Deadfall Hotel

by Steve Rasnic Tem

  As he spoke, a white-haired gentleman was climbing out of the passenger side front seat. From the resemblance, Richard assumed this must be the Reverend Johnson Senior. The older man nodded in Richard’s direction. The muscles surrounding the man’s mouth toyed with a smile, then gave up as if out of practice. “Tim,” he said hoarsely, “We better get her inside.”

  Richard assumed he meant the little girl, but the reverend Tim kissed his daughter on the top of her head, then joined his father at the rear passenger side door. With the sun’s lower angle, Richard could vaguely distinguish the still outline of a head in the back of the car. The Reverend Johnson’s posture withered slightly as he pulled open the door. “Dear?”

  A nice man, Richard thought, but something vaguely irritating about him.

  The two men leaned over, the elder Johnson with an audible grunt. When they straightened, a dark-haired woman in a bright red dress rose between them, like a miraculously blooming flower. Her back was to Richard, her head somewhat wobbly on the pale stalk of neck. There was something about the dress. Richard wasn’t sure what, something vaguely anachronistic in the cut of the shoulders, the cuffed sleeves. It didn’t quite fit her – it was too tight on the shoulders and upper arms. He wasn’t sure what gave him the idea, but he wondered if maybe she hadn’t dressed herself.

  The Reverend Tim tapped her on the left shoulder, and his father gave her a little push on the right. She leaned quickly toward Richard, and for a moment he thought she was falling, until the head righted itself. She smiled then, but it was reminiscent of the smiles of small babies – having more to do with some physical process, than with sincere feeling.

  This was obviously the little girl’s mother. She had the same dark, beautiful looks. The Reverend Tim stepped slightly to the side, his hands open and ready by her arm, accompanying his wife as she attempted to proceed to the porch unaided.

  She had a pleasant face, and she moved slowly up the steps, as if onto a stage. The Reverend Tim and his father seemed strangely quiet, reverential. The little girl stood perfectly still, away from the steps, watching her mother expressionlessly. Richard saw the window curtain near the door flutter slightly, then Serena’s face behind the glass.

  There was a slight hesitation in everything the woman did. Even tilting her head, saying “Hello, I’m Mrs. Johnson,” had an off-rhythm quality, as if she didn’t have quite enough air to move the words. Accepting her hand, Richard detected an unevenness in her grip. Her head swung slowly toward her daughter. “An-na-belle,” she said, almost as if surprised. Annabelle said nothing, motionless.

  “Go with your mother inside, honey,” the Reverend Tim said. “Help your mother.”

  Annabelle walked over reluctantly and went inside with her mother, ignoring the woman’s stiffly offered hand. Watching them leave, Richard was left with a great sense of disorder about the woman. He could see the crooked seams, the way the stockings bagged loosely below her knees, like a slough of skin. But no, not exactly as if she didn’t care, but as if she hadn’t noticed. He thought about the woman’s face, there had been a slight blurriness to it, as if viewing her features through gel – the cheeks looking sanded, a bit too smooth, a layer of pastels painted on, eye shadow and lipstick ever-so-slightly out of their expected borders, as if they’d been applied without benefit of mirror.

  “My wife,” the Reverend Tim began – Richard was instantly embarrassed; the man had caught him staring – “is not herself.”

  “I believe there’s a doctor, one of the towns,” Richard stopped, unsure if Jacob had actually told him this, or if he was just making it up, like filling in the details of a story only half heard.

  “No need.” Reverend Tim pulled several small bags out of the trunk. His father took them without comment and started, overburdened, toward the steps. Richard moved to help, but the old man shook his head as if embarrassed, hurried on. “She’s stable. There was an accident a while back. Her fault, I’m afraid.” He looked at Richard and shrugged. “She hasn’t been the same.”

  Then the Reverend Tim slammed the trunk lid with an angry motion – Richard was sure – despite his calm face. The lid popped back up, and he tried repeatedly to close the trunk, slamming it harder each time, but still with that implacable expression. Each time it popped open again. Finally he gave up and leaned back against the rear bumper, staring off toward the grove.

