Creepers Read online

  Something plopped on Balenger’s hard hat. Worried about bats, he jerked his light toward the ceiling, but all he saw were beads of moisture. Another drop splashed on him.

  “As long as the doors seal the area, there’s no place for the evaporation to go,” the professor said. “The water’s trapped in here. Feel how humid the air is.”

  “Dank is more like it,” Balenger said.

  Cora shivered. “Cold.”

  What they stared at was the hotel’s swimming pool. To their astonishment, it still contained water, green from algae growing in it.

  And it rippled.

  Vinnie’s camera flashed.

  “Something’s in the water,” Cora said.

  “Probably an animal that heard us coming and jumped in to hide,” Conklin said.

  “But what kind?”

  The algae kept rippling.

  “A muskrat perhaps.”

  “What’s the difference between a rat and a muskrat?”

  “A muskrat is bigger.”

  “Just what I needed to hear.”

  Rick found a slimy pole on the floor. It had a net at the end: a pool skimmer. “I could poke around in the water and see what I catch.”

  “You mean what drags you in,” Cora said.

  Vinnie laughed.

  “No, I’m serious,” Cora said. “This door was closed. So is the one on the other side of the pool.” Her light streaked across the scum and indicated the other door. “So how did that thing—whatever it is—get in here?”

  Lights flashed in all directions, searching for another entrance.

  “Rats can work their way into almost any place,” the professor said. “They’re determined and tough enough to chew through concrete blocks.”

  “And what in God’s name is this stuff?” Balenger pointed toward what resembled a white carpet on a wall.

  “Mold,” Cora said.

  The scummy water rippled again.

  “Rick, let me know when you find the creature from the green lagoon.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  “I’ve run into enough rats for one night. I’m a historian, not a biologist. If I stay here longer, I’ll grow moss.”

  While Cora rounded the pool, Vinnie took another picture. With an unnerving clatter—“Ooops. Sorry.”—Rick dropped the pole. Everyone followed. Trying to stay balanced on the slippery tiles, they joined Cora at a set of swinging doors.

  Rick pressed against a rusted metal plate on one of them. With the now familiar squeak and scrape, the door yielded.

  They entered a cobwebbed corridor in which a door on each side had a tarnished plaque with the word GENTLEMEN engraved on one and LADIES on the other. Farther along was a dusty counter behind which rubber sandals were scattered.

  “When people abandon a house, they usually take everything with them. It’s their stuff, and they want to keep it,” Rick told Balenger. “But when it comes to closing a hospital, a factory, a department store, an office building, or a hotel, everybody’s in charge, and nobody is. It’s assumed that somebody else will take care of the final details, but it often doesn’t happen.”

  They passed elevator doors whose metal was rusted. Stairs led up.

  Conklin pointed. “Take a close look at the stairs.”

  “Marble,” Vinnie said, then turned toward Balenger. “Most places we infiltrate, the floors have nails poking through. That’s why we warned you to wear thick-soled boots.”

  At the top, they came to another pair of swinging doors.

  “Looks like mahogany,” Cora said. “A sturdy wood. Even so, these doors are rotting.” She indicated a crumbling area at the bottom of each.

  When she pushed at the doors, they didn’t budge.

  “There’s no lock,” Rick said, puzzled. “Something on the other side must be jamming them.” He used his knife to pry one of the doors in his direction.

  The doors suddenly flew open. With a crash, Rick hurtled back, slamming into Balenger, knocking him down. Several things cracked and snapped, cascading. Cora screamed. Large objects banged around them, burying Balenger.

  In darkness, he felt something blunt and hard jabbing into his chest and stomach. A mushy, fetid substance weighed against his face. Heart racing, he struggled to free himself. He heard Rick cursing. He heard wood breaking, as if it were being thrown against a wall. Abruptly, he saw the light from headlamps and pushed something heavy with rotting fabric off him.

  “Rick! Are you all right?” Cora screamed.

  Coughing, struggling to his feet, Balenger saw Cora yank at a tangle of large objects, hauling them off Rick.

  Vinnie’s hands were on Balenger, helping him up. “Are you hurt?”

