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Prologue
HUCK
Huck Sharpe hadn’t thought today was going to be the day he died, but later he would suppose that not many people had that kind of foresight.
He’d been requested for a special woodworking commission, and the pay was too good to pass up.
Huck needed the money. He was trying to help his parents pay off medical bills from his mother’s breast cancer surgery, maybe chip away at his student loans, and perhaps save enough to get a new car…
Or at least maybe one that wouldn’t break down driving to the creepy ass hotel up the mountain.
He got going again after a friendly motorist gave him a jump and was soon on his way once more to the Allan Hotel.
He was headed there to take pictures and get sketches of a newel post topper to carve a replacement for one that had been damaged. He’d been told it was a lion, and there might also be some door moulding they wanted replaced as well. He was happy to do it all, although he honestly had no idea what a newel post topper was.
What was a newel? Why was there a topper for it? Did that mean there was a newel post bottom as well?
Huck figured he’d find out soon enough.
The Allan Hotel loomed in front of him, as creepy and daunting as ever, and he felt a sharp chill just looking at it. It was an old resort built by a hot spring that was once hailed as a miracle treatment for tuberculosis. Once people figured out the water was bullshit, the resort was sold and then eventually converted into a hotel with a hundred luxury rooms.
The rumor around town was that some of those rooms used to be the morgue when the place was still a resort and they needed somewhere to put all the bodies of the people who had not been magically cured of tuberculosis.
Well, that was justoneof the rumors.
Huck had heard all kinds of stuff, especially as a local. His parents had moved here from Georgia when he was a little kid after his mother got a big promotion, and Huck was instantly fascinated with the ghost stories. His parents had tried to sway him over to their favorite hobby, baseball, but Huck refused.
Being named after Huck Betts, a pitcher for the Braves, certainly didn’t help. If anything, it only added to his resentment of the sport. Baseball was boring, but ghosts?
Now there was somethingexciting.
There were countless stories of people dying at the hotel under mysterious circumstances, from a young Hollywood starlet who was found dead in her room with the door locked from the inside to some big shot heiress who dropped dead in the lobby when she tried to leave.
He didn’t know if any of that stuff was true, but his interest had fueled a lifelong love of the paranormal and ghost hunting shows. He preferred to enjoy the spooky adventures from the comfort and safety of his living room, and he’d never actually been to the hotel before.
Now that Huck was here, he found himself admiring the big front porch and tall turrets. Away from the city’s light pollution, the view of the night sky from any of those spots would be incredible. He loved stargazing, and he hoped that this job ran long enough for him to get a peek once the sun had gone down.
Within moments of entering the hotel lobby, Huck was escorted up a big flight of red steps by a fussy clerk, who sneered at Huck’s ratty hoodie, to examine the newel topper, which turned out to be the decorative sculpture perched on the post of the stair railing. There was a matching set of roaring lions at the top and bottom of the stairs, but the one closest to the wall at the top was cracked.
It looked like water damage, where the wood had been exposed to water over enough time for it to swell and split almost perfectly in half. The moulding directly above the sculpture also appeared warped, and the clerk reminded him the owners of the hotel were also interested in having that fixed.
Huck couldn’t quite make out the pattern on the moulding, and he was offered a ladder to get a better look. He very carefully positioned the ladder next to the top of the stairs, as he was wary of falling off and taking a tumble. It didn’t seem like it would feel very good.
He made it up the ladder with no problem, identifying the moulding as an intricate design of twisting roses. He took a few pictures and then headed back down with a sigh of relief.
The relief was short-lived, however, because just as his foot hit the floor, something grabbed his ankle.
He fell, tumbling right over his own feet, and landed at the bottom of the stairs with his head twisted back and an accompanying crack of bone. To add insult to his lethal injury, the ladder toppled with him and had an arguably more pleasant landing on top of him.
The last thing Huck remembered thinking was how very strange it was that the hand grabbing his ankle had felt like it had claws.
CHAPTER1
Grant
FOUR YEARS LATER…
Grant Mittel had thought the Allan Hotel would be bigger.
