later. Another part of her old life in Ashton that Penny had missed. It hadn’t all been angst and ghost sightings, though she might sometimes remember it that way.
“So I was serious about the tickets to Devil’s Fest,” Krista said, folding her arms on the table. “I need four.”
“I don’t want Dad any angrier than he already is.”
“Like Dad’s ever mad for more than five minutes. He’s probably forgotten what he said by now.”
Penny lifted a skeptical eyebrow, tucking more muffin into her mouth. Chocolate melted on her tongue.
“I gotta get back to the kitchen. I’m on buffet duty. Don’t forget the tickets, ‘kay?” Krista got up. “Oh yeah, and Matthew’s waiting for you by the front desk.”
A chunk of muffin went down the wrong way. Penny coughed. “He’s what? Why?”
“He said he’s your ride up to Eden.” Krista’s eyes narrowed as she smiled. “He lives here at the inn. You knew that, right?”
Penny groaned. She’d had enough of Matthew last night.
Krista walked away from her table. At the same moment, the disheveled woman started marching over—the same woman Penny had noticed earlier. She stopped in front of Penny’s table. Buttons were missing from her cardigan.
The woman leaned in too close. “You’re her, aren’t you? Penny Wright?”
“Um…”
“How could you, of all people, risk holding a big festival up in Eden? On Devil’s Night, no less? Someone’s going to end up dead.”
Penny couldn’t help laughing. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
The woman grabbed a glass of ice water from the next table. “You need to wake up.” She splashed the water into Penny’s face.
Penny gasped at the sudden cold. Her shirt was soaked through. The rest of the dining room had gone silent, everyone staring.
Krista came back over. “Excuse me? What is going on?”
“Someone will end up dead!” the woman shouted.
“Ma’am, you need to leave. Before I call the police.”
She left, still glaring at Penny on her way out. Krista got a pile of napkins and helped Penny sop up water from her clothes.
“I’m so sorry about that,” Krista said. “Sometimes people wander in for the breakfast, and we don’t worry too much about it. But I can’t believe…”
“Do you know who she is?” There’d been something vaguely familiar about the woman.
“No clue.”
“Uncle Harry said somebody complained to the mayor. Maybe it was her.” One naysayer in their entire town wasn’t so bad. Two if she counted her father. Well, three including Matthew. Maybe better not to keep a tally.
The rest of the diners had gone back to their breakfasts, though they kept stealing surreptitious glances in her direction. Penny stood up, helping to gather the wet napkins and tablecloth.
“I need to get going.”
“Okay. Hey, Matthew’s probably still waiting. You’ll have a story to tell on your way to Eden.”
“Tell him I already left.”
Krista tilted her head disapprovingly. “I don’t know what happened between the two of you, but—”
Penny darted toward the back door. She’d managed all right the past six years without Matthew in her life. She didn’t need his help, and she certainly didn’t need his approval.
Chapter Eleven
Penny called Alpenglow Guides—the local company they’d contracted with—to give her a ride. A twenty-something guy named Scott Mackey showed up, wearing a bright orange cap featuring a snowboarder and the words “Ride or Die.”
“Good to finally meet you.” He took off his orange cap and ran a hand through his sweaty mop of hair. “I heard of you before, but like, Krista’s talked about you, too. You work with Anvi, right?”
He was talkative on the drive, his mouth running while he kept eying the wet splotch on her chest. Apparently, Scott and Penny’s little sister were good friends, which might’ve shown dubious judgment on Krista’s part. But the guy seemed harmless.
When they arrived at Eden, Penny jumped out of the Jeep, barely pausing to say goodbye. She just wanted to get to work.
The sounds of hammering and air-powered nail guns echoed across the canyon. Matthew’s crew was laboring outside the Paradise Hotel, moving around gigantic pieces of lumber and plywood. Penny waited until no one was watching, then snuck into the hotel’s entrance, snagging a hard hat from a table.
The lobby was already cleaner than yesterday. The crew had left tools in various places along with more wood. But nobody was there at the moment, which made things easier. Matthew would probably tell her she shouldn’t be inside, hard hat or no. But she wasn’t going far. She was barely going to touch anything. She just needed to take some new photos.
Penny hurried into the dining room. She’d borrowed Linden’s fancy SLR camera from the trailer. Technically, she already had plenty of content for their campaign. Not to mention pages of copy written by the team. For weeks, they’d been posting teasers about Devil’s Fest, securing placements on blogs, influencer social feeds, and in the media. But Anvi had been all over Instagram the past few days, and Penny had to keep up. She wanted something fresh. Plus, it felt good to stay busy. If she filled every moment with work, then she wouldn’t have to think about annoying things. Like that crazy woman at the inn who’d ruined breakfast. Or Matthew.
She took a few shots of curled wallpaper; a close-up of weathered floorboards. The building across the street shot through wavy glass.
Something creaked over her head. Penny glanced up. Tiny bits of plaster were drifting down from the ceiling. The building was shifting, that was all. Matthew’s crew was working.
Next, she snapped another pic of the notorious crack in the ceiling where Ernest Fitzhammer, the hotel’s owner, had been hung from the chandelier.
