Purgatory Hotel

by Anne-Marie Ormsby

  “I missed you, that’s why I came back.”

  “Last I heard you were in love. Didn’t miss me then, did you?” he began, lighting a cigarette.

  “Yeah I know, it didn’t work out, I made a mistake. I realised it was you I loved, that I’d been terribly wrong to leave. But I’m back now and I want us to be together… properly,” she explained.

  “I see… did you read any of my letters?”

  “Yes, I read them all, the night before I came home. I kept them all as you sent them, but I didn’t want to read them because… well, because I was trying to leave you behind.”

  “I see.”

  Something ran across the clearing behind Jackson and Dakota jumped forward, clinging to him. For a second he was rigid under her grip, then slowly, she could feel softness entering the tight muscles of his arms and he put his arms around her, held her so tight that she thought she might never draw breath again. Tears pricked her eyes as the warmth she had dreamt of returned to her. That feeling of being loved and wanted was there again. Jackson made her feel like no other person in the world had: complete.

  The kisses that followed were as passionate as they ever had been, as though they were about to devour each other, as though they were the only sustenance left in the dry dead world.

  Then suddenly Jackson pushed her away.

  “What?” she asked, breathless.

  “No, not anymore, this isn’t happening anymore,” he muttered, turning away, shaking his head to the dark woods.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it’s not going to happen anymore, Dakota. You left me, and you made it clear you didn’t want me anymore.” He paused as emotion began to surface in him. “I loved you so much and you loved me, but you ruined it!”

  “I was wrong, OK? I made a mistake; I thought it would be best for us all if I left because there was no way we could continue without someone getting hurt! I did it for Lula!”

  “Yeah I know, but you hurt me in the process! What about me and my feelings? You were mine, and I was yours and you didn’t want me anymore, so you threw me aside to get on with a new life. So you could meet new men and do everything I taught you!” He was getting angry and Dakota was getting desperate.

  “But I was too young to understand! I can see it all now. I made a mistake and you were right all along; we are meant to be together!”

  “No! No, you don’t get to change it all anytime you like! You left me and that’s your choice. I can’t take you back now, because I have learnt to live without you.” He shook his fist at her as though he wanted to hit her, and yet the fear of him never returned. She wanted him more than ever now, and he was putting up a fight. This wasn’t right!

  “Hang on a second. Are you saying you don’t love me anymore?”

  “No! I love you and I can’t help it but I don’t want to anymore! You broke my heart, Dakota Grace. After everything I showed you, all the love I gave you, you passed me over for some other bloke you didn’t even last five minutes with. That’s not love.” She thought he was about to cry but he turned away again.

  “You can’t do this. I do love you and I can’t live without you. Please, can’t we just calm down and talk it over?”

  “No, it’s too late. I am marrying Lula and that’s it! You had your chance and you showed me you didn’t care so I moved on. I have spent the last six months trying to get over you and now you come back and do this? I could kill you!” He growled at her.

  “Oh yeah, do you think Lula would be marrying you if she knew what kind of a man you really are? The kind of man who would defile a twelve-year-old girl?” She smirked, suddenly turning on him, his unwavering rejection of her beginning to send shockwaves through her.

  “It wasn’t like that and you know it! You think she would feel so loved up about you if she knew you wanted me to come to your room every night? That you got pregnant when she never could and then killed it?”

  A swift slap across his face stopped his outburst. Rage burned in his eyes momentarily, then cooled.

  “Don’t try and turn this around, Jackson. You are just as guilty as I am,” she snapped angrily.

  “I’m going home, and I think you should go back to Ireland soon as the wedding’s over, OK?”

  “No, it’s not OK! I love you!”

  In the dark, quivering night, the two figures stood, bruised by the dark, the trees whispering malevolent lies in their ears. As bats flitted through the high trees, life went on elsewhere in the world, and the crimes that had taken place here were forgotten. This place was killing ground, and ghosts peeked out from behind the trees to witness the great battle of love continue in its last weak stages.

  Jackson allowed a tear to break from his eye as he looked at her: the one he loved, the one he adored and the one he had promised himself to until the end of time. But, Dakota could see, her Loverman was fading now. All the resolve he had when he wanted her had turned around on her. She had broken his heart and he was punishing her for it, denying her the one thing he knew she could not live without. Him.

  “It’s over, D,” he whispered and turned away, the wind ruffling his hair as his blue eyes looked away from her and down to the floor. Slowly, he began to walk away, ignoring her calling his name.

  Seeing him leaving, she knew there was nothing she could do, and as a mixture of grief and rage overtook her she reached down for a rock at her feet.

  “But Jackson,” she muttered, trance-like, in the gloomy woods, “you should know by now, it’s never over.”

  The rock struck him hard just as he turned his head back towards her on hearing her words, in moments that passed in slow motion. He fell to the ground before he could even turn completely. Silence passed through the woods, trees and animals suddenly still in the summer night, and Dakota felt her legs give way.

  She scrambled across the dry earth towards where he lay and took one look into his eyes and knew it was over.

  She had seen those eyes before.

  He was dead.

