In Deep - 20: Tennis Anyone?

As I skipped up the stairs of the Gilman House Hotel the door swung open and I met Ned Pierce coming out. He wore a determined look on his face (marred only by the bandage on his nose) and he carried a rifle in both hands. A day or so ago I would have baulked at his sudden appearance; now I raised a hand in greeting.

‘Hey Ned,’ I remarked, ‘sorry about the nose.’

He shook his head in dismissal. ‘Had worse,’ he said. ‘We’ve got the place locked down: we saw the creep come in but he’s vanished somewhere inside.’

I looked upwards at the beetling facade of the building while I lit a cigarette. ‘He’s probably got more tunnels through this place than the termites,’ I observed. ‘Alright Ned: As long as we keep the exits pinned down he can hide as long as he wants. He’s got to surface for air at some point.’

‘Elijah Southwark is going room-to-room with some of his buddies, starting at the top. Hopefully they’ll flush him out.’

‘I hope they’re armed...’

Ned grinned. ‘Those kids? Loaded for bear and spoiling for a fight! I just hope there’ll be something left for Stan to poke at.’

‘Huh,’ I chuckled, ‘Kids these days.’ I flapped my match out and flicked it into the darkness.

Behind Ned, the glass door swung open. ‘Hey you guys!’ Sherman Sargent stuck out his head; ‘Gilman’s been spotted out on the tennis lawn!’

We hefted our weapons and raced indoors.

The lobby was a blur of dark-coated enforcers and surprised guests. Coen Bros. started to voice an objection to the blatant display of weaponry from behind the Reception Desk but I gave him a stern glare and he decided to clam up. We went straight through to the restaurant and out onto the tennis lawn beyond. Here the Gilman House revealed itself to be a three-sided structure, the two rear-extending ells containing a grey-green rectangle of struggling grass, bordered by an overgrown garden and walkway, nominally designated a tennis court. A trellis wall beyond, sagging beneath cancerously overgrown rosebushes, shielded a view out to the ocean, and we arrived to see Winston duck through a gateway set in the middle of this, lugging a cumbersome stone in both arms. Ned cocked his rifle and we swarmed after him in pursuit.

Halfway across the dying lawn, a door slammed open at the base of the wing to our left and a loud gong shattered the atmosphere, reverberating off the surrounding walls. Bustling out of the building came a score or more of short athletic men in martial arts get-up, coloured black with flourishes of red, orange and yellow. They were armed with myriad different kinds of outlandish kung-fu weaponry, which they displayed with evident eagerness. Pushing through from the centre of this throng, draped in an oversized silk robe and carrying a huge gong with its striker, I recognised the crazy, butterfly-headed form of Madame Klopp.

‘There he is!’ she shrilled, pointing at me with her gong stick, ‘The one who seeks the stone!’ She broke off, screaming in some staccato language which clearly registered as “attack!” to her surrounding buddies. They surged forward keenly and one or two of them instantly burst out of their karate gear, transforming into huge rubbery creatures with whippy, sucker-tipped fingers.

I put my face in my palm. ‘Oh my god...’ I muttered.

Then Ned was by my side. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘we’ve got this. You go get Winston.’ I nodded and hurried away from the melee as gunfire and shrill screams rang out in my wake.

I was only a couple of paces away from the trellis gate when the air convulsed in front of me, wobbled and disgorged a hideous flying creature that leered dangerously at me. I hauled on the brakes and threw myself to one side to avoid its swiping paw. Landing heavily on the brown grass I looked upwards in time to see a second horror appear. They were vaguely insectoid and kind of like birds, with a distinctly reptilian cast; mostly though, they looked like they’d died a few weeks previous but had forgotten to lie down and be still. When they flapped their wings, a reek of something harsh, like ozone, swirled around them. They screeched evilly and began closing the gap between us.

I sneaked a glance back at the kung fu crowd and noticed that our side wasn’t doing too well: Madame Klopp had that “all my Christmases come at once” look on her face indicating that she was particularly pleased that the two beasties had shown up to swell her ranks. Ned was calling for ammo and Sherman Sargent was having trouble with a rubbery monstrosity that seemed to be trying to drain his blood though the toothy orifices on its fingertips.

I ducked a fistful of claws and stuck my hand in my pocket for my gun. Drawing forth my hand I realised I’d grabbed the wrong metallic object and held up the slightly curved, pointy stick with the flat top. The warning words of Alphonse filled my head as I rolled sharply away from a two-fisted assault.

‘Screw it,’ I said, and plunged the spike into the lawn.

A pulse shot through the atmosphere, as if the sky had just rippled. In its wake a momentary silence hovered and the light grew pale like the first light of dawn; things seemed to move in slow motion around me. Then everything slapped back into place: thunder boomed, wind roared and the ground beneath me began to heave strongly upwards.

I rolled beneath the flapping horrors and threw my back against the trellis, which was sagging more than ever beneath the thrashing rosebushes. A huge split rent the tennis lawn and massive tentacles oozed upwards from out of the dirt below. Tapering and twirling, they started thin like garden hoses but quickly grew to the heft of tree trunks. Rising ever upwards, these coiling members met finally at ropey body which still rose up out of the earth: many hideous fanged maws appeared, snapping and drooling, and I realised that I had seen one of these things before, at Rodney’s shack. It stood almost as tall as the Hotel’s sixth floor. The assembled combatants had all thrown themselves out of the way during this emergence and now stood goggling at the behemoth before them.

Suddenly, Madame Klopp screamed angrily in her alien pidgin and pointed her gong striker at the terror; in response, the newcomer roared in equal rage and then some, bellowing from multiple monstrous throats, and it shuffled massively over to join combat.

The flying dead things swooped, were caught in circling tentacles, crushed and then chewed to nothing in toothy maws; the kung fu crew fired guns and threw spears, but beat a hasty retreat back into the Hotel. Undeterred, the juggernaut slammed straight into the side of the building and burst through it in an explosion of timber and stonework. In its wake the Gilman House’s north wing slumped down into rubble.

Ned and the rest of our team quickly gathered themselves together, reloading, recovering and slicing Sherman free of the slug-thing that wanted his ichor. I straightened my hat and helped myself to a smoke.

‘Well,’ I said to no-one in particular, ‘that seemed to work.’

I turned and kicked open the trellis door. Time to find Winston.

To Be Continued...