Olive begins to panic and is thrown back into the dream.
She is still in the hotel room, but it is fully lit. A storm rages outside just as it does on the other side of the dream where Olive sleeps fitfully and the feet slide across the carpet toward her. In the dream, Olive is again at the window, looking out over the lake. There, in the flashes of lightning, she sees a man and a woman on the shore. They seem to be arguing, the woman gesturing wildly with her arms. It is clear she wishes the man to leave her alone. As she turns away from him, he lunges at her, grabs her by the arms and brandishes something shiny in his hand at her throat. The woman screams. She screams Olive’s name, who watches helplessly from above as her father murders her mother.
Olive keeps her eyes closed when she wakes again. Her nostrils are filled with the smells of decay. A watery voice speaks in the darkness, close enough to her face she can feel its stinking breath puff against her skin.
“Who would believe it was murder? He put me away in that hospital, threw me away so many times before,” it says.
Olive struggles to move her toes, turn her head, any movement that would break this spell, this cycle, this waking nightmare.
“Of course they would all believe it was suicide,” the voice croaks. “Every time he left a mark, every time I tried to take you away from him, he sent me away to that place. Hysteria, they called it. I would tell them he was the one who put the bruises on me, but of course he’d already told them I had inflicted them on myself—”
~
Olive is in the dream again. Again she is six years old, not long before her mother disappeared. They are playing dress-up with Irma’s slips and robes and heels. Irma is painting Olive’s mouth with a pot of rouge. They are laughing and eating cookies from a tin. A record plays. Just then, as Irma gently adorns Olive’s earlobes with a pair of clip-on pearl earrings, Charles’s booming voice can be heard from downstairs.
Irma’s face goes white.
“The dinner,” she says. “I forgot. It’s burned.”
Irma shoos little Olive into the closet and gives her the tin of cookies and a forced smile. She instructs Olive to stay very quiet and still until she comes to fetch her. Then she leaves Olive in the dark. Olive would later spend her adult life sitting, smoking in the dark, as if still waiting for her mother to come back for her.
She never would.
“Until now, Olive.” The voice gurgled.
Olive finally was able to let out a piercing shriek that seemed to dissolve the paralysis that had taken over her entire body. When she opened her eyes, she was staring straight into the milky white eyes of something that used to be her mother but was now a creature of the lake, of this place.
“You have to go back for them, Olive. Go back for them and leave him and never look back,” the thing said.
Olive rolled away from it across the bed and fell to the floor. She heard the squish-squish of its steps toward her. It’s slow, she told herself, it can’t catch me. She snatched up her purse and searched frantically for her flats in the dark.
“You. Have. To. Get. The. Children. Out!” the ghost screamed. Lightning struck outside the window, lighting up every corner of the room, showing Olive everything.
Moments later, Olive Pickbone ran from the room, screaming as if her hair were on fire, scrambling through the rain and mud to her car. Lissette and Hank, roused from their quarters, watched as the hysterical woman fell several times and struggled to unlock her car door. Just as Hank opened the door to offer his assistance to the poor thing, the Bobcat’s engine roared to life and Olive swung it around dangerously at breakneck speed. Through the window, over the storm, he heard her yell, “I have to get them out!”
Hank was still standing in the rain watching the taillights on the speeding car get smaller and wink out, when Lissette came up behind him.
“Well, there goes another one,” Lissette said, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Do you want a cup of coffee? Sun’ll be up soon.”
Hank sighed and spit into the puddle beside him.
“I suppose I would,” he said, squinting up at the sky where the storm thundered on. “Yeah, I suppose so.”
Neither of them glanced up at the shadow in the window above them as they went back inside. They had always known it was there.
Room 2: Friends without Faces
By DG Jones
So lonely. A five-hour drive in crappy weather to schlepp around yet another cell phone accessories trade show for an afternoon. The dire need for something strong to take the edge off his miserable day punched Art in the gut, hard. It always grimly amused him that he could spend an afternoon in the company of thousands and still feel hollow and alone. He tossed his satchel on his hotel room bed and headed straight to the minibar.
