Harmon proceeded cautiously, even though he had no idea what he was on the lookout for. He knew there was something in the Lodge, something that did not belong there -- or in the same universe, for that matter -- as he. The lobby, which had once been so familiar, had utterly changed in his absence. Now it held the unnatural hush that a haunted cathedral might have. All the life had been removed from it, as if a museum replica of the room had replaced what used to stand on this spot. He could only hope that his little sanctum under the stairs was as he had left it.
He moved unhurried, still leaning heavily against his makeshift crutch as he crossed the floor. By now he was used to the particular brand of pain that erupted from his broken ankle every time he moved it. Still, he went out of his way not to make any extraneous noise, skirting the bloodstains on the floor by a wide margin, still puzzling over what kind of tragedy they could be spelling out. The closer he got to them, he became sure that they didn't quite connect among the confusion of tracks, pools, and smears at the base of the stairway. Whatever had happened, the injured parties weren't there now, and thus Harmon was able to absolve himself from concern without much guilt.
After the blood, he had to weave through the scattering of women's clothing on the floor. He assumed this was the result of someone trying to outfit themselves (and maybe a few others) before going outside. He finally approached the door to his apartment -- and although it was little more than a well-equipped closet, he thought of it in more elegant terms -- and adjusted his balance before reaching for the doorknob.
He opened the door, and paused. The little light he had on the dresser was on, and had been moved. There was a staggered line of his paperbacks fanned across the floor. And most notably, there was someone lying on his cot. Harmon waited until he saw that the figure's chest was moving up and down in shallow, sleeping breaths. He stepped into the room, and closed the door.
Once his eyes adjusted to the yellowish, battery-powered LED light, Harmon was quite shocked at his new roommate's appearance. The man had clearly been through a lot, his face bloodied and burned until he was almost unrecognizable. Despite this, Harmon did recognize him; there wasn't anyone working in the hotel that he didn't know, even if their name didn't immediately come to mind. This was one of them, a familiar face from the kitchen that he had never been officially introduced to.
Harmon would have squatted down next to the man on the cot if he had been able, but at the moment all he could manage was to stand over him and look down, studying the man's battered face as he slept. He held some kind of metal piece close to his chest, and it took Harmon a moment to figure out that it was the metal logo of the Deertail that used to hang over the fireplace in the restaurant. Whatever the reason, the man was holding it like a security blanket.
"Hey," Harmon said, intending to make a more assertive sound than the tired croak that came from his throat. The man on the cot didn't move. Harmon tried nudging his leg with the shaft of the ski pole. "Hey," he repeated.
The man on the cot stirred, and just as Harmon thought he had fallen back asleep, his eyes flew wide, surprised to find someone in the tiny room with him.
"Don't worry," Harmon said, raising his hands. "It's just me. I know you from the kitchen, don't I?"
The man on the cot twitched a little, eventually making a motion that Harmon recognized as a nod. He wondered if the man was leaving dried blood and bits of charred skin on his pillow.
"Looks like you've been through hell, buddy," Harmon said. "I'm glad you found my room. Comfy, isn't it?"
No response this time, just a continued wide-eyed stare.
"I've had a rough time myself," Harmon said, looking around for a place to sit although he knew there wasn't one. Honestly, he'd never needed one before. "Don't suppose you could make some room?"
The burned man, an apologetic look clear on his face, immediately started trying to sit up, then realized he couldn't and rolled on his side, lowering his feet limply to the floor.
"No, no," Harmon said when he saw the man's difficulty. "Don't worry about it. I think you probably need the rest more than I do." This didn't deter the man's efforts, however. He kept trying to sit up, and Harmon was unable to bend down and physically stop him, so he gave up and let room be made for him. Through the maneuver, he kept a close eye on the metal emblem, trying to decide if it was being clutched so tightly because the man didn't want to let go of it, or if he physically couldn't. By the time there was space for Harmon to sit, he still hadn't decided.
"Well, thank you," he said, making sincere eye contact with the wounded man before he turned around and tried to lower himself down. Grimacing, he propped himself against the wobbling ski pole and tried to seat himself on the cot as tenderly as he could. By the time he had to give his trajectory over to gravity, he had realized that there was no way to do it without more pain than he'd experienced so far on his entire trip. He gritted his teeth and let the pain have its way with him until he was sitting next to the man on the cot.
"Whew," Harmon said finally. He turned to the man, tried not to be shocked by how much more horrifying his injuries looked close up. "I apologize," he said, "but I'm having a devil of a time trying to recall your name." The disappointment in the man's inability to communicate was obvious and painful to see.
