“She died.” A small voice leaked from his mouth.
And someone had to look after you!
His vision swam, and the thing in the mirror blurred and shifted. His mind reeled. His mother had been cremated. She wasn’t holed up in a hotel wall. His uncle had always said...
What a talented liar he was! Maybe dishonesty made his flesh bitter. Maybe that’s why the pike weren’t fussed about him; what do you think?
He thought of his uncle’s hairy knuckles, how the finger and thumb knocked together on the hooks like a Newton’s Cradle.
“That wasn’t me!” he said.
Well, I don’t have fingerprints. His pulsing white brother raised his — its — undeveloped hands, and they trembled as the thing tittered again.
I can help you, Marky. I can help you out of this. Just like I always do, but you have to listen to me.
Mark looked at the mess in the bathroom, the plaster and lath and dust and bones.
Don’t worry about it. We have work to do. Stuff to finish.
Before he could do anything — even think what to do here — he needed to keep the cleaning staff from turning down the room. He stuck his hands into the cold, pink bath water and washed the dust from his arms and hands. With that done, he hurried to the door to the suite and snatched the Do Not Disturb sign from the inside handle — Bugs Bunny sleeping against a haystack under a spiral of Zs — and he longed to climb into bed and sleep. Forget. Dismiss. Deny.
There’ll be time for that, just get that sign hung.
He opened the door and set the sign over the brass knob.
“A-ha. We meet again.” The dwarf was walking back to his suite at the other end of the corridor. He held what looked like a camera flight case, and a dismantled fish net. An array of wires looped and swung from the net’s corners.
Should he close the door? Ignore the little man. He wanted to; his flipper-like hands reminded him of his brother’s.
We’ll deal with him in a bit, just smile.
He nodded and as he moved to close the door, the dwarf stopped and walked to the door. “Did Ahab catch his whale?”
Mark immediately regretted the puzzled look he gave the little man.
“You know, Moby Dick?” he said. “Last time we spoke, you hadn’t caught your specimen pike.”
“Ohhhhhh!” Mark laughed, relieved. “Haven’t been back out — it’s too late.”
“Get busy and catch that monster, because in two days it’ll be closed season.” He flashed a wallet badge at Mark — Eric-somebody, and something else about wildlife and fisheries.
Mark forced another laugh and nodded again, before slamming the door and leaning against it once he was back in the room.
Closed season…How could you forget about closed season? That could be a problem. Or… Two birds with one stone… His brother gave a sly chuckle again. Now, get into bed and think of Bugs...
~
He woke to darkness but couldn’t remember turning out the lights. Even though it was dark, the birds were calling in morning, so he got up to use the bathroom. Groggy with sleep, yet lucid enough to recall the mess he’d made in here last night, he stood open-jawed when he saw the bathroom was spotless. Even so, a cool draft rushed over his feet from the bottom of the mirror, and as his squinting eyes adjusted to the bright light, he realized the mirror had been rehung over the hole he’d made. He pulled it away from the wall and peered behind. The blanket, strips of wood, and plaster had been thrown back there along with the bones; had he done this? Or had he done it?
Hee-haw, that’s an academic distinction at this point, wouldn’t you say?
He stepped back and saw the spectral twin wobbling like a huge, fleshy skin tag on his belly. Sleep’s welcome amnesia wore off as his memory of yesterday’s revelations crashed back into his mind.
Don’t you want a brother, brother? All we need’s a few more pieces...
He thought of the other voice he’d heard last night; she seemed so distant today. When he’d discovered her bones, had he freed her? That was the way these things went, wasn’t it? Discover a restless spirit’s unsanctified remains and release their soul? But then, it’d never been her voice he’d heard, had it? His lifelong companion was this ethereal and flaccid appendage that hung from his belly.
Yes, and it’s time to finish me off!
~
The next morning came and he was crashing through the undergrowth on his way to the lake again. His box was more cumbersome than usual, and he guessed he was emotionally exhausted after last night. Weak sun rays barely cut through the leafless branches, stalling at the forest fringe, and Mark used a strong LED penlight to find his route. When he finally cut onto the soil path surrounding the lake, daylight was strong enough, and the small lake gleamed, reflecting the sky like a lambent disc. No mist clung to the water’s surface.
