Incarnata

by Brandon Faircloth

  I was surprised to find I felt conflicted. “Well, tell me your name at least. I don’t plan on ever calling for you, but…well, just in case.” I glanced up at the red heartbeat of emergency lights that started to appear near the front of the property.

  It made a short chortling sound. “You are interesting, Mr. Spires. I like it. As for my name, it is Rilla. If we do not meet again, I wish you well on your path.” I looked away for a moment as the ambulance pulled up, and when I looked back, Rilla was gone.

  It’s been three months since that night. Jack was taken to the hospital and treated for his various injuries, including inexplicable trauma to his internal organs. We were both questioned extensively regarding what had happened to lead to us both being injured, a house being burned down, and two people turning up dead. Due to Jack’s condition, I gave my statement first, and I largely told the truth…with some changes to keep myself out of jail.

  I said that Oscar, my uncle-in-law, had gone crazy and killed his wife. When I learned about it upon visiting her, I was angry and went to confront him at work. He attacked me and Jack, and he must have killed the young couple, Tommy Peters and Jessica Fortesque, at some point during the night as well. As for what had happened to Oscar, I didn’t know.

  That lie was a calculated risk, but a good one. As I had set that underground nest of the Rot to burn, it began to collapse in on itself, and before I was done in the cellar, the tunnel had done the same. The earth was still obviously loose and sunken, but there was little sign that a tunnel had existed there before. If they went digging, I doubted they’d find more than a few cheap LED candles for their efforts.

  When Jack was able to talk, he was initially very careful in what he said. His old cop training and reserve kicked in, I guess. But at some point it became too much for him. He talked about Oscar attacking us, but he also talked about magic rats and evil worms and all kinds of stuff that…well, it sounded insane to anyone but me. So he was transferred to a mental health facility for treatment and I was told not to leave town.

  I took to visiting Jack every few days, and his parts of this account are taken from the journal entries they had him write as part of his therapy in there. I think he needed to write it down, to get it out, but once he told it, I told him he needed to let it go. Lie to the therapists. Slowly shift to agreeing with them and acknowledging that it was all just a fantasy his mind had made up to deal with the incredible shock and strain of all that had happened that night. Lie convincingly and consistently, but not too quick or they’d suspect something.

  And it’s worked. He’s scheduled to be released to an outpatient program next week, and I’m actually going to go pick him up. Strangely enough, we’ve become good friends through all this.

  Not everything has been positive, however. My view of the world is so much different now. Darker and filled with terrors I never knew existed before. When I go past an abandoned lot or ride through a dying town, I wonder. When I see someone on the street that looks lost or filled with some uncommon anger, I’m afraid. Because I know what seeds can be planted in such fertile soil.

  So I watch for the signs, always asking myself what I’ll actually do if I see a sign of the Rot. Will I run or will I try to stop it? In the first few days, my response might be one or the other depending on when the question was asked. But lately…lately I find myself looking for it more. Taking routes I wouldn’t normally take, driving around late at night. I tell myself it’s just to clear my head, to decompress, but I’m not so sure.

  I may never run across the Rot again, but if I do, I think I’ll try to stop it. Or not stop it, I correct myself, but at least thwart it for a time. It feels like a worthy thing to do. The right thing to do. And if I fight the Rot again?

  I don’t think I’ll be fighting it alone.

  The Halloween Room

  “Samantha, you’re making a mistake. Or repeating the same mistakes your father did. I know I’ve talked bad about him at times, but he was a good man. He just…got lost after your mom died. Whatever strangeness that family of his had put in his head, it took over. I don’t want to see the same thing happen to you.”

  I rolled my eyes as I stared out the windshield at the front of the place. God, it was huge. There’s no telling how much money it took to build it, even a hundred years ago. And way out here in the middle of nowhere? Was it any wonder it went under?

  “Sam, are you listening to me?”

  I turned my attention back to the voice on the phone. “I am, Becky. I just don’t agree. I’m not lost, and I don’t think I’m making a mistake.”

  “But you’re running away. Running away to another state to what? Hide out from the boogeyman? Honey, your father was mentally ill. There’s no such…”

  “I need you to stop this now, okay? I need you to stop talking shit about him right now before I say something I can’t take back.”

  “Samantha, I…”

  “No. You took me from him when I was fourteen, and it took me a long time to stop hating you for that. But I grew up, and I knew you did what you thought was right. I know he seemed weird to you. Crazy even, and you were trying to protect me in your own fucked up way. But I’m grown now, and while yeah, I’m dealing with a lot of stuff, I’m the one that has to deal with it. I don’t need you to decide how I live my life and I sure as fuck don’t need to listen to you shitting on the best man I ever knew. We clear?”

  There was a pause, and I could hear Becky’s wheels turning. She knew if she argued further, it might damage things beyond repair. But this was a personal thing for her now. She had to be right, if only to justify taking a teenaged girl away from her father eleven years ago. The only question was what she valued more.

  “Will you at least tell me where you are? So I know you’re safe?”

  I stifled a sarcastic reply. “I’m working for a company in Colorado. I’m safe…you know, relatively. I haven’t had it try to attack me since the day before I left.”

