Elijah awakened to the pungent smell of scorched flesh tickling his nostrils. It wasn’t his; it was the brutalized corpse of the Streeter that took the dive through the skyline. The fall through the floor wasn’t a joy ride. Elijah’s body ached. He rode that crumpled cruiser all the way down and it didn’t offer much support upon impact. Looking up, he noticed there was no hole present in the roof that they’d fallen through. There should’ve been. The hotel offered no explanations. His first thought was Mick. Mick! The rotting cur took several thudding shots from the ivory and marble 45s which threw him down into a heap of bloody ruin. No smarmy retort. Just silence.

  Banged up but in one piece, Elijah rolled onto his belly and pushed to his feet. In the chaos of the fall, he’d dropped the angels, but they were only a few paces from the crash. He snatched up the shooters and holstered them as he curved around the wrecked cruiser to find the scorched chunks of the skyline man and the remains of Mick. The spearhead of the Market Street Boys lay splayed, silent and mangled; his left arm was gone below the elbow and gaping holes in his shoulder and side left him a cold, dead mess.

  Looking around, Elijah recognized the anatomy of the level. He’d fallen through the floor and landed in a foyer. Art Deco. High ceilings. The hallways sported the same crown moldings and baseboards as the sixth floor. The dreary emptiness of the patchy, eggshell-colored walls was a native feature of the grounds. However, unlike the previous floor, this level wasn’t lightless nor its walls decayed and porous. Functional wall sconces dotted the corridors which shrank into the distance. The floor appeared to be largely abandoned but structurally sound. He wondered what secrets the space concealed. The hotel wasn’t to be trusted.

  “Gotta be the fourth floor,” he muttered to himself.

  “It is,” the Broker’s voice manifested suddenly. Elijah’s head swiveled around, desperate to place the source. Within moments, he located a speaker box mounted high on a nearby wall. “Did your little reunion not go to plan?”

  “No,” he said. “But two floors down and still kickin’.”

  “I noticed. The game wears on you but you persist.”

  “I persist.”

  The Broker went silent. As Elijah stood amid the relative serenity, he detected a barely perceptible warbling in the distance. It was inviting, melodic, eerily comforting. His instincts tempted him to wake Michael and Gabriel from their slumber. He drew them free, holding them at his sides as he crept along to find the source of the music.

  Walking softly and avoiding the scattered piles of plaster that chipped off of the walls, Elijah noticed the music getting louder and echoing dully through the hallway. It sounded like a big band playing a foxtrot ballad localized to a concentrated area nearby. A hall large enough to accommodate a band didn’t appear nearby, but the anomalous properties of the hotel hadn’t been lost on him. The way the cheery, upbeat song reverberated through the empty halls filled him with a lingering disquiet. The encroaching heaviness of the hostility of being in enemy territory began to weigh on him. The further along he moved, the louder and clearer the male vocalist’s voice became, so much so that the lyrics of the song could be discerned. It sounded like a song from the previous generation, one that fit Hotel Erebus properly.

  The source of the music was close, very close. Elijah was cautiously sidling down the hallway, his back against the wall as he neared a doorway whose frame presented an ornate, molded floral design. He moved up to the edge, knowing that the music was just around the corner. As he peeked in, he found it to be a large room, one that might be used for celebrations or small exhibitions. On the floor was a Victrola gramophone. A record—whose disc was slightly warped—spun slowly under the player’s needle. A projector sat on a small table, blasting light onto a screen hung up on a low stage on the far side of the room. Elijah saw the light dancing on the screen and became entranced, lowering the angels and inching towards it.

  As Elijah watched the moving picture playing on the screen, he realized that it showed another section of the hotel. The same interior design language was there. He wondered what devilry was unfolding before him. The movie showed nothing but the same empty hallways that had haunted him since he awoke into this living nightmare. A figure finally wandered into the scene as Elijah’s steely gaze bore onto the screen. The figure wasn’t immediately identifiable as they were running away from whatever device was recording them. It became apparent that it was a dark-haired female wearing a filmy sundress. He was entranced by the way she moved. She was thin and graceful and moved a balletic fluidity. When the focal point switched to another angle, the woman was more visible as she was moving towards the recorder. Elijah’s face twisted in horror.

