An old woman, sleeping or dead. The cats licking and nibbling away at her feet. Maybe they don’t know either if she’s sleeping or dead. What difference would it make to them? I always hope it’s neither. That poor Olivia goes into her own patterned space somehow, not sleeping, not dead, but somewhere in between.
Because their purpose is to catch rats, Olivia thinks it’s very clever to call the cats the Rat Pack, and she even named them accordingly: Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter, and Joey. Though I think Sammy, Peter, and Joey are actually girls. I haven’t checked or anything, they just seem to have girl faces.
Sometimes at night I peek in on them from the top of the basement steps. The moonlight pouring in through the window makes their backs look slick and oily and they move around each other like piranhas in a tank.
But they’re otherwise very nice cats.
Alf and I had a big favor to ask Olivia. He’d been nagging me for days to please, please, pleeeeeeease do the asking.
“Pleeeeeeease Noelle,” he begged. “I can’t ask her this. I can’t. Those eyebrows. I won’t be able to gauge her reaction, I’ll play the situation all wrong.”
For whatever reason, Olivia didn’t have any eyebrows. Based on two overly active mounds of flesh above her eyes, she guessed where her eyebrows should be and drew new ones on each morning. Because of this Alf found it very difficult to speak with her face to face. He couldn’t tell if she was mad or sad or happy and he found it unsettling.
I’d seen this disability of Alf’s in action before. He turned into a complete idiot when he spoke to Olivia, but a weird kind of idiot. Not stupid. Just totally unpredictable. Like once she asked him to rake the leaves and handed him a rake from the closet, and he grazed his pinky finger against hers very purposefully and awkwardly and afterwards couldn’t understand or explain why. He said that her face made him think it was the right thing to do so he did it.
When I couldn’t stop laughing at him, he got mad and said, “Do you think I don’t already wanna kill myself, Noelle?” And, “You don’t understand. It’s like talking to someone in a mask,” all seriously, when the laughing got truly out of control.
So anyway that’s why Alf had to be the lookout, watching her smoke on the porch from an upstairs window of the inn while I waited downstairs to sort of stop her in the hall like I was on my way to do something else.
As soon as I heard his feet stomping, our signal, I ran from the front desk to the bathroom, where I waited till I heard the back door open, then shut, and then I flushed the toilet to add authenticity to our ruse and emerged into the hallway and cut her off.
“Oh hi, Noelle!” said Olivia, all full of happy smoke.
“Hi Olivia,” I replied. “Pretty nice weather, right? Must feel good to be able to smoke outside again without the Big Jacket.”
We all shared the Big Jacket for outside duties. Sometimes Olivia would leave ancient-looking candies in the pockets. Alf and I didn’t know if they were supposed to be presents for us or if she was saving them for later. Either way, we often ate them.
“You betcha,” she said, and she WINKED at me. Which meant that I really had to ask right now in this second of her perfect smoky happiness.
“Olivia, can I ask you a favor?”
“Okay,” and the meter suddenly shot up. Favors. No one likes favors.
“Okay, so Alf and I, like, we were wondering if we could, if no one came to stay at the inn of course, we were wondering if we could invite some of our friends over for the Anniversary, and have, like, just a little dinner here.”
“The Anniversary?” I saw the meter shoot up faster still.
“You know. Just, we’re here every night all summer. We just want to hang out with our friends, and—”
Olivia felt particularly guilty about “us kids” spending all of our summer nights in this “wretched place” so I knew it was the right thing to say.
“Godammit, Noelle, I don’t want you thinking about all that grim stuff. And more importantly I don’t want this goddamn town to keep thinking about that grim stuff for fuck’s sake—oh cripes, sorry, Noelle, pardon the swears.”
“Oh, yeah, no problem.”
“Okay, well, alright. If absolutely no guests show up, sure, you guys can have a few people over but really keep it quiet, alright, Noelle? I’m so tired of that story I could spit.”
Then she walked right back outside for another cigarette because agreeing to the favor had depleted her meter too fast. Alf stomped-stomped-stomped happily on the floor above.
