She didn’t like The Reata. From the guy who’d stolen their room to the psychotic gardener, it seemed to her that everything was going wrong; this place was turning out to be the antithesis of everything they’d expected, and the thought of staying here another four nights made her feel more than a little apprehensive.
But there was nothing they could do about it now. Even if they took off tomorrow and canceled the rest of their stay, they would still have to pay for all five nights, and she knew Lowell would not be willing to write off that kind of money—even if she did somehow manage to convince him that a spooky gardener had been prowling the grounds at one in the morning and a demonic cloud face had been looking at her through the window.
She was overreacting, she told herself.
Tired and emotionally exhausted, she climbed back into bed. Lowell stirred next to her as she settled into place. “What is it?” he asked groggily.
“Nothing,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”
FRIDAY
Five
It was after eight when Lowell awoke. Curtis and Owen were already at the pool. Rachel and Ryan were seated at a table in front of the television, drinking orange juice from the minibar and eating Entenmann’s muffins that they’d brought with them in the ice chest. The room was full of children’s show chatter and bright desert sunshine, and Lowell realized that he must have been pretty damn tired to stay asleep through all that.
He put on one of The Reata robes from the closet and grabbed a muffin, sitting down. A copy of USA Today had been delivered to their room and was lying on the table in front of him. “I was thinking of going to that lap pool,” he told Rachel. “Swimming twenty minutes or so each morning to get some exercise while we’re here. Maybe checking out the weight room.”
She reached over and stuck her hand between the folds of the robe, pinching the roll of fat around his middle. “That’s a fine idea.”
He patted her stomach. “Feel free to join me.”
Laughing, she squirmed away. “I’m on vacation.”
Neither of them mentioned what had happened last night—
panties
—and he wasn’t sure if that was because Ryan was here or because they wanted to pretend that it hadn’t occurred. Both, probably. But he was acutely aware of the fact that beneath their surface jocularity, a darker layer had been added on to the vacation and no matter how hard they tried to maintain the carefree innocence of the past two days, it was ruined, gone, and the rest of their trip would be tainted by the events of last night.
Damn that Blodgett.
Lowell wondered what the asshole looked like. In his mind, he imagined a heavy, beefy man with a jowly angry face and a bulbous alcoholic’s nose, a man not unlike Mr. Mack, his high school science teacher. Mean, petty and vindictive, Mack pretty much had it in for any student who wasn’t a member of the geology club or whose life didn’t revolve around the physical sciences, and Lowell and his friends had hated the teacher. Hell, half the school had. And although Lowell hadn’t been in on the senior prank that had resulted in sugar being poured into Mr. Mack’s gas tank, ruining the engine of his brand new Buick LeSabre, he had secretly applauded the incident from afar.
Mr. Mack. Jesus, he hadn’t thought of that old bastard in years.
Lowell wondered if he was still alive.
Rachel stood and walked over to one of the bathroom sinks to wash the muffin crumbs off her hands. “Are you really going to try and exercise?”
“Yeah. Why not.”
“Then take your key,” she told him. “Ryan and I are going out to the big pool to keep an eye on the twins. We probably won’t be here when you get back.”
“What’s the plan for lunch?”
“Snacks. We have the chips and salsa that we brought, and I think there’s one of those cheese samplers in the minibar. Besides, it’s hot. You don’t eat much when it’s hot, you just drink a lot.”
“Speak for yourself.”
“We’ll have a real dinner. Maybe we should check the menu at that Grille.”
“That’s the one disadvantage of this place. We can’t just drive over to some take-out place or something. We’re stuck with the food on hand.”
She looked at him meaningfully. “The one disadvantage?”
“We just got off on the wrong foot,” he said, for his own sake as much as hers. “It’s all uphill from here.”
“Maybe we’ll reverse it tomorrow. Go to Tucson or one of the tourist destinations, have a real, reasonably priced lunch, and then snack for dinner by the pool.”
“Yeah!” Ryan said. “Burger King!”
Lowell smiled at them. “Sounds like a plan.”
He couldn’t remember where the building that housed the pool and weight room was located, so after changing into his bathing suit and slipping on a pair of sandals, he opened the leather Welcome binder next to the phone on the end table and turned the pages until he found a map of the resort. A walkway led from their building to what was referred to as the “Exercise Center” two parking lots down. As long as he stayed on course and didn’t take any of the forks or side paths, he’d be there in three minutes. He slammed the binder shut, took another muffin to eat on the way, grabbed a bottle of water and picked up his key card.
“See you later.” He gave Rachel a quick kiss, then ran a hand through Ryan’s close-cropped hair. “Meet you at the big pool, buddy. Tell Curtis and Owen they have to let you play or they can’t swim. Tell them I said so.”
Ryan grinned.
Outside it was hot already. Eight thirty and the temperature had to be well above eighty. Lowell was not the most heat-tolerant man on the planet—one reason he was grateful to work in an air-conditioned environment—but there was something very pleasant about vacationing in a spot where a person could swim comfortably in the early morning or late evening. It was humid, though, much more humid than yesterday, and he could tell from the wet gravel and the leaves on the ground that the predicted rain had arrived sometime last night. Despite that, today’s sky was clear, cloudless and an impossibly deep blue almost cheery enough to make him forget the debacle of last night.
panties
Almost.
