“Some challenge,” muttered Shay. She jumped again when Nathan, or one of his friends, started thumping hard against the door. It sounded like someone was kicking it rather than rapping on it with a fist.
“How heavy do you think that dresser is?” I asked, nodding in its direction.
Then the room went all fuzzy. My whole body felt covered in pinpricks, and my headache was so bad, I was seeing spots again. The faint, buzzy ringing in my ears and the thumping coming from the door certainly didn’t help matters. I felt the room sway and spin, causing me to tightly grip the armchair to keep my balance. Something wasn’t right. It wasn’t the lunacy we were facing. It was something else, like the moment you have when you’re falling from a high point in a deep dream, right on the edge of waking. I felt like my body was wanting me to wake, but my mind was playing obstinate, enjoying the free-fall.
Shay was suddenly there again, right beside me, her grimy face lined with worry. She held my face in her hands, a palm on each cheek, as she met my eyes.
“Hey,” she said, nodding at me. “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”
“I’m sorry. I just felt…funny. This isn’t right. None of this is right.”
She managed a chuckle, nodding. “Girl, you said it. None of it is. Now let’s move that dresser and block the door. Give those assholes the challenge they’ve been wanting.”
We made our way over to the dresser and got on either end of it. It was solid and wide enough and looked as if it had been made from some decent heavy wood, like it could last a beating or two.
There was a sudden, massive thunk to the door, and I could swear it was starting to splinter in the frame, even against its deadlock. “We’re coming, ladies,” Nathan cooed from behind the door. “Better get yourselves all nice an’ pretty for the boys here. Put on those smiles, but leave the perfume and hair product. We like you au naturel.”
We waited, listening, breathing heavily. There was finally silence on the other end.
“Just when I thought he’d never shut the hell up,” I said.
Shay wrinkled her nose. “And did he really just say ‘au naturel’? When does it end?”
“Your hubby’s disgusting,” I braced myself against the dresser. “Okay, let’s move this bad boy.”
I motioned with my head towards the door, and using all of our combined weight, we slid it carefully from one side of the huge space all the way to the door.
“Don’t ever say that again,” said Shay as she got her breath back.
“Say what again?”
“‘Hubby’. I hate that word.”
“Why not? Rhymes with ‘tubby’ or ‘flubby’.”
“It’s not the rhyming. It’s the implication.”
“Do you think this will hold?”
Shay made a show of examining the dresser before she said, “It should, but do we have anyplace else to hide?”
“Bathroom seems the only viable option,” I said and could hear the panic building in my voice. “Get inside. I’ll bring one of those chairs. We can use it to brace the door.”
Shay grabbed the mallet, taking it with her into the bathroom, while I picked up one of the dinette chairs and then followed her in.
There was another series of thumps against the door, which was on the verge of cracking, even against the weight of the dresser. The thunks were in time to the whoops and jeers and catcalling happening right outside.
“We’re gonna have us some fun with you, baby,” said Nathan, his voice brittle and mocking. “Sugar’n spice, everything nice!”
My heart was doing double time in me. I meant what I said, sure. Let’s face reality though. We really didn’t know what we were doing. This wasn’t one of those emergency situations where plans could’ve possibly been made in advance, and the escape route was going to be clear. Still, I’ll give it to the two of us; by then, it didn’t matter. We were letting Sister Adrenalin guide us in all of our madness.
Shay’s face had gone red. “Get bent, fuckface!” she hollered before she slammed the bathroom door shut and promptly locked us in.
SIXTEEN
(WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK?)
It’s just like them to play. I keep my arm protectively around my sister, all of this during our third or fourth circle of hell of the night.
“Shay! Hey, Shaaaaaay. I really need some painkillers, darlin’, so I’m gonna have to break down the door like I did earlier, sweet thing. Hate to do it though. Don’t wanna have to foot the bill for it. You know we only put down $500 for incidentals, and I don’t want all of it to go to a couple of busted doors just because you wouldn’t let me get some teensy pills outta my shave kit.” Nathan laughs. It’s a cruel cackle, like it wouldn’t make a difference in the world. He’s been primed to do it anyway.
