The Inn

by D. R. Mather

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m told anyway. How murder can be considered good for any reason is another thing, but I do get your point.”

  “It would be impossible to explain the inner workings of the Universe to you Kevin. As a human, you could never grasp it; this is why we chose to work as we do with you.”

  “Yeah, speaking of that, you seem to be playing rather loose with our original agreement. Care to explain that?”

  “We are within the bounds of it, no more can I say.”

  “True, the razor’s edge, but I suppose, within it nonetheless.”

  “Kevin, we’ve decided that you cannot dispatch of Stan at this time. He can expose our enemy if we give him a chance. With that, we may be able to finally defeat it.”

  “Hard to believe that you all have this power and yet it takes humans to defeat this ‘evil’ as you call it.”

  “When the evil goes through humans, it becomes weak as well as distracted. Given enough weakness, yes; it will allow us to end it.”

  “So we are your patsies in this little game, is that it?”

  “No Kevin, you must understand, this evil has been trying for a very long time to destroy all humans. From time immortal, we have been using people to fight it off. This is the first time it has decided to fight back in the same way that we have. This is why we have help for you. In the past it was always one man and one man only.”

  “I was supposed to be enough, with all the shit that’s going on in this twisted sick world?”

  “You were the balance Kevin; you brought it back to center. You certainly could never have won.”

  “You got that right.”

  “Kevin, April is the last one; she refuses to admit what she sees in the night, so you will have to help her see.”

  “I knew it was April. I was just waiting for the right time to get it out of her.”

  The sound was fading but Kevin heard one last thing before the silence returned.

  “We heard your special request Kevin, we all agree that you may proceed with it.”

  The voice was gone, and Kevin was once again alone. He sat there with his hand under his chin.

  “It’s like being walked in on while you’re in the bathroom for Christ sakes. I should have bargained for more ‘leave me alone and stay the hell out of my head’ time.” He stared out as darkness took over his side of the earth. ’Yeah, I think I can make it work,’ he thought as he sat making plans for the big surprise.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Thanksgiving was fantastic.

  All of the women spent the entire evening before, and the morning of Thanksgiving, in the kitchen. Everyone was making dishes that they had known before they had come to the Inn. April was making some kind of Jell-O mold with peaches and blueberries, as well as a hamburger and ground pork stuffing for the turkey. Marie was making a side dish that included green beans and carrots that were shaved down the long side of the carrot stalk. She was also creating a side dish that had shrimp in it, but it was hard to see what else because she was guarding it from everyone who tried to look. Beth had her hands in a traditional bread stuffing, with a cornbread stuffing sitting on the side of it. She was also making an onion dish with white sauce, having announced that the meal wouldn’t be complete without it. Barb and Judy were more or less working together. Barb has a butternut squash casserole set up in a huge industrial-sized casserole dish. Judy had a dish which featured baby carrots in some type of wine sauce with what she called a “brown sugar kick”. No one asked. Judy and Barb were at the counter with two twenty pound turkeys. They were trying to decide the best places to inject the liquid seasoning, when Kevin and Will came in.

  Judy turned to them and simply said, “Get out or die,” with a fake gruff look on her.

  “Easy, easy there wonder woman, Kevin and I are just passing through.”

  Barb looked over. “Yeah, the last time I heard that, the kitchen was cleaned out by the time you hit the back of it.” She then turned to Judy. “Not a speck of food was left, I can tell you, not one speck.”

  Now the two women were giggling like school girls. The other women were just smiling and working.

  “No, honest, I just wanted to show Kevin the boiler and generators, that’s all. I promise!”

  “Well go then, but remember, we’re all watching you.”

  Kevin and Will passed through the kitchen on the way to the back. Will saw a few trays of pickles and olives directly in his path and moved with some speed. Kevin figured it out a second later. As they passed by the tray, Will grabbed a handful of pickles without slowing, whilst Kevin went for the black olives.

  “HEY!”

  They both turned and saw Judy on her way over.