He thought of Blodgett, which made him think again of Mr. Mack. One of the reasons they’d taken this vacation now, at the end of June, was so that he could generate a legitimate excuse—to himself if no one else—to avoid his high school reunion. But his brain had been strolling down memory lane ever since they’d come here, and he was not really sure why. He was certainly not one of those pathetic middle-aged men living off former glories and pining for those idyllic teenage years. Yet he could not deny that he had spent quite a bit of time lately recalling his own past. Even now he saw a quasi-punk teenager dashing through the parking lot without shoes or sandals, yelping “Shit, shit, shit, shit . . .” as his feet hit the hot asphalt, and he found himself thinking about some of his old friends from high school and college, realizing that he could not imagine them middle-aged. They were frozen in his mind at their most carefree and irresponsible, and doubtlessly they had succumbed to the pressures and responsibilities of life to become respectable citizens—everyone did—but he still could not see it and hoped it wasn’t true. Toby and Russ and Carlos from high school, Dennis and Lu from college; he still saw them playing hackeysack in the park, partying all night long, and it was sad to think of them balding and in business suits, running in the rat race. He’d rather imagine them as beach bums or professional students, refusing to grow up and grow old, living on the fringes of society in rented apartments filled with strewn CDs and tacked-up posters.
In a way, he supposed, he was glad that he had not kept in touch with them.
And he was definitely glad that he’d avoided the reunion.
But what about himself? How had he turned out? What would they think of him?
Those were questions he did not want to examine too closely.
The pool room was empty. He’d half expected it to b
e filled with jocks and health fanatics, all getting in their two hundred morning laps, but the pool area was unoccupied, the cement floor dry, clean towels all folded on a cart, and he saw no one exercising as he passed through the weight room. He had the entire building to himself—luckily—since the rules posted above a bench along the side wall stated that all swimmers must shower before entering the water and he clearly hadn’t bathed this morning. He quickly jumped in and dunked his head before someone else entered and saw his wild uncombed hair.
The water was bathwater warm and remarkably free from the strong chlorine smell of the outdoor pool. He’d read somewhere that chlorine did not really smell, that the scent everyone associated with swimming pools and ironically thought was a “clean” odor, was actually caused by the interaction of chlorine with sweat and urine and other bodily fluids. Which meant that this pool was relatively uncontaminated.
The pool was divided into five lanes by ropes and buoys stretched across its length. He was in the first lane, and he paddled back and forth aimlessly for a few moments, acclimatizing himself, before backing against the wall of the shallow end and shoving off.
Lowell could not remember the last time he’d swum for exercise, and it felt good to be swimming so swiftly, with such purpose. Ordinarily, on vacations, he’d horse around with the boys, make a few halfhearted runs across the pool of whatever hotel they were staying at, then join Rachel for some sunbathing and reading. Other than vacations, he never swam at all these days. He had always liked the water, though, and it was invigorating to be doing laps, feeling the liquid sliding sensuously against his skin as he propelled himself toward the deep end of the pool.
He reached the far side, flipped over, pushed against the wall, and with swift kicks and broad, even strokes sped back down his lane, feeling the satisfying stretch of muscles in his arms and thighs and stomach.
He was halfway across the pool when someone grabbed his left foot.
Lowell kicked out, flailing wildly, shocked more than anything else, but the grip on his foot tightened, bony fingers digging into the thin flesh, holding firm. For a brief moment he was swimming in place like a cartoon character, then the hand let go and he floundered in the water as he fought against a force that was no longer there. Twisting, sputtering, trying to keep himself afloat and determine who had grabbed him at the same time, Lowell looked down into the bubbly choppy water beneath him, then scanned the surface of the pool. It was empty. There was still no one in the room but himself.
Someone had grabbed his foot.
He remembered that back in high school, Tony Sherman used to do that to him in P.E.
But Tony Sherman had been killed in a drunk driving accident their senior year.
Tony had been the drunk driver.
A chill passed through him, making the water seem icicle cold. Even if he was superstitious—which he wasn’t—there could be no possible connection between what he thought he’d felt and a twenty-year-old accident. Still, the coldness remained, and he pulled himself out of the pool, hopping onto the side. He sat there for a few moments, feet dangling in the water, as he continued to search for his unseen assailant. It was clear, however, that he was the only one in the building, and he decided that he had simply overreacted to a perfectly logical, explainable, natural incident. There was no mystery here. no ghost
His foot had probably just caught on the lane rope and his brain had misinterpreted what he’d felt.
He forced himself to believe it and slid back into the water. Once again, everything seemed normal. He was in a pool in the resort’s Exercise Center, not in the basement of some haunted house. He took up where he’d left off, swimming to the shallow end. Pivoting at the wall, he headed back into the deep water.
Fingers grabbed his right foot.
