An Unwanted Guest

by Shari Lapena

  She turns toward him as he approaches. Her eyes are troubled.

  “There’s something I have to ask you,” she says without preamble, her voice a whisper.

  Here it comes, David thinks. She’s going to ask him about his wife. She’s been listening to Riley; he’s sure of it. He should have told Gwen about his past first. He should have told her last night. But—it wasn’t the right time. You don’t tell a woman you’re terribly attracted to that you were once arrested for murder.

  “Anything,” he says, his voice low, his expression open. He will tell her the truth. It’s up to her whether to believe him or not. He can’t hide it; it’s all over the internet.

  Gwen glances back at the others around the fire. “Not now,” she whispers. “But we need to talk, privately, at some point.”

  He nods. It will give him time to prepare what he’s going to say to her. How to put it. He doesn’t want to frighten her away.

  * * *

  • • •

  All Beverly wants is to go home. She wants to see her children. This hotel no longer seems lovely and luxurious to her—it’s dark and cold and awful. She shudders when she remembers the cellar. It looked like it could be the setting for some horror film. She feels like she’s living in a horror film. This can’t really be happening, not to her. She’s a very normal woman, with a very normal, even dull, life. Nothing exceptional ever happens to her. And deep down, she likes it that way.

  It’s horrible to have Dana’s body still lying at the foot of the stairs. Really, it’s too much. She feels a bout of tears coming on, and forces them back.

  She wants that body moved. She thinks it’s beginning to smell. It has been lying there since sometime last night. It must be decomposing by now. That must be what that smell is. Can’t anyone else smell it? She’s always had a very acute sense of smell. She’s sensitive; she’s always been sensitive. Teddy’s like that too. Doesn’t like tags in his clothes, very fussy about his socks. She lifts her wrist to her nose and tries to breathe in her own fading perfume.

  As the time ticks by, she finds herself staring at Dana’s body, draped in the ghostly sheet. She couldn’t even look at it before, but she’s glowering at it now. Because she’s afraid of it. She doesn’t want to turn her back on it. It’s irrational, but that’s how she feels. She’s unraveling.

  She thinks she sees something moving in the dark, over by the body. A dark shape, a rustling. And now it looks as if Dana is moving slightly under the sheet. She’s heard about that, about bodies moving after death, shifting, because they’re full of gas. She stares more intently.

  What is that? Is that a rat? She screams.

  Henry bolts out of his chair.

  “There’s a rat, over there, by the body!” Beverly cries, getting up and pointing. Everyone turns to squint into the dark where she’s pointing.

  “That’s impossible,” James says defensively, jumping out of his chair.

  “You already admitted you have rats,” Lauren points out uneasily, tucking her feet up underneath her on the sofa.

  “Not up here!” James says.

  “But there’s a dead body up here,” Lauren says, “and maybe it’s . . . attracting them.” She shudders visibly. “Oh, God, I can’t stand this!”

  Beverly agrees with Lauren; she can’t stand it either. She starts to sob and shake; out of years of habit she turns and buries her face in Henry’s chest. He puts his arms around her, and even though she’s still furious at him, it’s comforting.

  “We need to get that body out of here!” Henry says crossly.

  “We really shouldn’t move it,” David begins.

  “To hell with what we should and shouldn’t do,” Henry cries. “There’s a dead body there, it’s festering, and attracting rats, and it’s frightening my wife!”

  Beverly lifts her head from Henry’s chest and looks at Matthew. He’s gone white. She’s suddenly sorry for her outburst.

  “I’m sorry—”

  But Matthew ignores her and picks the oil lamp up from the coffee table and goes over to Dana’s body. He holds the light over her, looking down, looking for a rat. It’s a macabre sight, but Beverly finds she cannot look away.

  “I don’t see any rats,” Matthew says sullenly. “There aren’t any. You must have imagined it.”

  Ian gets up and stands beside him. “Still, maybe we should move her,” he says gently. He turns and looks back at David.

  David looks around the room, as if gauging the mood. Finally, he nods, as if he knows he’s outnumbered. He takes his cell phone out of his pocket, pulls back the sheet and snaps some pictures. Then he makes a sound of frustration and says, “Now my phone’s completely dead.” He looks up at the others. “Okay. Where can we put her?”

  “The woodshed?” Bradley suggests tentatively.

  “No!” Matthew says. “There may be . . . rats might get her there.”

  It makes Beverly feel sick, the thought of rats gnawing on Dana.

  “How about the icehouse?” James suggests. “It’s cold. It’s completely sealed. Nothing can . . . disturb her there.”

  Finally Matthew swallows and nods. Beverly feels the most awful pity for him. She watches as David lays the sheet down on the floor beside the body. Then he takes Dana’s feet and Matthew takes her shoulders and they clumsily lift her onto the sheet. Her head falls suddenly to the side. They wrap her up tightly in the sheet to make it easier to carry her.

  Bradley, Matthew, and David put on their coats and boots and begin the sad, awkward journey with the body out to the icehouse.

  Once they’re out of sight, Beverly bursts into tears.

  TWENTY-ONE

  Saturday, 8:30 p.m.

