The Eaton

by John K. Addis

  He saw the top of the car through the gates. Then he saw the man inside. His father.

  Jon burst into tears. There was nowhere to go. There was nothing more to do. He had survived all this time, only to be destroyed by the creature just moments before his escape. And in the form of his father, no less, looking as healthy as he had right before his accidental death a decade ago.

  Defeated, Jon backed into the nearby wall and allowed his quivering legs to fail, his body sliding into a seated position in front of the monster. The image of Charles Wesley stared back at him, a concerned expression on his face.

  “Are you alright, my son?” The body of Charles Wesley knelt in front of Jonathan, and the face of Charles Wesley wrinkled its forehead.

  “You're not my father,” was Jon's choked reply.

  “Of course I am, Jon,” said the voice of Charles Wesley.

  Jon shook his head, slowly and sadly, finding anger and indignation impossible. “You look like him,” he said. “Right down to the grey stubble on the cheeks.” When Jon was young, he thought it felt like sandpaper when his dad kissed his forehead goodnight, but he never complained because he loved his father so. “And you sound like him—the deep, kind voice. But whatever you are, you are not my father. My father is dead. And I suspect I will be joining him soon in heaven.”

  The Charles creature looked offended, even hurt, and Jon was briefly overcome with sympathy for the illusion. Was it possible that the creature believed it was the person it pretended to be? But then Jon saw a hint of a smile pass across his father's face, a humorless, dark smile, and he knew it was all a game to the thing. It was toying with Jonathan, the way a cat will toy with a mouse before crushing him with its teeth. That's all it was. Maybe humans tasted better if they died afraid.

  “Son,” said the voice of Charles Wesley, “you've just had a bad fever, is all. You're seeing things. Maybe you've been consumed by bad dreams. Perhaps we should get your mother.”

  “Yeah, sure,” was Jon’s weary reply. “I wouldn't mind seeing her again. Go ahead, conjure her up, you bastard.”

  Again, a look of hurt flashed over his father's face. But an illusion of Jon's mother did not appear. The creature seemed to be debating something within himself, and the two stared at one another. After several long, silent moments, the creature spoke again, but although it still looked like his deceased father, the voice had developed an unusual timbre, a darkness underneath the words, and the false warmth was gone.

  “This is mine,” it said with unmasked bitterness, stretching out the vowels as if through clenched teeth.

  Jon didn't know what the creature meant. What was his? This moment in time? The body of his father? The hotel?

  “Tell me,” Jon prodded, out of obligation rather than interest. “Explain it to me in a way I can understand.”

  “This is mine,” it repeated in a harsh monotone, still lengthening each word for emphasis. “It has always been mine. These are my caves. You can decorate my caves, adorn my walls with wood and plaster and paint, but they are still mine. They will always be mine. And you will always be the invader.” The face of his father smiled. “And I will always defeat you.”

  “We didn't know,” said Jon, his voice hollow and hoarse. “You must understand that. You can read our minds, see our innermost thoughts. You didn't have to kill innocent people.”

  The creature chuckled. “Innocent! None of you is innocent. Clyde Knapp, the man in the room next to yours, had been stealing from his employer for more than six years, and fabricating evidence to frame a work companion if he was ever caught. Dr. Henrietta Carr cheated on her exams and even plagiarized her dissertation. Your associate Clem repeatedly fondled his younger cousin, then threatened to kill her if she told a soul.”

  “My wife was innocent,” Jon countered meekly.

  “I did not kill your wife,” the creature reminded him. “But she was not innocent. She let her little brother die. She had fantasies of sexual intercourse with your neighbor William while you were away on your trips. She was jealous of her friend Elizabeth, whose husband was home every night, and who gave her three children. Such extreme jealousy that she resented you, even though she was the one who was barren.”

  “No one is innocent,” said Jon. “It's the preponderance of good deeds that defines a man or woman, not the mistakes. We all make mistakes. Even you, creature.”

  The creature nodded with Jon's father's face, and forced a smile. “I do not like you, my son,” the voice again sounding like Jon's dad, but with the dark hint of hate underneath. “I do not like any of your kind. You are weak, twisted animals. You are liars and hypocrites. And so it is fitting for you to end your existences here in my caves. You deserve death in the dark, not life in the light.”

  “And you, creature? So noble in your torture and slaughter of other living entities?”

  The creature smiled. “You are the invaders, not I.”

  “You were trapped behind a boulder,” Jon reminded his enemy. “Others had imprisoned you, years before. Oliver rescued you. You repaid him by murder.”

  “He destroyed my home. He was worthy of death.”

  “Who among us is not?”

  “Then why be surprised when it comes?”

  “It comes to all of us in time,” said Jon. “But those carvings were old, by our standards. I suspect our lives are short compared to yours. So why not let us live them? I can leave your cave. I can board it up. I can assure you aren't bothered. But if you kill me, too, others will find you. Maybe the United States Marines will find weapons to destroy you. They will come in large numbers to avenge the deaths of their fellow countrymen. And all your murder would have been for nothing. You would not have peace. We ‘invaders’ would win.”