  Becky saw another avenue. “You know the police still want to talk to you about that girl you knew. The one that died.”

  My tone was harder this time. “Oh, the one they found in a dumpster? The one that had been rotting there for days when something that looked just like her tried to jump me in the parking lot? That girl?”

  Another pause. “Yes. I know you think that’s what happened but…”

  “Don’t patronize me. That is what happened. It was the Stranger. Just because you refuse to believe it doesn’t make much of a fucking difference. I was there. I’m the one it wants. I’m the one that had to banish it.” I couldn’t help but add, “Using things my crazy father taught me, by the way. If I listened to you, I’d be fucking dead or worse.”

  Becky sounded tearful now. “Just tell me where you…” I ended the call. I couldn’t take any more of that. It didn’t matter, anyway. I could never go back or I’d just put her in danger, and despite everything, I didn’t want to see her hurt.

  Letting out a sigh, I opened the door and got out of the truck. I had rented it in a small town a hundred miles south of here, and while it had been surefooted enough to get me up the mountain roads and into the valley, I couldn’t say for sure it would get me back down if heavy rains came, or worse, snow. It wasn’t supposed to get that cold for a few more weeks yet, but I wondered. The air felt thin and brittle with frost as I went to the back and grabbed my pack. I had most of my worldly possessions in there, which was freeing and depressing at the same time. Still, it made it easy to stay on the move, and the money I was going to make this week should go a long way toward starting my new life.

  I found it hard to take the first steps toward the place. It wasn’t just the air that felt thin here. Everything did. This whole small, grey valley seemed to be waiting for something, holding its breath before a coming storm.

  Taking a deep breath of my own, I forced myself to start walking toward the thing that dominated the whole valley, seemed to tower over everything, even the stark, craggy moun
tains that loomed on both sides. Even after years of abandonment, the extravagance of the place was amazing. Its stone edifice was a dizzying marriage of art deco styles from the early twentieth century and older gothic styles, all interwoven across a building that looked to be more than twenty stories tall and stretched out its arms into the far distance in both directions. I had the thought that it looked like a palace designed by The Great Gatsby in Hell.

  Letting out a small laugh, I jumped when I heard a voice close by. I looked over to see an older man wearing a stained blue ball cap eyeing me uncertainly.

  “You Hollis, I’m guessing?”

  I stopped and nodded at him. “I am, yeah. Hope I’m not too late.”

  The man shook his head without smiling. He had worn, sunburned skin and permanent frown lines at the corners of his mouth—lines that deepened as he regarded me. “No, I don’t think so. Several of the boys aren’t here yet. But fair warning before you begin. You’ll be the only girl here, and some of these boys can get real rough, especially after a few days cooped up in a place like this. I don’t say it to discourage you, just being honest.”

  I gave him a small smile. “Don’t worry about me. I can get real rough too.”

  This time he did smile, if only a little. “Fair enough.” Stepping forward, he extended his hand. “Name’s Mike Bramford. General contractor for the assessment. I think you dealt with Molly at the office, right?”

  “I did, yeah. Said it should be about a week’s worth of work. I’m supposed to be on the inventory crew.”

  He nodded. “Good. Well, go on in and get settled. We’ve got plenty of space, as you can see, but pick out a room to stay in on the first or second floor. Need to stay together when we can. Any questions for now?” When I shook my head, he gestured behind him like the world’s most grizzled concierge.

  “Well then, welcome to the Imago Hotel.”

  ****

  The lobby of the hotel was even more ornate than the exterior, with wood and brass mixing with marble and chrome to create the impression you were entering some kind of schizophrenic monument to wealth and opulence. It wasn’t that it wasn’t impressive—in many ways it was. Even after years of disuse, everything seemed well-made and surprisingly clean. And the lobby as a whole seemed to speak of a strong artistic vision of how to marry various materials and styles together: Spiraling black marble columns ran down into polished oak floors and up into coffered ceilings filled with abstract symbols of gold and silver filigree on the ceiling. It gave the feeling of stepping into a palace or temple, though I couldn’t say what the object of worship would be other than wealth or questionable taste.

  Because for all of the objective beauty around me, from the long open space of the lobby itself to the finely woven carpets, deeply polished woods and works of art that lined the staircase and the hallway on my journey to find a room on the second floor, everything was…off-putting somehow. And it wasn’t just that it was an abandoned hotel.

  Yes, I did find the idea of staying in a large abandoned building with a group of people I didn’t know or trust a little creepy and disconcerting. But I also found a degree of comfort and peace of mind in knowing that being in such a remote and obscure location likely gave me a degree of safety from being found by the thing that hunted me. If my father had been right, it would find me eventually wherever I went, but this should hopefully buy me time to figure things out while also providing me with money for when I moved on.

  No, the bigger issue was with the hotel itself. First, it really was in good shape. Like, the last guests checked out last week good shape. Given the wording of the job ad and the condition of the parking lot and signs outside, I had the impression it had been a few years at least. But more than that, it was a feeling I got. It was like the feeling I’d had outside, but multiplied by a hundred—the sense that something was coming, being anticipated. As though the hotel itself was watching me and biding its time.

