Slash, p.6
Slash, page 6
Todd killed the engine and got out, his gaze locked on the hotel. He laced his fingers through the links in the fence, the metal so cold, it burned to the touch. The gate was locked by loops of heavy chains and a padlock the size of his fist. Razor-sharp concertina wire wound its way across the top of the fencing, discouraging anyone who had the bright idea of climbing over. He tugged on the gate, getting it to move a few inches, but not enough for him to wedge his body through.
He looked down at the deep tire treads of construction vehicles, the tracks going well beyond the fence into the heart of the resort.
“Looks like someone would need a blowtorch to get in there,” Vince said.
He was right. Todd had done his share of demolition jobs. The fencing here was taller and sturdier than any he’d ever seen. They sure as hell didn’t want anyone getting in.
Or were they also concerned about someone getting out?
Todd shivered. “There’s always a way in,” he said. “It’s just a matter of finding the weak spot.”
Vince grew concerned. “Wait, you’re not thinking of going in there, are you?”
“You thought I drove all the way up here just to see if it was still standing?”
Vince huffed, his breath fogging the air between them. “Well, yeah. I figured if we found out it hadn’t been torn down, you could reach out to the contractor and see if they could bring you on. That would give you free, and I might add, legal rein to go anywhere you want.”
It was actually sound thinking, except Todd was pretty sure the foreman wouldn’t hire him once he discovered his connection to the place. If word got out, the media circus would start up again. They wanted this place removed with zero fanfare. Why would anyone want to give it any more grisly publicity than it already had?
“I don’t think it would be that simple,” Todd said. He slipped his boots into the links and climbed partway up the ten-foot-high gate.
“Hey, at best, you’re going to cut yourself to shreds if you try to get over,” Vince said. His hands were thrust deep into his pockets.
“I just want to see,” Todd said. He was able to afford himself a view of an extra floor of the main hotel, but that was it. He thought he caught a glimpse of the roof of the skating rink to his right, but there were too many trees to be sure. After that night, he had found a map of the grounds, trying to help Ash piece together the bits her mind held onto so they could trace her steps. At first, he’d thought it would help, but he quickly realized it only made her night terrors worse.
“I think…I think I’m better off not remembering,” she’d said to him out of the blue one night when they were on the couch watching TV.
He’d held her while she cried, then went to the dining room where he’d left the map he’d printed and thrown it out. In the end, she was right. And there was no need to try to figure out where she’d gone and how she’d gotten away. The police saw enough by following the blood and bodies.
Todd jumped off the gate. The cold metal rattled.
Now he wished they had made some progress. It would help him retrace her steps and find what she’d left behind.
“We’re going to have to do some recon,” Todd said. “Find the weak link.”
“I’m freezing my balls off, man. I’m not dressed for mountain breaking and entering. In fact, I’m going to warm my balls up right now. Thank God for seat warmers.”
Vince got back in the car and motioned for Todd to join him.
It was cold. Far colder than back home. Todd had no intention of going inside the Hayden now. He hadn’t come equipped with the necessary tools to make his way inside. They had locked it up good, much more secure than he’d thought.
But he would return.
With his back turned to the gate, he heard the snap of a thick dry branch. He whirled around, the nape of his neck prickling.
The air was still and heavy. His eyes darted all around, searching for where the sound had come from. He waited for more, the inevitable crunch of dry leaves as something approached. It would most likely turn out to be a deer. They multiplied like gremlins doused in water.
There were no follow-up sounds, no scuffling of critters great or small. Just the long, dead silence of a sprawling murder scene.
Todd knew it was his imagination, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. Why else would the hairs on his arms still be standing straight?
He stepped closer to the fence, peering into the dark spaces between the trees.
“Who’s there?” he said, the volume of his voice not high enough to travel far.
A slight breeze rustled the brittle, colorful leaves, ushering the lullaby of autumn.
Something was there, just out of reach. He felt it in his marrow.
Or was it someone?
The sharp bleat of a siren nearly caused his heart to burst out of his chest. Todd jumped, and then went into a defensive crouch.
The glare of flashing red and blue lights hurt his eyes.
Next thing he knew, two officers were stepping out of their cruiser and approaching him with their hands hovering over their holsters.
Chapter Eight
“You look a little too old to be trespassing onto private property,” the younger cop said.
Todd instinctively held up his hands. He’d had a few run-ins with the police when he was a wild teen, but he’d never been arrested.
“I was just taking a look around,” he said. His initial shock over, he managed to keep his cool.
“Out of the car,” the other cop, a burly guy still wearing a short-sleeve shirt, most likely to showcase the solid mass of tattoos on both arms, said to Vince. There were snakes and skulls and all sorts of nightmare visions. Todd bet the sinister body art worked on intimidating some of the people he confronted. He had a few of his own and wasn’t impressed.
Vince stumbled out with his hands high in the air. He shot Todd an I told you so glance. “Look, we had no intention of going in there. Seriously, my friend was just looking.”