  “If I were to let you leave, avoiding the judgment you deserve, what guarantee would I have that you would keep your word? And before you answer, remember that I know of times you have lied and not kept your word in the past, as you're thinking of one right now, when you told me, your own father, that you didn't steal the fruit when you were six years of age. And just now, your thoughts drift to the time last week when you told the newspaper delivery man that you hadn't received a paper, when you actually had received it and accidentally destroyed it with water before you had the chance to read it.”

  “None of us is innocent by God’s standards, and I cannot claim to have led a completely truthful life. But surely you see that on large issues, I have been a man of my word. Do you see that, creature?”

  The creature smiled a father's smile. “I do, my son.”

  “Then let me be,” Jon concluded. “I will cover up for you. I will board up the entrance. I will try and plant stories in the local papers that might explain the absence of some of the more prominent residents that were killed here. I promise you, creature, it is in my best interests to do so, and also in the interests of my fellow men, who might be spared death by your hand, should they go looking for answers. I can make this go away, and you will not be bothered anymore.”

  His father's face smirked. “You, an archeologist, have this power?”

  Jon almost laughed. “Don't you know what I can and cannot do? Can't you read my mind, my every thought?”

  The creature shook his head. “No, it isn't like that. It's more that I can read your past. I can see your memories, particularly of people, especially when the memories are strong, and you've thought of them often, and recently. You invaders all live in the past, and it's constant. Everything you see and do reminds you of something else. You continually replay scenes in your head, even ugly memories that serve no purpose other than to upset, scare, and anger you. These memories ooze out of you. To me, they are a dirty, yellow liquid, and I can see and taste those memories, literally taste that sour fluid that drips from your pores, from your eyes and ears and mouth, and I can feel what you felt, see what you had once seen.” The creature was overcome with disgust. “I cannot stand its taste, the dripping
, eggy mucus, but I admit, without shame, that my lust for making you suffer means I can stomach as much of it as you have to give. And with each release of that thick pus, you give constant clues to me as to what you expect an individual in your past would do or say, and so I can comply, when I feed the ooze back to you. But, if you thought of a random number, I could not penetrate your thoughts to retrieve it, nor can I predict your future actions, except when they are similar to your actions in the past, and I can guess.”

  Jon said nothing. He had no response that seemed adequate.

  “To me,” the creature continued after a pause, “it seems a strange way to live your life, thinking always of yesterday, especially when it must just reveal, over and over, how disgusting you are, how disgusting your actions have been your entire time on this planet. And when you're not congratulating yourself for getting away with yet another disgusting act, you're wondering what you might have done differently in situations in which you could not have affected the outcome. No other animal does this but you.”

  Jon nodded gravely. “It's how we learn.”

  “And no doubt, you will replay this scene in your head for years, if I allow you to live, dripping your putrid nectar of fear and regret and futility, spilling and oozing your memories onto the earth, where no one will see it, and no one will taste it without me. You, Jon, will convince yourself that you could have saved your wife. That you could have saved them all. That perhaps you could have killed me at this very moment, but were too pathetic, too weak to do so. These dark memories will drip out of your sick, decaying body every day of the rest of your life, poisoning the ground as it poisons your soul.”

  Jon was silent, absorbing the truth of what the creature was telling him. The rest of his life, if he had one, was indeed bound to be miserable, and sad, and obsessed with the past. But wasn't that better than no future at all?

  “Are you a demon,” Jon said at last, more a statement of futility than a question.

  “Like your grandmother?”

  Jon’s eyes widened. “Was she? Was she possessed?”

  “I can't know anything more than you remember.”

  Jon nodded. “Then what are you?”

  His father's image stared back at him, a foreign expression melting across his otherwise familiar face. “I don't know, exactly,” the creature revealed in a fleeting moment of humility. “Would a demon know they were a demon? I'm just…here.” The face hardened somewhat. “And here, is mine. Here, is me.”

  “You don't remember how you first came to be in this place? To…be this place?”

  “I do not,” his father's voice admitted. “I may have been hunted. But I do not much care. Unlike you, I live in the present, not the past.”

  “Then how do you learn?”

  “I do not need to learn. I need to live.”

  The two stared at each other for some time. The monster seemed capable of rational argument, yet was utterly alien, despite looking, and even smelling, like the man who had raised him. Could this really be some sort of undiscovered, intelligent life, as explainable by Darwin as man himself? Sure, perhaps an evolutionary advantage could be gained by absorbing people's memories and mastering mimicry—a chameleon of thought instead of form. But where could the giddy, indiscriminate evil come from? If it had indeed been hunted, had there been others? Was it the last of its kind, doomed to hate humanity without knowing why, using its powers to torture those it found unworthy of life? To what end? Jonathan couldn't wrap his head around it. This monster couldn't exist, yet there it was. Whether it knew itself as a demon or not, a demon it must surely be.

