The bed of the enemy is soft. After kicking away the surely semen-tainted bedspread, Hap finds himself battling a coaxing temptation to curl up and shut his eyes. Like a vampire waiting for true night, he sets the alarm for later, when he’ll emerge to wander the hotel in the early morning gloom. He’s unable to rest, though, because there is the idea that Tiff is somehow in a room just like this, maybe a few floors away, tied up, beaten, and crying out for him. Assaulted by the what ifs, Hap kicks himself off the bed and does a half circle in the middle of the room.
What can the hotel really be guilty of? A haunted building can only be the problem to a fault. If ghosts are real and there are mystical forces and hungry half-alive things creeping around, then how can that really factor into Tiff disappearing? Aliens are the ones who abduct people. Somebody probably drugged her, dragged her away, and now she’s tied up, being subjected to humankind gone warped. Despite being in the middle of the Miskatonic, Hap is still too far away. Every one of those rooms on each of the eleven floors is a secret that hides behind the mere idea that they are all identical. Identical beds, dressers, old TVs, bathrooms. If a hotel’s got something to hide, then that would be the first lie it leads you to believe.
Apparently, people claim to still hear the sounds of uproarious toasting from secret 1920s parties spitting in the face of Prohibition, echoing through the hallways. There’s also an allegedly fat ghost that follows people around, rattling empty room service trays. The Miskatonic was the subject of one of those paranormal TV shows a couple of years ago, and before coming back to Providence, Hap watched the episode. Twice. The show glossed over the hotel’s history, offering nothing more than Wikipedia facts. Google searches for a toad totem revealed nothing. Hap also tried to look up modern Rhode Island gangs and New England crime families, but really, there aren’t any. Not the Godfather kind, anyway.
Throughout his schooling, Hap’s read a couple of nonfiction accounts of investigative journalists, but did they even take pictures? What’s he thinking, that he’ll go around the Miskatonic with a camera too big for his pocket and put together a big wall chart in his apartment of everything suspicious he finds? No, art and productivity hardly get to mix. Hap’s Canon is a beautiful tool, but it’s too noticeable. He’ll have to use his smartphone for anything he wants to document in crappy, soulless resolution. Maybe a ghost will turn up. God, what if Tiff turns up, pale and shrieking over Hap’s shoulder if he were to take a selfie? He’s got to keep his paranoia in check.
The complimentary stack of notepaper on the dresser has Miskatonic Hotel sprawled across it, and given the way the hotel likes to put its name on trinkets, you’d think it was a Hilton or a Marriott. Beneath the nametag is a logo Hap hasn’t noticed before: Reserve your place in history. Hap shivers as a result of what his imagination can do with those little words. Tiff is gone, and anything can be made sinister. This whole night could be a sign that Hap is getting sick in the way orange juice and Nyquil can’t do a thing to solve.
There is no such thing as a Providence detective agency, but that’s what Hap needs. Why couldn’t the police just trace Tiff’s phone? He tries typing online: Where is Tiffany Lorice? He winces when her picture pops up next to a brief article in the Providence Journal.
Wait a second. Would the Journal be interested in his story? The opinion of the missing boyfriend and his suspicions about the Miskatonic. Hap could get a real reporter, a real investigator, to look into this. Maybe he could even get in touch with a detective from Boston or someplace. Hap flicks over to the Journal’s website, bumping out an email to their “Got a Story?” section. As a paranoid backup plan, he sends an email to himself that states he is spending the night at the Miskatonic. If he joins Tiff in the land of the missing, then maybe somebody will find it.
As if in answer, there is a thump and a strangled cry from the room adjacent to Hap’s. Finally, what he’s been waiting for. In his excitement, Hap knocks his camera to the floor before he realizes it’s just some couple having sex. His heart is pounding for nothing, and this is nothing. It sounds like rough sex, but that’s definitely pleasure that he’s hearing. Old walls must be thin.
