SHOUTOUT goes to NikkiFoxy86 for being the first to correctly guess the inspiration behind Pamela's fate in the story. The case of Alisa Lam was a crazy one, and still unsolved to this day, three years later. Phew...without further ado, enjoy!
~ chapter thirteen ~
That night, Pamela could have sworn she had heard the sound of a screaming man as she roamed the halls of the Hotel Cortez, aimlessly and with her eyes glued to the path in front of her. The sounds of footsteps and laughing children and more screams muddled her thinking as she stopped to take a break. Her legs weren't tired, but even in death, her psyche was extremely disturbed by this place.
This is fucking with my head, she thought, and John isn't in Room 64. Where is he?
When she rested her back against the left wall of the hallway, she looked down and saw two beautiful blonde women coming down the hallway in perfect sync. They each were wearing hats, but they both looked different in the face. Pamela focused on one, her psychic abilities immediately picking up Swedish heritage as she saw her dressed in a gray graphic t-shirt, black skinny jeans, ballet flats, and layered necklaces with a black fedora to top off her look. Her hair was golden in color and wavy, and there was a smile in her face that seemed deceivingly delightful.
The other looked similar, her soft face composed of light blue eyes and a naïve countenance. Her hair was styled in hairspray curls with a light straw floppy hat atop the crown of her head. She was dressed more provocatively than the young woman next to her, with short shorts made of denim, a white tank top tucked under the top buttoned band, and a floral kimono top as an outer layer and a fringy hem. Pamela smiled at the nostalgic-seeming outfit piece, but not at what they said—in fact, it creeped her out more than anything.
"Can you show us to line at Fast and Furious?" the one with the black fedora asked in a Scandinavian intonation—her accent was thick, and her English was slightly broken.
"Uh…what? I don't know, never been there," Pamela said frankly.
"We are lost in this hotel for so long," the blonde in the straw-hat added in a worried tone. "Can you help us?"
"I can say the same," the police psychic said. "Who are you?"
"I am Agnetha," the one with the straw-hat said, "and this my friend Vendela."
Vendela was the one in the black fedora, and Pamela immediately knew this; her delightful smile made itself known, making her feel unthreatened and safe around these two perfect strangers.
"So…what happened? Are you needing help? I think the elevator is down the way," Pamela suggested.
"You're never going to see Vin Diesel in 3-D because you can't leave this hotel," a voice said.
Pamela turned around, immediately recognizing the man from the fashion show with the vampy lady in white—Donovan. He was dressed in a black button-up dress shirt with casual slacks, walking toward the three women and staring Pamela up and down as if she were some eccentric freak. His penetrating icy-blue eyes caught her attention, and his hair was slightly matted and not in his usual pompadour.
"Uh, c-can I help you?" the police psychic asked.
"I'm talking to you all, actually," the handsome, pale-skinned man said.
"I told you, Agnetha," Vendela said to her friend in a whisper, "we are dead."
"Why do you think you're dead?" Donovan questioned, putting his arms over chest.
"Because everything I put in my mouth tastes like chalk," Agnetha answered.
"I've been getting that, too," Pamela said in addition to the Swede's answer.
"I love food," Vendela said with a miserable whine.
"We'll find a way out," Agnetha said to her friend, taking her arm. "Come."
"Nope." Donovan looked at them, his voice stopping them from turning their backs to him. "Until you find a purpose, you'll be stuck in an unbreakable chain, repeating yourselves over and over again."
Pamela took a moment of silence to think, using her psychic talents to decipher what he meant—"it's the power of the hotel, isn't it?"
"Indeed. Makes you lose your compass," he explained.
"No shit," Pamela sassed, adjusting one of her gaudy, large rings. "I sensed a murder because two guests were being total assholes to the room service girl."
"You lose a sense of yourself," Donovan added with a nod, "of anything, but there are those who have broken out of that cycle.
Pamela put out her hands, closing her eyes and getting attuned with her surroundings. Among the disturbing screams that muddled her mind and the sound of giggling children, she managed to get a feel for what he was thinking in regards to his statement. The two Swedes and Donovan watched her place her hands to the wall and gasp, reciting her visions aloud as an energy came through via her psychic senses.
"I…I see a woman," she stated softly, running her hands softly over the worn, aged wallpaper pasted to the wall in the hallway. "She was…large…and her name was…" She closed her eyes and let it come to her: "Cara…a-an elementary school teacher."
"Wait, I thought I was the only one who knew about that," Donovan cut in.
"I see her…s-she wanted someone to love her back. She came to the Cortez…and…" She sighed sadly, the image of a straight razor coming to her mind's eyes, "slit her wrists…it was a long time before anyone found her body. And…she was…like us."