He walked to his favorite spot, wincing in anticipation of the crazy old lady washing her tatty, bloody clothes at the ford. She wasn’t there. The large puddle still dribbled in little rills over the grass, and the mud down the clay bank still bore the skids and gouges from his tumble yesterday.
At the small, derelict jetty he set up his rods quickly, pleased at the amount of new bait he had; no wonder the seatbox was so heavy. The blue groundsheet he’d used to wrap the meat bags in almost reached the top of the box; he couldn’t even remember picking up fresh bait.
Just as he dismissed that thought, a soft, yellow orb plinked on at the ford, and he snapped to attention to see the tramp standing there. He dropped the bait — a slender, pork-like sinew — at her transformation. Her robe was clean, and he could see it wasn’t homespun at all, but a hotel bathrobe. A blue logo over the left breast, and blue piping along the lapels and edging, glowed vividly: Lake View Hotel.
Her spectre shimmered and fragmented, then reformed, smiling at him, and he was drawn to her. When he faced her, and his boots were creating little dams in the leaking rivulets of the ford, she spoke. Not in his head, but out loud; the voice was that of the one in the wall:
“I never left you, my angel,” she said.
“Mother?”
She didn’t reply. She didn’t have to; a beatific smile confirmed his thoughts.
“But neither has your brother.” She looked down to her hands, and he could see the knot of her bathrobe through them.
“I knew something was wrong, but we had to make a choice, Mark.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You will. And you can stop him. But I’m unable to stay here with you; I must move on now.”
“Who?”
She said no more. Just smiled and handed him a broken piece of crockery. Then walked into him.
He stood over a white bed stained with pooling blood. It looked like cherry jam, it was so thick. From behind he heard clattering, screaming and splashing, and his uncle’s voice. He turned to see an old-fashioned bathroom off the room. It was decorated olive-green, and flames blazed in an incongruous inglenook fireplace. He followed the sound and found himself staring at his reflection in a large mirror that hung from the wall next to the fireplace. He was still wearing his green all-weather jacket and dirty fishing jeans. This was the hotel as it had once been, when it had been The Lake View and not The Lake Manor.
Now that he was in the bathroom, he could clearly hear his uncle asking for help. The woman in the bath was still — the water blood-stained pink — but on her chest a twitching, chittering mass squirmed. It had a healthier complexion than she did. He crept over and realized the petitions his uncle was making were prayers, but he soon stopped his chanting and hurried toward the woman: the woman Mark had seen at the ford. He looked at his newborn self, the pile of placenta and umbilicals like a worm cast, and saw his twin brother, much larger than him but deformed. Or rather, under-formed.
His uncle ignored him, almost walking right through him, and stood over the bath, staring at the corpse. A flare of hope burned in Mark’s chest when she opened her eyes, but h
e knew how this would end, and it quickly extinguished with that knowledge.
“Separate him,” she croaked. Then, trying to look down to her chest, she said, “Jack.” She frowned, and her head fell back against the white ceramic of the iron bath with a clunk.
“Jack,” his uncle said, and reached for the gory mass on her. He hefted the wad of flesh up, and Mark recognized his brother’s unfinished shape. Blood on white. It looked like a half-cooked suckling pig: pathetic arms twitching and flipper-legs pedaling languidly. The baby’s backside was attached to the other — Mark’s — belly, which arched upward when his uncle lifted its twin.
Behind him the door clicked shut. He turned to see a graven-faced doctor who looked familiar. “The join is weak, but we have to hurry.” He dropped a substantial suitcase onto the floor and carefully placed both babies on a plastic-backed towel next to it. When he moved the monstrous twin’s legs up to get a better view of its joined anus, the baby crunched upwards in a spasm and bit his hand. It looked as if it were sucking his thumb, but the howl the doctor gave was extreme and when he fought the thing to drag his hand away, his thumb swung back over the wrist, three-quarters detached. Blood soaked the white mouth of the deformed twin.
