So Then There Were None

by Annie Adams

  After several failed attempts, I finally managed to keep my eyelids open, although that didn’t do me much good. The only light in the room was a blue LED on the mini-hand vacuum plugged into a charger on the wall. Not enough to see by.

  I was relieved to be awake, even if I was sitting silently in the dark. At least I’d woken from the horrific nightmare, where I repeatedly found a way onto the roof of the Harmony Lodge, and watched two mysterious arms pushing a woman off of the edge. The nightmare had been on a non-stop loop, repeating the push, over and over. And the whole time, through every repetition, I couldn’t tell if the woman being pushed was Kourtnee, or if it was me.

  I shook my head to rattle away the nightmarish thoughts for good. Since I didn’t know what time it was, I didn’t want to wake K.C., especially if I’d only been asleep for ten minutes.

  I stood up, being cautious not to whack any of my limbs against the shelves or knock anything down. As stiff as my joints were, it took several stages of unfolding myself before I was actually standing. After a few reaches toward the ceiling and some toe-touches, I was feeling better, refreshed, even. I might have actually slept for a couple of hours.

  Standing alone in the dark became boring in no time at all. But, being the good friend that I am, I remained silent. Now seemed like the perfect time to try out meditation. I’d heard about the wonders of daily meditation from books, and seminars about business, and people on TV—even my little sister had recommended that I meditate.

  Why not try it? I sat down again and after a good amount of coaxing, I twisted and folded my legs into the pretzel that I had seen before, making sure to get the bottoms of my bare feet pointing up. I was going to be meditating for a good long time, because there was no way I would be able to unfold myself right away.

  I rested the backs of my hands on my knees, with the middle fingers and thumbs of each hand pinched together, pointing to the sky. I was sure I looked the picture of the perfect meditator. I opened my mouth to say om, but remembered K.C. was sleeping and stopped the sound just in time.

  With my eyes closed, I sat and thought about—nothing. And then—everything.

  I couldn’t help it. Memories of my fight with Alex flooded my mind. I tried to stuff them down like I had before, but my mind wasn’t having it. My chest heaved under the weight that was suddenly there, nausea boiled inside my gut, and tears dripped off of my nose before I even knew they’d come out of my eyes.

  I had to stop to this. I wiped my eyes, and in an attempt to clear the darkness, I turned my head and found that little blue light and stared at it. I tried to unfold my legs, but they were stuck. Both of my feet had gone to sleep.

  I took a few deep breaths and told myself to calm down, and I did manage to clear my mind for a second. Long enough to feel the urgency of nature’s call.

  The need to go would be manageable for a few minutes, maybe. But I would have to turn on the light. And as horrible as it was, I would have to find a place to—you know—and hope that I didn’t wake K.C. while doing it. I made a hasty plan for clearing my impromptu bedding out of the way, flipping on the light, grabbing a container with a wide enough opening—yeesh—and contents that I could dump out without making a lot of noise, and then turning off the light and bending the laws of nature to tinkle without…tinkling.

  It could all be done, as soon as I unfolded my dead legs.

  My bladder was sending me ASAP messages, yet I remained seated in the downward pretzel position. I pried my legs apart with my hands, and tried to move them around to jump-start the circulation.

  Slowly, the feeling came back on the tail end of painful burning, as the blood flowed back into the empty blood vessels. With hesitation, I tested my legs’ ability to support my full weight. I needed to locate the light switch, but of course, there was no light to see by, save the tiny light on the vacuum. I looked over at the light and it gave me an idea.

  I reached for the vacuum that was plugged into the wall against which my feet had been crammed, while I slept. As I lifted it out of the holster, it made an incredibly loud click. I was sure had woken K.C.

  I stood frozen, waiting to hear her stir. But there was no sound.

  It also turned out there was no little blue light when I took the vacuum out of its holster.

  My bladder started to sing to me and I knew I was in trouble. I reached for where I thought I’d seen a plastic caddy—the type you carry around as you clean the house. It probably wasn’t very deep, but it would do the job.

