ABANDONED Page 6

  “Inspector, Corporal,” Eggelson said, nodding and addressing them as they arrived at the door. He sounded as unnerved as he looked, but his face showed some relief at not being alone up here on the third floor any longer.

  “Constable Eggelson, what seems to be happening here?”

  “I don’t know sir. I haven’t looked recently — haven’t had the nerve,” he admitted sheepishly.

  “Move aside, please, constable.” Harder approached the door, and Eggelson stepped off to one side. Facing the door, John grasped the doorknob. A penetrating cold numbed the palm of his right hand, freezing into the flesh. He jerked back with a sharp intake of breath.

  “Sorry, Inspector, I should have given you these.” Eggelson handed Harder a pair of industrial work gloves from his back pocket. “These make handling certain things around here a little easier,” he concluded.

  John looked at his right palm, the skin was red and looked like it might blister. He pulled the gloves onto his hands and turned the doorknob, but it wouldn’t budge. “It’s locked!”

  “No sir, it isn’t. I have the key right here.” The constable pulled a silver key on a hefty golden fob from his pocket and handed it to Harder. “Try it for yourself!”

  John jammed the key into the door lock and turned it, but discovered that the constable was indeed correct, it wasn’t locked. The key moved freely. “What gives?”

  Stuffing the key in his pocket, John grabbed the doorknob again, this time with both hands. Giving a mighty heave, he turned the handle with all of his might. The knob turned almost enough to disengage the lock and then it suddenly ripped back in the other direction, wrenched from Harder’s grasp in the process, like it had been rotated by a pneumatic ram. Standing back in astonishment, John said, shocked, “Son of a bitch!” Over his shoulder, he said to Eggelson, “Is there anyone else up here with you?”

  “No one, sir. I checked the suite myself about fifteen minutes ago when I first heard all the noises coming from the room up here.”

  “Noises?” Harder asked.

  “Well, when I first came down this corridor doing a security sweep, it sounded like someone was having a life-or-death struggle inside there. But when I reconnoitred the room, it was empty.” As Eggelson finished, a crash came from the other side of the door, and everyone jumped.

  “What in God’s name is going on here?” Harder asked.

  Standing beside Harder, Corporal Jansen shuddered and said in a small voice, “I don’t think God has anything to do with this.”

  John reached out to grasp the knob just as three rapid, heavy blows came from behind the closed door.

  With a loud click, the knob turned, and the door suddenly popped open, just a fraction of an inch.

  As one, all three police officers stepped back a pace. Nothing was visible, the dim light from the hallway doing little to illuminate anything more than a sliver of carpet inside the room.

  Harder pulled his flashlight from his hip, along with his service revolver from its holster. He clicked on the light and clicked off the safety on the Smith and Wesson .38 Special. In an authoritative voice, he said, “This is Inspector John Harder of the RCMP, you are trespassing in a secured crime scene location. Come out with your hands up!”

  Following John’s cue, the junior officers drew their weapons as well, and each stood to one side of Harder.

  John waited for a beat to see if there was any response.

  The partially opened door remained unmoving, and the darkened room beyond was silent as a morgue.

  Harder raised his size thirteen boot, it’s black, mirror-like finish gleaming in the brightly lit hallway. After a brief moment, he pistoned his leg outward. The heavy leather boot’s rubber sole smashed into the door, slamming it back into the room. Something behind the door went crashing to the ground.

  “That sounded expensive”, John muttered under his breath, then ducked low and entered the room.

  The two junior officers trailed Harder, each covering a different angle as they came through the open doorway behind him. Eggelson flipped the light switch next to the door, but nothing happened, and the room remained cloaked in darkness.

  Spinning around three-hundred and sixty degrees with his light, John scanned the room for a perpetrator. Jansen and Eggelson swept the room at his flank, their own light beams cutting through the gloom on both sides simultaneously.

  The room was empty.

  Breathing hard, John’s breath steamed like a locomotive, the temperature frigid inside the room. With a tilt of his head, Harder directed the corporal to move toward the partially closed door of the suite’s half-bathroom. Jansen moved toward it slowly, gun at the ready.

  John gestured to Eggelson to cover the closed bedroom door, giving him the hand sign to stand by at the same time, then he moved toward Jansen’s location.

  Harder booted the door, and with a crash, it pounded into the wall at its back, cracking the inlaid marble. The small, secondary bathroom was empty, with no place for anyone to hide.

  A voice behind him called, “Inspector!” It was Constable Eggelson on the other side of the suite. The bedroom door had creaked open halfway while Harder and Jansen had been scoping out the bathroom.

  Eggelson was on top of things, assessing the threat, and he moved toward the darkened bedroom doorway, gun at the ready. He suddenly looked energised by something he caught sight of in his light’s beam through the opening, and shouted, “Freeze, police!” then lunged through the doorway.

  “Eggelson! Stop!” Harder called.

  With a resounding crash, the door to the bedroom immediately slammed shut behind Eggelson. Moving rapidly for a man of his size, Harder crossed the room with only a few long strides. Corporal Jansen was much more petite and had to move quickly to keep up with the inspector, like a small tug trailing an outgoing ocean liner on the coast.

