Without warning, he gripped the doorknob, turned it, and flung the door open. Jumped back, ready for … well, anything.
He froze.
His gaze fixed out the opened door on what lay beyond.
He squinted, then closed his eyes fully. Counted to five and opened them again.
Eased himself closer to the door, cautiously, still expecting an assault of some sort.
Nothing happened. Nothing attacked, except the scene before him attacking all his rationality and understanding.
Lance was looking at the very same motel he was currently standing inside.
It was a view he was familiar with, because what could only have been a couple hours ago, he’d been standing in the middle of the road and getting his first glimpse of the motel from the exact same vantage point he was seeing from through his room’s door.
Impossible.
There was that word again. The one he shouldn’t use, creeping its way into his thoughts.
He tampered down the ridicule and forced himself to think, to analyze what he was seeing as somebody with his abilities, his understanding (or lack thereof) of the Universe and its rules.
Quickly, the scene before him became clearer.
It was a message. A clue. Possibly a warning.
Lance reached a hand outside his door, letting it cross the threshold to see what would happen. The cold air bit and the wind gusted, but his hand remained attached to his body, so he considered that a good sign.
He took a breath and stepped outside.
An ear-popping whoosh sucked the air from behind him, and when Lance spun back around, his motel room was gone. There was just the darkness of the field and trees on the opposite side of the road, all smeared by the white flurries of snow.
Lance shivered at the sudden exposure to the cold and the wind. He turned around, finding himself standing exactly in the same spot he’d been earlier when he’d arrived from his long walk along the road.
The lights were still burning in the office window. The spotlight still shone down and tried to illuminate the parking lot. All the rooms remained darkened. Closed off and ominous.
But Lance was not paying attention to any of this.
There were people standing in front of some of the motel’s rooms.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. There were the silhouettes of people in front of every room, semi-amorphous figures that were filled with what looked like fuzzy television static, blanking out any distinct features other than human shapes.
And beside each figure or group of figures in front of each motel room door was a boy.
More a young man, really, this boy. Lance squinted against the snow and used one hand to shield his eyes from some of the spotlight’s glare. The carbon copy of the boy stood by each door with the corresponding fuzzy-television people, like somebody had performed a computer copy-and-paste. He was fairly tall and lean, wearing baggy blue jeans and an oversized knit sweater. He had stocking cap pulled down low over his ears and—
He looks like me, Lance realized.
Not identical. Not by a long shot. Especially when the boy turned and Lance could make out the cleft chin and the flat cheekbones and the pointed nose. But in terms of physical stature and build … the replicated boy standing by the motel rooms’ doors could have very easily been mistaken for Lance from a distance, and especially from behind.
The copy of the boy that was standing with a solo figure in front of door one reached out and embraced the static image of a human in a hug. At the boy’s touch, the silhouette quickly faded into color, its features emerging like a butterfly from a cocoon.
It was the woman Lance had seen hanging from the bedsheet. The one who’d spoken her mysterious message and then vanished.
Here and now, wherever and whenever here and now was, she looked much more alive. Cheeks rosy from the cold and plumes of breath billowing from her mouth as she spoke into the frosted air. After her embrace with the boy, she turned and entered room one.
Lance watched as the boy in front of the other rooms’ doors likewise embraced the people he was with and allowed their bodies to take full form. There was a middle-aged couple at room two, and a child—a girl, no more than eleven or twelve—at room five.
And then Lance’s heart went cold and the lights seemed to darken and in a flash of something that wasn’t actually something at all, there was suddenly only one person left in front of the motel. In front of room six.
Lance Brody stood in the middle of the road that should have been the walkway outside his motel room and stared back at himself.
This time, he was sure of it. This lone figure who remained while all the fuzzy-television people and copies of the boy had vanished was him. It was wearing the same outfit as Lance was now, cargo shorts and his favorite hoodie.
But Lance was here. He reached down and patted his chest and legs and felt his head, just to make sure.
And if he was here, he could not be there, right?
Lance on the road stood completely still, not even breathing as he watched Lance by the motel room.
The other Lance was also standing still, staring straight ahead, looking out across the parking lot directly in front of room six. The two Lances stood that way for a moment, and then the Lance in front of the motel room suddenly shifted his eyes upward, out toward the road. Fixed them directly on the spot where Lance was standing.
And then he waved.
And for some reason, Lance felt very much like it was the wave of somebody saying goodbye.
The Lance by the motel room turned around and reached out for the handle to room six, and just as the Lance on the road opened his mouth to call and out and tell this other Lance to wait, there was another whoosh, this time all around him and—
Lance sat up, his heart pounding and ears ringing, and called out, “Wait!”
But he was back in his motel room. Safely atop the bed with the television still playing and the heat still humming from the baseboards and the lights still on.
Still alone.
