Moon Regardless

by Nick Manzolillo

  He’s been working so much that whenever he dreams, he is helping guests unload their luggage at the hotel in a hellish form of payless overtime. He’s been aiming for as many late shifts at the Miskatonic as he can get. No clues, or ghosts, will appear in the mornings. The nights when his shift ends at six are a defeat, as he’s sent home to scrounge up a couple of boxes of leftover Chinese takeout. At first, the most exciting thing Hap would do with his free nights was walk down from Broadway to Onleyville, where there’s a famous New York System wiener joint where a bunch of too-happy cooks makes the best greasy food Hap’s ever had. He tried coffee milk for the first time there with Tiff, and now, whenever he eats there, he fixates on her memory while the cooks joke around him, a silent sap chewing his food. As of late, Hap has been brought to more drastic means to discard his free time.

  A week after his accident, Hap found that the Spanish-speaking chefs in the Miskatonic’s kitchens were serving venison as a room service special. He almost puked, mainly because the Miskatonic seems to mock him at every turn. One of the chefs had a bandage smudged against his nose, and Hap wondered if the chef had been kicked by a stubborn pair of hind legs.

  Now there’s a presence behind the peephole for Room 353. There’s a slightly muffled moan as the door swings open to reveal a woman with artificially wavy brown hair. She arches back, flaunting a heaving chest tightly wrapped up in a yellow silk robe. This is a diva hurled into the form of a busty woman in her thirties with pouting lips that stretch back into a pair of wild eyes. Starkly put together as she is, it takes Hap a moment to recognize she’s beautiful while he hauls her bags into her room.

  There are plain white candlesticks scattered around the suite, flickering like a galley of spectators, which definitely doesn’t adhere to local fire codes. The door to the second bedroom that’s a part of the suite is cracked open; the glow of more candles paints shadows from within. Hap sets the bags down, trying not to intrude any further. Going into the guests’ rooms is always awkward; how often do you stand with a stranger beside the bed they sleep in? The eccentric looking woman who held the door open for Hap asks him for his name before swinging the door shut. His personal space is tossed aside as the woman thrusts her face in front of his.

  The candles, combined with the stench of incense, mix with the shadows of both the room and the strangeness of the woman in the robe, who Hap swears was dressed plainly and unspectacularly down in the lobby only minutes ago. She asks in a sexy purr how old he is, if he has a girlfriend, and her smile is one that labels her intentions as much as they can be communicated. Beyond the artificial familiarity of a teenage boy’s fantasy, there is something wrong here.

  Hap recently had one weird guest asking for flowers, as the wormy guy who spoke too softly gave him some kind of specific list of plants. When Hap asked Paul what he should do about it, Paul said he’d take care of it himself. He took the list away before Hap could Google any of the names.

  Someone is moving in the other room. Some of the candles are black. There is something in a wooden box on the nightstand behind the bed. Is Hap in danger? How many stories are there about horny boys being devoured by sexual temptation? There is no stir beneath Hap’s itchy, suffocating bellhop pants. The woman smiles as she plucks his silly hat off his head, tossing it to the floor. “We have a thing for strangers. You want to play? You don’t look too busy, and I promise to leave a nice tip,” the woman whispers into Hap’s ear. She’s trying too hard; she’s been taking notes while watching too much cheesy porn. This is the Miskatonic, and it’s finally showing him something. He has no choice but to play along.

  Hap is remembering that long before the soul comes into play, human beings are animals first. He’s the one who hasn’t been watching enough porn. His shirt’s suddenly being whisked off by the woman in yellow. He has to remember that she’s practiced that purr in her voice. He has to try to figure out what’s actually going on in her head as he’s stripped to his underwear and her heavy hand smacks his ass. A finger pokes hard against his chest, pushing him toward the adjoining room of shadows.

  “There is one thing you have to do.” She walks around the bed to the nightstand, gracefully leaning over to pick up something out of the wooden crate. The candles bring to life what looks like a buffalo’s head. When she holds it out to him, he realizes it’s a mask. “You put that on. Then you can take those off.” She gestures to his underwear as she leans beside him and places the mask in his hands.