Past the dining room, Penny came to the kitchen and the corridor she’d seen yesterday. Light barely filtered through the dirty windows. She took a few photos of the iron stove, which had little rosettes stamped into the metal. It seemed like everything from the nineteenth century had some kind of decorative flourish. Little feet that curved into claws, or crystal knobs for handles. She snapped a photo of the stove’s feet, too, and then turned around.
Her breath stopped in her chest.
There was someone standing in the hallway. The woman in the long dress.
Penny blinked at the darkness. She could only see the woman’s lower half—billowing fabric that didn’t quite brush the floor, and the pointed toes of sturdy shoes. She was so real. More solid than Penny had grown used to seeing in Los Angeles—faded impressions of people like old photos. She tried taking a picture, but the camera’s display screen showed just black.
The woman walked away. The figure reached the end of the hall and turned right, where the corridor continued out of sight.
Penny thought of the ghost last night who’d crossed the second floor.
Was it Marian?
In the legends, Bloody Marian was the villain of the Devil’s Night Massacre. The ominous figure that witnesses had seen walking down Main Street, covered in blood. But nobody knew all the details of what happened on the original Devil’s Night—why Marian had killed those people, including some of her own men.
What if Penny could use that in the Devil’s Fest marketing, somehow? Play up that mystery? She could bring her father’s book into the narrative without putting the focus on herself.
Penny let her mental walls slip—just a bit—and listened.
Don’t let him hurt me, a faint voice said. As if it had whispered from behind a crack in a wall.
The sound of crying came from somewhere deeper in the building.
Penny walked down the hallway. The camera bumped against her stomach on its strap. She had to use the light on her phone to see. Go, leave me alone, she heard. But inside her, the pull to follow only grew stronger. There was a musty smell, more intense here than the rest of the hotel—rotting wood, mold, ancient dust. Her fist clenched around her phone, the screen growing slick from her sweat.
Penny rounded the corner. She spotted the ghostly woman again. The specter walked through a closed door.
“Wait!” Penny said.
She hurried toward the door. The knob made a shrill sound, metal grinding against metal, as it turned. It opened on a small room with a bookcase on one wall. The shelves had collapsed, all the books long gone.
The ghost stood by the remains of the bookcase. Then she walked through the wall and vanished.
Here, the voice said. I’m here. Please.
Penny reached out to where the ghost had disappeared. There was an odd flaw in the wood paneling. Penny traced the small opening, and her finger slipped inside.
She pulled. A section of the wall moved on creaking hinges. Opening. Then another room appeared.
A collapsed brass bedstead slumped against the opposite wall, the mattress rotted into dust. A rod still hung over the window, though the curtains were just shreds. A pile of ancient trash lay in the corner—cans nearly rusted away, empty glass bottles.
Penny stepped inside.
The crying started again, now louder. She didn’t know why she’d come here. She didn’t want to be in this place. This room. Her head was swimming. The room began to rotate. She squeezed her eyes shut.
I’m scared he’ll come back. What if he doesn’t come back? It was the ghostly woman—her thoughts and feelings flooded Penny’s mind. But the thoughts were contradictory. Penny couldn’t make sense of it.
“I’m Penny Wright,” Penny said aloud. “I’m leaving now.” Trying to convince herself.
Ghosts were just shadows left behind after a living person had gone. They were like a replay of a video; mere remnants of the past, not the present. Ghosts couldn’t hurt you. Only fear could.
She tried to close off her mind, but the foreign thoughts kept pushing in.
Be quiet. He’ll hear.
The secret panel in the wall slammed shut.
She tried to find the latch again, but this side was smooth. Splinters dug into her fingertips as she searched for the edges of the door.
“Hey!” she said, banging with her fist against the wood. “I’m stuck in here!” Matthew’s crew wasn’t far. They’d hear her. They had to.
Then she felt hands on her back.
Each finger was distinct, pressing into her shoulder blades. They pushed.
The hands threw her up against the door. Her face hit the wood, the roughness scratching her cheek. The hard hat clattered to the floor. She screamed, but the sound was muffled. Fingers wrapped around her neck. Pressed.
Help me, please. She coughed, trying to breathe.
Penny squirmed away and spun around. But no one was there—neither living nor spectral. She had to get out of there before they came back. He. Before he came back.
She ran for the window across the room. Ripped aside the tattered curtain. The frame no longer held any glass, leaving a narrow gap about two feet high.
She pushed herself up on the ledge, maneuvering sideways through the opening. Her foot touched down, but she didn’t land evenly. Her elbows landed hard on the ground a moment later. The blue sky was bright in her eyes.
Penny was gasping, unable to catch her breath. She sat up and brushed dry grass from her hair. She seemed to be in a space in between buildings. A postage stamp of dirt and weeds, enclosed by walls on all sides but open to the sky above. It smelled like mildew, the air stagnant. Three of the walls were brick, as if the hotel had been constructed to partially enclose this space. The last wall was wood, only about two stories high. It didn’t budge when she tried pushing on the boards.
She looked up at the brick walls. The second and third floors had duplicates of the narrow rectangular window. The second floor one was boarded up from the inside.