  Another forceful kick opened the bedroom door, and it tore partially from its frame, hanging drunkenly askew. As before, John moved in low, looking for feet or legs in his light’s beam as he rapidly swept the darkened bedroom. Jansen slipped in directly behind him, instinctively covering the high side of things.

  “Constable Eggelson! Where are you?” Harder called. They scanned the room with their high-intensity lights: more furniture and a massive bed, but no people. Somehow, the bedroom seemed even colder than the living area of the suite. John felt his nostrils freezing shut as he breathed. He turned around several times, repeatedly scanning the room as did the corporal. The heavy drapes were still closed, and Jansen pulled them open all at once, revealing a row of windows with blackness beyond. There were no other exits from the room, except for the ensuite bathroom.

  With another thrust of his powerful leg, Harder rammed the bathroom door open with his foot, embedding its doorknob into the wall. “Police!” He shouted, flicking his light into the room, his adrenaline pumping. John hurried across the room and whisked the frosted glass shower stall door open. At the same time, Jansen covered a massive clawfoot tub in the other corner, but both locations proved empty.

  Inspector John Harder stared around the room in disbelief, then looked toward Corporal Jansen. Her light green eyes returned his own look of utter astonishment, with her expression adding an element not seen in his own eyes, fear.

  The Sinclair Resort Hotel’s royal suite was completely empty. Constable Eric Eggelson had vanished without a trace.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  December 23rd, 2021, 2105 hours

  Lively stood behind the front desk, back to the lobby, his courier bag slung over one shoulder. A brown American Tourister suitcase sat next to his legs like a faithful dog awaiting a scruff behind the ears. Before him, a panoply of passkeys sat in the pigeonholes of the cobwebbed wooden room-rack.

  How many stories had occurred in each of those rooms, he wondered? Tens of thousands? Perhaps hundreds of thousands? And which of these suites would tell the most interesting tales? He’d investigated several hotels over the years that containe
d either a haunted room or a wandering spirit wailing about the place somewhere, but he'd never stayed the night in a place like the Sinclair, where so much had happened in such a relatively short period. After going over the police reports of the incident, and almost everything else concerning this hotel's darker secrets, he realised he was spoilt for choices in this 'incident prone' hotel.

  Flummoxed, Lively studied the hotel's dusty rack. Three-hundred and forty-two available rooms, but which one to take for the night? "Well," he reasoned aloud, "either go big or go home, I suppose." He reached into the top pigeonhole and extracted a large silver key attached to a strangely shaped fob, which looked to be made of gold. After a huge sneeze from more disturbed dust, he said, "Bless me." Since there was no one else around to do so for him, he felt it important that he bless himself, particularly after a sneeze, and especially in this place. Not a superstitious man by nature, he still liked to cover all his bases, just in case. He turned around and faced the lobby, holding the key to the royal suite triumphantly in his right hand, and said, "The keys to the kingdom!" And then he sneezed again. With a sniff, he said, “Well, now I’m doubly blessed.”

  Extending the handle of his suitcase, Lively trailed it at his back as he crossed the large lobby toward the stairs. He paused before climbing to the royal suite and took a deep inhale, then coughed a little and wrinkled his nose in distaste. Thanks to his recent dose of dust. everything still smelled like an old library at the moment.

  He was exhausted from his recent adventure on the high seas and ready for a good night's sleep. And although the last thing he felt like doing was exercising at this time of night, he was leery of taking the main elevator or any elevator in this hotel, for that matter. If he were the only person in the building and the lift decided to suffer a mechanical breakdown, or another power failure occurred, he'd be screwed. After a moment, he smiled slightly, thinking he would have to amend his thought in light of his destination and toss an adverb in front of it. He said aloud, "Actually, I'd be royally screwed."

  Lively looked at the thick layer of dust on the carpeted stairs before starting his climb, and commented, "My, my, this looks like a job for Mr. Hoover, if ever there was."

  Ka-bump… Ka-bump… Ka-bump. The suitcase's wheels slapped rhythmically against the steps as Lively's long legs conquered them one by one. Halfway to the second floor, the staircase opened out onto an expansive mezzanine that wrapped partway around both sides of the huge lobby. An enormous landscape of the resort took up most of one wall here. Behind a long-dead potted plant next to it, he found another series of light switches and flipped them up, banning the shadows that surrounded him. The painting depicted various events in each window: a dance in the grand ballroom and a swim in the pool, then chess in the games room, followed by lunch in the Snowdrop Lounge, all captured in minute detail.

  "I'll have to play Where's Waldo with you tomorrow."

  Much like the front door's extravagant engravings, he felt sure this portrait contained more than met the eye and could probably bear closer inspection. He wished Minerva were here since she loved this kind of thing. She had such different tastes from him, despite being his twin. Looking at this painting now, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that she would devour it with her eyes if she ever saw it. One of Minerva's 'things' was an attention to detail. She always loved Where's Waldo and easily solved them within seconds of looking at the drawings, most of the time. The longest she’d ever taken to find Waldo that Lively knew of was four seconds, and that was without her morning coffee.

