by Amy Cross
I feel a jump in my chest.
I'm making eye contact with a woman who died twenty years ago.
I wait, but she doesn't do or say anything. She's definitely staring at me, but she doesn't seem particularly fussed about the fact that I'm standing here. As the seconds slip past, I begin to realize that it must be almost a minute now since her eyes opened, and finally I tell myself that I have to say something.
I have to speak to this ghost.
“Hey,” I stammer, my voice trembling with fear, “I...”
I what?
Why didn't I plan ahead for this moment? I guess maybe I didn't really believe that I'd actually come face-to-face with an actual dead person.
“I'm just going to... uh, I'm just going to take some photos, okay?” I say finally.
Fumbling with the camera, I realize that my hands are trembling so badly that I can barely hold the damn thing. I look through the viewfinder and take a few shots, but then I realize that she's naked so I lower the camera again.
“Sorry,” I say, “I...”
Again, my voice trails off, and then I step around the bath and crouch down. After re-framing the camera's view so that it's a little more respectful, I'm about to take another shot when I realize that Gwendoline's eyes have followed me and that she's still staring at me.
“My name's Paula,” I whisper, before taking a photo and then lowering the camera, returning her stare. “I... I want to ask you some questions.”
4:40am
Nothing.
She hasn't said a single thing.
It's been a few minutes now since I last spoke, but so far Gwendoline Emmervessy has shown no sign that she's going to respond to me. She's still staring at me, and I've tested that by moving a little several times; sure enough, she keeps her eyes fixed on me.
But she hasn't actually spoken.
“I need to know how this works,” I tell her. “Why did you appear? Why now? Why to me? What specifically did I do to make you show up?”
Again, she doesn't reply.
So far, the main thing I've noticed is that I can't feel the steam from the bath. I can see the steam rising right in front of me, but there's no heat at all. I guess that's natural, since the bath is actually empty, but now I can't help wondering what it would feel like if I reached out and tried to touch Gwendoline's ghost. Would my hand go straight through her? Would I scare her away? I have photos to prove that she's really here, but I want so much more.
I want to know how ghosts work.
“I'm alive,” I point out, “and you're dead. That doesn't mean we can't talk, though, does it? We can... It'll be like first contact. The world of the living reaching out to the world of the dead.”
When she still doesn't reply, I take a look at my scanners. I'm picking up a few readings, but the most obvious have faded now and I don't really have any strong leads. I make a few adjustments, without any results, and then I look back at Gwendoline as I realize that there's one obvious things I could try next.
I could touch her.
“Okay, don't get spooked,” I say cautiously. “I just want to see how this goes.”
I set the camera down, and then I begin to reach out to her with my right hand. The air all around me feels very cold, and my hand is shaking, but Gwendoline doesn't really react as I get closer and closer to her wet, glistening shoulder. I have no idea what to expect when my fingertips finally reach Gwendoline's body, but I'm ready for anything and I can feel a tightening knot of anticipation in my chest.
Any second now, I'm going to be perhaps the first living person in history to -
Suddenly I hear the door swinging open, followed by footsteps and then the sound of the door slamming shut.
“Only me!” a male voice calls out. “I got what you wanted. I hope you're ready.”
I freeze, with my hand not quite touching Gwendoline, as I turn and look through to the bedroom. My first thought is that maybe I'm hearing a voice from one of the motel's other rooms, or that the voice is drifting in from the parking lot, but then a dark figure moves into view next to the bed and starts coming toward the bathroom door, finally stopping in the doorway and grinning.
It's a guy, about my age or maybe slightly older, wearing a leather jacket and jeans. He leans against the door, leering at Gwendoline and apparently not noticing me at all.
“Well that's a sight for sore eyes,” he chuckles. “Gwen, baby, you sure know how to get my attention. Now how about you climb out of that bath and we see what happens on the bed, huh?”
Staring at this guy, I realize that he must be another ghost.
I turn to Gwendoline and see that she's still looking at me.
“What's up?” the guy asks, stepping into the bathroom and moving around to the other end of the bathtub, where he stops and crouches down directly behind Gwendoline. “Aren't you pleased to see me?”
Still, Gwendoline keeps her eyes fixed on me.
Suddenly realizing that I have to document this, I grab the camera and take a couple of photos, making sure to catch the guy's face in the shot.
“I like you clean, baby,” he says, leaning closer to her from behind and gently kissing the side of her neck. “You know that.”
She doesn't react to him at all. Instead she continues to stare at me, and I can't help but notice that the look in her eyes seems much sadder now, ever since this guy entered the room.
“What is it?” I whisper. “Gwendoline, tell me.”
“So are you ignoring me?” the guy asks her, and he sounds a little annoyed now. “Is that it? Come on, baby, I know you're mad but you can't stay like this forever. It's me, Johnny, and I came all this way just to spend the night with you. That's gotta count for something, right? Relax.”
He kisses her neck several more times, but still she merely stares at me.
And somehow, in the space of just few seconds, she's managed to look even sadder than before.
