LUMP

by Claire L. Fishback

  A single bang on the door brought Harold out of the dark memory with a start. He stared at the door, at the flickering foot shapes under the door. The handle jiggled.

  The lights stayed constant outside the door, went out, and when they came back on, the foot-shadows were gone. Harold tucked the photos back into the envelope and folder. He stuffed them into his bag and went to the door. He peeked through the peephole. Only the cracked and crumbling plaster of the opposite wall peered back. He unlocked the door and cracked it open to listen. But all he could hear was the pounding of his own heart.

  Harold returned to the bed, pushed off his shoes, and lay down. He rolled toward the nightstand and turned on the radio, tuned it to a non-station for the white noise, and clicked off the lamp.

  HE AWOKE TO THE SOUND of heavy, rapid footfalls in the hallway and someone pounding on the other doors. A glance at the clock told him it was now three in the morning. Three-oh-nine to be exact. The footfalls sounded again. More pounding. Closer this time. Maybe two doors down. His first thought was Sharzhad was waking everyone up to get them out because of some emergency.

  Footsteps. Pounding. Harold turned on the lamp, pulled his shoes on, and gathered his things from the bathroom. If he had to leave at three in the morning it’d be for good. He’d get back on the road and put more distance between that bloody crowbar and himself.

  Footsteps. Another loud bang on his door. The handle jiggled again like earlier in the night. More pounding and—was that scratching? Were they clawing to get in?

  “Now hold on just a minute,” he said, anger creeping into his voice.

  He unlocked the door, threw it open, and stepped into the hall. A draft blew past him.

  “What the hell—” No one was there.

  Except the elevator. But elevators aren’t someones.

  Harold looked at the ceiling. Perhaps the sounds came from overhead. He went back inside, locked the door, and picked up the phone to call the front desk.

  “Front desk,” Sharzhad’s sultry voice said. “How may I assist you, Mr. McCreed?”

  “How did you know it was me?”

  “Caller ID, sugar. Now, how may I help you?”

  “Someone upstairs is running around pounding on doors. Hasn’t anyone complained?”

  Sharzhad’s raucous laugh barked through the line. Harold flinched and pulled the phone away a few inches.

  “Sugar, you are outta your mind. This motel is only two floors. Now unless someone is on the roof . . . are you sure you didn’t have a bad dream or something?”

  “What about the thirteenth floor?” Harold asked with a good amount of snide in his voice.

  Sharzhad let out a girlish giggle. “I was just playin’. Motel industry joke.”

  Harold grumbled.

  “If you’re sufferin’ from bad dreams, sugar, I can sell you something to help,” she said. He could hear her wicked, nicotine-stained grin through the phone. See her fathomless eyes peering at him. He got that creepy sensation of being watched and glanced up at the ceiling, at the vent. There was a hotel once whose owner was a voyeur and installed boards in the ceiling, so he could spy on his customers.

  “That won’t be necessary. Thanks.”

  “Goodnight, Mr. McCreed.” The line went dead. Harold replaced the receiver and lay back on his pillow. He stared at the texture on the ceiling until his vision started to double, then darken.

  Right as he slipped to the edge of slumber, his cell phone rang. Harold grabbed it and answered.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?”

  Ragged breathing replied.

  “Very funny. Who is this?” He looked at the phone screen but didn’t recognize the number. The line went dead.

  Harold took a deep breath through his flared nostrils and let it out. He hung up, then dialed the number. Listened as the line connected. A digital ring in his ear. A real ring right above him. Digital ring. Real ring.

  He jumped out of bed, grabbed the key from the dresser, and stomped into the hallway.

  The elevator, its gaping black mouth, waited at the end of the hall. Harold swallowed. The anger drained out of him at the sight of that deep darkness.

  He clenched his free hand into a fist and strode toward the steady lights flanking the elevator, climbed aboard, and pulled the accordion shut. He looked up at the black maw yawning over his head, then threw the lever to the right. To thirteen.

