The buzzing of the lights returned and I could see it shining through my eyelids. I opened my eyes, and she was gone. I looked around, relieved that no guests had witnessed my cowardice, but at the same time disappointed that I was alone. Nobody was going to believe me, I knew. My only evidence was a mountain of ice on the floor, a mess which would only get worse the longer I waited to clean it up.
I barely dragged myself into work the next night. I was wired on coffee after tossing and turning to no avail. Heavy gray bags under my eyes made me look like a washed up rockstar, only I lack a rockstar’s edge.
I felt scared and alone. I have close friends and family I could talk to, but I was afraid to tell anyone about my frightening encounter for fear of what they might think. As adults, we tell ourselves that the boogeyman isn’t real. The monsters in our closets were long ago exposed as frauds. There’s not a blood-covered ghost in the mirror waiting for us to say her name three times. We tell ourselves that the deceased go to a better place, and miraculously they all manage to get there with no trouble, as there are certainly no lost souls among us. We consider people who believe in the boogeyman to be crazy, or at least we call them names like “weird” and “flaky”. That’s why I decided to keep this to myself.
Though I had never been so scared in my life, I didn’t let it show. I went about my usual routine. The hotel was busier than usual, but the moments I spent alone seemed to drag on forever. I did inventory to keep my mind busy, to avoid thinking about the invisible woman… the lady who wasn’t there, whose familiar clothes floated in the air as if watching me with unseen eyes. My skin grew cold each time I thought about the frigid air that swirled around her.
I looked through the front windows as a taxi pulled to the curb, and to my shock, Sameer Ahmed emerged from the car… with his wife! Yes, the elusive Mrs. Ahmed followed close behind him. I’ll admit, I was ecstatic to see her, if a little worried about my sanity. I had worked myself into a frenzy thinking something had happened to her, and after seeing those terrible things, it was a mixture of satisfaction and confusion to see her walking toward me now.
The revolving glass door caught the red glow of the taxi’s tail lights as they entered the building with Sameer in the lead. It was close to his usual bedtime, and I figured they were returning from a late dinner at a crowded restaurant. I had to suppress a smile as I envisioned the impatient millionaire, forced to wait for his meal. Though my smile faded as I wondered how Mrs. Ahmed managed to eat through that veil.
He approached the desk and proceeded to inform me that this would be his final night at the Ladford. His new home was ready. He’d be leaving in the morning and needed a luggage rack promptly at seven.
The moment he looked away, I stole a glimpse at his wife. Just one last look to commit those gorgeous amber eyes to memory. I feared I had suffered a mental collapse, and I was hoping to replace the image of the floating niqab and its empty veil with something more palatable.
But what I saw made things worse. It sent a jolt of shock to my heart.
Her black veil was in place, with the same rectangular slits for the eyes. But the woman’s eyes had changed. They were different, no longer the glistening pools of honey I’d admired two nights prior.
Her dark brown eyes showed no sign of recognition as she observed me with indifference. The old Mrs. Ahmed had always averted her gaze. She never looked directly at me. Not until the night by the ice machine. Yet these chocolate brown eyes studied me, so alert—the wrong shape, the wrong color, the wrong personality!
Imposter, I thought but didn’t say. He’s replaced his wife! Just like that! Replaced her!
A chill crept down my spine. I willed it away, not allowing my body to betray my suspicions. I finished my business with Mr. Ahmed, and I avoided any further eye contact with the mysterious woman at his side.
The loneliest part of the night shift comes around three in the morning. The drinkers and party animals have all gone to bed. The early risers have not yet risen. The ticking of the clock resonates in some deep part of the soul which wants—no, needs to be around people. Because anything can happen when you’re alone.
I was contemplating the woman in the niqab and how she was not the same woman Sameer Ahmed had arrived with several nights ago when the lights blinked off, one by one. All around the lobby bulbs flickered and went out. The hallway to the guest rooms was left in utter blackness. I remember noticing the other electronics were still working—the computer and the vending machine. I wondered what would cause the lights on several different circuits to fail.
I felt a familiar chill in the air, a drop in temperature which caused my jaw to chatter. The lobby became downright frigid, and my breathing grew heavy despite my best efforts to keep calm. I scanned my surroundings—the vending area, the sofa and coffee table piled with magazines, the elevator, the stairwell, the hall. I flicked my eyes from place to place and told myself the coast was clear. Yet my eyes were drawn back to the hall.
I gulped, and the wad of saliva stopped halfway down my throat. Nervous bile rose from my stomach. I tried to focus, to make sense of what I saw.
There was someone in the hall, but they didn’t walk upright, which is why I hadn’t noticed them at first. Instead they crawled through the darkness like a spastic inch worm, clawing at the carpet with spindly fingers. One good leg propelled them forward as the other dragged behind, seemingly useless below the knee, foot twisted sideways like a broken doll. Shadows contrasted the waxen skin and dark hair.