They were weaker this time, as though they’d used up all of their strength with the first attack, but they still clutched the middle portion of his foot with clear purpose, and the assault was nonetheless shocking for its familiarity. He kicked out hard, trying to hurt whoever—whatever—was at the other end of those hands, but he connected with nothing save water. When he stopped swimming and spun around, the pool was empty. There was no one here except him.
For the first time since he was a child, Lowell felt that deep primal fear of the boogeyman that had made his boyhood nights a living hell, a terror that he had never been able to make his parents understand. He gripped the edge of the pool and started pulling himself up.
The hand was back, grabbing him, attempting to draw him into the deep water. Whatever was in the pool wasn’t strong enough to drag him down—but it clearly wanted to. The invisible fingers clutching his ankle were pulling at him, but they simply didn’t have the strength.
He freed himself from the unseen grip and flopped onto the cement, trying to catch his breath. Reflections of light off the still rippling water shimmered on the wall and ceiling. Feeling he was still too close to the edge, he quickly stood and moved away from the pool, taking refuge on a bench against the wall, ready to run out of the room at the slightest sign of anything unusual. He was panting hard, not so much from the physical exertion as from fear.
What the hell had just happened?
He’d had a supernatural experience. There was no doubt about that. If he had formerly considered himself skeptical but open-minded when it came to the paranormal, he was now a firm believer. But what should he do about it? Should he rush back and tell Rachel? Let someone on the hotel staff know so they could . . . could . . . what? Hire a ghost-buster? Keep people away until the haunting stopped? The practical aftermath of such an incident never seemed to be addressed in horror movies, and he was unsure of what step to take next. Logic told him to keep quiet, not say anything to anyone, wait and see if something like this happened to anyone else before sticking his neck out and exposing himself to ridicule. At the same time, didn’t he have an obligation to protect others? This wasn’t just some shadow on the wall, this was a physical force that had attempted to pull him into the water, that could have drowned him. Shouldn’t he warn others to keep them from harm?
But would anyone listen? Would anyone believe?
The lap pool sat there, light blue under the fluorescent lights, water once again calm, looking as modern and innocent as that in any fitness club.
Taking a deep breath, Lowell slid on his sandals, inching sideways toward the door, keeping his eye on the pool, prepared to run at any moment should the lights in the room go off or the water start to roil mysteriously. As he reached the exit, he was suddenly aware that there were other noises in the building, that his were not the only sounds in the Exercise Center. He walked through the doorway, past the showers and lockers. From the weight room up ahead, he heard the regular clang of metal on metal, as though someone were in there working out. This, too, seemed spooky under the circumstances, and his first irrational thought was that he would walk in only to find the place empty, none of the machines in use. He shivered—and not just from the air-conditioning on his wet skin.
. . . Clang . . .
. . . Clang . . .
. . . Clang . . .
He paused in the weight room doorway, overcome with the certainty that there’d be no one there. Or that he would catch a peripheral glimpse of someone in the mirrors lining the walls but the room itself would be empty. Thankfully, though, he saw through the overlapping rows of exercise equipment an overweight bald man sitting at one of the weight-lifting machines, heard the man’s very real grunts of exertion. As he drew closer, however, walking toward the exit, preparing to give a friendly greeting as he passed by, he saw that the bald man was not just overweight but grossly obese—three hundred pounds at least.
And wearing no clothes.
The sight was disconcerting, and alarm bells started going off in his head. Lowell wanted to glance away, but his gaze was drawn by the huge symmetrical folds in the pale sweaty skin, the rounded rolls of fat that jiggled with each grunting lift and subsequent dropping
of weights. The man was not only enormous but fearsome looking, his shiny shaved head and ferocious countenance giving him an almost inhuman appearance, and Lowell slowed, stopped, not wanting to walk past the man.
Afraid to pass by him.
. . . Clang . . .
. . . Clang . . .
. . . Clang . . .
He scowled at Lowell, continued to press weights, and, horrifyingly, his penis trembled and grew until it was fully erect. The man lifted the forked bars up to his shoulder level then let out a tremendous guttural grunt as he shoved them above his head.
Lowell did not stay to see the finish but quickly exited the building, practically running as he made his way down the short corridor. A closed door to his right said SPA. He did not even want to think about what could be in there.
Outside . . . everything was normal. A family of four was heading down one of the gravel paths on a nature walk, the younger boy complaining that his feet hurt. On the road connecting the parking lots, a Reata staffer drove by on an electric cart piled high with clean towels. Lowell stood there for a moment just to reacquaint himself with the real world. He heard the shouts of children playing at the big pool, heard the thump of music from within a passing Lexus. The air was hot and still, but it felt real, it felt good, and in the space of a few moments what he had experienced within the Exercise Center seemed unreal even to himself. He turned around, looked at the door, but though it looked perfectly normal and he felt no vibe, he was not about to go inside again.
He started walking back to the room.
“Dad!”
Rachel and Ryan were walking up the sidewalk toward him, on their way to the big pool. He purposely slowed his gait as he saw them approach, waving.
Ryan ran over. “We’re going swimming!”
He ran a hand through his son’s hair. “That’s great, sport. Have fun.”
“Are you coming, too?”
“In a while.”
“That was quick,” Rachel said.
The Resort Page 5