Agnetha and Vendela stared at each other, and then to the police psychic—"she was?"
"I…I can sense her energy, but she is not here anymore. S-She found her purpose," Pamela explained thoroughly, the visions of an obese, dark-haired woman with excess arm fat dressed in a white short-sleeve nightgown came to her mind.
"Cara enjoyed terrorizing the hotel guests," Donovan said, proving her visions true. "She was quite fond of the pool until they drained it."
The pool, Pamela remembered, knowing it was where she saw the glass coffins where the children were kept.
"That's why there are just glass coffins down there?" the police psychic asked the man.
"What?"
"Oh wait a sec," she added. The vision of the transvestite bartender, Liz, and a woman in black with her blonde hair in an Edwardian Gibson-girl style came to her mind, seeing a sledgehammer held as it beat mercilessly against the glass sarcophagi.
"W-What…is going on?" Agnetha asked in her thick Swedish accent. "I…do not understand what is happening."
"I do. The coffins were destroyed. Why?" Pamela asked Donovan.
"Ramona was right," he muttered, "I don't give a shit about those kids."
"I know you don't," Pamela said, "that explains why you didn't stop them."
"Sir," Vendela interrupted, catching his icy eyes on her as she spoke, "if we find our purpose, we can leave the hotel?"
"No," he said, "You don't get to leave. Never."
"Say it isn't so," Pamela said, sounding sarcastic.
"All you get is a reprieve from the hamster wheel. Eternity can be tedious without something enjoyable to break up the day," he explained, pacing back and forth in the hallway with the ghosts of the three women before him.
"W-What about you?" Agnetha questioned sadly, feeling sorry for him. "What's your purpose?"
"I lost mine when I lost her," he said solemnly, and enough to catch the police psychic's attention.
"Wait a minute…"
Pamela, putting her hands in front of her toward the icy-skinned man, felt her fingertips fade through the shoulders of his shirt. Donovan was confused, looking at her strangely as she gained visions of what exactly he was implying when he said he lost his purpose—it came to her as clear as day, every vision of the event and every exchange of words.
Five weeks before…
Donovan was in shock—having just burst open the doors to the bedroom in the penthouse high up on the building, he felt himself growing more and more furious as he watched his lover of twenty years, Elizabeth, in bed with the male model, Tristan, from the fashion show held by Will Drake. His icy, light blue eyes looked at her with extreme jealousy and hurt, but then to the spiky-haired model with pure hatred. He saw Elizabeth pull back the silk sheets and slip on her slippers and put on her Chinese-patterned bathrobe.
"Tristan," she said calmly to the man in bed with her, "would you give us a minute?"
"Yeah, sure."
Elizabeth made her way to the doorway in which Donovan stood, and his hatred just turned to pure odium, and his pain turned to numbness as he gave a light chuckle.
"I can't believe you turned him," he said, suppressing tears so heavily that they never even fell. "He's a stupid trashy model."
"And you were a pathetic addict dying on a filthy floor," Elizabeth sassed in a hasty whisper. "I didn't want to hurt you. I still don't." She made her way past him, the scent of rose and hyacinth following her trail as Donovan caught the scent he knew so well. "There's no reason this has to end badly."
His eyes widened, and he closed the doors to the bedroom they had shared for twenty years as lovers. He then proceeded to make his way to the credenza, where Elizabeth poured herself some cognac from the decanter into one of the smaller-sized, exquisite glasses made of fine crystal.
"Are you throwing me out?" he asked hopelessly. "W-Why?"
She ignored him.
"I love you," he added.
"And I love you," she said finally, tired and seemingly bored with him, "but you will learn that it isn't our precious virus that makes you, who you kill or who you screw. It's the heartbreaks. The bigger, the better. I know better than any of us."
She poured an empty class full of cognac and handed the drink to him, casually and as if nothing at all happened right then and there, smiling as she gave another direction for him: "I'll let you pack your things."
SMASH!
The glass handed to Donovan shattered on the floor as he pushed it away, suddenly grabbing the pale woman and pinning her to the empty part of the credenza's surface. He could feel her shapely legs snaking around his waist, grinding her hips slowly against him to try and calm his temper. His hands squeezed the sides of her head, nearly having her hair in a firm grip as he seethed relentlessly.
"You said," he grunted through gritted teeth, "when you brought me back from the brink of death, that it was the CLOSEST thing you ever had to a spiritual experience. Is THAT how you felt when you made him?!"
"Honestly," she muttered softly while making genuine eye contact, "it was one of the most erotic moments of my life."
