Page 23 of Holidate Fail
Kelly and Heath repositioned, then Kelly circled his finger. “Try again.”
Dahlia did, with the same results. “What were you going to say?”
Heath and Kelly left the front of the car, and Dahlia turned off the ignition.
Lacole sat back with a sigh. “It can wait.”
Kelly got in the passenger side and Heath slid into the back seat.
“Okay. Ideas?” Kelly asked.
Lacole hooked her thumb over her shoulder. “I saw neon lights before we turned. There’s a restaurant or a hotel or something back there.”
“You got a flashlight?” Dahlia asked Kelly.
“Yeah, but our eyes will adjust better to the dark if we don’t use it.” He sat up straight. “Oh. Hang on.”
He popped out of the car and returned with his bag. After unzipping it, he fished around and produced two energy bars. “Okay. We may be wet and lost, but at least we’ll have breakfast if the lights aren’t a house or something.
“Are they organi…nevermind.” Lacole said.
“So we’re going to find the neon lights?” Dahlia asked.
“Yeah,” Heath said.
“Let’s get going.” She stood close to Kelly, hoping Lacole didn’t come back to claim him. “And don’t be afraid to make noise so animals stay away from us.”
Kelly gripped her hand, and they walked by moonlight to find the neon sign.
Chapter 7
The small, wobbly two-story structure loomed across a patch of grass. The pink neon sign Lacole had spotted proclaimed it as the Country Inn. A welcoming light shone from a window near the front door, but the rest of the hotel was dark. Paint chipped from the exterior walls, and rot was clearly visible at the bottom edge of the siding. Dahlia was afraid to get too close in case someone threw a peach at it and knocked it over. But it was a building, shelter from the outdoors and the steadily falling rain.
“Are we sure we want to go in there?” Lacole clutched Heath’s arm. “It looks like a good place for someone’s mother to practice taxidermy on humans.”
“It does look creepy, even if there aren’t any gargoyles,” Dahlia said. “But we’ll be fine. It’s got good bones.” Beneath the wobble. “It doesn’t look large enough to be a hotel, though. I wonder how many rooms it has.”
Heath and Kelly exchanged glances. “We’ll go in and check it out,” Kelly said. “You both stay here.”
“You don’t mean to leave us out here alone!” Lacole practically shrieked.
So much for girl power. “Come on, what’s the worst that could happen?” Dahlia asked.
“A madman with a chainsaw scares us with its noise and then chases us as we scream. Then he drags us into the woods to throw us in his hidden murder van and kidnaps us and we’ll never be seen again,” she answered.
Dahlia blinked at her in the silence that followed. “Watch much true crime?”
“Yes! So I’m not staying out here alone.” She raced after the men.
Dahlia sighed and followed her.
The unlocked front door led to a small lobby with a cracked counter. A couple of wicker chairs with slashes of red, green, and blue broke the boringness of the room. Pale yellow curtains with large white flowers kept out the dark. A muted light shone on a phone and note on the counter said what number to dial.
After Kelly spoke to the innkeeper, footsteps echoed down an unseen staircase. An older woman entered the room, her fluffy lilac robe belted tightly around her wide frame.
“Kelly?” she asked.
After he raised his hand, she nodded and stepped behind the counter. “I’m Mrs. Linares.”