  The elevator didn’t move, but when Harold tried to pull it back to two, it wouldn’t budge. He left the phone connected but pulled it away from his ear to listen for cables grinding or any indication the car moved.

  Ten seconds went by. Twenty. His eyes were drawn compulsively to the hole in the ceiling. To the darkness beyond.

  Thirty seconds.

  A full minute. The tinny digital ringing from the cell phone continued.

  The collar of Harold’s t-shirt seemed to tighten. A cold sweat broke out on his upper lip. He pressed himself into the corner farthest from the hole and kept his eyes on it.

  There. Was that movement? The darkness seemed to shift and morph. He blinked hard.

  Fourteen hours on the road would make a man crazy. Half of those hours were spent in a blood-spattered t-shirt. Once he got out of dodge, he pulled over at a vacant rest area and changed. He left the t-shirt in the trashcan, headed back the way he came for an hour, then circled around to the west.

  A scratching sound perked his ears. His eyes jumped back to the gap in the ceiling. The scratch came again, and Harold realized it was his own finger scraping at something on the leg of his jeans. He looked down. A single drop of dried blood.

  Without a ding, the elevator’s outer door shuddered open. Harold peered out through the metal accordion. Same flickering lights. Same floor. But it wasn’t, was it? The lighting was different. The colors were muted. It was like he’d stepped back into Kansas after being in the bright and cheery Land of Oz. Only Kansas was dead.

  Now why’d you have to go and think that? A cold draft caressed his neck.

  He wrestled the metal clap trap aside and leaped out. A few feet clear of the elevator, he lifted the phone to his ear. It still rang. He listened out into the flickering darkness and heard the faint ring of a phone far down the hall.

  The lights overhead buzzed in time with the flickers. The carpet shushed against his feet. Harold stopped outside the room where the ringing came from, hung up his cell phone, and put it in his pocket. He hit the door once as hard as he could, then jiggled the knob back and forth. Locked, of course.

  But then, the door opened. A cold claw clamped around his balls. Thick darkness filled the room like some kind of living substance.

  “Hello?” Harold whispered.

  He needed to run back down the hall and return to the second floor, but he stood frozen outside this room with the door open into darkness. He had to leave, and soon. Whatever was in the room was going to come out and yell at him, or pound him to a pulp for bothering it in the middle of the night.

  Harold couldn’t leave. His legs trembled, and he fought to contain his bladder.

  He had to leave. Now. Before it came out. Before—

  The lights went out. Harold let out a short scream, then another when they didn’t come back on right away. He fumbled his phone back out of his pocket.

  The metal accordion rattled down the hall. Harold held his breath. The shudder of the exterior doors closed. Harold flipped the burner-phone-of-the-week open and let out a high laugh laced with hysteria at the insignificant amount of light the minuscule screen provided.

  It almost made things worse.

  If I can’t see you, you can’t see me.

  The overhead lights buzzed back to life. The elevator was gone.

  Harold ran down the hall and searched the wall for the button to call it back, but there wasn’t one.

  Sugar, this motel is only two floors.

  The lights threatened to go out again, all flashing at once instead of taking turns. Harold
cringed each time they darkened. He made his way down the hall again in an attempt to find the stairwell to get back to the second floor. Behind him, the elevator dinged. He turned and stared at it just a few yards down the hallway. The doors slid open. The accordion was already open.

  The interior was black, like the interior of the room down the hall. A living darkness. His ears strained to hear if something was inside. A soft shifting sound. No. Just his hand again, scratching at the blood on his pants. The lightbulbs in the sconces popped and went out. Harold backed away from the dark mouth.

  The set of flickering fluorescents just outside the elevator flickered once, then stayed dark. Something did shift in the darkness. A sliding sort of sound. The sound dragging something through grass might make.

  Harold lurched to the first door and pounded on it, tried the door knob. Locked. The next set of lights went out. He moved to the next door. Then the next. Pounding on each one. Testing the doorknobs. All locked. No one was home.