“Uh-huh,” the young cop said. He had a deep scar on the side of his right eye but it did little to harden his boyish looks. “We get a lot of people up here who tell us that, and then we find their buddies already inside.”
Todd stepped forward and the cops tensed. He made it a point to stop. “We’re telling the truth. There’s no one up here but us.”
“Let me see your license and registration.”
When Todd and Vince went to get their wallets, the tattooed cop said, “Slowly.”
Todd handed his over and said, “I have to get my registration. It’s in the glove compartment.”
Up close, he saw the young cop’s last name was Cooper.
Cooper said, “That’s fine.”
Todd rummaged through the mound of junk that had accumulated in the glove compartment. Vince babbled something to the tattooed cop.
“Found it,” Todd said. He backed out of the car and handed the slip of paper to Office Cooper.
“Stay right there,” Cooper said.
Both cops got back into the car, entering their information in the computer to see if Todd and Vince had any warrants.
Vince jammed his hands under his armpits and leaned against the Mustang. “Now can we go home?”
“You have any unpaid tickets?” Todd joked.
Vince paled. “Shit. I can’t remember.”
“Relax. They’re not going to throw you in jail.” Todd watched the cops as they studied their computer screen.
“I know that. I’m just a little light on cash at the moment.” Vince stamped his feet to keep warm. “I feel like we’re seventeen again, the night we got busted for toilet-papering Ms. Roundtree’s yard.”
Todd suppressed his laughter. He didn’t think the cops would appreciate it. “Dealing with the five-oh was the easy part. It was the punishment from our parents and Ms. Roundtree that really sucked. How many extra reports did we have to do that semester?”
“Too many.”
Cooper and the tattooed cop, whose nametag declared him as Landers, emerged from their warm car, holding out Vince’s license and Todd’s license and registration.
“I’m real sorry,” Cooper said to Todd.
Confused, Todd said, “No, we’re sorry for causing a fuss. It won’t happen again.”
Office Cooper shook his head. “I mean, I’m sorry for your loss. And I understand. I thought I recognized you when we pulled up.”
Of course. Todd had been linked to this place through the news almost as much as Ash. He hated that they dubbed him her white knight who dropped everything in his new life in Denver to come to her aid. He was no knight, and in the end, he hadn’t been able to save her.
Office Landers added, “I’ll bet you were hoping to see this place flattened.”
Todd decided it was best to play along with what they were giving him. “To be honest, I’d hoped it was just going to be a big hole in the ground.”
Cooper adjusted his belt. “There’s been a delay. They started on the bungalows, but someone got hurt. Everything is suspended, but I hear they’re coming back next week to finish the job. If you want, I can arrange it so you can have a front row seat the day they blast the hotel.”
The mini-rise building was where the bodies had been stacked, though forensics sussed out they’d been murdered elsewhere around the property.
Todd gritted his teeth. “I’ll just be happy to know it’s all gone.”
“I hear you,” Landers said. “It must be hard.”
Todd felt the best reply was stoic silence. The truth was, talking about it with strangers was difficult. But he had learned there was still one week left before it was all gone, and that was vital.
“We’re sorry to bother you,” Cooper said. “You wouldn’t believe how many dumb kids and plain old ghouls we’ve had to chase away from here.”
“Actually, I would.”
“I bet it’s been no picnic dealing with all those final girl lunatics,” Landers said. “I can’t tell you how many of them we’ve busted. As you can see, they’ve been here a lot lately.” He looked at the flowers and other in memoriam gifts. “They tell us they get some weird kind of strength by being close to where your….”
He let the rest hang in the air.
“Some of them even have tattoos of the place…and Ashley,” Cooper added. “I don’t know why people would want to commemorate such a thing on their body forever.”
Todd shrugged. “I gave up trying to understand them years ago. I had enough to worry about.”
“Feel free to stay as long as you like. You’ve earned it,” Landers said.
Todd wondered if he should press his luck and ask them if he could go inside. Knowing what the answer would be, he simply nodded and thanked them.
As they were getting back in their squad car, Cooper said, “The offer still stands.” He handed Todd his card. “You call me if you want to see the place come down. Take care now.”
Todd and Vince watched the car pull away, their breath curling over their faces.
“That was a close one,” Vince said.
“That was better than I could have hoped for.”
“Care to tell me why?”
Todd held up his fingers. “One – now I know I have a week to plan and get in. Two – we have all morning to look around the perimeter. And three – even if I get caught when I come back, it looks like the local cops will give me a break.”
“Or four – you press your luck and end up with a mug shot anyway.”
Todd stared at the hotel. A hawk circled overhead. “To be fair, I don’t give a shit. I’m going in and I’m going to find it.”
