by Ryan Harding
“Did you see anything upstairs?” Nathan asked.
The calmer one answered. “It was just us. Do you know where we—”
Marcus cut her off. “None of us know what the hell’s going on.”
“Do you two…know each other?” Nathan said this with only the slightest pause. Adam wondered the same thing.
“What? No.” She indicated the woman in the red pantsuit. “I heard her wandering in the hallway for help. Her name’s Annette. I’m Eliza.”
Nathan only introduced himself, leaving Adam’s dad to (correctly) identify the family. He showed no reaction to “Adam” instead of “Aaron.” Marcus and Suzanne offered their names, which Eliza and Annette evidently took as their cue to descend the last steps and join them. Annette relinquished Eliza’s arm but kept a pincer grip on the sleeve of Eliza’s lime green shirt. This struck Adam as lame until his mom squeezed his hand and he remembered his own situation.
Eliza somehow managed to wear gray jogging pants, which seemed positively subdued compared to the primary color wheel everyone else represented. She came from the northeast, in Bridgeport. “It must have happened when I was out running,” she explained. “But I don’t remember.”
Adam couldn’t help noticing how well she filled out her lime shirt, even in all his anxiety.
I wouldn’t mind seeing her out for a jog.
“I was shopping,” Annette offered. “I think. Or picking up my prescription. No. No, I never got it. Oh God. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
She didn’t mention where she lived and no one asked. Adam wasn’t sure she’d know that either. Up close he figured she must be in her mid-forties, a thin woman with chestnut hair, right around the age of Nathan and his parents. She dropped Eliza’s sleeve when she talked and started fidgeting. She reminded him of a bird bouncing through grass, head in a perpetual swivel. His mom would have warned his head would pop off if he kept doing that. Her pantsuit seemed to be her choice rather than the sort of fashion tragedy which befell Adam.
“Are there any more floors up there?” Nathan asked.
“No.” Eliza gestured up the stairs. “Ours was the top.”
“Okay. Well, let’s see what we can find downstairs.”
They trudged down to the next landing, Adam more self-conscious about holding his mom’s hand as their numbers grew. He assumed they would go straight to ground level, but Nathan held them up on the second floor.
“I think I heard something.”
They listened when all their shuffling ceased, and sure enough, they heard faint voices through the door.
“Could be others like us,” Adam’s dad said, barely above a whisper.
“Yeah, and could be those mystery motherfuckers who brought us here,” Marcus said.
Adam’s mom made a strained sound in her throat which Marcus probably mistook for the prospect of a confrontation.
“I doubt they’d bring us here and let us get the jump on them,” Nathan pointed out.
“Who says we’ll even know when we see ‘em? There could be a mole. We don’t know what kinda game they’re playing with us.”
This brought them all up short. Suspicious glances spread. Adam took the opportunity to peer through the small pane of glass. He saw three more people, nobody seemingly armed.
“They look like us,” he reported. “I bet they don’t know how they got here either.”
“Shit,” Marcus said, making it at least two syllables. “How they gonna steal this many people with no one noticing?”
“They’re not armed,” Adam added.
“I ain’t either, but I wouldn’t tell nobody they was safe around me.”
“We’re going,” Nathan announced in a normal voice and shouldered open the door.
The three people—two men and a woman— whirled around at the noise. Adam had a nightmare flash of someone hoisting a gun after all and shredding them, but they were empty handed.
Nathan held up his arms. “Sorry for the dramatic entrance, but I’m guessing we all have something in common.”
Adam noticed Marcus fixing Nathan with his intense stare, perhaps less than thrilled with the haphazard way he decided a course of action without debate and risked all their lives. Nathan’s recklessness didn’t seem like the hallmark of someone who could keep his head in a crisis.
Nathan went through their roster for the new people, managing to get Adam’s name right this time. He had to be corrected when he introduced Suzanne as Susan.