  But that was dumb, right? It was just another way of freaking myself out in a strange place. In reality, the men I had passed downstairs had all been perfectly pleasant and polite, and if any of them turned into an asshole, I could handle myself. As for the building itself…it was just a building. Huge and weird, yes, but so what? All that meant was there was more work and money to be had.

  I stopped along the hallway at random and turned toward a room door. 213. Well, that’s as good as any. All of the room doors on this floor had the keys stuck in the locks, and I hadn’t seen any missing, so it might be I was the first one to pick a room on this floor. That suited me fine. While I was going to try my best to get along with everyone, I wasn’t here to make friends, and I was kind of gunshy around people at the moment anyway. The more time alone, the better.

  Turning the key, the door unlocked with a loud click and swung open. I flipped the switch just inside the door, and to my relief, the lights came on without any hesitation. Again, very weird. In fact, while the outside of the hotel was dark, all of the interior I had seen seemed fully powered, and I didn’t remember seeing the first blown bulb. Even if the lights had all been turned off until recently, what were the odds of that?

  Still, at least in this circumstance, the relatively pristine condition of the hotel was working in my favor. The room was spacious, with a king-sized bed against one wall, a large sofa against the other, and plenty of open space in-between. The decoration inside the room was much more subdued than outside, with a simple, abstract watercolor hanging over the bed and a few knickknacks cluttering a small writing desk tucked into one corner.

  The bed itself was even made, though the linens did seem a bit stiff and musty. And aside from a light coat of dust on everything, it was hard to say I wasn’t just spending the night in a stuffy luxury hotel. Except it wasn’t a night, I reminded myself. I was likely going to be there for days, all alone except for the group gathering downstairs.

  Still, I had resigned myself to sleeping on a towel or rotten mattress in a decrepit run-down building. How could I complain that everything was so nice? Shaking my head, I stowed my backpack under the bed, locked the room back, and went down to try and find out more about what I was going to be doing during my stay at the hotel.

  ****

  “Gather around, everyone. Anyone missing?” Bramford looked around the lobby at the group of people assembled there. Most of the men looked to be in their thirties or forties, but there were a couple of guys closer to my age and several that looked much older as well. I had kept to myself since coming back into the lobby other than smiling or nodding at a couple of people, and for the most part I was left alone. One of the younger guys, he said his name was Ricky, had come up and introduced himself, and while I tried to be friendly, he seemed to pick up on my reserve fairly quickly. After a few moments of trying to awkwardly chit-chat, he had faded back into the group he had come from.

  And that was the way with almost all of them. Most of the people there seemed to either work together or at least know each other from prior jobs, so they clustered into several discrete groups around the lobby as they waited for the contractor to come in and get started. The only notable exception to that was a tall, lanky boy who looked younger than the rest and woefully out-of-place. His sunken eyes stared out at the crowd with a mixture of contempt and anxiety, and when Mike Bramford entered the lobby, the sentiment seemed to intensify.

  “We should have nineteen people, myself included.” Bramford was pointing at each of us in turn as he did a silent headcount. “Okay, good. Let’s get started then.”

  Bramford walked closer and gestured at the room. “This is the Imago Hotel. Some of you local boys know about it, and maybe a few of the rest of you have heard of it. I am not a local boy, and I never knew it existed before two months ago when I got hired on for this job. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t heard stories about it. Spooky shit and all that. Let me start off by saying, no.” He paused a moment to sweep the room with his gaze.

  “This is not the place or the tim
e for fuckery. This is a massive, very profitable contract for my company. This is how I’m going to feed my family and put my two kids through college. It can also be a very profitable contract for all of you. If there is no fuckery.”

  “Now normally, I would limit my fuckery speech to the usual. No women…” He paused and glanced at me. “Or men…Or women…I don’t judge…allowed at the work site unless they are working the job.” He looked back over the crowd. “That means if you have an itch that needs scratching, you go somewhere else to do it.”

  “No drinking except between seven and ten in the evening, and even then, only in moderation. Not having one of you kill yourself or someone else because you can’t hold your liquor.”

  “No smoking inside the building. They’re not paying us to fuck it up worse.”

  “Absolutely no drugs other than prescribed meds that you have already told me about.”

  “No dragging ass or not showing up. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to be here any longer than I have to be. Unlike some of you, I’ll be up here for several months, and if I figure out you’re making that stay longer by slacking, I’ll have your ass. You start work at eight, you go until six. If you need more time, clear it with me. If you get hurt or sick, clear it with me. If you just don’t show up, pack your shit. If you break one of the other rules, pack your shit.”

  Bramford’s face was still stern, but he did smile a little as he went on. “But for those of you that know me, none of that is a surprise. They’re normal rules to prevent normal fuckery. However…” He raised his index finger, “like I said, I know this place has a local history of spook stories and rumors. And it is a big and kinda weird-looking place. I know you’re all professionals and grown-ass men…and women, but I’ve been doing this shit for thirty years, and I’ve had crews get spooked before. Waste time telling ghost stories and whatnot. Again, we do not have time for that kind of silly shit, so just no.”