No way out from here. She’d have to go back the way she came.
But that room…Someone had been in there with her. A ghost had actually touched her. Pushed her. She’d never experienced anything like it. Hadn’t even thought it possible. Her dad had claimed something similar in his book, but she hadn’t believed him.
Tears sprang into her eyes. She was just now grasping the awfulness of what she’d experienced.
Someone had tried to hurt her. Why?
“Can anyone hear me?” Her voice sounded weak. Strangled. Now that she was outside, she could hear the banging of the construction nearby, which was comforting in a way. Stay calm, she told herself. You’re okay. Linden’s camera was a bit scratched but otherwise intact. Penny felt for her phone, but it wasn’t in her pockets.
She cursed. She’d dropped her phone in that room.
Penny went back to the window and looked in. Her phone lay on the floor.
A new feeling surged through her—he was coming. The voice spoke again.
Don’t make a sound. Please, just leave me alone.
The world tilted. She stumbled and fell to the dirt, cradling her head in her hands. Nausea rose in her stomach, and she gagged.
“This isn’t happening,” she told herself. “It’s not real.”
But she kept hearing that plaintive voice in her mind: Don’t hurt me again. Please.
She sat there in the dirt, head between her knees, until the feeling began to pass. The sky had stopped spinning, and her stomach was calming. She put her hand down, bracing herself. But her finger caught on something. She pulled to free herself, and skin tore from her fingertip. Blood welled from the cut.
She looked down. It took another surreal moment to understand what she was seeing.
There was a human skull half-buried in the dirt beside her.
Eden sprung up about three years before the Devil’s Night Massacre. Ernest Fitzhammer, a wealthy businessman and owner of many mining claims in that region, spent extravagant amounts to build the Paradise Hotel and bank. Fitzhammer envisioned a microcosm of a city block in New York or San Francisco, though he never was able to replace Eden’s other buildings with more permanent stone or brick.
But since it was built, the Paradise was plagued with rumors of a haunting. Guests would report odd noises. They heard crying at night, though the porters could never discover the source. Even before Eden’s luck turned, the Paradise grew unpopular among the town’s visitors. So perhaps the place was always cursed to be the site of terrible events, as some newspapers later claimed.
-from A DEVIL IN EDEN by Lawrence Wright
Devil’s Night - 1894
Fitzhammer stared at her in dismay. “Marian? Is that really you?”
Slowly, she got out of the coach, positioning Fitzhammer in front of her. Bart’s eyes flashed with fury. His finger tightened on the trigger.
Marian pulled back her bonnet, exposing her face. Her hand was sweating. The derringer slipped against her palm as she held it. But Fitzhammer’s shock was like fresh water to her, calming and cool.
“What do you want?” the man asked. “Money?”
Douglas appeared from his hiding place, advancing slowly toward them.
She held the derringer to Fitzhammer’s temple. “Drop your weapon, Bart. You’re outnumbered.”
Douglas pressed the barrel of his gun between Bart’s shoulders. “You heard the lady.”
Marian saw the hesitation and hatred in Bart’s eyes. But he did as he was told. His gun thudded onto the dirt.
“Bart, you’re going to drive,” Marian said. “Ernest, you’ll get back in the coach. We have a trip to make.”
“Now be reasonable,” Fitzhammer said. “Why not just take what’s in my purse and be done with this?”
“Don’t you see?” Bart asked. “She’s going to kill us. This is her revenge.”
“No one’s going to die,” Douglas said in his baritone voice. “Not if you do what we ask. Get back up onto the driver’s bench.”
Bart turned around, reaching for the bench. But then he suddenly dropped to fours, scrambled beneath the horses, and ran. Douglas fired, but his bullet went high. Bart sprinted uphill for the nearest copse of trees.
Another shot rang out. Smoke rose in the air.
Tim emerged from his cover of bushes, his gun tight in his fist. He jogged down to where Bart had fallen. Bart was screaming, clutching his thigh.
“Lord in Heaven.” Fitzhammer grabbed the bowler hat from his head and pushed it to his chest. “You’ve killed him. You’ve killed Bart.”
“Get him bandaged up.” Marian tossed Douglas her shawl. He trotted over to Tim. Together, they rolled Bart—who was still hollering and crying—onto his back.
Fitzhammer turned to her. Sweat was glistening on his upper lip above his pale mustache. His hair had gone grayer than she’d remembered, but his whiskers remained a golden yellow.
“Marian, I was always good to you, wasn’t I? I took you in.”
“If you want to live, I suggest you shut your mouth.”
“Nobody else would’ve cared for you but me. Consider who your mother was, where you came from—”
She squeezed the grip of Bart’s gun. “Stop talking.”
She’d read the story by Robert Louis Stevenson. Dr. Jekyll denied his true nature at first, too. Yet by the end, he had to face his Mr. Hyde. Fitzhammer would too, before his end.
Marian had known her mother’s habits well. The woman had been drunk nearly every waking moment, trying to drown her utter bafflement at the life she’d been reduced to living. Just once, she’d spoken of loving a man who jilted her. But the next time Marian asked, her mother insisted it never happened. Your father was like any of them. Nobody special.