  It was Mia! Mia, his jaded paramour, wore a panicked mask. She was trapped in the accursed tower with him. He knew nothing more than that. The questions tortured him. It was when Elijah was at his lowest, seeing her gilded softness scurrying about on the screen, that he heard a phone ring. The ear-splitting sound reverberated threateningly. Of all the sounds he expected in the hotel, a ringing phone wasn’t one of them. It was coming from the hallway just outside. He scurried up to the doorway and peeked around the corner, leaving nothing to chance.

  There, in the middle of the hallway, was a phone booth. It wasn’t there when he walked into the projector room. He’d have walked past it. It had manifested seemingly out of thin air. The base of the phone booth was wreathed in detritus. It wasn’t rigged up or connected to anything and defied any sense of technical logic. He winced, silently boggled as he approached it. He knew it had to be another of the Broker’s machinations but there was no value in challenging it. He had to face it. It continued to ring incessantly, luring him in.

  Delicately opening the booth’s sliding door, he reached for the receiver and picked it up. He held it aloft for a moment—worried at what he might hear—before finally bringing it to his ear.

  “Elijah?” he heard Mia whimper desperately.

  A wave of dread washed over him. “Mia?! Where are you? Are you alright?!”

  “Elijah! Help me, please!” she begged before the line went dead. He looked at the receiver with hopeless eyes before a laugh emanated from it. It was the Broker’s shrill cackle. Rage boiled under Elijah’s skin as he brought the receiver back to his ear, tolerating that horrible laugh. “What are you doing with Mia? Where is she?!”

  If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  The Broker’s laugh slowed. “See for yourself. Follow the chattel.”

  The line went dead for good. Elijah looked through the booth’s glass pane and saw a crowd of people slowly filing into the corridor from down the way. He scrambled out of the phone booth and ran back to inside the doorway of the projection room.

  Elijah peeked down the hall and watched dozens of rotting shamblers walking towards him. What stood out is that they weren’t Streeters or gnarled, twisted damned. They were of the same physiognomy as the other denizens of the hotel—deflated and wrinkled features with milky, glazed eyes—but they were dressed in formal wear; the men in slacks, dress shoes, dress shirts, blazers and fedoras; the women were in frilly dresses and flower pot hats. They moved in a slow, plodding gait with unblinking eyes trained forward towards an unknown destination. Rather than sic the 45s on the well-dressed throngs, Elijah merely watched as they walked past him with a sedate indifference. After several dozen of them filed past, he followed from a safe distance.

  The shuffling, well-dressed throngs flowed down the hallway and made a left-hand turn. Elijah followed and saw that they were congregating into a large ball room. The expansive hall was crowned with a high ceiling whose recessed dome was comprised of frosted glass. An elevated stage area commanded attention at the far end of the hall. To the right near the hall entrance was a bar of considerable stock; a long, curved counter-top was hugged by a dozen stools with the entire installation manned dutifully by a uniformed bartender.

  The damned entered, moving with a sleepy, unnerving economy, taking seats at one of the dozens of tables that furnished the hall. Elijah watched with concerned interest, wandering towards the bar.

  “Having a drink, sir?” the bartender asked with that signature baritone grumble.

  It was clear that this lot wasn’t immediately aggressive. They saw him as one of their own, or their autonomy was limited by the hotel’s “rules”. Aside from the elevator operator, the bartender was the first in this pit to exude any kind of social normalcy. Elijah felt best to play along.

  “Bourbon,” Elijah uttered dryly.

  The bartender nodded. “Of course.” He knelt down to grab for a bottle and a glass. Returning to the counter, he laid out the bottle and uncorked it, smoothly pouring the drink halfway up the glass.

  Elijah had Mia in mind and knew the Broker’s business. He wouldn’t have been sent to the ballroom otherwise.

  “Who’s the talent tonight?”

  The bartender settled himself, stretched arms resting on the bar. “Miss Mia, of course, sir.”

  Elijah’s brow furrowed. “Miss Mia?”