The thing Art liked most about cheap hotels was they never used those swanky minibars with the electronic tags on the bottles. Those things pissed him off. Art ran his fingers along the bottletops of the various beers and miniature liquors on display, clinking them satisfyingly. One of these would go down a treat after the day he’d had. He eventually chose a miniature bottle of Jack and poured it into a glass the maid probably assumed passed for clean.
Before he took a sip, he rubbed his hands over his face and savored the deadening tiredness of the day. Jack would help with the alleviation, if only for a few hours. Jack, and his other friends. Thinking of them, he glanced over to his satchel, looking for his laptop. The satchel contents — a psychedelic soup of gaudy cell phone covers — sprawled across the mattress. He let out a long, stale breath as he shoved them back inside his bag, hoping that tomorrow he’d get shot of them all. The corner of his laptop poked out from the satchel, beckoning.
“Go on, then,” he muttered to himself.
Returning to the hotel desk, a rickety thing with chunks gouged out of it, like someone had set the dog on it, he set down the laptop and finally took a sip of the Jack. Sweet and strong, yeah. Better.
“Goddamn wifi,” he said, bashing away at his laptop through heavy eyes. He fumbled around his pockets for the wifi token the bellhop had given him. The guy had been a joke: a wrinkled old stiff, with buttons done up to eleven. The desk had been manned by a handsome brunette lady; getting on a bit, perhaps, but he still wished he’d been served by her, in more ways than one. Open-mouthed, and trying to remember the shape of her ass, he rummaged in his pockets and found his Swiss army knife. Distracted, he rubbed his finger along the little grooves where the implements were flush with the casing, and felt the little nicks and scratches it had picked up over the years. Loneliness. There again, in those nicks and grooves, and the thing for removing grit from hooves. The knife was the last — the only — relic from his marriage he’d permitted himself to keep. Christ knew why, anymore, but he couldn’t bear himself to throw it away with all the other stuff.
Ah, there. In a deeper recess of his pocket. The wifi code. He retrieved the crumpled paper and punched in the code. His browser cranked into activity, and he navigated his way to his favorite news site. The usual bullshit: a politician taking illicit payments from some lobby group; riots dressed up as protests; saccharine reviews of the tripe on TV; and on every article, below the line, were the usual collection of the inane, the bewildered, the splenetic, and the moronic. Art shook his head. A few of them made him chuckle, and a few of them read, “This comment has been removed by a moderator for breaking the rules of the forum.” He grumbled every time he saw that message. Why should he not be permitted to read what they said, just because someone else got pissed off over it? These people needed to learn their damn place. He chucked another load of Jack down his throat, scratched his stubble and logged in to the site under his pseudonym, TheWorkingGirl.
KimKim had left a dumb comment defending the corrupt politician, that it might have been a setup. She’d posted this sort of crap before. He tapped over the keyboard.
I see your defending the actions of this disgusting man. Im not surprised, your just as thick and corru
pt as he is why don’t you take a look in the mirror I guess what they say is right people get the politicians they deserve. Why don’t you toddle off to the reality TV section and write about that seems the only thing your qualified to write about.
Words poured out of him without any thought, or reason, but he somehow knew them to be true. Poring over them wouldn’t achieve anything. He posted the reply, and scanned down the page. Another user, BelovedAunt, had criticized the press. The “MSM”, she called it. What a stupid post. Written in a stupid way. How could people be so stupid? Dumb, he wrote in response to her comment. Dumb woman, why am I not surprised. Its a fact women allow their emotions to dictate their thinking when they talk about stuff like this thats why they talk so much bollox. They cant do logic. Stay off the news pages sweetheart do us a favor fetch us a beer and leave the talk to the big boys eh.