16. Not only would Noelle have been aware of the inn’s unusual reputation from having grown up in King City, but also library records indicate that Noelle researched its history quite thoroughly before applying for the job.
17. In the late 1980s, two mediums, a physicist, and a parapsychologist were called to do a report on the property and its alleged paranormal activities. In the report, one of the mediums said this: “Nathanial Holcomb is here. Oh, he’s here all right. He’s the one who pulls the strings. He’s in the walls; he’s in the windows and the floors. He is the house. And he craves misery. He craves tragedy. He’ll twist any living person to his will if they give him the chance. All he wants is blood. Burn it to the ground. There will never be peace here.”
18. Interviews with people who have stayed at the inn reveal common complaints of cold spots in the house, areas that just won’t get warm no matter how much heat or insulation management applies. Many guests have reported missing eyeglasses, hairbrushes, small personal items that simply reappear in strange places or in places the guests swear they checked. Strange sounds: scratching in the walls, whispering behind closed doors; the “bumps in the night” manager Olivia Grieves mentioned. One particularly disturbed guest claims that she watched her bathroom faucet turn on by itself, piping hot water full blast, and that night she had a vivid dream about someone drowning her, pushing her head into a sink full of blood.
19. Olivia Grieves, manager of the inn for the past twelve years and the second person at the scene of the crime after Jessica West’s phone call to the police. Olivia was hired by the great-great-grandniece of Nathanial Holcomb, Miss Anita Fray, who’d inherited the place from her father a few years before. Her father, Alec Fray, had run it when it was an apartment building and knew Margaret Grimley and Margaret’s father personally. Anita Fray refused to comment on the recent massacre except to say, “Why do you think I don’t go inside?” She’s been generous with supplying historical documents on the house, however, and allowed us to copy the quote in footnote 17 from the medium’s report.
20. Rules, copied from the paper behind the desk:
1. All lights must be flicked on and off five times before being turned totally on. When the lights are on they can’t come out.
2. Tell yourself you want to see a ghost if you really DON’T want to see a ghost.
3. Never close the medicine cabinet mirror while looking into it—something terrible WILL be standing behind you.
4. Don’t antagonize the ghosts.
5. Don’t unlock locked doors.
6. If you hear a weird sound run away. And don’t run upstairs somewhere if running out the front door is an option.
7. RUN up and down all staircases.
8. Don’t, under any circumstances, go down ANY of the basement hallways.
21. Margaret Grimley’s boyfriend; died in the suite in 1979, the result of consuming infected human flesh.
Seventh Entry
I guess, diary, now that you’re alive, you’ll wanna know all about the Anniversary.
Alf and I are working at the very place the celebrated incident took place, so it’s kind of our responsibility to have a massive party.
Kids in this town had been having Anniversary Parties since before Alf and I were born. There aren’t any tattoo parlours h
ere, or seedy bars, or even drug dealers who can get anything harder than pot. So celebrating the most horrific bit of town history is really one of the only ways for us to rebel. Mothers say it’s sick. Fathers say it’s disrespectful. That’s about the best we can hope for. Force them all to remember what they want to forget.
Okay, so The Boy Eats Girl Inn is actually really old. I’m not sure exactly how old, but I do know that we tell people about Oscar Wilde 22 staying here, back when it was one family’s giant home. And about how the basement had been part of the Underground Railroad. 23 So however old that would make it, that’s how old it is.
It’s kinda sad when you think about it, that this great old house, a house that’s seen it all, now has a buzzing honeymoon-red sign on it. And to a pair of kids like Alf and me it may as well be a Wal-Mart or a McDonalds or some other shitty summer job. Old buildings should really get the same kind of respect that old trees do, but that just doesn’t happen. I guess because trees are more technically “alive” and often people in towns have no reason to wanna forget about particular trees like they do particular buildings.
Begin flashback with Noelle voiceover, then let the flashback take over.