The man, intense sadness in his eyes, seemed to be trying to form words with his lips, but they quivered and couldn't quite coordinate themselves to do it. After a few moments Harmon shushed him gently and said, "That's all right. It will come to me."
For a while, the two elderly men sat side by side in the quiet room, sharing a moment with their individual injuries and shared predicament. In that short interval, Harmon made a decision. It was one that never would have crossed his mind before this night, or even before he had gone out into the snow, trying to outrun an avalanche like a damned newbie.
This time, he didn't ask for permission. Harmon closed his eyes and reached out in that way he had with Kerren, but this time into the mind of the man sitting next to him. As he had wandered through the filigreed light of that woman's mind, he had been moved to tears by its beauty. It was like a nearly endless labyrinth made of soaring, living crystal cathedrals. But now, he immediately entered a place that was horribly corrupted. The inside of this man's mind was similar to Kerren's, but its lofty architecture had suffered a horrible attack, some awful cerebral approximation of the London Blitz.
Many parts of his mind had gone dark. Whole planet-sized areas of it had been cracked apart and stained pitch black. Elsewhere, jagged cracks were the origin of bleeding areas that coated other vast sections in crimson viscosity. But Harmon kept looking for intimations of life somewhere else; he could sense its direction by the way the dark parts were lit from behind, or from the side. It was like trying to divine the sun's position using only stray beams that punched through the cloud cover. He kept moving, and found his way to the core.
The man's name was Benny -- as soon as Harmon heard the name, he realized that he had once known was it was, but had forgotten. There was a little startled activity as he realized that Harmon was present, but calmed down quickly as the two realized how kindred their spirits were. They were two men, old enough to feel themselves past usefulness to the world in general, who had found a new place to belong, high up in the rarified air of Deertail Mountain. This was what Harmon could glean from the glittering, sputtering part of Benny's mind that was still functioning like it always had.
After this era of mutual understanding, Harmon began to ingest all the information that Benny had from what was currently happening, and in turn he shared with Benny his own experience. They found even deeper kinship there; both had sustained horrible injuries, and had fought hard to persevere despite them. It was when Benny started to unweave his thoughts about the Qoloni that true horror began to dawn on Harmon. Of course he remembered the creature, although it had been several years since he had read the book, one of the long list of things he mostly forgotten about. With Benny's sensory impressions of it, though, Harmon recalled the visceral thrill he had experienced then.
Reading about something terrifying and actually coming face-to-face with it were two entirely different things, however. As he thumbed through Benny's catalog of mental images from when he had been attacked by the thing, seeing how Harmon's own little sanctuary had almost been invaded by the thing, he felt despair beginning to creep in around the edges of his own disembodied mind.
Together, they began to attempt piecing together how something from a book could possibly find its way into their real world. It must have had something to do with the author's presence. If Bruce Casey were here, was it possible that he had brought the thing with it? Was it some kind of real, haunting presence that had dogged him for years -- since the book had been published back in the heady year of 1991 -- and had followed him here?
They worked together, their intellects cranking in a sort of tandem that would have been impossible in the outer world, even if they had been fully able to articulate their thoughts to each other. Inside, thoughts took on almost physical forms, intricate shapes of light and chemicals that could be understood more intuitively than any perfect string of words or line of prose. They tried to recreate their idea of the novel together; it was harder for Harmon, because he had read it much longer ago than Benny, but found that different parts of it had made impressions on each of them.
For example, Benny seemed to recall Princess Ynarra's initial exploration of Cheval Castle's dungeons more clearly due to his childhood fear of his grandparents' basement. He brought the memory forward for Harmon, who could viscerally taste the terror in the child's throat. For his part, Harmon had formed such a clear picture of the initial ceremony where the Prince of Cheval greets his suitors at a grand ceremonial dinner. Harmon read that part right after he had recovered from a bad stomach flu, and there was still a good two hours before the lodge's restaurant would open. He was ravenous, and Bruce's purple prose as he outlined the menu of the banquet had set Harmon's stomach growling in the most enjoyable way.
Eventually, they had painted a mutual picture of the story, the way the initial beauty of Ynarra's experiences at Cheval were eventually stripped away, revealing the frightening skeleton of intrigue and dark magic underneath it. They had sculpted the shape of the tale inside Benny's mind, and could turn it this way and that, examining it from all sides. It was a strange way to look at a tale, but it made sense in the way that a vision of beauty in a dream does. And when they turned it just the right way, they saw what they were looking for, the reason they had been collaborating to reconstruct it in the first place, although neither had known it.
