The Danger of Being Me

by Anthony J Fuchs

  I had expected Steven Arendell to be working the counter. He owned and managed the Motel, and lived in the room above the office. I had interviewed him in the middle of February for the Gateway article, and he had told me that if I ever had a reason to stay at the Motel, he'd give me a discount. The man behind the counter now had two weeks of growth darkening the bottom half of his face and greasy hair that nearly reached his shoulders, but I could see the family resemblance. He had the same deep-set eyes, the same nose, the same high forehead.

  I reached into my pocket, felt the wad of bills, decided against pulling out the entire roll. I thumbed through the cash, dug out two twenties. "I only need one night."

  The guy looked at me again, saw me for the first time. His eyes flicked up to mine, and he squinted at me for a moment. Whatever he saw made him catch his breath. He might have seen a ghost in my brushed-chrome eyes.

  He huffed a dry laugh when he saw the cash, turned to the board nailed to the wall behind the counter. The keys hung on thumbtacks, a few more than two-dozen missing. I leaned onto the counter. "And I need Room Sixteen."

  His hand hovered in front of the keys. He didn't quite look back at me, but his head tilted a little in my direction. "Sixteen," he said, turning the question into a statement.

  "Yeah," I said. From the television on the counter, I heard Maury reveal that in the case of baby Amaya, Stefan was not the father. Chanel seemed unpleased by that.

  "You sure about that?" His grungy hair hid his face, but I could hear the humorless smirk in his words.

  I just nodded. "Absolutely." I considered telling him that I had unfinished business there, but decided against it. Such melodrama was unbecoming at this late hour.

  He hesitated for one more second, then reached across the board. He picked a key attached to the rust-colored rhombus marked with the digits 16. Then he turned back to me, reached under the counter, came up with a three-ring binder that he laid out on the desk. He held onto the key as he flipped pages to a half-empty sheet.

  "Room's got a two-hundred-dollar security deposit," he said without looking up. Even upside-down, I could make out the list of names of former renters. Steven had told me that he only ever rented out Room 16 by request. He had said nothing about a two-hundred-dollar security deposit, and I thought that his younger brother might be trying to supplement his own income. I couldn't blame him. People generally only rented Room 16 for one reason.

  Now I smirked. "Two hundred bucks?"

  "You'll get it back," he told me. Then he looked up at me. "Tomorrow morning. When you check out."

  I smiled at that. I couldn't help it.

  "Fair enough," I agreed as I dug my roll of cash out of my pocket. I counted out an additional ten twenties, laid the stack down on the counter, and watched the man from across the desk. He must have seen something unexpected in my face. He huffed out another dry laugh and picked up the twelve bills, counted them. He slipped two into the cash register, pulled out a grimy five and laid it on the counter, then tucked the remaining ten bills into the pocket at the front of the three-ring binder.

  I picked up the grimy five, stuffed it into my pocket, almost wondered about its previous transactions, owners, histories. Its story. Then the man spun the binder toward me. He handed me a pen. I took it and scribbled my name into the ledger in the next open line, halfway down the left-hand page. I jotted the date next to my name.

  I handed the pen back, and the man traded me the key. "Room's on the second floor," he told me. He spun the binder, slapped it shut, placed it beneath the counter.

  "Second from the west end," I said.

  He glanced at me one more time before turning back to his television. I couldn't read his expression. "Ice machine's at the bottom of the stairs."

  I thanked him, pushed the straps of my bookbag higher up my shoulders, pulled the door open and emptied back into the sunset. I spotted the Jeep from across the parking lot, and refused to consider the idea that this might be the closest I ever got to it again. I turned the corner around the office, climbed the metal switchback staircase to the second floor, and headed down the concrete concourse. I passed three doors before I found the one matching my key.

  I reached the door too soon, and slipped the key home. The tumblers clicked into place. I twisted a quarterturn clockwise, and for one insane moment I expected the door to open onto a deserted speaking ring with a flaming purple sky, or perhaps a concrete city park in the middle of a digital reality. I pushed the door in, flipped the light switch, and found nothing but a plain motel room.