  TWENTY-NINE: The Sound of Guilt

  Dakota felt as if someone was strangling her, her useless throat constricted with shock as she closed the book and turned away from the table where it lay. The images were playing over in her head like a video tape being rewound and played again over and over. Each time the last image was his dead blue eyes looking back at her.

  She could feel all that pain again, the same pain she had felt in life at realising the love of her life, her soul-mate, was gone forever. All the horror and disgust she had felt during the re-learning of her life had vanished, replaced by those real feelings, the pain of love, the shock at what she had done. She had taken a life, the life of the man she loved.

  All the time she had felt responsible for Michelle Taybury; all that guilt and shame paled in comparison to what she felt now.

  She was a murderer.

  At last she knew into which category she fell here in Purgatory. She was amongst killers. She was no better than Goldman.

  The sound of her sobs echoed through the library, the rain humming in the background as if it had quietened the storm in favour of this new sound.

  The sound of guilt surfacing.

  What on earth had she done? What had made her a killer? Why did she snap so violently, and kill Jackson for turning his back on her? It was ridiculous, in her earlier years she would have given anything for him to turn away and leave her alone. She must have lost her mind, she decided. The years of abuse had made her mentally unstable and Jackson had finally pushed her over the edge.

  Dakota came back to herself, leaving the dark forest behind a door she closed in her head.

  The library loomed around her, dark and uncomforting. She needed to get out, and tell Betty.

  Tell Betty that she was a murderer, too, just like her. And she thought of the feeling she had when Betty had told her; that slight revulsion at the thought she was sitting so close to someone who had taken a life on purpose. Now she had to turn that judgemental
gaze on herself.

  She thought of Goldman, laughing maniacally at her all the time, laughing at her disgust of him being a murderer. All that time he knew she was just like him. No wonder he was laughing at her, looking down on him for being a killer when she was no better.

  Dakota returned her book to the shelf, deciding she had read enough for now. The mystery of her own death would have to wait; she had to deal with this fresh news first.

  The long shadows whispered and the vague outlines of others crouching by lamps or shuffling amongst the high shelves haunted the edges of her vision as she made her way out of the library, feeling again that she needed to be drunk.

  As she left the library, she first headed straight to the Bar, but before she got too far down the hall, she remembered David and how she promised she would go back and see him. She felt that she needed to pray now. Knowing why she was there, she felt she needed to start praying, for help or forgiveness, or both.

  Past the cockroaches and dust, she made her way to the door that led through to the Chapel, and when she got there found herself looking around to see if anyone was watching her enter the room.

  Inside the Chapel, the rain muttered against the windows, shadows of dead trees shivering across the dimly lit room.

  “David?” she whispered, unable to see him. Silence returned to her as she searched the room for her young friend, but he was gone.

  Strange, she thought. He doesn’t leave here much. She stared at the chair he was sitting in when she last saw him. She wondered if his prayers had finally paid off and he’d been forgiven.

  The loneliness of the high room with its deities looking down at her made her realise she did not want to be here right now. I’m a murderer, she thought. I’m not worthy of your gaze.

  As quickly as she entered, she left the chapel and hurried away down the hall to the Bar. There seemed to be fewer people around – just the occasional shadow in the poorly lit corridor, but not as many as usual.

  The Bar seemed as busy as ever and Danny was asleep against the bar again. A customer had climbed over the bar and was helping himself to bottles of whisky as she approached, searching her pocket for her cigarettes. He paused as she sat at the bar and noticed her eyeing his armful of bottles. After what seemed like a moment’s careful thought, he plucked a bottle from his arm and put it down in front of her with a sheepish grin.

  “Thanks, pass us some fags while you’re back there?” she muttered, her last cigarette dangling from her lips as she crushed the empty packet in her other hand. After grabbing a few packs for himself, he threw two down for her and shuffled away and out into the corridor.

  The Bar was quiet, although there were quite a few occupants. They all seemed to be calm for a change, no arguments or shouting, and there weren’t many women around either, but Dakota didn’t care about the company – she just wanted to drink and sleep, but first she wanted to talk to Danny. She had to tell him what she had found out.

  “Danny? Danny?” she whispered, shaking his arm slightly. He woke with a start and stared at her bleary-eyed for a moment before calm seemed to come over him and he reached for his cigarettes.

  “So, any wiser?” he asked.

  “I’m a killer Danny… I killed someone, that’s why I’m here… I know now,” she mumbled, half-ashamed, half-pleased to know the truth.

  “Well I could have told you that, but I figured you wouldn’t believe me.” He shrugged, cigarette smoke curling away from his lined face.

  “What? How did you know?”

  “Well, I just had it figured out, that’s all. You certainly weren’t a rapist, and I just guessed you had murdered someone.”

  Dakota froze, slightly angry that he hadn’t told her before, slightly fearful as she realised she was truly among her own kind.

  “Christ, I wish you’d told me! But you’re right – I would have thought you were lying. I’d never believe I was here cos I killed someone, but I did and here I am.”

  “Who’d you kill?”

  “My... lover, he tried to leave me and I killed him.”