More comments appeared below. They were insipid, thoughtless, all kinds of dumb but, like every night when the blunted buzz of alcohol took him, he couldn’t tear himself away. Like watching the monkeys at the zoo eating their own shit, or a train wreck. Art had never seen a train wreck. He’d seen a car on fire on the interstate once. It had made him late. Cat and he had looked at the flames with sadness, hoping that whoever had been in there had gotten out all right. It had been a cloying summer’s day, the type when opening the car window only allowed billows of suffocating superheated air in. As they both looked out of the passenger window at the fire, he could see only the back of her head, but it remained oddly beautiful. Sometimes he thought, if she turned around in that memory, he wouldn’t quite remember the contours of her face. As his numbed mind groped at the recollection, a beep brought him back to the now. Incoming message.
Your message has been reported to site moderators for: ABUSE.
Standard. Losers like these could never bear it when they were called out on their stupidity. He wiped his face. Christ, he was tired. He navigated to a different site he frequented, a chat group for writers. After pondering over which of his usernames he should log in under, he signed in and scrolled through the posts. Under the Culture pages was a review of some girl band’s latest album. Five stars. Video clips of the songs could be played in the review, but if this was five-star stuff, then he was a buggered monkey. Shaking his head, he started scrolling below the line. CrazyLily had written something typically inane in support of the album. Full of lolz and other idiotic abbreviations. This Lily frequently posted on the culture pages, but she was about as cultured as a yogurt.
Before he could start typing, he found himself over at the minibar again, fishing another miniature bottle out. No more Jack. Crap. He settled on some cheap shit Canadian whiskey instead. As it burned his throat, words tumbled out upon the keyboard.
I don’t know why you think this shit is worth your money. Is five sluts poncing around on stage without any clothes on really what passes for culture nowadays I would’ve guessed that someone with your intelligence would like this crap my God. they say bread and circuses for the dumb masses while our country goes further down the toilet well you’re the only dumb mass around here.
He wiped his hands over his face again and blew out hard, screwing up his face. This gave him little pleasure, but he had to do it. These people had to listen, and learn. He wondered about CrazyLily. Probably young, impressionable. Maybe she’d get that he was trying to help her out, right? Open-mouthed, his head swam, and before he knew it he’d written out a private message.
CrazyLily. You know I love your messages really why don’t you post a picture of yourself for me. we could be friends, you know. I bet you’ve… He stopped typing. Somewhere in the back of his mind a bell sounded, telling him what he was about to type wasn’t right. He threw the seed of the thought away before it could take root, and burned it up with more Canadian whiskey, just to make sure. ...got a great body. Ive seen the videos of that band you like which one do you look like? The one with the stockings yeah and the hair all bunched up. The slutty one. Come on. Come on you sweet precious little slut send me something nice. Send me something.
After posting the message, he sat back in the creaky old chair and read more of the messages. They were all filled with such hate and stupidity. He found his right hand fingering his left-hand ring finger and, finding it empty, he recoiled. He had never gotten used to its not being there, and he felt something nervous and itchy prick him behind the eyes.
“God’s sake,” he whispered, rubbing the moisture away before it could erupt into weakness. He threw the last of the whiskey down his neck and stared emptily at the screen for a few minutes. Thoughts of work came to him; he’d have to move those phone covers tomorrow. That depressed him even more.
A new message alert flashed up.
Your message has been removed for: ABUSE. Please note continued abuse of the site and its users will result in sanctions or could result in criminal prosecution.
He waved at the screen in disdain and retired to the bed, and closed his moistening eyes, fingering his ring finger and thinking of Cat. The thought of that car fire on the interstate sprang back to him. “Turn around, Cat,” he whispered. “Look at me.” But she never did. Maybe she couldn’t. The fire transfixed her, and he couldn’t get her back.
After the divorce he refused to keep pictures or photographs; that had been too hard, so he destroyed or deleted them all. But occasionally he regretted it, and the memory of her became blurred, like his sight was dying, until her face was like soft mists behind dirty glass. As he fell asleep, he wondered what she might be doing now.
~
Stop, please, no more. Leave me be, now.
The woman’s voice was breathy, no louder than a whisper, right into his ear. She must have been lying next to him.
Sorry, Cat, he responded. I’m sorry…
Stop, please. I didn’t…
Startled, he sat up and threw the duvet off. His pulse quickened and a sick feeling bubbled in his throat. Shivering, he turned the pillow over in the dark and punched it, convinced she must have been there, but there only came the dull thump of fist on feathers.
