FREE CHAPTER: HOTEL EREBUS, A Horror/Action Thrill Ride Written by S.A. Reyes-Jones
ELIJAH CROWE is a troubled man in troubled times. In the wake of the end of World War 1, Elijah returns home to 1920s Chicago. One night, he awakens in a strange hotel not remembering how he got there. A blaring voice on a speaker box tells him that he’s in a room on the sixth floor of Hotel Erebus and if he wants to leave, he just has to find a way to get to the first floor and walk out. The problem is that Hotel Erebus is no typical place and the hotel is filled with occupants that don’t want him to leave. The mysterious voice offers him a suitcase that has two strange pistols in it that don’t need to be reloaded and don’t run out of ammo. They’re his only weapons and only means of protection for this night of terror.
Will Elijah survive and escape? Find out by reading Hotel Erebus!
CHAPTER ONE
Elijah Crowe awoke from a horrible sleep. His head was throbbing and his stubble-dusted jaw ached as if waking after being cold-cocked. His tongue slid around his mouth, tasting cheap alcohol on rotting breath. His hands smelled like he’d been handsy with a cheap hooker. The residue on his fingertips reeked of rosewater perfume. He hated rosewater. The smell of it repulsed him.
Patting himself down, he was in tattered slacks and work boots, a stained wife beater and not much else. He felt something soft and metallic sliding against his throat. Reaching up, he found a silver chain with a large crucifix pendant hanging from it. In his front-left pocket there was a wallet. Flipping through it briefly, he found his driver’s license—a few months expired as of February 1925—and a single photo of him and Mia Wolfe in the alley behind a local speakeasy. She was a brooding brunette of a dame. A hot property. A good time.
He flipped the photo over, and Mia had scribbled a note on it:
You’re the worst thing that ever happened to me.
-Mia
As his senses centered sharply, his eyes rolled about the room. A gaudy, shoddy motel with chipped plaster walls. The bed beneath creaked and groaned. The springs were sprung and several tears in the mattress revealed rusted metal coils. Blackened splotch marks on the walls made it look like someone took one of those flamespitters the GIs used in the big war to dab the place up nice and crispy. The carpet had suspicious stains soaked in.
Elijah had been in burnt out joints like this before. He called them ‘princess palaces’, havens for one-night stands where he’d get to be Prince Charming for a special princess, but he’d have to hurry because the magic died at midnight. He was one of Mia’s regulars—practically under contract with her, but he wasn’t an exclusive player. The two of them put miles on beds like this. Sometimes she wore a busted lip. It perplexed him since he was a gentlemanly crook and never the type to lay hands on a dame. Must’ve been one of her other clients. He wondered which one as he wanted to put a fist through the rat’s skull.
Elijah tried to put the pieces together and discern where he was and how he got there. His head rolled with muddied marbles. He was known to throw down drinks and heat up his heels on the dance floor if an eye-friendly dame was within arm’s reach, but he couldn’t recall the previous night’s events.
He scanned the rest of the room; it was a minimalist deal: four walls, a ceiling, a floor, all sparsely furnished. There was the bed upon which he currently laid, a simple bulb light fixed to the ceiling, a ratty felt chair in the corner and a lone, barren wood table slid against the other corner. Not a particularly inviting space. You came to these joints to do half-hour kinds of business. Discretion not luxury.
The only curious feature of the room was an inconspicuous fixture about the size and shape of a shoe box mounted high up on a wall adjacent to the only door in the room. There were no windows, either. Disarmingly bland. All he had were questions. His foggy mind had nothing to offer.
“Elijah Crowe!” a gravelly male voice blared over the beige box fitted to the wall near the ceiling. The sound popped, squeaked and grumbled through the speaker.
The confused man slowly rose from the bed, eyes tuned to the growling box.
“Wakey, wakey,” the voice muttered with a mirthful derision.
“Who are you? Where am I?” Elijah barked.
“I’m your Broker and you’re in my house. House rules are this: get to the ground floor and out the front door. Sounds simple, right? Well, there’s five floors between you and freedom. Problem is that this building isn’t empty. You’ve got a few hundred friends that have been here a loooong time. They’re hungry and it’s been awhile.”
Elijah’s brow sank in concern and he stood still, concentrating to better focus his hearing. Through the walls, he heard distant, indistinct clamor. It was an arrhythmic surging, sliding and thumping. Stitched within the slithery groans, he could’ve sworn he heard some kind of animalistic muttering. He couldn’t place it, but knew it wasn’t natural. His imagination failed to visualize what could be on the other side of the wall.