  “I see,” he mused, flicking the ash from his cigarette.

  “It’s true, isn’t it, that we meet the same people in each life?” Danny nodded, a sad look in his eyes.

  “So why do you think that I was murdered in all my lives by the same soul, but in my last one, I killed my murderer?”

  “You finally got there first?” He half laughed.

  “Maybe that’s what it is. I guess I just wasn’t going to let it happen again, eh?” She laughed but tears were pricking her eyes again as she recalled those last moments before Jackson died, that look in his eyes, the way he had held her, telling her that he wanted her but his words saying the opposite. He was leaving her. How dare he? And for that second, she felt the same rage that was in her when she killed him, that deep burning rage in her stomach, rising like bile and blurring her senses, removing all reason. She had felt in those seconds what Jackson had felt in every life before he had killed her, every time he had taken her life away.

  It was almost revenge.

  Revenge for every life he had taken away from her, and only her soul knew how deep that need for revenge went. It wasn’t revenge for leaving her; it was revenge for being the one who decided when it would end… every time. Dakota opened her bottle of whisky and began drinking it down like it was water. The desire to be completely drunk overtook her. She wanted that numbness to take away all the feelings her discovery had put in her. She was a killer and nothing would change that, but she just wanted to forget for a while, forget the horror of it all.

  “I think you should go lie down in your room for a while, sleep for a bit before you carry on. What you found out is a shock, and there are more to come, I think,” Danny said, getting up and moving behind the bar.

  “Yeah, I will. I have to get over this first, before I find out anymore,” she agreed and got up, clutching her bottle and smiling warmly at Danny. “Thanks, I’m sorry I woke you up. I just wanted you to know.”

  “You know what you are now. Does it feel any better than when you didn’t know?” he asked, not returning her warmth.

  “No, it doesn’t feel any better, but at least I know. I can be miserable but at least I know why.” She laughed, but her laughter seemed wrong, and she looked around at the ugly, angry faces in the gloom.

  “Go to bed,” he muttered and began looking perplexed at the lack of bottles behind the bar.

  “So you’re a murderer too, eh? Who did you kill?”

  “My Lover. She tried to leave me so I killed her,” he said coldly in the distant whisper of rain. Dakota nodded, realising it was not the time for questions, and headed out of the Bar to her room.

  She was too drunk to negotiate the elevator, and accidentally said twenty-one instead of her own room number of twenty. Even more confusing was the fact that when the elevator opened its doors, she was facing room twenty-one. She peered along to see her own room door and wondered why the room had moved, or if it was the elevator that had moved.

  The elevator ride was no good for her equilibrium. As she stepped out onto her landing, she stumbled. A feeling like standing on a moving boat overtook her and she moved, slowly, drunkenly, as though the hotel was floating on an angry sea.

  “Ugh, fuggin’ whisky,” she muttered to the empty corridor. As she began to rummage around her coat pocket for her keys she became aware of music playing somewhere. A low and lazy tune was creeping out from one of the rooms, and as she laid her hands on her room key, recognition of the tune clicked in her brain.

  It was Nick Cave, the last song on the album Jackson had given her, and as she moved slowly and unsteadily towards her door, she knew the music was coming from her room.

  For a second a burning feeling set up in her stomach; fear took form in her but also rage.

  Who was in her room and how dare they?

  She burst angrily through the door, to find it empty apart from the life in the stereo and the flutt
ering curtains. Tired of the stalking games, she kicked the stereo until it went silent and slammed her door causing moans to come from other rooms.

  The loud noise was a bit too much for her own brain and she collapsed groaning onto the bed where she passed out.

  Sometime later she woke up, her skull thumping just as it had when she first woke in Purgatory. As she slowly opened her eyes she realised the light was out, and she was sure she had left it on when she lay down on the bed.

  Turning her head towards the rest of the room she noticed something over by the curtains.

  A shape was flickering in and out of visibility like a poor TV reception or a faulty fluorescent light bulb.

  Dakota’s eyes widened in fear as it began to permeate her brain, the image reappearing like a strobe light until finally it stabilised in the darkness to a solid form. A tall figure of a man was standing a few feet away by the fluttering curtains, his face momentarily lit by the glow of a match as he lit a cigarette.

  “Hello D,” said Jackson.

  THIRTY: The Reunion

  Dakota wasn’t sure how to react, but the first thing she did was reach over and turn the light back on so she could see him properly.

  And there he was, the love of her life, looking as beautiful as he had in life, smoking a cigarette and looking at her with those eyes that always made her give in.

  Tears sprang up in her eyes as she looked at him and her whole life with him seemed so clear in her head again. And as clear as any other image was the last time she saw him, lying dead on the forest floor.

  “Was it you? I mean has it been you following me around here? I thought it was Woods, I mean Goldman,” she stuttered, unsure at how he was going to behave now he was face to face with his killer.

  “Yeah, it was me. Thought you would have guessed by the poem,” he replied calmly, his eyes flicking from the bedside table and back to her.

  Suddenly she remembered the poem that she had found in her bed. How stupid was she? It could have been written by him, but she guessed it was Baudelaire.