The figure kept coming, scraping along the carpet like a wounded soldier through the dirt, and after a few seconds, I made out the face of a woman beneath her hair, which seemed to fall in every direction at once. Her neck was wrenched at a painful-looking angle, her scalp and face pointing the wrong way. Many of her bones were bent and twisted.
Her advance was sketchy. Her joints popped with each movement, and her muscles strained, skin ripe with bruises. She pulled herself into the light of the vending machines, and I saw the blood crusted on her lips and chin, dark splotches down her chest. I had plenty of time to call for help, to run over and assist the injured woman. But I’m no fool. I may be a skeptic in the matters of magic, demons, and astrology, but I recognize a ghost when I see one.
Her raspy breathing caused me to hold my own breath as she dragged herself into the lobby. She never looked at me, not once, and I must admit I was relieved. The only thing preventing me from running into the night screaming like a little girl was the lack of eye contact she had bestowed on me so far. The thought of this dead thing looking at me with those blackened eyes and acknowledging my existence… that would have been my final straw.
But it didn’t happen. Not even an upward glance. She kept crawling in that slow, labored manner until she had disappeared behind the sofa, leaving me to wonder what to do.
I stood my ground, hoping the lights would flicker to life or the phone would ring or a guest would come wandering down the hall. Anything, anything to end this moment. Every horror story must end, and I knew this wasn’t over yet.
I groaned. I couldn’t stand in the dark forever, but this was her game, not mine. Why should I have to make the next move?
I was scared, dangerously close to wetting my pants. Half my attention was focused on my bladder, the other half on the sofa. When no light returned to the room and no guests appeared to run interference, I knew the ball was in my court.
I gulped and stepped forward. The snack machine lit my path as I rounded the desk and made my way to the lounge area. I kept going, around to the back of the sofa.
Sitting in the soft glow of the soda machine was a large trunk I had never seen. It looked heavy, made from a solid would craftsmanship that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Dark leather lined the surface with a metal latch in the middle and two belt-like straps on each side. I was certain it hadn’t been there before.
I spotted key holes where the latches came together, and I knew I couldn’t open it. Fine with me. I di
dn’t want to anyway. I turned and prepared to walk away, and I told myself three things: A) someone had misplaced their luggage, B) I needed to see a shrink, and C) I needed to fix the lights before we received a complaint.
The trunk began to rattle. I stopped in my tracks and listened. It was such a low rumble I was barely sure I heard it until the trunk started thumping and banging against the floor. I jumped and spun around and watched with uneasy fascination as it tremored, caught in the throes of a supernatural quake. The locks clicked, and the leather straps danced as the trunk bucked wildly on the floor.
Then it stopped. The metal clasps thudded against the lid and slid down the arc, dangling at the trunk’s sides. All was quiet for a few panicked heartbeats, and then my ears picked up the sound of raspy, labored breathing coming from inside the trunk.
It couldn’t be, I told myself. She couldn’t be in there. A person couldn’t fit inside. Not unless… I froze as the realization struck me. Not unless they were stuffed inside like a rag doll, bones broken and bent at gruesome angles.
Trembling, I closed the distance between myself and the trunk without any further hesitation. I knew what I must do, and frankly I wanted to get it over with. I grimaced as I reached for the lid. I flipped it open.
Her body was bent in half, limbs tangled in a gory mess. A splintered collar bone protruded from her purple and green splotched neck. She had been crumpled up and stuffed into the trunk with no regard for broken bones.
As I contemplated the twists and turns of the woman’s desecrated remains, she sprang to life. She grabbed me and started pulling, and to my horror, I couldn’t fend her off. This monstrous women was incredibly strong. I remember worrying that she would pull me down into the trunk, into the deep, dark oblivion of the empty niqab, the endless silence of her tortured unrest.
Fingernails dug into my flesh as she tightened her grip. I recoiled from the stench of old blood on her breath as she sputtered and moaned in what sounded like Arabic. The grotesque angle of her battered face atop her twisted neck will never leave my mind.
She pulled me close, so close... so that I was looking at her eyes. Amber eyes. The eyes of Mrs. Ahmed.
The ice machine cranked to life, spewing forth its bounty. Pain shot through my skull as something rock-solid hit the back of my head. Stars and blackness filled my vision.
I awoke on the floor next to a metal ice bucket. It must have been what hit me, hurled by the force of the broken woman in the box. The shape of the bucket’s rim perfectly matched the fresh indent in my cranium. I looked around, but there was no sign of the trunk or its monstrous occupant.
I shook the fog from my head, rubbed my eyes, and checked my wrist watch. With over two hours left and my last nerve dangling from a thread, I knew I needed to get out of the hotel. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t relax… and worst of all, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.
