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And he could run.
That was the other thing, and it was the only thing—before he was shut out in the lost corridor and the storm took him, too.
The padre returned to the lobby, entering beneath the stairs just as the raindrops fell like hammers, battering the big doors and windows, rattling the nerves of everyone still trapped there, in the center. All eyes turned to him, and all candles flickered together in sympathy; but the lights held, and he told himself that it was a good sign—that if the light could hold, it might make a difference and the building might hold.
Or at least the center.
“I’ve closed the fire door,” he said, and he did not care for the shaky sound of his words. He cleared his throat and added, a little stronger, “But the east wing is probably lost. The doors and windows are open, and the storm has come inside.”
The Ranger swore and nibbled at a cigarette. He picked up a candle, lit the edge of the papers, and sucked it until a hard red coal burned on the end. “Who the hell would do a thing like that?”
“It was Sarah, and Emily Nowell. The hotel has taken them both, and now they serve it. I don’t know how much power they have—I don’t know how much help they need—but the Jacaranda wants them to fling it all open. The hotel wants to meet the storm, and be carried away by it.”
“You don’t know that!” Mrs. Anderson shrieked, and when her husband tried to sooth her with a hand upon her arm, she turned to him and said, “He doesn’t know that! The hotel will stand, just fine!”
“Not the east wing. But the north wing might, and the center is still sound. We must keep the faith, and keep the fire doors secured…and have faith that the hotel can stand. It will stand. And in the morning, we will be standing too.”
No one questioned anything else he said, though he couldn’t imagine that anyone believed every word of it. If it was true, that everyone kne
w about all the deaths, and no one ever spoke of it…well, no one was speaking of it now, either. No one called him a maniac for suggesting that two dead women were trying to sabotage everyone else’s survival efforts; no one challenged his assertion that the hotel had a plan for itself.
The room only fell into something like silence—as close to silence as it could fall, considering the pelting rain and the revival of the thunder outside.
The storm cracked and rolled, shaking the lobby and threatening the candles, and the compromised east wing whistled like a flute. Glass broke and doors creaked, curtains flapped and were sucked out into the night. The building groaned, and another piece of roof peeled away with a hard, loud series of pops that let in more wind, more water.
“This will be the worst of it,” the nun promised him. He hadn’t realized she was standing right beside him, having left the Alvarez women to collapse together, crying with or without her presence.
“How do you mean?”
“The eye of the storm—the walls around it, that’s where the storm is strongest. If we survive the next hour, we’ll survive the night. I’m sure of it.”
“I’ll do my best to believe you. Tell me, Sister: do you know what became of Tim?”
A look of horror crossed her face. “No!” she gasped quietly, taking him by the hand and drawing him closer, so that she might whisper the rest. “Good God, where could he have gone? I haven’t seen him since he left Sarah’s room, and he wasn’t anywhere in the hotel before we closed it. We searched! Everyone searched!”
“Let us hope,” he whispered back to her, “that the boy evacuated with everyone else. No one has seen him, not even his cousin’s ghost. There’s nothing we can do for him now except pray for his safety, wherever he is.”
She nodded and sighed, and the Ranger joined them, with a cigarette gripping the corner of his mouth.
He reported, “No one’s turning on anybody, yet. That’s not much, but it’s something.”
The nun gazed from face to face, taking stock of those who remained. She said, “Let us hope it remains that way. Tonight, the battles must all be waged against the hotel, and not against one another.”
Juan Rios checked over his shoulder, where the lovely, terrible mosaic turned (or did not turn) on the floor between the staircase landings. “Vaughn said the hotel speaks to everyone, now, and Sarah’s spirit suggested the same thing. Has it spoken to either of you?”
“I don’t know…” said the Texan slowly. “I’ve heard a voice, once or twice. Wasn’t sure what to make of it. Couldn’t understand it very well—something about the storm. Something about the ocean.”
The nun agreed, “It has spoken to me, but…it’s as if someone is whispering on the other side of a closed door. I can’t understand what it says, or what it wants.”
“Maybe it’s time to try speaking, rather than listening. We’ve asked our questions of everyone else; why not ask the hotel itself?”
The nun and the Ranger looked at the padre with surprise, and no small bit of concern.
“Do you really think that’s a good idea?” asked Korman. “In my experience, when something nasty starts talking…the best thing you can do is plug your ears. These things lie, padre.”
“But even a lie is an answer,” he argued. “What else do we have, right now? Nothing but time, and apparently the hotel likes to talk. Let’s give it an audience, and see what it wants to say. Even if it’s nonsense, or some devious falsehood, it might be worth hearing.”
They decided to speak with it together, just the three of them.