* * *
By the time Todd pulled into his driveway, he felt like the walking dead. Exhaustion and the excitement of the day had sapped every ounce of his energy. Vince had barely been able to say ‘so long’ when he’d dropped him off. His best friend had shuffled to his door where Heather waited. She cast a quick glance at Todd before ushering Vince inside. Todd had been too tired to try to read that glance.
He went straight to his refrigerator and gulped down a bottle of water. It was going on eight o’clock. He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since McDonald’s almost twelve hours earlier. He felt something bump his leg and he jumped, spilling water.
Elvira gave him a passing look as she sauntered by.
That cat never nuzzled him.
“Good to see you too,” Todd said. He squatted by her food bowls and ran his hand over her back while she munched on some dry food. She was still aesthetically an ugly cat, but he was seeing her in a new light. She’d been through hell and it showed. So had Ash, though most of her scars hadn’t been visible. There had been a long gash on her leg and other nicks and welts on her body, plus the weight loss, but no one had been able to see the real damage the Wraith had inflicted on her.
“Bet you have some stories you could tell.”
Elvira raised her head from the bowl and licked her lips. He scratched under her chin and was shocked to hear her purring.
Flecks of dirt fell off his jeans onto the linoleum. His clothes were a mess. A day spent crawling and climbing around the Hayden had left its mark. He should just strip down and toss it all in the washing machine, but now that he was on the floor next to a very content Elvira, he wasn’t sure he had the strength.
Instead, he lay down on the cold, hard floor, petting the cat.
He had hoped to find one access point that would be easy to get through. In fact, he had found half a dozen where the soil under the fence was soft enough to dig under or the concertina wire was sparse. He and Vince had traversed the entire perimeter of the Hayden, Todd scribbling the best spots on an impromptu map he’d drawn on the inside of their McDonald’s takeout bag. The map was tucked in his jacket pocket. He should study the map and get to planning.
But first, he’d wait until Elvira finished eating.
The cat crunched away while Todd’s thoughts drifted.
He awoke with the sun on his face. His shoulders, hips and back ached. Groaning like an old man rising from his deathbed, Todd grabbed hold of a knob on one of the kitchen drawers and pulled himself up. The clock on the stove read 7:32. No wonder he hurt. Twelve hours on the floor had left him near-crippled. He limped to the bathroom, shucking his clothes along the way.
While he peed, he opened the medicine chest and found the bottle of ibuprofen. He popped three of the orange tablets and washed them down by drinking straight from the faucet.
“Shower.”
It pained him to step over the lip of the tub. He cranked the hot water until it was just shy of scalding. Leaning his forehead on the wall, he let the hot spray beat against his aching muscles. He stayed that way until the water turned tepid, a warning that he better finish up before there was no hot water left.
As he dried off, his stomach grumbled with such force, it echoed in the tiny bathroom. He prayed there was food in the fridge, because he couldn’t see himself getting ready and leaving the house. At least not until his bones didn’t feel like they were made of rotted wood.
Todd cracked four eggs and scrambled them, adding a few splashes of hot sauce and sprinkling in some pepper jack cheese. He spooned the eggs over two slices of toast and winced when he sat down at the dining room table to eat. Elvira lounged on the other side of the table. Normally, Todd would yell at her to get off and she’d scatter, but not before flashing him a dirty look.
Today, he was grateful for the company.
By the time he finished eating in silence, he’d started to feel a little more human. He loaded the dishwasher and got Ash’s final letter – he couldn’t bear to think of it as her suicide note – and brought it into the living room, where he spread it on the coffee table. He had to move her puzzle books aside to make room. His mother had tried to gather them into a pile and put them in the closet, but he’d rather rudely told her not to touch them. He wanted them just where Ash had left them.
He took out a notepad, hoping to remember the things that Ash brought along with her when she went urban exploring. It was still hard for him to remember her as the school’s wild child. Breaking into abandoned places had all started with her and her best friend, Sheri Viola. As she had explained it to him, they’d gotten baked in her bedroom while her parents were out for the night and fell down the YouTube rabbit hole. Once they came across a home video of some teens who had broken into a shuttered hospital, they were hooked. The interior of the hospital was covered in graffiti, as one would expect. Some rooms still contained beds and IV poles, as if waiting for a patient to return from X-ray or a walk down the hall.
It wasn’t until the intrepid teens, filming in night vision, got to the morgue deep in the basement that Ash’s fascination was cemented. She’d shown Todd the full video and it had given him the creeps.
The doors to the cold storage lockers had been thrown wide open. Within each were the bones of dead animals. There were obvious cats and dogs, and others that might have been raccoons and squirrels. All of the remains had been picked clean of flesh and posed with outstretched arms, as if awaiting crucifixion. One of the boys noted a dull hum in the room that wasn’t captured by the camera. They were naturally very afraid, but too curious to just leave. They had to see more, find where the hum was coming from. So they left the morgue, the camera shaking as they hurried along down a long, litter-strewn corridor. As they went farther down the hall, the hum became audible on the recording. It was coming from behind a steel door.