6
On the small television screen, Full House continued on with Uncle Joey saying something that Lance didn’t hear, which caused Uncle Jesse to give an eye roll, which caused the laugh track to roar, which caused Lance to get up from the bed and cross the room and switch the television off. He’d enjoyed the white noise of the show earlier, but now, with his mind racing and his heart still coming down off its high, he wanted to eliminate distractions. He wanted quiet. Needed it. Because confusion was grabbing him by the wrists and ankles and trying to drag him away, pull him down into a stupor of disbelief.
And not because of the fuzzy-television people, and not even because of the copy-and-paste boy—the boy who might have been him at a quick glance from behind—but because of the last thing he’d seen.
Himself.
Lance replayed that last bit of the scene over and over in his head, watched as the other version of himself had stared, seemingly perplexed, at something the current version of himself had not been able to see, right before something like recognition had flickered across the other version of Lance’s face, and he’d shifted his head and raised his eyes and stared.
Stared directly at Lance and then waved.
It was that last bit that bothered Lance. The way that the Dream-Lance—and at this point, Lance was calling the entire episode a dream, for lack of a more accurate word—had seemed to know that the real Lance was there and had essentially said goodbye before he’d turned to enter room six.
Goodbye was a word that carried many different weights. It could be casual and light as a feather, such as saying goodbye to a coworker before you left work for the day, or at the end of a phone call with a friend. But it could also be burdensome, a two-ton boulder that crushed lives and destroyed families.
Lance thought about the dead woman he’d seen hanging from the bedsheet, and the alive version of her from his dream.
She’d said the ultimate goodbye, in the worst po
ssible way.
Which sort of goodbye had the Dream-Lance used? What was going to happen inside room six once he stepped inside?
And to Lance, the most important and troubling question of all was this: was the dream nothing more than a message from the Universe to be interpreted, a clue to be used in a greater mystery, or was it more? Glimpses of what had already been, and also what might be? A hint at things to come coupled with flashes of the past, all meshed together in some sort of hybrid vision?
Lance shook his head and shifted his thoughts. Changed course and sailed his mind away from the image of Dream-Lance and headed toward another point of curiosity. The copy-and-paste boy.
Lance looked at the beige plastic phone on the nightstand. Remembered Meriam’s words. Is it really you?
Lance sat on the bed and picked up the phone and pressed zero. It rang once before she answered.
“Yes?”
“Hello, ma’am. I’m sorry if I woke you,” Lance said, though judging by how quickly Meriam had answered the phone, he knew he hadn’t. It was almost as if she’d been waiting for his call. “And I know this might sound strange, but I … well, I have some questions.”
There was a pause. Short, but long enough for Lance to know she was thinking about what the best course of action was. Then she said, “Do you like coffee?”
* * *
The walk from room one to the motel’s office was just as short as it’d been earlier but seemingly twice as cold. The snow had blown up onto the walkway beneath the overhang, and there was at least an inch of accumulation there. Lance left footprints large enough to entice big game hunters, or maybe Bigfoot enthusiasts, as he crossed the short distance with his hood pulled tight around his face and his hand tucked into the front pouch of his sweatshirt.
The wind howled, and the cold scratched at his skin.
He’d felt the cold during his dream, certain it had been the real thing, but now he was quickly reminded of just how vicious the weather had gotten. The dream had been a good imitation, but nothing compared to the real deal.
Wasn’t even in the forecast.
Lance Brody did not get cold, not in the sense that most people did. He had no problems wearing shorts year-round, and he found it much more uncomfortable to be overly warm than overly cool. This had been an issue in his and his mother’s home during the winter months. They were constantly playing an unofficial game of dueling thermostat settings.
So the fact that Lance found himself growing so cold now, after such a few short steps from his room to the door to the motel’s office, sparked a small debate in his mind.
Am I just unaccustomed to weather this far north? Which wasn’t completely out of the question, considering he’d spent nearly his entire life living in Virginia before being forced to move on a few short months ago. Or…
Or is this something else, this cold? Is this something more than you’d find on The Weather Channel?
Lance risked a glance up into the wind, toward the road.
There’d been the blackout, him sitting up in the snowy parking lot with no memory of ever going down. There’d been Meriam’s odd behavior. There’d been the dead woman in his room. There’d been the dream.
Wasn’t even in the forecast.
Lance freed a hand from his hoodie and pushed open the office door.
Meriam was waiting for him, standing behind the counter and urging to him to shut the door before he let the heat out. Lance caught the door as it began to swing closed behind him and helped it along, pushing it shut against the wind. Then he turned and basked in the glory that was the warmth of the office, feeling himself instantly begin to thaw out, the snow on his sneakers quickly melting to small puddles on the floor.
He wiped his feet on the doormat and Meriam said, “Come on around the counter here.” She pointed to the far end, where the counter opened along the wall. “Coffee’s in the back.”
Right then and there, Lance would have agreed to accompany Frodo to Mordor to destroy the ring if it meant a big hot cup of coffee in return. He walked across the office and joined Meriam behind the counter, where she gave him one final appraising glance up and down before pushing through the door she’d come through earlier when Lance had checked in. She motioned for him to follow.
