~ chapter ten ~
"I never was an alcoholic. Just a control freak."
John had his collar loosened by Angela as they sat on the edge of his hotel bed. She had also fetched him a glass of water to help clear his system, and when he took a sip, he felt like it was beginning to work already. He had a few hallucinations on the way back to Room 64, but nothing like he was experiencing at the entirely imagined "Devil's Night" soiree. Their eyes met for a moment, and Angela gave a quick reply as she patted his back.
"Are you okay now?" she asked.
"Yeah," John said with a nod. "I…I just…it's been so long since I've gotten drunk. I think that's why I was like that just now."
"If you don't mind me…uh…asking," Angela began, "when was the last time? Can you remember?"
There was a silence; John took the opportunity to take a deep breath and try to remember his last time being drunk. He sipped from the water, which turned into a big gulp, before speaking.
"I always have…tried to stay sharp. Being a cop, that can be difficult even with the stuff I face every day on the job. It started like most days. Multiple homicide in Glassell Park. Dad here spent the year in prison for second-degree assault. We figure he couldn't take the pressure, so he poisons them all, and blows his brains out. It was sad seeing those children dead in the living room, but on the flipside, at least they died peacefully."
"Oh my god," the young brunette sighed, patting his shoulder comfortingly. "I can only imagine how awful you felt."
"Well…we learned later that he didn't actually kill his family," John continued. "His power had been turned off, so he brings in a portable generator so his kids can stay warm. It ran out of gas, so he came back from his night shift, and he found his whole family dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. That's enough to make a man shoot himself."
"Oh my god," Angela repeated, feeling a pang in her heart at picturing the scene he was describing.
"I had two kids at the time myself. It was Holden and Scarlett. I didn't make it back home for two days. Then the day I came home, I took the family to the beach. Some kind of desperate gesture to earn my wife's forgiveness, but then I realized she didn't know how truly traumatized I was. It almost worked…but…"
"But…what, John?" she asked, paying attention to his every word.
"We lost Holden," he said. "There was a carnival at the beach, and I remember putting him on the carousel. I still remember the color of horse. It was yellow. One minute, he's there having a fun time. The next, he's gone."
"That's terrible," she said.
"For five years, we believed he was dead. My wife had lost hope. It put a strain on us, and she even attempted suicide. I found her in the bathtub with slit wrists. I was the first to find her. I thought I was going to lose her," he explained.
"I'm so sorry, John." Angela frowned complacently, reaching for his hand to hold it. "I'm sorry all of that happened to you."
"Scarlett has since seen Holden. As for my wife, I have not heard from her since she gave me the divorce papers. I don't know if Pamela is right, either."
"What do you mean?" Angela asked. "The police psychic, or whatever she is?"
"Yes," John said. "Uh, I made an awful mistake calling her crazy."
"Why?"
"Because she's the only person helping me on this case, that's why," John explained. "At the same time, I question the validity of her visions but then there have been things she's been right about."
"Hm…like the time she said she saw divorce in your future?" Angela asked.
John's eyes widened suddenly—"what?"
"She told me that, but it didn't come from me," she said nervously.
"She spoke to you?"
"Yeah."
"When?"
"She was going to question me about that addict who looked like a zombie," Angela explained, "but then she located a nasty mattress. Iris replaced it…and…"
There was a silence, but in all truth and verity, Angela was remembering that fateful afternoon, seeing Donovan slice his wrist and feed his dead mother, Iris, the blood that was rich with the life-giving properties that saved him twenty years before. Seeing her lips moving, seeing her eyes open for the first time in her eternal life, the way Angela screamed at the sight, was all coming back to her.
"What?"
"N-Nothing," Angela said. "I-I'm fine."
"You don't seem it."
"Look at you and who's talking," Angela replied haughtily. "You need rest. Finish your water. It'll help."
"Well…tell me. Let's be fair," John inquired. "When did you last get drunk, Angela?"
"I can't remember. I was probably way too young to give a damn," she said. "I remember the last time I threw up, though."
"That's odd," John said. "That you can remember that."
"Well…I remember my teen years like it was yesterday. I'm twenty-four now, and I'm healthier than ever. I feel alive, but not whole. There's something I'm after but it is missing and probably way out of my reach," she explained.
"Those years seem so distant, and I'm only thirty-five," he said. "Why don't you get out of working here and reach for it?"
