Heavy, stinky bastard, covered in coarse black hair on the back like a goat, with a big, plastic, bully face that had once bobbed and grinned, but I took him apart to get him out of his flat piecemeal. Unbelievably, as I de-jointed his carcase in the bath, he came alive for a bit and scared me half to death. He didn’t last for long, though, and I finished up with some secateurs that were good on meat. I found them under the sink in the kitchen.
Took me three trips: one to the old zoo that should have been closed years ago where I threw bits into the overgrown cassowary enclosure (they had three birds); one trip to where the sea gulls fight by the drainage pipe; and one trip to the Sea Scout hall with the head, which I buried beside the war memorial so that Richey could always look upon the place where he got the ball rolling.
When I got home, I shut Lois in the loft and took down the smoke alarms and burned all of her clothes, except for the best party tights, in the kitchen sink with the windows open. I went through the house and collected up all of her things and what I didn’t dump in the council rubbish bins I gave to charity.
Before I left her growling like a cat, up in the loft amongst our old Christmas decorations, I told Lois that I might see her in our new place when I found it. I went downstairs and put her ladies’ watch on my wrist and listened to it tick rapidly, like a heart fit to burst. Inside the sideboard, the little black warriors began to beat their leather drums with their wooden hands.
Lois was still clawing at the plywood loft hatch when I left the house with only one suitcase.
ADAM LG NEVILL
Adam LG Nevill was born in Birmingham, England, in 1969 and grew up in England and New Zealand. He is the author of the supernatural horror novels Banquet for the Damned, Apartment 16, The Ritual, Last Days, House of Small Shadows, No One Gets Out Alive and Lost Girl. In 2012, 2013 and 2015 his novels were the winners of The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel. The Ritual and Last Days were also awarded Best in Category: Horror, by R.U.S.A. Adam lives in Devon and can be contacted through www.adamlgnevill.com.
THE HUNGRY HOTEL
LISA TUTTLE
I never told anyone I knew him, and in fact I hardly knew him at all.
It happened more than twenty years ago, when I was twenty-two and engaged to Marshall, who was away all summer, doing an internship out of state. Our impending separation had pushed him to propose. We loved each other and all that, three months wasn’t going to make any difference to our feelings, but the formality of an engagement was better, it left no room for doubt.
I never even thought about being unfaithful, and didn’t imagine I could be tempted. So I can’t explain why, when this cute but short and dark and scruffy character (he couldn’t have been more different from Marshall) looked at me, and our eyes met for a moment, I responded as if I’d gone into that bar desperate to hook up with some guy. In fact, I was only there because I was supposed to be meeting a girlfriend – she was the one who wanted to hear the band – but she bailed at the last minute.
When he came over, I let him buy me my low-alcohol beer, and we talked as best we could in that noisy place – I could hardly hear a word he said – but it didn’t matter because our bodies were having their own conversation. When he indicated the crumpled pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket, although I didn’t smoke, I went outside with him. We sat in my car and made out for about an hour. We didn’t do more than kiss, but that was a lot.
He had to go – his band was doing the second set – and asked if I would wait for him. Could we get together after the show?
Breathless, dizzy, drunk on his kisses, I agreed.
But I did not follow him inside. I got behind the wheel and drove away. There was no light on in our apartment, and as I drew in, I remembered: Lauren was spending the night with her boyfriend. So I kept on driving. I don’t know how long I drove, past familiar landmarks and around the campus where I used to be a student, before entering neighbourhoods unknown to me, where dark, winding roads doubled back on themselves or turned into dead-ends.
I drove without aim or destination until I finally ended up back in the parking lot behind the bar and he was standing there, smoking. His face lit up when he saw me.
‘I thought you must have changed your mind,’ he said, getting into the car. ‘I told myself, I’ll give it one more cigarette.’
I said, ‘I must be crazy. I have a boyfriend; I mean, my fiancé.’
‘But he’s not here, and I am.’ He put his hand on my leg. ‘We don’t have to do anything. I’d like to get to know you, and spend some time with you. Just – whatever you want. I’m going away in a couple of days. I sure don’t want to mess up your life.’
I asked him if he had a hotel room. No. The band had been put up in a borrowed house, sharing bedrooms. It might be empty now, but the others would turn up sooner or later; there would be no privacy. But if I didn’t mind, if I only wanted to hang out…
I told him again that I was engaged. I said I couldn’t risk it; I couldn’t stand it if somehow word got back to Marshall that I’d been hanging out with some strange guys. Would I have been so worried about how it would look if it was an innocent friendship? Of course not. But I already knew – we both did – that it wasn’t innocent. Those kisses.
So I took him to my place. This would be a very different story if my roomie had been home that night. But I knew she wouldn’t be, just like I knew we would do more than talk.
It’s funny, though, because while you might think sex was the main thing – it was what our encounter was all about, this unexpected, inconvenient, undeniable physical desire that had drawn us together, and it was certainly the aspect of our time together that Marshall might have considered unforgivable – it isn’t what I remember.