“What the fuck is that?” he whispered.
“The other pieces of the board, Mr. Crowe.”
The Broker’s voice pestered him as a niggling pebble in a shoe. “Don’t know what greases you, sir, but I ain’t playin’ your game.”
Elijah popped off of the bed and ran to the door, grabbing the knob. The steel knob boiled in his grip, causing him to pull his hand away and wince as he staggered back.
“I told you, Mr. Crowe. You will do as you’re told. Collect your belongings in the suitcase and then you may proceed,” the unseen Broker commanded.
Elijah clutched his clawed hand which still reeled from the burn.
“What the fuck is this?!” Crowe shouted in inconsolable rage, veins pulsing against the corded muscles in his neck.
For the moment, he had no other recourse but to obey the formless voice in the speaker. He turned away and made towards the suitcase which sat innocently atop the ratty chair.
“The suitcase. Open it,” the Broker commanded.
The tattered man flipped open the case and inside sat two modified M1911 .45 longslide pistols. They were unlike anything he’d seen before. Their barrels were pointed inward, facing each other as if placed for effect. The pistol on the left was pure white with a polished ivory handle and a slide which was furnished with a swooping flourish which started at the front and glided in a wind-swept pattern back to angel wings engraved on either side of the rear of the slide. The pistol on the right was constructed of burnished silver with a molded marble handle and a cherubic face engraved into the rear of the slide.
A momentary lapse in focus overcame Elijah as he fawned over the implements of war. Elijah was a simple man in simple times, but these pistols seemed the product of divine engineering. He knew that his hands were unworthy to wield them. He’d leveled Tommy guns into two-bit thieves, pickpockets and button men and split them in half. He’d fed sidewalks with the blood of mouthy street toughs who thought they were above the law of the wild. He lobbed grenades at Krauts during the War. He’d fired every kind of firearm a civilian could get their hands on and many a common Joe had never heard of, but he’d never seen anything like the angelic hand cannons beaming up at him from that shabby suitcase.
The Broker’s snarling, mocking voice shattered the transitory serenity. “Your two best friends. Michael and Gabriel. Better to have two angels in your hand than a devil on your shoulder, hmm?” the Broker jabbed.
“Michael and Gabriel?” Elijah wondered aloud.
“The names should be familiar. Like old friends, eh, choir boy?”
The sharp words needled Elijah. “What d’you think you know about me, huh?”
“Enough. Take care of your new friends. They’ll serve you well. Light on the trigger pull and you’ll notice there’s no magazines. There’s no magazines because they don’t fire bullets and they never run out of ammo. Pull the trigger to your heart’s content. Inflict maximum violence.”
Elijah was beyond discombobulation and fumed at the needlessness of it all. “What is this?! Let me out of here!”
“I didn’t bring you here, Mr. Crowe. You brought yourself here. You’re under my roof now and under my rules. You will play by them.”
“This a game to you?!”
“It is. And with all of your barking, some of the other players know where you are. You might want to check the door. Don’t forget to bring the heat.”
Elijah slowed his anger and closed his eyes momentarily to compose himself. “I get to the ground floor and I’m free?”
“It’s that simple. May Lady Luck shine on you.”
Looking back into the suitcase, there was a leather double shoulder holster. He set the pistols back into the case, hastily drew out the harness and slung it on, adjusting the shoulder straps before fastening the tie-downs to his trousers around the belt line. Snatching up the pistols, a slight calm radiated through him, feeling the latent power present in their weightiness. He carefully made for the door, unsure of what was on the other side.
The slithering groans outside the door strangely faded into silence just as he planned to enter the fray. Elijah tucked Michael in his armpit and reached apprehensively towards the door knob again, summoning the courage to finally grab it. It wasn’t hot this time, and when he turned it, the door slowly creaked opened.
Elijah drew both pistols up, peeking out. There was a corridor running perpendicular to his room. It was eerily dark at both ends of the hallway. The building seemed to creak and yawn, as if it were breathing. Slipping into the hall, the door slammed shut behind him. No turning back now. He slid with his back against the wall as he stalked forward with his pistols hiked up and ready to sing at the first sign of trouble.
