THE BELLBOY'S MIDDLE NAME
The skeletons carrying the teens were soon joined by a dozen more. Six skeletons flanked the road to the right, five flanked the road to the left.
The last skeleton joined the one frogmarching Erica, and, like a rag-doll, they lifted up the unhappy girl. And, with a steel grip, they carried her away. When she tried to protest, a skeleton ran up and put his cold, clammy finger-boned over her mouth.
It wasn't easy to sightsee when carried along by walking skeletons. Or even talk. The rattle was so loud it seemed to reecho in Ethan's skull.
But this was what total defeat looked like.
Sarah was angry. Rory, just stunned by the reverse. As for Ethan, an incredible feeling of guilt set in.
"Would it had been so bad to turn into a man-eating werewolf every full moon for the rest of my life?" thought Ethan desperately. "Even two to the power of ten times! I could have been locked and chained up each full moon? I mean, even if I act like a dog half the time now . . . but I could live with that. Outside the full moon, I don't look too much like a wolf. I could have learned to live like this!"
"It's better than ruining everybody's life for me!"
"Don't blame yourself" answered a voice. "Did you really want to live your life as a werewolf? Did you want your best friend to be a zombie? Don't you give yourself any credit for ending the curse on the very souls of Sarah and Rory? The girl who you've hopeless in love with. One of your pals since earliest childhood. Ethan, you were born with the gift of second sight, the ability to see ghosts and spirits? Won't you believe that the powers of evil and darkness will lose to the good? At this, the worst crisis of your life? Courage and faith!"
The voice came from no source Ethan could see; given his limited ability to look about that was no surprise. But more unusually, the voice seemed inaudible to friends, Erica, and skeletons alike.
Even more oddly, for all the world, it sounded to Ethan like his Dad's at his most patient; a father-son talk tone of voice. And that's how Ethan came to the conclusion stress had caused him to imagine it.
Facing doom, Ethan desperately wished he was at home with his parents. And Ethan wished desperately he had refused to haul his friends on this disastrous journey.
The forest gave way to a wide lawn and the paved road going the final distance to the hotel. There were flower gardens too on this side of the hotel. In fact, the old building's streamlined walls . . . which had, after all, been built to look welcoming . . . practically shined in the fog. The copper-roofed towers would have been exiting after a long journey for many of traveller of yesteryear.
No doubt many of the guests would have liked to sit at benches and small tables this side of the hotel.
But the place was terribly eerie. No guests, no sunlight. Not even bees or any insects among the flowers. Just the fog smothering the landscape.
There were bright red awnings in front of the hotel, under which a few large black cars stood waiting patiently to go to the station to retrieve guests from the station. Chrysler Imperials. But their ghosts, like the hotel and everything else in the town.
There were no animals, no insects, but there were more zombies at the hotel. The old-school kind, like Benny was now.
Ethan could smell them before he could see them; he didn't know where Stephanie had found them. Ethan didn't even know whether they were living people under spells or dead bodies forced to do Stephanie's bidding.
But these zombies weren't moving skeletons. Although Ethan, and only Ethan, could smell them, they looked not the least bit decayed. Except the eyes. It was always the eyes with Stephanie's zombies.
A young doorman, with a pallid face and vacant black eyeballs, opened the heavy double doors for the regiment of skeletons. Just inside there was a maid sweeping, wearing a very tight sweater and a long skirt, with dead black eyes.
Ethan could see Rory had been about to say something to her, until put-off by her dead eyes.
"The windows to the soul" said Sarah musingly, quietly, almost imperceptibly.
The hotel lobby was designed in the art deco style; all brass, glass polish and chrome. The lobby was dominated by a shiny, rounded streamline modern front desk. There were chairs about, inlaid with woods. Coffee tables were glass topped. The thick walls and marble floors were painted a dull blue. Curving chrome decorations and shiny elevator doors. Rounded, porthole windows were by the massive doors. Above it all, was a large multi-armed chandelier of what looked like highly polished steel.
The desk clerk was another zombie. An old man with a grey handlebar mustache. He was so old, thin and passive looking, Ethan felt sure that the old man must had died naturally years before and his soul must have long since peaceably moved on! But how did he look so much like a living man, if all Stephanie could do was enslave the corpses of the dead and curse the lives of the quick?
Erica had by this time, become very angry . . . although her fury had to battle with a cringing disgust at being "manhandled" by a skeleton. It was a bit ironic, given how much she had loved being un-dead herself in the past! This truth crept into Erica's mind unbidden. It made her all the more furious!
Sarah, who had, after all, carried the remains of "Jockenstein" to Anastasia, didn't like being carried by skeletons but didn't find it as loathsome as Erica. She had looked assiduously for a chance at escape. Unlike Ethan, Sarah had a lot of experience with dealing with self-pity in the past . . . you didn't let it get in the way with what you had to do!
But Sarah and Erica soon had Rory's shocked expressions on their faces.
It all was the bellboy's fault.
