“But to answer your question – I think it is only logical to conclude that they do not care if their members are frightened. In fact, they must find some advantage in it.”
“Advantage?”
“Why else would they be here? If you think about it, they want to impress upon their flock that Evil is real, that the dangers to their spirits are real. The Reverends are holding out this stick with a big carrot at the end of it. It would be difficult to convince your flock to crave salvation, I would think, if they were comfortable in their current existence, if they believed themselves to be safe.
“They depend on a good story to keep their members. You know how powerful a good story can be. You can give your very life over to a good story.”
“I think I understand that, but how would they know about this hotel in the first place? What… qualifies the Johnsons to even be here?” Jacob started to answer when Richard interrupted. “I know, I know, it was before your time. But are there any records of when they first came, or why?”
“We rarely deal in ‘whys,’ Richard, but we have ledgers going back to the hotel’s beginnings.”
Jacob moved the school desk and peeled away the stiff, rotting rug, exposing the lines of a trap door. Pulling up the hatch by its rope handle automatically switched on the lights in the room below. Jacob wordlessly started down the narrow ladder. After some hesitation, Richard followed.
A painting of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland was mounted on the wall behind the ladder. As Richard descended, it filled his view. “Once upon a time someone named this hidden room the Rabbit Hole,” Jacob said, in front of him.
Rough wood shelving covering most of the walls held the hotel ledgers as well as reference works on carpentry, landscaping, plumbing and electricity, bound periodicals relating to the hotel industry, bibles, volumes of philosophy. The one wall without shelving was stacked with paintings. Two were exposed: portraits of an incredibly short, squarish woman – Jacob’s predecessor, if Richard wasn’t mistaken – and of Jacob himself, a much younger version with a silly smile.
“We change the portrait in the hall after the new proprietor is on the job for an appropriate time. There’s a blank space out there waiting for yours. I could not wait the usual interval, I am afraid, to get mine down. I swear I have never smiled like that – the painter was drunk, I believe.” Jacob went through several volumes before he found it. “July 1, 1961: Emmett Johnson & Son. Checkout is listed as August 23rd of the same year, so they spent some time with us,” he said, rifling through the dusty pages. “She liked to make notes on the guests. A bad habit, I believe. It violates the spirit, if not the letter, of our commitment to our guests for discretion and privacy. The majority of her notes are useless, in any case – she liked to comment on what they ordered from the kitchens, for example, what they wore, the minutiae of habits observed, that sort of thing.” He paused. “Interesting.”
“What is it?”
“Here she puts ‘Father – pedestrian, normal. Son – healer.’”
“I wasn’t aware that was part of their religion.”
“I do not believe it is.”
Later Richard went into the library to find a book on miracle healing. He didn’t know if they had such a book, but Jacob had told him he’d be surprised if they didn’t.
The door to the Deadfall library was an inconspicuous gray wood panel with a plain brass knob, next to a coat closet off one of the side corridors on the main floor. The walls of the narrow gopher-tunnel of an entrance were lined with pictures – paintings and photographs – of various views of the grounds, particular guests (their faces fuzzy or hidden, shadowed or out of focus), and past managers. Some had engraved name plates fixed to the bottoms of the frames, but most did not.
Jacob was there – a skinny, much younger man caught in the act of doffing the traditional “Deadfall Hotel Recreation Department” baseball cap. Beside him was an oil depicting the vanished Mr. Grant, whose sleepless red eyes and neat beard made him resemble an ailing bird of prey. Then there was a watercolor rendering of a beautiful young woman with a lizard – a live lizard, apparently – perched near the top of her great, pyramid-shaped hat.
There was a dark, murky, black-and-white photograph labeled, simply, ‘Mr. Carl.’ Richard was at first unable to discern any human figure in the image, but over time realized that the soft smudge near the middle was a man’s face, an incredibly long narrow oval of moon-white, hanging in the darkness of the photo’s background, his eyes closed.