Pamela frowned, looking up into Donovan's eyes and shaking her head. He just stared back, knowing full well that she could see what had recently happened to him. At the same time, she could sense his confusion.
"I'm so very sorry for you," she told him. "Now…you seek revenge."
"I…do, but…how do you know?" he questioned.
"I'm psychic. I also can see someone else in your near future. You know her," she said to him.
"Psychic?" Agnetha asked. "W-Wait, I…want you to see for me, too."
"I only saw how he lost his purpose," Pamela said, turning to her fellow ghost and reaching for the Swede and letting her hands rest on her face, closing her eyes as she did not see the purpose she had to pursue, but the ultimate fate she met with at her death.
The visions presented to her by psychic sight let her see Agnetha, who was extremely pale and weakened, locked in a cage-like iron maiden with her head set straight to prevent her from struggling under the iron bars. The image of a young tow-headed boy sucking on the wrist of the dying woman came to mind, and shocked her, but as she heard exchanges and her cries for help, more came into place.
"Help! Help!" the Swede was shouting.
"Shut her up!" the voice of an older woman scowled. "No one wants to hear her! Did you forget we have cops under our roof staying here?!"
It was Iris, the front desk lady who checked her and John in that day when they began to investigate the strange murders leading them to the hotel.
"They're off at work," another female voice said; it was Sally, the heroin addict. "They won't be back for a while."
Then, Agnetha's whimpers fell silent—she was completely dead, bled out by the towheaded child who sucked the life from her vivid blue veins. He turned his head to Iris and frowned, tapping his tummy with his palm—it was Holden.
"I feel sick," he whined. "She tastes bad."
"That's because she's dead," Iris answered. "Stop it."
"You died…being sucked dry?" Pamela asked, her stomach full of the pangs of nausea at the thought of her blood being sucked and drank completely from her body.
"I…I…"
"And you," Pamela said, looking to Vendela to make an inference regarding her death, "you must have suffered some kind of blood loss, too."
"I…I…my throat…" she replied, tracing her fingertip over the skin of the front of her neck and showing her a hint of what happened to her.
"Slit throat…" Pamela whispered, looking at the attractive woman. "B-By who?"
"A woman…in white…" Vendela said, struggling to get her English correct. "Red gloves, a tie hat, and…a claw…it slit my throat."
"Wait," Donovan said, "that was…Elizabeth."
Elizabeth, the police psychic thought to herself before speaking: "wait, you both were at that fashion show!"
"Yes."
"That was her? S-She killed you, Vendela?"
"Yes."
"Oh dear…" Pamela nodded in understanding, looking at the three before her and stepping away to assess the situation, knowing he was going to get even for what this woman did: "and you plan for revenge?"
"With Ramona, yes," Donovan said, "but I don't think you can help."
"Why the hell not?"
"You're, uh…a ghost," he responded.
"I've heard better excuses while I was alive," Pamela grinned jokingly. "You'd be surprised. Then again, I think you have more hope with a special someone, anyhow."
"Who?"
"That new girl at the front desk," Pamela said suggestively, "Angela is her name."
"I-I haven't seen her in hours. Where is she? D-Do you know?" he asked, suddenly getting frantic at the sound of her name, remembering her lovely appearance.
"Two floors down. There's been a death," she stated vaguely. "But not her own."
Liz had remained in the room with Tristan, crying his eyes out as he returned to sit on the edge of the bed in his hotel suite. He covered his messed-up face, smudged kohl, mascara and all, to avoid looking at the hours-old, stiffened corpse covered in a generous amount of blood at the wide, deep wound in his throat. Even his aged hands were covered in dried, clotted blood, but he didn't pay any mind to it. He sobbed, knowing full well that the love of his life was now gone, slaughtered mercilessly for his betrayal to Elizabeth. He suddenly heard a knock at the door, he looked up with beet red eyes, not knowing how to feel be it angry or frightened.
"G-Go away!" he shouted, still sobbing.
"Uh…Liz?" I-It's Angela…"
"Y-You c-can't be in here…I…I…"
Crrreeaaaakkkkk….
The door was still open and unlocked, much to his surprise, and he saw Angela peek in gingerly. He was shocked to see that she had overlooked Tristan and looked straight at him instead as he sobbed his heart out over the loss of his love.
"Liz?"
Angela then turned her eyes down to the horrific sight, her feline-like gaze widening at the sight of a dead Tristan, arms sprawled out on the floor like he was nothing more than a ragdoll. His hair was matted and stuck together with the blood that had spurted from his throat, and his clothes were saturated in the red, sanguine fluid. Angela quickly slammed the door shut and leaned her back against the nearest wall, putting her hands to her mouth and looking at Liz, who sobbed and whined loudly.