Mixing passion and a paycheck was something Hap always wanted. Tiff lucked out both managing an event and attending much of the Astro-con scattered across the convention halls throughout the city. He attended a few events with her during the day, preferring the slideshow presentations to the discussion panels, if only for the kinds of pictures where content holds more power than anything. He asked Tiff if there was some way he could shoot the event and slap the pictures together on a blog to add flesh to his boney resume, but she told him the people running the show had their own camera crew for some exclusive magazine. Of course, Hap called her out on how stupid it was that she couldn’t even ask for him. And Tiff, when you piss her off…oh boy. Hap’s pillow wasn’t thick enough to hold over his ears as she cussed him out.
Hap’s watch chimes one thirty, and he can’t wait another minute. It’s a Wednesday; the city’s hardly alive on weekends, let alone now. If someone catches him, then he’ll tell whoever asks that he was looking for a maid’s closet to find some pillows. Nothing suspicious about a fool in search of comfort.
As his door clicks shut behind him, he runs his hands over his room key, looking down the hallway first to his left, then his right—no men hauling unconscious girls over their shoulders, no wispy spirit orbs dipping behind a corner. So far, the worst part about the Miskatonic is a faint fishy smell in the bathroom, the origins of which Hap is happier not knowing.
In the elevator, there’s the heart-swelling word Ballroom next to the button for the fourteenth floor. His finger can’t press the button hard enough. What is he looking for, a bloodstain? Fingernail scrapings along the walls? Strands of blonde hair?
As the elevator slowly rises, Hap eyes a button marked Service Station, and another marked The Garden Room. The elevator comes to a stop, and the doors creak open—he will do this floor by floor and room by room if he has to. Before him stands a pair of grand double doors. Above them is a gold plaque with Ballroom scrawled across it in fancy, cursive lettering. What’s behind door number one?
Hap nearly slips across an oddly moist carpet embroidered with an ornate pair of eyes, similar to the decorations scattered throughout the lobby. The doors are surprisingly unlocked. His eyes meet a vast expanse of darkness, save for the ever-burning bulbs of the picturesque city beyond a number of massive windows. Hap flicks out his phone, using its light to find a switch along the closest wall.
Illumination beams down, revealing a number of red-cloaked dining tables. The blood would blend in here. The domed walls of the ballroom are of carved and oaken wood, splashed with a faded green paint that almost looks like moss. Dancing, horned men with goat legs are carved into the wood. The men have furry, bare chests; some even hold flutes to their lips, while others play harps. Between every seven goat-men bleeds a gnarled, drooping face with curling antlers and tight, yet peaceful, lips slashed across its jaw. Hap tries to imagine the sprawling parties this room has seen over the past century. People back then wanted to be gods more than ever, maybe because their collective imagination was limited to fables and religion. Now rich people stroke their egos instead with tennis courts, Corvettes, and Gucci. The Miskatonic is immune to the effects of time.
Hap snaps off several pictures, even though the multi-purpose room would surely have been less of a dining room during the ball when Tiff disappeared. There’s a massive chandelier with light bulbs shaped like triangles. It’s worth a few smartphone shots as well. Should he check the floor for trapdoors, blood stains? There is no way Tiff was taken here; someone didn’t pull her through the floor in the middle of a crowded room. Where could she have gone next? Will one of the rooms in this hotel have along its walls a black toad with humanoid arms clawing out of its back? What demented mythology is that thing even from?
When Hap calls the elevator
with every intention of exploring the Garden Room, the doors slink open, and he finds himself face to face with a grinning bellhop clad in the royal attire of the Miskatonic. The velvet bucket hat and matching purple vest look like they might better suit the queen’s guard in Britain.
“You lost, man?” The pimple-faced bellhop grins; he is just a kid Hap’s age, carrying a mostly empty black trash bag by his side. He’s nothing like the stone-eyed punk that dragged Hap out of the lobby a month ago.
“Ah, yeah, I thought there was a bar up here.” Hap feels his face growing hot. If college prepared him for one thing, it’s slipping into bullshit mode on autopilot.
“Shit outta luck. The one downstairs is the best we got, and you’re three hours too late. First thing I learned here was that Providence has nothing for a guy in need of a nightcap. What’s your floor?” The bellhop gestures toward the elevator control panel as Hap sheepishly steps in beside him.
“Seven,” Hap says, causing the kid to snicker.
