Chapter 33

Chapter Thirty-Three

"This damn door is too thick. I can't hear a thing," Natalie grumbled then took a step back from the door that itself had taken on an evil feel to it.

"I for one am grateful it's so thick," Bobby, standing a couple of steps below where she stood on the landing, commented.

"Natalie?!"

The sound of her name being called, not from above but from below had Natalie frowning.

"Was that Harper?" she asked, glancing at Liam.

She didn't wait for an answer but ran down the single flight of stairs and reached for the knob of the door that separated the emergency stairwell from the ninth-floor hallway. She felt an undeniable sense of relief when that knob turned in her hand.

Leaning into the hallway, she saw Harper and Alice by the elevator. "We're down here!"

Harper turned and visibly breathed out a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God you're all right. We heard at the theater that Letisha is trapped and you were calling for help," she said as she strode fast down the hall, Alice almost jogging behind her to keep up.

"We would've been here sooner but we had to walk. What did we miss?" Alice asked when she finally arrived, perspiring as heavily as she was panting for breath.

"As far as we know, half of the ghosts are upstairs fighting that thing that trapped Letisha and the crew on the tenth floor. But wait. Why did you walk here?" Natalie asked.

"We heard you were in trouble but Sam was all like, the show must go on. Keep filming. So we snuck out of the theater," Harper explained.

"I tried to hot wire the van but I couldn't. These vehicles with the new-fangled ignitions aren't as easy to steal as the old ones used to be, so we had to hoof it from there." Alice added.

Hot wire? Steal? Natalie's eyes widened. Who was this woman? She had thought she knew Alice but the more she learned the more she realized she knew nothing at all about Alice Mudd.

A bulb overhead in the hallway light fixture exploded, sending shards of thin broken glass falling to the floor. Harper covered her head, ducking into the stairway with Alice on her heels.

Things weren't much better in there. The lights in the stairwell flashed. The fixtures buzzed while noises from above—bumps and crashes—filtered down to them.

Paulina glanced up at the ceiling. "That doesn't seem good."

"No, it does not," Liam agreed, glancing up at the tenth-floor door a flight above them. "Nat, I think we should block the door. We don't want that thing to be able to get out."

"With what?" Natalie asked. "It'll be able to just walk right through whatever we pile in front of the door."

He tipped his head toward the shaker still clutched in her hand. "The salt."

"Oh, right." She turned and ran back up the stairs.

The door at the top was literally vibrating with energy. Could everyone see it or just her?

"Nat. You might want to hurry."

She turned to see Liam standing behind her on the steps and staring at the door.

So not just her then.

Hand shaking, she up-ended the salt shaker and shook, sprinkling it in a faint line across the floor at the bottom of the door as the roar of the indistinguishable sounds surrounding them got louder.

"Babe."

Natalie glanced up and found Liam close, hand extended.

"Give me." He took the salt from her hand, saying, "Pour. There's no time to sprinkle."

He twisted the top off the shaker and poured a thin line along the threshold as the sound of whatever was happening on the other side got more intense.

Sick to her stomach she wished she could do more than pour salt. Her ghost friends were in there. Not to mention the PNC crew, whose lives were in danger all because they'd followed their boss's order.

And of course, there was Letisha. Why would she have risked going after that thing? She wasn't without powers. She'd seen it. Felt it. She should have known better.

"Question. I'm no expert in these matters, but even if you block the door's threshold with salt, can't that thing just come through a wall? Or the ceiling?" Bobby asked, eyeing the line of salt on the floor that admittedly didn't look like much of a deterrent.

Natalie sighed and took a step away from the door, since it was seeming more and more dangerous to be standing too closely too it. "I don't know, Bobby."

It wasn't a perfect plan, but it was all they had at the moment.

But if they all got out of this thing alive—and not possessed by demons—she was going to demand that some useful information on fighting malevolent entities be put on the internet immediately by… somebody.

The door flinging open and crashing against the wall right next to where Liam stood stopped that thought dead in her head.

Then Natalie, and everyone else in that stairwell, stared and waited to see who—or what—was about to come through that doorway.