  “No.” Balenger felt nauseous from the odor of what had pressed on his face. He tried to wipe away the smell. “But what—”

  “Rick?” Cora pulled him up.

  “I’m okay. I just—”

  “What fell on us?” Balenger demanded.

  “Furniture,” Conklin said.

  “Furniture?”

  “Broken tables and chairs. Sections of sofas.”

  An animal made a terrible screeching sound. Balenger saw a rat scurry from a hole in a decaying sofa. A second rat streaked after it. A third. Balenger’s stomach thrust bile to his mouth.

  “Somehow, all kinds of banged-up, shattered furniture got piled against that door,” Conklin said. “When Rick opened it, the movement was enough to dislodge everything.”

  Balenger rubbed his aching chest where what he now realized was a table leg had jammed into him. Adrenaline shot through him. “But how did the furniture get broken? How did it get thrown there?”

  “Maybe a crew started to do some renovating and was told to quit,” Conklin suggested. “These old buildings have all kinds of puzzles. In that abandoned department store in Buffalo, we found a half-dozen fully dressed mannequins sitting in a circle of chairs as if having a conversation. One of them even had a coffee cup in its hand.”

  “That was somebody’s idea of a practical joke.” Balenger scanned the darkness. “Fine. So is this a practical joke? Is somebody telling us to stay away?”

  “Whatever it is,” Vinnie said, “it happened a long time ago.” He showed Balenger a broken table leg. “See this break?”

  Balenger aimed his headlamp at it.

  “The wood’s old and dirty. If this were a fresh break, the inside of the leg would be clean.”

  Conklin smiled. “You get an A, also.”

  Rick picked up his knife. “Well, at least we got the doors open.”

  Balenger noted Cora’s relief that Rick wasn’t injured. But he also noted the way Vinnie looked at Cora, pained that her affection wasn’t directed toward him.

  The young man subdued his emotions and raised his camera. Its flash made an animal scamper.

  The open doors beckoned. Past the murky outlines of more broken furniture, Balenger and the others paused in astonishment.

  “Now this is what makes the effort worthwhile,” Rick said.

  They stood in the shadows of a vast lobby. The ceiling was so high that their lights barely reached it. The floor was grimy marble. At several pillars, there were tangles of battered furniture: cracked chairs, tables, and sofas, once-plush upholstery moldering.

  “A clean-up crew that was told to stop is still the logical explanation,” Conklin said.

  Some pillars were surrounded by rotting velvet divans. Elaborate crystal chandeliers drooped. Balenger kept a distance, concerned that they would fall.

  Vinnie took a photograph of a chandelier, but its crystals didn’t reflect the camera’s flash. Everything in the lobby was dull and smelled of dust, while another acrid hard-to-identify smell hovered. Cobwebs hung like ragged curtains. A mouse scurried from a settee. Suddenly, a panicked bird catapulted from one of the chandeliers. Balenger flinched.

  “How did that get in here?” Vinnie said.

  A cricket screeched.

  Rick coughed. “Welcome to Wild K
ingdom.”

  “Or Miss Havisham’s memorial chamber in Great Expectations. Stay away from animal nests,” Conklin warned.

  “Believe me, I intend to,” Balenger said.

  “What I’m concerned about is the urine smell.”

  Now Balenger recognized the odor. Again he wiped his face, trying to lose the feeling that something mushy and fetid still pressed against his mouth.

  “If you get too strong a whiff of the urine, there’s a risk of hantavirus.” Balenger knew the professor referred to a recently identified flu-like virus sometimes found in rodents’ nests. Harmless to its animal hosts, the disease was potentially fatal to humans. “Not that you need to be paranoid about it. From time to time, cases turn up in the American West, but it’s rare around here.”

  “That certainly relieves my mind.”

  Conklin chuckled. “Perhaps I should change the subject and talk about the lobby. As I mentioned, Morgan Carlisle took pains to update the infrastructure of the hotel.” The professor’s voice sounded hollow in the huge area. “But he never changed the design of the interior. Apart from the damage, this is the way the lobby appeared when it was first constructed in 1901. Periodically, the furniture wore out and needed to be replaced, of course. But the look of it never varied.”

  “Schizoid,” Rick said. “The exterior anticipates art deco of the 1920s. But the furnishings are turn of the century. Victorian.”

