The Cursed Blood, стр. 38

“Do that again, and I’ll burn you at the stake myself,” he growled, and while I’m not sure if he was just saying it because he was angry or not, to me he sounded pretty darn serious. Gretta, however, just laughed.

“Don’t threaten me with a good time,” she scoffed as she unhooked the ornate gold room key from the peg under a tiny brass plaque deeply engraved with a “33” over the room’s mailbox cubby and tossed it to him, never once breaking eye contact Gramps swiped it out of the air.

“You know,” she added mischievously with a suggestive wink, “if you want to tie me up and bring me outside to play with fire, all you have to do is ask.”

Rolling his eyes Gramps made a disgusted noise and propelled me away from the desk with his free hand. We could hear Gretta laughing almost halfway down the hall to the elevator.

It was a roomy little old school one with a gate of the same black and gold coloring that the whole hotel seemed to prefer. It even had a bellhop of sorts—an old bent elevator man, who by the look of him had been there since the building broke ground, or perhaps even the dawn of time.

Gramps hesitated then went very pale and still looking for all the world like he was steeling himself for a dreaded task that there was no avoiding whatsoever. He shuddered as we were beckoned inside with an unnervingly skull like grin.

He gently guided me forward, arm about my shoulder and led me in through the threshold of the very vintage looking convenience. When we passed through it felt like we had stepped into another time and place through stale, uncomfortably warm and thick air. The one who had beckoned to us bobbled his head as we both did a terrible job acting natural and relaxed as he studied us.

The man seemed absolutely ancient. Skeletally gaunt, with huge, clouded misty pale blue eyes that appeared to have the beginnings of cataracts, he had more wrinkles than I could count, a liver spotted bald head, bent, beak like nose, and a creepy, crooked, yellow toothed smile.

“Room 33, I take it?” he warbled wetly. Accepting Gramps’ glaring nod as we stepped in with a croaking cackle, he pushed the button and began to crank at a handle. Peering at me in a way that made me feel both absolutely trembly and curious all at once, he sent me a knowing wink.

“A right fine young man you’ve got there, Arty,” he said with a benign smile, the word ‘Arty’ causing a vein to pulse dangerously on Gramps’ forehead as the elevator man gazed at me unblinkingly. “Oh, yes. Right fine, indeed. A good boy, I take it?” he asked. “I can see you in-em. I bet his father wasn’t too happy about that, eh old boy?”

Gramps said nothing, his fists balling and white knuckling as he pointedly looked at anything but the old man working the crank.

“I see a bit of his mother in-em’ too, eh? How do you feel about that, Arty?” The elevator man asked. The question seemed to finally get Gramps’ attention as he stiffened and sharply turned his head, glaring thunderously at the old man and seemingly about a hair’s breadth from punching him in the nose.

“You knew my parents?” I asked uneasily.

My question deeply unsettled Gramps as he glanced down at me sharply, his face going splotchy and strained.

A heartbeat later he took up, staring daggers at the old man, a worried look lining his brow as he tugged nervously at the edges of his flannel. I got the distinct impression that he wasn’t entirely pleased at what the elevator man might have to say.

The odd old man smiled benignly, affording Gramps a withering look that ended his staring and had him instead peering at the framed safety instructions on the elevator wall.

“Indeed. It’s what I do. I know everyone, you see. Eventually. Although your little family is a bit of a special case, young Master Bright.” He answered while the elevator made a whirring sound as we went up a floor. With a shudder the elevator let out a bell like ring and came to a grinding, rumbling stop. The shiny polished gate creaked open like a graveyard gate well overdue to have its hinges oiled.

“Why is that?” I asked, ignoring the near horrified look on Gramps’ face.

The elevator man smiled at me and shook his head. “Oh, everyone knows Arty Bright, now don’t they? Arty, Arty, Arty Bright, the darkness’s brightest light, eh Arty?” he asked in a sing song voice as he fixed Gramps with a look and a playful wink. “In one way or another everyone does. You’d have to be living under a rock not to… Though, young man, I have the dubious privilege of knowing your Grandfather far better than most. But I certainly won’t hold that over you—as I doubt his sweet mother would have wanted that, eh Arty?”

Gramps never did answer, instead he fished out eight odd looking tarnished gold hued coins from his jeans pocket. They were more hexagonal than round modern coinage and seemed to have skulls stamped into them and were encircled with some odd fish-hooky lettering I didn’t recognize, that made my ears itch and eyes water.

There was something off about them, too. The dull metal exuded an otherworldly wrongness that gave me a horrible case of the willies, like I was unwittingly standing on a grave. “For the accounts,” Gramps mumbled gloomily.

Then, after taking a deep breath he dropped them into the old man’s waiting, crooked, very claw like hand. The elevator man snatched them out of the air, eyed one, bit it, nodded in deep satisfaction, and stuffed them all into his vest pocket for safe keeping.

“Arty, you sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. Catch you on the way down, eh?” the old man