“How’d you get down there?” Jean asked. She sounded amazed, relieved.

“Tire tool magic,” Pete said. “Okay, I’ve got you, hon. Let’s lower her gently.”

“No no no, don’t! I’ll fall.”

“We gotta get you down outa there.”

“Well, boost me up, okay?” Her voice was controlled, but tight with pain or fear. “If I try to go down, I’ll get wracked up even more.”

“All right. We’ll give it a try. You guys ready up there? On the count of three.”

“You gonna push her up by her legs?” Jean asked.

“That’s the idea. One. Two.”

“Take it easy,” Barbara urged him, “or I’ll end up with a bunch of wood in me.”

“Okay. One. Two. Three.”

Barbara came up slowly through the break as if she were standing on an elevator. Still hugging her chest, Larry struggled to his knees. She swayed back against him. He slid a hand down the slick, bare skin of her belly. She gasped and flinched. Then he grabbed her belt buckle, yanked upward, pulled her hard against him, and she came to rest sitting at the brink of the gap.

“Okay,” she gasped. “I’m okay. Give me a second to catch my breath.”

Larry and Jean held onto her arms.

“All right up there?” Pete asked. The beam of his flashlight swept back and forth through the break in front of Barbara’s knees.

Barbara didn’t answer.

“She’s safe,” Jean called down.

The beam slid away and only a faint glow drifted out of the opening.

“I want to go home,” Barbara muttered. Larry and Jean held her steady while she leaned back and drew her legs up. She planted her shoes against the rim of splintered wood at the gap’s far side.

“Jesus!” Startled, scared.

Barbara went rigid. “Pete! What’s wrong!”

“Holy jumpin‘... Oh, man.” Not quite so scared now. Amazed. “Hey, you’re not gonna believe this. Honest to motherin’ God. Larry, get down here.”

“What?”

Barbara leaned forward and peered between her spread legs. “What is it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“This is no time for games, Peter.”

“You’re just damn lucky you didn’t wind up down here.”

For a moment no one said anything.

Then Pete’s voice came up through the crevice. “You would’ve had company.”

Shivers ran up Larry’s back.

“There’s an old stiff in here.”

He’s kidding, Larry thought. But his body knew that Pete was telling the truth. His cheeks suddenly felt numb. He had trouble getting enough breath. His bowels went shaky. His scrotum shriveled up tight, as if someone had just grabbed it with a handful of ice.

“Oh jeez,” Barbara muttered. Jean and Larry got out of her way as she twisted around, grabbed the banister, and struggled to her feet. They followed her down the stairs. She held the railing and moved slowly, hunched over just a bit. Her blouse now hung all the way down her back.

“I knew I didn’t like this place,” Jean whispered.

Barbara went straight to the hotel door and threw it open. Daylight flooded in. She stopped in the doorway and turned sideways. She was squinting. Her teeth were bared. Though Larry was several feet away, he could see her trembling. Her hands shook as she pinched the edges of her blouse and spread its front wide. She gazed down at the raw band of skin across her belly.

Her breasts looked very white through the open patterns of her bra. Larry glimpsed the darker skin of her nipples. She was too hurt and dazed for modesty, and Larry felt like a cheap voyeur taking advantage of her carelessness. In spite of the guilt, he didn’t want to look away. There was a dead body under the stairs. Somehow, the sight of Barbara’s skin through the black lace bra eased his sick dread.

But he forced his eyes lower. The right leg of her shorts was rucked up higher than the left. Both thighs were scraped, her shins bleeding. The right was worse than the left, but both legs had been abraded in the fall.

Jean went to her. “You really didget wracked up.”

“You’re telling me.”

“Where is everyone?” Pete called. His voice sounded muffled.

“Barbara’s really banged up,” Larry answered. “Come on out of there and let’s go home.”

“You’ve gotta see this! It’ll just take a minute.”

I don’t want to see it.

“Man, your wife is hurt.”

“What’s one more minute or two? We’ve got a dead bodyhere. You’re a writer, for godsake. A horrorwriter. I’m telling you, this isn’t something you want to miss. Come on.”

“Go ahead if you want,” Jean told him. “We’ll start on over for the van.”

Larry wrinkled his nose.

Barbara nodded, still grimacing and shaking. Her face and chest were shiny with sweat. Larry found himself looking again at her breasts. “Go on,” she said. “It’ll make him happy.”

“You gals don’t want to see it?”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Jean said.

“Just make it quick,” Barbara told him.

He turned away from the door. He walked slowly across the lobby floor. Glancing back, he saw Jean and Barbara step outside.

He felt abandoned.

I don’t have to be here, he thought. I could be out there with them.

He did not want to see a damn corpse.

But his weak legs kept moving him away from the sunlight.

Alongside the staircase a wide section of paneling had been ripped loose and gaped open a couple of feet. The glow of Pete’s flashlight showed through the space. Larry turned sideways and stepped into the enclosure.

“Thought you were going to chicken out on me,” Pete said.

“Can’t miss a chance like this.”

He found Pete standing on a couple of boards that had fallen from the landing. He looked frozen there, back rigid, his right arm straight out, aiming the flashlight almost as if it were a pistol. Aiming it at the coffin that was jammed headfirst against the underside of a low stair.

The body was covered, at least to the neck, by an old brown blanket. The blanket was rumpled as if it had been tossed into the coffin by someone who didn’t care to straighten it.

The corpse had long yellow hair. The skin of its face looked tight and leathery. Larry saw sunken eyelids, hollow cheeks, lips that were stretched back in a mad grin that exposed teeth and gums.

“You believe this?” Pete whispered.

Larry shook his head. “Maybe it isn’t real.”

“My ass. I know a stiff when I see one.”

“Looks almost mummified.”

“Yeah. Guess we oughta check it out, huh?”

Shoulder to shoulder, they moved slowly forward. Pete kept his light on the corpse.

Hideous, Larry thought. He’d never seen such a thing. His experience with bodies was limited to three open-casket funerals. Those people had looked almost good enough to sit up and shake hands with you.

This one looked as if it might want to sit up and take a bite out of you.

Don’t think that stuff, Larry told himself.

The underside of the stairway slanted down in front of them. They had to duck as they stepped to the foot of the coffin. Pete sank into a squat and waddled in farther. Larry started in, crouching. But after one step a sense of suffocation stopped him. The stairs seemed to be pressing down on him, wanting to shove him lower, to rub his face in the corpse. He dropped to his knees and reached out, ready to brace himself on the wooden edge of the coffin. Just before he touched it, he realized what he was about to do. He jerked his hands back and clutched his thighs.

The blanket piled on top of the corpse didn’t cover its ankles and feet. They were bare, the color of stained wood, and bones showed through the tight skin. The nails were so long that they curled over the tops of the toes. Larry recalled that hair and nails supposedly continued to grow after death. But he’d heard that that was just a myth; they only appearedto grow because the skin sank in around them.

“Bet it’s been here a long time,” Pete whispered. He reached over the side of the coffin. With his index finger he brushed the corpse’s forehead.