  “Queen Victoria died in 1901 as the Paragon was being built,” the professor explained. “Although Carlisle was American, he felt that the world had changed and not for the better. This was the style of the New York mansion in which he was raised. The exterior symbolized where his parents went and he was not allowed. The interior represented the place in which he felt safest.”

  “Yeah, schizoid. No wonder the hotel had trouble making a profit. It must have seemed old-fashioned even when it was built.”

  “Actually, it achieved the status of a theme hotel.” Conklin gestured toward their surroundings. “Because the interior remained firmly entrenched in 1901, over the years ‘old-fashioned’ became viewed as ‘historical’ and then a kind of ‘trip back into time.’ The staff wore uniforms in the style of the turn of the century. The porcelain dishes and gold-plated eating utensils remained the same, as did the menu. The music in the ballroom was from that era, and the musicians wore period costumes. Everything was from another time.”

  Balenger studied the shadows. “Must have been a hell of a shock when a guest went upstairs, turned on the TV, and saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. Or firefights in Vietnam. Or the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago. But maybe Carlisle didn’t allow televisions in the rooms.”

  “Reluctantly, he did. Guests didn’t want to go that far back in time. But by then Asbury Park was in decline, and people had pretty much stopped coming.”

  “Yeah, a damned sad story,” Balenger said. “Are all the sites you explore this well preserved?”

  “Don’t I wish. Salvagers and vandals often violate buildings before I get to them. The chandelier and the marble plant stands at the entrance, for example. Drug addicts would usually have stolen them long ago. The walls would be covered with obscene graffiti. It’s a tribute to Carlisle’s precautions that the hotel survived as completely as it has. Look at these photographs.”

  The group turned toward a wall of framed black-and-white images. Each had a tarnished copper plaque under it: 1910, 1920, 1930, all the way to 1960. Each depicted the lobby and showed festive guests. But although the lobby remained the same in every image, the style and placement of the furniture never varying, the clothing styles changed abruptly, lapels wider or narrower, dresses higher or lower, hair longer or shorter.

  “Like time-lapse photography.” Cora wandered across the lobby, turning her light this way and that. “But there’s no photograph of the guests in the lobby in 1901 when the Paragon was built. I can imagine them around me. Moving calmly, speaking softly. Dresses rustle. The women carry gloves and parasols. The men wouldn’t dream of going anywhere without ties and jackets. They have pocket watches on chains attached to their vests. Some have canes. Others have spats over their shoes to protect them from the sand on the boardwalk. As they enter the lobby from outside, they take off their Homburg hats, or maybe they’ve allowed themselves to be slightly casual at the seashore and their hats are straw. They approach the check-in desk.”

  Cora did the same.

  Meanwhile, Rick went to the double doors at the entrance, inspecting them. “As you said, Professor, the interior doors are metal.” He tried to open them, without effect. Proceeding to a window on the right, he pushed away rotted curtains, only to jerk back when another bird erupted, this one from the top of the curtains.

  “Damned floor’s covered with bird shit,” Rick grumbled. He examined a shutter behind the curtain. “Metal.” With effort, he freed a bolt. The shutter was mounted on a rail. He tried to push it but wasn’t successful. “You mentioned that vandals smashed the windows. Rain and snow must have come in through the holes and rusted the rollers in place. The good thing is, nobody can see our lights.”

  “And if a security guard happens to pass, he won’t hear us, either,” Conklin said.

  Rick pressed an ear against the shutter. “I can’t hear the waves on the beach or the sheet metal clanging in that condo building. We’ve got the place to ourselves. But how on earth did the birds get in?”

  A bell rang.

  Balenger whirled.

  Cora stood behind the check-in counter, her right hand on a dome-shaped bell, the brass of which would once have been shiny. Facing the group, she set her hard hat on the counter, her red hair glistening in their lights. Cobwebbed mail slots occupied the wall behind her. There were pieces of paper in a few of them.

  “Welcome to the Paragon Hotel,” she said. Her strong beauty was enhanced by the lights directed at her. “I trust your stay will be enjoyable. There is no finer hotel in the world.” She reached beneath the counter and took out a wooden box, setting it on the counter, raising dust. “But this is our busiest season. Conventions. Weddings. Family vacations. I do hope you made reservations. Mr…?” She looked at the professor.