I texted Eleanor and asked if she could cover the rest of my shift. “It’s an emergency,” I said. I broke the news to her when she arrived. I was quitting. I wouldn’t be back. She tried her best to guilt me, of course, but I had made up my mind and no amount of shame would change it.
I did return the next day, however, one last time. After restless hours in which I was unable to sleep, eat, or concentrate on anything other than thoughts of the ghost, I decided there was something I had to know. I apologized for my behavior and groveled and gained Eleanor’s blessing to review the hotel’s security footage. She didn’t ask me what I was looking for. Eyes bright with denial, she donned that old, familiar poker face and silently assured herself that I was in need of a shrink and some anti-psychotics.
I spent two hours reviewing the surveillance footage, and here’s what I found. On the last night of Mr. Ahmed’s stay, he departed the building alone. There was no sign of the woman in the niqab until he returned with her hours later. She disappeared from the camera’s footage after our encounter by the ice machine, only to reappear that strange, memorable night when I noticed her eyes had changed.
I should also mention there was no sign of the haunting images I had seen. The footage does, indeed, show a malfunctioning ice machine and a baffled clerk, but not the floating figure in the niqab with emptiness where the face should be, or the battered woman crawling down the hall into the trunk. The camera even blinked out right at the moment when the ice bucket hurled itself across the room, finding a target on the back of my skull. Rather frustrating, I’ll admit, but I digress, because more disturbing than any of that was the footage of Sameer Ahmed checking out of the hotel.
On the grainy TV screen, I watched as he grunted and steered a luggage cart himself. He shooed a bellboy aside who attempted to offer assistance and barked an order to his assistant, Tahir, who held open a set of double doors as Sameer maneuvered the cart onto the sidewalk.
His so-called wife brought up the rear of the group as Tahir held the door for her, too. And that was the last I saw of the leather-bound trunk with its straps fastened tight and middle latch securely locked as it thumped along with the other baggage, hiding the Pakistani millionaire’s dirty laundry. I’m certain the person in the niqab on this last piece of footage is not the real Mrs. Ahmed, but I am alone in this knowledge. To be honest, I don’t expect anyone to believe me.
Unless you see her... the woman in the niqab who floats in her robes with no body and no face. A cold and beaten corpse who crawls the hallway and plays with electricity and throws metal buckets. But I wonder: Is it just me? Am I the only one she haunts because I am the only one who noticed her existence and therefore her disappearance? Is she the ghost of a ghost? The memory of someone who was but really was not?
You’ll have to answer that question. Can you do that? Can you write back to me please? I just… I need to know, one way or the other. Whether I’m crazy or sane, I need to know if I bear this cross alone.
So please… If you hear the clatter of ice cubes echoing through the empty lobby, if you catch a glimpse of her black robe around the corner or see her broken body writhing on the carpet, be on guard but, please, do not run. Stand your ground and face the darkness for me. Because Eleanor is not going to believe you. No one is going to believe you. But I will. Nights at the Ladford Inn are lonely, and I know what it feels like to pace the floors, to watch the halls, to wonder…. if she’s standing right behind you.
The Blue Girl
Frederick winced as he tightened the young girl's restraints. “Please don't do it,” she begged. “I'm frightened!”
Her slender face, framed with a mess of tangled blonde curls, pressed tightly against the leather strap around her forehead. She arched her back. The flesh of her wrists and ankles turned white as she fought futilely against the restraints. A mere girl of nineteen years old, the sight of her struggling on the floor of the wooden box caused Frederick's heart to swell with remorse. Too much white showed in her panicked blue eyes. He wanted to soothe her, tell her it would be all right.
“Let me out! Let me out!” she screamed.
Frederick felt the doctor's presence at his back. A large hand touched his shoulder. “Silence her.”
The girl sobbed inconsolably as a rivulet of snot formed a thin, slimy trail down her cheek. Even still, she is beautiful, he thought. Frederick gulped. This part of his job brought him no joy. The task at hand was just that—a task. Something that had to be done.
She made no effort to bite his fingers as he popped the ball gag into her mouth. She merely whimpered, closing her eyes and trembling on the rough wooden plank. His sympathy only deepened as he eyed the scars on his hands where countless other patients had sunk their teeth in a last-ditch effort to escape the gag. This one was different: docile, full of woe. Perhaps water shock treatment was too extreme.
Frederick looked at Dr. Walters in his crisp, white physician's coat, always starched and ironed to perfection. Three decades his senior, the man bristled with energy. He paced the floor, eyes alight with anticipation, salt and pepper
hair cropped close to his scalp.
“What did she do?” Fredrick's question caught the pacing doctor off guard. He stopped moving and blinked his eyes slowly, his train of thought derailed. He glared at his assistant, who gazed compassionately at the face of patient 5572 as she whimpered through the ball gag.
The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) Page 8