The Burning Man

12

Stillness suffused the hotel. The snow of the high country had swept indoors, blanketing everything. Hunter was on his feet, the fuzzy torpor of the alcohol already gone.

‘Chill out, killer. It’s only a stopped clock.’ Dreamy and drunk, Laura stretched like a cat.

‘It’s affecting you. Fight it.’

The sharpness of his words cut through her hazy state. ‘Shit. That was weird … trippy.’

Hunter took in the details of the scene quickly. The crackling of the fire was barely audible and appeared to be coming from the end of a long tunnel. The light had an odd cast; shadows fell from no obvious source.

Laura tentatively touched the glistening wall. ‘Frost,’ she said, puzzled.

‘Stay with me,’ Hunter ordered.

‘Now you’re confusing me with someone who does what they’re told.’ She stepped closer to Hunter nonetheless.

At the bar, the barman was nowhere to be seen. Nor was the heavily bearded, red-faced drinker who only a few minutes earlier had lurched from the restaurant to start downing the hotel’s strong lager.

‘I thought I saw Shavi and Tom come in.’ Laura turned slowly. ‘I can sense that grumpy old git within fifty yards. They couldn’t have slipped by us.’

‘The frost on the walls is growing thicker,’ Hunter noted, ‘but the room isn’t getting any colder.’ He leaned over the bar. A bloody smear ran from where the barman had been standing into the back rooms. ‘So. We could follow that into obvious danger or we could walk away,’ he said.

‘As self-preservation is my default setting, I don’t think I need to answer that,’ Laura said. ‘But as being a thick-headed man is your thing, I can see which way this is going to go.’

Hunter stepped behind the bar.

‘I just hope that as you lie dying you’re tormented by guilt that you sacrificed a young and innocent woman,’ she said.

‘You can be quiet now.’

‘And you can take that gun you’ve got tucked away and shove it up your-’

Hunter pushed open the door to the back rooms to reveal the barman lying butchered in one corner. It looked as if he’d been attacked with an axe.

Laura glanced away. ‘Well, Shavi is going to be pissed off.’

‘Nice show of compassion. Very endearing.’

Hunter noted there was only one door leading down to what he presumed was the cellar.

Laura followed his gaze. ‘Why would you want to go down there?’

‘The other one might still be alive.’

‘I thought Church was the one who did the right thing.’

‘You really don’t know me. I’m a sensitive soul underneath this sexy and charismatic exterior.’

A flight of wooden steps led down into the dark cellar. The only sound was a distant creaking. Hunter flicked the light switch and a single bare bulb came on somewhere out of sight. It was barely enough to hold back the shadows. The creaking grew louder when they reached the foot of the stairs.

Rounding into the main area of the cellar, they saw the bearded drinker hanging by his neck from an oily rope attached to a hook in a beam. He was naked. His body was covered with runes cut into the skin with a sharp knife. Laura pressed a hand over her nose and mouth to keep out the salty butcher’s shop smell. Hunter first made sure the rest of the cellar was empty, then examined the body.

‘Ritual marks,’ he said. ‘Don’t know how they could have been carved so quickly.’

‘Because time doesn’t mean anything here. It’s like a bit of the Other-world has crossed over. Those runes — they look Viking.’

‘You’ve seen them before?’

‘I belong to an environmental group — Earth First. A couple of blokes in my chapter are Odinists. They’ve got those runes tattooed on their chests.’

Hunter tried to make sense of the markings. ‘Patterns,’ he mused.

‘What?’

‘Everywhere. Patterns. Numbers — five. Names. Symbols. Systems. All of them repeating.’ He paused thoughtfully. ‘Almost as if they were programmed in.’

‘When you’ve got your head out of your arse, can we actually turn our attention to who did this?’

The eyes of the hanged man snapped open, the whites crimson with broken blood vessels. Laura leaped back with a curse.

‘You woke them,’ the corpse said in heavily accented English. ‘You crossed into their Great Dominion. You woke them!’ It thrashed its legs around in fury, the ligature biting into its neck, the eyes bulging.

Hunter unconsciously stepped in front of Laura to protect her. ‘All right — slightly weird, but here we go. Who did this to you?’

A sickening laugh rattled in the hanging man’s constricted throat. ‘He will get you next. They all will!’

The eyes snapped shut and the animation left the body. The creaking rope gradually stilled.

‘I hate this life,’ Laura said.

Hunter grabbed her hand and hauled her towards the stairs. ‘We have to find the others. ‘“They all will”,’ he said. ‘How many of them are here?’