Darkest Thoughts

by P W Hillard

  Darren nodded, though he wasn’t entirely sure he understood. “What are we going to do about that thing? We have to tell someone right?” He was whispering, lowering himself close to the table.

  “Tell who? It could have been anyone here. I’ll let Mum know when she gets here, but I wouldn’t say anything to this lot.” Perrin peered around the room and then smiled with a wicked grin. "Some aren't as nice as I am."

  Darren went to reply, to make some pithy comment about how she was cold as granite, but instead, the low murmur of the breakfast room was pierced by a scream. A pained howl that echoed around the dull green walls like a siren.

  The commotion was intoxicating, a beacon to the inhabitants of the hotel, who had clustered around the doorway. A maid had been crying uncontrollably as the population of the dining room had arrived in a long line. Somebody had cast a hand over her face, and now the maid was smiling happily as she pushed a trolley full of towels down the corridor, the horror she had seen forgotten.

  “Well,” Mickey said from behind the crowd. “This is a turn up for the books.”

  “The fuck are you doing here angel, for all we know this was you?” The woman speaking had a thick Danish accent, but her hair was jet black. It was tied into a long braid which languished over her shoulder, dropping down her dark green dress. She looked wildly overdressed for breakfast.

  “Slow your roll Helen, you know we don’t operate like this. Besides,” Mickey stood on his tip-toes, peering over the tall woman’s shoulder. “We quite liked this one, he was very organised. A lot of rules, a lot of order. You know we love that.”

  In the room, slumped next to the bed was Yanlou. Across his chest, splitting his expensive-looking silk pyjamas was a massive gash. Within a vortex swirled. He was obviously dead. The thought unsettled Darren. He had only the smallest grasp on the power and importance of the entities within the hotel, but killing one was something he had written off as impossible.

  “Should…should we call the police?” Darren asked. All eyes turned towards him, like he had blasphemed before the assembled gods.

  "No," said a woman in a red pantsuit. Her skin was tanned, her makeup immaculate, eye-liner curling out from the edges of her eyes. She stared at Darren. "We look after our own human. We will deal with this. Our first suspect, I would imagine, is you. Why is a human here? I've seen you, talking to Mickey, spending time with Perrin. You know what we are, don't you?"

  The thoughts coming from the woman were unsettling. Flashes of torn flesh and ripped organs. They came with an unspeakable hunger, a lust for meat.

  “He’s on my mothers’ payroll Ammit. He was with me last night, he’s on the level. My mother has claimed his as a priest, in accordance with the laws.”

  Ammit snorted. “A priest! Well, it has been a long, long time since Asag had one of those. I’m keeping my eye on you, morsel.”

  Chapter Six

  Darren was sat in the hotel's tiny bar, this time at one of the oddly uncomfortable seats that seemed to populate every hotel. Flat bottomed beige things with low round backs. He shifted, trying to wake his sleeping legs, his exorbitantly priced glass of cola in his hand. Perrin was sat next to him; her chair having creaked as she had sat down. Opposite them, Anne had finally arrived, acquiring herself a large gin and tonic from the bar, despite it only being nine AM.

  “So, one day you’re here without me, and get into trouble?” Anne took a long swig of her drink. Her thoughts were like a simmering heat, a low flame threatening to explode into a wildfire.

  “I’m sorry, this is all so new to me still and-” Darren began.

  "Oh, not you, Darren," Anne said. "You don't know any better. Perrin, however, is an old hand at this. Why didn't you ward his room?"

  “This whole hotel is supposed to be warded. What was the point? Approved beings only. Same as it is every year.” Perrin had her arms outstretched on the chairs low back. “How was I supposed to know someone would find a way around them?”

  “You said to me not to trust anyone,” Darren said. “Should have followed your own advice.”

  “Look,” Perrin said, shooting Darren a withering glare. “Whatever that thing was, I don’t think anyone could have reasonably expected it.”

  "And yet, there it was, this…what did you call it?" Anne placed her glass on the table between them with a soft thud, a ring of condensation forming on the over-polished wood. "Shadow man?"