“Shay, c’mon, sweetheart,” he purrs. “You know, we’re married now. This kinda thing, lockin’ me out. It ain’t right. It’s hardly befitting a wife. Not in God’s eye.”
It’s quite enough for me, all of it. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Nate, but I don’t think God had homegrown cannibals in mind when He created mankind.”
“Hush now, bitch,” Nathan growls. “Once again, no one asked for your goddamn opinion. Gonna have to stitch that mouth of yours shut just to have some peace n’ quiet when we eat you.”
Even now, I can’t help myself. “Man, I love it when a Christian boy sweet talks me.”
“Shay, open the FUCK UP!” roars Nathan, causing us both to flinch. He thumps the door again and there’s the sound of something sliding up against it. He must have been leaning against it. There’s the thumping of steady footsteps. Low murmuring. Several voices out there, whispering something about us. I don’t know how many there could possibly be by now, and I don’t even want to know how many of us there are left alive. Us. Who would’ve thought a wedding could turn into an us-versus-them kind of affair, really? Well, all right, maybe since it’s a matter of the bride’s family versus the groom’s family, it makes a little more sense, makes it seem a little more reasonable, but is this reasonable?
These thoughts, these tangled thoughts worm and wiggle their way in. My mouth is chalky-dry. It isn’t just my arm that burns. Everything hurts, and it’s growing harder for me to take deep breaths.
Shay must’ve seen something in me. A look of concern has spread across her face.
“I’m okay,” I whisper. “I just need to get my medication.”
“Don’t think we should attempt that right now,” she says. “Can you manage?”
She’ll never understand. No one does, and now, especially now, it’s frustrating to even try to convince anyone that I’m not okay, that it’s making me sicker every damned day.
“Yeah, I’ll be all right.” I won’t be, but what does it matter. It’s either suffer in silence and keep on or…well…get eaten.
Shay and I are back to being quiet, the two of us straining to hear, looking at the other intently. Just as Shay’s about to speak, I hold up a finger for her to wait.
It’s silent out there in the bedroom.
“Monster,” Shay says softly. Her eyes have gone hard and glassy, but the sadness, the regret, the how-did-I-not-know’s…evident.
“He said he has pain meds? ” I say. Desperate times. Desperate measures. It will relieve the pain in my arm and numb the heat in my head. Before she can answer, I’m already up and rummaging through the Dopp kit that had been left on top of the toilet tank.
“He does, but it has Codeine in it, Ans. You don’t want to take that.”
“I wish I could transfer the pain I’m experiencing here to you,” I say as I search. “You’d be looking for anything you could get. My arm is on fire. It’s like someone injected battery acid into it.”
“If you have to, take half of one.”
Half of one. If only. But she knows that.
In my desperation, I can’t find any sort of pill container, but my fingers clasp around something cold, metallic. A key. It feels like one of the casita
keys judging from the intricate pattern of its bow. Heavier though, solid, like it would open the gate to a dungeon. I pull it out and hold it up, taking a look at it. It’s definitely one of the resort keys, but it’s longer and thicker, its casing a dingy wrought iron with a double bit at the end. A heavy skeleton key.
Shay doesn’t seem to recognize it either, as she’s staring up at it curiously, too. I waggle it at her, and she shakes her head. “Probably for another casita,” she said. “It’s got the same design as the others.”
“It’s heavier, like it’s for the main gate maybe…?”
She frowns, deep in thought. “What would he be doing with that?”
“It’s not like the Cards don’t have access since they’ve pretty much taken up the entire resort.”
“Yeah, but why would it be in his shave kit? That means he’d packed it with his stuff when we were getting ready.”
“Whatever. I say we keep it. We may need it.” Curiouser and curiouser. “Let me ask you something,” I say, tucking the key down my dress front. “Who owns this place?”
“Family friend, or so I was told,” Shay says.
“Yeah, I remember that part. But who’s the friend?”
“I don’t know. He has a lot of them. You saw. Pick one. Charlie maybe?”
“No, from what I saw,” I say, “he was trying to get away like the rest of us in the madhouse.”