  A narrow table huddled in one corner to the right. A squat bureau butted against the wall at my left with a television perched on it. A door in the corner beyond led to a small bathroom. A twin bed faced the television from the opposite wall, with a night table beside it. Catercorner from the front door stood a pair of sliding glass doors. Thick blackout curtains had been drawn aside to reveal a scenic panorama of downtown Prophecy Creek.

  Such as it were.

  The room felt ashamed of itself. Twenty-nine lives had ended here, and at least one that I knew of had begun here. But the bed was made, and that was enough for tonight.

  But none of that really registered just then. Standing in the doorway, all I saw was the painting hung on the wall over the twin-sized bed. Not just a print, but an actual painting, in an intricate wooden frame that must be worth more than everything else in this room. It was no Gothic masterpiece, but it had its own dark brilliance.

  It depicted an ordinary urban sidewalk in downtown Philadelphia. The soaring statue of Billy Penn loomed in the background, deliberately out of proportion to its place in the skyline and facing in the wrong direction.

  Painted into the scene stood a subway entrance that was no modern work of glass and steel. This was a single block of rough-hewn marble, like nothing that had ever been built on any urban sidewalk. It was the gasping maw of a cave. Two steps led down into a crack in the Earth. Then the passage descended into creeping darkness.

  A feverish burst of vertigo rushed up my spine, twirled like a duststorm through my brain, then receded. A chill that had nothing to do with the temperature ran down my arms. My imagination had finally jumped its tracks.

  I had to believe that. This was all my hypermanic mind running off the psychedelic fumes of its own exhaustion, hurtling itself through an urban streetscape with a full head of steam. I had been awake for too long, running a marathon around the perimeter of madness. But I still had one more job to do before this night was through.

  Cool jasper laid against my breastbone. My heartbeat slowed inside my throat. I drew in a long breath. I tasted cigarette smoke and disinfectant and the unmistakable musk of the past. I tasted brimstone and cordite. I tasted silence, and I tasted the delicate incense of death.

  I blinked, hard, and looked into that yawning throat of stone as it looked back into me. Whoever had created this streetscape had been, or gone, insane. He had painted untold horrors onto the canvas, then painted that subway entrance over top. I couldn't see them, but I could hear the relentless thumping of their dark pulse from beneath the brushstrokes. And standing in the doorway, I thought that maybe I understood a little bit about this room.

  I couldn't imagine what kind of grinning madman had envisioned this nightmare. And I had no urge to get close enough to its surface to hunt for a signature. I probably wouldn't even find one. That would be just the sort of joke that a gibbering lunatic who would paint a thing like this would enjoy. I'd spend the night searching until I tripped on a crack in that urban sidewalk and tumbled down that marmoreal flight into the creeping darkness below.

  Or I just might hear some faint breathing down in those infinite shadows. I would lean a little too close to the wall. And in the final moment before my sanity flaked away like paint peeling from the desiccated slats of a skewed fence, some unimaginable dæmon would reach up out of that darkness, close its serrated talons around my throat, drag me down a marmoreal flight of seventy steps to a ca
vern of flame, and another seven hundred steps to an unspeakable forest where it would feed me alive to its young.

  Or maybe my feet would just tangle themselves up in the sheets as I clamored toward the painting, and I would fall off the bed, and snap my neck. The scruffy man with Steven Arendell's deep-set eyes and high forehead would find me. He would keep my two-hundred dollars.

  Blue jasper felt cool against my chest, and I looked into the gasping maw of that subway entrance. Inexpressible creatures lurked just out of sight in that passage. Peering out into the incomprehensible world of this motel room. I felt them there, watching me with unblinking eyes. I was as sure of that as I was of the weight of my bookbag.

  They were there, and I knew just as surely that they wouldn't come for me. Not this night. They had come for others, slithering up out of that creeping darkness to claim the newlyweds from Montreal and the preacher's wife from Sylvan Springs and the soldier from Innsmouth.

