Our heroes, having made it through the night albeit with some odd sleep-deprivation experiences, get washed and freshened up in Julia’s bathroom, all observing the necessary propriety.
Remembering that they had agreed to take Alice into their confidence at breakfast, they traipse down to the lounge, where they find her absent, although not for long. She arrives at their table with a shoe that she says she found outside Dwight’s room that morning as she was coming down to breakfast.
Galvanised into action, the party splits up – Alessandro and Alice set off to try and find Lennie the shoeshine boy whilst Julia and Chester head to reception to interrogate Rachel the receptionist to see if she knows anything about shoes. She is not able to tell them much but she does advise that several guests are leaving that morning, along with a Mr Spreiser and one of the hotel chambermaids.
Meanwhile, Alessandro and Alice have much better luck, tracking down the room which Lennie shares with several of his fellow bellboys. They find out that Lennie found the shoe in an abandoned workshop in the basement, and persuade him to accompany them to show them exactly where.
Meeting up in the lobby, the stalwarts realise that they need a cunning plan and with Chester’s help, they soon have one. Through a carefully-staged series of diversions and stunts, they manage to get the keys to Solomon’s basement prison, set their comrade free, liberate his guns and get the keys back without anyone noticing.
They all rendezvous at the bottom of the liftshaft and Lennie leads them through the rabbit-warren of tunnels and chambers to the abandoned workshop, creepy and overrun with rust, decay and thick cobwebs.
Alessandro and Alice manage to find that one section of racking against a wall is in fact a secret door which they manage to get open. Inside is a room which has a shaft in the floor. Down this, our brave investigators decide to go.
They find themselves in a subterranean cave tunnel and in the distance, they can hear the sound of water and smell a foul and disgusting stink. This they head towards.
The source of the stench is a cave where there is strong evidence of something awful having gone on. Blood and entrails lie on the floor and scattered axes and saws are sticky with scraps of flesh and clotted blood.
Our heroes follow the sound of the water and the trail of slimy blood down to the edge of an underground river, where all trace of whatever it was disappears.
They retrace their steps and try another tunnel which leads them into a lamp-lit cave where there is a sinister black-bound book titled in German, and what appear to be trinkets or trophies in alcoves lit by tallow candles. While they are examining (but not reading) the book, they hear noises approaching from two of the tunnels. Drawing their weapons, they band together to stand and fight the approaching menace.
Out of the tunnels appear ten hillbilly types, armed with axes, clubs and machetes, and two shotguns. They sneer at the party and rush them, aiming to beat them into submission. Our heroes open fire and with two volleys and some excellent shooting, manage to kill or badly wound five of their assailants. The remainder flee in panic.
The gang decide that their best option is to try and make for the shaft as quickly as possible. They are nearly at the tunnel leading to it when Alessandro hears something drifting down the passages – it sounds like voices, crying out in fear. Solomon suspects that the hillbillies are trying to lure them deeper into the catacombs and they ignore the sounds. Julia and Alessandro climb up the shaft first and come face to face with Deputy Franks. There is a tense moment while guns are pointed and then Julia faints and Alessandro convinces the deputy that they are no threat. A hotel waiter who was with the deputy is sent off to reception to find anyone who can render first aid to Alessandro and Solomon, both of whom took injuries in the melee in the caves.
Aware that the hillbillies could come swarming up out of the caves at any moment, our gallant band take up position with some hastily improvised oil bombs and sure enough, there are voices from the tunnel at the bottom of the shaft. Solomon throws his bomb, with satisfying effects. This appears to prompt a retreat by the hostiles but to be on the safe side, the door to the shaft room is closed and fastened shut, with a booby-trap to prevent it being opened from the far side.
The waiter returns with Doctor Clemence who has only just arrived at the hotel and was promptly dragged down into the basement by the waiter. He adminsters first aid to the wounded and some time after that, as they decide to return to the hotel proper, Sheriff Wallace appears, complete with pump action shotgun and questions Franks about what has happened. He sends the doctor back to the hotel lobby where gunshot casualties await his ministrations.
When they reach the lobby, they find that something terrible has happened – the body of Granville Frost lies inert on a stretcher and Clemence is trying to save the life of Todd Frost, his son. The family were attacked in the forest by a wild-eyed man who called Frost by name and then shot him. Todd was shot as he rushed to his father’s aid.
Julia and Alessandro talk with Tommy Milner and Brightman the restaurant manager to find out what’s been happening and discover that half the senior staff seem to have disappeard.
After the injured boy and his mother are sent off to Brattleboro with the doctor and Deputy Franks, the Sheriff takes the gang through to the dining room for a frank talk on what they know and what they have been doing. Chester reveals the book that they took from the caves and Julia gives more details of what they have discovered. Realising that the hostile elements may try to regain the book and take their revenge on our heroes, the Sheriff proposes that they secure the hotel and try to safeguard the guests, many of whom have no idea what is going on.