  The darkness followed.

  When Harold reached the door at the end of the hall, he pounded his fist against it. Someone was inside, he knew, they opened the door before. The lights right overhead flicked out, came back on. He jiggled the doorknob. Locked. The lights went out. Harold clawed at the door, then sank to the floor. He curled into a ball against whatever attack might come from whatever thing slithered down the hall.

  The door opened. Harold jumped up and ran inside, despite the darkness within. He tripped over the first bed, fumbled his way around the second, and cowered in the corner. The door clicked shut and locked.

  He bit his knuckles to contain the whimper trying to erupt. He pulled his knees to his chest and covered his head with one arm. He rocked in the blackness.

  After an eternity passed with no incident, Harold got to his hands and knees. He found the edge of the curtain and pulled it back. No window. Just like in his room on the second floor. He searched his memory for the lighting situation in his room. There was a lamp on the table between the beds.

  Harold crawled along the end of the bed, turned the corner, and reached out for the table. His hands found something cold. He jerked back with a gasp, then lunged for the table and the lamp. He clicked it on.

  On the floor at his feet was a crowbar. The crowbar. On the bed, the pictures from his folder. On top lay the one of his wife’s dead eyes.

  The lamp flickered.

  Harold stared into the eyes in the photo. A sickening sadness welled within his gut. He sank to his knees and picked up the picture.

  “I’m sorry, Lori. I’m so sorry,” he said. He had to turn himself in. It was the only way to escape this. He grabbed the phone. It started to ring before he could even dial.

  “Do you have any idea what time it is?” His own voice asked. Harold only breathed into the line. Too shocked to say anything. “Very funny. Who is this?”

  He dropped the phone back onto the receiver. A second later, the phone rang. A sob erupted from his throat.

  The crow bar lay at his feet. He picked it up and touched the hooked end with his thumb.

  HAROLD LAY ON THE GROUND in front of the gas station convenience store. A vehicle pulled up. He didn’t look. He’d stopped looking years ago.

  The whores started giggling. Harold turned his head. He sat up. It was finally who he’d been waiting for.

  He watched a younger version of himself contemplate going into the store. Harold in the brown coat rolled to a standing position and stumbled over to Harold in the fresh shirt. His eyes darted to the single spot of blood on younger Harold’s jeans.

  “What’s the matter, mister?” One of the whores said to the younger Harold. “Not lookin’ for a good time?”

  When the Harold from the truck turned, the Harold in the brown coat pointed at the motel. Harold from the truck turned to follow the pointing finger. When he turned back, Harold in the brown coat tried to speak. The other Harold’s eyes shifted downward, probably to the scar on Harold’s throat. A mangled mess of a scar. The crow bar hadn’t been sharp enough for the job, and he’d lost his will.

  Don’t go in there. Run away, and keep running, he tried to say. Only clicking and creaking sounds came out.

  “Thanks,” the other Harold said, and offered him a five-dollar bill.

  Gloria’s Tears

  I WAS IN LOVE WITH Gloria Marks, the girl from Wednesday night art class. I never really talked to her much, because she wore head phones in class. Sometimes I nodded to her when she looked at me. She usually smiled and continued painting.

  She was gorgeous with long, luminous auburn hair and sparkling green eyes. She was short, and slender, and always wore knee-high boots of some variety. One night she looked like Robin Hood, wearing green tights and worn, brown leather boots. She always wore a scarf, no matter what the weather was like outside, and she carried a large, slouchy purse where she stowed her art supplies.

  I felt like we belonged together. Some cosmic pull that guided me to sit next to her every Wednesday. It took me almost six months to ask her, I mean, who would want to date me?

  I’m the nerdy kid in art class that paints impressionistic art that sucks. Finally, one night before class I asked her if she wanted to go for coffee afterward.