"Because I need to get by for now," Angela said. "I have spent years obsessing over myself, and dangerously at that. I was underweight for a lot of years because of stuff I did. I was bulimic. It was a shame to binge-eat and throw it all up, and I kept to myself about it. My boyfriends knew, though."
"You were bulimic?" he asked. "That's terrible."
"I was overweight as a child, and my mom was verbally abusive about it," Angela revealed. "The only one who got me was my neighbor, but when she died, things got worse."
"You don't ever have to worry about your weight…I…I think you are perfect the way you are," John said, leaning in a bit closer to tilt up her chin.
The kiss they shared at that moment was unrivaled among any other kisses they've shared. Unlike the crashing of lips that served as their first, it was gentle and soft. Angela broke it, looking into his intense blue eyes calmly as she put her hand to the stubbly, lower half of his distinctive face.
"John, can I ask something?" she asked.
"Yes?"
The young, dark-haired woman was hesitant, but the words escaped her lips: "do you still love your wife?"
John sighed, looking away for a moment. He did love Alex, yes, but after Holden went missing, their marriage was deeply strained. He had tried his hardest to support his family, even strictly separating that and work, but it never seemed good enough.
"I can't answer that," he said indefinitely.
"Huh," Angela muttered. "I see."
There was a silence between them, and she looked away; John just admired her dark waves and pale skin, her feline-like blue eyes and her rosy pout.
"I-I'm sorry," she added.
"No, no," John said. "It's okay."
"Well," Angela said, standing up and adjusting the coat over her work uniform. "I should be going. My shift is over. Be sure to rest, John. I'll maybe see you tomorrow."
"Goodnight, Angela," he said with longing in his gaze. As she left the room and closed the door, he laid back on the bed, his head on the pillow as he sighed. The ceiling, plain with a light fixture above it, seemed to fade as he closed his eyes for rest.
As Pamela opened her eyes, she found herself laying on a sofa in an unfamiliar hotel room within the Hotel Cortez. This was not Room 64, the one she was staying in, and the sensation she felt in the back of her head was unpleasant by all forms of measure. Her eyes seemed weary, and when she sat up, she rubbed her eyes and looked around. It seemed normal; no, too normal, of an environment considering she had spent four hours unconscious from a rap the back of the head with a blunt object.
She stood up and stumbled, putting her hand on an armchair and the back of a sofa for support. There was a record player or phonograph playing statically, and she immediately recognized the tune as Goodbye to Love by the band she loved and adored so much, the Carpenters. She sluggishly walked over to the record player, listening to the lyrics carefully through the heavy static and feedback:
"All the years of useless search
Have finally reached an end
Loneliness and empty days will be my
Only friend
From this day love is forgotten
I'll go on as best I can…"
As she made her way to a collection of shelves bolted to the wall, which displayed numerous vintage and modern art pieces, she listened to the distinctive Jimi Hendrix-like guitar solo as the next part of the song. Touching one of the art pieces, she tried to get a glimpse of who it may have belonged to, but nothing came; no visions, no sensations, nothing.
Her intuition was completely blank.
"Ugh," she groaned.
"Take any piece you like. None of it has any meaning for me," a refined male voice said. "You look like you need a drink."
Pamela slowly turned around to see a man in an expensive tuxedo, standing tall and erect with a small glass of lime green-colored absinthe in his square-shaped hand. He was quite handsome with a charming exterior, his dark hair in a classic male hairdo from the early 20th-century with a thinly mustached upper lip and intense, soulless dark eyes that were more frightening than charming, but extremely magnetic.
"W-Who are you?" she asked. "Have I met you?"
"I would remember you if we did meet before, but allow me to introduce myself," he said cordially with a sip of his absinthe. "I am James Patrick March. Born October 30, 1895. I built this hotel from determination and being at the epitome of success."
"I…I'm confused. I'm sorry," Pamela said wearily. "I…think you're dead."
"Indeed."
"It doesn't surprise me. Your name sounds familiar, too," she added.
"You may have heard from me."
"People died here, sir," Pamela said. "My partner and I are here to investigate."
"John?"
"Yes, how did you know?" she questioned.
"You're asking me?" March snickered. "Did that wrap on the back of your head warp your mind?"
"I was hit?" she asked. "Damn, it hurts. I…I can't even locate John. I can't see where he is."
"He left my party hours ago," March said. "He went off with some dark-haired hussy. Quite beautiful, but still very rude of him to just leave the party."
"What party?" Pamela asked with confusion, curious as to why she hadn't foreseen it with her psychic talents. "What about the other guests?"
