There’s a deep sense of loss as I start back toward the lobby. Loneliness is a pit in my stomach, empty and void. I want what I have with Elias to be real, but it can’t be. I’m leaving this place, leaving with Daniel and my father. I can’t save him. I’m not sure I can save myself.
When I reach the hall leading to the ballroom, I glance again at the staff members guarding the door. I’ll have to get my invitation from my room, find something to wear. I’ll get past them, and once inside I’ll find my family. And then we’re out of here. I just have to hurry.
The elevator signals my floor, but I’m only a few feet down the hall when my legs become heavier with each step. An ache starts in my arm, then continues to crawl over my chest, onto my neck. “Ow,” I moan, putting my hand on the wall for balance. Pain, like a tightening vise, starts across my forehead, making my eyes blur with tension. The air has a dreamlike quality. I look ahead to my room, and the walls of the Ruby expand and contract, like they’re breathing.
Is the hotel trying to stop me? I consider turning around to make my way back to the elevator, but it’s so far—and I’m so tired. So weak. And then it starts: the soft music. The slow strumming of a guitar. The haunting melody, drawing me to it. I rest against the wall, rife with pain and longing for escape. I roll my head to the side and see a light underneath the door of room 1336. The music played in there before but then stopped. If I’m not alone on the thirteenth floor, who else is here?
“Hello?” I call, and push myself off the wall, stumbling forward. My ankle turns and the heel snaps off Catherine’s shoe. I stagger forward, the weight of my right leg causing it to drag behind me in a limp. “I need help!”
Instead of opening the door, they turn up the music—louder, until it’s on full volume, rattling the mirror hanging on the wall. Are they trying to block me out? What sort of person ignores a call for help? Are they the others? I’m only a few doors away when a terrifying thought hits me: What if this is Kenneth? Or what if it’s a trick the Ruby is playing on me?
But the song—the song is so familiar. Around me the temperature starts to drop, colder with every breath. Along with that, my skin feels wet, and I lift my uninjured arm, surprised when I see moisture gathered, like dew on the morning grass.
“What?” I murmur, stepping forward again until I reach the door. I fall against it, my legs finally giving out. I’m slipping toward unconsciousness; I’m slipping away and the terror is crushing. “I’m dying,” I breathe out. “I’m dying.”
I reach behind me, sliding my hand along until my fingers wrap around the metal handle of the door. I pull it down, my eyelids too heavy to see any longer. The pulsing of my heart pounds in my temples. And then, all at once, the door opens and my body is falling backward.
Chapter 17
My eyes flutter open, and at first the world is blurry. Above me is a light—far, far up in the sky, the world black beyond it. I start to ask where I am, but there is a gurgle and I choke. I turn my head to the side, spitting up blood onto a black ground. I try to take in a breath, but it’s difficult. More blood comes up.
I’m cold, and the minute I sense it, the cold is followed by the most immense pain I’ve ever felt. My entire body is wracked with agony, like it’s been dropped from a three-story building, smacking me onto pavement. I moan, struggling to breathe, to comprehend the pain. Then in the background I hear the song again. Only now I can understand the melody. My eyelids flutter again, and I see more light, two round lights below me.
The world is too difficult to understand, and then, slowly, clarity and focus return.
At my side my arm is pinned beneath my hip, a smashing ache at the bone. The fingers on my good hand slide over the ground, touching pebbles and grit and rock. Feel asphalt. A whimper sputters blood from my lips, and I press my cheek to the road and look at the two lights of my father’s car, overturned in a ditch about twenty yards away. The song still plays on the radio, the same song from the CD that we were listening to just before the accident.
The accident. It rushes back—the last moments in the car. Daniel taking my Snickers bar, my mother’s CD in the stereo. I was tired and reclined my seat. I’d forgotten the rest. I’d forgotten my father mumbling under his breath, how he couldn’t do it anymore. I turned to him, tears glistening on his cheeks.
“Dad,” I said, startling him. He jerked the wheel.
The car began to slide, my weight throwing me against the door, my head cracking the glass of the passenger window, and I reached for the door handle. The music continued to play, but over it I heard Daniel scream my name. I heard him scream, his body flying forward. The world upended as the car rolled; my door opened and there was a whoosh as I was sucked out by gravity. Then . . . nothing. We were arriving at the Hotel Ruby.