The first of the three was a beefy guy with a widow’s peak named Lawrence, the only one among them to wear fairly restrained colors, a pink shirt but gray slacks. He had a film of sweat on his brow, though the temperature in here seemed neutral to Adam. Not potential “mole” material, but maybe that was the point. He fit into the age demographic of Marcus and Suzanne.
The other man seemed a much better possibility as a double agent. His name (he claimed) was Patrick. Probably around forty with a receding hairline, but still had most of his brown hair, rather neatly parted for a guy supposedly abducted. He had a stare sharp enough to blind anyone who made eye contact. He wasn’t saying much. He showed more personality in his navy blue shoes. Khaki pants and a white shirt completed the ensemble.
Lastly there was Gin, a dark-haired woman of Asian descent. Not stacked like Eliza, but she was gorgeous. Adam saw some pretty girls at the beach this week, but Gin made them look like flaming dog shit stomped out on somebody’s porch. She was younger, too. Not his age, but definitely early twenties.
With my luck, she’s the mole and she’ll slit my throat while I’m sleeping.
It was stupid to think of her like that anyway in this situation, but what he wouldn’t give to know more about her. She looked to be a victim of the fashion assassin as well, in a yellow top with red jeans.
“What is up with these clothes?” Marcus said.
“I think they brought us here to shoot a Tide commercial,” Adam said, hoping to get a laugh from Gin. No dice from her, or anyone else for that matter.
Oh right. We’re all terrified.
Marcus inspected his green pants. “I didn’t even know I still had these. Ain’t worn them since high school and sure as hell didn’t pack them for her parents’.”
“Yeah, I didn’t choose mine either,” Adam quickly chimed in, lest Gin think him an idiot.
“Hey, what happened down there?” Suzanne pointed past the group to the opposite end of the hallway.
“We hadn’t made it down there yet,” Gin said.
They walked down en masse, awkwardly clustered together for strength in numbers. The lights on either side of the hall had burned out down here, offering only the faintest hint of what Suzanne spotted.
Nathan reached it first. It seemed to Adam like he hurried to do it. “There’s a break in the wall.”
“A break? It looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger smashed through it,” Lawrence said, sounding mildly out of breath even from just the short stroll. Adam doubted they grabbed him while he was out jogging.
The hole was indeed the height and size of a very large man, with lots of broken plaster scattered along the floor and inside the room beyond the wall. A hint of light pushed through the opening. It was room 237.
“Want to check it out?” Eliza asked.
“Might as well,” Adam’s dad said. “We’ve been safe so far.”
Yeah, Adam thought. Until we’re not.
Nathan crouched and leaned through the hole. “Yeah, this is really weird.”
Three people said some kind of variation of “What is it?” at the same time.
Nathan didn’t answer, just stepped through. Adam saw what he meant soon enough. Someone had “broken” into the room because the door was barricaded. The armoire was tipped over and pushed in front of it, with the dresser shoved behind that as well.
Adam looked back at the special Hulk-smash entrance.
For all the good it did them.
“Someone came and took them,” Annette sai
d, eyes ever moving, door, wall, hole, floor, ceiling, repeat.
“Maybe,” Nathan said.
“Maybe?” Marcus echoed. “You think security kicked through the wall and threw ‘em out for not paying the bill?”
“We need more light,” Eliza said and flipped on the bathroom switch. It seemed like Annette started screaming even before the end of the thock sound.
The bathroom walls looked practically painted with dried blood.
Three
Lawrence watched their reactions with thinly veiled bemusement.
Eliza recoiled in horror, hand raised to her mouth as she sucked air in a bizarre parody of a gasp. Annette screamed. Suzanne broke a long silence with “Marcussss” and predictably he took the spotlight and ran with it. “Yo, man, this is messed up.” Not exactly the macho “look how badass I am, fool” statement Lawrence expected of him. Annette screamed. Ed ordered his wife and son not to look. Annette screamed. Nathan took two quick steps in his stylish black and white brogues and clasped a hand over her mouth. Nathan: man of action! Huzzah!
Lawrence watched them through the hole, taking it all in, assessing, surveying, deducing, theorizing.