  My hands fumbled along the shelves until they found what felt like the caddy. I reached inside, to find out if it was empty. I nearly lost the contents of my bladder when I felt lots of sharp, cold points. The caddy was full of metal screws. There was no time to find something else.

  I grabbed one of the towels I’d used for a bed sheet, spread it out on the floor next to me, using my foot, and then reached for the caddy. It was too heavy to lift with one arm. I tucked the vacuum under my left armpit, lifted the caddy with both hands and then tried to carefully pour the contents onto the towel, making as little noise as possible.

  As I crouched to pour out the caddy, my bladder took that as a signal that things were a go. I stood up rocket fast to close off the dam. As I did so, the vacuum squirted out from under my arm and clattered onto the floor.

  I was so distracted by the sound, I dropped the caddy, which, judging by the sound of the metal deluge, had turned over sideways, spilling its contents all over the floor. I couldn’t have made more noise if I’d tried.

  “I am so, very, sorry, K.C.”

  She didn’t move, or reply. Or make a single noise.

  Great! Just great! I yelled inside of my head. If that hadn’t woken her, the light wouldn’t either. I shuffled in what I thought was the direction of the door, keeping my knees squeezed together, my abdomen now feeling the shooting pains of my bladder pounding on my internal door.

  I leaned forward, hoping my calculations were correct, so that the wall would catch me, and I wouldn’t step on K.C. I found the light switch and… an empty floor, where K.C. should have been sleeping. She was gone.

  All other thoughts took a back seat. I dropped my jeans and underwear, grabbed the empty caddy and squatted just in time for two things.

  First, a bottom of the ninth, last-second buzzer-beater save of epic proportions from the embarrassment I would have encountered had I not reached for the caddy in time.

  And the second thing.

  I squatted in front of the door just in time to have it swing open to an audience of Johnny, Chad and K.C.

  Thank goodness for shirttails.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  “What the…” I shouted out from my crouched position.

  K.C. pushed the two men aside and pulled the door shut. And while I did appreciate her efforts, more than I can express, I couldn’t erase the stunned look on her face, nor the strange expressions on the faces of Johnny and Chad.

  It wasn’t only the compromising position I’d just been viewed in, like a gorilla in an up close and personal encounter at the zoo. Nor was it my inability to get out of said compromising position, which caused the most mortification. No, it was the silence on the other side of the door. I could only imagine the looks and whispers that were being exchanged. What had they actually seen? What had they imagined I was doing? Or—the horror—did they know exactly what they had seen me doing?

  What a miserable way to start yet another day at this beautiful, but god-forsaken place. My engagement was over, and perhaps my career, after the word spread to the bride and groom. I wanted to sit there—well, not actually sit—there—in fact, I really did need to stand up, but I wanted to escape into some kind of coma, where I would have an excuse to be transported to some far away hospital, or home where I could sleep in privacy for a week.

  At least a good number of the bridesmaids had been knocked off in the game, so they wouldn’t hear about this for a while. By then I would be back home, speaking only to my dog
Jerome, my sisters, and my parents—and that would only be when absolutely necessary.

  I realized right then that I should embrace my newly acquired spinsterhood. I was a spinster who squatted in the middle of the closet floor to pee. When I got home, I would have to sell my business—because who would want customers to interact with this crazy peeing lady?

  I created a picture in my mind of how I would make myself and Jerome comfortable in our little house, and hopefully, I could rely on the charity of my sister, Allie to bring me meals once in a while, maybe do some shopping for me, and check to see that I wasn’t fermenting somewhere in my chair having died while watching reruns of Friends on TV.

  I heard a quiet tapping on the door at the same time I was managing to stand up by pushing off the floor in front of me, with my hands. With every neuron I could fire, I made sure that no part of my body or clothing touched any centimeter of that caddy. Just the slightest bump, and a mess of catastrophic proportions would unfold.

  I pulled up my underwear and jeans just before I heard the tapping again.