  The woman grabs Hap’s arm and leads him to the half-open portal to the next room. There are fewer candles within. “Put it on,” she commands as she takes it from his hands and forcefully slips the mask over his head. It’s scratchier than a face full of his bellhop hat. It has a heavy, chemical odor to it, and its weight seems to throw off his balance.

  In the next room, there is a girl—white, slender, and naked—lying face down with her skinny bare ass arched into the air. Her arms are stretched, and her wrists and ankles are shackled by black tendrils of rope on either side of her that extend from each post of the bed. Her mask is that of a white goat, expressionless with its marble eyes unblinking. Hap’s eyes linger over her hairless exposure of flesh.

  “The masks stay on. Everything else is fair game,” the woman in yellow whispers into Hap’s ear, pushing him toward the bed. The hunched-over girl is moaning pleasantly. Above her, on the wall, scribbled along five conjoined pages of Miskatonic notebook paper, is the familiar symbol of a seven-pointed star with seven descending circles spiraling from each point. The symbol clicks within Hap’s memories, tearing all of his doubts away. There was that abandoned house on the hill and now the Miskatonic itself. His insanity hasn’t been lying after all. The pale, potentially drugged girl on the bed is tall, and her blonde hair pushes back from the nape of the black goat’s head. Oh god, Tiff....

  Hap is casting his mask aside as he rushes to Tiffany’s bedside, cracking to his knees as he tears off her mask. An unfamiliar, snarling face is suddenly spitting and hissing at him, calling him a “cheater.” A hand on Hap’s shoulder hauls him back as he drops the mask, his back forced against the bathroom doorknob as the woman in yellow is all over him with flailing nails and bared teeth. “You couldn’t follow one simple instruction!” The purr is gone as a hand slaps across his face. Hap’s grabbed by his hair, and the next thing he knows, the blinding light of the hallway is searing his eyes. He whirls around, catching a glimpse of a flapping yellow robe before the door slams shut, and he’s left lying in the middle of the hallway in his underwear.

  He debates pounding on the door, but that wasn’t Tiff. He’s okay, for now. If he knocks on that door, his cover might be blown. If he causes a scene, if he acts like anything other than a dweeb who’s afraid of the kinky stuff, then he’ll only know as much as he does now.

  He runs to the stairwell with more hop in his step than there should be, given he’s half-naked. That sign! That symbol! There is something real! There is something real! Who was that woman? He can’t go downstairs. He…. Fuck, he’s onto something, and if some guest sees him in his freaking underwear, then he’s fired or worse. Hap scatters down the stairs to the second floor, peering in through the window of the steel door that sections off the stairway that overlooks the right wing of the corridor. There’s no way he can walk through the lobby; it’s only five-thirty. His phone is downstairs, and, not that it matters, his tip money is still tucked under his watch.

  Running back up the stairs, Hap checks every floor’s window, going all the way up to the sixth before heading back down. He finally spots Luke wheeling luggage through an empty hallway, but there’s a couple in front of him. Hap pokes just his head from the stairwell door and hisses for Luke’s attention. The couple looks at Hap strangely while Luke goes about his business settling their bags in their room before heading Hap’s way with a confused grin.

  Ten long minutes later, a giddy Luke has brought him a spare uniform. He’s also de
manding, for the second time, that Hap explain what happened (while calling him a lucky bastard the whole while). Luke doesn’t matter anymore. Hap should call out sick for the rest of the day; he has too much to think about. Plus, he should lie low, right?

  Luke, understandably, won’t leave Hap alone once they reach the lobby. “I wouldn’t worry. I mean, do you know who that was?”

  “Who was she?” Hap asks. The woman upstairs is the most important puzzle piece he now has.

  “Augustine Sanfresco. She’s kinda hot in her own way, but she’s big in the fashion industry, which means she’s real big on models and crazy-hot girls. Man, I can’t believe you just got pulled into that. She’s been coming here for a while, too. Man, how has this never happened to me? I can’t believe they just kicked you out…your balls must be blue as fuck, man.” Hap all but tells Luke to leave him alone, as he lies to Cassandra at the front desk about how he has some type of food poisoning and needs to go home.

  “I know exactly what you’re going to do when you get home, you bastard!” Luke calls after him as Hap hurries into the street. His lie might not be so far-fetched. The idea of puking from his excitement seems like a real possibility.

