The Hike

by Drew Magary

  He smacked right into the double doors upon landing and had to carefully regain his balance on the rebound to keep from plummeting into the gorge below. Just as he was steadying himself, he doubled over in pain again, turning away from the castle walls and clutching at his leg. Everything went taut: his skin, hair, fingers, and toes. He felt as if he had become a fist. His mighty giant hair spooled back into his head. He slumped down on the narrow ledge as his chest and stomach and legs and arms shrank back down, the serum from the gun wearing off.

  He was six feet tall again, which would have been a welcome development except that all his writhing and spasming had caused him to roll right off the mountain.

  He grabbed hold of the ledge just in time to avoid falling into the red abyss. His hands were in better shape now, but his full body weight was bearing down on them and he could feel his fingers getting sweaty and losing friction. He was slipping away. In one desperate motion, he pulled himself up and swung his foot onto the ledge as all his hand muscles cramped and seized.

  The doors in front of him parted silently to reveal a stark, modern hotel lobby: pristine white marble floors, black light fixtures, a large black fountain in the center of the lobby with water falling down the sides of a black granite cube, and a series of elevated tables with sleek black bar stools. Two escalators ran up to a generic white mezzanine.

  Ben swung his other leg over the ledge and rolled to safety, gasping for air as he gazed into the lobby. At the back, to the right, there was a long white counter with a short old man standing behind it, staring at Ben but not saying a word, never blinking, not offering to help the traveler lying prone at the hotel’s doorstep.

  Eventually, Ben got up and walked inside, the doors sealing shut behind him. When he pressed down on the floor mat and waved his arms around, the doors failed to reopen. There was no leaving the hotel now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE HOTEL

  He was just a man once more, everything about him now in correct proportion to his environs: his body, his clothes, his bag. It was vaguely disappointing.

  Between Ben and the clerk was a small, circular stone table with a fruit basket sitting on top: complimentary apples and pears and oranges. He grabbed an apple on his way to greet the creepy old clerk, who looked like a wax figure: his face caked with foundation makeup, each strand of hair on his head discernible to the naked eye, occupying its own little patch of real estate on his pale scalp. He looked as if he had been crafted by a twisted dollmaker. Ben approached him with caution.

  “Hello?”

  The clerk said nothing, and instead reached into a drawer to pull out a plastic key card, the kind you find in any twenty-first-century hotel. He placed it against a magnetic reader until it beeped, then bundled it inside a little pamphlet and scribbled a number—906—on the inside in blue pen. He left the Wi-Fi password space blank, then slid the pamphlet over to Ben.

  “Is this my room?” he asked.

  The clerk answered only with a leering half smile. There was a bank of elevators behind him to the right. He pointed Ben toward the bank, but Ben wasn’t in a rush. The lines demarcating the path were gone now. He had free rein to explore the hotel as he pleased. To the left of the cube fountain was a sleek, open lounge with a full bar. No one was there. No bartenders. No patrons. There was a smattering of tables, but all of them were covered in overturned dining chairs, as if service had ended. Ben walked up to one of the place settings and unfurled a cloth napkin, watching a fork, a spoon, and a thick steak knife all tumble out. He grabbed a second bundle from another place setting and tucked it into his backpack. The clerk, who remained conspicuously silent, slowly ambled over behind the bar and rested his frail, rotting hands on the cold marble countertop.

  The bar, apparently, was still open. Whatever this place was, it at least had better liquor laws than Pennsylvania.

  Ben walked to the bar and hung his backpack over a stool. He didn’t bother asking for a double rye. He knew the clerk wasn’t going to ever speak. Ben pointed at the bottle and held up two fingers. The clerk nodded and filled a tumbler. Then he dug up a scoopful of ice and held it over the glass, awaiting further instruction from Ben. Ben held up one finger and the clerk let a single rock fall into the tumbler, then placed the drink on the bar. He stared at the glass until streaks of condensation ran down the side, pooling at the base and forming a suction ring.

  “Money?” Ben asked.