Annette angrily shoved free, but it was clear who decided to break the contact. She straightened her gaudy red pantsuit as if he left her disheveled. “Brute.”
“Keep it together,” Action Man stage whispered, so everyone could acknowledge the arrival of their born leader.
Annette opened her mouth, then opted to fume silently.
Three of the four vanity bulbs remained intact. Two still worked but only one had steady light, the flickering bulb providing a horrific strobe-like effect. Lawrence almost laughed—the all-too-perfect set-up like the first scare in a haunted house, designed not to overwhelm so much as set the stage for the inevitable escalation of terror. The German word demontage came to mind, as someone had been dismantled; maybe several someones. Lawrence imagined them rag-dolled about the room stamping bloody depressions into drywall, shattering the vanity mirror, knocking shelves off the wall.
“Someone got their ass wrecked in here,” Marcus sagely observed.
Or at least someone (Loonatik411, maybe?) wanted them to think so. Take a gallon of syrup, Hyacinth punch mix, chunks of rubber or foam, and spread liberally—voilà! Instant murder scene. No body needed, just pieces that could have once been a body with a little imagination and dodgy lighting. The room smelled of mildew and stale air and mothballs, but not death or rotting flesh or even blood. Granted, he stood in the hall outside, but wouldn’t decay have permeated the hallway, too?
Not real, you rubes! Let’s move on to the next stage so we can get the hell out of here.
Lawrence seemed to be the only one in on the joke. Well, maybe the shifty looking Patrick knew the deal. He reminded Lawrence of the painting in a cartoon haunted house where the eyes moved, because otherwise his face gave up nothing. He sized him up as the chief competition if this were a game of wits. Judging by the Tide joke, Adam seemed to have his shit together, too—or he was showing off for Eliza the buxom jogger. Jury still out on that one.
Patrick and the Japanese chick also stayed in the hallway. Ed pointed/pushed his family toward the “exit,” and Lawrence nearly bumped Patrick as he backed away to give them room. Mr. Personality deftly avoided contact by sliding to the left. His bright white T-shirt didn’t blend into the shadows as well as his intentions.
“Watch your head, mom.” Adam came through the wall first with his mother literally in tow; she would not relinquish the boy’s hand. If she did, Lawrence figured it would only be to gather the fallen pieces of wood and drywall to build them a makeshift shelter.
“You a gamer?” Lawrence whispered to Adam.
Adam looked at his mom as if deferring to her for an answer, an answer in itself: no violent games for this kid. No, you cannot play Mario Kart! There are bombs in that game!
“What did you say?” Pamela’s voice trembled.
“Nothing.” Lawrence quickly stepped away to make Patrick a buffer between himself and mother hen.
As soon as everyone filed back into the hallway, Nathan cut through the mumbling and disparate conversations with an elevated, stern voice. “We need to keep it together.” He had the air of an upper management type who took his authority for granted. He held both hands aloft with palms outward as he spoke, moving them forward slightly as if pushing his ideas outward to the others.
Or delivering the Sermon on the Mount. Is that #3 in 101 Power Gestures for the Aspiring Alpha Dog?
“Last thing we need is everyone running in different directions,” Nathan continued, though nobody seemed to be in a hurry to go anywhere except his pocket.
“Or screaming to let everyone know where we all at.”
Annette stared at Marcus with a slack expression like she’d heard him speak but hadn’t comprehended a word of it. Lawrence’s first impression of her still held: a few Xanax short of a full pill bottle.
“It’s okay,” Eliza assured Annette. “We’re all scared.”
“I want to go home. Can we?”
Adam’s father said, “Someone is going to pay for this misunderstanding. I’m talking epic lawsuit.”
Lawrence wasn’t sure what kind of “misunderstanding” would land eleven strangers in an old hotel with no memory of it, but whatevs.
He’d yet to spot any cameras. Well-placed, strategically hidden, no doubt providing a running chronicle of their exploits in this crazed little motel hell. Who would do something like this and not film it? This was high entertainment for someone, possibly live-streaming on the net for über rich clientele with a taste for macabre theatrics. The only question was how far they would take it.