At first sight, it reminded Lance of a room in a retirement home or assisted living facility. One large rectangular space segmented into all the comforts of home. He was standing in a carpeted living space with a faded blue love seat and recliner positioned in front of an old boxy television set with a modern cable box atop it. There was a coffee table with books stacked neatly, and a small bookshelf tucked away in the corner with framed photographs on the shelves. To his right, the direction where Meriam had gone, was a kitchen with a two-top table against the wall and a long counter with a sink, microwave, oven, and, most importantly, coffeemaker.
There was another door beside the kitchen that must have led to a bedroom and bath.
She lives here, Lance thought.
And then he thought of Leah. How she’d had her own bedroom in the back of her and her dad’s motel that she’d managed.
Before it’d burned down.
The coffeemaker, a small black plastic thing that was so simple it only needed a single on/off switch, sputtered and gurgled and then sighed, and Meriam pulled two mugs down from a cabinet and poured.
“Cream or sugar?” she asked over her shoulder.
“No, thank you. Black is fine, ma’am.”
She made a sound that might have been a suppressed scoff. Shook her head as she spooned helpings of sugar from a small glass jar into her own mug. “My husband drank it black. Sometimes I wonder if men have any taste buds at all.”
Lance didn’t know what to say to that.
Meriam turned and set both mugs down on the kitchen table. Sat in the chair facing the living room and waved for Lance to join her. Lance pushed the sleeves of his sweatshirt up around his elbows, surprised at how quickly he’d gone from freezing to overly warm, and pulled the other chair from the table and sat. The baseboard heating hummed at his feet.
“I appreciate the coffee, ma’am,” he said, taking a sip that turned into a gulp, that turned into him downing half the mug before he came up for air. It was too hot, burning his throat, but it was good all the same. Sometimes simple is all you need.
After he’d set the mug back down, Meriam stared at him as if she’d just witnessed a magic trick she was trying to figure out in her head, blinked a few times, then jerked her head back toward the counter and the coffeemaker. “You’re welcome. Feel free to help yourself when you need more. I’m always brewin’ it. I got insomnia, you see. Almost never sleep, so the coffee helps me keep on going. Nice to have some company for a change.”
Lance nodded. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“And stop with all the ‘ma’am’ talk. I appreciate that you’re trying to be polite, but point taken. Speak freely, boy. This isn’t a test.”
Lance wondered about that. Because despite Meriam’s feigned ignorance thus far, all signs were currently pointed to this little late-night coffee rendezvous being very much a test of who could get what information out of who first, and not just a friendly social visit between an insomnia-suffering lady and the young stranger who’d wandered on foot into her motel.
On the phone, Lance had said he had questions.
And Meriam had not even asked what they might be about. There’d been the pause, that moment where Lance figured she was contemplating just what she might be getting herself into, and then she’d invited him over.
She’s just as curious as I am, Lance thought. Just as curious about me as I am about this place.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lance said, then caught himself. “I mean … yes. Okay. I’ll try. But old habits die hard. My mother raised me right, you might say.”
Meriam gave a small smile and nodded her head. “I think I do believe that. She certainly fed you right, tall as you are.” She sipped her coffee. “Where
is she these days? Back home, wherever that is?”
Lance felt that familiar twinge in his heart, let it hit and then waited for it to dissipate before he brought himself to answer. “She died. A few months ago.”
He downed the rest of his coffee and stood to get more.
When he sat back down, Meriam said, “I’m very sorry about your mother. I would never have asked if I’d known.”
Lance nodded a thank-you and sipped his fresh cup. Meriam sipped hers, and it was as if all of a sudden they both realized they could no longer hide the reason they’d come together. The small talk was quickly over, and now all it would take was one of them deciding to lead the charge.
It turned out to be Meriam.
She set her coffee mug on the table, folded her hands in her lap and looked Lance in the eye. “You want to know about the woman who died in your room, don’t you?”
7
Lance Brody had spent his entire life with the ability to know things in ways that nobody would understand. Whether by premonition or by touch or by gut instinct or by the whispers of the dead who had not yet passed on, information that regular people would never ascertain without more direct methods flowed freely to Lance. It was one of his gifts. One of his burdens.
It was extremely useful, he had to admit. Even if sometimes he felt a flicker of guilt at invading somebody’s private thoughts and memories.
So when Meriam asked her question—You want to know about the woman who died in your room, don’t you?—Lance had a small moment of panic where he wondered if she was inside his head. If she, too, possessed some sort of extra sense that allowed her to see into his mind, read his thoughts.
It reminded him of the first day he’d seen the Reverend and the Surfer. The way the Reverend had let Lance pass by on the sidewalk and turn the corner before blasting his message into Lance’s head, loud and as clear as if he’d been speaking directly into his ear. It had been jarring, frightening, sickening.
The Lance Brody Series: Books 3 and 4 Page 24