Creepers

The doors suddenly flew open. With a crash, Rick hurtled back, slamming into Balenger, knocking him down. Several things cracked and snapped, cascading. Cora screamed. Large objects banged around them, burying Balenger.

In darkness, he felt something blunt and hard jabbing into his chest and stomach. A mushy, fetid substance weighed against his face. Heart racing, he struggled to free himself. He heard Rick cursing. He heard wood breaking, as if it were being thrown against a wall. Abruptly, he saw the light from headlamps and pushed something heavy with rotting fabric off him.

"Rick! Are you all right?" Cora screamed.

Coughing, struggling to his feet, Balenger saw Cora yank at a tangle of large objects, hauling them off Rick.

Vi

"No." Balenger felt nauseous from the odor of what had pressed on his face. He tried to wipe away the smell. "But what-"

"Rick?" Cora pulled him up.

"I'm okay. I just-"

"What fell on us?" Balenger demanded.

"Furniture," Conklin said.

"Furniture?"

"Broken tables and chairs. Sections of sofas."

An animal made a terrible screeching sound. Balenger saw a rat scurry from a hole in a decaying sofa. A second rat streaked after it. A third. Balenger's stomach thrust bile to his mouth.

"Somehow, all kinds of banged-up, shattered furniture got piled against that door," Conklin said. "When Rick opened it, the movement was enough to dislodge everything."

Balenger rubbed his aching chest where what he now realized was a table leg had jammed into him. Adrenaline shot through him. "But how did the furniture get broken? How did it get thrown there?"

"Maybe a crew started to do some renovating and was told to quit," Conklin suggested. "These old buildings have all kinds of puzzles. In that abandoned department store in Buffalo, we found a half-dozen fully dressed ma

"That was somebody's idea of a practical joke." Balenger sca

"Whatever it is," Vi

Balenger aimed his headlamp at it.

"The wood's old and dirty. If this were a fresh break, the inside of the leg would be clean."

Conklin smiled. "You get an A, also."

Rick picked up his knife. "Well, at least we got the doors open."

Balenger noted Cora's relief that Rick wasn't injured. But he also noted the way Vi

The young man subdued his emotions and raised his camera. Its flash made an animal scamper.

The open doors beckoned. Past the murky outlines of more broken furniture, Balenger and the others paused in astonishment.

"Now this is what makes the effort worthwhile," Rick said.

12

They stood in the shadows of a vast lobby. The ceiling was so high that their lights barely reached it. The floor was grimy marble. At several pillars, there were tangles of battered furniture: cracked chairs, tables, and sofas, once-plush upholstery moldering.

"A clean-up crew that was told to stop is still the logical explanation," Conklin said.

Some pillars were surrounded by rotting velvet divans. Elaborate crystal chandeliers drooped. Balenger kept a distance, concerned that they would fall.

Vi

"How did that get in here?" Vi

A cricket screeched.

Rick coughed. "Welcome to Wild Kingdom."

"Or Miss Havisham's memorial chamber in Great Expectations. Stay away from animal nests," Conklin warned.

"Believe me, I intend to," Balenger said.

"What I'm concerned about is the urine smell."

Now Balenger recognized the odor. Again he wiped his face, trying to lose the feeling that something mushy and fetid still pressed against his mouth.

"If you get too strong a whiff of the urine, there's a risk of hantavirus." Balenger knew the professor referred to a recently identified flu-like virus sometimes found in rodents' nests. Harmless to its animal hosts, the disease was potentially fatal to humans. "Not that you need to be paranoid about it. From time to time, cases turn up in the American West, but it's rare around here."

"That certainly relieves my mind."

Conklin chuckled. "Perhaps I should change the subject and talk about the lobby. As I mentioned, Morgan Carlisle took pains to update the infrastructure of the hotel." The professor's voice sounded hollow in the huge area. "But he never changed the design of the interior. Apart from the damage, this is the way the lobby appeared when it was first constructed in 1901. Periodically, the furniture wore out and needed to be replaced, of course. But the look of it never varied."

"Schizoid," Rick said. "The exterior anticipates art deco of the 1920s. But the furnishings are turn of the century. Victorian."

"Queen Victoria died in 1901 as the Paragon was being built," the professor explained. "Although Carlisle was American, he felt that the world had changed and not for the better. This was the style of the New York mansion in which he was raised. The exterior symbolized where his parents went and he was not allowed. The interior represented the place in which he felt safest."

"Yeah, schizoid. No wonder the hotel had trouble making a profit. It must have seemed old-fashioned even when it was built."

"Actually, it achieved the status of a theme hotel." Conklin gestured toward their surroundings. "Because the interior remained firmly entrenched in 1901, over the years 'old-fashioned' became viewed as 'historical' and then a kind of 'trip back into time.' The staff wore uniforms in the style of the turn of the century. The porcelain dishes and gold-plated eating utensils remained the same, as did the menu. The music in the ballroom was from that era, and the musicians wore period costumes. Everything was from another time."

Balenger studied the shadows. "Must have been a hell of a shock when a guest went upstairs, turned on the TV, and saw Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald. Or firefights in Vietnam. Or the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago. But maybe Carlisle didn't allow televisions in the rooms."

"Reluctantly, he did. Guests didn't want to go that far back in time. But by then Asbury Park was in decline, and people had pretty much stopped coming."

"Yeah, a damned sad story," Balenger said. "Are all the sites you explore this well preserved?"

"Don't I wish. Salvagers and vandals often violate buildings before I get to them. The chandelier and the marble plant stands at the entrance, for example. Drug addicts would usually have stolen them long ago. The walls would be covered with obscene graffiti. It's a tribute to Carlisle's precautions that the hotel survived as completely as it has. Look at these photographs."

The group turned toward a wall of framed black-and-white images. Each had a tarnished copper plaque under it: 1910, 1920, 1930, all the way to 1960. Each depicted the lobby and showed festive guests. But although the lobby remained the same in every image, the style and placement of the furniture never varying, the clothing styles changed abruptly, lapels wider or narrower, dresses higher or lower, hair longer or shorter.