  On their return from the icehouse, David puts two more logs on the fire and gets a good flame going. Then he turns reluctantly to the others, seated around the fire, their faces glowing in the firelight. Matthew sits apart, alienated from the others by his grief and by the suspicion that has been cast on him.

  The room is quite dark, with just the light thrown by the fire and the single, sputtering oil lamp. The other has run out of oil, and Bradley has explained, embarrassed, that there is no more. No one was expecting to have to use oil lamps.

  Riley fidgets nervously with the ring on her index finger, her version of wringing her hands, David thinks.

  She says, “What are we going to do?”

  David thinks that someone should give Riley another drink. Or one of those pills of hers they found upstairs. He says, “We’re going to stick together. We’re going to make it through the night.” The storm shrieks around them, slamming against the windows, as if mocking him. “And in the morning, when it’s light, I think we should try to make it out to the main road.”

  He detects some nods in the shadows.

  “We’ll stay here, in the lobby. If anybody has to go to the bathroom, we’ll go together, in groups,” David instructs. “And then, at daybreak, we’ll go. Maybe the road crews will be out by then. We’ll get help. But we have to stick together. Nothing can happen to anyone if we all stick together, understand?”

  Everyone stares back at him. Now, one by one, they nod. Even Riley, who licks her lips nervously.

  “It’s still cold in here,” David continues. “We need to stay warm. We have to keep the fire going.” He stops to think for a minute. “We should get some more blankets from the rooms.”

  “I’m not going back upstairs,” Gwen says with feeling.

  David is distracted for a moment by how anxious she looks. But they’re all frightened. Other than keeping them warm and fed and all together in one place, he has no idea how to keep them alive.

  “Our phones must be very low on battery; mine’s out,” David says. There are nods all around.

  “Mine’s still working, for now,” Matthew says. “But it won’t last much longer.”
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  David turns to Ian and Bradley. “Why don’t we go upstairs now and grab some blankets.”

  Bradley and Ian nod, and the three of them head for the central staircase, into the dark, Bradley holding up the oil lamp to light their way, leaving the others by the light of the fire.

  * * *

  • • •

  Gwen stares into the dark after them. She’s reminded somehow of the story of Hansel and Gretel, lost in the dark forest, trying to make their way home, where they aren’t even wanted. The fairy tale had terrified her as a child, and now she feels as if she’s inside the story, in the dark forest, abandoned by those who love her. She shivers. She’s letting her imagination run away with her.

  * * *

  • • •

  Riley watches and waits, her heart beating fast, like an overrevved engine that might burn itself out. She listens to every little sound—the wind against the windows, the crackling of the fire, the startling sound of the logs shifting suddenly in the fireplace. But she’s listening for something else, something unexpected. She’s listening for something that shouldn’t be there.

  She pulls the blanket more tightly around her body. She tells herself that they have to make it to the morning, then they can try to get the hell out of here. She tries to think. Maybe there’s a connection here that they don’t know about, as David suggested. If anyone here knew Dana or Candice previously, they aren’t admitting it. It’s possible that Matthew’s right, and James and Bradley are hiding something. She had seen James and Bradley whispering too. Or Matthew might simply be trying to shift attention away from himself.

  She knows she’s become a little fixated on David Paley. Yet as much as she thinks he might have murdered his own wife, she’s not particularly afraid of him now.

  But she wishes Gwen would stay the hell away from him.

  Saturday, 9:05 p.m.

  They settle into their sofas and chairs around the fireplace. They’ve eaten a meal hastily thrown together by James and Bradley, with David keeping them company in the kitchen. James has brewed another big pot of coffee.

  No one wants to sleep tonight. No one wants to even close their eyes. They sit together in a charged silence. No one is talking about the elephant in the room.

  Gwen squirms in an attempt to find a more comfortable position on the sofa. She doesn’t know who or where the killer is. She can’t bear to think about it anymore. Her neck is stiff with tension. She just wants to survive. They will try to make their way out of here first thing in the morning. She’s holding on to that.

  They sit wrapped in blankets with their fingers around their mugs of coffee for warmth. There’s a bottle of Kahlúa taken from the bar cart sitting on the coffee table. They take turns topping up their coffees with it.

  Maybe it’s not such a good idea to get drunk, Gwen thinks, but the Kahlúa tastes good, and it’s soothing. She notices gratefully that David isn’t putting anything in his coffee. He’s going to keep his wits about him. Their protector. She has more faith in him than in Matthew, with his gun, which seldom leaves his hand. He plays with it restlessly. She wishes he would put it down. She wishes David would tell him to put it down, or take it away from him. It’s making her nervous.

  The rest of them are now trying to talk about other things—other hotels they’ve stayed at, in other countries—anything to keep their minds off the long dark night stretching out in front of them. She finds her eyes drifting more and more to David as the night wears on. She keeps thinking about the two of them together the night before. Occasionally—in fact, more and more frequently—he glances her way.

  He looks dark and solid by the meager light of the fire and the oil lamp. He’s unshaven, but he wears it well, and a lock of his hair falls forward over his forehead in a way that she finds appealing. She wants to brush it back. She wishes that the two of them were sitting close together, sharing a sofa, but she’s sharing a sofa with Riley.

