Ellen Datlow - The Best Horror of the Year. Volume 6

When it finally ended, Carol lighted two cigarettes. She gave him one and then dialed her friend the hairdresser and cancelled her appointment. She slurred like she did after the fifth or sixth cocktail.

Franco smoked his cigarette without enjoying it, his mind ticking with the possibilities of what he’d witnessed. She curled against him, her nails digging into the muscles of his chest.

He said, “I think something odd is going on with you.”

“Mmm? I feel pretty damned fine.”

“Have you been taking drugs? You doing X?”

“Are you trying to piss me off?” She smiled and blew smoke at him.

“I’m trying to decide what I think. You’re acting different.” He didn’t know what to say about her bizarre iris and figured keeping his mouth shut was the best course for the moment.

“Hmm. I’ve been seeing a hypnotist. Trying to break this smoking habit.”

“Uh, did you happen to think that might be the reason you’ve had lousy dreams lately? Go screwing around in your brain and God knows what’ll happen.”

“Hypnotism is harmless. All that stuff about them making you cluck like a chicken or do stupid tricks is bullshit. He puts me in a light trance. I’m aware of everything the whole time.”

Franco rubbed the vein pulsing in his temple. “Who’s this hypnotist?”

“Phil Wary. An old dude. Lives upstairs. He was a magician back in the 1970s.”

“This is great.”

“It’s so-so. I paid him three hundred bucks. I’ve cut back to half a pack a day, but sheesh, it could be better. That’s what I’m saying — sure as shit isn’t a cure for cancer.”

“Okay,” he said. He didn’t think anything was okay, and in fact had already made up his mind to pay Phil Wary a visit and set the coot straight. Anybody messing with Franco’s girl was in peril of falling from a rooftop.

Franco dreamed of standing in a hallway. He was naked and smelled of sex and bitter perfume. The hallway was dark except at the far end where a pair of brassy elevator doors shone, illuminated by an unseen source. He walked toward the doors and they slid apart. He entered the elevator. It was tight and dim. The doors shut. A panel of glowing buttons floated in the sudden darkness. He pressed the L and waited. The elevator moved, silent and frictionless, and with a sense of tremendous speed and he screamed as his body became weightless and his toes drifted several inches from the floor. He was trapped in a coffin-shaped capsule rocketing into zero g orbit. The control panel flickered and its numerals blackened and popped and died. The overhead strip emitted a hideous red light that caused his skin to smoke and char where it touched. The light dripped like oil, like acid dissolving him.

When the doors opened, he stumbled into the empty lobby of The Broadsword Hotel. Yet the chamber was far too vast, and in the distance one of the walls had collapsed. It was cold, and the gloom thick with a sense of ruin. Furniture lay in broken heaps, and tiles of the vast marble floor were smashed, pieces scattered, and everywhere, curtains and streamers of cobwebs and dust. The tooth of the moon shone through the skylight dome. Carol stood hipshot in its sickly beam. She too was naked except for a silvery necklace, and panties that gleamed white against her delectable buttocks. Her figure was unutterably erotic in its slickness and ripe strength and quivering vulnerability, a Frazetta heroine made flesh. Her head craned toward one of the support columns, arm raised in a defensive gesture. She was a voluptuous conceptualization of Fay Wray transported to some occult dimension, gaping at an off-screen terror.

A shadow moved across the floor and obliterated Carol’s paralyzed figure. It stretched unto colossal dimensions until its clawed edge overlapped Franco’s feet and he raced into the elevator that was no longer an elevator, but an endless tunnel, or a throat.

Franco lay in bed alone until noon. This was his first vacation in two years from his millionaire charge, Jacob Wilson. Wilson had jetted off to Paris for the week with his girlfriend of the moment and Leonard and Vernon, the senior bodyguards.

He didn’t have any fear of confined spaces, but today the elevator ride was harrowing. He loosened his tie to alleviate a feeling of suffocation. A middle-aged woman in an enveloping dress crowded him and he sweated and squeezed the bridge of his nose and breathed shallowly until the lift thudded to a halt and squealed open a full ten seconds later.

Despite his rather mundane and admittedly coarse occupation, Franco enjoyed a good, thick book and was enamored of classical architecture. The hotel had become a hobby. Almost a century old, and enormous, its caretakers kept alive certain elements and traditions not often present in its modern counterparts. There were at least two sub levels, one of which hosted a barbershop, international newspaper kiosk, cigar shop, and a gentleman’s club called The Red Room, this latter held over from speakeasy days. On the ground floor was the lounge, the Oak & Shield restaurant, a largely defunct nightclub called The Owl, and the Arden Grand Ballroom. There were galas every few months and he’d vowed to accompany Carol to one in the near future. Franco was an elegant dancer, comfortable waltzing to a big band.

He went to the lounge and sat at the end of the deserted bar farthest from the double doors and the sun streaming through the windows overlooking the hillside and Capitol Lake far below, and across the way, the Capitol Dome itself, a cracked and grimy edifice that somehow retained its grandeur despite years of neglect. He ordered a Bloody Mary, followed immediately by a double vodka. He lighted a cigarette and pressed his hand to his eyes while he smoked.

Franco had become a regular at the lounge these past months since his dalliance with Carol. The staff knew who he worked for and when he dropped a hint about his interest in resident Phil Wary, the white-suited bartender disappeared, then returned with a hotel business card, Mr. Wary’s apartment and phone numbers scrawled on the reverse. Franco glanced at the card, then burned it in the ashtray as a courtesy. He left a fifty on the bar when he finally dragged himself off the stool and went in search of answers. He buzzed Mr. Wary’s apartment, then he unfolded his cell and tried the phone number.

Someone picked up and breathed heavily. “What?” The accent was foreign to Franco, although it reminded him of the old Christopher Lee Dracula movies.

“Mr. Wary, hey. Could I have a few minutes of your time? I’m downstairs—”

“I heard you buzzing my intercom. I hate that buzzing. That brash, persistent noise drills straight through my eardrum. No, I think you sound like an oaf, a knuckle dragger. A second generation Italian mongrel, perhaps.”

Franco made a fist with his free hand and squeezed until his knuckles cracked. “Very sorry, sir. I just need five minutes. Maybe less. You know a friend of mine. Carol—”

Mr. Wary breathed into the phone. He made an odd noise in his throat. “Then I am convinced I am not interested in your company. My business with her is not for you. Goodbye.”

The line went dead. Franco stared at his cell for a several moments. He carefully folded and put it away. He cracked the knuckles of his right hand. It was a long climb to the seventh floor, but there was no chance of his risking the elevator again. He felt homicidal enough without exacerbating his dire mood with an outbreak of latent claustrophobia. By the fourth floor he’d come to regret his decision. His legs were soft from spending too many hours on his ass in limousines and holding down barstools. He’d given up weightlifting and jogging. The endless columns of booze and stacks of unfiltered cigarettes made his sporadic appearances at the gym painful.