“My inspection isn’t done, I’m afraid,” Seymour said, “I still need to see the lower levels. The mechanical rooms.”
Goodwin blanched as he stammered.
“The lower levels? I can take you but there’s nothing down there. Wouldn’t it be better if I showed you the administration offices? You can get a feel for how we’re handling the incoming guests. It’s a state of the art system, and it’s really pretty exciting. I was just telling my wife last night—”
“Goodwin,” Seymour said, snapping shut his notepad. “You’ll need to take me through everything. Without a complete report, the Russo won’t pass and the Ministry will shut it down immediately. Or would you rather I go through Mr. Dressler’s office?”
Seymour remained quiet and waited. The gas station wasn’t important yet it bothered him it was gone. He didn’t like a building that sprang up from nowhere, changing the landscape of the city, and he didn’t like how cavalier Dressler and Goodwin were about their guests’ safety.
Goodwin was no longer smiling when he spoke.
“No need. We’ll go to the mechanical level. Please follow me.”
Goodwin led him down a papered hallway, a gold rococo design traced on the sky-blue walls. They passed beneath an archway made of red brick and too much plaster which Seymour avoided lingering on too long. He did not like this place. Even the floor was uneven, as though the hardwood were warped beneath the carpets. It was strange, though no more than the raised voices that continuously pursued them.
Around the corner waited an ornately trimmed set of elevator doors. Seymour watched the floor numbers flash without being able to make them out; the constant frustration of everything just of out sight beginning to wear on him.
“There’s something off about this place. Things seem to be functioning on the surface, but everything feels unstable and wrong.”
Goodwin shrugged.
“I’m not sure what you mean. It all looks fine to me.”
“Everything is familiar, as though I’ve been here before.”
“That’s part of its charm. It’s a dream hotel. No two people are going to experience it the same way.”
“That makes no sense. You said people had constructed this place together.”
“True, but that’s all they’re doing—dreaming it into existence. It’s just a framework. This place is as much a part of the staff and the guests as it is of the Somnambulists. It’s never the same from moment to moment, because it’s specific to whoever is looking at it.”
“I don’t follow.”
“I noticed you lingered on that archway back there? Was it familiar to you?”
Seymour glanced back. He’d known immediately it was the archway that held the door to his childhood home. It didn’t simply look the same; it was the same, down to the crumbling bricks and excess mortar. It was as unnerving as it was impossible.
“Somewhat familiar.”
“It means nothing to me. But it’s not for me; it’s for you. It’s like the window back in the suite—it reminds me of my son. I can’t explain all the reasons it’s so important because they’re so personal they wouldn’t make sense to you. There’s a nuance that only comes from understanding the full context of every little aspect, and unless you’ve lived my life you couldn’t possibly.
“The rest of the hotel is the same. There are no structures here; only meanings. And the Russo is built on meanings, on those of the other guests, on those of the Somnambulists, and Dressler believes that rather than falling asleep so people can transverse their personal meanings, they can come to the Russo and experience those meanings filtered through the heightening prism of other people. Who knows? Maybe all those different meanings will intersect and create something new, some grand overlap where we all might finally decipher one another.”
“That all sounds fine,” Seymour countered.
“Fine? I think it sounds exciting!”
“But if this is such a utopia, then why do I constantly hear people arguing?”
Goodwin started to reply, but was interrupted by the elevator bell and the doors parting.
They didn’t reveal an elevator car; instead another room. This one a dim living room with an unfinished wooden floor and a pair of torn couches positioned near a large unwashed window. Seymour knew it immediately; he’d sat invisibly in that room listening to his parents snipe at one another many times as a child. The sight of it evoked a desperate need in Seymour to flee.
“What is it?” Goodwin asked.
“This place... this room...” He couldn’t speak, couldn’t find the breath. Goodwin peered inside, his brow furrowed quizzically, then looked again at Seymour and put his hand on the inspector’s shoulder. Seymour stiffened, but didn’t protest.
“Do you still want to go on? We need to pass through here to access the rest of the hotel, but we can always turn back.”
Seymour didn’t know if Goodwin was being sincere, or if it were a ruse to prevent further inspection. Experience told him it was always better to assume the latter.
“I’ll be fine,” he said, steeling himself. “Lead on.”
Goodwin hesitated.
“I need to come clean first.”
Seymour had expected this, but it came at the worst possible time. He was already having trouble holding himself together.
“I told you about Dressler’s plan for the Russo. What I didn’t mention was the problem with it. Well, maybe not a problem. More of a hiccup, really.
“Remember how Dressler brought in the group of Somnambulists culled from all over the world? Well, it turns out that two of them had already found each other. Don’t ask me how. Maybe it was through the classifieds or online. But they did and they started talking. And, as people sometimes do, they hit it off and after a time eventually married. There have been rumors about the sort of places they were dreaming up when they were together. Some people said it was the beginnings of a modest home. Other people said it was actually the makings of a palace. A few of the crazier ones said they were dreaming up a child. No one really knows and the couple couldn’t tell because neither ever saw their labors. They were asleep, after all. But that was fine, because they didn’t really care about houses or children. They were in love. For a while, anyway. Eventually, things went sideways, or so the story goes. Their compatibility didn’t translate to the waking world—their dreams for themselves, for their lives, never meshed—and soon the arguments and the stress became too much. The young couple called it quits.