So, back in the ’70s or the ’80s or something, I forget exactly when, The Boy Eats Girl Inn was, for a brief time, a very fancy apartment building.24 The same half-moon windows and red brick and white shutters on the outside, but inside, beneath all the bad carpet we’ve got now, swirling marble floors and dark hardwood and real art on the walls. There was an even bigger piano in the lobby, with someone on the bench playing it all the time, and a harp with a long-necked lady harpist, and a doorman in a suit with tasseled epaulets.
A very overweight woman named Margaret Grimley was kept in the biggest apartment in the building by her wealthy father and his trophy wife. She had the suite. The whole top floor of the building. As far away from her family’s home as possible. They visited very rarely and paid every bill without question, even when she pushed it for attention. Like ordering masseuses to the room and demanding that buttery dinners be delivered right to her door on a special rolling cart and tray (which they’d also had to buy).
She was the product of her father’s first marriage, to a dark-haired woman who was dead now. Killed herself shortly after Margaret was born. 25
Margaret trolled lonely hearts ads and missed connections in the daily paper endlessly. Looking even just for friends. The doorman was constantly seeing people in and out of the building on her behalf, so often, in fact, that he eventually stopped bothering to have them write their names down, just asking which room they were headed to. “The suite” was almost always the reply.
At first he’d brought it up to the woman’s father, but the popular theory is that Mr. Grimley greased the doorman’s palms to keep him quiet.
Chances are her father hoped that one of the visitors would end up murdering her. It would be cheaper in the long run.
Finally she met someone special. A man from somewhere down south. And her father and his trophy wife let her keep him in the suite. His name was Wink, and that was that, and if they wanted to ask him any more questions he’d cut their fucking tongues out. He had a large indented scar down the front of his head, a hook that just snared his wormlike eyebrow. He said he’d taken a bad fall and hit his head in prison, where he’d roomed with an old devil who’d taught him magic. 26
Of course Margaret had never really been one to leave the apartment, always ordering everything right to her door anyway, but now Wink answered the door instead, Margaret just a pair of pudgy, red-toenailed feet hanging over the bed, lobbing buoyant hellos over Wink’s head to whoever had the depressing misfortune of knocking.
That she was totally preoccupied with Wink was a relief to her father and his trophy wife who just wanted to get on with their lives and their money. They overlooked anything that might have disturbed them about the strapping young gentleman who’d fallen head over heels for their only daughter, moved right in, and stood in the doorway between Margaret and the world.
After a little while, Margaret and Wink started browsing the lonely hearts ads again, together, looking for women to invite over so that Wink could have sex with them and Margaret could watch, or at least that’s what it said in Wink’s journals. And again the doorman stopped taking names, stopped noticing the comings and goings altogether while his pockets grew fatter and fatter with Margaret’s father’s cash.
That’s why it was hard to track down when the women first started going missing.
But they did go missing. And kept going missing. Because together, in that apartment, Wink and Margaret murdered and kept them. Fifteen women in total. Way up high, a floor all their own.
During this time Margaret became pregnant. And doubly unfortunate for her, Wink had fallen in love with their last captive. He’d decided with his new lover to kill Margaret. And he explained in his journals that he had to do it very slowly. Because the old devil he’d roomed with in prison, the devil he claimed was Nathanial Holcomb’s poor, sensory-deprived son, taught him that all lovers must be killed as slowly as possible.
He strapped Margaret to the bed, not that she could have easily gotten up anyway being as big as she was, and over time severed each of her limbs with care, one by one, tying them off tight as sausage ends, stopping the blood off so she would remain alive. And he ate her.
Eventually her wounds pulsated with infection. Wink got sick from consuming so much soft raw flesh.
The police found hundreds of journals about how he’d done it, what each little bit of her tasted like, about how he hated her so much by then that all of her tasted delicious because it meant she was suffering. One line I remember from the paper was, “How cum she never tastid this good wen I luved her?”
I thought that was kind of beautiful in a way.
Are you kidding me? Tell me you found this kid. Please. If not, that’s priority one. Find him, get him to sign off, make him our flesh and blood slasher.