  After another short climb, he arrived on the second floor. An indoor terrace stretched out before him alongside a large, mirrored common area. On either side, an arcing staircase led up to the third floor. Choosing the right, Lively crossed the lengthy terrace and began the final leg of his ascent.

  Ka-bump… Ka-bump… The suitcase followed him up the staircase as he climbed. But after a few more steps, the sound changed, becoming more resonant and bass-heavy.

  Ka-BUMP… Ka-BUMP... This continued for several more steps, and then it became louder still.

  KA-BUMP… KA-BUMP... Every time he climbed another step and his bag struck a stair riser, a mirroring retort would come from below, reverberating throughout the hotel. The sound grew louder and louder until the very building shook with every step he took, as if a giant had been stirred from its nap of ages and now clambered up from the bowels of the building, wanting to grind his bones for its bread.

  Almost to the top, Lively stopped and looked back. Footprints, his own, stood out starkly on the dusty floor below. They meandered across the magnificent brocade carpeting, followed by a set of parallel lines on either side created by his suitcase’s wheels. There were no other prints; however, that soon changed. He tugged the American Tourister up to the final step just below the top.

  BOOM! At the bottom of the third-floor staircase, next to his dustprints, a massive invisible foot pounded onto the floor in front of the first riser, stirring up a mushroom cloud of dust.

  Hair on the back of Lively’s neck began to rise like the hackles on a cornered cat. The air felt electric around him as if he were surrounded by unseen high-voltage current. He took a final small breath, then pulled the suitcase all the way up to the third floor.

  BOOM… BOOM… BOOM… Clouds of dust exploded up the stairs toward him as the entity accelerated its pace — no longer mirroring his steps, it now seemed very eager to meet him.

  “You’re on your own, little buddy,” Lively said to his suitcase. He released his grasp on its handle and began an all-out sprint to safety. Slapping one sneaker-clad foot in front of the other, he raced down the hallway toward the salvation of the royal suite at its end. He grabbed for the room key in his jacket pocket as he moved, feeling its irregularly shaped fob almost immediately. All things considered, he wanted the key ready to insert into the lock when he arrived at the door and didn’t want to waste any time fumbling for it in a panic. He risked a glance back over his shoulder as he ran.

  Microcosmic dust storms exploded on the surface of the aged carpet as the entity pounded its invisible feet after him, moving fast and getting faster. Light globes lining both sides of the hall dimmed and then brightened again as it rushed by.

  Hoping to pop it open, Lively slammed against the door with his six-foot-four frame, almost knocking himself to the ground from the force of his rebound. The door hadn't even quivered. But then again, why would it? This was the royal suite and would undoubtedly have reinforced doors to keep its occupants safe, not unlike a modern safe room, so he shouldn't have been surprised by the result of his driving blow.

  He jammed the key into the lock and wrenched it to the right, disengaging the tumblers. With a yank, he extracted the key then slipped into the darkened room beyond. He leaned his full body weight against the door, slamming it hard. Within milliseconds, a filling-rattling crash came from the other side as the entity made contact with the heavy door, causing Lively to bounce off slightly from the impact. Fortunately, the reinforced concrete around the steel frame held. He reached his left hand behind his back and found the deadbolt, clicking it quickly closed.

  Breathing raggedly from the unexpected exertion and adrenaline rush, Lively croaked, "Welcome to the Sinclair." He slapped the wall next to the door with his right hand, searching for the light switches for several long, dark seconds.

  A trio of crystal chandeliers in the ceiling bathed the room in a sparkling rainbow of colours. "Let there be light." As the room came to full brightness, a final, jarring blow came from the other side of the entrance, followed by the sound of a heavy tread moving off down the corridor once more. It seemed his welcoming party had done its job and now had other duties to attend to elsewhere in the hotel.

  Lively whistled softly, then coughed for a moment. He reached into his courier bag and pulled out a Salbutamol inhaler, taking a quick pull of its airway-clearing medicine. As he waited to regain a somewhat regular breathing rhythm, he took in the room around
him in amazement. "Back in the day, this suite would have been the place to stay, if you were someone important. Well, tonight, I guess that would be me."

  Throughout the vast, labyrinthine structure of the Sinclair, most amenities had been but a phone call away. But the royal suite was different from all the other suites; everything the hotel offered was available within fingers reach. Lively had read comments from several reputable sources that if the Sinclair couldn’t provide whatever it was that you required immediately, somehow, they would make sure they found it ASAP, no matter what the request.

  The room was as grandiose as he imagined it would be. Dust lay thick on every surface. The dated furniture and draperies smelled of age, like an elderly parent's closet full of dated clothes. There were a lot of antiques scattered around the room that Minerva would certainly appreciate, but he was not a fan, despite his retro leanings. On a sturdy table near the window sat a huge thirty-six-inch Sony Trinitron TV. Lively smiled, thankful that modern TVs were much more svelte than their bulky ancestors. He couldn't imagine carrying something that weighed more than he did up the flight of stairs to his condominium in the city. The seventy-five-inch, thirty-five-kilogram 4K TV hanging on his wall back home was awkward enough, thank you very much.