Incarnata

by Brandon Faircloth

  He was right. I remembered the noise it made when it arrived on a floor and then again when the door opened. But if he wasn’t imagining it, who was it?

  Could it have been The Stranger coming for me?

  Holding his gaze, I leaned forward and spoke barely above a whisper. “Look, I believe you. You seem like a smart guy, and I don’t think you’re bullshitting. And maybe there’s a reasonable explanation for it. Probably there is. But it still worries me too. If you swear to keep this to yourself, I’ll tell you why.”

  His eyes had widened as I spoke, and he seemed to weigh his decision before he nodded. “I swear.”

  I tried to choose my words carefully. I didn’t want to lie to him, but I also didn’t need him thinking I was crazy. So long as he knew to be cautious and keep an eye out, it was pointless to tell him that the thing that was after me wasn’t human. Or if there was a point, it was at least outweighed by the likelihood he would just tell his uncle I was crazy and had to go.

  “Okay. There is someone after me. Stalking me kind of. I don’t know who they are or what they look like, and they are really good at disguising themselves so they can get close. But they have been…obsessed with my family for awhile now. Hurt relatives of mine. And now they’re after me.”

  Jefferson leaned back slightly. “Can’t you just go to the cops?”

  I gave a short shake of my head as I glanced at the two carpenters leaving the dining room. “They couldn’t help. I should be okay here, it…they don’t know I’m here, or I don’t think they do. I know this all sounds kind of weird and crazy, but it’s true. I don’t know why they’re after me, but they are.”

  He frowned. “Look, if you’re in some kind of trouble with criminals or…” He fell silent when I pointed a finger at him.

  “Look, I believed you, okay? I need you to trust me too.”

  Looking sheepish, he nodded. “Okay, that’s fair. I’m sorry.” Giving a glance around the now empty room, he looked more tense when he turned back. “So you think this person might be lurking around up here? For real?”

  I shook my head. “Like I said, I doubt it. At least not this fast. I just got here, and no one from my old life knows where I am. But just keep your eyes peeled for weird shit, yeah? And if you see something, see someone you don’t know…or see someone you think you know, but they’re acting weird? Just come get me, okay? Don’t try to be a hero or something.”

  Jefferson smiled widely for the first time all day. “Me? No worries. I’m kind of a chicken.”

  ****

  We finished the sixth floor that day, though it took longer than we had thought. The maintenance room was packed with a variety of cleaning agents, tools, and other odds and ends that took time to go through and properly describe. Still, by five-thirty we were back downstairs and telling Bramford we were ready for our next assignment.

  He looked up from where he was going over some paperwork, and when he heard we were finished, he gave a short laugh and smiled. “Hell, that’s great. You’re the first group to get done with a floor today.” Pausing, he held out his hand. “Let me check out your inventory list.”

  Jefferson handed it over nervously. He had been right about his writing though. He wrote better than I did, and took detailed but legible notes of everything we had found. Apparently his uncle agreed, because after flipping through a few pages, he looked up with clear relief. “Great job, you two.”

  “And the notes are all Jefferson. He’s really great at it.” Jefferson threw me a grateful glance before nodding at Bramford silently.

  Bramford leaned back in his chair as he regarded his nephew. “Well it’s fine work, Jeff. I knew you had it in you.” Glancing between the two of us, he went on. “You two go ahead and knock off a few minutes early. You’ve earned it. And given how well you’ve done, I think tomorrow I’m going to give you a bigger challenge.”

  Good work meant more work and responsibility, just like every job I’d ever had. But that was a good thing, particularly when I needed this job to work out. “Sounds good. Where are we going to tomorrow?”

  Bramford looked between us as though he was trying to make a decision, though whether it was about the job or something else was unclear. Seeming to resolve himself, he began.

  “It’s floor twenty-one. The rooms up there are called The Holiday Rooms.”