  When Hap gets home, he delicately picks up his camera and attaches it to an umbilical wall plug as a sliver of red light indicates its approaching life. Augustine Sanfresco? Hopefully, the NSA isn’t still monitoring phones because he is going to Google that name until he knows enough to write her unofficial biography. The star symbol, too…sex acts with animal masks, everything. He is going to start a file, and he is going to email it to his parents, maybe his brother, for safekeeping. He is going to build something nobody can take away from him.

  It’s not until the next morning that he remembers the uniform he left in Augustine Sanfresco’s hotel room had his nametag plastered over it.

  The next day, as soon as Hap checks in at the front desk for his four to twelve shift, Cassandra tells him Paul wants to talk to him. A lump begins to form in his throat as he realizes Luke is off hauling bags and he is on his own. “Make sure to knock. Who knows what he’s doing back there?” she says, and there’s a pause before she giggles as she thinks of something. What’s the worst that could happen; Hap gets fired?

  There’s no answer after the standard knock, so Hap opens Paul’s door partially. Paul lifts his head from his desk, his face red and compressed as if he were taking a nap. “Ah, you’re in uniform.” He burps twice in a row and gestures for Hap to come in. “I saw what happened….” Paul waves at Hap, who remains standing. The office is bathed in shadows as if the lights are about to blink out. “…and I don’t care.” At Paul’s words, Hap’s heart rises, and this is nothing, only a reprimand. “Can’t say I’d have done differently in your situation. Hey, take a seat.” Paul burps again, gesturing toward a chair. Hap has no choice. Even in the dim light, he can see the redness in Paul’s eyes. “I didn’t want to see the security video, but, uh, it was brought to my attention. Try and be a little less accommodating next time, yeah? Even if they offer you a tip.” Paul waves his hand, and it seems like he’s trying to make a joke, but his heart isn’t in it. “You’re not in trouble, but, ah, why didn’t you go through with it?” Paul asks, and Hap isn’t sure if he’s serious. “What? You have a girlfriend or something?”

  “No,” Hap says, maybe a little too quickly. Has Paul figured out who he is?

  “Well, get one. This place, dealing with people like this, can get messy. There’s a whole lot of temptation. All sorts of stuff is going on behind closed doors, and you’ve gotta know not to go knocking.”

  Hap doesn’t correct his boss by mentioning that he was pulled into that room. He also doesn’t mention the overbearing stench of alcohol wafting over from Paul. The guy has tears at the rims of his eyes, shining in the glow creeping under the door from the lobby

  “Anyway, was curious is all. You surprised me, kid. Now off you go,” Paul gestures, and Hap has to do everything he can to stop himself from running out of the room.

  Chapter 10: The Eye Exam

  When the cop car pulls halfway into the valet lot, stopping just before the pickup zone, Hap wants to throw his hat on the ground and stomp on it because he’s pretty sure he missed something. It’s probably just a random fight between drunken tourists, but with the hotel being as big as it is, there could be a mass murderer having a field day on the seventh floor, and he wouldn’t even hear about it until it was over. There’s a cold breeze that replaced the setting sun a few hours ago, and another New England summer is beginning to fade.

  Hap doesn’t recognize Officer Dylan until the cop is standing right in front of him and asks, “Hap, right?” There’s a natural, panicked moment of disorientation as one of the uniformed guys with a gun, whom Hap has trained himself to avoid eye contact with, breaks the fourth wall and enters his reality. Officer Dylan ushers him away from the two unfriendly valet guys and Luke, whose hands are clasped behind his back as he raises his eyebrows at Hap, mouthing out the word, “Shit.”

  When they’re out of earshot of the others, Officer Dylan says, “I’m glad to see your bruises look better. Your car getting fixed?”

  “Nah. Still waiting to get a call back.” In truth, Hap hasn’t even checked his phone for missed calls. His parents have definitely tried calling. If only they had what it takes to be a part of this.

  “I’ve gotta tell ya, I spent the whole rest of that night thinking about your story. You see a guy with his eyes uh…gone, and then you go home and eat leftovers. But your story. It’s been occurring to me, though, as I drive by here, about your girlfriend, and it hit me. You working here, it took me a while to realize it…you’re trying to figure out what happened to her, aren’t you?” Officer Dylan grins, but it doesn’t make Hap feel as stupid or crazy as he thinks he sometimes is. Guy’s less than a decade older than him, but Hap gets the impression he’s being looked at as a little kid. “Well, you find anything?” Officer Dylan asks.