The persistent ambient noise daunted him, but just ahead he noticed the outline of an elevator door. Rushing towards it, he found the elevator to be seated in a bronze frame, decorated with intricate Art Deco engravings and relief patterns consisting of swirling floral and hard, geometric shapes. It resembled a bank vault more than an elevator, but he didn’t judge it further. The heavy doors divided open and he piled in. As he did, he noticed the elevator operator and flinched, reflexively drawing his M1911s and aiming them into the servant’s chest. The operator was daintily dressed in royal-red livery and a service cap tilted marginally on his head. Despite his relatively dapper gear, the man himself looked depleted; his skin was deflated, creased and waxy and his eyes were a lifeless gray. Elijah couldn’t place the man’s age; he looked both young and old, decoupled from time.
Despite the operator’s harmless vibe, Elijah didn’t trust him and kept his new friends leveled at him as he nested in the corner of the elevator car.
“Take ‘er down, friend,” Elijah skittishly commanded.
“I’m sorry, sir, but this elevator only goes up.”
Elijah was momentarily boggled. “What kind of an elevator only goes up?”
“House rules. I’m just the operator.”
Elijah recognized the man’s strange appearance and stiff, lethargic movements and realized he had little leverage. Whoever he was, he was bound to the rules of this strange prison.
“What is this place? Where are we?” Elijah pressed curiously.
“The Hotel Erebus, sir.”
“How long have you been here?”
“I’ve always been here,” the operator droned. “I’ll always be here.”
The listless manner in which the elevator operator delivered his response vexed Elijah. He looked like he’d crawled out of the grave and reported for duty.
Shaking off the disillusionment, Elijah peeked out of the car and glared down the long hallway which tapered into darkness. Raucous movement was shifting within it. He quickly distinguished numerous silhouetted forms moving intelligently within the well of shadows. A jerky, thudding cacophony resounded as limbs clattered against the walls and floor. Whatever the source, Elijah didn’t want the chance to introduce himself.
“Close the door. Close the door!” Elijah demanded.
As soon as the heavy bronze slabs slid shut, the swarming racket on the other side became undeniable. Disassociated forces clattered against the door and it would be impossible to head back whence he came.
“What the hell is that?”
“We’re not the only ones in the hotel, Mr. Crowe,” the operator deadpanned.
No time to delve into what that meant. The operator—like everything else in the hotel—wasn’t hospitable nor accommodating.
“How many floors in this building?” Elijah asked hurriedly.
“Seven.”
“Okay, and we’re on the sixth floor, right? That’s what the man on the speaker said.”
“The Broker.”
“Yeah, the Broker. So, we’re one floor away from the roof. I can get on the roof and call for help.”
The operator’s face didn’t so much as form a crease in response. The body was present but there was nothing there to generate even false interest.
The scratching and clawing on the door persisted into a shrill ambiance as Elijah looked up and noticed a panel in the ceiling of the elevator car. Only one way out: up. He holstered his friends and climbed up to dislodge the panel, shoving it aside and climbing up through it.
When standing atop the elevator, he realized he was in the elevator shaft whose walls were covered in soot and grease with cabling running up and along the walls. There was only marginal illumination in the claustrophobic steel shaft and he had to squint and focus to place structural details. As he scanned upward, he finally noticed what looked like a service area intended for the construction and repairmen that would work the innards of the place. There was a handy ladder bolted to a recess in a wall that led up to a gangway that he hoped offered roof access.
Elijah quickly scrambled up the ladder to the gangway. Upon putting his weight on it, it creaked but was strong enough to support him. At the end of the gangway was a panel whose utility he couldn’t place. Scurrying over, he noticed that it was a service access panel with a small handle. He excitedly turned it and pushed the panel open. A gust of chilly night air washed across his face which provided beautiful relief.
Upon crawling through the access, he found himself on the roof. Gravel crunched under his knees and feet until he was able to stand and sweep his vision to assess his surroundings. Sweet night. Elijah loved the dark and all that came with it. The distinct smell of moist air tinged with steam piling out of manholes. Even the stench of trash offered an odd safety. In the city he was home. His eyes leveled forward at the multi-tiered Chicago skyline splayed before him. Pillars of smoke and soot wafted up, seasoning the stone, steel and glass verticals with a hazy, granular texture. Wherever he was, the hotel was near the waterfront. He knew the area, but there’s no way he could’ve missed a seven-story stack in this part of town. In his mind, he had a moment of clarity and confidence knowing where he now was in the grand state of things. The mental gears began to spin and whir.
Get out of this fucking prison.
“Very astute,” the Broker’s disembodied voice resonated.
Elijah looked around and noticed a small stair enclosure behind him with a speaker box fitted near the top of it beside its lone door. The Broker had eyes everywhere.
“Only seven floors down. Maybe you can jump and—by some miracle—survive the fall?” the Broker chuckled derisively.