It was there, inevitably woven into the very fabric of the tale itself. It was plain, obvious to them in this quasi-physical form. The novel's ending was menacingly unresolved, even though Ynnara escaped. But now they were able to unlock the secret. They both knew how to stop the Qoloni.
-11.6-
Carlos didn't look back. He just ran. He had no idea how long his feet would keep him ahead of the grasping hands (or, even worse, the razor-like swinging antlers) of the dark, buzzy thing pursuing him. He just kept moving as fast as he could, as fast as the uneven floor of the hallway would allow. He could only hope that it was slowing his pursuer down as much as it was him.
He was almost past the stairway down to the lobby. He thought briefly about bounding down them out into the snow, just to get the thing out of the building and away from Benny's hiding place, but it didn't work out that way. His foot caught on an unfortunate fold of carpet just as he was about to swerve, causing him to stumble and take a lateral step away from the stairs to retain his balance. He realized that he wasn't going to be able to correct his trajectory without slowing down, and then the footsteps chasing him would undoubtedly catch him. So he kept running straight, down the opposite wing of the Lodge, his heart threatening to throb itself out through his ears.
He had never run in such a blind panic before. Not even the time when he was small, and they had visited a horse farm. It had belonged to one of his dad's cousins, some small ranch far off in another mountain's foothills. Little Carlos had somehow wandered out into the pasture, and suddenly an eight-foot horse was coming over to investigate. To his child's eyes, the thing had been the size of a freight train, and closing in on him much faster than he could run away. He felt that same panic now, barreling down the Lodge's upper hallway, so fast that he felt like his legs might detach from his body. Only now, the thing behind him really meant him harm, to catch him, throw him down and impale him...
Just beyond the stairs, one of the guest room doors stood open, and it wasn't until it was too late for him to aim his stumbling body toward it that he realized it would have been an ideal place to hide. He could have just thrown the door closed behind himself and been safe. He was sure the thing couldn't have followed; it would be blocked by the physical solidity of the door just as it had before. But as quickly as this thought came, the hope was dashed and the door passed behind him.
Carlos still hadn't managed to fully correct himself, and his pounding feet skirted the left side of the corridor. He could hear some distorted grating sound behind him, which he assumed were the tips of his pursuer's antlers scraping the wall above and behind him. The sound was like nails on a chalkboard fed through a broken amplifier, and sent jagged bolts of discord up his spine. He wondered if that resistance was buying him time. His breath wheezed in and out between his gritted teeth, and he was acutely aware of how his life was boiling down to a scattering of infinitely small moments and incidents, ground gained and lost in millimeters as the distance between the clutching hands of the thing behind him and his fleeing heels.
There was something in the hall ahead, propped against the wall, giving him a reason to keep trying to steer his never-fast-enough body toward the middle of the hall. The shape drew closer, and he realized what it was; a decorative table, narrow enough to be of no practical purpose other than to carry two small but elegant vases, which were perpetually filled with dried but lovely flowers. A table runner ran the length of it, pinned down by the crystalline weights at the ends, and a large, framed mirror hung on the wall above it. Carlos was surprised to see that, despite the disruption of the avalanche, this arrangement was still mostly intact. The mirror was still hanging straight on the wall, and only one of the vases had been knocked over, tipping out its freight of pussy willows across the table and onto the floor. Barely thinking about it, he grabbed the fallen vase, then passed it to his other hand and grabbed the second as he ran by as well.
He flipped the upright one over in his hand, dumping out its freight of dried sticks, and grabbed it around the neck. He took a quick look back over his shoulder, and found that the shape -- so vague against the pervasive darkness of the hall -- was closer than he thought from just listening to its approach. *Much* closer. Now in a near panic, he flipped his left hand over his right shoulder, releasing the vase at what he hoped was the right instant. He couldn't help but continue to watch as it flipped end over end, reflecting what dim light it could gather from the surroundings, until it impacted the horned thing in its chest, right where its heart might possibly be.
He should have seen the reaction coming, although he would later think to himself that he didn't know what was going to happen. However, the pursuing thing stayed true to its physical nature. It couldn't affect the vase's presence in the world, so in the collision of kinetic energies moving both forward and backward, it inevitably lost. Carlos had a fleeting glimpse of the vase being bent out of its true shape, wrapping around the creature's shoulder like a wet towel being slapped across its skin, and then the thing was twisting in mid-stride, one side of it being almost entirely stopped in its tracks. Its antlers swung by as it pivoted, mere inches above Carlos's head.
He ducked instinctively and turned back forward, realizing that he had just bought himself a few more tenths of a second of life. He knew he had to take advantage of it, and try to get his legs to pump just a little faster. He heard the vase, having presumably slipped around the dark figure's space-warping edge and come out unscathed and unaffected on the other side, make its final glittering crash on the floor far behind them both.