“What's wrong?” I ask, as the guy moves around and kisses the other side of her bare neck. “You can talk to me, Gwendoline. Tell me what's happening.”
“You're so hard on me sometimes,” the guy purrs, moving his kisses down to her shoulder. “Baby, you know how that gets me, don't you? Man, you really drive me wild. Now how about you climb out of this bath and I can remind you what it's like to be with a real man, huh? I know you've been running with some real losers lately, some real weak guys, but I also knew you'd come back to me eventually. Couldn't stay away, huh?” He pauses, with his lips still close to her skin. Still being ignored. “You need me, baby.”
Gwendoline doesn't reply.
She simply continues to stare straight at me, almost as if she wants me to see what this guy is like. I've never had time to have a boyfriend, of course, but I've always thought that most of them are pretty vile. This guy seems like a grade-A jerk.
“What's that?” he sneers. “You don't appreciate me? I come back from a hard day at work, and you're not even willing to fucking acknowledge me? Is that the shit you're pulling right now?”
He pauses, before suddenly grabbing her hair and yanking her head back.
All the time, however, she keeps her eyes fixed solely on me.
“Stuck-up bitch!” he spits into her ear. “I can do so much better than you, you know. Don't you think there are girls at the factory begging me to take them out? And they're younger than you, and hotter than you, are way more fun than you, and they're way better in bed than you!”
“Why are you letting him say these things?” I ask, still staring into Gwendoline's eyes from my spot kneeling on the floor next to the bathtub's other end. “Even back in the late 90's, no-one would take this kind of crap. Why don't you stand up for yourself?”
He tugs her head back even further, and still she simply continues to look at me.
“You've had this coming for a long time, do you know that?” the guy hisses, as he reaches down with his other hand to grab something in his pocket. “After all the good things I've
done for you, I'm not going to sit around and take your crap. We're done, bitch, you've done something no other woman has ever managed to do. You've pissed me off so much, I'm finally gonna do something about it!”
“Don't take this!” I tell Gwendoline. “You're not -”
Suddenly I spot a flash of metal, and I see that the guy is holding a switchblade.
“What -”
Before I can get another word out, he slashes the blade across Gwendoline's throat, slicing her open. Blood sprays from the wound and splatters against my face, covering my glasses, but somehow I can't move my position here on the floor. I half turn away, and when I open my mouth to cry out I feel and taste hot blood gushing into the back of my throat. Hearing a sound like fabric being torn open, I turn back and see to my horror that the guy is hacking through Gwendoline's neck, cutting her open from ear to ear, while she keeps a calm expression on her face and stares straight at me.
“Stop!” I gasp, still unable to move or to help as more and more blood sprays onto me. “Please, you have to stop!”
The guy pushes her down, and finally blood starts bursting into the water. Still not managing to react in any way, I can only watch in horror as the guy reaches the knife into the bath and stabs Gwendoline over and over in the chest, splashing water all over the place in the process. Blood and bathwater are spotted all over my glasses, but for some reason I'm unable to do anything except stare. Gwendoline, meanwhile, isn't fighting back at all. Her eyes are still fixed on me, even as her head is dunked under the surface of the bloodied water.
Finally the guy lets go.
I stare at the water. I can still just about see Gwendoline's face, but she's making no effort to sit up and there are no air bubbles either.
This must be how she died.
I just saw it all.
I stare for a moment longer, before suddenly realizing that I'm being watched. Turning, I look straight at the guy and see that he's watching me. There's blood on his face, and his eyes are wide and crazy.
I open my mouth to say something, but no words come out.
“You killed her,” I whisper, my voice shaking with fear and anger. “That's what happened, isn't it? Maybe not exactly the way I just saw it, but more or less. That was the condensed version. You killed her, and you got away with it.”
He doesn't reply.
He simply stares at me, the way Gwendoline stared at me before she died.
“Oh God,” I stammer, finally stumbling to my feet and taking a step back. “No, please no...”
I step back again, until I bump against the open bathroom door, and then I step back into the doorway that leads into the dark bedroom.
The guy is still on the floor, leaning over the head of the bath, still holding the switchblade and staring at me.
“You're a murderer!” I gasp, with tears in my eyes. “You're nothing but a -”
Suddenly he stands up.
I let out a faint cry as I take another step back. I know I should be brave, I know this guy is just a ghost like Gwendoline Emmervessy, but at the same time I'm scared to turn away in case the guy lunges at me. Looking down at the knife, I see that blood is dribbling from the blade and spattering against the floor. Even in my panicked state, I can already see that the blood all over the bathroom is in the same pattern that I saw in the police photos from the late 90's. It's as if, over the past few minutes, I've witnessed the transformation of the room from its formerly pristine state to the messy murder scene from the evidence file.
Suddenly the guy steps toward me.
I instinctively step back.
“No,” I whisper, feeling a rising sense of panic in my chest, “you're just a ghost. You're not -”
I gasp as he again steps toward me, and I step back.
I need to run.
I know this is irrational, but I need to get out of here.