  ****

  Jefferson, you might have already heard about them with all your internet detective work about this place, but my guess is Ms. Hollis hasn’t. And neither one of you probably knows much about the reality of the rooms and why they’re so important. So valuable. So before I send you two up there tomorrow, I need to explain some things.

  When this hotel was running, apparently one of the big draws for the wealthiest people was to get a room on one of the higher floors. Floors Twenty through Twenty-Three all had larger, more unique rooms, and from what I’ve heard, you didn’t rent those rooms, you had to apply and be invited. All super-exclusive, rich person weird bullshit. Make something exclusive so the idiots will cough up the dough.

  Anyway, the rooms themselves are pretty unique. They are even famous in some circles of fruitcakes with more money than sense. According to the county guys I talked to, a lot of the most expensive pieces of art and antiques are in some of those rooms, and they’re hoping they can sell off the contents of the individual rooms as room-specific lots. So when you’re up there, before you start inventorying a room, take lots of pictures. Jeff, you can use your phone for that, right? We want to make sure we know where everything was at before we start moving stuff around.

  That’s part of why I want you two to be the ones doing this floor. I’ve got good guys here, but about half of them aren’t above slipping a few things into their truck if they think they can get away with it. Jeff, I’ve never known you to be a thief, and Ms. Hollis, you seem to want the job more than you want to risk it swiping a trinket. I guess that’s my shitty way of saying I trust you two more than I do most of these guys, and your work today makes me think I’m right.

  The other reason I want you to be the ones to do it is that…well, the upper floors are weird, including the twenty-first floor. No, I see how you’re looking Jefferson. This isn’t meant to start back up your ghost hunting bullshit or whatever silly mess you found on the internet about this place. But I’ll be the first to admit that some parts of this place are odd, and I know how people can get when you put this many together for days at a time in a strange place. The wrong couple of people get spooked and within a week you’ll have ‘em clustering up like old hens, trading superstitions. Every time someone stubs their toe, it’ll be because the place is bad luck. Every noise we hear at night will be the boogeyman. Grown-ass men, but it doesn’t matter. At best, it can be a distraction and slow things down. At worst, I’ll lose a few people over time if they get too spooked. Normally I’d just say good riddance of fools, but I’m on a tight schedule on this one and there’s too much money at stake to let the weirdness of this place cost me good workers.

  But Jeff, you already believe some of that weird stuff, right? And not to point out the obvious, but you’re also not in the same position to leave that most of the guys are. Not trying to be an ass, just being honest. In any case, if you two are the first to clear one of the stranger floors, it makes it easier to defuse any talk later. People want to start swapping ghost stories, I can just point out how my kid nephew and the only woman on our crew went through The Holiday Rooms without any problems.

  Because there won’t be any problems. It’s just a weird, fancy hotel with some eccentricities. And the only ones that matter are what helps you do your job and make us money.

  Now when you go up to the twenty-first, you’ll notice that there are fewer rooms. That’s because they are all much bigger than the rooms on the sixth. Second, you’ll notice each room has a theme. Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Easter, that kind of thing. Really weird, really elaborate. Beats the shit out of me why anyone would want to stay up there,
but who knows what these folks were into.

  The second thing you’ll notice is that the doors are not unlocked. This is partially because I don’t want anyone having access to the goods in there except for people I okay, but it’s also because of some lock system they have in place up there. To be honest, I haven’t figured out how it works yet, but the gist is this: All of the Holiday Rooms have the same key, and only one can be unlocked or opened at a time.

  It’s really kind of neat, particularly given how old this hotel is. Got to be some kind of mechanisms in the walls that are interconnected. But if one of the doors is unlocked or open, none of the other doors up there can be. Now how the hell that used to work when you had different sets of guests? Beats me. But again, rich fruitcakes.

  So that’s about it. Jeff, I want you to take this seriously, okay? This is me trusting you, both of you, with something that’s important. Those upper floors are a big deal to the people at the county. Can you guys handle it?