Grunting in pain, he turned to Mark’s uncle. “I can guide you through this,” he said through gritted teeth, hurriedly wrapping his thumb with a dressing from the suitcase.
His uncle backed up and shook his head. “Your thumb!”
“She’ll die if we’re not quick, her uterus is...”
Mark heard a half-sound like a squelch and a gasp come from his mother. His twin had managed to wrap the umbilical round its legs, and its feverish kicking had pulled something free. He assumed it was the placenta, but it was far larger than he would have expected it to be. A chrysanthemum bloom of black-red spread in the water between his mother’s legs, turning the water even deeper pink.
“Mother,” he screamed at her still body. Her eyes were now open, but their translucency had dulled and there was an unfocused gaze to them. He would wring the life from that fucking freak’s mangled body! He spun and took a lurching stride to where the doctor was carefully moving the babies, but the edges of his vision flared and burned white until only a dark point remained in the center. A whining sine tone grew in intensity until the sound became indistinguishable from his vision, and just as he felt he would pass out from the clamor, his sight faded back in.
The doctor had gone and his uncle stood in front of the fireplace, weeping. Two hotel maids were scrubbing the floor and the bath. In the hearth was a large bundle wrapped in a blue blanket, and his mother’s head was exposed at one end. His uncle bent and kissed her forehead, then left the bathroom.
~
Mark came to, alone at the ford and shivering, his hands clawed and aching. It was a little brighter, but the sun wasn’t much higher. He relaxed his hands, and from his right a white china wedge fell into the puddle. His grip had been so tight he’d cut his palm, and the blood flowed freely from it. He left the shard where it had fallen, the shallow water clearing the blood from it until the only mark on it was the crude writing, 11a, hands (L&R).
He trudged back to the small jetty and opened the seatbox. His mind was clear but his soul was exhausted. He pulled the edge of the groundsheet covering the bait. The dismembered body inside was small, but not a child’s. Mark looked over the lake, wondering how many guests lay under the perfect surface, before falling on his knees and shrieking an unintelligible lament. In a frustrated convulsion he kicked the tackle box, and the remains of the dwarf tumbled out, the torso and head falling into the lake with a low splash. The arms and a leg rolled a little way from the box before rocking to a stop, dripping viscous fluid through the wooden planks of the jetty.
Drip, drip, drop.
Mark stared at the sky, the glare softening as low, grey clouds promising the first snows rumbled over the clearing, and listened to the body broth dribbling into the water below.
Drip, drip, drop.
He thought of the broken china. The catalogue of body parts. “All those hints. Why didn’t you just tell me?”
Drip, drip, drop
Like:
Tick, tick, tock
The grandfather clock on the landing…
Click-clack, click-clack
Like a chant…
“Jumbled-up Jack! You’re not to bring him back!”
Mark sat up abruptly and walked to the end of the jetty. The lake was now a grey mirror, and the twin gleamed on his belly as it shifted and moved with a peristaltic motion. It was smiling.
We’re all finished, Marky! It tried to wink a black-olive eye, but this just made the coarse ingrown hairs of the patchy eyelashes sink deeper into the doughy folds of its heavy brow. Mark looked away from the lake so he couldn’t see the grotesque reflection. On the jetty he saw the dwarf’s scattered arms and legs: no hands on the arms.
Nope, we needed them. His brother whispered conspiratorially in his mind.
Mark walked back and took a running jump, singing as his brother screamed at him of betrayal. “I knew a lad of birth maligned with whom I shared a womb…”
Room 3: The Long Way Home
By Victoria Silverwolf
Margaret watched a rainbow of death spiraling down the bathroom sink. Capsules of dark blue and pale yellow and somber green, dozens of tiny tablets as white as virgin brides, as deadly as vipers. She turned the hot water tap as far as it would go. When the mirror was hidden behind a veil of steam, she shut it off. Sleepless nights and days full of dull pain would be a small price to pay to escape temptation. No, not that way. That would be too easy.