“Well, at least you didn’t take the stairs.” The kid scratches at the string holding his velvet bucket of a hat to his head.
Awkward silence oozes through the clamped elevator doors. Hap can imagine the bellhop judging him, probably internally calling him a “faggot.”
“Hey, you go to JWU?” The bellhop pronounces it “Jay-woo.” Before Hap can say he just graduated, the bellhop’s smirking, snapping his fingers practically in Hap’s face. “Film analysis, with the Goober.” Soon as he says it, Hap recognizes him as the guy who always wore an obnoxious sweatshirt with golden Greek letters stitched across the front. “What, you can’t wait to go back to school already?”
Hap doesn’t know his name. The class was mostly a lecture with a charmingly eccentric old instructor who used to be a director. It was an easy four credits to cap out his Gen Eds.
“I’m actually, ah….” and Hap’s excuses are sticking together before he comes up with a flimsy justification. “...switching apartments and, go figure, the water’s leaking at the new place, so here I am.” He shrugs and wishes he had been a communications major.
“That’s rough. You workin’ in the city this summer?”
Hap has a brief flash to the email he sent to the Providence Journal. “No, but I’m looking. Still waiting on a few things.”
“Man, late start looking for gigs,” the kid says. Of course, it’s the end of June. Most kids have jobs by now. The elevator grates open.
“Tell me about it. See ya around.” Hap smiles, his best bullshit smeared across his lips as he steps into the hallway. The bellhop refuses to leave, clamping his hands over the elevator doors to stop them from closing.
“You know, I could talk to somebody for you, to work here,” the bellhop says.
“Yeah?”
The kid nods. “We’re hiring here. They’d let you make your own schedule once school starts back up.”
A bell starts ringing in the back of Hap’s mind. What better way would there be to check out this place? “Um. Sure, that’d be cool.” Hap tries to hide his grin.
The bellhop nods again. “Yeah, I know it’s fuckin’ late, huh? Well, my name’s Luke. Ask for me at the desk tomorrow. Lucky me, I’ve got seven hours of sleep before I’m back for the morning shift. But the pay’s not bad, and the tips are solid. Have a good one, man.” Luke waves halfheartedly as the impatient metal doors swallow him up.
Hap’s next step has risen out of the muck. Work at the Miskatonic? That’s a good idea until somebody realizes who he is and kicks him out. He’s not even a student anymore, but Luke wouldn’t have to know that. JWU offers plenty of master’s degrees. The fucking Miskatonic. Hap debates riding the elevators back to the Garden Room, but what if he runs into Luke again? Or worse, what if it’s not a pimple-headed frat boy waiting for him behind curtain number two? No, Hap has to be smart. As he curls up to sleep, he tells himself he’s no longer that same hysterical, sniveling guy who got dragged out of a hotel lobby while sobbing his girlfriend’s name
Somewhere, between heavy eyelids and flickering traces of dream gibberish, Hap imagines all manner of strange things wriggling through his room. At one point, he’s fairly confident the door to the hall is standing wide open and that something is splashing around in the bathroom. He can nearly hear the lock to his door clicking on and off. There is even a moment when he feels a weight on his bed. He imagines the softness only a girl could ever provide, slipping between his arms and nuzzling against his neck.
In the faint blue midmorning light, Hap rips himself upright with a half yell, having imagined somebody standing by the side of his bed, peering over him. The shadows in the room are all but banished. The door is closed, locked like he left it, and all is right with the room and himself.
On top of the alarm clock is the ring he bought Tiff, its dark yellow diamond hungry for a glint of sunshine; it’s been kept in its box for too long. He glances over the room, double checking along the sides of the bed before sprinting into the bathroom, crouched low. Nobody else is here. The ring was in its case, zipped up in his backpack; he was sure of it. Like the pictures of Tiff on his camera, he can’t bear the idea of looking at it; he hasn’t since she disappeared. Not until now.
“Hey!” Hap shouts, looking around the room, studying the ceiling as if an intruder could have crept down from some secret porthole. A whine escapes his gullet as he picks up the ring. Is it just his imagination that it’s warm? “Tiff,” Hap whimpers. He is an active sleeper; who knows what he got up to in the middle of the night? The hotel bed is comfortable. Somebody took that ring out. Tiff isn’t dead; that is a stupid, silly little idea. Hap either took the ring out in some sort of delirium, or a living intruder did.