  But they would not come for me. They knew that I had come back to this place with one last job to do. They would wait for me down in the darkness. And they would greet me cautiously if I should find my way into those infinite shadows. Because secretly, they feared me.

  I stepped across the threshold. Through the door. Into the room. I smiled. Then I laughed. And tears streamed down my face as I laughed. Because after all the years and all the impossible miles, I had finally come home.

  4.

  I closed the door, threw the bolt to lock out the world.

  I crossed to the table at my right, shrugged off my bookbag, set it on the narrow table in the corner with a heavy thump. A window over the table framed the parking lot, and Route 119 beyond it, and I glanced between the drapes to watch the last of the day disappear behind the hill on the other side of the highway.

  There would be no moon tonight.

  The white letters of the Gateway's sign threw a harsh glare over the parking lot. The Wagoneer waited at the far left, parked at the curb facing the highway, looking away. Like it had turned its back on me. Like it couldn't bear to watch what it knew I had to do here tonight.

  I could understand that. The Jeep hadn't asked to get wrapped up in this dubious endeavor. It hadn't chosen to ferry me along this long and curving path into my own personal undiscovered country. If tonight wound up going as badly as so many nights in this room had gone before, the Wagoneer would be left out on that cracked tarmac until the police came to claim it.

  I felt a flash of pity for the truck. It was just more piece of collateral damage in this idiotic adventure of mine. But there was nothing to do about it now. I had made my decision. I would live by it, or I would die by it. All that remained was the hope that tonight would not go as badly as so many nights in this room had gone before.

  I shut the drapes over the window before the darkness could creep up to the building. Before it could press its greasy palms to the glass and gape into my room with its bloodshot eyes and exhale its ghastly breath on the pane.

  I crossed the room, rounded the bed to the sliding glass doors. Through them I saw the breadth of Prophecy Creek a mile away down the rolling hill behind the Motel. The lights of the city sparkled against the darkening sky like splintered glass thrown across concrete. A beacon glowed within the restored commentator's tower at the Camlann Fields Baseball Park. And straightaway, at the center of town, stood the Speaker Tree shrouded in shadow.

  I looked into the coming of the night, and I thought of Winnie. I thought of Helen and Phil and Erin. I thought of Regina. I thought of Angel Wings, and the waitress at the Snake Eyes Diner. I thought of the contralto seraph in my operating room. And I thought of Ethan Gibson.

  But most of all I thought of Amber. Thought of her shooting blacklight billiards at the Morris with her friends, or working a shift at the coffee counter at the Tetraplex with her uncle and cousin, or maybe just wandering the stores at the Winslow Graham Mall with Dawn.

  Then I thought of her camped out in a boxseat along the third base line at Veterans Stadium with her father. Wearing a Scott Rolen jersey and an infielder's glove. I don't know why I didn't imagine her mother there with them. Maybe she had been called away on an emergency. A primary spontaneous pneumothorax, perhaps.

  A bolt of heat shot through my chest at the thought of Amber. So I yanked the blackout curtains across the doors to close out the darkness creeping up the hill. I crossed the room to the bathroom, pushed the door open, reached into the shadows. I groped for the switch, flicked it. The bulb above the mirror ignited and an inexpressible creature lunged out of the darkness at me.

  I choked on a scream that never made it past my lips. Bloody claws reached for me with inhuman speed. That thing's serrated talons would close around my neck and rip my throat out. It would gorge on my blood right here on the linoleum floor of this squalid bathroom.

  Then I blinked. The unspeakable monstrosity that had slithered out of the creeping darkness was my own twisted reflection. It stared at me from the far side of a scummy film that stained a sheet-metal mirror above the sink.

  I blinked again, watching the image on the far side of the looking glass, staring into its brushed-chrome eyes deepest of all. They were my own, but older, and I knew without knowing how that I was looking into the face of John Doe 83. I waited for him to stop imitating me, to flash his mad grin, to shatter the barrier between our worlds and drag me away into his nightmarish wonderland.

  He didn't do that. Of course he didn't. He just stared at me with that cautious expression. With those eyes.