  "That's a good a description as any," Perrin said. "The damn thing had a very fey-like frame. Long, thin, pointed fingers that end in claws. Never seen a fairy that looks exactly like that though.”

  “I wouldn’t say it was a shadow,” Darren said. His mind glossed over the mention of fairies. After slumming about with demons and gods in a run-down hotel it didn’t surprise him. “It was more like it was made of…nothingness. It felt like when you pulled me to your hell, just emptiness.”

  “Felt like it was made of plenty of something to me. Took a punch well enough.”

  “Well,” Anne said, adjusting the maroon blazer she was wearing. “It would seem that, at the risk of sounding cliché, a murderer is among us. I suppose we should try and sniff them out.”

  “Why us?” Darren said. He wasn’t keen on seeing the creature again.

  “Who else? I wasn’t here, and you and Perrin are the only other people to have been attacked. No-one else has any kind of reasonable alibi. We’re the closest thing to impartial as you can get in here.”

  “Oh, well. I suppose that makes sense.”

  “Besides, your ability makes you uniquely suited to a bit of investigating,” Anne said.

  “Again, not how it works, not with your lot anyway. It’s like images, feelings, emotions with you, not solid perceptible thoughts.” Darren took a sip of his cola, it had started to go flat and felt slightly unpleasant as it slipped down his throat.

  “Wouldn’t the killer be emitting things that would give them away? A desire to kill, anger, images of violence maybe?”

  “That’s everyone here. Everyone. You’ve dropped me into a bunch of people who run their own personal hell’s, very literally. All your thoughts are violent, gruesome even. Well, everyone’s except Perrin’s, hers are like, serene? Calm? Like a mountain walk on a pleasant day.”

  "Huh," Perrin said. "I think that's a compliment?"

  Anne nodded. “That makes sense. Perrin and her siblings are my children of stone, her nature leaking out like that follows.”

  “There was this other guy, Mickey, his thoughts are like a single long drone. A note held for too long,” Darren said.

  “You know he's an angel then?” Anne said. Darren nodded. "Good. That makes sense too. The angels, the Abrahamic ones, fancy themselves as the agents of order. Everything in its place, everything neatly labelled. They would love the universe to be sorted into neat little boxes, for everything to just fall in line like clockwork. It's nice to know their thoughts are as rigid as they seem."

  “You think it could have been him?” Perrin asked. “An angel at a convention for the hells? It is a little like a cat amongst the pigeons.”

  Anne shook her head and picked up her glass again. “No, no, I don’t think so. The angels bloody loved Yanlou. They get on pretty well with anyone from the celestial bureaucracy, all those forms, and procedures and lines. Plus, he would have to know he would be suspect number one if he had done it. Even angels wouldn’t be that pig-headed.” Anne nursed at her drink, a slice of lime listing amongst the fizzing clear liquid. “I would put good money it was one our lot. Yanlou is from an afterlife that is just riddled with red tape. That meant he was a fucking whizz at arguing his case. That, plus the population of china these days, meant he was collecting a lot of souls. A lot.”

  “So, he was the perfect target?” Perrin asked. “Big enough to be worth taking down, but you aren’t messing with the Dante’s Inferno lot.”

  “Does this kind of thing happen often?” Darren said.

>   "Not normally so openly, and certainly not to this extent. The rest of the bureaucracy is going to apoplectic. Never mind the most important thing,” Anne said, finishing her drink.

  “And that is?” Darren asked.

  “It shouldn’t even be possible.”

  ***

  They had gathered in Darren’s room, seemingly it had been designated as investigation central. Perrin had requisitioned the use of a printer from the hotel’s office, along with stealing a box of brass tacks that she was using to attach her print-outs to the wall. The staff hadn’t questioned her, or even acknowledge the murder had happened, carrying on with the routine unperturbed. It had unsettled Darren a little, to see how easy it was to bend the human mind.

  “Right, ok,” Perrin said, stepping away from the wall. She had ordered her clippings into columns. “This side is the big dogs. I think we can discount them for now. They didn’t get where they were doing dumb shit.”