"They're staying the night here," March said.
"Mr. March!" a voice called out along with the sound of whimpering and crying. "I found this one in the bar, sir. She was prostituting herself."
Miss Evers, the maid in close accomplice with the man in the tuxedo and someone Pamela had seen before, tossed the woman on the bed complacently. Her facial expression was detached, and the woman was tightly tied at the wrists and ankles struggling to get out of her confines. Mr. March just smiled at the woman in the vintage maid uniform and took what looked to be a revolver from her—Pamela went to the woman and tried to undo her ties.
"Oh my god," she muttered.
The moment her fingertips touched the binding on the woman's wrist was the minute March cocked the revolver and pointed it to Pamela.
"Get away, you," he hissed, his near-black eyes fuming. "There's nothing she won't do for a dollar. She's a waste of air."
"What the hell! Stop it!" Pamela said, approaching the man and trying to get the revolver away from him to prevent the woman's death. "What is wrong with you?!"
He gave up control, which made her face turn from fear to surprise.
"Why don't you take her last breath, then?" he offered. "It's exhilarating!"
"No!"
"You know that deep down," he cooed in a sultry whisper, "you want to kill."
"You're crazy!" Pamela exclaimed. "I'm not shooting her, and neither are you!"
"You got to go out and grab life!" March barked, taking the revolver and quickly aiming for the woman on the bed.
BAM-splat!
"NO!"
The woman who was ushered in by Miss Evers was now dead from a single shot to the head by Mr. March's revolver. Pamela let out a scream of disgust, sickened by the sight of splattered brain matter and broken skull fragments having stained the perfectly good linens upon which she had been laying before.
"JESUS!" she shouted again. "What the fuck?! You're a psycho! I could have you arrested, you know!"
"Miss Evers?" he called, seeing she was still present as she obediently came to his request.
"Yes, sir?"
"Replace the linens," he ordered.
"Right away, sir," she said. "I'll get the ammonia. What a glorious stain!"
"Glorious, my ass!" Pamela shrieked. "I'm out of here!"
In distress, Pamela turned around and ran from the strange hotel room. She put out a hand to help her psychic senses locate Room 64 in the long, winding hallways that seemed to go in circles as she ran by each door and number—it was to no avail. Her psychic vision seemed totally dead from being hit so hard by Tristan hours before.
She kept running until she sought refuge in the elevator, which didn't seem to move at all as she pressed all the buttons. Was she stuck? Was she in any form of danger?
No one else was there—who knows? All she knew was that she was going up, gradually and slowly.
John had a lot of trouble sleeping that night; he felt like he was being driven wildly mad, like mad dogs eating and tearing at his brain with razor-sharp teeth and clawing at his psyche like nails to a chalkboard. He unwittingly clawed at his scalp, but when he finally opened his eyes to what was around him, he felt a strange presence behind him as he lay restlessly in his bed. Out of suspicion, he flicked on the lamp and as he looked to the ceiling, he felt a chill breath next to his neck.
Looking to his left, he saw no face but the face of Pamela, laying uncomfortably close and laughing hysterically, as if the best prank in the world was pulled on him.
He gasped and jumped out of the bed, only then realizing he was completely in the nude as he slept. I don't remember undressing, he thought. Pamela turned red, laughing her head off until John finally said something.
"Where the hell have you been?" he asked forcefully. "What the hell are you doing in my bed? Your bed is over there!"
"Oh my god, relax," Pamela giggled. "I'm just messing with you."
"Why am I naked and you're not?" he questioned, noticing that she was dressed in her silky, cloud-print bell-bottom pajamas and an old white blouse made of gauze fabric.
"You tell me," she said. "Here you are, stripping off your clothes and shit."
"I…I don't get it," John muttered. "Are you okay?"
"Oh I'm better than I've ever been," she said with a smirk, sitting on the other edge of the bed.
"You're not yourself. Have you been drinking?" he asked.
"No, but clearly you have been. Absinthe, I see?" Pamela predicted, brushing her palm against the back of her head. "I mean, after that wrap to the head, my psychic vision was messed up but now it's coming back. Isn't it a miracle?"
"You don't get it, Pamela. I saw terrible things," John said, sitting on the bed with her on the other side.
"I did, too. You don't have to tell me," she responded, fixing the front tie of her old white blouse she wore for a pajama top.
"I couldn't stop them."
"Stop who?"
