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Amber got up, went to the door, glanced into the kitchen to see her father eating a dead pony. She stepped through. She wasn’t in Orlando anymore. She was outside. The sun was shining and it was pleasant, and Amber wasn’t sweating.
She found James sitting beneath a tree with a blonde girl wearing an old-fashioned dress. She was teaching him to read.
Amber’s demon-self stood beside her. “They found each other,” she said. “He escaped and hopped on a train and off he went, exploring the outside world, and they found each other. Do you think it’s love? I think it’s love.”
A voice drifted by on the wind, someone calling for Molly.
The girl got up quickly. “I have to go,” she said. “I’ll meet you back here tomorrow, okay?”
“Yes, please,” said James, and held out the book for her to take.
“You keep it,” said the girl. “Practise.”
She smiled, then she ran off, and James smiled and looked at Amber.
“Her name’s Molly,” he said. “She likes me and I like her.”
“So I see,” said Amber.
“Tomorrow someone is going to snatch her,” said Amber’s demon-self.
James’s smile faded. “I know,” he said. “A tall man in black clothes. He drives a carriage for funerals.”
“A hearse?” Amber prompted.
“Yes,” said James. “A hearse. I’m going to help her. She’s the first person ever to be kind to me, and I like her so I’m going to help her.”
Amber nodded, and it was night and they were outside a wooden building with a sign that said STROMQUIST’S UNDERTAKERS & COFFIN MAKERS, and the undertaker, a tall man in black clothes, was walking towards them, his face twisted in anger.
Amber woke.
She thought about the dream, but her thoughts started to rebound in this quiet room. This unnaturally quiet room.
She got up, went to the window. Tapped it. Double-paned? Triple-paned? Something more? She went to each of the walls, rapped her knuckles against them. The sound was dull. Heavy. She stood in the middle of the room. So what? It was a motel beside a diner. Of course noise pollution would be a problem. Of course they’d have had to tackle it.
She clicked on the light and sat on the end of the bed, caught her reflection in the mirror. She didn’t look convinced. She looked like there was something nudging at her thoughts.
Amber went over to the mirror. It was screwed to the wall. Okay. Made sense. Some people might want to steal a mirror. It could happen. It could even be a thing. Mirror-thieves, for example – that ever-growing threat to motel owners everywhere. Screwing the mirror in place was a perfectly acceptable thing to do and she accepted this. Although, by doing so, the motel owner did make it impossible to check behind the mirror. Not that there would be anything behind it. Nothing except more wall. Not a hole, that’s for sure. Definitely not a camera. Nope. This was just an ordinary mirror. Nothing two-way about it.
Amber sat back on the bed and looked at the mirror for another minute.
There was an ashtray on the nightstand, even though the motel was one big no-smoking area. It was heavy in her hand. Glass. Nice and thick. She threw it at the mirror and the mirror smashed.
“Yep,” she said softly to herself.
Behind the mirror was a hole in the wall. It was covered with more glass, and Amber had a pretty strong suspicion that it was glass as thick as the window. No camera, though, and no pervert standing there. She walked over and peered through. Beyond the hole was an unlit corridor.
She straightened. So the Catching Z’s manager liked to peep. Gross, an invasion of privacy, but okay. Probably liked to take pictures, too. Gross, gross, gross, but whatever. But there was still something more. Something extra.
Chasing a half-formed thought, she pulled back the sheets on the bed, exposing the mattress to the light. All the stains she would have expected, plus a whole bunch more. Darker too.
Dried blood. And lots of it.
(#ulink_4e6ef1b6-8c04-5144-9300-400435ca23a4)
AMBER COULDN’T SAY SHE was surprised. This was a motel on the Demon Road, after all. It was bound to have had the odd murder or two. Or three. Or whatever.
She pulled on a pair of jeans and sneakers and walked to the manager’s office. He wasn’t around. No one was. She went into the room at the back. A cluttered desk, an old computer, a broom closet and plenty of filing cabinets. Inside the broom closet were mops and buckets and a shelf full of bulbs and various bits and pieces one might need as the manager of a dirt-cheap motel such as this. But all of this stuff, every last thing, was on the left side of the closet. The right side was bare. Amber pressed her hand to the wooden wall and it rattled. She pushed, and the wall swung open.
She stepped through.
The corridor smelled of stale sweat and men. She passed the holes, peeking through each one she came to. She saw Milo, already asleep. He looked agitated. She knocked on the window, but he didn’t wake.
She heard someone cry out, and hurried round the next corner to a window as the lights came on. It was Clarissa’s room. Clarissa herself was curled up on the bed, clutching her hand.
There was a switch on the wall and Amber pressed it, and a door clicked open beside her. She pushed it wide – it was heavy – and Clarissa looked up, saw Amber come in, and jumped off the bed, wobbling slightly.
“What are you doing?” she shouted.
Amber tried to get her to calm down, but the door swung shut behind her. There was no handle. There was barely a seam.
“What’s going on?” Clarissa shouted again.
Amber turned back to her. “We may be in trouble,” she said.
“Where did you come from?”
“It’s the manager,” Amber said, “the guy from the front desk. He’s got a tunnel behind the rooms. He spies on people.”
“But why are you here?” Clarissa asked, panic edging her voice.
“Clarissa, listen to me. I didn’t mean to scare you. I found the tunnel, I followed it, I heard you scream and I pushed the door open.”
“That’s the wall!”
“It’s also a door. I’m on your side, okay? Why did you scream?”