“Unfortunately for everyone, Dressler knew none of this when he found and individually recruited them to his convoy of Somnambulists, and it wasn’t discovered until after they were hooked into the system and started dreaming their pieces of the Russo. By then it was too late.
“Here’s the problem: even though they haven’t seen each other since before Dressler took them in, somehow each knows the other is there. Maybe it’s instinct, maybe it’s something else, but when they get going...” Goodwin paused. Shook his head.
“Well, I don’t want to say more than I have to. Let’s just go to the mechanical rooms and see how things are. I’m sure they’re going to be fine. I just wanted you to be careful.”
“What do you mean be careful? What’s wrong down there?”
“Probably nothing. But you know how mechanical rooms are. Always a weird buzz or clang coming from someplace.”
Goodwin scuttled off before Seymour could ask more questions.
The door at the other end of the room led to a dark set of stairs that Seymour and Goodwin descended. A light shone continuously from an undetected source above, throwing the steps into inky shadow in either direction. Seymour’s coat grew heavy and stifling, but there was no railing for support and nowhere to rest, so he was forced to push through his discomfort.
Once they reached the ground, Seymour heard the droning buzz Goodwin had mentioned even though Goodwin, himself, could not.
“I’m probably numb to it,” he said. “I’ve hear
d it so much it doesn’t even register anymore.”
But for Seymour the machinery’s buzz shook him from inside out, triggering a cascade of sickening ripples along his back. Yet, despite the drone, that incessant arguing remained, except the voices had become more familiar. And more enraged.
“Where are you taking me,” he asked. Goodwin didn’t stop or slow down.
“Don’t you want to see everything?”
“Yes,” he said. “But why are you suddenly willing to show me?”
“Because you asked. Because even though Dressler told me to keep any problems quiet until they’re resolved there’s no way I can do that. Hiding them only makes them seem worse. I’m showing you so maybe you’ll understand the Russo better and what we might accomplish if you give us the chance.”
They reached a large square door with a giant wheel in the middle. Goodwin turned to Seymour with an uncomfortable look on his face.
“Obviously, guests aren’t allowed down here, so this part of the hotel might appear... unfinished. It’s not a restful place, but between you and me it’s getting better. Dressler’s team sent in a variety of specialists to help the Somnambulists find a harmonious balance. I’m not sure how it all works: brain waves, I think, but I’m no scientist. All I know is things are better than they used to be. Today’s the first day in a while we’ve had any issues. I don’t know,” he laughed uncomfortably. “Maybe it’s because you’re here.”
Seymour was unamused.
“Let’s get this over with,” he said.
Goodwin nodded and put his hands on the wheel. With each turn, the ground twisted by a nearly imperceptible degree, forcing everything slightly askew. Seymour didn’t know if it were real or a figment of the dark. When the metal door swung open, it revealed the small kitchen from Seymour’s childhood. Cabinet doors were cracked and hung partially open from their broken hinges, and the stovetop was caked with hardened spill-over around each of the elements. The refrigerator, too, was browned by old fingerprints, and the floor was carved with long grooves from shifted appliances. The memory of the last time he stood there floated just beneath the surface of his psyche—him banging his teenaged fists on the countertop, demanding attention he would never get. Things in the Russo were becoming too personal.
“The machine room is just up here.”
Beyond the kitchen lay a dim grey room, sparse and clinical. In its middle, arranged in a circle around a tower of black machines and blinking lights, were nine hospital beds, each occupied by a sleeper connected to an intravenous drip and sensors. No one else was in the room but Seymour and Goodwin, and yet the intense shouting now seemed to surround them.
“These are the Somnambulists,” Goodwin said, his voice raised to nearly a yell. “Dressler’s team moved them here to try and stabilize the hotel.”
“Stabilize it from what?”
As if on cue, a tremor rippled up Seymour’s legs. He glanced down for an instant, long enough for his surroundings to transform from his parents’ kitchen into their attic. Yet the occupied beds and machinery remained.
“Things shift more the closer we are to the Somnambulists,” Goodwin shouted. “Their individual dreams haven’t had enough time to synch with one another. It’s stranger down here than anywhere else.”
“How can you possibly think the Ministry would allow this? What kind of hotel are you running here?”
Goodwin appeared both embarrassed and worried.
“It’s—well, like I said, today’s been a bad day.”
Seymour looked at the beds, at each sleeping face in turn. The Somnambulists appeared untroubled, but what did that mean? He might be able to make sense of it were the disembodied screaming to stop. But it wouldn’t. He felt as though he were a child again, lying on the dusty floor of that attic, trying to both hear his parents and yet stifle their sniping voices. Lying in that same musty attic the Somnambulists had occupied now. And as Seymour realized this, the screaming voices became his parents’. He shook his head to dispel the hallucination, then paused.
“Wait. Didn’t you say there were twelve Somnambulists?”