  I watched that twisted reflection for another thirty seconds before I started laughing again.

  I couldn't help myself. The absurdity of waiting for an image of myself to burst out of a scummy sheet of metal in a squalid motel bathroom overwhelmed me. I laughed until my gut cramped up and I doubled over against the doorframe. Tears stung my face. My reflection laughed along with me on his own side of the looking glass. The same absurdity had struck him; he found it unbearably hilarious. So at least we had that much in common.

  Uncountable minutes later, I couldn't remember what had been so unbearably hilarious. My laughter subsided. I pushed myself off the floor, loosened the cramps in my gut. Looked into the mirror above the sink again. Just to make sure that the thing on the other side of the looking glass really was nothing more than a harmless echo. It was. I just nodded to it, gave it a short two-fingered wave. It returned the gesture. My reflection was left-handed.

  I grinned, but my grin twitched as I saw in the mirror what I hadn't seen before. Behind that other me, above that other twin-sized bed in that other room on the other side of the looking glass, hung a painting of an ordinary urban sidewalk in downtown Philadelphia. A subway entrance that was a single block of rough-hewn marble. The gasping maw of a cave. It was no Gothic masterpiece, but it had its own undeniable dark brilliance.

  Billy Penn faced in the right direction.

  I turned away from the bathroom, but I left the bulb on. My grandfather had given me his light, but reinforcements never hurt. Even he would admit that much. I crossed to the twin-sized bed in my own room, grabbed the comforter and the sheet and dragged them to the floor. I pulled the bedsheet free from the blanket, bundled it into a ball in my arms, and climbed up onto the mattress. I stumbled once, nearly went over, regained my footing, and stood in the middle of the bed a few feet from the painting.

  This was as close as I wanted to get to the creeping darkness lurking beneath that ordinary streetscape. But if I didn't want tonight to go as badly as so many nights in this room had gone before, I knew I had to get closer.

  Close enough to that darkness to smell the paint and the brimstone and the cordite. And I thought I could do that, because I had a creeping darkness all my own. And mine might just be strong enough to hold out whatever monstrosities prowled beneath the brushstrokes.

  I felt cool jasper against my breastbone. My heartbeat slowed in my throat. I closed my eyes, counted to nine, then stepped forward without looking. I reached
out, the sheet spread between my hands. I took another step, and felt suddenly certain that I would twist my ankle and tumble off the mattress. Then I took another step and felt the wall with my outstretched hands.

  I hooked the bedsheet over the corners of the intricate wood frame, my fingers brushing against the grain. I felt the dark pulse of inexpressible creatures writhing down in that marble passage. I jerked my hands away, waited for the shadows to swallow me. Waited to be yanked through the canvas and dragged into that dusky otherworld.

  Nothing happened. I counted out twenty seconds, and then another ten. Just to be safe. I heard the soft growling of a patient dæmon, felt the humid breeze of each breath as it waited for me to open my eyes. To look into its face. To prove my worth. So I did. Because if there were horrors to be faced, then I would face them. It was all I could do.

  I blew out a long breath, and opened my eyes. All I saw was a grey sheet that billowed gently in an idle breeze. I inhaled, and smelled nothing but laundry detergent.

  I eased away from the sheet and the painting behind it, not quite ready to turn my back on it. I reached the foot of the bed, stepped to the floor without looking. I folded my arms, watched the sheet billow in a breeze that came from nowhere. That painting might have been the undiscovered masterpiece of a forgotten genius waiting to be unveiled.

  I had to smile at that. Because this work would not be unveiled. Not this night.

  Then I saw my bookbag on the table under the window.

  My smile fell away.

  Seven months ago, I had been hunched over a desk in the Writers Club room, waiting for the first meeting of the year to begin. Helen, Phil and Winnie had lingered near the windows that looked out over the courtyard. Ben had sat against the wall, rushing through a worn paperback to prepare for the discussion in Mrs. Kraven's fifth period American Lit class. I recognized the Avalon Rising cover artwork in an instant: a striped kestrel in flight over an ocean, lit by the reflected light of a hunter's moon.