Chapter Seven: The Road Beyond
To say that the hotel was creepy would have been redundant. But it was creepy; the whole place made my stomach drop. It seemed too familiar. As I climbed the stone stairs toward the grand double doors (which were no longer grand and covered with what smelled like mildew and felt like slime), I was certain I'd been here before.
(But how was that even possible, D? Have you lost your mind?)
I started to laugh, with no idea why. I was sick to my stomach. I looked down at my hands, and saw my shiny gun.
I entered the slime-covered hotel. Something was happening inside of me, and I felt powerless to stop it, and hated myself for it. I'd never felt powerless...ever. I looked around the lobby. Quiet, dark, with a thick scent of ozone. Now what?
Just to my left was a map of the hotel. I took it down, ripping it off the walls (which were wet, disgustingly enough) with a slick ease. I headed for the front desk. It just seemed like the right thing to do...not that I expected anyone to be there, but more likely because that's the first thing I always did when I went to a hotel. Creature of habit—maybe it would pay off and there would be some paperwork or something to help me get out of this mess.
I walked over to the counter and looked around. The front of the desk was messy with paperwork but not where I could reach it. I tried the door to get to the other side. Locked.
Fuck it. I kicked it in. Well, I tried to kick it in—I'd never kicked in a door in my life and had no clue how one actually did that. My foot slipped and I fell on my ass. My hands didn't catch me, and I was still holding the gun, which happily shot off at the door, hitting just to the side of the knob. The door popped open.
I put the safety back on the gun, got up, dusted off my butt, and entered the office area.
Much of the paperwork was wet, and covered with a dark red ink, and I couldn't read much of it. Useless. I turned around to look at the room cubbies. Funny. No keys. Except one.
Room 213.
I stared at the key for a long time. I'm not sure how long I stared at it. This couldn't be good.
My hands began shaking, and I felt waves of dizziness come over me. I shuddered, stomach dropping. I was going to vomit. I swallowed it down, and forced my hands to steady. I breathed. Again. And once more. 'Slow down, D,' I thought, 'just slow the hell down.' Was I really going to have to go to this room?
I looked through the front desk office drawers. I found a flashtlight, some batteries that tested okay (love that little strip on the side), and a letter.
The letter was addressed to...ME. I opened it.
D,
I'm here, and I have a surprise for you. Come to room 213, love, and all your questions will be answered.
Try not to fret, D. All of the answers that don't lie with me lie within. I know all this is scary and rather off-putting, to be certain, but you have nothing to fear.
Love,
H.
I sighed. This should have been expected somehow, I thought. I closed my eyes for a moment. Opening them, I looked down and saw that the words were still there, still written in Howard Croft's exacting hand. I put the letter down on the table. With a much steadier hand, I took the key and headed to 213. This was not going to be easy. The staircase from the lobby had been destroyed (it looked like something had chewed it up until it collapsed). I was going to have to take the service stairs...if those were even in order...
I went out the back door from the office and turned on the flashtlight in the enveloping darkness. The arc of light gave me a disappointing foot or so visibility. Even the darkness here seemed alive, and eating everything in sight.
Fortunately the stairs weren't too far away, and even more fortunately still I had stumbled my way in the right direction. I placed one foot on the stairs when I heard it, and I stopped still.
It was a screech. I little screech of a tortured baby animal...or human. Whatever the hell it was, I had no intention of meeting it here, nor its mother. I ran up the stairs as fast as my legs would carry me. My legs carried me right into it.
The little noise maker, my flashtlight revealed, was actually about six-feet tall. It was unsurprisingly shiny with wetness on its silvery skin, and covered sporadically with a slick black liquid, and where there was no silver skin or black liquid, there was a rotten-smelling, red, sticky-looking substance, which, presumably, was blood. I would have vomited, normally, but it was heading toward me. It had no eyes, no mouth, nose, or ears. Just skin stretched over a head. It had arms, though, and it was reaching for me. I had no intention of finding out if it had a mouth—I just aimed my gun and started firing. It took four shots to take it down, and then, I had to kick its head area. Kick, kick, kick, kick, kick. A sickening splat and what was left of its 'head' shattered under my foot. Great, now my foot was stuck in rotting goo. That was the moment I puked.