  "Agreed," Anne said. She had claimed the sole chair in the room, a rickety-looking wooden thing, its cushion held on by tie strings around the stiles. “We need to look at who can gobble things off the bottom. People desperate enough to try something like this.”

  "I reckon, we're looking at these people here," Perrin said. The pictures on the wall were hardly people, the images pulled from Wikipedia, medieval woodcuts of strange creatures. "Ok, so the top of our list are these two. Ammit and Helen. They’re old religions, so they’re stuck trying to make claims on ancestry alone.”

  “I know the feeling,” Anne said. “Helen has a bee in her bonnet constantly. Feels that because she gave the world the word hell, she’s owed some bigger slice of the pie.”

  “Helen, she was the lady with the accent. Danish or Norwegian or something like that. I couldn’t quite place it.” Darren stretched his back, sitting on the edge of the bed was making it ache slowly. “What’s her deal? Which hell is she?”

  “You ever see a Viking movie?” Perrin asked.

  “Ah, right, that one. What about Ammit?”

  “She’s Egyptian,” Anne said. “A really nasty piece of work. Has a taste for the flesh of her enemies.”

  “Charming,” Darren said. “I thought Anubis was the Egyptian god of the dead?”

  Anne nodded. “Right, but he’s just the judge, a neutral third party. It’s Ammit’s job to drag the damned off for punishment. Must be growing hungry, things are so sparse for them right now. Who else we got on there?”

  “Well, I have Mickey under the suspects pile, because well, he’s a prick,” Perrin said. “I’ve also added Lucille and Abby.”

  “Who?” Darren said.

  “Lucille and Abby have been, off the grid, for a few years. Shafted their responsibilities and vanished. This really pissed off the Abrahamic heaven and hell, but the rumour is they came to some kind of amnesty agreement. Now they’re free agents. Lucille is here to collect some stupid lifetime achievement award.”

  “Mickey mentioned that, said he was here to give an award to his sister.” Darren sat there, silent for a moment. “Holy shit. She’s…that person? Really?”

  “Yeah, she is. Like I said though, she hasn’t been running the place for a long while now. It’s why I’ve got them in this column. They’re a spare part.”

  ***

  “I feel like a fucking spare part,” Lucille said. “Everyone here keeps giving me a wide berth, like I’ve got the fucking plague.” Lucille was sitting in the bar of the hotel, sipping at a cup of tea that was much too milky. She had wanted a nice glass of good quality whisky, but the hotel whisky was both terrible, and much too heavy for her system, since her recent troubles. She was much too used to ignoring the effects of alcohol, now that it worked on her, she had found her tolerance laughably low.

  “This can’t be a coincidence, right? They invite you here to get some stupid award and now someone gets offed. It’s a setup, right?” Abbie was still drinking the hard stuff, her own tolerance and abilities unaffected. Lucille was jealous, though she would never say so.

  “Ladies! So nice to see you.” Mickey strode towards them, arms outstretched, looking for a hug. Neither women moved, and Mickey dropped his arms dejectedly. “So that’s how it is huh?”

  “Fuck off, Mickey,” Lucille said. “You had something to do with this didn’t you?”

  “Me, no I never would.” Mickey held his hands to his chest, as though wounded. “I’m just here because they asked me to give you your award Luci. How could I say no?”

  “I wouldn’t even be here, collecting this stupid fucking thing, if I could refuse it. I could have done that, if working for you hadn’t fucked me over. Now I have to play nice, pretend I’m friends with all these pricks so they don’t get pissed off.”

  “And again, I am terribly sorry about that.” Mickeys grin was insufferably smug, like a child who knew he was getting away with something they shouldn’t. “How was I to know what would happen? You can’t blame me.”

  "Oh," Lucille said, twisting around and standing up from her stool in one sweeping motion, her dress flicking as she did. "I absolutely can. And I do. If I ever find a way to get back to how I was, I'll stuff your feathers so far up your fucking arse you'll vomit up a whole goddamn chicken. Fuck off, Mickey."

  The angel did as warned, vanishing in the moment between seconds.