Except for isolated stretches of progressive or related imagery, the pictures appeared not to be in any particular order. There, among smudged charcoal sketches of obese twins, night photographs of dim gray widows, pictures of uniform background in which virtually no foreground figures could be seen, bright paintings of long-dead men with wide eyes and flushed faces, was a Polaroid snapshot of Richard and Serena entering the hotel for the first time – their slightly blurred faces still clearly apprehensive. The point of view seemed to be that of an upstairs window, but with the plane of ground somehow tilted.
Richard did not like the photograph, did not like the idea of it, but knew he would have a hard time explaining to Jacob exactly why he objected.
At last leaving the cramped tunnel, he was invariably awed by the floor-to-ceiling windows that filled the tall wall on the library’s far side. At first you might doubt you were in a library at all. Where were the books? But approaching those windows and then turning around, you discovered that the small entrance was like a mouse hole in one corner of a great three-story gallery of finely polished wooden bookcases, the upper levels accessible via wrought metal spiral stairs and ornate catwalks. Several reading chairs had been positioned by smaller bookcases – ‘reading islands’ Serena liked to call them – on the shiny wooden floor.
Each level had its own separate lighting system, and at night, if you looked up, all you could see was layer after layer of vertically placed volumes leading up into increasingly deeper levels of darkness. During one evening spent in this room, Richard had experienced a terrible, debilitating vertigo, accompanied by the sensation that he himself was warping into the vertical, his body becoming taller and thinner, his head filling with air and floating toward the ceiling like a child’s balloon on a jiggling string.
He loved books, and at first had begun each day with an excited visit to the library. But he’d soon discovered that the majority of the volumes here were most eccentric: pseudo-scientific treatises on all manner of strange creatures and belief systems, novels written in bizarre styles, biographies of nonexistent people, geographies of nonexistent countries. Jacob claimed there was a wealth of useful information here if you knew how to weed out the ridiculous. Obviously, Richard hadn’t the expertise.
He found the Reverend Tim Johnson sitting in the Queen Anne, his lap filled by a giant, oil-stained leather volume. “I hope you don’t mind.” The reverend looked placid, somewhat sleepy. Richard suspected that whether he minded or not was completely irrelevant.
“Of course not. Guests have free access to the library and its holdings.”
“Very generous. Very generous.” He turned a couple of pages with a delicate wave of his fingers. “You have a wonderful collection of religious writings, by the way. And great old Bibles – the illustrations in this volume are unlike any I’ve ever seen before. You might think – well, you might even think the artist had encountered angels and devils firsthand.”
“Much of great art is divinely inspired, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yes; yes, I believe I would. For good or ill. Sometimes the artist allies with the wrong side, I would say. But all these religious tomes, you wouldn’t be running some sort of secret seminary here, would you?”
Richard smiled. “I’m relatively new on the job, but I really don’t think so. I suppose it’s just that spiritual issues have been… an interest, among the proprietors. A wide range of beliefs, cosmologies represented. And many of the guests, well, I belie
ve many of the guests read, of course.” Richard actually knew very little about such things. He hoped he wouldn’t be asked for a recommendation.
The reverend smiled. “Yes, well. Reading opens doors, as they say.”
“Serena really enjoys your daughter’s company, by the way. I think she may have found a friend.”
The smile diminished slightly in the face of this revelation, but still held. “Your daughter appears to be… very well behaved. Annabelle sometimes can be a trial. ‘Pre-teen,’ I believe they call it. But your daughter is a good influence, I think. I compliment you.”
“Oh well, I’m not sure it’s my doing. She was born with that temperament, I think.”
“Oh, please don’t minimize your influence. Fathers so often set the tone, I think. Not that mothers are unimportant.”
“Of course.”
“I’d like to apologize,” he said.
“Oh.” Richard felt instantly uncomfortable.