  ****

  I glanced at Jefferson before nodding at Bramford. “We can. We’ll do a good job.”

  Part Two

  The elevator dinged softly as the doors opened on the twenty-first floor. Jefferson had assured me the day before that his uncle said they were safe, and they certainly looked fine, but I still was happy when I was able to step out of the elevator car and into the elevator lobby with its wood floor and ubiquitous black marble columns.

  My first impression was disappointment. This didn’t really look much different than the other floors at first glance, and as I moved to the gently curving hallway and looked down both directions, the only significant thing I noticed was that there were far fewer doors along the walls. Well, that, and the doorknobs were different.

  I pointed it out to Jefferson and we moved toward one of the nearby rooms. As we drew closer, I realized there was a small brass plaque on the middle of the door. It said “The Christmas Room”. How fucking weird. I almost went ahead and unlocked it when Jefferson spoke up.

  “It’s a peephole.”

  I frowned and looked to see that he was crouched down and studying the doorknob. It was made of cut glass or crystal, with a multitude of facets creating the impression of a large, rounded gem. Jefferson moved closer and looked into it.

  “You mean you can see into the room through it?”

  He looked up at me and nodded, his face both excited and troubled. “Yeah. It’s weird. It’s kind of like looking into a kaleidoscope, but it’s not mixed up. I can see pretty clearly in there. The room is super odd.”

  Shooing him aside, I crouched down and looked at the doorknob. At first I just saw the light bouncing around in the knob itself, but then I shifted slightly and I saw it. It reminded me of looking through a powerful telescope where you had to get your angle right and then you could see everything clearly. I let out a small curse at what I saw.

  The room, or at least what I could see of the room through the glass doorknob, was massive. As one might expect, it was also decorated for Christmas, but to an almost impossibly lavish degree. A giant tree filled one corner of the room, covered over with ornaments, strings of popcorn, and trailing lines of red and purple ribbon. Twin giant nutcrackers guarded a large stone fireplace festooned with garland, berries, and various Christmas figurines. There were even stacks of presents cluttering the floor around their boots.

  “What the…” I thought of something as I looked up at Jefferson. “The lights are already on in there. I mean, we can see the room, so it has to be lit up. I know your uncle powered this floor up, but did he flip on the lights too?”

  He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t know. I guess. But it’s weird, right? All that shit in there?”

  Standing up, I dug the key to the Holiday Rooms out of my pocket. “Yeah, it’s weird. But he said it would be.” I stuck the key in the lock and then paused. “Go grab that big planter from near the elevator. We can use it to block the door and keep it open. I’m not looking to get trapped in one of these rooms if the locks are fucked up.” He nodded and brought back a heavy bowl-shaped thing made of concrete. I unlocked the door and pulled it open and then froze.

  The lights weren’t on in the room after all. To the contrary, the shadows and gloom made it feel like I was peering into a dark cave, with only vague shapes being visible in the deeper dark. I heard Jefferson suck in a breath behind me as I reached in and flipped a light switch. Everything sprang to life instantly, looking just as it had through the doorknob. Even the large electric lights on the tree went back to twinkling. I turned back to Jefferson, who looked petrified.

  “I know. I don’t understand it. Maybe the doorknob amplifies the light somehow?” I knew that didn’t explain the lights on the tree or…well, any of it, but I felt the need to offer him something. I could see by the panic in his eyes that he was close to bolting. “Let’s not freak ourselves out. It’s weird. Super weird. But we can get through it. Just make sure that planter is blocking the door, yeah?”

  His face pale, Jefferson looked at the room and then back at me before nodding. Grunting as he push-rolled the planter into position, he let out a sigh. “Okay. Let’s get this over with.”

  ****

  Three hours later, we were only halfway done with the Christmas Room. Easily the size of four rooms on the sixth floor, it was really more of an extended, undivided suite of some kind, every bit of it tastefully crammed full of Christmas decorations of one sort or another. It was gaudy and overwhelming, but most of all, it felt…wrong somehow.