  “Run for your life boy!” said Will. The men made a fast retreat to the back of the kitchen. In the back, on the right outside wall, was a door.

  Kevin got his bearings and looked at Will, “This doesn’t make sense, we were in the basement, I saw clear through to the other side.”

  “That you did, but what you didn’t notice is that when we walked around the outside of the house the other day, the right side is just a little longer than the left. It was designed that way on purpose.” Will opened the door and a set of stairs went down and out under the back yard.

  “Well son of a bitch, so they made the utility area jut out from the house so it wouldn’t take up the basement space.” As they got to the bottom, Kevin saw a huge underground concrete area. “Ah, Will, the basement is stone, this is concrete.”

  “Yip, My grandfather had it put in during the forties, said he kept hearing that damn boiler while he slept. They pulled everything out of the basement and re-did the venting and pipes and all. Put it all under here.”

  “You could hear a boiler from the basement up to the second floor?”

  “Nope. I never said my grandfather was sane, did I?”

  Kevin and Will got a good laugh out of that, and then Will showed him around.

  “Over here on the left is the boiler. Sitting right behind it is the backup boiler. I switch them back and forth once a month so one doesn’t just go on sitting and rusting up.”

  “They’re monsters, Will. So what are those three over on the right?”

  “Those, Kevin, are three industrial-sized generators.”

  “How much will they run in the house?”

  “Oh, that’s easy—all of it!”

  “No shit, they put out that much juice?”

  “And then some, as a matter of fact.”

  They headed back up the stairs and exited the utility room. As they both turned around, all eyes were just staring at them, along with mean expressions on their faces.

  “Ballroom, Will?”

  “Ballroom, Kevin, and quick, before that’s the only thing that has balls anymore.” They both made an abrupt turn to the right and moved out, fast.

  They now had to go all the way around through the side hall that brought them to the end of the living room.

  “Long trip, Will.”

  “Yeah, but a survivable one.”

  They both chuckled. After they came back around and into the living room, Will told Kevin to grab his coat and that he’d be right behind him. Kevin headed to his coat.

  Will went to the desk, grabbed his keys, and then headed over to Kevin. He dangled them. “We’ll need these.” They head out and walked a bit down the left side of the driveway. “Oh, good, the plow came in.”

  “Who does your plowing, Will? I saw the truck, but I never asked you. Whoever did it never came into the Inn.”

  “Bill from up the road. You won’t see him most times because I’m only one of his runs. He went and got an old city plow. You know, the big highway kind. He uses it for us and maybe seven or eight others.”

  “How much does he charge you?”

  “Nothing. We lose power a lot up here, when we do, he loads his wife and the two kids into that plow and heads down here. We put them up until it comes back on. We haven’t lost po
wer yet, so they haven’t been in.”

  “Now that arrangement I like Will.”

  “Yip, had them here for three weeks once. We lose the power a lot in the winter Kevin.”

  Will took Kevin on a side road that went off of the right side of the entrance driveway. It weaved around a lot of trees then opened up into a fenced in area. The fence looked incredibly strong, like it could stop a tank.

  “Amm, that’s one heavy fence Will.”

  “Yip, has to be so the fuel truck won’t drive over the other side of it.”

  Kevin looked puzzled.

  Will grinned and waved his hand, “Follow, young sir.” They went over the fence and Kevin saw it wasn’t ground at all, but concrete. Will walked over to the left edge and started to scrape snow with his boot. “I have to remember to come out here with the shovel. Can’t let this pile up here.” Once it was clear, Kevin saw a trap door. Will opened it and a set of stairs went into the darkness below. Will reached out and lifted a plastic cover from the wall, pushed a button and then lights came on. The glow from them seemed, well, greenish from outside. When they reached the bottom, Kevin was face-to-face with four gigantic tanks.

  “Fuel,” said Kevin.

  “Yip, four, 3000 gallon tanks; they go way back in. The lights are behind one inch thick glass so that it doesn’t ever create a spark when I turn them on or off.”