“Fuck you,” Elijah said as he jogged over to the edge.
“Don’t fall. The game’s just started.”
Elijah sneered as he peeked over the edge and down to street level. Traffic around the block was sparse, but he could see several blocks away and the automobile traffic shuffling healthily. He looked near the base of the building and noticed someone walking up the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Finally, a free soul.
“Hey!” Elijah yelled, his booming voice carrying downward. “You there!”
The sidewalker kept walking as if he heard nothing.
Irritated, Elijah inhaled deeply before bellowing out with all of his strength. “Buddy! Hey, you!”
But the man kept walking. Elijah slapped the lip of the roof.
“Dammit,” Elijah muttered low.
The building was near the waterfront where traffic density was thin. The man should’ve been able to hear him. Maybe he was hard of hearing? Maybe he didn’t give enough of a shit to respond.
When his hope began to ebb, he looked back down and noticed a tubular escape chute built into the exterior of a section of the seventh floor. There was no way to get to it from the roof. Hotel Erebus apparently had no fire escapes. To confirm his realization, he looked down the roof on two sides and didn’t see a single scaffold leading safely to the ground. That one escape chute was the only one.
“Are you hosting a party, Mr. Crowe?” the Broker asked ominously.
Crowe squinted with suspicion. “No, why?”
“I thought you might be having a rooftop party. You’ve got visitors incoming.”
Elijah knew nothing about the Broker aside from that accursed voice, but he knew that the voice seemed to love to impart uncomfortable truths. He ran back towards the edge of the roof and peered over carefully.
What he saw forced a drawn breath. Indistinct, humanoid forms were scaling up the side of the building towards him. He couldn’t make out the shapes of what they were, but he saw what looked like beady, cherry-red eyes set in gelatinous, obsidian flesh. There were dozens of the things lurching up towards him.
The Broker could be heard laughing quietly through the speaker box. Elijah pulled away from the edge and ran over to the stair enclosure, kicking the door in and charging down the stairs. He thought of nothing but descending away from the roof and those things. Even though he only scaled down a single flight of stairs, when he reached the door at the bottom of the well, the number ‘6’ was painted on the door.
‘Where was the seventh floor?’ he thought, but he didn’t have time to tarry.
Moving through the door back onto the sixth floor, he found himself in a nondescript hallway. The carpet was dyed in dull wine adorned with generic floral patterns. The plastered beige walls featured Art Deco flourishes in the baseboards and crown moldings.
There were several doors lining the corridor. It was a hotel, after all. He began to wonder about the mechanics of the place. Was he the only one being harassed? He ran up to one of the doors and knocked on it. The worst that could happen is that he might interrupt a couple mid-coitus or wake a drunk out of a sound sleep. It was worth the risk.
He knocked again. Nothing.
“Hey! You in there! Open up!” he exclaimed. Then, he listened quietly for any ruckus on the other side of the door.
“Shy neighbors aren’t much fun, are they, Mr. Crowe?” the Broker asked through a speaker box a bit further down the hallway.
Elijah ignored the attempt to vex and opted to pound his fist into the door. Nothing. He ran over to a door on the opposite side of the corridor and banged on it.
“Building’s on fire! Open up! Life or death situation, buddy! You in there?” he yelled desperately, but there was no response.
“My house, my rules. Carry on, good sir. Find your way down.”
Elijah ground his teeth, seething through the skin. “When I find you…”
The Broker chuckled. “That’s the last thing you want.”
Composing himself against the obvious needling, he noticed a painting hanging on the wall beside the door. It was the kind of art intended to fill a space and not elicit any specific emotions. A generic landscape. Trees, a blue sky and a brilliant sun. A horrible suggestion entered his mind. He closed his eyes and turned his head away from the painting. Opening his eyes and looking back at it, he was shocked. The daytime landscape had flipped nocturnal. The sun was replaced by a moon.
Elijah staggered away—overcome in incredulity—and ran down the hall until he came upon another door. This time, rather than knock, he opted to turn the knob. It wasn’t hot like the first time and the door opened. Beyond the door was a simple room like the one he awoke in with a door directly across from him. His nerves danced on edge and sweat pooled in cold beads on his forehead as he dashed across the room seeking the other door knob. As he emerged through the doorframe, he found himself in another corridor indistinguishable from the one he’d just left.
“What is this?” Elijah asked breathlessly, eyes glazed over.
“I told you, there’s only one way out: down,” the Broker’s voice resonated through another speaker box fitted in the crown molding in the wall directly across from Elijah.