He takes another step.
I try to stand firm, but I can't. I take another step back, and then I turn and run to grab my bag from the bed, and then I hurry to the door.
Just as I'm about to grab the handle, I'm pulled from behind and shoved around, and sent crashing down onto the bed so hard that I almost bounce straight off. I cry out, but a hand covers my mouth as I'm twisted around and pressed down face-first against the sheets. I can feel somebody climbing onto the bed, and then a knee presses hard against the small of my back to hold me down.
“No!” I shout. “Please, no!”
A knife slices straight into my back. I feel the blade scraping against one of my shoulder-blades, but already the knife is being pulled back out. I'm stabbed again, this time lower down, then a third time in the side of the neck.
I reach forward, trying to grab the other side of the bed so that I can pull myself away, but I can already taste blood in the back of my throat.
“No!” I scream, with tears in my eyes as I desperately trying to call for help. The guy stabs me in the back again, then again, and again and again and again. “Somebody help me!”
6:00am
Opening my eyes, I see morning light streaming through the curtains. I blink, and I know something's wrong, but it takes several more seconds before I remember.
“What the -”
Gasping, I sit up and turn around, but there's nobody else in the room with me. I freeze for a moment, too scared to move as I remember what happened last night, and then I look down at the front of my dress and see that there are no tears and no blood-stains. I reach around, touching my back, but again there are no injuries. I remember that guy stabbing me over and over, and doing other things to me as well, but now it's as if he was never here.
Checking my watch, I see that it's six in the morning, which means I must have been unconscious for about an hour.
I clamber off the bed and head over to the bathroom. Stopping in the doorway, I look through and see that all the blood is gone. The bathtub is empty, and now the tiles are cracked and the walls are grimy, just as they were when I arrived. There's no sign of Gwendoline Emmervessy, however, and no sign that anything at all happened during the night.
But something did happen.
I saw it.
I saw it all.
I hesitate for a moment, before suddenly remembering that I have proof.
“The camera,” I mutter, trying to remember where I put the damn thing. I check the bed, then the dresser, and then the shelf in the bathroom.
Finally I crouch down and see that the camera must have somehow slid under the bath. I reach through and pick it up, and then I bring up the photos I took of Gwendoline last night.
Except that there aren't any.
There are no photos on the camera at all, apart from a couple of test shots I took before I came to the motel.
“Come on,” I whisper, frantically searching for the images, but there's absolutely nothing here. I had hard, irrefutable proof of the existence of ghosts, I had it all right here on this camera, but suddenly somehow it's gone.
I flick through again and again, convinced that eventually I'll realize what's wrong and then I'll be able to find the pictures. So far, however, I'm finding nothing of interest at all. It's genuinely as if I never took any photos at all.
“I know you're here,” I mutter, still trying to work out what could have gone wrong. “Damn you, I know I took those pictures!”
***
Stepping around the corner, I almost stop and turn around when I see that Gloria is once again at the ice machine. Before I have a chance to retreat, however, she turns and glances at me, and a smile immediately breaks across her face.
“Well hello there, young lady,” she says, as yellow ice cubes drop noisily into her cup. “From the size of those shadows under your eyes, I'm guessing you didn't get much sleep last night.”
“I'm fine,” I mutter, heading toward her and then making my way past, hoping to avoid a lengthy conversation. “Thank you.”
“Checking out, are you?”
“Actually, I'm going to boo
k a second night.”
“Oh yeah? Don't tell me you actually think you found something.”
I take one more step before coming to a halt. I know I should just keep going and ignore her attempt to get a rise out of me, but slowly I turn and see that she's watching me with a smug, supercilious grin. Clearly she thinks my night was a total failure, and I want to take her down a peg or two.
“Actually,” I say, “I made some significant progress. That's why I'm going to stay another night, so I can follow up on that progress and see what else I can learn.”
“Progress?” She raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Is that so?”
“It's definitely so,” I tell her. “Physical manifestations. Noises. Residues. You name it, I found it.”
“Uh-huh. In room nine?”
“In room nine.”
“And are you sure it wasn't all in your head?”
“Of course I'm sure.”
“How?” She stares at me, and now her smile is a little less broad. “How can you possibly be sure that you didn't imagine whatever you think happened?”
“I have proof.”
“Such as?”
I open my mouth to tell her that I have photos, but that would be a lie.
“I'm not in a position to divulge my findings at this stage,” I tell her, determined to wipe the rest of that smirk off her face. “All I can say is that my night in room nine yielded some very promising leads, and tonight I plan to gather some more data so that my research can continue. It's all very complicated. Even if I could tell you, I doubt you'd understand.”
“I doubt I would,” she chuckles.
“You'll see soon enough,” I add. “Everyone will. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go and speak to the man at the desk.”
With that, I turn to walk away.
“Oh honey,” Gloria says suddenly, hurrying after me and grabbing my hand, holding me back, “I can't let you go out there and make a fool of yourself. It wouldn't be fair. There's something you need to hear.”