“Then my money’s on a friend of Rex and Delia’s.”
“Or Rex and Delia own the place.”
She nods. “That would make sense. Keeping it insular. Family ‘friends,’” she says with a sneer.
“One percenters with their oil money and their fucking barbeques.”
Shay shakes her head at the thought of it. “I wonder how long they’ve been doing this. How many people have gone missing? How is it no one is even asking anything? No one even knows, Ansley.”
“Rich people. They can do anything to anyone at any time. Must be a dream.” I feel something brush lightly against my skin, a slight, cool breeze that soothes the back of my neck, all the way down my arm.
When I’m just about to turn and take a look, the air around us suddenly explodes in sound, thundering hard against the door again and again, rattling the chair rapidly. Shay and I both scream, shaken by the noise. She scrambles to her feet and scoots beside me, brandishing the tenderizer at the ready. There’s nothing worthwhile for me to use as a possible weapon except—
“Give us a minute, honeypie,” Nathan purrs from beyond the door. “We’re comin’ in. Be with you in a moment.”
—there is a way out. How did we not catch it earlier? Distractions, I suppose, but still, how did Shay not remember? I ease the shower curtain back a bit, revealing the little window, probably no larger in size than a kids’ cubbyhole, and its ledge with its travel-sized resort bath products along with Shay’s favorite grapefruit-scented shower gel lined up in a neat, little row. The window itself is slightly ajar.
“Yeah, I know. I thought of that,” she whispers, startling me out of my own thoughts. “There’s no way we’re going to be able to get out in time through that.”
There’s another cracking thunk against the door, one that grows repetitious, one beat at a time, somewhat synchronous, but the other foot kicking at it occasionally gets out of rhythm.
Even still, the door panels are starting to crack. I don’t know if it’s the sound of the monsters outside trying to kick their way in or the rattling of the chair frame against it that forces the desperate and dumb idea out of me in the barest nick of time.
#
“They’re probably running to the exit road,” Nathan says as he holds up the tattered remnants of the skirt slip and torn crinoline from Shay’s dress that we’d ditched in the deep bathtub, just leaving that trace of us with the window wide open to the night. A couple of his friends have joined him in the bathroom, one I recognize as the stocky, plaid-jacketed newbie who’d slowed down to talk with Rex.
“Should be easier to trap now,” says Plaid Jacket. “We couldn’t find Charlie and that hot mom with the kid though. Think we should be worried?”
Shay squeezes my hand tightly. I squeeze back, signaling that I’d heard. The two of us are locked together, face to face, crammed at an awkward angle. We can barely breathe in the tight space of the suite’s narrow linen closet, our sides pressed against the wall. We’d barely had any time to detach the few shelves from their hinges and then lean them against the wall on Shay’s side. Right now, we can just see what’s going on in the bathroom through the narrow slats of the doors.
Nathan drops the dress slip and crinoline remnants back into the tub where we’d left it earlier and closely examines the open window, the toiletries scattered in the tub. He turns back to his friends and smacks P.J. across the cheek, a sharp pop of noise out of nowhere, and Nathan holds up a hand again in a loose threat. P.J. cringes, cowering from the hand, his gaze darting back and forth, from Nathan to Nathan’s hand to Nathan.
Nathan softens, smiles, puts on his brotherly charm once more. “Now look. We’re kings here, right? This is our land, our domain. We got nothin’ to worry about. There’s nowhere those bitches can possibly go. They don’t know the land here.” He gives P.J. a friendly shoulder squeeze. “Have faith. It’s what gets us through the years we’re not able to feed.”
“I never knew I needed this until tonight. I told your dad. I just hadn’t known.”
“How’s it feel?”
P.J. cracks a half grin. “Fucking amazing.”
“Now why don’t you and the rest of the boys get on outta here. Do some huntin’. Impress the rest. Find them before dawn breaks.”
“What? What happens at dawn?”
Nathan stares at the guy hard enough, it bores a hole directly through his soul. “Thought you did your research like a good, little college boy. We just shrivel up and fade away,” he says coldly.