“Yeah. We isolated the couple from the group until we know what to do with them. They’re here and close by, but like I said they haven’t integrated correctly; their dreams aren’t fully synched. The seams between them, and between them and the rest, are starting to show. Thankfully, it’s only happening here on the lower levels where the guests aren’t allowed.”
Rumbling returned to Seymour’s legs, and the shouting voices so like his parents’ filled him with dread. The attic was changing once more, abandoned boxes becoming door frames, dusty lamps becoming framed photographs, different forms melting into another or swapping with an inaudible pop, and after the shift he found the walls had become those from the old house’s hallway, the bedroom doors all ominously closed, but warped enough that light creeped out in thin strips around the frame. He followed them down the hallway toward his parents’ bedroom, the door of which appeared to be flickering rapidly out of place. If the final two Somnambulists were anywhere, they would be in there.
As he opened the door, Seymour prepared himself to find the last two Somnambulists, that young couple, in his parents’ bedroom, dreaming their unique aspects of the hotel into existence, because where else would they be but there? Instead, what he found looked nothing like that bedroom, or the attic, or the kitchen, or living room. What he found looked nothing like these things because it looked like all things at once, all at tenuous odds with one another. Pushing and pulling with such force that the earth beneath his feet churned violently—asphalt and concrete and hardwood and porcelain ingested and regurgitated, a never-ending collision of rebirth. At the opposite end of the room flickered a dim red light from a glowing exit sign.
“What’s going on in here?” he asked.
Goodwin’s voice cracked.
“I tried to tell you. Those two Somnambulists are an issue we’re trying to resolve. We just can’t figure out how yet.”
“Do you know who they are? Do you know their names?” Seymour asked, though he already suspected the answer.
“I don’t even think Dressler knows their names. They’re just Somnambulists, they’re all the same. All except Russo. It’s his dream they’re all building on.”
Seymour looked back into the room they’d come from.
“Which one was Russo?”
Goodwin didn’t bother looking.
“I have no idea.”
It was getting colder and louder and the red exit light wavered ahead. The walls transformed around Seymour like a kaleidoscope, except instead of colors they were aspects of his life he barely recognized. He pulled his thick coat closer and stepped forward. Underfoot he found a rug from his old home, except soggy and soiled, torn where uneven hardwood surged through. He cursed, and went to take another step, but Goodwin’s hand gripped his arm.
“I was wrong. It’s not safe.”
“Goodwin, you need to help me get to those last two Somnambulists.”
“Are you crazy? The dreams here aren’t fully meshed. If we go any closer we might not find our way back.”
“I have to see them, Goodwin. I have to know.”
“Know what?”
“I have to know who they are. If they’re my parents.”
“They’re too young. And they never had a child. I told you that.”
“Are you sure?”
He paused for a moment.
“No,” he finally said. “I guess not.”
Seymour had trouble returning Goodwin’s stare. Everything was too wild, too disconnected, and he couldn’t focus on any one point long enough to understand it. Only the flickering exit light was permanent.
“Help me,” Seymour said.
So they walked into the inchoate chaos. At times their feet no longer touched anything solid, while around them the world churned and the angry voices grew clearer. With each step Seymour was increasingly convinced his parents’ voices rattled
across the room’s impermanent structures. Bricks slipped away from bricks, mortar dust crumbled, first from one wall, then another. Volley and return, the room shrinking with each word as Seymour dashed toward the red light and into an Escheresque world of upside down stairs and sideways scaffolds in continuous flux. What was once a door became a window became a wall, and more than once Goodwin was the only thing that stopped Seymour from stepping through a collapsing passage. When Seymour’s notepad slipped from his pocket it moved straight past his head and spun away as though caught by the wind. But it didn’t matter; he no longer needed it.
“Do you know where we’re going?” Seymour asked.
“It’s just through here,” Goodwin said, as if those simple directions weren’t disconnected from space.
But in the structureless void Goodwin’s hand remained locked on Seymour’s arm. There was a tug like a fish on a line and Seymour found himself overwhelmed by a tumultuous current, and then spit out into a small bedroom lit by a corona of sunlight around drawn orange drapes. It was his parents’ bedroom. But Seymour was interested only in the two bodies lying beside one another in matching hospital beds, a second tower of black machinery and blinking lights between them.
“Here they are,” Goodwin said, but Seymour didn’t need to be told. He could feel them. He’d always been able to feel them. Waves emanated outward, lapping against his body like ripples in the sea. He raised his hand and the waves broke against his palms, slipped between his fingers.
The two bodies were underneath thin grey blankets, chests rising and lowering slowing. They faced away from him, so Seymour saw only the tops of their heads, but the color and style of their hair looked right.
“Is this what you expected?”
Seymour didn’t know what he expected. When he tried to remember last seeing his parents together, he couldn’t. It was as though it had been witnessed by someone else, some other Seymour with whom he shared only the faintest memories. That Seymour must have understood more than this one, because faced with the two sleeping figures he had no idea what he thought would happen. Were they supposed to spring up and hug him, then each other? Were they supposed to remain asleep forever, fading at once from his memory? Was this a moment of hello or goodbye?
Shadows & Tall Trees, Volume 8 Page 5