I shook off my foot, covered in goo and my own stomach bile, and headed up the rest of the stairs. It was quiet.
I found room 213. I put the key in the lock and turned it. Opening it slowly, I stepped inside.
Shutting the door behind me, I stared at a clean room, with the bed freshly made. There was nothing sinister about this room. No smell of ozone, no fog...everything about it was clear. Howard stood, his head bent, facing away from me, his slim frame smaller, somehow defeated. He was wearing a brown sweater vest over a white shirt, and light brown pants. His feet were bare. He looked clean and out of place. The whole room looked out of place. He was looking at a body on the floor.
I crossed the room to face him, and the body. There, sprawled out on the floor, was his son. I recognized the square-jawed good looks of his only child, lying cold on the navy blue carpet with the gold coin design. His black hair was slick, he was naked and wet. He looked like he'd been pulled out of the water.
Howard was quiet, tears streaming down his face. "My son died in search of the truth about his mother, you know."
"Howard, please, you need to let go of this," I started, taking a step forward, reaching out to him. "You've suffered enough."
I started to take his hand, then retracted it. He looked up at me, still crying.
"I can't, D. I can never let go. I know the truth now. You killed him."
I tried to smile, but more of a sneer crossed my face. "What nonsense is this, H?" I started to feel jumpy. I had to leave. This didn't make any sense. "Why would you say something like that?" I felt something inside of me break...a little 'tick' sound in the back of my head, then, a feeling of strange euphoric relief filling my body. I giggled a little. Howard, face twisted with rage, stepped over his son's body (perfectly still in that strange, supine position, I half expected it to move, but it didn't), and came toward me, hands outstretched. I'd never seen him so ugly, so twisted, his eyes bloodshot with tears, glasses off, bored into me. I felt heavy and stupid under their scrutiny.
"You killed my son!" Howard exclaimed. I raised the gun. I pointed it at him, but I didn't fire. I didn't want to do it.
"I didn't. I killed the monsters!" Howard came toward me, his arms not arms, but tendrils as those of a squid. He grabbed me, and I tried to struggle against him, but he held me strong. I dropped the gun, and the Howard-monster dropped me. I ran from him, picked up my gun, and tried to get away. He returned to normal, standing over his dead son-monster (whatever the hell it was—it looked like his son, sure, but to me, it was just another monster), and looked at me. Tears streamed down his face.
"You knew he was going to take over and get rid of you. You knew, and you couldn't bear it."
What the hell was he talking about? "Yes, Howard, I knew, but that's not why I shot him...I...he...we..." I stopped. "H, I killed him because I didn't want him to come between us, and that's what he did. He tried to rape me at that party, and when I wouldn't cave, he threatened to take me down. I didn't want to lose everything I'd ever earned over a dick! A dick, Howard, your son was a psychotic asshole who would have made us lose everything!" I was babbling and screaming at the top of my lungs. All H would do was just stare in return. A stupid stare. Finally, he spoke.
"I knew all the things you had done, D. I knew, and I loved you anyway. But then you TOOK MY SON AWAY! I knew you had to pay, Delia. So here you are. Here is where you will PAY." His tendrils came back, and he flicked one like a magician on stage. "Now, Delia...remember."
Suddenly, I remembered everything as it had really happened. I did love Howard, and he loved me, as much as two people with our backgrounds can love each other (considering 'our people' view everything as a type of business transaction, that is). I remembered hoarding him greedily, putting ground glass and high doses of potassium in his wife's wine. Watching as a kitchen maid took the fall for my careful planning. Her fingerprints everywhere, the bottles of potassium under her bed (wiped clean of my fingerprints), her crappy legal counsel, her conviction, her death at the hands of the state. Attending Mrs. Croft's funeral, standing by Croft, our affair. His son, catching on, accusing me, wanting to be part of it, my shooting him and dumping his body in the Hudson. The cops finding the floater and blaming the mob—hell, they hadn't even questioned me, lazy, stupid, fucking pigs.