  They headed back inside the Inn and saw Judy standing at the entrance to the living room; Kevin could see she looked really pissed.

  She turned when she heard the door and walked over to Kevin, “OH I could just strangle him, I swear.” Then she reached out, grabbed Kevin’s face, gave him a big, wet kiss, and turned and headed into the dining room.

  “What the hell was all that,” asked Will.

  “I think I know,” said Kevin and went to where Judy had been first standing. Stan was standing in the middle of the living room with his arms crossed in front of him. He had a ‘Go on, just you dare’ look on him. Kevin went to put his coat away. When he returned to the living room, Stan was gone. Kevin went to the kitchen and found Judy talking to Barb and Beth. Everyone else was gone.

  “Just what was all of that?”

  Judy saw him and ‘squeaked’ her way over to him, then wrapped her arm around his side and stood next to him. Barb was just looking and not talking.

  “That asshole Stan. He walked by me when I was in the dining room, setting the table. He bumped me into the table, called me a “fucking whore slut”, and then kept walking.”

  “It seems Stan is getting braver.”

  “The weird thing is Kevin, I came into the dining room from here, and he was NOT in here or the dining room. When he passed by me, it was from the hall coming out here. Barb says he wasn’t out here. Now explain that one.”

  “Actually, I may be able to, just not yet,” he kissed Judy and left.

  ***

  The feast was amazing. There were enough different flavors to satisfy anyone on earth. As Kevin said, there was enough food to FEED everyone on earth. Will had double duty. He had no sooner finished carving one turkey when Kevin switched them and had Will start with the other one.

  By the time Will was finished he sat back and said “Now I’m too exhausted to eat.”

  Food was flying, stories were flying, and jokes were flying. It seemed the only things that weren’t flying, were the two turkeys. At one point, Kevin made a head gesture to Judy, Alex and Beth to have them look over at Stan. As usual, Stan hadn’t said a word and was doing his ‘usual’ grumbling over his plate. What was interesting was that Mark seemed to have joined in the session with Stan.

  Kevin raised his hand and had two fingers up. They all got it; there were two of them now.

  Roland and Cindy stood up with glasses of wine in there hand. Cindy looked to see that everyone was looking at her. “I want to thank all of you for bringing us here and taking us in. We never would have had all of this where we were. I’d like to say a special ‘I love you’ to Emma. May she…she…rest…rest…” Cindy lost it. She just started crying and could no longer talk. Judy was off her seat and in front of Cindy, holding her tight before anyone else could even react. The entire room got somber; every single woman had tears rolling down their cheeks; actually, every single PERSON except Stan and Mark. Everyone knew at least some of what had happened. Only Kevin, Judy, Cindy and Roland knew all of it. Stan slammed down his fork and was about to say something foul when he saw Will looking at him. If Will had been the killing type everyone’s problems might have been solved then and there. Instead, he just stared at Stan. Stan shut his mouth, got up and left with Mark in tow again.

  Cindy was finally under control again and sat down. “I’m so sorry everyone, I wanted to say something nice but I guess…”

  “You did Cindy,” says Kevin, and Cindy looked at him and smiled. They all raised their glasses.

  Kevin said, “To Emma, she’s home now,” and they all sipped in silence. Kevin sipped his non-alcoholic wine.

  Barb stood up, “Okay, it’s too damn quiet in here now.” She said this while wiping her wet eyes with her napkin. Barb went over to the serving cabinet and Judy launched out of her seat and was next to Barb in a flash.

  April looked over to Kevin, “Is she giggling?”

  Kevin put his hand over his face and shook his head up and down. Barb and Judy pulled off all the covers and Judy did the model displaying her wares move with her hand.

  “TADA!”

  There were pies; chocolate cream, pumpkin, squash, banana cream and even Pecan. Within mere minutes, the second feast began.