  The clerk shook his head. Ben dislodged the tumbler from the wet bar and took a sip. It was real booze. No tricks. No poison. Real, honest-to-God booze. His socks were digging into his ankles and now even his leg hairs were sore, like wearing a snug baseball cap for too long. His body and mind moaned with every blissful sip. It tasted like home in the wintertime.

  He gestured for a refill. The clerk obliged.

  At the far end of the bar was another set of tinted double doors. After a couple more sips, Ben stood up and walked toward them, then looked back at the clerk for approval. The clerk gave a nod and Ben stepped onto the floor mat that made the doors slide open automatically.

  Outside, he came upon a flagstone patio. In the center of the patio was a small, black-tiled pool with deck chairs arranged in a rectangle around it. Rolls of complimentary towels were stacked on built-in shelves over to the side. To the right of the pool was a raised fire pit, made of stone, with a circular slab running along its perimeter for bench seating. The pit was surrounded by wrought-iron outdoor furniture with firm cushions and little side tables where patrons might rest all manner of fruity, fifteen-dollar cocktails.

  The entire patio was enclosed by a black aluminum rail fence that was five times higher than Ben was tall. In the distance, he saw that the patio overlooked a vineyard at the base of a series of rolling, sun-bathed hills. It looked like paradise: the fat grapes hanging in bunches from vines that were held up by wooden stakes. (Stakes, eh?), the wizened olive trees that dotted the hillside, the way the fading sunlight seemed to embrace all of it and give it a visible aura. He walked to the fence and grabbed one of the cold rails with his free hand, the second rye cocktail in his other hand nearly finished. He wanted a third. He wanted a hundred.

  The clerk was outside now as well, perched by the double doors, which remained open to the hotel lobby. Ben took a final sip of his whiskey and then grasped the fence with both hands, bracing his foot on the rail, ready to climb. He looked to the clerk for approval.

  The clerk shook his head.

  So Ben picked up the tumbler and gave it a shake. The clerk nodded and went to get another refill. The sunlight faded to purple and Ben looked down into the stone fire pit, which was filled with tiny blue rocks and had two small gas pipes jutting out. When the clerk returned with a full drink, Ben pointed to the fire pit. The clerk nodded once more and walked over to a white switch on the side of the patio. The flames kicked up and toasted Ben’s skin the way the liquor toasted his insides. He slumped into one of the chairs ringing the pit and gazed into the fire. He didn’t want to think about Annie Derrickson, but he couldn’t help it. It was okay now. A few drinks always made it okay to put guilt aside for a moment.

  Then he thought about Teresa and the children. No SWAT team or Special Forces agents had found him. They wouldn’t find him, of course. They could sweep every square inch of the Earth and not find him. Maybe they had a funeral already. He hadn’t had time to write a will or make any sort of proper burial request. He was at that age where he used work as an excuse to put off other pressing matters, like personal finances and filling out life insurance forms. He preferred making the small amount of money he made to figuring out how to take care of that money.

  But Teresa would know what to do. She would be practical. After the proper amount of time had passed, she would accept that he was gone, and then hold a small memorial service in their home, with platters of sandwiches and bowls of dip (she made excellent dips) set out for the ber
eaved. She would keep her shit together until everyone had cleared out of the house, and then she would cry and wail privately, just to herself. After a year, maybe she would begin dating again. Maybe she would get married. The kids would have a new dad. And slowly, they would all forget about Ben, wouldn’t they? Life would move forward, without him. He didn’t want to be gone, but now he was. Just like his worthless old man. A whole new ecosystem would soon grow and thrive over his grave site.

  He squeezed his glass angrily and left it on the edge of the fire pit, unfinished. He fell asleep right in the deck chair, his clothes still on. In the dead of night, the clerk gave him a gentle tap on the shoulder and he slowly opened his eyes. He didn’t like the clerk touching him. His touch felt like it could infect others.

  The clerk pointed up. It was time for him to go to his room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  906

  Through the double patio doors, across the lobby, past the desk, and into the elevator bank Ben went. Alone. The clerk didn’t follow this time. In this confined part of the lobby, he could hear a tinkling of Muzak coming from the speakers embedded in the hotel ceiling: the darkest of jokes.