  “I’ll have Jacob, our caretaker, take a look,” Richard said, feeling absurd at this pretense of being somehow in charge. “He’s very competent with this sort of thing.”

  “My wife is very fond of this car,” the Reverend Tim replied. Then he stood up, looking renewed. “If you don’t mind. I must attend to my family.” And suddenly he was energetically striding for the front door of the Deadfall, as if in flight. Richard struggled to keep up.

  “WELL, THIS MAY be the problem.” Jacob pointed the flashlight into a dark space where several beams criss-crossed.

  The supporting architecture down in this level made no sense to Richard. He was used to parallel beams, parallel floor joists, posts supporting the beams and the bearing walls on top of them. Very little here appeared to be parallel, or perpendicular for that matter. Beams and joists were arranged in patterns like Pick-Up Sticks, laid one atop the other at irregular angles.

  The flashlight beam wavered, finding its way through the barriers, finally revealing what appeared to be a tattered wig dyed a multitude of colors. Richard allowed his eyes to adjust before making any conclusions. Finally he said, “It’s a big tangle of electrical cable. God, don’t tell me those are splices?” Dizzy, he grabbed a beam, tried to hide just how scared he was.

  “I’m afraid so. There may be some sort of metal box at the center of it, just for form’s sake, but that may be no more than a tomato soup can with holes punched through it.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “There is a peaches can, label still on it, buried in the wall behind a bathroom mirror on the second floor. It’s the junction box for the wiring to about twelve rooms.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We do nothing. Some people find flickering lights romantic. The next time we have a couple of that persuasion in the Deadfall, we’ll know what room to put them in.”

  “How can that be safe?”

  “If we tamper with the nerves, then who knows what might happen to the body? Best to leave them alone. We are hardly trained physicians, here. From time to time, I have brought professional electricians in to examine the premises. They shake their heads. They refuse to touch a single wire. A few say nothing – they simply walk out to their trucks and leave.”

  “So we don’t touch, either.”

  “Not unless there is sparking, exposed copper. That has been my criterion. So far it has been sufficient. Imagine this hotel, its integrity compromised, its senses altered. All due to our meddling. Imagine it as Mrs. Johnson.”

  “Whoa. Where did that come from?”

  “None of my affair, really. I should have kept my peace. I was being indiscreet.” Jacob studied the wiring.

  “Too late now. What are you seeing?”

  “It would be beneath my notice, if not for the little girl. People may do as they like – certainly this hotel is some sort of monument to that sentiment, and I presume this to be a family issue and not indicative of the religion as a whole – but children, well, certainly, you know yourself. Children require care.”

  “Well, the woman is sick, obviously. But I don’t understand. Are you saying she shouldn’t be around her own child? Because if you are, that her mother –”

  “– is dead, Richard. I am convinced her mother is dead.”

  “Then who is this woman pretending to be her mother?” He stopped. “Oh.”

  THE ‘GATHERING,’ AS they referred to themselves, began arriving early the next morning, about an hour before dawn, and continued to arrive over the next thirty hours or so, Jacob and Richard splitting shifts in order to check them in at all hours o
f the night. Couples and families, extended groups, lone stragglers, arriving in trucks, cars, buses, bikes and motorbikes, and a single white horse with an ornate red cross painted onto one flank. Richard’s worry about the steed was aggravated by the gallon-hatted rider with the badge that said ‘Lassoed by God,’ which turned out to be his only words. But Jacob said there wasn’t any problem, and he led the animal away.

  During the final hours of the influx, Richard made it out from behind the registration desk only for occasional bathroom breaks. Now and then, he saw Serena walking around with Annabelle, showing her the sights.