This many people? There’s a limit for sure.
The best-case scenario involved everyone giving their consent beforehand and agreeing to some type of roofie. Latrunculin A could wipe memories in rodents, but that was a lawsuit waiting to happen if something went wrong here. He didn’t need Ed to tell him that. Lawrence also couldn’t see mother hen allowing Adam’s participation without the kind of padded suit worn by attack dog trainers. More importantly, he’d never agree to this himself, much less a basket case like Annette.
There had to be a plant in the group, someone with a portable hidden camera. That ruled out the couple and the family; why set more than 10% of the group as double agents? Nathan? Too active. Patrick? Too obvious; he’d be a fool to keep himself so remote. The Asian wallflower would be too bizarre; a literal and figurative Manchurian candidate. Annette? Too theatrical. Eliza? She stayed in the thick of the action with the best vantage point. She flipped the bathroom light switch and put her back to the wall. Reaction shot? Her baggy gray jogging pants had black arrows alternating up and down; any one of them could have a camera peeking.
“We need to get downstairs and figure out our location and a course of action,” Nathan said.
Let’s all go to the lobby, let’s all go to the lobby…
“Shouldn’t we figure out what we got in common and who’s doin’ this shit?” Marcus asked.
You do just that, Flava Flav. Who be fuckin’ with us, boyee!
Nathan hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Whoever did that won’t wait for us to get our bearings, Marcus. We don’t have the element of surprise until we take it.”
Lawrence imagined Nathan practicing this line in a mirror, to help take charge when the time came : “…until we take it…until we take it…” Experimenting with pounding a fist into his palm for effect [Power Gesture #15].
Lawrence snickered.
“You have something to add?” Nathan asked.
Pamela glared at Lawrence with the patented Mother’s Evil Eye, a human shield for Adam.
“N-no,” Lawrence stammered. “Good here.”
“You think this is funny?” Eliza demanded. “This isn’t funny.”
Oh, it’s okay for your girl Annette to scream like a banshee and give us away, but laughing is a clear and pre
sent danger. Got it.
“If you got something on your mind, maybe you should share it with the group,” Suzanne said.
“Yeah, man,” Marcus chimed, and others muttered similar tidings while it was safe to kick the scapegoat.
“What’s your story, Larry?” Nathan asked. “If you know something, out with it.”
Larry?
“He doesn’t have a leg to stand on,” Suzanne concluded. “Look at him sweating. He’s just as scared as the rest of us.”
Marcus pushed the air dismissively. “Fool don’t know shit.”
Lawrence saw his only out and seized it. “N-nothing. I-I have T-Tourette’s, you fu-fu-fucks. Sorry. Fuckers! Hmmmmm.”
Deception level: Expert.
He had his theory, but once voiced it could be poked at, its veracity questioned, its probability reduced by the chorus of dissenting opinions even if they had nothing constructive of their own to offer. Lawrence wanted to hold onto his explanation for now, keep it his, have a good laugh at the end and say he knew all along.
Such optimism felt misplaced. The bloody walls flashed through his mind.
“Need to keep your punk ass mouth shut then,” Marcus said.
“Does Tourette’s really cause that kind of stuttering?” Eliza asked.
Nathan thankfully cut off the inquisition. “Okay then. First floor it is.”
He led the way followed by the Chinese girl, Marcus and Suzanne, Eliza and Annette, Ed, Pamela, and Adam, and Patrick and Lawrence last. He looked for cameras or nooks where they might be hidden, but in a stairwell with dim emergency lighting he saw nothing of note but the lighting itself. Were they to believe the only things replaced since the 1980s were the light bulbs?
Sloppy.
An unknown group had kidnapped and drugged them—their diversity and various points of origin throughout the continental US hinted at a large organization with broad interstate reach. They were deposited into a situation with no ideas and no clues. Possible ends: Mental experiment? Social experiment?
