The 7th Guest by Matthew J. Costello & Craig Shaw Gardner

Author:Matthew J. Costello & Craig Shaw Gardner [Matt Costello]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Brian Dutton had gone looking for voices. He had heard that choir once. He knew he would hear it again.

He walked slowly down the second floor corridor, looking and listening for anything out of the ordinary. But, instead of hearing a choir, he heard wild laughter.

It came from the bedroom across the hall from his own. The door was slightly ajar. He opened the door and stepped inside.

There, in the middle of the room, was Hamilton Temple, twirling about and laughing like an idiot.

"Temple?" Dutton called to the older man. "What's all the noise?"

But Hamilton Temple didn't answer. Instead, he reached both hands towards his bed. Dutton looked where Temple pointed. There, where there had been nothing a moment before, was a beautiful woman.

"Yes! "Temple shouted.

"Temple! " Dutton called again. "What the hell are you doing?"

But the old magician either couldn't hear Dutton, or didn't want to. He gestured toward the bed again, toward the alluring young woman who held her arms out to both the men. And she changed. She seemed to be growing older, ten years in ten seconds. Her face and hands wrinkled, her hair went from chestnut brown to silver.

But the change didn't stop there. The woman's body shriveled, her skin turning an unhealthy gray. She struggled for an instant, then fell back upon the bed as if dead. Holes appeared in her flesh as maggots crawled in and out.

Dutton wanted to run from the room. Why was Temple doing this? What did he hope to prove?

"Stop it!" Dutton called. "Stop what you're—"

But Temple seemed beyond hearing, as if whatever spell he had conjured had captured the magician as well.

The body of the woman on the bed began to split in two. A tremendous wind filled the room, coming not from the windows or the hall, but from inside the body. Pictures banged against the walls. From somewhere, Dutton heard the rattle of chains. Part of Dutton still wanted to leave, to get as far away from here as possible, but he found it impossible to move, as if his shoes were nailed to the floor.

And still the woman continued to split. Dutton thought he saw something, deep within the corpse, a moving shadow waiting for the body to be split in two, waiting to be free.

"No!" Dutton screamed, but his voice was lost to the wind.

But the thing, the moving shadow, was coming out.

Temple stood as rigid as a soldier, no longer slightly bent by age. He made a fist.

"Stop!" he called.

The wind died, and the woman was gone.

Dutton stared at Temple. Somehow, he felt as if they had barely survived something that in a few seconds would have become a catastrophe. What was happening here?

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