“Dream,” he muttered, his throat parched. Weird. Cat never usually haunted his dreams; the fading glimpse of the dream snatched at him, and he thought maybe it hadn’t been Cat at all. He fumbled for his watch on the bedside table, and looked at the time: 01:46.
He almost returned the watch back down, but something stopped him. In the cold fluorescence of his laptop screen, the only light in the room, he saw it. Or, he saw not it. Before they had fallen out — over what, he couldn’t remember for the life of him — his brother Olly had bought him that watch as a present for being his best man twenty-odd years ago, and he knew every little nick and scuff it had acquired over the years. This watch was pristine. Where his thumb would usually register the faint signature of scratches, it felt hideously smooth. Like everything unique about it had been erased. In spite of the warmth, his skin broke out in goose bumps, and he pulled the duvet up tight around his nose, placing the watch back carefully, his brows creased.
When sleep would not avail him of the memory of the voice, he threw off the duvet, rubbed his face and swore. The first whispers of a hangover: the gentle throb behind the eyes, and the familiar wave of self-loathing — hello, old friend — fugged up his mind, and he groaned. Weird. Normally a couple of whiskeys would do nothing to knock his noggin out of kilter. He’d have to close the damned laptop up, or he’d never be able to sleep.
The bang came as he was halfway across the floor, making him jump back, hands shielding his face. The door looked at him accusingly, seeming to creak and grow before falling into a pregnant silence. Art became aware of his nakedness, and hurriedly threw on some trousers and a vest. While doing so, he realized he didn’t remember undressing before sleeping, but a second bang shocked him into attention. The noise had come from the corridor, as though someone had run full tilt into the door. The laptop continued to glow in non-judgmental coolness, and he thought better of switching it
off.
The third bang came, making him jump again; twitching, he leapt to the door and pressed his ear up against it. He wiped a boulder of sleep away from one of his eyes, flicked it away and yawned cavernously. Must be drunkards, partygoers maybe, coming back after a late night. He pressed his hand to the door handle, assuring himself it was locked. “Keep the noise down, you pissant morons,” he yelled through the wood. “It’s two in the goddamn morning, some of us are trying to sleep!” Dickheads.
Please stop. You don’t know what…
The woman’s voice spun him around. Didn’t sound like it was outside. He turned around, but saw only the shabby room’s darkness. A second voice spoke, a man’s: for God’s sake! Please just leave me be. Oh, God…
It trailed off into a thick sob. Maybe not a dream of Cat: these people were outside. He cupped an ear to the door, but it yielded no further secrets. What if there was an assault on the other side? He pressed his hand against his pocket to make sure his Swiss army knife was still there. To his dismay, his pockets were empty. Where the hell had he put that? All tiredness fled, and his body tensed, alert.
“What the hell’s going on out there? I’ll call recep—”
The man’s howl cut Art’s words short, and he pressed himself against the door, his body flashing with alarm. Must be an assault. He’d have to intervene. He breathed out slowly, and turned the handle.
The corridor was just as it had been when he entered the room: low-ceilinged, dimly lit, soulless heavy doors punctuating it. Without daylight, it looked longer, more eager to stretch into nothingness, and somehow blurrier. But when he looked into the gloom, his body tensed.
A man — maybe the one who cried out? Art wasn’t sure — was on his knees, sobbing thickly. He was balding, middle-aged, and wearing only his underpants, a sorry pair of grey trunks half-hidden by a hairy, overhanging paunch. The carpet around him seemed to stand on end, like grass in the wind. In front of the kneeling man was another figure, barefoot, dressed in chinos and a creased shirt. A crackling fuzz concealed his whole head, cascading up and down in myriad pixels, hissing like white noise. Cold whooshed along the corridor and made the hair on Art’s arms stand on end. The white noise crackled louder, and the kneeling man looked up at it before raking his eyes and whimpering loudly.
The Haunting of Lake Manor Hotel Page 15