On the verge of panic, he scrambled back the way he came and when he went through the open door, hoping to find the painting with the nighttime landscape, he discovered it was no longer there and neither was the door beside it. In fact, the corridor ended and emptied into another that ran perpendicular. The entire floor-plan had changed in mere moments. His brain instinctively tried to calculate with a linear logic to bring order to the madness that surrounded him, but he was left completely perplexed.
Pondering the endless labyrinthine tomb he’d found himself in, a low sound perpetuated in the distance. Almost imperceptible at first, the sound gained in volume and intensity; it resembled a heavy sack being dragged across the floor. He loosely pinpointed its origin and wandered out of the room into the hallway to pursue it. Running up to the edge of the corridor, he peeked around the corner.
The elongated, intersecting hallway seemed to stretch far beyond the physical limits of such a building, but something else perplexed Elijah. Something was moving rapidly down the corridor and heading towards him. At first it looked like a rushing tidal wave that encompassed the dimensions of the hallway, but it was an unnatural, lush red. A wall of flesh-colored mass was careening rapidly down the entirety of the corridor, smothering the wall sconces lining the plaster walls in sections and blotting out their light. Within seconds, Elijah was able to discern details on the horrifying thing. The face of this flesh wall flexed large, pearl-colored fangs which sprouted forward and wreathed a textured, slimy maw which spewed translucent saliva.
The realization of what he was watching surged down his back like a lightning bolt. The hairs on the back of his neck straightened and he stumbled from the wall. Sensing that this rushing mass of flesh wasn’t slowing down, he spun around to return through the door he’d just walked through, but it wasn’t there. Where the door was, a framed painting of a flower had replaced it. The rumble of the approaching flesh reached a fever pitch, shaking the building around him. It shook with some ferocity that the walls vibrated and powdered plaster shook free as Elijah was thrown to the ground. He finally pulled his pistols from their holsters and aimed them towards the end of the hallway, waiting for hell to arrive. The flesh wall suddenly hurtled past, revealing itself to be more like a train car made entirely of skinless sinew, an elongated, worm-like creature that undulated and pulsed, moving with an unstoppable fervor.
Seeing it sweep by, seemingly unaware of his presence, gave Elijah a moment to seek refuge. He popped to his feet and charged down the hall behind him. As he neared the end of the corridor, the flesh train rumbled past through that intersecting corridor. He didn’t know if it was circling him like a shark or slithering about randomly. Both possibilities terrified him.
He opted to round the corner, going in the opposite direction the creature had just hurtled through. He found that several doors lined both sides of this particular corridor. Part of him felt a spate of confidence that he’d evaded the monster; a smirk crept onto his lips thinking he was figuring out the madhouse. The hallway through which he ran seemed to stretch on forever like the others.
Elijah peeked behind him to ensure the fanged maw of the creature hadn’t circled back, but it was when he turned forward again that the view tightened his heart...
It was straight ahead!
The hungry train of insatiable flesh was coming again. It had circled around to retread its recent route. Looking to the closest door on his right, he curved towards it and went to turn its knob, but the door wouldn’t open. He swung a heavy kick into it but no luck. Seeing the speeding train of death bearing down towards him, he gave a final, powerful kick that threw the door inward, but it emptied into a void! There was no time to think; Elijah leapt, snatching at the top of the door and hanging from it as the snapping worm roared past the open doorframe. Elijah looked down, realizing the door had opened to the outside of the building and there was a sixty-foot-odd drop to the street below. Impossible, but “impossible” was being redefined on a moment-by-moment basis now. He stretched his foot to touch the edge of the floor and pulled himself back inside.
Not wanting to risk sprinting down this particular hallway, he tried for the closest door. Luckily the knob turned and he pushed it open. Another plastered passageway identical to the others revealed itself. This time, however, a descending stairway was just across the way, a few long paces away. But as he took a step towards it, he noticed that accursed bore-worm rushing in from the right. With all the courage he could muster, he tore off for the stairwell, leaping in the last stride, tumbling into the stairwell as the beast barreled ahead behind the fallen Elijah.
Elijah heard it rumble away through the hotel, the sound lessening as it moved further away. He loosened up and rested his head against one of the stairs, closing his eyes and breathing deeply.
“Hmm, congratulations, Mr. Crowe,” the Broker’s voice piped in through a speaker box in the stairwell. “The fifth floor has some surprises of its own. The game persists. Are you game?”
Elijah sat up and stood, yanking his weapons from their holsters as he cautiously descended the stairs. “Yeah.”
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SARJ OUT
