Chapter 10
Marcus laughed again, a harsh, grating sound that rattled in his throat.
"And you know what the best part is?" Marcus grinned, baring yellowed, tobacco-stained teeth. "You’re gonna help me pack your little car, you’re gonna put those chains on the tires, and when Dutch shows up, we’re gonna ride right out of here with four hundred thousand dollars while you’re tied up in the dark, thanking God that a wolf decided not to eat you."
Arthur looked at him.
He didn't flinch. He didn't cower. His thin-framed spectacles caught the amber glow of the ceiling light, completely masking the expression in his pale, unblinking eyes.
"Is that how you think it works, Marcus?" Arthur asked.
Marcus frowned, his brow furrowing in momentary confusion. "What did you say?"
The boy hadn't stammered. He hadn't called him sir. His voice hadn't cracked, wavered, or hitchhiked. It was flat. Smooth. Cool as river stone beneath the ice.
Before Marcus could process the sudden, jarring change in tone, the world exploded.
BRRRRRRR-ING.
The sound was deafening. It tore through the stale silence of the lobby with the violent, mechanical fury of a fire alarm.
BRRRRRRR-ING.
Marcus jumped three inches off the floor, his wounded ribs screaming in protest as he whipped around, his gun coming up in a spastic, defensive arc.
On the front desk, sitting right beside the brass bell, the heavy black vintage Western Electric rotary telephone was shivering on its rubber feet. Its twin internal brass bells were clanging with violent, ear-splitting ferocity, vibrating so hard the handset rattled in its cradle.
BRRRRRRR-ING.
Marcus stared at the machine as if it were a venomous snake that had materialized out of thin air.
The phone.
The landline that the kid had sworn was dead. The line that was supposed to have been crushed by fallen branches three hours ago down by the creek.
BRRRRRRR-ING.
"The line..." Marcus breathed, his eyes bulging as the gears in his fevered brain spun wildly. "The line’s working."
Dutch.
It had to be Dutch. The road had cleared! The storm had broken down in the valley! Dutch had made it to the Texaco station, dropped his dimes into the coin slot, and dialed the front desk!
"It’s him," Marcus gasped, a manic, desperate grin splitting his filthy face. "It’s Dutch! He got through!"
Marcus lunged across the space, grabbing Arthur by the back of his mustard sweater with a violent yank that nearly tore the wool from the collar. He dragged the clerk across the linoleum, slamming him against the front counter right in front of the shuddering telephone.
BRRRRRRR-ING.
Marcus jammed the blackened muzzle of the .38 hard beneath Arthur’s left jawbone, forcing the clerk’s head back until his pale throat was stretched taut.
"Pick it up!" Marcus snarled into Arthur’s ear, spraying hot spit against his cheek. "Pick it up and hit the speaker toggle! If it’s Dutch, you don't say a word, you hear me? You let me talk! If you try any funny business, I’ll blow your jaw off right onto this desk! Hit the switch!"
BRRRRRRR-ING.
Arthur didn't pull away. He didn't struggle against the iron grip on his collar.
Slowly, with an eerily steady hand that showed neither a tremor nor a hesitation, Arthur reached out across the Formica counter. His pale, slender index finger pressed down on the small brass toggle switch mounted beside the rotary cradle—the speaker amplifier routed through the hidden relay in the baseboard.
Click.
The violent ringing stopped instantly.
Instead of an open exchange or the distant crackle of an outdoor payphone, what surged through the speaker horn was the low, rhythmic whir of a magnetic playback head engaging across a tape transport, accompanied by a heavy wash of electrical hum. But to Marcus, half-blinded by fever and deafened by his own surging pulse, the mechanical flutter registered merely as the harsh static of an overloaded mountain line.
Marcus leaned forward over Arthur’s shoulder, his heart pounding in his throat, a triumphant bark ready on his lips. "Dutch! Dutch, is that you? I’m at the—"
"Marcus?!"
The voice that exploded from the small speaker horn wasn't triumphant. It wasn't delivering the calm, professional news of a clear getaway route.
It was ragged, breathless, and shrieking with raw, pants-shitting hysteria.
Dutch sounded like a man whose spirit had been pulverized to dust. The voice carried none of the muffled rush of mountaintop wind; it was dead and flat, boxed in by the hard, claustrophobic acoustic of an enclosed concrete space. Every syllable was strained, wheezing around a mangled, gasping throat, recorded so desperately close to the microphone that the signal peaked and tore against the speaker cone.
"Marcus! Do not go inside that office! Turn around and run! Turn around and run right now!"
Marcus froze, the gun trembling against Arthur’s throat. His brow twisted in stunned disbelief. "Dutch? What the hell are you talking about? I’m already—"
"Listen to me, you stupid bastard!" Dutch screamed through the speaker, the magnetic hiss fluttering behind his panicked wails. "The real night clerk is dead! My truck went over the switchback last night into the culvert—the whole ditch down there is packed with bodies! Toby, the kid who worked the counter, frozen solid in the drifts with his chest carved open! Marcus, whoever is running that place, it’s not an employee! It’s the Dunridge—"
Arthur didn't wait for the sentence to finish.
With an eerily steady hand, Arthur reached out and pushed the heavy bakelite switchhook down with a single, delicate index finger.
Click.
The connection severed instantly. The frantic, tinny playback died, plunging the lobby into dense, suffocating silence.
Arthur straightened his spine.
The rounded, defensive hunch in his shoulders melted away. The clumsy, stumbling boy who had been trembling, sobbing, and clutching his knees for the last two hours simply ceased to exist. In his place stood a man with a spine of tempered steel, moving with a fluid, terrifying elegance.
Arthur turned his head slowly toward Marcus.
The terrified, watery sheen in his eyes was gone, replaced by a pair of pale, glacial irises that held no more humanity than a winter sky.
His lips parted, curving upward into a calm, amused, razor-thin smile.
"Wolves and sheep, Marcus?" Arthur whispered, his voice smooth, resonant, and entirely devoid of fear. "You really should have checked who owned the flock."
