Authors: Blake Crouch
They made their way back through the carnage of furniture into the lobby.
“Here’s the deal,” Lawrence said. “I’ve never explored the second floor, so we’re gonna take these stairs one person at a time. Be alert, be careful, and walk softly if you can.”
His right hand glided up the rickety banister as he climbed. The first four steps were fine, but they grew progressively creakier the higher he went. The last three made no sound at all, and then he stood at the top, just a moon of yellow light fifteen feet above.
“Who’s next?”
June went up, followed by Emmett. Abigail took the path Emmett had chosen, straight up the middle, her headlamp trained on each step.
“You’re doing great,” June called out as the fifth step creaked loudly and she felt the wood give beneath her. The next three were even worse. She could feel her pulse accelerating and a shortness of breath brought on by the first stage of panic. Abigail climbed the final steps faster than she should have, but as she neared the top, Lawrence and Emmett reached down, each taking an arm, and pulled her to safety.
“That was sort of terrifying,” she said.
Abigail stood with Lawrence at the edge of the steps, watching their guide ascend. He climbed toward them, a model of patience and confidence, a man at home on dangerous terrain, even when he crossed the noisiest steps.
He was almost to the top now, and Abigail could see him grinning. He winked at her as he put his weight onto the last step. Then came a dry crack, and he simply disappeared.
The staircase collapsed in a fanfare of splitting wood, dust everywhere, people shouting in the darkness. Coughing, Abigail aimed her headlamp down toward the lobby, half-expecting to see Scott sprawled across the wreckage.
At first, she mistook it for a cry of pain, but then she saw the gloved fingers gripping the edge of the second floor and realized that Scott was laughing, even as his feet dangled seven feet above the fallen staircase.
“He’s right here!” she yelled. “Help him up!”
Lawrence and Emmett dropped to their knees, grabbed Scott’s arms above the elbows.
“Maybe I should just drop,” Scott said. “It’s not that far.”
“Bad idea,” Abigail said. “I see nails sticking out of the boards underneath you.”
“Abigail,” Lawrence said, “my grip’s slipping! Get him under this arm!” They strained to lift him, inch by inch, sweating, groaning, swearing. Finally, Scott’s knees cleared the ledge where the staircase had broken away and they all fell back into the corridor.
Jerrod yelled up to them, “Everybody in one piece?”
“Yeah, we’re cool,” Scott said. “Why don’t you come stand underneath us. I’ve got rope in my pack. We’ll hoist you up.”
“I think I’ll just wait down here.”
Lawrence helped Abigail and June onto their feet, and soon they were all moving down the second-floor corridor, testing with each step the fidelity of the floor. At last, Lawrence stopped at a closed door with a tarnished number 6 hanging upside down from a rusty nail.
On the door frame, Abigail’s headlamp fell upon some tiny scrawl that she wrote off as graffiti:
Something awful happening.
“Honey, can you get over the heaviness?” Emmett said.
“I know. It’s much colder in here. Room’s really sagging.”
“Why are certain places paranormal hot spots?” Abigail whispered.
“Usually because of intense, unresolved emotion,” Emmett said.
June had wandered over to an enormous wardrobe, which she opened. Inside hung petticoats and evening gowns, so eaten by time, they’d have evaporated in a gust of wind.
In a corner near the bed, Abigail gazed at a collection of porcelain figurines on top of a bureau, wondering how they’d remained untouched all these years. Beside them, facedown, lay a small frame, its picture gone.
Lawrence came up behind her, whispered, “Do
you
feel anything in here?”
“Loads of bullshit.”
They turned and watched June approach the bay window, where, remarkably, only one pane of glass had been busted out. A divan stood in utter disintegration in the alcove.
“She’d sit here,” June said quietly, as if to herself, “watching the world go by without her.” She crumpled down on the floor and rested her head between her knees. After awhile, she rose into child’s pose and bowed her head.
Abigail muttered “Jesus Christ” under her breath.
Emmett walked over to Abigail and Lawrence. “You really don’t know anything about the history of this room? Even the smallest detail might help.”
Lawrence shook his head. “I’m sorry. I know a lot about Abandon, but there are gaps.”
“Why don’t you two go ahead and turn off your lights. I’m gonna take some photos.” They all turned off their headlamps. The room went dark, Emmett just a shadow now, quiet save for the floor creaking beneath his footfalls, the clicking of his camera, and the deep rhythmic breaths June emitted as she knelt motionless before the bay window. Abigail’s eyes had just begun to adjust to the darkness when Emmett finished.
“I can’t wait to process this film,” he whispered. “I think I got something.”
“What kind of camera are you using?” Abigail asked. “I’ll need to get all the technical information right for my article.”
“This is a Minolta X-700. Only reason I use the older stuff is because it doesn’t have all the electronic hardware, so it doesn’t fool with the film. Infrared is so sensitive, you can’t even shoot it in most of the newer cameras.”
“Now, what exactly is infrared? It keys off hot and cold, right?”
“No, infrared is just outside the visible spectrum of light, so our eyes can’t see it.”
“She hears a church bell,” June whispered. “She watches them all move past, but she won’t leave.”
“Any special lens?”