My greed led me to murder—my greed for Howard's real affection, to have him all to myself. my greed for money and power. My blind desire to have everything I felt I deserved, even if it meant killing one or two people in the process, and gladly letting others take the blame. I looked over my shoulder, into the mirror. Where I should have been standing was a hideous freak—a thing that looked human, but covered in odd bark and shiny skin, and it—I—was holding a gun. When I looked down, though, I looked like myself again.
The mirror showed the inside. The real inside.
I ran as Howard transformed. I knew what I had to do. I had to end this.
Dropping the gun, having lost the flashtlight earlier, I ran, empty-handed, to Toluca Lake. I ripped off my clothing. Nude, I jumped into the lake and swam out as far as I could go. I waited. I went under. I breathed in deeply. Water, cold, slimy, stinging wetness filled me.
Then, something slithering grabbed my leg. Howard, transformed? It pulled me close, and took me into the depths of the lake...whatever it was. I couldn't see.
Silence and darkness washed over me. 'So this is what it is to die...and this is what it means to pay for my...sins...karmic debt...ill-gotten gains...whatever they are...it doesn't matter, it's all the same, no matter what it's called. It's retribution, plain and simple.' Suddenly, there was nothing but darkness, fear, and cold silence. In just moments, I was gone.
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Road trip. I'd been on the road for a solid 72 hours—living on alternating sips of Mountain Dew, Red Bull, and coffee, sleeping only when necessary (oh, about every 14 hours or so). Even with sleep, that long, buzzing tiredness started to set in, and I knew that, sooner or later, I'd have to find a rest stop again and actually rest—or I could nod off at the wheel like a total jackass—then I'd rest for good. No point in wasting a perfectly good month-long vacation winding up in a crematorium. 2800 miles made for a long trip, and I was of the school that sleep was a necessity for sanity.
Now that I look back on it, maybe I should have tried to stay awake.
I should explain how I got here, even though I'm not entirely all that sure…
I had (yes, had) a really high-pressure Wall Street job. I was one of the most successful young women on Wall Street, and certainly the most successful woman at Wynston & Armley. At the tender age of 27, I was promoted upon receiving my MBA, and made a great token woman on the board of eight directors (two other women had made it, but they were 25 years my senior and I was in charge of them). I played the game, and I played it well. I did anything I could to get that position—and yes, I think I fucked every chairman there to get that goddamn promotion, and would have fucked the chairwomen, too, if I'd had to (they sure looked like they needed a good lay). Four years, and four men to a promotion as Chairwoman Queen Bitch from Hell, otherwise known as Delia Wallace. But I could've gotten that promotion without screwing anybody (in a manner of speaking)—in just four short years, I made millions for the company, been published and printed and profiled in countless Finance Magazines, and was known around the Board at the "Miracle Million Maker." Hey, these Wall Street types aren't clever, but they can buy and sell clever if they…if we…want to.
But by the ripe old age of 28, I was burned out. Being the Chairwoman on a board of Chairpeople isn't easy for a seasoned pro, let alone a kid like me who's never really seen the world outside of the great big money filter known as New York City. But hell, some kids have all the luck. I was good at buying the right bonds, skirting the law (in other words, doing the job my way and then turning around and making it all look legal), back-stabbing, getting meddlers and other peons fired, but most of all, I've always seemed to have this weird ability to push others into getting what I want.
I wanted to be rich by my own hand, retire at 30, invest, and spend the rest of my life being and independently wealthy bitch, whoring all over the globe.
And I did it. Sure, I had more than my share of luck to begin with—rich family, only child, good schools—but a lot of the strings after that, well, I pulled those on my own.
But I was tired of it. Done playing, ready to go home to my dead parents, move back into our large but humble family estate, and be done with it. Better than suicide—now there's a way to retire (yeah, right).
It seemed no one wanted to let me go for a while, and I didn't think I'd be able to leave just like that. But I did. I left for a month's vacation, and I didn't intend to go back.
This felt familiar...
END (Begin again at Chapter One).