The group begins to prepare for action, with a barricade of sofas, tables and chairs being erected across the reception area and Solomon booby-trapping the service stairs to the basement using tripwires. Once this has been done, they settle down to wait for any attack that might come but are in for a nasty shock as a truck comes crashing through the front doors and skids into reception, closely followed by eight hillbillies, three of whom are armed with shotguns. A battle royale breaks out with Chester being shot twice and the Sheriff being blasted in the leg. All three shotgunners are killed, and the others, wielding machetes and axes come hurtling over the barricade to make mayhem.
Julia ends up in a fist fight, Alessandro takes a machete blow to the head, Chester manages to avoid being hacked to pieces but the black book gets hit by an axe, Alice is chased up the stairs by a manic hillbilly and Solomon and the Sheriff are busy reducing the odds against them with some deft gunplay.
Eventually, the gunfire subsides and it’s revealed that only two of the hillbillies survived; one of them is badly wounded – Alessandro handcuffs him to stop him crawling away – and Julia is busy fighting off the other.
Suddenly, there is the sound of Alice’s scream from the landing, where she is waiting to see if it is safe to come down. More attackers have entered the lobby from deeper into the hotel. They are led by Leonard, the sinister porter, who shoots at Alice to silence her. Alessandro and the Sheriff open fire on this new group and pin them down behind tables and sofas.
Alice survives the attempt by Leonard to kill her and runs back up the corridor. There, she meets a semi-naked Daniel Quigley, his skin covered with eerie sigils. Julia, having put her assailant to flight, takes aim at Quigley before he can summon more horrors to attack them but misses. Quigley tells them that he has heard the Nightmare “so many voices, so many voices” and then wanders off. He is clearly quite mad.
Solomon uses his guile, inventiveness and spare oil cans to create the Steinberg bomb, which, by amazing luck, works first time, hurtling through the air to explode in the midst of the bad guys, killing Leonard and all but one of his cronies.
Having put paid to the second attack, our heroes gather their strength and tally their losses. It is decided to check on who is alive and who is missing, particularly in reference to staff members, who, our heroes suspect, may be allied with Leonard and his cohorts. Porters and loyal staff begin to tour the hotel, calling all the guests down to the lobby and the dining room so that a roll-call can be taken.
Whilst this is going on, our heroes are discomfitted by the sudden appearance of tendrils of green slime oozing up out of the ventilation and heating ducts in the walls. By lucky chance, Alessandro discovers that fire drives the tendrils back and his warning enables the guests and investigators to keep the sinister manifestation at bay. Solomon goes back to the wrecked truck in the lobby to get more petrol and is alerted to more trouble by the sound of gunfire. A third band of cultists under Ursula the sinister receptionist has sneaked in whilst the attention of the party is distracted and has beaten and slashed Chester to try and get back the Black Book which he had been left with. The Sheriff spotted them and, whilst playing dead, drew a bead and opened fire. Solomon joins in the firefight, as do Julia and Alice who arrive moments later. Alice shoots Ursula but is critically wounded herself. The cultists are driven off but do succeed in getting the book back.
With a state of near-panic on the part of the guests, our heroes are in two minds as to how to proceed. Their minds are made up by the arrival of a convoy of vehicles, including the hotel bus. The lead car turns out to contain Winslow J Hawley III, the Albert family lawyer. He has brought several private detectives with him and serves papers on Tommy Milner as the surviving representative of the hotel ordering its immediate closure and evacuation.
The cars and hotel bus are loaded up with as many guests and staff as can be accommodated and they set off into the night. They are heading for Marlboro in the first instance to arrange for more cars to be sent up to the hotel to get the rest of the personnel out. On the way down to the hamlet, more than one guest claims to have seen something shadowy in the forest, running through the darkness as if following them.
They arrive at Marlboro to find that the bar there is playing host to a most unexpected guest – a traumatised and insane Lennie. He is cowering at the back of the bar with a knife, cackling and muttering to himself.
Whilst our heroes are wondering what to do about this turn of events, an elderly guest comes in to announce that her husband has wandered off into the woods to answer a call of nature and has not come back yet. They set off to find him but as he totters out of the undergrowth, something else is just behind him – a hideous, semi-skinned creature that has been eviscerated. Guns seem to knock it down but not kill it. The party nevertheless empty their weapons into it but the coup de grace is dealt by Sheriff Wallace, in a car driven by Deputy Franks – they blast the creature and then run it down with the vehicle. Before it can recover (if it was still alive – no-one wants to check) everyone climbs back into the bus and cars and they drive speedily back onto the highway and head for Brattleboro.
Once there, they take the injured to the hospital and seek accommodation for the night. The remaining staff and guests arrive later that evening. It seems that their stay at the Majestic is over for good.