  She wonders what David would think of her, if he knew the truth about her. She’s not going to tell him. Not yet. There’s only one person who knows the truth about her, about what she did—and she’s sitting right beside her. But Riley isn’t going to say anything.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Riley’s been slipping Kahlúa into her coffee at a faster rate than the rest of them. They already think she’s got a problem with alcohol. Maybe she does. But that pales in comparison to the problems they’ve all got tonight. She just wants to take the edge off.

  She notices the way Gwen and David are looking at each other, and decides she’s not having it. She can be a bit mean when she’s had a couple of drinks.

  “So,” she says, venturing into a conversational lull, “maybe we should get to know each other a little better.” She’s looking right at David. She’s pretty sure, from the way he was last night at the dinner table, that he knows she’s onto him. She knows who he is.

  She can feel Gwen tightening up beside her. Bristling.

  But then Lauren says, “Sure, why not?” She stares at Riley across the coffee table, challenge in her eyes. “Why don’t you tell us a bit about yourself, Riley? Like, what exactly is bothering you so much?”

  Riley looks back at her, surprised and thrown off course. She doesn’t like Lauren. She’s seen her rolling her eyes. And now she’s giving her a hard time. How dare she?

  Riley hesitates, angry at Lauren. Then she says, “You don’t want to know.” There’s a warning in her voice.

  “Sure I do,” Lauren says.

  Pushy bitch, Riley thinks. She pauses and then says, her voice icy, “I’ve seen things that would make your guts turn inside out. So don’t you dare judge me.”

  “I’m not judging you,” Lauren says. “I just want to understand you. I remember when we first got here thinking that maybe you were—disturbed in some way. Because you seemed freaked-out before any of this started happening.” Lauren leans forward in the dark. “So do you know something about what’s going on? Because I don’t trust you.”

  Riley freezes in her seat, speechless. She can’t believe what she’s being accused of.

  “What are you saying?” Gwen protests from beside her, clearly indignant. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this!”

  “Really? She may not be the one killing people, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she knows something! Look at her!”

  Now everyone is staring at Riley. She can feel herself becoming agitated. She tries to stay in control.

  “She has a point,” Matthew says, glaring at her. “You’ve been really nervous since we all got here. Everybody can see it. I thought there was something wrong with you. So did—so did Dana.”

  “Maybe we should all take a step back,” Ian says calmly.

  “I don’t know anything about what’s happening here!” Riley protests.

  “Tell them,” Gwen says beside her, her voice bold and furious. “Tell them what you’ve been through. Tell them, or I will!”

  Riley flashes Gwen a grateful look. She sighs heavily and says, enunciating carefully, “I’m a journalist.” She hesitates a bit too long. Takes another gulp of her drink—more straight Kahlúa than coffee by this point.

  “Yeah? So what?” Henry says provocatively.

  Riley, feeling cornered, turns her eyes on him. She hasn’t really given Henry any thought, but suddenly she despises him. She looks around the room. She despises all of them, except for Gwen. Gwen is the only friend she has here.

  “I was stationed in Afghanistan—mostly in Kabul. I spent almost three years there. I saw terrible things.” Her voice begins to shake. “I saw so many civilians killed—children, babies. Limbs torn off by bombs, just lying in the street. So much brutality—” She stops. She can’t say any more. Her voice has fallen to a whisper now, and she feels Gwen put her arm around her shoulder. She focuses on the pressure of Gwen’s arm around her, grounding her. “Then I was
taken hostage.”

  “What?” Gwen says beside her, obviously shocked. “You never told me that.”

  Riley stares down into her lap. “It was kept quiet. I was held prisoner for six days, until they negotiated my release. Every day they would hold a gun to my head and pretend they were going to fire. They would pick someone at random and shoot them on the spot.” Her entire body is shaking now, and it makes her feel ashamed, even though she knows she shouldn’t be ashamed. “I thought I could do it. These were important stories, they had to be told. So I stuck with it for as long as I could. You try to cope. Until you crack.” She waits a beat. “But after that,” she falters, her voice a whisper, “I couldn’t do it anymore.”

  Gwen is rubbing her back now, in large, slow circles, comforting her. The others are deadly quiet.

  Riley focuses on the feeling of Gwen rubbing her back in firm circles. It feels good, actually, to get this out. She’s tired of pretending she’s fine, when everybody’s looking at her like they obviously think she’s got a screw loose. At least now they’ll know why. She reminds herself it’s nothing to be ashamed of. Her illness is a sign of her humanity. When she speaks again, she tries to make her voice sound more matter of fact.

  “I had to come home. I’m trying to get well. I’ve got PTSD. I take medication for it,” she says. “These horrible images keep coming back to me, and I never know when they’re going to come. I hear a sound—it’s like something trips in my head, and I’m back there, in the chaos, waiting for the killing to start.” She raises her eyes then and looks at each one of them, their pale faces looming above their dark blankets, as if their heads are disembodied and floating in the air.

  Gwen whispers, her face close to hers, “Oh, Riley—I’m sorry, I didn’t realize—I had no idea what happened to you.”