Of course I don’t mean I’ve forgotten the things we did that night in my bed; I remember his lips and his hands and his skin, how smooth it was, and how good it felt against mine, in places I hadn’t thought of before as erogenous zones – and yes the erotic details would come back to me for a long time afterwards. That’s not the point. He wasn’t a better lover than Marshall, just different.
What I remember most about that night is how much we talked, and that we never slept. We were each too excited and disturbed by the presence of the other to finally let go and fall asleep. So you could say that we made love or had sex, but we never slept together.
When I was little, before I knew what were called then ‘the facts of life’, I was told that to make a baby, two people must love each other very much, and be married. But then it became clear that the teenager next door had a baby in her tummy, and she wasn’t married; there was no loving father anywhere in sight. Someone said she had slept with a boy… and from that I came to believe that lovers created a baby in their dreams. If the baby was meant to be (already at the age of five I knew, from observing the miserable girl next door, that what the potential parents wanted was irrelevant), then by sleeping together in one bed, at the same time, they would each dream the same thing, and that dream would somehow get into the tummy of the mother-to-be, and grow into a baby.
‘So people are dreams made flesh,’ he said. ‘I love it!’
Our talk was not like a normal conversation, at least, not like one I’d ever had before. We weren’t on a date or planning a life together. We didn’t have to impress each other, or assess each other for suitability, or lay down the beginnings of a lasting relationship. We were strangers, free to say anything. I didn’t tell any lies about myself; I don’t know if he lied to me – he fantasised and made up stories, but I knew that was what he was doing: he wrote songs. He made up one just for me; it was kind of silly, forcing unlikely words to rhyme with my name, but I was charmed. I wish I could remember it now. I’d sing it to cheer myself up.
No one had ever been impressed by my creativity, and I thought of myself as practical and unimaginative, down-to-earth. He didn’t know that; he had no particular expectations, and it didn’t matter if I disappointed him. The situa
tion set me free.
* * *
When I heard Lauren coming in the next morning, I made him leave by the window. It was easy to do, perfectly safe, and I gave him directions to a nearby cafe where I said I’d meet him for breakfast in half an hour, but seeing him clamber out of my bedroom window added an element of old-fashioned farce, as if it was happening in a black-and-white movie, or an old cartoon, certainly not part of my real life.
I regretted having suggested breakfast as soon as he’d gone. What if someone I knew saw us together? I stopped by the cafe to order coffee and bagels to go, and greeted him like a casual acquaintance – ‘Hey, good set last night!’
We exchanged a secret, conspiratorial grin. He looked wrecked, but happy, telling me he was about to go crawl into bed to sleep for the rest of the day. I said, ‘Thank God it’s Saturday!’ so I could do the same. He told me he’d leave a comp ticket, if I wanted to come to the show that night, and I said I would.
When I got to the venue, I was immediately hailed by some friends of Marshall’s, so there was no chance for us to talk. When the band began to play, I was surprised to learn that he was the drummer. When we’d first stood together talking in the noisy, crowded bar the previous night, when I had let him buy me a beer, he had told me a couple of drummer jokes, so I knew that the drummer was to the musician what the blonde or the aggie was in a similar context, but I hadn’t realised he was making fun of himself.
Getting away from Marshall’s friends was not easy. Eventually I left, drove off, feeling sick at the thought that I might never see him again. But the unspoken bond between us held; when I drove back some time later, he was waiting for me in the parking lot, like before; he crushed out his cigarette under his heel and got into the car.
Lauren was at home, so I couldn’t take him there. Feeling like a teenager again, I drove west, towards the lake, until I found a sufficiently secluded spot to park. We got into the backseat and started making out, but it was cramped and uncomfortable and soon unbearably hot. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and the open windows invited flies and mosquitoes, and added to my fear that someone unseen in the darkness could be spying on us.
For the first time I asked myself what I thought I was doing.
I didn’t want to linger. As soon as I could, I scrambled back into the driver’s seat, hastily adjusting my clothes.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing.’
He didn’t ask again. We drove back into town, and the only voices in the car came from the radio, the songs either wildly inappropriate, or offering ironic counterpoint to our sordid little affair.
I dropped him off at an intersection he said was near the house where he was staying. For years afterward, whenever I chanced to stop at the lights there, I remembered that moment, watching him walk away from me, not looking back, thinking that was the end.
It should have been, but when I finally went out the next morning, an envelope that had been wedged between the door and frame fell at my feet.
Inside the plain white letter envelope was a sheet of paper folded in thirds. The handwriting was unfamiliar, but I knew who it had to be from.
It was his last day in town, the band was driving down to Houston – late tonight, to miss the worst of the traffic and the heat – and he hoped he could see me before they left. Could he take me out to lunch and/or dinner? Would I take him sight-seeing? He hoped he hadn’t missed me already. He was just going off to have a late breakfast in the café I had suggested to him before. If he got to the bottom of his bottomless cup of coffee before I showed up, he would probably smoke a couple of cigarettes before he wandered off and tried to find something else to do. He would be sorry not to see me to say goodbye.