  “Creature,” Jon began, addressing an earlier question, “I cannot give any assurance that my plans will be successful, only that they represent your best chance for privacy. ‘Tis true my motives are of self-preservation, and perhaps preservation of others, but I am not lying to you. I am not a man without means, and I will do what I can to prevent anyone else from falling into your judgment. Ultimately, it is your choice. You have the power to destroy me, and I do not have the reciprocal ability. I am weary, and we have talked enough. So please, if you are to kill me, then do so with haste. If you are to accept my proposal, to let me escape and try and stop others from pursuing you further, then stand aside and let me begin my work. I will speak no more on this, and await your decision.”

  Jon sensed a deep loathing from this face of his father, and knew that his own hatred for the beast could not approach the bitter, unhinged abhorrence the creature felt for humanity. Jonathan tried not to think of anything from the past, not even the recent past, for fear of offending the creature with vile emanations of memories that only the beast could see and taste. But he couldn't look at the monster, either, because it was impossible to stare in the face of one's father and not be flooded with imagery of the past. So, Jon turned his head and stared at the wall, attempting to concentrate on counting the shapes of the patterns etched in the wood, filling his mind with abstract math, hoping it wouldn't remind him of a damned thing.

  At last the creature stood up, brushed off the illusion of his father's slacks, and walked back into the elevator. Jon remained seated, paralyzed by uncertainty, until he understood the creature intended Jon to join him in the car. He got to his feet, wincing again at the pain in his leg, limped over the threshold, closed the gate, and pressed the glowing “12” to exit.

  The two arrived at the waiting chamber, and Jon left the elevator alone. The electric light from the elevator bathed the room in amber, but Jon did not feel safe just yet. The staircase before him ended at the floor of the depot, and he realized he still had no idea what time it was. He would have to listen at the underside of the floor to assure the depot was closed and free of people before he would attempt the mechanism that would free him. Jon heard a noise behind him, and turned to see his father's form closing the gate and pressing a button. As Jon watched the car descend, he saw the image of his father fully transform into the black, terrifying beast he had only glimpsed in drunken flickers before. And, to his astonishment, he found the creature to be beautiful.

  Jonathan Wesley smiled in spite of his pain. He had communicated with an inhuman lifeform of great power, one who had slaughtered countless others and caused his own wife’s suicide, but he had learned from it, and survived. And in surviving, he had a duty to protect others, to devote the remainder of his life to protecting the incredible secrets he now possessed. It may not have been a mission from God, but it was a mission nonetheless.

  He waited for over an hour until he was sure no one was in the station, lifted the floor on its hinge, and entered the deserted depot office. He drank water, which he was desperate for, and found day-old bread in a trashcan, which he devoured with impunity. Then, calculating that he had but hours before a morning crew might arrive, he began to systematically board up the elevator shaft, disassemble the lights in the basement waiting room, and apply thick wood glue to the seam around the hidden entry panel, which Jon was sure would hold a hundred years. If Oliver had been careful, and it was true the secret had been maintained, then every person who knew of the hotel had died within it, and no one would be looking for a way in. And, if the creature were to be believed, as long as its home was safe, it would have no interest in a way out.

  In the months that followed, Jon did his part to obscure and hide the true nature of the disappearances. His experience as an archeologist had required an ability to discern the authentic from the forgeries, but he found that also gave him a unique talent at crafting forgeries as well. Jon was able to write letters, create false travel documents, post official-looking notices in area papers, send convincing certificates to numerous jurisdictions, and develop a number of plausible, documented scenarios which could explain the deaths of those he knew from the hotel in an untraceable, pattern-free collection of freak accidents, spread over the course of a year as to not arouse suspicion. He got a job selling train tickets at the depot, on a forged recommendation letter of cours
e, and on the rare occasion someone would mention something peculiar, he would do his best to send them off the scent. With Oliver missing and presumed dead (according to documents mailed to his estate, he had traveled far into Canada to hike the dangerous northern trails), the depot was sold to another wealthy magnate, who liked what he saw in Jon, promoting him to manager, where he stayed for the remainder of his career. He even got remarried, to a young, ambitious redhead he met at the station, and at the advanced age of 58, Jon fathered his first child, a daughter, who they named Anna.

  “This is mine,” the creature had said, referring to the space below the earth. But also, more cryptically, “here, is me.” Jon could never grasp the meaning of this claim, and it haunted him, but not as much as the idea that his memories were physically oozing out of his body, a thought which disgusted him. As he got older, he began to drink more heavily, and became emotionally distant to his family, even abusive. In his twilight years, the same dementia which had claimed the life of his grandmother claimed Jon’s sanity as well. After being told by doctors that his time was near, he began to record hours of nonsensical voice recordings up until the moment of his death, ranting both about a secret, evil hotel, and also a terrifying creature, which he referred to as The Eaton.

  Years after her father’s passing, Anna would fall in love with and marry a dashing young Detroit salesman named Milhouse Horner, and after several miscarriages and a decade of assuming she was barren, the Milhouses would have an unexpected child when Anna was nearly 40.

  More than a century had passed since the creature had spared the life of Al's grandfather. Jon had promised the creature would be left alone. But the presence of these intruders proved that this clemency had been a mistake.