As for the baby, it’d been a boy. And he ate him first. 27
And the captive he loved, he believed she loved him too. So, after she proved her loyalty by eating a slice of by that time already very infected Margaret meat, he let her leave. Alone. To get a change of clothes and all her money and valuables so they could disappear. But of course, after a seemingly endless stream of vomit and a short faint in an alley, she went to the police and that was that.
So anyway that’s why it kind of makes sense that this place is called The Boy Eats Girl Inn sometimes. When the M is on the fritz.
And that’s the Anniversary we’ll be celebrating. The Anniversary of Margaret’s death.
Alf and I invited everyone from school. Literally everyone. Because basically if we didn’t, they would all hate us and I wouldn’t blame them. We’re sort of obligated, like I said.
June and Andrea will be coming. They’re my two sort-of-closest girlfriends. But more so, the three of us are just there. Leftovers. Who probably all prefer the idea of not being alone to each other’s actual company. But I guess that’s kinda bitchy. I do like them too. I don’t know. I’ve barely seen them all summer.
I guess people at school would say that we’re best friends. Because that’s the high school phrase for what we look like: BEST FRIENDS. June and Andrea and I are THE BEST FRIENDS and Alf is some guy who wears turtlenecks and has a weird haircut who happens to have a crush on me.
June and Andrea are cool though. They are. Because they’re kind of bad. They like to get drunk and smoke pot and skip class and hang out late and do whatever they feel like. And they’re smart too but not in a boring way. Like, they don’t study or get good grades or anything but they’re funny and they know what’s cool and they know just exactly how to watch TV and talk at the same time. You know how some people just aren’t good at that? They talk at all the wrong times and when they do talk they don’t get it, it’s not funny in t
he right way. Anyway I guess it’s the kind of thing that’s hard to explain, but June and Andrea, they’re great to watch TV with. Even commercials. Great to get drunk with and great to be hungover with, watching TV and eating.
Alf’s got this one friend named Ian that he hangs out with at school. Ian smells sort of bad and I think there’s something wrong with his feet, they both turn inward a bit so he’s always rubbing holes into the knees of his jeans and his mom has to patch them, but he’s nice enough. He’ll probably show up too.
I can’t wait for the Anniversary.
22. There is no evidence to support this claim.
23. Holcomb, a vocal abolition activist, constructed the basement to have hiding spots, camouflaged doors with powerful locks, a kitchen area, bedrooms, and even a bathroom. It was also as soundproof as was humanly possible during that time, all safeguards to help secretly hide slaves along their paths to freedom.
24. From 1976 to 1985 it served as an apartment building.
25. Edna Grimley, Margaret’s mother. She was a sullen woman, and overweight like Margaret. Apparently she spoke often of suicide even before Margaret was born. She hung herself in an upstairs closet of the family home using a low, sturdy cupboard and thick nylon. Legs purple and bent at the knee, feet black and dragging on the ground. It is a common misconception that the body’s unconscious will to survive will take over when a person is attempting to self-destruct.
26. In Wink’s diaries, he claims that his roommate in prison, the devil he lived with, was the son of Nathanial Holcomb—the same child who’d been locked in a closet and studied in Nathanial’s essay on sensory deprivation and discipline. According to Wink’s journals, Nathanial’s son called himself Sal (short for Hansel, which was indeed the Holcomb child’s name), and Sal predicted that after Wink got out of jail, he would move to King City and answer a very special lonely hearts ad in the paper; Sal told him he’d move into a swanky apartment with an enormous woman, and that if that much came true, then it was Wink’s responsibility to trap sick and sad people in the suite and murder them. Sal promised Wink that the house would make it worth his while; that the house “never forgot the kindness of those who fed it.” Wink said in his journals that he would do all the murders again and much worse if Sal had asked him to; from the tone of his writing, it’s obvious that Wink truly believed Sal was a devil. However, there’s an odd discrepancy in Wink’s account. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, when Wink served his prison time, Sal Holcomb would have been well over 100 years old.
The Boy Meets Girl Massacre (Annotated) Page 5