The bellboy wore a bright red hat strapped to his chin, a bright red double-breasted uniform with polished brass buttons, a bright brass nameplate on his chest, and brightly polished black boots with brass coloured laces.
One look, and Ethan realized that this bellboy was not a revived corpse.
The bellboy's bright brass name tag read "Jack". And the fact that the bellboy's name-tag read "Jack" was Stephanie adding insult to injury.
Benny didn't much like his middle name and liked to keep it secret. But there was no detail too small for Stephanie to exploit.
And while Benny, like Ethan and Rory, liked costumes somewhat too much . . . both Ethan and Rory half-wondered how Benny could have been made to wear the bright red brass-buttoned bellboy's uniform. Even as a zombie.
But this was Benny Weir standing there all the same. Benny Weir standing drained of all personality and emotion, and standing black eyeballed at the command of the old man of the front desk.
The truth was you can make an old-school zombie do anything. Even if he used to be a spellmaster of incredible potential.
"Benny?" said Ethan hesitantly, and found four skeletal fingers closing on his mouth.
Ethan instinctively bit the bones, but was forced to let go as another skeleton wrenched open his supernaturally powerful jaws with its even more powerful skeletal fingers.
Ethan coughed as he realized in disgust what he had just done.
"It's no good, Ethan" said Sarah, who gave a menacing look to one of the skeletons carrying her. "Just you try that on me!"
The skeleton didn't.
"Even dating Della, Benny would be eyeing the maid just across the room" observed Erica. "They're both zombies, so they'd be involved by now if Benny had any brain or wasn't such a geek."
"Zombies don't date" said Rory.
Rory did get a skeleton's hand over his mouth. But he didn't bite.
Ethan looked again at the motionless Benny, and cringed.
Insult atop injury.
One of the skeletons walked up to a large polished call bell. He loudly clanged it; so it echoed through the lobby and through the empty hotel.
This was a signal for the mild old man to come to life . . . so to speak.
"The party of four?" he said in a kindly grand-fatherly voice.
The skeleton nodded.
The old man rang the bell twice, so that it echoed and reechoed through the hotel.
This was a sign for Benny to come to life, as he neatly stepped sideways to the old man and gave a smart salute.
"Jack" said the old man. "Show our guests to the Royal Suite, where Stephanie's waiting for them."
"Of course, sir" Benny said in a extremely formal tone, that neither Ethan nor Rory had ever heard him use.
"But don't forget, Jack!" warned the old man.
"I won't sir" said Benny.
Benny picked up the shining call bell, and walked determinedly to Ethan with it.
"Dude . . . don't!" said Ethan, who knew what was coming.
Ethan tried to struggle, but the skeleton's grip was too tight. The skeleton stretched out Ethan's palm.
"By Stephanie's special order" Benny said calmly. "She wants to remind you of what you are before she sees you. What you did to her when you turned her into an old geezer."
"She was an old geezer" Ethan cried out.
"Stephanie wants you to, as our friend the siren used to say, feel her pain!"
"Buddy!" said Rory, before again having skeleton fingers over her mouth.
"Benny!" tried Sarah.
"Oh, it's Jack" said Benny. "Jack Weir. I go by my middle name."
"Ethan's . . . your best friend" said Erica, abruptly.
And in spite of herself, a tear came to Erica's eye. She could just imagine being forced to do the same thing to Sarah.
"Benny, don't!"
But with no further pause, Benny with a dead-eyed stare, plunked the call bell into Ethan's outstretched palm.
The bell was 99.9% Sterling Silver. And if Erica's silver quarter had been bad, this was unbelievable.
Benny quietly removed the bell back to the desk, while Ethan was still howling from the pain of the palm of his hand being scorched black and brown.
When his howls of pain had finally finished re-echoed through the hotel, Ethan stared quietly as the burnt skin healed red and faded into a puffed-pink.
And Ethan now knew he was within earshot of the real Stephanie. Ethan's ears twitched madly, as heard her several floors up. Laughing uproariously, with Jesse near her side.
"Stephanie says you have a very mournful howl" said Benny. "She feels she did a very good job with you."
"We may still do a very good job with her" Sarah replied sarcastically.
"I don't think so" said Benny. "Is your hand healed yet, whelp?"
"Yeah" said Ethan, looking at Benny bitterly a moment. Ethan took a deep breath. "But, Benny, it's the same as when Stern had you throw fireballs at us. Or the King Gremlin has us hypnotised. You just can't help yourself."
"I don't know what you're talking about" said Benny. "And the name is Jack Weir. J-A-C-K. And I'll take you up to Stephanie now. Our elevator operator is sick, so I'll take you up myself. But I have bad news. You'll have to leave most of your skeletons behind. The elevator only holds thirteen."
That left two skeletons per-teen, not counting Benny who led the way across the lobby and down a wide, high hall with Mahogany-panelled walls and expressionist paintings of the Canadian Shield.
Benny abruptly stopped before a set of four shiny elevators with chrome dials and mirrored doors.
He pushed a button, gave a very un-Benny like bow, and ushered the others into the nearest car.