Clare had sensed the presence the second she had stepped into the hotel.
Every building has its ghosts and demons, especially hotels. How many people had lived there, died there? She had been trained since she was a child to recognize these beings, to feel them, to know them, to track them. Her whole life she had been forced to maintain a connection with the other side, the dead and demonic.
Clare led the way off the rickety old elevator, down the dark, crumbling hallway. The north wing of the hotel was under construction. Had been for a very long time.
She had done her research before coming to the conference, and this particular wing had a very "fun" history. A man slaughtered his entire family, a bachelor party that ended in mass murder, a handful of suicides and one arsonist.
That arsonist was the reason this wing was in the shape it was in. He apparently had gone stark raving mad and had attempted, and almost succeeded, in taking the whole place down with him.
According to the reports Clare had read, the man's last words were, "she made me do it." The question was, who was she?
"Watch your step. The floor has been mostly finished, but there are still some weak spots." Clare moved smoothly over the boards, side stepping the potential threats with ease.
Max was having a considerably harder time. His drunk feet were failing him, and he nearly fell through the floor several times. "I'll give you this. You know how to pick a place with atmosphere."
Clare shook her head. "That's all you think it is, don't you? An aesthetic."
"It makes for good TV. I know that much." He sped up his pace so that he was walking side by side with Clare. "Throw in a night vision camera, maybe some screwy audio, and you have a ratings grabber."
Clare stopped, her eyes trying to focus on the darkness in front of them.
Most of the hallway was illuminated by the silver moonlight that streamed in through the glassless window panes, but the stretch of hallway in front of her was pitch black. No light seemed to be able to penetrate it.
"It's waiting for us." Her voice was soft, a smile on her lips.
"What?" Max squinched his eyes, trying to make out something, anything, in the darkness. Clare wasn't sure how, but it seemed that Max was getting drunker.
"You know, I had another reason for bringing you along with me." Clare glanced over at Max, smiling.
"Why... what reason was that?" All the color seemed to drain from his face.
"I needed bate." She gave him a hard pat on the shoulder.
As if on cue a tentacle, black as the inky darkness that it came from, whipped out at them. It wrapped itself around Max's waist, and with a high pitched yelp he was pulled into the darkness.
Clare stretched her arms over her head, shook out the bit of alcohol that was trying to cloud her brain, and smiled.
"Here comes the fun part." She laughed and dove head first into battle.
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