"I…I told her…" he choked up.
"About…how you…loved him?" Angela stammered nervously.
He nodded, and without any further hesitation, the brunette ran to the edge of the bed and comforted Liz, who cried on the shoulder she offered him to continue crying on. Angela got some blood on her light blue blouse, but she didn't mind it, not after the event with the hipsters and how she murdered them out of pure rage and annoyance.
"It's okay…I…I am so sorry, Liz," she told him.
"I loved him…s-she said that…h-he was mine and…I could have him…and bury him!"
He wept so hard his head ached, and Angela just stared him straight in the eyes, seeing his makeup entirely ruined and his trademark Egyptian eye shadow smudged across the bridge of his nose and down to his cheekbones.
"I can imagine…but…w-what do you want to do?" she questioned. "I…I don't think you should, uh…p-put his body down the chute…"
"I want the Countess to pay," he said with an unusual temper in his voice not typical of his normal behavior. "After what she just did to me…"
"Then I may have a solution, Liz," Angela offered.
He took his hands away from his face, looking at her with the most solemn, serious look she had ever seen on him. She saw his lower lip tremble, the smeared nude gloss gathered in the corner of his mouth as he finally began to speak again.
"Y-You do?" he asked.
"Yes. We need to see Donovan," Angela said, standing up and looking down at the newly-decomposing body of Tristan. "He has a plan."
"W-Will Iris be involved?" he asked hopelessly.
"Yes, but…" Her feline-like blue eyes stared down at the festering wound in Tristan's open throat, "first order of business…w-we need to…uh…"
"I don't care," Liz said. "The chute is all we have. I-I cannot leave to make arrangements at a funeral home. The Countess won't pay, and—"
"You know what?" Angela rhetorized with aggravation, "FUCK the Countess! He deserves a proper—"
"Keep your voice down!" Liz shouted at her. "She could be roaming these halls, seeking to hunt me down!"
There was suddenly a wilding beat of her heart in trepidation, thinking of what she had heard about the enigmatic Countess, Elizabeth. The room was struck with silence minus the sound of small flies starting to fly around Tristan's body. The silence lasted for all but a moment, but Angela looked to a mournful Liz and sighed, whispering softly.
"First, we have to do something about him," she hushed, referring to the corpse on the floor. "Second…we go to Donovan."
So the two embarked on their pursuit to dispose of Tristan's body, helping each other lift his stiff, repulsively-smelling form up onto a large cart. They placed the white tablecloth coming from the cart over him, and opened the door to wheel him out together, making sure not to be seen as they kept trying to readjust his arms and legs, stiffened but still taken down off the cart surface by gravity. Liz wept softly on the way there, but made sure that his whines were not loud enough for people to hear. Angela maintained quiet between the two, even going as far an ensuring the cart was not loud when they finally got it to the floor's chute.
When they moved to the sides of the cart in the narrow room with the chute, she watched Liz halt her in order to pull back the sheet from Tristan's face. With a sniffle and a tear of goodbye, he reached down and kissed his bloodied, stale, cold lips. Angela nearly cried, her empathy cutting deep in her heart as she watched her friend kiss the man he loved, hearing him whisper one last sweet nothing.
"Goodbye," Liz sobbed, his hand resting on Tristan's dead chest, feeling the absence of a heartbeat. "I-I love you…"
After letting him have a moment to say goodbye, the two removed the sheet and with all their might, pushed Tristan's corpse into the mouth of the chute and down many feet below. She pushed away the cart, hugging Liz tightly and getting more blood on her in the process.
"Let's get you cleaned up," she suggested. "Come on."
"I…I…will not have peace of mind until…the Countess…suffers!" he grunted furiously and vengefully.
"We are going to see Donovan about that. I am going to help you and them get revenge," she vowed. "You are my friend, Liz."
"I am so happy to have you as a friend, Angela," he smiled tearfully. "Thank you for—"
"Shush," she hushed as they made their way down the hallway, "that's what friends are for, you know."
As they made their way down the heavily-geometric hallway arm in arm, they tried to stay quiet, but when the lights suddenly flickered off, Angela gasped in fright. Liz let go of her arm, but remained by her side as he stepped a couple of steps forward, seeing the light flicker back on to reveal what looked to be a disgusting creature small in size and on all fours crawling toward the two.
"Oh no!" he shouted, half-turning away from the small beast.