  “Class ends at eight, I’d be up all night!” She covered her mouth with her hand as she laughed. I took her hand.

  “Don’t cover it, you’re—” My voice caught in my throat, and I cleared it. “Beautiful.”

  We went for coffee after class, and yes, we were up all night, sitting on the plush carpet in her living room, talking about art, love, relationships. We even talked about death, of all things.

  “I’m not afraid to die,” Gloria said, handing me a plate of chocolate pie. “Not at all.”

  “Why’s that?” I dug into the pie. It was heaven.

  “Well, I feel that I live every day to its fullest, so if I did die, I have no regrets.” She smiled with chocolate in her teeth. “What about you? Are you afraid to die?”

  I was terrified of dying. “No.”

  We finished our pie in silence. Gloria took the plates to the kitchen and when she came back, she dropped to the floor next to me and kissed me. She tasted like chocolate pie.

  The next morning, Gloria was gone before I got up. She left a key on the counter with detailed instructions on what to do with it.

  1. Pick up key

  2. Go to door

  3. Open door

  4. Walk out

  5. Turn around, close door

  6. Put key in lock

  7. Turn key

  8. Put key in pocket

  9. Call me later

  I smiled.

  When I called her later, she didn’t remember giving me the key or our night together.

  THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY, I saw her in class. She approached me with a confused expression on her face.

  “You didn’t call me,” she said.

  “Yes, I did,” I told her. “You didn’t remember me.” I handed her the key to her place.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “The key you gave me.”

  “What does it open?” She asked, turning the key in her hands.

  “Your front door.” I should have checked my tone. Her mouth fell open and her eyes grew wide. She shook her head slightly and regained her composure.

  “What did we do?” she asked in a small voice. She looked at her hands, fiddling with a hang nail.

  “We stayed up most of the night talking,” I said.

  A tear dripped onto her hand. I raised her chin with a finger and wiped a second tear from her cheek.

  “What did we talk about?” she asked with a thick voice.

  “Tons of stuff,” I said with a smile. “It was the best night of my life.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Her face contorted with sadness. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “Shouldn’t have done what?” I asked.

  She sniffled hard and took my hand. “Let’s go sit
down somewhere.” She pulled me into a closet in the art wing and sat on an overturned bucket. I sat on a step stool.

  “I black out,” she said. “Whenever I have strong feelings, I black out and I don’t remember things that happen.”

  “Oh.” I looked at the toes of her boots.

  “I don’t know what happened the other night, but I remember writing a note for you to call me,” she said. “I must have felt something powerful or the situation caused some sort of stress, and my brain blacked it out.”

  “But you were still moving, you were still conscious.” My heart beat hard. She didn’t remember, she really didn’t remember our kiss, or . . . the other stuff. It was all a blank space in her mind.

  She shrugged her shoulders and looked down. Her face contorted again.

  “I don’t feel anything,” she cried. “Because whenever I start to, my brain blocks it from my memory.” She full out bawled into her hands at this.

  I held her close and pet her hair that smelled like raspberries and champagne.

  “We’ll get through this,” I said. “I still want to be part of your life.”

  I did some research and told Gloria that I thought maybe she couldn’t remember because a lot of memory has to do with the emotions we feel when experiencing them. I didn’t find anything on why her brain seemed to turn off when she experienced the feelings but tried to link emotions back to her childhood. Gloria couldn’t remember much of her childhood, she thought because it was so full of good emotions. She was wrong.

  A letter came from her mother a week after. It was a note that explained everything. It was one that started: If you’re reading this, I am dead.

  Gloria let out a small gasp as she started to read it, and one by one, tears began to slip down her cheeks. I was in the kitchen chopping vegetables for a stir-fry, but I could see her on the couch. Her hand went to her lips.

  When she was done, she crumpled the letter and threw it hard, then fell back against the couch and cried.

  I rushed to her side.

  “My mom . . . Is dead.” She gasped for air. “I was—” Tears started anew.