“My wife’s behavior. Sometimes it’s a problem, and that influences Annabelle. She becomes upset.”
“That’s quite all right.”
“Ever since the accident. We had that serious accident with the car and, well, we all knew any one of us could have died. An experience like that can have a serious effect on a child. A very serious effect.”
“You were in the Lincoln? It appears to be in great shape now.”
“I took it to some very good people. They knew exactly what to do. You’d hardly know there had been damage.”
“Hardly. No one was injured?”
“Scrapes and bruises, and then my wife’s injuries, which were more severe.” He waved as if to dismiss the question, but his hands were ill-controlled and exaggerated the gesture. “My wife’s recovery required some time. And during that time, of course, Annabelle was without a mother. It made for a very delicate situation, interrupting that bond between a mother and child, especially a daughter. I have prayed over this many times – we came so close to losing her.”
“Your daughter?”
“No, no, my wife. She might have died. Luckily I knew what to do in the situation.”
“You knew first aid.”
“Well, yes. I had some knowledge, which I applied. Knowledge flows from the Lord. He showed me what to do, and I followed.”
Slightly embarrassed, Richard nodded.
“But she’s just fine now, my wife. A little shaken up, certainly. Her behavior has been… a result of the stress. Post-traumatic stress. A terrible accident. And of course that can encourage fantasies in a child, especially in a sensitive child.”
“I see.” He decided to leave it there.
“I saw you at the sermons. Did you find them edifying?”
Richard felt vertiginous with the sudden change of subject. “It was… interesting. I’m not a terribly religious person.”
“None of us are, until we hear the right things. That is why this work is so important. We must share our witness. People must hear our words.”
“They appeared to be listening.”
“And why shouldn’t they? I have given them something they can feel a part of. How many people feel like they belong? The members of the Gathering suffer as all people suffer, but the Gathering provides a solace for being human, the solace of finally having the answer, of being right for once, and the hope that there will be something good at the end of all this suffering. How could I deny them that? How could I deny them their escape from death?”
EACH MORNING, THERE was another round of sermons, followed by studies and discussions late into the afternoon. Dinners were generally held outside, and the Gathering retired relatively early, which allowed, Richard supposed, other residents to walk about, but as far as he could tell very few ever took the opportunity. He did run into Mrs. Johnson now and then, always accompanied by two or more assigned guards, as she wandered the halls silently, her eyes in constant movement, reacting to stimuli. He’d noticed red marks around her wrists, her lower arms, her neck, and he imagined that periodically they must strap her to her bed in order for her keepers to get some rest.
The Reverend Senior Emeritus was out and about a great deal, talking to members, laughing, leading small, spontaneous prayer groups. Richard rarely saw his son, who, he was told, was “in prayer.” The few times Richard did see him, it was in hallway encounters with his daughter, who was usually tearful, the Reverend Tim breathless and irritated from having to chase her down. This evolved into a tableau Richard had seen many times, but had somehow avoided, personally, for the most part: father lecturing somewhat sullen daughter.
“Anna, you need to be with your mother now. At least try talking to her.”
“It makes no difference, Daddy!” the child wailed.
Later he actually saw the three of them together, sitting in the old wooden lawn chairs under one of the great maples. Annabelle sat back with her arms folded, in contrast to Reverend Tim Johnson’s eager, forward-leaning posture. Mrs. Johnson sat stiffly in the next chair, head tilted as if listening to the ground. Two of the young guardians stood on either side of her. The reverend appeared to be waving his hands about in false heartiness, patting Mrs. Johnson on the shoulder at intervals, gesturing to Annabelle as if to invite her into the conversation.
Serena continued to spend most of her time with Annabelle. It was only when Annabelle’s mother was around, or when her father came to take her back to her mother (he appeared to have no other reason for seeking her out), that Annabelle returned to the pale, large-eyed child who had first arrived at the Deadfall.
