The Overlook
I was twelve years old when my Dad murdered me, my Mom and my sister, Caroline. Winter had only really just got going up in Colorado when it happened. Autumn had lingered on like a long shadow at sunset. The snow had arrived a few weeks earlier but it hadn't yet grown heavy enough to pile up against the huge windows in The Overlook's grand dining saloon.
I had never really thought about what it meant to be lonely until we moved into The Overlook hotel for what should have been six months. We only made it three before my Dad took a hatchet to mine and Caroline's head and shot our Mom three times in the chest. And I think, after having a few years to wonder about it, he had already as good as killed us all the moment he took the job as winter caretaker.
Before the snow came in late November Caroline and I used to go with Mom into Sidewinder, the nearest town, whilst Dad was busy ticking jobs off his long list of winter repairs. Sometimes we would stop for hot chocolate and pie at the local diner. The first time we went in Mom got to talking with one of the waitresses who I still remember now because she used to chew gum and twirl her bleach blonde hair around her finger whilst she spoke. She laughed nervously when Mom told her we were staying at The Overlook for the winter.
"You're crazy going up there by yourselves for six months!" she said, "Don't you know that big old place is haunted? Especially, they say, room 217."
Mom laughed it off but a cool slice ran through my stomach and after that the loneliness set in.
Nobody could deny that The Overlook was breath taking. Its palatial design caught the eyes of guests as the plunging Colorado Mountains dropped away and it stood glinting in the sharp sunlight. Its ceilings were tall, its ballroom exquisite, the gardens often gave way to the thwack of a croquet mallet. It had at one time been famous for its masquerade balls.
But I never saw The Overlook like that. Living in a place that big with just three other people was strange to say the least. When I was alive I barely moved away from our living quarters or the kitchen. I didn't go near the Topiary Garden with its terrifying animals trimmed out of bushes. Of course I know the place pretty well now.
But occasionally, I would wander into the grand dining saloon, tracing my fingers along the monstrous chairs. I was aware how my footsteps echoed along the floor. I would tilt my head and point my chin up to look at the enormous windows, the smooth glass magnificent but watchful. And I suddenly felt very small as if I was the only human being left on the entire planet. And in that moment as I stared off into the haze of silent snowflakes I realised, even though I was only twelve, that I didn't actually, truthfully, know anyone but myself, not even really my family. The Overlook made me feel the kind of loneliness that most people brush under the carpet or don't really want to ever admit.
My Dad was certainly one of those people. Except he didn't brush his loneliness under a carpet. Instead he sought relief with a bottle of Jack Daniels. My Dad had always been a drinker, even as a small kid I can remember hiding with Caroline under our bed sheets whilst he and Mom argued.
I think the only reason Mom agreed to coming up to The Overlook was because she thought the peace and quiet would solve everything. She wasn't overly happy about Caroline and I missing so much school but she made sure we kept up with our reading and Math.
It didn't take long before they were arguing again about one thing or another, normally stupid things, and Dad would storm off to the ballroom and sit at one of the bar stools, a mere dot against the large deserted walls and stagnant, dull mirrors.
As the snow drew in and the mountains seemed to close in around The Overlook, Mom and Dad virtually stopped talking to each other. They didn't even argue and in some strange way that was worse. Some nights In the weeks to come before Dad finally snapped I began to follow him.
I would wake up, hearing him staggering around our living quarters and I would creep out of the door letting his shadow disappear around the tall corner of the long corridor before I followed. Sometimes I would hold my breath as I tiptoed down the extravagant staircase that led to the ballroom. Yet still I could hear the steady inhale and exhale of what I told myself was the wind even though I actually believed it was the hotel itself.
Dad would sit at the bar swilling bourbon around the glass humming music that I didn't recognise or holding conversations with himself. I would peer around the large door noticing how the yellowy lamplight glimmered across his rough, wild face. It was really when I stood in the shadowy hotel staring at a man that I didn't recognise anymore that I felt the most lonely. I often wondered what he would do if I ran up to him and wrapped my arms around his shoulders. But something always stopped me and I disappeared back upstairs closing my eyes once in bed, remembering his voice from a time when he used to read bedtime stories to Caroline and I.
When Dad wasn't at the bar he was in room 217. I had always kind of known that the room was haunted. I didn't need to be told by a waitress from Sidewinder. Occasionally when I had wandered past it I had stopped and retraced my steps my ear pressed to the door. I could hear the flush of water running from a shower in a steady, persistent rhythm. Once, my hand grasped the icy cold door knob, almost ready to step inside. But as my curious mind was about to enter I heard the shrill, piercing laugh of a woman's voice. I clamped a hand over my mouth to stop myself from screaming and stared, horrified at the door knob as it began to twist slowly. I ran along the wide, angular corridor, my scalp a prickle of cold sweat, without looking over my shoulder. I never went back to room 217 but for some reason I can't explain, even now, I knew my Dad had been in there.
I didn't tell Mom or Caroline about 217. I just knew they wouldn't believe me.
Five days before Christmas Dad picked up a hatchet from one of the outbuildings and trailed his footsteps through the snow and into our living quarters where Caroline and I were watching TV. We were dead before we even had a chance to scream. He then took his two barrelled shot gun and fired three shots at Mom as she made supper in the huge stainless steel kitchen. In the end he turned the gun on himself. We were found two weeks later by a state trooper from Sidewinder. He had been sent by the Sherriff after they hadn't heard any radio contact from The Overlook for a while. Dad used to have conversations most nights with either the Sherriff or his Deputies. They liked to keep a look out for us and report any bad weather that was heading our way. In fact they even had a conversation the night Dad murdered us all.
A lot of the Hotel staff still talk about our deaths even though it all happened seven years ago. That's how I've come to know most of the facts. They wonder, just like I do why he did it. A bad case of cabin fever they all agree. I don't know the answer but I always like to think that Dad did love us all once and who knows if he would have murdered us whether we were living at The Overlook or not? I'm pretty sure the hotel had something to do with it, a lot of the people who pass through don't realise it has a life of its own.
And I'm still here, for eternity probably. I watch the guests coming and going. Most of them never notice me, or pretend they haven't seen me. But I see their arguments, their intimacies. I see the kitchen staff helping themselves to ice cream when they think no one is looking or the chamber maids taking a nap on somebody else's bed.
Families don't usually check into The Overlook but when they do I stay close. Close enough so they feel a chill across their neck. I watch a father show his son or daughter how to play croquet out on the tidy, green lawn. I see Mothers wiping milk moustaches from their children's lips. And I try, even though it's getting a little harder these days, to remember a time before The Overlook.
Because, even though I see the world through the eyes of a ghost, I'm still just a lonely, little kid.