At the moment, however, Carlos was trying to figure out what the end of the chase was going to be. He was rapidly approaching the end of the hallway, which was farther from light sources than any other, but he knew that there was a door there. It didn't lead to any room, instead contained a service area where the majority of the housekeeping supplies were stored. He was heading straight for that door, and if he could buy himself enough time to get it open, dash through it and shut it, he might make it out of this encounter unharmed.
That was a big if, though. He could already hear the horned thing's footfalls regaining their rhythm, not as far away as he would have liked. Maybe he had just prolonged the chase, instead of winning it. His legs were getting weaker, his breath rasping in his throat. Before he knew it, he was just a few steps from the door, and couldn't remember... did it swing into the storage room, or out into the hallway? His shoulder impacted with the force of his entire body behind it, and he immediately knew it was the latter.
He bounced off and spun to the side, which brought him around to see the horned thing. It was bearing down on him with frightening speed, and for a moment Carlos thought they were going to replay the tackle that had happened at what was now the far end of the hall, this time with Carlos pinned between the thing and the wall, instead of the other way around. He obliquely wondered how his body would react when compacted between the thing and an immovable object, and braced himself...
But it turned out that he had been thrown too much off course for the thing to collide with him. Instead, it ran full speed into the maintenance door; clearly, Carlos's prior knowledge of the Lodge's layout was an unexpected advantage in this near-total darkness. He threw his hands protectively over his hand and ducked away, aware of the way those fearsome antlers were spearing their way into the wall above his head. Even so, he could figure out what had happened. Similar to what had happened at the far end of the hall, the horned thing bent the door inward almost three full feet. Then, after a moment of suspension, it was flung back out. Carlos marveled again at how the immovable material that he had smacked his shoulder into could now appear so pliant. The horned attacker stumbled backward, its arms pinwheeling in a decidedly human fashion, trying to keep its balance under the weight of its enormous antlers tipping backward from the impact.
Carlos saw his opportunity, and grabbed for the door handle. At the exact moment he felt the cool solidity of the knob, he also felt a debilitating pain shoot up his arm, collecting at his left shoulder and turning into a bright flare. He still held the second vase in his right hand, so opening the door with it wasn't an option. He pushed through the feeling that his arm was on fire, grabbed the knob, and yanked the door toward him. It swung open easily, but he overestimated how hard he had to pull that the knob flew out of his hand, and the door swung wide open.
If there had not been a small window high up in the wall of the storage closet, the blackness inside would have been impenetrable, but after the dimness of the hall, the small gateway to the moonlit mountainside turned into a virtual spotlight, shining on the horned thing as it strove to regain its footing. Carlos realized he had maybe a second to make it inside. At this point, he didn't even care about getting the door to close behind him. Maybe the thing's wide antler-span wouldn't allow it to enter anyway. That was all he had to hope for as he dove into the gap. Two steps in, he wheeled around.
The horned thing was so close it was almost filling the doorway. At the same time, he was aware of his peripheral vision revealing the way the antlers were pressing into the walls above both sides of the doorway as well, like splayed fingers trying to push through a membrane. It lunged forward, trying to force its way over the threshold, stretching the doorframe farther than Carlos had thought it could. Its outlines, while still far from certain, were limned by the light from behind Carlos, making his heart threaten to stop out of terror. Because of the stark lighting, he could truly see the contours of its face for the first time... and he felt that sudden sense of dislocation that only comes with profound shock. Fortunately, the one instinct he did have was to raise his hand and throw the other vase.
It was little more than a lob at such close range, but it caught the thing squarely in what would have been its throat, had it truly been human, or even animal (Carlos had long since begin suspect that it was neither). Instead, Carlos witnessed in full illumination the way the shape of the crystal distorted, wrapping around the thing's neck like a melting choker necklace, and the thing was swept backwards by its light but undeniable kinetic force. It wasn't until it had backed away that Carlos realized he now had an opportunity to close the storage room door.
He jumped forward, every impulse in his body screaming at him that it was the wrong direction to travel in. He threw his right arm -- now blissfully available to do work his left couldn't -- around the jamb and fumbled for the knob while trying to keep an eye on the horned thing. He couldn't keep his eyes off it, trying to tell if what he had seen in its face a moment before had really been there, or was just a trick of his eyes.
His hand found the knob, slipped once across its slick surface, then tightened around it and pulled. At the same time, his nemesis started recovering from the attack, and Carlos watched in fascination as the door swung closed and the thing lunged. He had no idea which was going to win the race.
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