  “I’m just…keeping my ears open.” No, wait—doesn’t the expression go keeping your eyes open? Hap immediately feels like an idiot.

  Officer Dylan leans in, and Hap isn’t sure if he should take a step back or not. “I’ve been having a hard time swallowing all of this, but I think there is something weird going on with the investigation, something I’m trying to figure out. I think you should come with me.”

  Hap feels a twinge of low-grade panic flow through his insides.

  “I’m going to show you something, so we’re on the same page, and I…. I wouldn’t ask you to keep doing this, but since you are, maybe you can help me since you’re kind of like a man on the inside?”

  Hap’s no expert in gauging the concern in someone’s eyes, but for a cop, Dylan seems genuinely troubled. It’s in his eyes, and it’s backed by power, by an assurance. Officer Dylan might turn out to be Hap’s savior.

  “All right. Um, I’m working till one. Maybe tomorrow or if that’s not too late….” Hap glances at Luke, who is still staring at him with his arms crossed, trying to figure out what’s going on. The two valet boys, near identical with their buzzed black hair and broad shoulders, are staring off at the street like the silent, miserable bastards they are.

  “You could come now. Your boss is Paul Jones, right? Leaving three hours early ain’t bad on a Tuesday. He’ll let you go if you ask him; mention your accident and how you have to follow up with me about your insurance information. I’ll come in with you, if I have to, but….” Officer Dylan leans in once more, releasing a gust of coffee breath. “I’d rather leave my name out of this, so we should get going. Depending on what we’re dealing with here, keeping our heads down would be smart, right?”

  Hap agrees, trying not to sound too nervous or excited. What’s the first thing he tells him? Maybe he’ll leave the part about breaking into the Federal Hill home out of it, but the stuff with Augustine Sanfresco? That seven-pointed star spiral?
Hap isn’t going to have much to say, but maybe the cop can fill in these two blazing clues. Right now, Hap knows as much as Wikipedia, and the only search result he got for the star spiral was a crop circle from a UFO news story that looked exactly like it. Aliens, yeah, right.

  “While you check out,” Officer Dylan chuckles at his own pun, “I’m going to grab a coffee and park around the other side of the building. You want one?” Officer Dylan’s turning toward his car, and Hap shakes his head. Coffee? He doesn’t need the energy; he’s amped up as it is.

  Hap gets a “figured” out of Luke when he tells him his conversation with the cop is only about hitting the deer. Luke asks an additional question, but the sliding glass doors are already separating them.

  Hap feels weird, suddenly being back in his clothes, his shorts, and a shirt featuring the band Sublime’s sun logo that Tiff bought him. Hap already gave in to a night of work and misery, and now he has a partner. More than that, he might have a lead on Tiff. Shit, this changes everything. Hap slings a new Nike string bag over his back, loaded mainly with just his camera that he’s wishing he used for more than just the Federal Hill house; if only it wouldn’t raise suspicion if he took pictures while working.

  A cop who might as well get his detective’s badge is going to guide him right to her. They are going to find out what happened. There will be pictures, a front-page picture, and then somebody will learn about Hap’s picture-taking skills, and he’ll have a job. Tiff will be famous, and she’ll write a memoir about the experience, and then they’ll both be rich and living in Westerly, spending the rest of their lives staring out at the sea from a king-sized bed with silk sheets and a stash of secret chicken wing recipes. Tiffany has been missing for two months. Lifelong PTSD can occur from an event as short as fifteen minutes. Pretty dreams tell the ugliest lies.

  Cassandra, eyeing Hap from the reception desk, asks if he’s sick again. He tells her it’s something much worse: he has to go refile a report at the police station because his car did damage to a building when it hit the deer, and he has to go prevent himself from getting sued. In fact, just as he’s walking by her, he realizes he probably doesn’t even have to face an awkward confrontation with the bleary-eyed Paul. Cassandra can just tell him, can’t she? Hap asks the favor and walks away without waiting for much of a confirmation. He figures he’s all set until he walks into Paul coming out of the coffee shop that’s adjoined to the hotel with a large ice coffee clenched in his hand.