  “Conklin. Robert Conklin.”

  Cora pretended to flip through cards in the box. “Nope. Sorry. Doesn’t seem to be a reservation for Conklin. Are you positive you contacted us?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “This is quite irregular. Our reservation department never makes a mistake. And what about you, Mr…?”

  “Magill,” Rick said.

  “Well, there is a reservation for Magill, but it’s for a woman only, I’m afraid. The noted historian Cora Magill. I assume you’ve heard of her. The best people stay here.” Cora again reached under the counter and this time set down a thick ledger, raising more dust. She opened it and pretended to read names. “Marilyn Monroe. Arthur Miller. Adlai Stephenson. Grace Kelly. Norman Mailer. Yves Montand. Of course, only well-to-do people can afford to stay here.” She picked up a card from next to the bell. “Our rates vary from ten to twenty dollars.”

  “When twenty dollars was twenty dollars.” Rick laughed.

  “Actually, you’re not wrong about some of those guests,” the professor said. “Marilyn Monroe, Arthur Miller, and Yves Montand did stay here. Monroe and the playwright were having domestic difficulties. After Miller checked out in a huff, Montand arrived to console Marilyn. Cole Porter stayed here, as well. So did Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Pablo Picasso, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Maria Callas, Aristotle Onassis, who was having an affair with Callas, and so on. In fact, Onassis tried to buy the hotel. The Paragon attracted a lot of famous and powerful people. And a few who were infamous and powerful. Senator Joseph McCarthy, for example. And the gangsters Lucky Luciano and Sam Giancana.”

  Balenger frowned. “Carlisle let gangsters stay here?”

  “He was fascinated with their lifestyle. He ate dinner and played cards with them. In fact, he allo
wed Carmine Danata to keep a permanent suite here, ‘a place to roost,’ Danata called it, when he wasn’t working as an enforcer in Atlantic City, Philadelphia, Jersey City, and New York. Carlisle gave Danata permission to have a vault put in behind a wall in his suite. It was done in the coldest part of the winter of 1935 when the hotel was virtually empty. Nobody knew about it.”

  “But if nobody knew about it…” Cora shook her head from side to side. “This reminds me of what’s wrong with Citizen Kane.”

  “There’s something wrong with Citizen Kane?” Vinnie asked in disbelief. “That’s impossible. It’s a masterpiece.”

  “With a big flaw. In the opening scene, Kane’s an old man. He’s dying in bed in his fabulous mansion. He has a snow globe in his hand.”

  “Everybody knows that opening,” Vinnie said. “You and I once watched that movie together on the classics channel. You never mentioned anything about a flaw.”

  “I only realized it after you moved to Syracuse. Kane murmurs, ‘Rosebud,’ then drops the globe, which shatters on the bedroom floor. The noise makes a nurse charge through a door. All of a sudden, the newspapers and the newsreels are filled with the mystery of Kane’s last word, ‘Rosebud.’ Then a reporter sets out to solve the puzzle.”

  “Yeah? So?”

  “Well, if the nurse was out of the room and the door was closed and the bedroom was empty except for Kane when he died, how does anybody know his last word?”

  “Oh,” Vinnie said. “Shit. Now you’ve ruined the movie for me.”

  “The next time you watch it, just skip over that part.”

  “But what does this have to do with—”

  “Professor,” Cora said, “how could you know about a secret vault in Danata’s room, one that was installed in the winter of 1935 when the Paragon was deserted?”

  Conklin smiled. “You are indeed my student.”

  Balenger waited for the answer.

  “It turns out that Carlisle kept a diary, not about himself but about the hotel, all the interesting events he observed over the decades. He was especially fascinated by the suicides and other deaths that occurred here. There were three murders, for example. A man shot his business partner for cheating him. A woman poisoned her husband for threatening to leave her for another woman. A thirteen-year-old boy waited until his father fell asleep and then beat him to death with a baseball bat. The father had molested the child for years. It took all of Carlisle’s wealth and influence to keep those incidents from being publicized. After he died—”