  Other than the occasional eccentrics, like the cowboy and an extremely tall, rather homely woman wearing a man’s suit much too small for her, the vast majority of the Gathering appeared to be perfectly normal, everyday types. They might have been plucked wholesale from your average mall, or from any neighborhood (pre-Deadfall, of course) Richard had ever lived in. Now and then he’d overhear one call another, “Most Reverend,” or “Sister,” or once, “Acolyte John,” referring to a man who looked no more threatening than a grocery clerk (a perception which, he quickly realized, was perfectly useless, for wasn’t a grocery clerk, too, capable of terror?). But they might as well have been Shriners, Elks, or Scouts – fanciful labels applied to ordinary people. He was embarrassed by his prejudice, but there it was: he took comfort in the fact that the aberrations who resided in the Deadfall looked the part.

  Richard soon discovered the significance of the group’s name. Late in the afternoon of that day, just before sunset, all the members of the group went outside, spread across the lawn, sat down among the trees, wandered onto the tennis courts. They looked like any large company picnic, really, loosely organized into parallel tracks of activity, grouped for conversation, for sports, for eating. And yet, viewed from the hotel’s front entrance, there appeared to be more cohesiveness than that, as if they were a large organism spreading its limbs, stretching here and contracting there, making itself comfortable. Richard saw Annabelle leading Serena through this group, no doubt reciprocating Serena’s tour through the hotel, holding hands the way little girls will, with that talent for making ‘best friends forever’ at a moment’s notice.

  He felt he should just let the girls be, tried to make himself feel at ease with it, thinking surely there was nothing wrong with these people, with Serena being out, unchaperoned, among these people, that sometimes you had to let your silly prejudices go for the health of your children. But at root he didn’t feel okay with it, and couldn’t relax with it. He walked down the lawn and into the congregation, whose members nodded, smiled and waved, sang out greetings or muttered polite hellos, the mix like any other crowd, although perhaps a crowd somewhat friendlier than most.

  He chose not to exactly follow the girls, but tried to remain in their vicinity at least, listening to the way the people talked to each other, attempting to interpret what they said, trying to find some salve for his anxieties. The Gathering actually consisted of small bunches of people, conversational groups. He thought of the couple of cocktail parties he’d been to during his lifetime, and thought them remarkably similar. There wasn’t the booze, but there was the air of drunkenness. The subject matter of their conversations, of course, was something different entirely.

  “It’s about survival, really.” This from a bearded man smoking a pipe, a professor type. “No one wants to die.”

  “There’s death of the body, and then there’s death of the spirit.” A pale woman in a large red hat, looking guarded, and angry.

  “Of course. It is the interplay, the balance that is so difficult to achieve.”

  And a few feet away, a young man of damaged complexion whose tone managed somehow to be both friendly and aggressive. “The early Christians, they were guerillas. The real reason Judas betrayed Jesus was because Jesus wasn’t being militant enough. But Judas underestimated the Christ. ‘Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I come not to send peace but a sword.’ That’s from Matthew. ‘He that hath no sword, let him sell his garments and buy one.’ That’s from Luke. He was crucified with other zealots and rebels.”

  And walking down the hill, pushing between the tight masses, apologizing, but keeping himself moving forward. “Devils and demons, demons and devils. But only one God, mind you.”

  And down around the tennis courts, separated by the nets. “The need to belong, the need to be loved, becomes the will to power. The faithful give their money, their possessions, but on the other end, they do well financially. I see it happen all the time. Have you read the literature?”

  And under the trees, the couples holding hands. “You think about what the group can do for you, and what you owe to the group. What does it mean not to belong? I say it means everything. Who would want to remain in that position?”

  And lying on the grass, holding hands, eyes closed, weeping. “One decision and it all becomes clear. The rest will be taken care of for you.”

  Much of the group was euphoric, some of them bordering on silly. There were small groups participating in ‘exercises in laughter,’ where they laughed together, at nothing, until one or two had to sit down on the ground for lack of breath. But here and there, Richard picked out some who appeared confused, staring at their surroundings as if they weren’t quite sure where they were. They appeared lost, and seriously depressed.

