Hotel Midnight by Simon Clark Read Free Book Online Page B

doorway. Slowly, they filed through it into cool, green pastures.
    Without fire, that incandescent animating force fled from the corpses. It killed the doorway, too. Tonight, Danny must leave the gas jets blazing. He would simply open the doors, dash into the oven, then through the miracle doorway. To give him some protection from the inferno he’d made a suit of kitchen foil backed with sacking; on his head, a helmet of wire netting covered in layers of foil. Two tiny holes punched by needles in the material served as eyeholes. For a whole five minutes he’d sluiced himself down from the hosepipe to soak his clothes and layer of sackcloth beneath the suit of aluminum foil. That drenching with water, plus five Solpadol would deaden the effects of the intense heat. It would be enough to get him through the blazing doorway. He sang to himself as his gloved hands pulled back the oven doors. They dripped water. The fingertips steamed as they came into contact with the hot metal handles.
    This was going to be hot. He’d suffer some burning. And yet he promised himself any burns inflicted by the fiery interior of the crematorium oven would be supernaturally healed the second he passed through the doorway. Once on the other side he’d rest for a while. After that, he would enjoy a pleasant stroll to the mountain with the human face.
    The heat from the oven hit Danny with the force of a concrete slab. Winded, he wanted to gasp for air; only he knew he must hold his breath or this heat would reduce his lungs to paste. Through the eyeholes he saw his goal. He waded through the sea of flame, pushing aside corpses that waited patiently in line to file through the doorway. He could see nothing but blazing yellow. Adrenaline together with the Solpadol quashed the pain. Yet he knew he was burning. He could feel the itch of bubbling skin on his back. His hair singed into a molten cap inside his foil helmet.
    Danny fought his way through the line of burning corpses. Now faces lunged into view, flames jetting out of mouths. Eyeballs popped with puffs of steam; faces peeled away like they were plastic masks. He felt hands grip his arms.
    They’re attacking me! The thought left him panic-stricken. But then he realized they were helping. The burning dead supported him, and then guided him towards the doorway they had built. They knew his need was greater than theirs.
    There it was. He was six feet from the doorway of burning coffins. Beyond its flaring archway were lush meadows, sprinkled with a million golden dandelions. They looked like stars against a sky of surreal green. Willows swayed in a light breeze. Butterflies with wings of a delicate cornflower blue flitted above the grass. And in the distance, the mountain with the human face. It was smiling.
    Danny was still inside the oven. The flames were eating into his hands now. The gloves had turned to ash. Fingernails went black and spilled from his fingers; the skin bubbled red and brown like a pizza in an oven, but:
    ‘I’m there! I’m going through. Oh, thank God! Thank God!’
    A six-year-old child, grossly humped with tumors, stood in his way; eagerly he pushed it aside where it burst against the wall like an egg.
    Nearly there!
    But the suit made him clumsy. Danny’s flailing arm brushed the burning doorway. He hardly touched it but it toppled. It hit the floor in a cascade of sparks that streamed up into his masked face like machine-gun tracer.
    Howling now, more from frustration than pain, he swung round at the burning corpse. They stood placidly watching him. ‘Work, you bastards … work!’
    They had to build another doorway. They had to do it quickly. Wood coffins were crumbling to ash. Gaping holes appeared in his suit, allowing tongues of flame to lick his flesh. Through his eyeholes he saw his hands trailing skin as they grabbed at coffins and begin to stack them.
    Inside his head, his mind detonated into splinters: one screamed with burning agony; one, insanely