  “Yes, sir. She’s quite the sensation. The belle of the ball, so to speak.”

  “And she’s going to perform tonight?”

  “Yes, sir. In fact, she’s about to come on the stage,” the bartender said matter-of-factly.

  The ballroom lights dimmed while the stage lights bloomed, illuminating the cobalt blue curtains in a lush, shimmering effect. The bartender took several steps towards the stage, clasping his hands behind his back and eyeing the curtains, preparing to enjoy the performance.

  The curtains finally parted and there was Mia. She was clearly uncomfortable and under duress. She winced under the glow of the spotlights which were manned by unseen staff on a catwalk at the rear of the ballroom. Awkwardly stepping forward, she neared the microphone stand that awaited. The stiff crowd didn’t respond to her debut; they sat there, eerily stone-faced.

  As Mia took up the microphone, feedback grumbled and reverberated through the hall. She peered out, trying to compose herself, until she finally locked eyes on Elijah. She audibly gasped. He raised a flat palm to pacify her, encouraging her not to break character and play along to the crowd. Without a word exchanged, she knew what Elijah wanted her to do and nodded weakly as confirmation. Mia cleared her throat again and attempted to sing an improvisational melody to appease the crowd and play the Broker’s game.

  Elijah noted the bartender’s attentions were fully focused on the stage, so he carefully stepped behind the counter and drew two large bottles off of the back bar before slipping out. His eyes rolled about the hall and he noticed that each of the tables at which the ghouls sat had a large candle as its centerpiece, filling the space with a warm, amber glow. He knelt down and quietly uncorked the bottles, palming one in each hand and clamping a thumb over the lip.

  After strategizing for a moment, Elijah began to slowly walk among the crowd as Mia sang. She never was one to belt out a song. Her voice wasn’t one of her talents. She knew this. Mia eyed him ferociously, desperate for reassurance. He returned eye contact and nodded in such a way to convey a particular message that only she would understand.

  Keep them watching. Dazzle them. That’s what he said without saying a word. Rather than remain stiffly clutching the microphone and singing off-key, she began to undulate in place. The way her dress hugged her petite curves as she shifted her hips to and fro is one of the things that mesmerized Elijah the first time they met. She was on stage at a ratty dive bar on the North Side. It was how she reeled in clients for backstage work. That’s where the real money was.

  As she began to dance, Elijah paced in a steady, winding path around groupings of tables, pouring slow streams of liquor onto the tile floor.

  Mia saw what Elijah was doing and her confidence slowly rose. Her dancing became more lively and energetic; she even smirked flirtatiously into the crowd, not that the man-shaped husks in the crowd had the agency to be seduced by her charms. Still, she danced.

  Elijah had emptied the bottles and glanced down at his handiwork, seeing the streams of flammable liquor intertwined beneath the unknowing throngs of zombified dead. Marching up to the center row towards the stage, he was preparing to summon a burst of courage to enact his plan. He noticed a large metal drink cart at the base of the stage.

  Mia was gyrating her heart out when pounding, angry footfalls resounded right beyond the entrance into the ballroom. Elijah spun around in time to see half a dozen Market Street Boys file into the hall with the beaten and battered Mick at the forefront. The gaping wounds from earlier hadn’t healed and Mick looked a terrible sight, but the fire burning behind his eyes spoke volumes.

  “Nice night for a show, huh?” Mick remarked, prompting Elijah to scramble up on stage, putting a barrier between her and the undead.

  “You trust me?” he asked Mia as he yanked the long irons from their holsters.

  Mia’s jaw bobbed incredulously as she struggled to answer. The Market Streeters were about to charge forward when Mick threw his arms out to the side to block them and sniffed at the air.

  “You smell that?” Mick asked, looking for the source of the wafting spirits. He saw that the floor was drizzled in drink. It took but a moment for his undead neurons to flash. The realization slapped him in the face.

  “Elijah?” Mia asked worriedly.

  Elijah sniggered as he leveled the angels at a centerpiece candle in the front row and made the triggers dance. Michael and Gabriel thundered bursts of righteous anger. The salvo exploded the candle and showered the ground in tears of fire.