  He had made an honest effort not to think much about Mrs. Johnson, but he had been fooling himself, of course – meditations on the implications of what Jacob had concluded about her filled in any unoccupied gaps in his thoughts. Now and then he did see her in the crowd, tottering about, followed around by some earnest-looking young man in a dark suit and narrow tie Richard assumed must have been assigned to her. She appeared lost, stunned, and at times just plain goofy. Nothing scary here, he concluded. Just sad.

  He didn’t really know what to think about what had happened to her, not that he had the faintest idea what, in fact, had occurred here, beyond Jacob’s vague allusions. But when he thought about his own wife, and the possibility of keeping her on the planet, then it didn’t matter what warnings a hundred cheesy movies and a few hundred pulp novels made – he would have done everything humanly, and inhumanly, possible.

  At one point there was an announcement for ‘Just Desserts,’ which was met with laughter and cheering. Young women wearing rainbow-patterned baseball caps came out into the crowd dragging large trash bags full of candies and packaged pastries, which they distributed freely. He saw Serena and Annabelle sitting with a group of children greedily tearing into the packages and devouring the contents, pointing at the sticky messes on each other’s faces, giggling uncontrollably. She’s in for a sick night, he thought. Headache in the morning. But he felt no compulsion to stop her. It was good just seeing her acting like any other kid.

  He saw Jacob out beyond the edge of the crowd, struggling to put up chairs under the trees among a collection of large antique birdbaths. Not that Richard had ever seen a bird using one of them. Jacob had told him, simply, “Something else likes to use those baths. I’ve seen it once or twice, from a distance. But no sign of a bird anywhere near them, ever.”

  Richard walked over, trying not to step on anyone; and when he did, apologizing profusely, the injured party just shook her hand in exaggerated fashion, laughing around her candy bar. A few yards away, he spied Mrs. Johnson sitting on the ground beside her worried-looking keeper: her dress pulled up high on her thighs, her face smeared with thick, mud-like chocolate. She grinned spastically while maneuvering her tongue with impressive skill.

  “Can I help with that?” he asked Jacob.

  Jacob looked up, smiled, but with a harried edge. “Oh, please. Thank you. Some of the older members sit down at sunset for special prayer, it seems. The Reverend forgot to tell me until a half hour ago.”

  After a few minutes of quiet labor unloading folding chairs from a cart Jacob had dragged out of one of the storage buildings, trying to find stable spots for th
em on the uneven ground, Jacob asked, “So what do you think?”

  “About?”

  “About our new guests? I know you had some reservations, and I believe, some discomfort with religion in general, am I correct?”

  “Well, yes. A prejudice of mine, I’m sure, so I’m trying to be more open-minded, which I should be, especially with your – our – role here.”

  “But?”

  Richard gripped the back of a chair and leaned forward, looking at Jacob. “I’ve just never quite gotten it. Why are religious people always talking about gods and devils? Why can’t they stick with the real world? It’s hard enough just keeping track of the day-to-day.”

  Jacob paused in his chore and looked at him. “If it were only that simple. I doubt that I imagine the same God as these people, or the same devils. But I do dream of gods, and veritable armies of devils. The world is full of horror. Our imaginations struggle to keep up. It would be a poor life without imagining. I’m not sure we can have any salvation, in fact, without imagining.”

  “Imagining didn’t stop the Holocaust, Hiroshima, the deaths of hundreds of thousands, or my own wife’s death. That’s the real world, Jacob.”

  Jacob stared at him long enough to make him uncomfortable. Finally he spoke. “Please do not lecture me on issues of world history, Richard. I have more than a history aficionado’s knowledge of the deaths of hundreds of thousands.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –”

  Jacob waved his hand in agitated dismissal. “No, I apologize. Perhaps I myself am affected by these” – he gestured vaguely toward the crowd – “intense encounters with religion. I believe, surely, in the real world. But some factual events achieve status beyond the real. They are as real as the severing of a limb, yet become as mythical, as symbolic, as Saturn devouring his children. And both aspects impact us significantly. Our lives are voyages through darkness. Imagining a divine meaning for it all permits us to love. This duality is essential to our nature. How else do we face nonexistence?”