  ***

  After the feast, everyone save Stan and Mark were in the kitchen, cleaning one thing or another. Will was scrubbing a pot when Barb walked up behind him, hugged him and turned his head to the crowd in the kitchen.

  “Our family,” she said, before walking away and starting to bark out orders.

  The evening was just as fantastic as the meal. Everyone, save Stan and Mark, sat in the living room and told tales and life experiences. Kevin and Judy worked their way over to the sofa that April was sitting on. Both of them were talking to her about what brought her there. It seemed April was simply a three-time runaway who finally grew up and had nowhere to run to anymore. Both her parents were killed in a terrible car accident when she was young and she was sent to live with her aunt. They just hated each other. So April, on several occasions, set out to find her own life. That eventually landed her at the Inn.

  “Do you ever have bad dreams about it April?” Kevin asked.

  Judy knew he was baiting her to talk about any dreams she may be having. It didn’t take a lot of bait.

  “I didn’t used to, but now that you mention it, for the past month I’ve been having really scary ones. Something about bad men and I’m trying to stop them. In fact, both of you were in the last one. You told me that you could help me if I wanted you to.”

  Kevin smiled at her. “My, my April, that IS quite a tale.”

  “April, we can,” said Judy, and took her hand. Kevin felt it almost instantly, the circle was complete. Kevin joined Judy’s hand in April’s.

  “I’ll need to speak to you alone soon, okay?”

  April smiled at him, “I think I’ve been waiting for that.”

  Kevin patted her hand and went over to Will and Barb. Judy stayed and talked to April. It wasn’t anything important; she just wasn’t leaving April alone right now.

  Stan and Mark were in Stan’s room. Well, Mark was, but he wasn’t quite sure WHERE Stan was. Yes, he was sitting right in front of him, but his eyes were all whites and he seemed to be talking to himself. Mark kept flipping in his head; first he didn’t want to help Stan, then he thought about Kevin with April and got all pissed off, which brought him back with Stan again. Mark had become one very confused man.

  The evening drew to a close and everyone headed up the stairs. Just as Cindy was about to start up, Kevin grabbed her and gave her a huge hug, “I’m so
very sorry I didn’t get there in time. Emma deserved to live, it was my fault.”

  “It wasn’t your fault Kevin, you did all you could;” she hugged him back.

  Roland moved in and hugged them both. “Kevin, you got there as fast as possible, this I know. I also know you saved a lot of people that night, so let it go.”

  Kevin slowly pushed away from Cindy and said, “Yeah, I guess so.” Then he headed up to meet Judy, who was waiting at the top. They walked down the hall together until they got in front of Judy’s room.

  “Wanna see Kev?”

  “Huh? Now that you ask, I haven’t seen your room yet.”

  Judy flung the door open and Kevin was confronted by….pink! The walls were a pale pink, the drapes a medium pink, and her bedspread was a mixture of pink and white.

  Kevin took a look at the bed and said, “Hey, weren’t you wearing that outside the day I brought Cindy and Roland here?” Yes, that earned him a slap on the arm.

  “Wanna meet bitey?” she asked.

  “What’s a ‘bitey?’”

  She went over to a corner and lifted up a hamster cage. Inside was a completely white hamster.

  “THIS is Bitey!”

  “Interesting name, is there a reason for that?”

  “Damn right, he bites when you hold him!”

  Kevin walked over, opened the cage, took Bitey out and held him in his hand. For twenty minutes they sat on the edge of Judy’s bed, talking about what was going on. Bitey didn’t live up to his reputation; in fact, he was sound asleep in a ball in Kevin’s hand.

  Judy looked and said, “Damn hamster.”

  Kevin laughed as he put Bitey back. “You just don’t have the hamster touch honey.” He came back over and sat with her again. Judy leaned over and kissed him on the lips. Briefly afterwards, both of them were lying on the bed and a lot of kissing and heavy petting began. Judy reached down and slid her hand on him. Kevin was hard now. She squeezed him and was about to reach for his zipper when he bolted up.