Graham Masterton - The Ninth Nightmare

John lowered his paper. The headline was Iguana Regulation Bill Killed . The state senate had decided it was unnecessary to control the sale of pet iguanas, despite the fact that they could grow to ten feet long and pose a lethal threat to children and small animals.

‘Not taxi-driving tonight?’ asked Walter.

‘Taking some time off, detective. Catching up with some homespun gossip from B.R.’

‘Right here? In the Griffin House Hotel?’

‘Is there a law against it?’

‘Not that I know of.’

John looked up at Walter, unblinking. It was obvious that Walter felt that there was something suspicious about him sitting here, but he couldn’t think what it was. After a few moments, Walter said, ‘OK. But watch the attitude, OK?’

‘Oh, you bet,’ said John. ‘I’m keeping my attitude under constant scrutiny.’

Walter returned to the Lantern Bar, although he stopped and turned around before he went back inside, and gave John a look that almost made the potted palm wither up. John, for his part, shook his newspaper ostentatiously, lifted it up high in front of him, and pretended to read an article about people in Baton Rouge burning trash in their back yards and creating too much toxic smoke.

John was sitting in the lobby to keep a watch for Mago Verde. He didn’t expect Gordon Veitch to walk into the hotel wearing his clown make-up, but he reckoned he could pick out a Dread without too much difficulty. There was something about Dreads which he always recognized — a blurriness , as if he were seeing them through a fogged-up window.

From his vantage point beside the potted palm, he could clearly see the main entrance, as well as the elevators and the stairs. He could also see the entrance to the Lantern Bar and the Boa Vinda Restaurant and the corridor that led to the hotel parking-lot in back. The only way that anybody could enter or leave the hotel without him noticing them was if they climbed up one of the fire escapes.

He checked the time by the art deco clock standing by the reception desk. Seven-twelve. Kieran had promised to relieve him after two hours and he knew that he was going to need relieving. The smell of pan-fried escalopes of veal was wafting his way from the restaurant and he hadn’t eaten since twelve thirty.

Upstairs, meanwhile, Kieran, Kiera and Rhodajane had walked up and down every corridor and looked into every door that was open. When they returned to Rhodajane’s room, they found Springer sitting on the balcony, keeping an eye on the fire escapes.

‘Nothing,’ said Kieran, as he closed the door behind him. ‘Maybe he’s not coming.’

‘Oh, he will, I’m absolutely sure of it,’ said Springer. ‘After your attack on him last night, Brother Albrecht is going to be very anxious to complete the sacrificial ritual as soon as possible. Think about it: this could be his last and only chance to bring his circus back to reality.’

It was growing dark outside, and street lights were beginning to twinkle all around University Circle.

Kiera said, ‘What if we miss him? What if he manages to get into the hotel without us seeing him?’

‘Then you’ll have to go after him in Brother Albrecht’s dream, and hope that you can nail him before he manages to hand over his sacrifice.’

‘And if we can’t get to him before that?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Springer, gravely. He was still in the guise of Dean Brunswick III, but he was beginning to look older and grayer than he had at first, as if the alcoholic ravages of Deano’s later life were catching up with him. ‘I guess you’ll just have to give it all you’ve got, and hope for the best.’

‘That sounds like a plan,’ said Kieran. ‘Not.’

‘I don’t know what else I can say,’ Springer told him. ‘For some reason, Brother Albrecht appears to be invulnerable to the most powerful existential weapon in Dom Magator’s armory. Maybe he’s vulnerable to something more rudimentary — like a regular bullet-firing gun, or a crossbow bolt, or an ax.’

‘You think we should try chopping his head off?’ said Kiera, her eyes wide with revulsion.

‘It wouldn’t hurt,’ said Rhodajane. ‘Not us , anyhow.’

Springer said, ‘Anyhow, all we can do is wait. Mago Verde may have abducted and mutilated a ninth victim already, but he still has to come here and dream what he did to them into the hotel walls. Hopefully, that should give us enough time to find him. And even if we can’t find him, thousands of people all around the Great Lakes will be asleep by then, and dreaming, and at least some of them will be dreaming about Brother Albrecht’s circus. We can enter one of their dreams and go after him.’

‘I have a real bad feeling that this isn’t going turn out too good,’ said Kiera.

‘And what about our mom?’ asked Kieran.

‘I can’t tell you,’ said Springer. ‘You’ll have to play this as it comes. If you get the chance to rescue her, then take it. But I can’t offer you any guarantees. I can’t even offer you a plan. The truth is, with Brother Albrecht, I don’t even know what we’re up against.’

By twenty after eight, Walter had checked out seventeen rooms and two de luxe suites. It was police procedure at its most procedural, and to make matters worse he wasn’t even sure what he was supposed to be looking for. A pattern? An ennead — whatever the hell that was?

Five of the rooms he had thankfully found unoccupied, but when he had knocked at the doors of all of the others the patter had always been the same. ‘Good evening, sir, madam. Real sorry to disturb you but my name is Detective Wisocky from the University Circle PD and I’m making a routine security check of all of the rooms in the Griffin House Hotel. Do you mind if I take a quick look around? It will only take a moment.’

Almost every time, the guest had asked him, ‘What exactly is it you’re looking for, detective?’

‘Signs of disturbance.’

‘Oh.’ Pause. ‘So what do they look like, these signs of disturbance?’

‘Hard to describe. But — you know — we always recognize them when see them.’

‘Oh.’

Maybe Charlie had been talking b… but in some of the rooms that Walter had walked into — not all of them — he had felt a distinctly unwelcoming atmosphere. Not exactly a tangible chill, but a feeling that there was somebody else’s presence here, somebody hostile, apart from the current guests. It had given him the same discomfort that he felt when he walked into an unfamiliar house, when the owners were away, or when they had been killed. Even the family photographs over the fireplace seemed to frown at him disapprovingly.

After he had finished checking every room on the sixth and seventh floors, he sat down on the couch next to the elevators and unfolded his hotel floor-plan. Taking out his pen, he marked a cross against every room where he had felt unsettled. Five on the sixth floor and three on the seventh floor. Only eight altogether. But when he laid one floor-plan over the other, he saw that it would have taken the addition of only one more room to make a nine-cornered star.

He sat back. Now, was this a coincidence or what? He was tempted to call Charlie and tell him what he had discovered. But he had picked those eight rooms only because of some indefinable feeling of unease, and not because of any empirical evidence that Mago Verde or Mago Verde’s successor had ever been there. OK, so he was Hunch Detective, but maybe this was one hunch too far. He didn’t want to look like an asshole.

He looked at the floor-plans again. The room which would have completed the nine-cornered star was Room 702, which had been unoccupied. Maybe he hadn’t experienced that unwelcoming feeling in Room 702 because Mago Verde hadn’t yet visited it.