Clarissa hesitated, deciding whether or not to trust Amber. Then she picked up her jeans and pulled them on. “I went to turn on the bedside lamp and it gave me a shock,” she said. “Faulty wiring or something. I could have been killed. I’m definitely gonna sue. Why were you back there?”
“I went investigating,” Amber said.
“Investigating the manager?”
Amber picked up the glass ashtray and hurled it at the mirror. Clarissa jumped back, then saw the window, and the man behind it who wore a surgical mask with a snarling mouth drawn upon it. Even Amber jumped at the sight of him.
The man scuttled off, and Clarissa marched forward.
“Hey!” she shouted. “Hey, asshole! What the hell is your deal?”
“Come on,” Amber said, heading for the door. “We’ll catch him when he runs.”
She took the chain off the door and turned the handle and the floor gave way beneath her. Clarissa grabbed her, held her, and Amber dangled for a moment before Clarissa pulled her back.
“What the hell?” yelled Amber, once she had her feet under her once again. They peered down into the hole. It was a four-foot drop on to metal spikes.
“Are you kidding me?” Clarissa whispered. “Are you kidding? What the hell kinda place is this? That could’ve killed you!”
“I think that was the point,” Amber said.
“But why? What does he have against you? Or me? He doesn’t even know us! Why would he want to kill us? Oh Jesus, we’re gonna be killed. We’re gonna be killed.”
“Stay calm, Clarissa.”
“That’s not my real name.”
“Yes, it is,” said Amber. “Clarissa Keeps Her Cool, okay? All right? That’s what’s happening right now.”
“Okay,” Clarissa said. “Okay.”
Amber looked around. “Move carefully,” she said. “If he had a trapdoor there, he could have one anywhere.”
Clarissa’s eyes widened, and she jumped on to the bed. “Quick!” she cried.
Amber held up a hand to calm her. “That’s okay,” she said. “You stay there. I’ll find a way out.”
“What about your friend?” Clarissa asked. “Call him!”
“My phone’s in my room,” Amber said. “But don’t worry – I’ll get us out of this.”
Stepping carefully, Amber went back to the hidden door. Now that she was this close, she could see the join.
“Can you open it?” Clarissa asked.
“Don’t know yet.”
“There must be some way to open it.”
“Not necessarily,” Amber said. She pressed her hands against the wall beside the door, fingertips probing the wallpaper. “Ah,” she said.
“What?” Clarissa asked. “What is it?”
Amber jabbed at the wallpaper with rigid fingers, poking a hole through it. She tore it back, revealing a section cut out of the wall. She peered through.
“What’s in there?” Clarissa asked. “What can you see?”
“Metal,” Amber said. “Springs. Hinges.”
“Is there a button?”
“I think so. At the very back.”
Amber put her arm through. There was plenty of space to move within the wall – the entire section seemed to be pretty much hollow. She stretched her arm out straight, her shoulder jammed into the hole and her face pressed up against the wall.
“Almost got it,” she said, her fingers brushing something metal. She grabbed it. It moved. “There,” she said, and pulled.
There was a sound like heavy swords clashing, and pain seized hold of her arm and wouldn’t let go, and Amber screamed.
Clarissa was at her side in an instant, but Amber barely recognised her, such was the agony and the panic that stabbed through her mind. Clarissa was shouting and trying to pull Amber’s arm free, but whatever had her held her tight and wouldn’t let go.
Clarissa ran back, out of view, and Amber’s demon-self whispered in her ear.
“This is it,” she said. “The day you die. Squealing like a pig, bleeding to death. Has your arm been chopped off? Feels like it has.”
“Get away from me!” Amber roared, and her demon-self was gone and Clarissa was there, holding a lamp. She tore off the shade, smashed the bulb, and rammed it, again and again, into the wall next to Amber’s arm. The cheap wood started to give way.
Amber stopped screaming. Her bottom lip trembled violently. She wanted to puke and pass out.
Clarissa kept ramming the lamp into the wall, widening the hole that Amber had put her arm through. Clarissa dropped the lamp.
“We’re gonna pull your arm out,” she said. “You hear me?”
“No,” said Amber, “no, no, no …”
Clarissa reached through, took hold of something, easing the pressure off Amber’s arm.
“Jesus,” Clarissa said. “I think it’s a bear trap.”
The bear trap, or whatever it was, jarred against the opening and Amber cried out again, but Clarissa didn’t stop, and together they pulled the trap from the wall. Amber sank to her knees and Clarissa laid the trap on the floor, its metal teeth holding Amber’s arm tight. There was blood. A lot of it.
“You’re gonna be okay,” said Clarissa. “You’re gonna be … Christ … you’re gonna be okay.”
“You’re going to die like a pig,” said Amber’s demon-self, standing behind Clarissa. “And you’re going to leak all over this fine carpet while you’re at it. I hope you’re happy, young lady.” She laughed. “When your parents hear that this is how you died, they are going to be so unimpressed.”
Amber snarled.
“Clarissa,” she said. “Towels.”
“What?”
“Towels. Soak them. Hot water. Go. Now.”
Clarissa nodded, leaped up and ran to the bathroom, and Amber shifted.
Still snarling, she brought her knee in to brace the bottom of the bear trap, and she gripped the upper teeth with her good hand. Growling at the pain, she pulled the jaws apart, and withdrew her arm. She let the jaws snap closed again, and reverted before Clarissa came out of the bathroom.
“Oh my God!” Clarissa said. “You did it! How did you do it? Jesus!”
Amber sat back against the wall, sweating profusely and clutching her arm.
