“I don’t care!” Violetta shrieked. “I have to do what she says—I have to do what they tell me!”
“They?” the padre asked, but no one answered him.
Mrs. Alvarez kept praying, Valeria kept crying, and the McCoy brothers were increasingly agitated by the whole thing—George even called for someone to shut her up.
“I tried,” said the nun. “It didn’t work.”
The Ranger held up his hands and spoke with the loud, low voice of authority. “We’re all at our wits end, but we’ve got to behave ourselves like civilized men! All of you, calm down, for Christ’s sake! Listen, can’t you hear it out there? The storm is kicking up again—Sister Eileen was right, and now we’re in for the second act!”
While he spoke, the padre looked more closely at Mrs. Alvarez and Valeria, and he saw that they were bleeding. The girl’s hand was badly torn, and so was her mother’s forearm. He thought at first that it was an injury from the beam, falling from the door—or some new trick played by the hotel—which injured
whoever it could, whenever it could, however it chose. But the injuries had the ragged, vicious look of a big dog’s bite…something with the jaws of a wolf. Something that didn’t just bite, but chomped and pulled, and tore flesh away in chunks.
The padre looked at the nun, still facing down the other women—daring them to challenge her again. They were cowed, or at least the mother was. Valeria was out of her mind with something…grief? Despair? Confusion?
He scanned the rest of the lobby, wondering if anyone there had any medical training, but the nun’s touch on his arm startled his attention back to her. “She’ll be fine,” she told him. “It looks worse than it is. Her mother will wrap it up, when she calms down.”
“If you’re certain…”
“Oh, I am. But she’s positive she heard Sarah calling out, so she opened the east wing fire door.”
“Has anyone else gone through it?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so. The Ranger watched it, while I watched everyone else. Go close it, if you would. The storm isn’t upon us yet—but it will be soon. I don’t know if the place can withstand another round or not; but if the fire doors fail us, it will all come down around our ears.”
“And we’ll all be swept out to sea, scattered like the seeds of a dandelion.”
She regarded him with curiosity. “Something’s given you an idea?”
“A bad idea,” he told her. “It was Vaughn, something he said out there. But I’ll go…I’ll take a look around the east wing. I’ll see if there’s anything left of Sarah to wander.”
“You think there might be?”
He did not mention that he’d seen Constance Fields, or that the whirlpool spiral on the lobby floor had spoken—to him, and to others. He almost asked if it’d spoken to the nun, too, but there wasn’t time. The breeze was no longer a breeze; it had become wind once more. Its strength was growing, and the distant thunder was less distant with every tick of the wall clock, closer and more forceful. It was rolling in on top of them.
All the padre said was, “Yes, there might be something left of Sarah. If so, I will shut her out. I won’t be long.”
The Ranger asked if he needed any help.
“Yes, I need someone to stay here, and make sure those doors stay shut, this time. David, George—put the beam back against them. I don’t think Vaughn will try to escape again,” he said of the now-unconscious man on the floor, lying in a puddle of his own vomit. “But someone else might.” His eyes narrowed toward the Alvarez mother and daughter—and then to Violetta, who had not joined them, but she still stared with awe and a touch of horror at the nun, who declined to address their fears.
“Go on, if you’re going,” Sister Eileen said.
So he went—the same admonition as before: “If I’m not back when the storm sets in again, you must shut the fire door and leave me out there.”
Down a short corridor that led to the east wing, the fire door lever had been drawn down—and the door was hanging open. Not widely open, but ajar by about a foot…that was as far as the girl had cranked it back, before the nun had caught up to her.
(Did Sister Eileen bite her? Had she left those awful injuries on the Alvarez women? Perhaps he did not want to know. Maybe he would not ask.)
He slipped inside, into the darkened hallway without a hint of light. He hadn’t brought a candle. He had a feeling he wouldn’t need it—not when he could still look, and still listen. Besides, if Sarah was there, he trusted her to come and find him, just like Constance Fields.
He closed his eyes. Exhaled. Opened them again.
“Sarah?” he called quietly. His voice bounced back and forth between the walls, the ceiling, and all the closed doors. Again he could see outlines and shapes, not quite glowing around the edges, but discernable all the same. Behind him, there was still a little faint light from the lobby, peeking around the edge of the fire barrier…but it wasn’t enough to help him.
Only God could help him now, or the Mother, if she chose to.
“Sarah, are you here?”