"Jeffrey Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, Aileen Wuornos, Richard Ramirez—"
"What?!" Pamela asked incredulously and with utter confusion. "Damn, you really were under!"
"I'm not joking," he said nervously, biting his lower lip and growing more frantic and distressed in his tone, "I'm dead serious. I saw them! They stabbed a man to death, there was blood everywhere! Sally brought him in, and James March was there, and he's the killer! He's doing all this!"
That was it—everything compiled in his head, stressing him to the point of a small-scale breakdown complete with tears and clutching the front of his raven black hair. He felt Pamela's hand go to his shoulder, trying to console him as he wept and grunted, hyperventilating his way to calmness as he felt her strangely-cool touch against his skin.
"I guess I'm not the only crazy one," she whispered to herself.
"What?"
"Now, consider us even," Pamela added, "so tell me what you saw."
"I'm not crazy," he muttered.
"Just tell me, John. Get to the point," she ordered complacently.
"I…I was invited to Devil's Night. I was invited by Mr. March. When I came here, I found a tuxedo on my bed and I put it on and went to the room where it was taking place. It's n-not far from this room, actually," John began.
"Yeah?"
"Gacy, Dahmer, Wuornos, Ramirez and Zodiac were all there, Pamela. I shit you not. T-They had to have been actors…t-they posed as them pretty damn well," he recalled. "Dahmer was brought in a guy. He drilled holes in his head and put acid in his brain. Then Sally brought back a guy high off heroin and they all stabbed him. I couldn't stop them. Gacy cuffed me to the chair…"
"So…what next?"
"I…I felt someone slap me…i-it was that maid…"
"Angela?" Pamela asked.
"Yeah. Her," John concluded. "She brought me here. I…I think they all drugged me."
"The maid didn't drug you," Pamela said, "she helped you, but that isn't something you don't already know. You just told me, for christsakes."
"No…I…I don't remember what happened…I looked at her and saw that the room was dark and empty. It looked so run down. She had to uncuff me. Gacy did that," he added. "That man…I couldn't save him."
"Don't worry about it. Absinthe fucks with your head, John. You should know that more than anyone," she said, giving his shoulder one last pat. "You should have been where I was."
"Where?"
"Uh…I was hit on the back of the head," Pamela said. "I was knocked out. I didn't remember much, and I still don't, to be honest. I did wake up in a room, and it was weird. I didn't remember it. I hear that song…Goodbye to Love…oh, I love that song…"
She cleared her throat, crooning the song softly:
"I'll say goodbye to love,
No one ever cared if I should live or die,
Time and time again—"
"STOP!" John screeched, startling his partner. "Damn it! Please!"
"Geez, relax," she scoffed. "It's a good song. Awful quality on the record player, too. I don't remember putting it on, either. I walk over to a shelf with all…these…uh, modern art pieces. I see Mr. March there…his maid brings in a hooker from the bar, apparently…h-he shot her. Brains went everywhere, John…I'm not crazy. If I am, then you are, too."
"Jesus," he muttered under his breath. "What happened after?"
"I ran away."
"Where?"
"To the elevator. I…I don't remember much after that," Pamela said. "The elevator just kept going up and up, higher…it's weird because this room, Room 64, is on this floor but I was going higher up, and I don't know how I got here, either."
John just shook his head, looking at her with bewilderment. The fact that she was not aware how she got to Room 64 was beyond him, surreal; maybe she was not real at all? How did she come to her senses so quickly about forgiving him for outright insulting her? Was she going through the same mental turmoil as he was? So many questions were unanswered, making him think so much that his head began to ache. The splitting pain felt like a migraine, and as he reached down to find his boxers, he felt like falling over due to dizziness.
THUMP!
"Ah," he grunted, feeling his body hit the carpeted floor with his boxers halfway up his legs. He struggled to pull them up, but didn't even bother to lift the band over his knee before calling for his partner to help him.
"I-If it's not too much to ask, please help," he said assertively, out of breath as he kicked a leg outward. "Pamela?"
There was no answer.
"Pamela?"
Still no answer, not even the sounds of her clothing moving against her form or the noise accompanying moving feet. He grunted with frustration.
"Pamela! Where'd you go?!"
The room was dead silent—no one was there.
When he finally got up, he rubbed his forehead and dug his thumbs into his eyes, covering his lids as he stood steadily on two feet and sighed. Once he didn't feel dizzy anymore, he looked around the suite of Room 64 and saw that nobody was there, not even Pamela. There we go again, he thought, was she even real? Is it the absinthe acting up still?