Richard was a little less nervous about Serena’s time with the Gathering, but he’d been relieved when Enid came to him and said, “I’m not cooking much these days. I’ll sit with your girl, wherever she goes.”
“But your son? I wouldn’t want –”
“He is in good hands – my sister is watching him. There is little good I can do for him, and to see him like this – I should have time away from him now. I must steel myself for both our sakes. I will watch your sweet girl. I would like nothing better right now.”
He wasn’t sure this was necessary, but it was still reassuring. Whenever he saw the two little girls now, Enid was with them. Sometimes when he passed them in the hall, the two girls holding hands, walking quick as lizards, Enid huffing as she attempted to keep up, Serena would glance at him and roll her eyes. But he didn’t think she actually minded that much – most of the time he saw the three of them they were sitting companionably, sharing a sandwich or a game, softly conversing. The officious young men the Gathering had employed for watching, for goading, for herding, tended for some reason to avoid Enid (although he couldn’t imagine why), and therefore the girls.
Jacob wandered by the front desk in the middle of that afternoon. “Things appear to be handled, I assume? At least as much as possible? There is a sense of equilibrium in our little hotel?”
Richard wasn’t positive, but he thought he smelled just a hint of wine on Jacob’s breath. Of course that didn’t really mean anything – he’d probably just had it with lunch – but Richard was surprised just the same. “I believe so. They’re not the rowdiest bunch, for their numbers.”
“Indeed. Well, then, I have a chore it is time you learned. Our private cemetery – it must be weeded and cleaned once a year. It will only require two or three hours, so I was thinking I would suggest now? If you are available?”
“Oh. Well, of course.” Richard had never really thought of that plot just beyond the tennis courts as something of importance, requiring maintenance.
Entrance to the private cemetery was obtained via an ornate, bronze-colored gate. The cemetery was laid out on a surprisingly sharp slope (“for drainage purposes,” Jacob explained), which skewed the gate and warped the bordering fence, so that the gate never entirely closed, and whole sections of the fence were broken or down altogether. Great trees grew in the gaps, the cemetery situated around and inside one of the older groves of trees on the property. The grave
s in the central, cleared area were arranged in a series of concentric circles with occasional spokes, a more-or-less uniform spider web.
As they approached the central web, passing through a tight wall of trees, Jacob stopped him, gestured toward a row of tall oaks on a serpentine mound which ran near the downslope edge of the cemetery. There Richard recognized a few of the long-term tenants proceeding single-file along the mound: the two old sisters in their dark choir robes, the incredibly emaciated man who wore a different hat every time Richard saw him, a gray-robed figure who never spoke, whose face had never been seen. A final figure trailed the line, its face wrapped in rags, carrying a grass sack across its back whose sides bulged. Jacob walked down for a better view, and after a brief hesitation Richard joined him.
The grass sack was gently laid beside a pre-dug hole. The old sisters opened the sack, and several hands went in to ease the body out.
The body was all bone and black oily skin, reminiscent of the thing that had disturbed the leaf piles earlier. Richard looked away despite his burning curiosity, feeling much too much the intruder. He proceeded back up the slope and to the central clearing, began the work of clearing vegetation from around the graves. After a few minutes, Jacob joined him, silently bent to his labors.
There were dozens of graves, the vegetation thick and stubborn around each one. After a while, Richard asked, “Who’s buried here?”
“A few members of the founding family, managers and other staff, the occasional resident, if request was made, the even rarer wayward traveler who never made it, technically, to checkin.”
Most of the names on the stones were virtually unreadable, others lettered in some foreign tongue. Some were simple piles of stones, others complicated and intricate constructions suggestive of abstract sculpture.
Richard carried an ordinary rake, with some clippers tied to his belt. His job was weeding around the markers, which produced considerable anxiety, especially around some of the more delicate sculptures. And he had no sense of what was considered appropriate etiquette for the task, where he was supposed to stand, what was or was not proper to touch.
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