Sliding to the floor, he leans against the mattress and scrolls through his phone. The message he sent the Journal says it was read at eight thirty this morning. There is no reply. “Fuck,” he mutters and prepares himself to call down to the front desk to see if Luke the bellhop is in. There’s something here. He knows that now. Here’s to the rabbit hole, Hap thinks, as the girl on the other end of the phone picks up.
Chapter 4: The Dripping Mandibles of Dr. Dream
Paul awakens to the sound of a record player emitting a slithering, jazzy rhythm that crescendos into a thump from somewhere beyond his bedroom. Warm things curl naked on either side of him. Before he can claim the surplus of loose flesh and ponder the idea that he doesn’t actually own a record player, the lure of sleep pulls him away.
In a dream place, clearer than a picture, a saxophone plays while he settles back into his cushioned seat. He’s sitting in a convention hall at the Miskatonic, full of fellow sleepers propped up on thick chairs of their own. Before them is a stage bearing a stone coffin of an altar. Something from the twenties intersects with the bits of jazz, echoing faintly through the domed ceiling of the hall.
A crimson curtain ripples softly behind the altar. A milky-eyed black goat emerges and climbs up onto the slab of stone. The animal’s cry is that of a human infant, sending shudders along Paul’s arms.
Clapping warbles out from behind the curtains, creating a cylindrical echo of applause. The sleepers idle silently, breathing in the sounds of unseen approval. The goat collapses, all four of its hooves sprawling out like they’ve been kicked. The crying becomes hysterical.
With a sudden spasm, the goat stiffens. Its back begins to ripple as if a slew of worms are festering beneath its fur, and Paul feels his stomach acid begin to churn up bile. The outline of a humanoid head begins to press taut against goatskin that now stretches like elastic. A head is followed by the wiggling, curvy outline of a feminine being.
Like ripping Velcro, the ripples along the goat’s spine pull apart in a pulpy spritz of blood. What emerges is a woman soaked in gore, wearing the goat’s entrails over a faint purple cloth that glows like fading neon. The woman’s head is thrust into the stump of the goat’s skull as sh
e extends her arms in a syrupy slouch of loose blood.
The shawl of purple is little more than a half-shrugged cloak, defiant of any intent to clothe. The woman spreads her arms wide as the clapping from behind the stage returns once more, alongside cheers and howls of fanatical appreciation. The vomit looming in Paul’s throat is shocked forward by the stirring erection below his belt.
“Faith, a strong thing,” the woman says, her voice a sea of tumbling sand that warps over the faint jazz riffs.
The curtain rises as if yanked up and tossed away by a massive hand from above. There on the stage behind the goat-woman, coated in dusty film, sits a shack, squat and rotting. Upon the shack’s door is a backward crescent moon, dimly shining with celestial light. Hunched over things with painted white faces and crusty orange hair hop along the sides of the moon house, croaking, “Mooshuck.” Clowns on stage congregate beside the structure. The stage fills with their multiplying, writhing forms, and the woman bows her black goat’s head. The jazz record cuts to a jagged, screeching stop as the seats beside Paul slide back in unison. The rest of the crowd stands and turns their glowing faces to him. A thousand faces have become a thousand moons, hungry with a radiant light that wants nothing more than to swallow him.
Paul’s stinging eyes blink back something already slipping from memory, and the softness of his bed has hardened to the point that the doors of sleep are now closed. His nostrils flare and burn as if a cigarette has been lit and blown across his face. There is flesh on either side of him, grazing and dampening his fingertips. Two strangers with ample breasts are draped around his bare arms like silken pillows. A full sized bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue stands empty on his dresser. Though his memory is aerodynamic and full of holes, the only mystery here is how he can be so spoiled.
What used to be a badge of victory and celebration for Paul is now a vague sense of déjà vu and loneliness. To whom could he brag about a threesome these days? Who would even want to hear about it? Even the college kids on Thayer would spit at him.
Moon Regardless Page 4