“This is a twenty-eight–seventy. Sometimes, I’ll use a fifty-millimeter, depending on the conditions. Here, take a look.” He lifted the strap over his neck and handed the camera to Abigail. She brought the viewfinder up to her left eye.
“I can’t see anything.”
“Lawrence, turn on your flashlight.” Lawrence flicked it on. “Cool, it’s red,” she said.
“Yeah, that’s the number twenty-five filter.”
June got up suddenly and went back to the open wardrobe, began fingering one of the evening gowns, her face still radiating a blank, trancelike intensity. With June out of the way, Abigail took the opportunity to walk over to the bay window. From the vantage point, she could see down through old glass onto the street below.
She lifted Emmett’s camera and stared through the viewfinder.
“Lawrence, can you give me some light, please?”
He came over and shined his flashlight at the saloon across the street.
“You know, I want to apologize, Emmett,” Lawrence said. “For fucking with you last night about the spaceship and Abandon.”
“It’s all right.”
“No, I was being a dick. Let me share with you my theory on what happened.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Now, I’d have been laughed out of academia if I’d ever published this.”
Where the beam passed, the night glowed in deep reds, and Abigail suddenly knew she would write about this moment, what it felt like to gaze into the viewfinder, through the number twenty-five filter, searching for lost spirits in the sea of red. Maybe Emmett wasn’t actually looking for spirits when he snapped his photos, but she could embellish. Make his whole bizarre profession sound sexy and strange. She had the first inkling that this could be a phenomenal piece.
“But because of the way the town disappeared—everything abruptly abandoned, no record of what happened, no bones . . .”
Something stepped out of the saloon and ran up the street. She lowered the camera.
“I came to the conclusion that—”
“Lawrence, you see that?”
“What?”
Emmett came over. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Something just came out of the saloon and ran up the street.”
“Probably a deer,” said Scott, who’d been leaning against the wall by the door, quietly observing. “Tons of wildlife out—”
“It didn’t move like a deer.”
“How’d it move?”
“Like a man. You didn’t see it, Lawrence? It moved right through where you were shining the flashlight.”
“I didn’t see a thing.”
Abigail handed Emmett his camera and walked through the suite and out the open door, moving quickly down the hallway to where the staircase had previously merged with the second floor.
“Hey!” she called down into the dark lobby.
Jerrod had extinguished his headlamp. Abigail turned hers on, directing her light across the collapsed staircase, to the front desk, where he’d been standing several minutes ago.
“Did you see something out there? . . .” Her words trailed into silence.
She swept her beam of light at each archway.
“Jerrod?” she called out. A shadow moved down the corridor toward her. “Scott?”
“Yeah.”
“Jerrod left.”
Scott came and stood beside her, flipped on his headlamp, moved his light
across the lobby. “Jerrod!” he yelled, then cupped his mouth, shouted again, “Jerrod!
Where’d you go?
” Abigail heard the others emerge from the suite.
“What’s wrong?” June asked as they approached.
“Jerrod’s gone.”
The five remaining members of the party peered down into the lobby, listening.
Lawrence finally said, “You think something happened?”
Scott knelt down, unzipped his backpack, and dug out a climbing rope.
“I’ll see what’s going on.” Standing there, watching Scott unspool the rope, Abigail realized the soberness in his voice unnerved her. He jogged into the nearest suite, wrapped the rope three times around a heavy chest of drawers, and tied a knot. Then he came back out into the corridor and kicked the pile of rope. It dropped fifteen feet into the lobby. He got onto his knees, worked himself over the edge, his gloved hands gripping the rope. He slid carefully down onto the wrecked staircase.
“If you guys just want to wait up there, I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Hold up,” Lawrence said. “I’ll go with you.”
The older man didn’t make lowering himself look as effortless as the guide had, but he got down safely, and the two men disappeared out the front door of the hotel.
June, Emmett, and Abigail sat down in the corridor.
“I hope everything’s all right,” June said.
Emmett looked over at Abigail. “You got extra batteries for your light?”
“Back at camp. Why?”
“Yours is dying.”
Abigail pulled off her headlamp just in time to watch the bulb fade out.
“They’ve been out there ten minutes,” she whispered.
June and Emmett had turned off their headlamps to conserve the batteries, so all she could see of them were the white pairs of facing crescent moons that framed their irises.
From one of the rooms on the second floor came a sound like a shutter slamming against a window frame.
Emmett said, “Wind.”
They sat awhile longer in the corridor, listening to the shutter squeak on its rusted hinges and bang into the window. Finally, Emmett struggled to his feet.
“Okay. I’m gonna go down and see what’s going on here.”
“No,” Abigail said. “We’ll all go.”
June went first, Emmett and Abigail helping her to ease over the edge, her hands trembling as she cursed quietly to herself while her feet dangled above the lobby. She slid slowly down the rope and whispered “Thank you, God” as her feet touched the staircase.
When Emmett and Abigail had lowered themselves into the lobby, the three worked their way over the staircase debris, past the front desk, to the hotel entrance.
They moved through the threshold and out into the misty street.
The loose shutter had gone quiet, and Abandon stood in perfect silence save for the occasional creak of a teetering building bracing against the wind.
“Where’d you guys go?”
Emmett shouted. No answer but that of his own voice resounding in fading refrains through the canyon. He shouted again. Echoes again. Silence.