  “Quincy,” K.C. said, “are you alright in there?”

  I’d temporarily lost the power of speech with my embarrassment, which was a good thing. If I’d been able to speak, I would have been far too honest about my feelings and whether or not I was “alright.”

  "Now, I'm not here to judge, just wondering if I can help," K.C. said.

  "Oh, for heaven’s sake!" I opened the door a crack, and peered out with one eye. I tried to convey all of the wrath that I could with that one eye.

  "Why don't you boys go back downstairs for now, and I'll come get you later to work on this lock," K.C. told Johnny and Chad.

  They were all too eager to comply with K.C.'s request, judging by the speed in which they left the scene.

  K.C. motioned as if she was coming toward me to open the door.

  "Uh,uh,uh. Stay right there. We've got a hazmat situation in here."

  "What can I do to help?"

  "I'll need to get into your room, and I'll need you to make sure no one sees me."

  "Gotcha. I'll make it so." K.C. saluted, turned on her heel, and left in the direction of her room.

  Using a spare trash can liner, I bagged things up and left for K.C.’s room, walking as fast as possible, while keeping my precious cargo level—as if my life depended upon it. This was a situation in which I could be grateful for my experience in carrying vases and buckets full of water, while keeping the liquid from sloshing out of its container—or vessel—as the hoity-toity florists like to call them. I’m not sure what they would say about the vessel I was carrying now or its contents. My friend and competitor, Danny Barnes could lean in the hoity direction at times, and I would need to remember to tell K.C. that he was never to hear a word of this ridiculous portion of my journey.

  Once in K.C.’s room, I took care of the problem and then disinfected everything within reach. Turns out that utility closet was stocked with all kinds of helpful things, like cleaning products—it just required the light to be on in order to see them.

  “Okay, K.C., I think I’m ready to get in the shower. But before I do, you have to explain how you got out of that closet, and why those two were there with you when you came back.”

  “I woke up needing to use the facilities. Without even thinking about the locked door, I stood up, found the handle, and what do you know? It just opened up, no problem. When I came back, you were still asleep and I couldn’t stand the thought of waking you, so I went back to my room and slept in my own bed for an hour.”

  “So, you’re saying that if I had just opened the door instead of worrying about waking you up, I could have saved myself the embarrassment of peeing in a bucket in front of a couple of strangers?”

  “Well, technically, they’re not strangers, are they?”

  “So not helpful, right now,” I grumbled.

  “Right. A bit off topic, isn’t it? The answer is maybe or maybe not. I didn’t want to leave the door open with you sleeping in there, because there’s no telling what might have happened.”

  It was saving from myself that I had needed most. No door or lock seems to be able to fix that.

  “I closed it, and then heard a click that I didn’t like. I tried to open the door again, and it wouldn’t budge. So then I panicked and thought maybe it wasn’t such a good thing for you to be locked in there, not knowing what was going on. So, I went and grabbed the two boys. They were going to get you out. But—it turned out they didn’t need to—didn’t it?” The last bit came out apologetically, and I realized how much she had been concerned for my welfare.

  “Thank you for worrying about me. It was nice to sleep, at least a little bit, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s for darned sure.”

  “So, it wasn’t someone locking us in, it was just a bad lock on the door?”

  “I suppose so…although, I’m getting a vibe about the whole thing.”

  I felt a smirk overtaking my mouth and I clamped my lips down to stop it.

  “Laugh all you want, but I had all kinds of crazy dreams last night.”

  “Oh, I’m not laughing. I swear. And I had awful dreams too, about—I don’t want to recall them—we’ll leave it at awful.”

  “No, my dreams weren’t bad. The ghosts came to visit me and they were trying to communicate with me. I was just getting the hang of their language and what they were about to tell me, when I had to get up to use the bathroom.”

  “So…the…ghosts…locked us in?” I asked.

  “Maybe. I think they were trying to protect us from something outside of the closet. Like I said last night, that closet might have been the safest place for us.”