I had woken up that morning with the sad, empty feeling of having done something irrevocable. His letter offered what I thought I wanted: the chance to part as friends.
But it was already past noon, getting close on to one o’clock. I had no idea what time he’d stopped by with the note. Would he still be drinking his coffee, or smoking his cigarettes, or had he given up on me?
I was wearing my usual outfit for a weekend laundry run – ragged cut-offs, a promotional T-shirt, and flip-flops. I thought of going inside to change, at least to put on eye make-up. But what if that five-minute delay meant I missed him? Did it matter what I looked like, even if this would be his last memory of me? After all, I wasn’t out to seduce him – quite the opposite.
Deciding that speed was of the essence, I hurried to my car just as I was, threw my bag of dirty clothes into the trunk, and headed for the café.
Being a Sunday, the place was packed. I recognised a couple of cars belonging to people I knew before I saw him, grinding a cigarette out under his heel and giving me a shy, crooked grin.
‘You got my letter. What’s the plan?’ he said, opening the door on the passenger side.
I drove off as soon as he was buckled in, thinking that it would be just like Fate to have one of Marshall’s friends – or maybe the ex-girlfriend who carried a grudge – see me giving a lift to a strange guy, a musician I shouldn’t even know.
My plan was to get out of town. ‘You said something about sight-seeing. I thought we’d head for the hills. There’s a state park, and some cute little towns, markets, a German bakery, good barbecue… I’m just going to stop off at home first to change my shoes.’
‘A lot of walking?’
‘Could be.’ Mostly I wanted my make-up.
* * *
Those cute little towns, and the state park, attracted a lot of visitors, especially on the weekends, but it was a very different crowd from the people Marshall and I knew. The last time I’d taken this route I had been with my parents, when they came to visit me during my first year of college.
Going there with him felt strange; it made me feel different, like I was playing a part. I was playing a part, and like an actor who can’t get to grips with it, I kept wondering, ‘What’s my motivation?’
Why had I agreed to meet him? Why were we here? Before, at night, it had been like a shared dream. In daylight, part of the crowds strolling around the quaint town square, walking into the pottery, or investigating the dim recesses of a room stuffed with old junk optimistically described as ‘Collectibles and Antiques’, our being together was all wrong. I tried to think up an explanation, in case I was asked. He could be my cousin from out of state… but not if it got back to Marshall, who knew the names and ages of all my cousins… The safest thing would be to connect it to work. If my boss had asked me to entertain a visitor for her… It was unlikely, but as Marshall knew, she had once asked me to take her mother to a doctor’s appointment.
Soon I was treating him as if we’d met for the first time that day. I ‘made conversation’, asking him about the band, their touring schedule, and he obliged with answers and anecdotes. He tried to take my hand, and I flinched.
We had a late, heavy lunch in an ostentatiously German restaurant, and talked about food, our favourite dishes, the fact that neither of us knew how to cook. Then we talked about recent movies we had seen.
Driving back to the city, the sun going down behind us, we were silent, exhausted by the effort of working through every possible subject for conversation. I noticed, as we drove through the practically deserted back road leading into town, that there was a new development on this western outskirt. In addition to the houses, town-homes and a shopping mall still under construction there was a brand new hotel, towering over the landscape from its hilltop perch, its multitude of windows glittering like faceted gems in the last rays of the sun.
‘Turn here,’ he said suddenly and I did; off the highway, onto an empty access road which wound around and around and brought us into the parking lot in front of the hotel. Although the building looked finished, and there had been a sign advertising it, I wondered if it was actually open yet, as there were only four cars in the vast concrete expanse of parking lot around it, and no one to be seen. I stopped the car an
d gave him a quizzical look.
‘Why here?’
‘From the top floor, we can look down and see the whole world spread out before us.’
I was slow; not getting it, I craned back my head and looked up. ‘You think there’s a restaurant up there?’
‘Let’s spend the night together.’
My heart lurched. ‘You’re going to Houston.’
‘They are. I don’t have to. I could get on a bus tomorrow… unless you want me to stay. We could have one more night – or forever. What do you say?’
It had taken Marshall three years to decide he wanted to marry me, and this guy, who hadn’t even set eyes on me three days ago, was talking about ‘forever’.
I didn’t say anything. I took my foot off the brake and steered the car around to drive back onto the highway.
He sighed deeply. ‘I mean it. I want to spend my life with you. But if that’s too much – I know you’ve got a man, you love him and he loves you, and you’d probably have a better life with him than I could ever give you – he’s—’
‘Don’t you talk about him,’ I growled, feeling my face flame.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean… Of course. It’s nothing to do with him.’
‘That’s right.’
‘I was just going to say – if you don’t want me for all the time, I’m happy to be your wayfarin’ stranger, see you when I’m passing through. If you’re lonely—’
‘I won’t be. And it would be wrong, when I’m married.’
‘Okay.’
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