Hotel Midnight by Simon Clark Page A

floor, something submarine breaking the surface from whatever depths it called its lair.
    Closer, closer.
    Run, Caitlin!
    Formed from an uncanny post-mortem darkness, the horse’s head bobbed eerily along the aisle; faster now; homing in on the seventeen-year-old girl.
    Close up on camera two: head height. Caitlin, still unaware of what stalked her, shivered as if cold fingers fumbled down her spine. She folded her arms across her breasts.
    Caitlin, run!
    The horse’s head rose higher, the neck arching – now suggesting something more cobra than mammal. Even the mane was more membrane than hair. Once more Jackie tried to force the warning scream from her mouth, her eyes locked on the dark shape that bore down on her daughter. Instead, her breath hissed through her lips:
    ‘I remember you. Good God, I remember you.’
     
    ‘What’s that you said, Jackie?’ Ben looked round, speaking through the pencil gripped between his teeth. ‘Has number eighteen gone down again?’
    ‘No, it’s … nothing.’
    ‘Uh?’ He glanced up from the technical manual to check the screens, his broad forehead gleaming under a wispy fringe. ‘Camera eighteen’s the lemon if we’ve got one. I’ll go down and check it.’
    ‘No, not yet!’
    He looked stung by her razor voice. ‘OK. You’re the boss, Jackie.’
    She no longer heard him. Thumbing the mic button, she said, ‘Caitlin. You might as well come back to the pod. We’ve got glitches.’
    On six TV screens Jackie saw the blonde head nod. Quickly now, the pretty seventeen-year-old jogged along the aisle toward the office. Jackie immediately hit monitor keys firing up cameras in her wake.
    Where are you? Where are you? She searched the aisle behind Caitlin, hunting for the horse’s head that moved with that churning motion. At the same time she listened for her daughter’s feet on the stairwell, willing her to get through the pod door so they could shut—
    Shut it be damned. Lock it tight. We’ll barricade the door. We won’t let that monster in. We’ll —
    ‘Hey, Jackie.’ Ben whistled. ‘What the hell’s that in aisle three?’
    ‘Hurry it up, Caitlin.’ Jackie snapped the words into the mic: they rolled across the canyoned face of the supermarket like the word of God. On three monitors, one in distorted close up, Caitlin glared up at the camera. Yes, Mother dear. Any more orders, Mother dear? The girl’s scowl said it all.
    Jackie shot a glance over her shoulder. ‘Ben? Where are you going?’
    ‘Didn’t you hear? I told you I was going to check out what’s on aisle three.’ He watched her strangely now. ‘Do you feel OK, Jackie?’
    She whipped her face back to the screens, scanning each one that Caitlin passed through either in dwarfish miniature or bloated giant.
    ‘Jackie?’
    Jackie glared at aisle after empty aisle. The horse’s head shadow had vanished. Behind her the door opened. Caitlin entered with a flash of rebellion in her eye. ‘It’s like an oven down there. I’m not going out again until I’ve had a Coke.’
    A melting sense of relief poured through Jackie. Taking a steadying breath, she said, ‘Ben, you said you saw something in aisle three. Where exactly?’
    ‘Screen five. It’s a ceiling cam. I can’t make it out.’
    ‘Where? I don’t see it?’
    Jackie noticed Ben raise an eyebrow at Caitlin that as much said Why’s your mother playing the super bitch today? Then he added, ‘At the top near the intersection. It looks like someone lying on the floor.’
    Rolling the tennis ball-sized camera remote, she zoomed in on the thing that lay like a fallen corpse, its swollen head at the foot of a cereal stack.
    ‘Aw, he’s gone and fallen over.’ Ben grinned.
    ‘What is it?’ Jackie’s voice was brittle.
    Ben’s grin broadened. ‘Don’t you see?’
    ‘Would I ask you if I could?’
    Caitlin answered. ‘It’s only the Honey Bear cut-out. I must have knocked it as I passed.’ She shook her head. ‘Jeez, Mom, what are