  The elevator opened and Ben consulted his key card packet, which was festooned with stock photos of smiling children and young couples holding hands on the stone patio. 906. His room was on the ninth floor.

  He pressed the 9 button and watched the doors seal shut behind him. When they reopened, he found himself in a standard hotel hallway, with generic framed photographs lining the walls and cheap sconce lights mounted between them. The whole hallway smelled like wallpaper glue. He came to room 906 and dug out his key card. The black sensor under the door handle flashed red when he placed the card against it. He tried again. Red. He tried a third time, turning the handle. Red. Then he kicked the door.

  When he turned to walk back to the elevator, there was a Mouth Demon right in front of him.

  All mouths. Its eyes were mouths. Its nose was a mouth. Its long, stringy hair was interrupted by bare patches with mouths where scalp should be. All the mouths were open and drooling green fluid and babbling incoherently. Its breath was a cloud of horrors. The voices coming from the Mouth Demon suddenly filled the hall, sounding like a throng of the damned.

  It reached out for Ben, and he could see two hungry mouths embedded in its palms, and more mouths lining its forearms. He backed up so quickly that he fell to the ground and the Mouth Demon pounced on him. Ben screamed in terror as the demon grabbed his hand and bit him on the arm with its hand-mouth, its rotting teeth plunging in, eating away at him like a living tumor.

  Ben jerked away from the demon as it ripped a chunk of him free and feasted on it. He got up to run to the end of the hallway and the demon followed, slowly but with purpose. Ben’s arm was festering now, the wound bleeding and widening. He saw teeth growing along the outside of the wound, and a pit forming down into his arm. Soon, there was a tongue. His arm began babbling.

  The demon approached. There was a door marked STAIRS but when Ben tried to push it open, it held fast. The demon grabbed him again and bit into his clothing, and he could see more mouths lining its neck, open and waiting to be fed.

  The gun. He needed the gun. Why hadn’t he just kept the gun out the whole time? He reached into his bag with his uninfected hand and felt the grip of a weapon, but when he pulled it out, it turned out to be the paintball gun he’d filched from Fermona’s cave. Then he remembered: the faded tome said you had to fill the mouths to beat the demon.

  Paint fills things.

  He aimed the paintball gun at the monster and blasted a tiny orb of orange latex into its face. One quick shot was enough to make the demon recoil. Ben fired again and again, hitting every possible open orifice at the base of its neck and across its chest. It fell to the ground in pain, covered in nightmarish bursts of Technicolor. Ben watched as the demon tried frantically to spit the latex out, making strange noises and writhing about as the mouths sealed shut.

  He rolled the demon over and found more mouths lining its back and legs. He filled those mouths as well, and then filled the hungry wound blabbering on his own arm. Once filled with paint, the maw on his arm closed and the lips sealed shut, fading back into his skin, leaving a lively orange polka dot. When he wiped the paint off, he uncovered a faint white line on his skin that would not go away.

  On the ground, he now saw a human corpse. Male. Sunny paint blots all over him. Ben slid down to the floor, resting against the wall, shaking uncontrollably, rubbing the new scar on his arm. He tore off his shirt, checking for new mouths, listening to see if he could hear any more unholy gibberish coming from inside him. But there was nothing.

  He ran back to room 906 and frantically tried the key card again. And this time—by God—the light turned green. He turned the handle, hurried into the room, and slammed the door shut, bolting every bolt and sliding every chain. The mouths . . . Oh, God, the mouths. He kept seeing the mouths, smelling their toxic breath. No one would hear him in this generic hotel room. It would be okay. He screamed and banged his head against the door. He took the real gun out of his bag and held it fast to his heart.

  After his fifth violent head-butt of the door, he remembered . . .

  . . . the tissue of another undead being . . .

  There was an ingredient for Voris’s glowing poison right outside that door. Who knew if it would be there for much longer? Perhaps some ghoulish maid service swept through the hotel every hour to pick up remains of the undead. He was gonna need that poison.

  He took out the pickle jar and unbolted the door. The man lay dead in the hallway. His nose and eyes had been restored. He looked like any other man. Ben knelt beside him and felt his cheek, which was now cold and hard.