  “You shouldn’t wind him up,” Abbie said. “If he wanted to take you out, he could.”

  “He never would, he needs me. Take’s too much pleasure in tormenting me.” Lucille reached across the bar, picking up her teacup and finishing the pale brown drink in one mouthful. “Besides, someone here is doing his dirty work for him.”

  Chapter Seven

  Darren adjusted his suit. He hadn't worn it in a long time, and it pinched at his waist uncomfortably. He tugged at the sleeves, now slightly too short at the end. He had last worn the thing to a cousins wedding, a frankly intolerable affair. That many people in the room, with that much alcohol, meant he had been bombarded by stray thoughts. Darren had made his excuses and left early, nursing a migraine, pain building behind his eyes. It felt like that sometimes, as if the thoughts were threatening to shatter his skull, splattering his brains across the room. It was why Darren had avoided any meaningful relationships all his life, constantly worried that the other person's thoughts might slowly fill his mind to bursting without a decent break,

  He was alone now, back in the room where that creature attacked him. Still, he felt safe, the knowledge that Perrin could walk through the door at any time should he need her. Whatever bound her to him seemed to work on any doorway, acting as a portal between him and her. It had been interesting, meeting her. Her thoughts weren’t like everyone else’s, they didn’t threaten to push against his skull, or trample over his own. They were calming, peaceful, except when she was angered. For the first time in a long time, Darren considered trying to spend more time with a person.

  Darren shook his head, raising his chin as he did so. His fingers worked deftly on his tie, knotting it effortlessly with practice. Darren hadn’t worn one, not at first, but his patients seemed to expect it from him. He had taken to wearing one just to avoid hearing the thought over and over. His thoughts of Perrin were hopeless. She wasn’t even human, not really. Darren wondered what she thought about him. That was a new experience for Darren, and it unsettled him. It must drive others to distraction, worrying about how people perceive them, he thought. Darren tucked part of his tie through the gap between his shirt buttons. He didn’t own a tie clip. He wasn’t even sure where you would buy one, it seemed like the kind of thing only owned by sixties advertising men and noir private detectives.

  Their own attempts at playing detective had been fruitless so far. There was simply not enough evidence, and too many people with motives. Darren wasn’t a born detective, despite his ability. It was hard to guess at why people did what they did, when you were so used to the right answer being served up on a platter. Darren con
sidered that he could have had a good career in the police, before discarding the thought. He wasn’t sure he wanted to peer into the minds of some people, for fear of what he might experience by proxy. Not that Darren wanted to be playing at investigator now, but Perrin and her mother had been very clear that the other attendees would consider leaving an admission of guilt, discarding logic for convenience.

  There was a knock at the door. The bathroom door. Darren rolled his eyes.

  “Come in, Perrin,” Darren said, buttoning his jacket. He fumbled for a moment, forgetting exactly how many to do up, settling on just doing the middle button.

  “How did you know it was me? Mind reading again?” Perrin stepped through the door. She was wearing a pink strapless dress in the same colour as her hair. In her hands was a matching clutch bag.

  “No-one else knocks on the bathroom door to come in. You look nice.”

  “Oh, uh, thank you.” Perrin blushed, colour rushing to her cheeks. “You ready?”

  “I guess so? I mean, going ahead with the awards regardless seems like a terrible idea. That thing, or whoever released it is still out there. Putting everyone in one place doesn’t seem smart.” Darren put his hands in his pockets, rocking back and forth on his heels.

  “Hah, that assumes that the people here actually care. Most of them would be pretty happy to see a rival out of the way. Plus, I think they’re frightened. One of their own is dead. Dead! That hasn’t happened in a very long time. Keeping trucking on is just their way of coping. Your tie isn’t, straight. May I?” Perrin tossed her clutch bag onto the bed and stepped forward.

  “Stiff upper lip, right?” Darren said as Perrin pulled herself close to him. She smelt of pine and fresh winter air. Darren could feel her warm breath as she adjusted the black tie around his neck.

  “Something like that. Remember these people have been around, well forever. They can be very stuck in their ways.” Perrin pulled, making sure the tie was tight.