Whispers came from the other room. Margaret left the bathroom, moving as quietly as possible, hardly breathing. There were voices in the Lake Manor. Sometimes they snarled, sometimes they laughed, often they wept. She looked over the room, half-expecting shadows to gather into spirits. There was only an ordinary hotel room. A heavily upholstered chair, painted with sunlight from the single window. A desk with yellowing postcards never to be mailed. A bed that had been room enough for two newlyweds, but now seemed unbearably narrow for one widow.
Someone knocked. Margaret peered through the peephole. She didn’t feel like socializing with some bored tourist, but it was only Hank Freeman, the eternal footman of the hotel. The peephole distorted his grayish face into a death mask. He grinned, as if he were looking back at her.
Margaret opened the door. “What is it?” She hated the fear and contempt in her voice.
Freeman held a large green bottle in his bony hands. “Local mineral water, Mrs. Helder. Gift from the management. Thought you might need it. Helps you swallow medicine.” He looked exactly the same as two years ago: a sniveling dog, watching for any sign of weakness.
“Thank you. That will be all.” She closed the door gently. He wasn’t worth a slam.
The bottle was decorated with spidery white lines. Margaret thought she could make out a church with tiny gravestones scattered at its feet and ghostly parishioners on their way to a funeral. The text was an incomprehensible blur. She twisted open the cap. The bottle hissed and foamed, running over her hand. She took a long drink. It was delicious, not at all the poison she had expected. Cool and tingling and tasting of limestone, it was like sipping the water from a secret lake deep inside a cave. Had Freeman really expected her to use it as part of an elegant overdose? She raised the bottle high and pledged a toast to him. Nice try, but he wouldn’t win her soul quite so easily. She took another drink, pretending it was champagne.
~
Two autumns ago, David had poured champagne into the lake directly from the bottle. Margaret and her husband of less than a week sat in a nearly motionless rowboat under steel clouds.
“A sacrifice to Hymenaeum,” David said. The last few drops of champagne fell into the water. Margaret tilted her head and studied the face she had tried to capture so many times in ink or pencil. It was rugged, craggy, even ugly by any ordinary measure. Y
et when he smiled, it was like Adam seeing the new world for the first time.
“Did they really throw bodies in here long ago?” Margaret watched dead leaves floating on the water, like giant insects.
David shrugged his massive shoulders, sending the boat rocking slightly. “That’s what they say. Maybe just a story to intrigue visitors. If it’s true, the bottom of this lake must be covered with bones.”
Margaret shivered, not unpleasantly. “It’s getting chilly. Let’s head back.”
“OK.” David rowed with long, slow movements.
“Aren’t we going the wrong way? The hotel’s over there.”
“I know. I want to take the long way.”
The water murmured under the oars.
~
Today, the lake blazed under a merciless sun. A hot wind shattered the surface of the water into glittering shards of glass. Margaret roasted in a wool sweater and leather pants. The other guests, in their shorts and swimsuits, must have thought she was mad. Perhaps she was.
After a short walk along the shore, Margaret found herself alone, unseen, in the shade of mixed hardwoods. The air was full of the chatter of insects. She sat at the base of an ancient oak and rested. Its leaves offered her a measure of relief from the heat, but sweat still poured from her body. On the opposite side of the lake, the hotel shone like a snow-covered mountain. It seemed as eternal as the sky, staring silently into the water, brooding over its reflection.
Margaret stood and walked into the lake. Water flowed into her boots. It was shockingly cold, as if the summer heat had no power over it. After a few more steps, the water was up to her neck. Her body felt numb, as if she were encased in ice. She waited a moment. Had David felt like this as he sank into his final coma?
Surrendering to the lake was as easy as closing her eyes. Waterlogged clothes dragged her down. She landed on her side, her knees drawn up like a fetus. The bottom of the lake was soft and welcoming. Even the burning in her lungs was a comfort, like a hearth fire.
The Haunting of Lake Manor Hotel Page 10