  “Maybe you’re right.” I needed to get the ghost talk and the closet talk behind me. “I guess I’ll take that shower now.”

  “Okey-dokey. It’s about time for me to meet Megan—oh you will never guess what I heard about her, by the way.”

  I was sure that I wouldn’t be able to guess.

  K.C. didn’t wait for my reply, she just forged ahead. “Do you remember when I was reading the Tarot cards, and Megan asked the meaning of one of the cards?”

  “Uh—no.”

  “Well, anyway, she showed herself to be a fraud, by asking.”

  “How?”

  “I had previously talked to Audra—I don’t remember when. Anyway, we got to talking about people’s jobs and things, and Audra told me,” she leaned forward and pivoted her head from side to side, making sure no one was around to hear us, “that Megan used to be part of one of those online outfits where you log on to a website and someone reads your cards for you. When you sign up to work with one of those places, you’re hoping to develop a list of return customers.”

  “So people just go online and get their fortune told by a complete stranger?”

  “Apparently. She had some regulars from what I’m told.”

  “Kind of like a hairdresser. Are you sure she wasn’t talking about that?”

  “Well, Megan does that now. I’m sure Audra wouldn’t lead me astray,” K.C. said matter-of-factly.

  I wasn’t so sure about Audra’s reliability where the truth was concerned. “I wonder if she’s losing money this weekend not being able to get online,” I said.

  “Oh, she doesn’t do it anymore.” She said it with such certainty, as if she’d spoken directly to Megan herself. “Apparently, one time, the twins and Audra and Sydnee all went golfing together. And while Audra and Megan sat in the clubhouse, waiting for the other two women to finish golfing, Megan got a call. It was one of her high-frequency clients, someone who called her a few times a week at any hour, day or night. Megan actually told the client that she was reading her cards at that moment, while they sat there in the clubhouse cafe.”

  “Wow, I don’t know what to say about that. If it’s true, it doesn’t sound very honest. I wonder how her company screens their employees?”

  “Don’t know, but when you mess with mystical ene
rgy like that, you can get in a whole lot of trouble. Karma’s a real thing. Take it from someone named Karma.” She did a full face wink.

  “Hey, aren’t you going to be late to meet with her? What time is it?”

  “It’s almost nine-thirty.”

  Maybe the ghosts from K.C.’s dreams were fooling around with us. It didn’t seem physically possible that only that many hours had passed. It felt like it should be around noon or later. Maybe it was just being here with all that had gone on—where minutes felt like hours. Or maybe I had been correct before when I mentioned being on an enchanted Fantasy Island. Only, this wasn’t part of any fantasy I had ever had.

  Whatever the case, I had an appointment with a hot shower.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Showers have magical powers. I turned off the faucet only after I had maybe used up every last drop of hot water for the entire building. And for that, I was truly sorry to the other guests. Not really.

  The shower and sauna were luxuriously appointed, with beautiful sand colored tiles and a bench where you could sit down right in the shower and have a steam bath. There were his and hers shower heads. As I stood in the cascade of one of the fancy shower heads, which felt like standing under a gentle, heated waterfall, I imagined how wonderful it would have been if Alex could have joined me in a shower like this while we were here at the Harmony Lodge.

  Right then I decided that once I got dressed, I would go knock on the door to our room. If he didn’t let me in, I would assume he wasn’t there and go find him and apologize and ask him if he could ever forgive me. If I couldn’t find him—I would lose my mind and there was no telling what would happen next.

  I opened the ceiling to floor glass door only a sliver. Just enough to reach the towel waiting for me on the warming rack. The towel was thick, and soft, and enveloped me in fabric that felt just as rich and wonderful as the taste of a perfect piece of pumpkin pie, topped with a spoonful of whipped cream.

  I hated the thought of putting the same clothes back on my body that I had worn for the last fourteen or so hours, but at least I’d been able to wash the grime from my body. It would only be temporary—I would put on new ones once I got into my room.