Angela let out a sharp scream, seeing it charge toward her, speeding unusually fast for its size, and latch onto her leg. In what sounded like an infant's whine, she felt what seemed to be claws or jagged teeth biting into her pant leg, making her fall on her back and scream before realizing she needed to do something to stop it.
"HELP! LIZ!" she screeched.
When the transvestite tried to reach for the nasty, small creature, he felt a claw swipe across his face, incising a gash that only went skin deep. Angela saw him fall back against the wall trying to cover the wound and stop it from bleeding, and with her leg still in pain, she realized that the bottoms of her shoes, skinny kitten heels, were her last and only line of defense. The creature latched on and whined against her right leg, but when she tried to kick it off, he still gripped onto her, digging its claws and teeth into her like she was a prize cut from a butcher shop.
"AHHHH!" she screamed in agony.
Now, she had to think fast—taking off her left shoe, she stabbed the heel into the head of the creature, making it holler in excruciating pain as he finally let her leg go. The creature was clearly bleeding profusely, but Angela knew it needed to die.
JAB!
A stab to its neck, making it bleed more.
SLICE!
The small kitten heel embedded itself in his left lung, making him struggle to breath.
KNOCK!
The final hit to his head finished him off, but that was when Angela's eyes widened in shock, staring at its small form with horror. It was only then she realized that it was a severely-deformed, monstrous infant with an extremely disfigured face. In fact, it didn't even look like a baby—it looked like a fetus with a terrible cleft palate, small black beady eyes with white eyelashes, and sharp teeth, now covered in blood, lining the cleft in his palate. Tears filled her eyes, and she looked to Liz, noticing the huge gash in his left cheekbone and even more blood smeared on his hand.
"Oh my god…" she heard him mutter.
"A-Are you okay?" she asked, clearly in distress with tears in her eyes as she crawled weakly over to Liz, who crouched down to see her leg. Angela pulled her pant leg back and saw deep claw gashes accompanied with teeth punctures in her skin. The skin was livid, almost a blue color mixed with yellow, and there was blood emanating from each injury.
"I'm b-better off than you," Liz said fearfully.
"I-I'll be fine…I-I just need to go to t-the hospital," Angela said weakly.
"No, y-you don't understand. Y-You just killed…t-the son of…" Liz was cut off, biting his lower lip.
"What?" Angela asked with shock.
"That was Bartholomew," Liz answered. "T-The son of the Countess. Y-You killed him…"
Angela's heart nearly stopped as she froze at this notion—that was it, it seemed. She sealed her fate, putting the final nail in the coffin with her killing of Elizabeth's extremely ugly, deformed baby son. Putting her shoe on, she struggled to stand up but had a lot of trouble due to the injuries the baby beast left in her lower leg. The minute she heard footsteps coming down the hallway, the fear was real.
"Oh shit," Angela cried to herself. "I'm dead."
"B-B-Brace yourself," Liz said frightfully. "T-The Countess would punish you dearly if she knew it was—"
Angela took another look, and down the hallway, she could vividly see Donovan, Iris and Ramona approaching them. The man's eyes widened, seeing the blood saturated into the strangely patterned, geometric floor and the injuries apparent on Angela's leg. Ramona, still dressed in her patch-fur, colorful jacket and strapless jumpsuit, looked even more in shock but was seemingly angry—but what for?
"Aw, you took my job away from me," she sneered slowly, holding the knife firmly in a grip to her side.
"I-It's was accident…h-he attacked me, and—"
"Little bastard attacked me, too. He was the one in Room 33," Ramona pointed out. "See this gash in my face?" Ramona pointed to her right cheek with the blade, and Angela immediately noticed dried blood clinging to her flawless brown skin. "I see little Liz over there has it, too."
"I t-tried to pull him away from Angela," Liz confessed. "I…I…"
"It's fine," Donovan scoffed, looking at the beautiful woman of color, "you were going to kill him anyways."
"Hmph," he grunted.
"Angela," Iris cut in, looking at her with her dead-looking, serious eyes. "Y-You can't stay here. W-We need to go to the nearest room."
"Mine is down the hall," Liz said.
"Take us there."
The five scurried down the hall, but before long, Alex emerged and began to walk down the hallway. The first thing she noticed on the floor was the pool of blood that saturated the carpet, and next to it was Bartholomew's dead body. She gasped, biting her lower lip sadly as she collected the lifeless, deformed infant into her arms and wrapped in in the black blanket she had on hand with her. Without any words or tears, she took it back to Room 33, where he was permanent resident, and laid him to rest in the bassinet.
a/n
As Angela becomes more and more immersed into the happenings at the hotel, we can only begin to wonder where things will end up! More to come!