  He unfurled the napkin roll from the hotel lounge. The steak knife was serrated and razor sharp.

  “I’m sorry,” Ben told the corpse, as he dug into its arm and carved out a small hunk of flesh where a mouth once was. The man’s blood was already coagulated and crumbly. Not a drop of liquid came out of him. Ben dropped the hunk of flesh into the pickle jar and ran back into 906. Again, the bolts and chains.

  He wanted to sleep. Needed to, really. But how? He looked at the steak knife. It had cut through the man’s flesh so easily, like digging into a fresh jar of peanut butter. It would be a cinch to draw the knife across his own neck and watch the blood come running out, a quick moment of pain in exchange for eternal slumber. The knife could free him. No more mouths. No more giants. No more mountains to climb or bridges to cross. And no more uncertainty.

  No.

  He wiped the knife on the cloth napkin and rolled it back up neatly with the fork and the spoon, leaving it ready for room service.

  The room itself was a suite, nicer than any hotel room he’d ever been in. He didn’t even know hotel rooms could be this open and spacious. There was a kitchen, and a vast master bath with whirlpool jets, and two king beds in the main bedroom, each turned down and adorned with a single chocolate wrapped in silver foil. On the desk in the corner of the room, there was a vase of fresh flowers, along with a cheese-and-fruit plate and a bottle of champagne chilling in a pewter bucket. There was a small envelope tucked under the plate. Ben set his bag on one of the beds and walked over to the desk, grabbing the envelope and tearing it open, reading the tiny note card inside:

  Compliments of the Producer.

  Behind the desk was a set of French doors that led to a balcony. He opened the door and saw the outline of the picturesque hills in the darkness and smelled the olive trees perfuming the fresh air. This Producer, whoever he may be, was abusing Ben in the most classic sense. There was trauma, and then there was a gift, and then more trauma, and then another gift. The pattern was unmistakable.

  There was no sign of the path beyond the hotel. Whether it had abandoned him, or whether he had to figure out some mindfuck puzzle to conjure its return, he was
too tired and frazzled to care.

  Just then, a crow flew by and dropped a scroll of red construction paper onto the balcony. He bent over and unrolled it. There were two small handprints on the paper, made with white finger paint, and a poem cut out and pasted beneath it:

  Sometimes you get discouraged

  Because I am so small

  And always leave fingerprints

  On furniture and walls

  But every day I’m growing up

  And soon I’ll be so tall

  That all those little handprints

  Will be hard to recall

  So here’s a special handprint

  Just so you can say

  This is how my fingers looked

  When I placed them here today.

  At the bottom, there was the name “RUDY,” written by a kindergarten teacher in black Sharpie.

  “God damn you,” Ben whispered softly. “Thank you, but God damn you.”

  He placed the paper on one of the king beds, and put Flora’s stuffed fox next to it. There were a great many kiddie board books that Ben could recite from memory. So, on this night, he recited them aloud to the fox and the handprint. He asked the fox, which acted as proxy for Flora, how her day had been. He told a joke to the handprints. He tucked the objects in for twenty minutes before finally kissing them goodnight and covering them with the sheet and blanket. After a quick shower and change into clean boxers and a white T-shirt, he fell into the opposite bed, staring at the door, waiting for something to start banging on it.

  Nothing did. He fell into a deep sleep with the balcony doors open.

  • • •

  When he woke up, he was a tenth grader. In school. The principal’s office, to be exact. He was sitting in front of a stern woman.

  Oh, that’s Principal Blackwell. That was her name. Hey, wait a second. . . .

  The principal had called Ben into her office and worse, she phoned Ben’s mom at the hospital and made her come in as well. Apparently, Ben’s teacher had read through his journal and was horrified by its contents. Now Principal Blackwell laid the open journal out on her desk for Ben and his mom to see: Severed heads. Pools of blood. Angry missives and threats to kill other students. Hideous creatures covered in frothing mouths. You drew those. You probably don’t remember that, do you? Depression has a way of vaporizing big parts of your memory. Important parts.