Then he barks out a laugh, shaking his head. P.J. laughs uncomfortably along with him, looking as if he really wants to get out of there. Can’t say I blame him, cannibalistic tendencies or not.
“Lord above, man. You just ate that up, didn’t you? Naw. That’s when the day staff gets in,” Nathan says. “They start rollin’ in around six. They’re usually supposed to be in at seven, but on account of the grand occasion we got goin’ on here, they’re scheduled for a special clean up.”
Plaid Jacket clucks a nervous chuckle as Nathan playfully socks him hard on the arm, a hit that causes him to wince and recoil when Nathan reaches for him to attempt to give him an apologetic shoulder squeeze.
“You run along now, lil’ doggy,” says Nathan shooing his friend out the door. “Don’t wanna be last at the table again.”
As soon as Nathan’s friend scoots away, I sense Shay relax, releasing tension, but only just when I give her hand a tap with a finger in warning, pressing firmly down on it. She finally looks at me, reading my expression. Her face is marked in lines from the light filtering in from the slats. Her eyes are round. I shake my head, a slight warning.
When I turn my head to look again, I see Nathan hasn’t budged. He just stands there, frozen, listening. He shifts a little, as if he senses something, and icy prickles sprout all the way down my back. His mouth curves ever so slightly, forming a sneer that’s only just perceptible. He then swivels around, pulls back, and slams a tightly balled fist against the bathroom mirror over the sink, shattering the glass into webbed cracks. Shay and I twitch at the sudden noise, the shock of it. He thumps the cracked mirror a couple of times with the side of his now-bloody hand, loosening the glass bits, and he pries a large shard from the damaged mirror.
My own hands are growing clammy, cold and sticky with damp. Shay’s heavy breathing is so loud in our own cramped space, I worry that Nathan can hear her.
Nathan swivels, facing us dead-on in our hiding spot, grinning, grinding his teeth together. I don’t know if he can see us, but I can certainly imagine that he smells us in here. Our
blood and sweat, the meaty tang of us. I suck in my breath, set fire to my lungs, my heartbeat undoubtedly loud enough to hear through the slats. Shay tightens her grip on my hand, staring down at the floor as she does. She doesn’t want to watch. Her fingernails dig trenches into my palm. We wait, and I keep watching him closely, silently, the two of us frozen there.
Nathan scans the bathroom up and down, all around, like he’s looking for something specific. What, I’ve no idea. He opens the shower stall door, peers inside. Then he shuts the shower door with a bang and scrapes the large shard of mirror glass up and down the closet slats with an idle hand. He’s toying with us. The rattling sound of it causes Shay to nearly drop the mallet, so I pry it gently from her shaky hand and grasp it in my own. It’s slick with her perspiration, but it doesn’t deter me from clasping its handle tightly.
I look Shay in the eye. She’s breathing hard and looking right at me as well. “One,” I mouth.
Nathan is now facing the door, his sneer curling, his eyes flat. “Heeeeeere, pretty girl of mine,” he softly sings.
“Two,” we mouth together. Shay nods.
He slides the shard in-and-out through the slats at eye level.
“Three,” I finally say, audible enough I hope, and the two of us ram our shoulders into the door.
SEVENTEEN
The force of our shove is enough to smash the rickety door loose from its hinges and have us slam right into Nathan, sending the three of us, colliding into each other, tumbling to the floor.
At first, we’re nothing but a messy tangle of bodies, arms and legs and torsos squirming about the bathroom floor in a frenetic game of Twister. I feel a slash of scorching heat across my face, from the corner of my eye to my cheek, and the wound splatters blood over Nathan’s cheek and chin. It takes me a fleeting second to realize he’d just used the shard to slice me raw.
Shay screams down at him with a mad rage. I’ve seen her like this before but can’t recall when as everything’s a blur of motion, and my head feels numb and strange. Shay attempts to wrangle the shard from Nathan, scratching her own hand in the process. Her face contorted into a spittle-foamy grimace, she closes his hand tightly around the shard, dripping a blend of their blood onto the floor, and he howls.
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