  “Fuck. There’s just so much…stuff.” Jefferson had sat down in one of the chairs, which was a testament to how big and packed full the room really was and how long the process was taking. I could tell he was as uncomfortable in the room as I was, but he was tired too. We both were. Setting down a small clock that had a small cardinal come out every hour like a yuletide cuckoo, I stretched my back and sighed.

  “Yeah, why don’t we take a break? Go get something to eat and rest a bit before we start back.” He looked up at me gratefully as he massaged his wrist.

  “Sounds good. But I’m going to skip out on lunch and go take a nap if that’s cool. I slept for shit last night. I think thirty minutes would do me a lot of good.”

  I was disappointed, but I understood. I hadn’t slept the best the night before either. I think I had dreams, but I couldn’t recall them. All I knew for sure was that I periodically snapped awake with a panicked feeling until I finally gave up on more sleep as the sun was coming up. Nodding, I told him that was fine. I’d grab him a sandwich and meet him back in the lobby in forty-five minutes. With that, we parted ways.

  Looking back, that’s one of the things I regret the most.

  ****

  When I met Jefferson in the lobby after his nap, he actually did look a bit better. More alert and less worn out than he had before. He smiled at my approach and said we should get back to it. I agreed. I didn’t like being on the Holiday Room floor, and the sooner we were done, the better.

  It was as we were riding up in the elevator that I remembered his sandwich. “Oh shit. Here’s your lunch. I guess you thought I was going to…” My hand brushed his as I handed him the paper plate, and immediately I was overwhelmed by something like rotting meat. It was a powerful, tangible sense that made my eyes water as I staggered back, letting go of the plate. The only time I had ever felt it before was when something that looked like a girl I barely knew tried to kill me a few weeks ago.

  When the Stranger had touched me.

  I looked up and saw that Jefferson was still holding the plate, but his eyes were on me. Oh no, fucking no, not him, not now, not here. I turned as I reached for the knife hidden under my shirt at the beltline, but even as I started the motion, I saw the plate was tumbling from its hand as the other reached out for me. I only saw this in an abstract, detached way. Like my father had trained me, I was motion and will, not thought. Thought could lead to hesitation and fear, and those things would get me killed.
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br />   In less than two seconds the knife was out, and my turn had shifted me enough that I was able to dodge its first attempt at grabbing me. But in the elevator, I had no where to run or maneuver. And I had to attack it from the front for the ritual to work. If I could just…

  As though reading my mind, it stopped turning back toward me. Instead, it put its back to me and backpeddled fast, slamming me into the corner of the elevator car and pinning me there. Immediately, even through our clothes, I could feel that horrible stench pervading my brain again. Gagging, I tried to push it off or slide past it, but in Jefferson’s form it was bigger than me and at least as strong.

  That’s when I started feeling a strange cold, numbness creeping over me. My arms and chest and the front of my legs felt like they were turning to smoke and…Oh God. It didn’t need to use its hands to take me over.

  I started stabbing it in the back and sides, but to no effect. My arms felt disconnected, but I could still use them fine, at least for the moment. I had to be smart, not panic. I knew where I needed to hit it.

  Shoving the hand with the knife up suddenly, I managed to move past its head and slam the blade into one of the ritual spots in the shoulder. It was the wrong shoulder to start the blade ritual, but my hope was it would have at least some effect. It did. I heard it start laughing as it pressed me deeper into the corner as it slowly possessed me. I realized with growing horror that its body was starting to look different, less solid, and while I was pressed into the corner just as much, I almost thought I could see through the monster that had murdered my friend.

  I stabbed the knife in again to distract it while I yanked the chain from around my neck hard enough to break it with my left hand. At the end of the chain was a small pendant in the shape of an arrowhead. Small and common enough to be unremarkable if someone saw it, but hopefully sharp enough that it would do the job in an emergency.