999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [284]
He started trying keys.
The door opened on the fourth attempt, and Putnam turned the knob slowly, pushing in. Behind the door there was indeed a stairway, a narrow series of low wooden steps covered with a carpet of gray dust. The high walls were also wood, and from a pipe running lengthwise up the center of the sloping ceiling protruded two bare bulbs of ancient vintage. He stared into the dimness at the top of the stairs. This must have been a side entrance to the theater, he realized, the stairway used by stagehands and caterers. He began walking up. There were no handrails, which made him feel a little off balance, but he steadied himself by placing his hands on the walls. He took the steps two at a time.
He paused at the top. Here, stretching away from him, was a hallway that apparently ran the length of the building and ended somewhere above the boutique or the dress shop or the jewelry store beyond. The corridor was dark, illuminated only slightly at this end by the light from the bookstore below and at the other end not at all. Within the darkness were areas of deeper darkness, and he had the distinct impression that there were doorways leading off from the corridor into other rooms. It was too dark to see, though, to tell for sure, and he hurried back downstairs, got the flashlight from under the front counter and ran back up.
At the top of the stairs, he turned on the flashlight and shone it down the corridor. There were doorways but no doors, and he walked through the one closest to him. The yellow beam of his light played over bare walls, a dusty radiator and a bricked window. At the far end of the room’s left wall was another doorway, and he strode across the hardwood floor, his footsteps echoing in the silence, and shone his light into the black opening. He saw a claw-footed bathtub, a freestanding sink and an old toilet. He stared for a moment into the bathroom, feeling vaguely uneasy, then quickly turned around and walked back through the larger room into the corridor.
He walked down the hall and into the next doorway. And the next. And the next.
This had been a theater? It looked more like a hotel. All of the rooms leading off from the hallway were bedrooms and adjacent bathrooms with identical back-to-back floor plans, each a carbon copy of the last. He continued his exploration, his disquiet increasing as he made his way down the corridor. The first few rooms he’d entered were empty, but in all of the others the furniture remained undisturbed: canopied beds, nightstands with kerosene lamps, dark wood bureaus, high-backed chairs. Each room had a radiator and a sealed window which, at one time, must have faced the street.
He stepped into the last room.
And saw, sitting in a dusty sheet-covered chair, a dead man.
He jumped, dropped the flashlight, almost screamed.
He was about to run away when he saw by the dissipated illumination of the downed flashlight that the figure in the chair was not a man at all. Nor was it dead. It had never been alive. It was a dummy: a pair of pants and a shirt stuffed with cloth, topped by a rag-covered wigmaker’s head.
He reached down and picked up the light, shining it first on the figure, then, more slowly, around the room. This was not a bedroom. It was longer and narrower, and the floor sloped visibly forward. Thick dusty red curtains framed the brick window. There were no beds here, no nightstands, only four chairs, one of which, the one hosting the dummy, faced the door, the other three facing a wall.