The Resort

by Bentley Little

  The connection was terminated, he was left with a dial tone droning in his ear, and Patrick hung up the phone. He waited a few moments, listening to the ruckus, then put his ear to the wall to see if he could make out any of the conversations. He frowned. What had sounded like party talk from a distance was now differentiated into more ritualistic sound lines. There was a deep low voice chanting the same unintelligible word over and over again while two shouting female voices punctuated the litany at regular overlapping intervals. He couldn’t really tell what they were saying, but he thought one of them called out “Apples!” although that didn’t really make any sense. Several male voices, less deep than the first, were talking loudly in cadences that suggested they were reading poems. The dog barked randomly.

  He moved his ear away from the wall, and once again it sounded like a wild chaotic party. He heard laughter, screaming.

  Patrick waited several more minutes—ten by the clock—and when it became clear that the resort’s management was not going to do anything to quiet his neighbors, he dialed the lobby again. This time he got a busy signal.

  The party grew louder.

  He pounded on the wall with his fist, but the noise continued unabated and he doubted his knocks could be heard above the racket. “Quiet down in there!” he shouted, slamming both fists against the wall in a staccato barrage. There was an earsplitting report from the other room, as of a gunshot, and he backed away quickly. The laughter came again, louder, other voices joining in, and then several dogs started barking.

  This time he walked up to the lobby, putting on his clothes, trekking up the deserted sidewalk all the way past the pool to the patio, letting himself in through the south-facing double doors, determined to drag someone over to the room if he couldn’t find anyone who would believe him. Even walking past, he heard screams and laughter and loud conversation and the incessant barking of dogs, and he was surprised that none of the other guests were complaining. Yet the corridor was quiet, the surrounding landscape bathed in darkness, and the tranquil nighttime setting lent the raucous room a spotlighted focus it would not otherwise possess.

  The Shining.

  The lobby was empty, as was to be expected at this hour, but behind the front desk stood a pert fresh-faced young woman whose appearance and demeanor did not jibe at all with the voice on the phone. “Excuse me,” he said, walking up. “I’m in room 215, and I just called to complain about a loud party in the room next door.”

  “Yes, Mr. Schlaegel!” The young woman smiled brightly. “How may I be of assistance?”

  He stared at her, astounded by her cluelessness. “You can tell the people in the next room—217, by the way—to keep it down, other people are trying to sleep. Or, even better, you could transfer me to a different room so that I wouldn’t have to put up with their noise any more.”

  She typed something into the computer in front of her and frowned. “Which room did you say the noises were coming from?” she asked.

  “The one next to me. On the right. Room 217.”

  “Room 217 is closed for refurbishing,” she said. “There’s no one staying in that room. There hasn’t been since last fall.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “It’s true.”

  “I’m telling you, I heard them.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but that’s simply not possible.”

  “Yeah, well, I guess I made it all up. I woke up from a sound sleep in the middle of the night, put on my clothes and walked all the way up here just to play a practical joke on you, huh?”

  “That’s not what I’m saying, sir.” There was defensive-ness in her voice. Good, he thought. If his night was going to be ruined, he was damn well sure he was going to make someone else a little uncomfortable. It was going to take him forever to fall asleep now as it was; he’d probably end up dozing through one of the festival screenings in the morning. The least he could do was spread the joy.

  “What are you saying?” he asked her.

  “There is no one—”

  “Yes there is.”

  “I can assure you—”

  “How can you assure me?” he demanded. “Huh? You’ve been sitting here in the lobby all night. I was just there! They woke me up!”

  “That room has been gutted. It’s in the process of being remodeled. There’s no furniture, no working lights, nothing.”

  “Maybe workers are having a party in there. I don’t know. All I know is that there’s dogs barking and screaming and chanting and laughing and what sounded a hell of a lot like a gunshot.”

  “Chanting?” The desk clerk looked pale. “A gunshot?”

  He was being sucked into something that he didn’t understand but that seemed awfully familiar. What movie was it? he thought.

  “Yes,” he told her. “Why?”

  She shook her head, the mask of resort desk clerk pulled once more over the human face that had momentarily peeked through. “Nothing.”

  But it wasn’t nothing, and it suddenly occurred to him that the reason the room was being gutted and remodeled when those to either side of it remained untouched was because a murder had occurred there, a ritualistic murder, and they needed to get the sprayed blood off the walls and floor and ceiling.

  “What about a new room?” he asked. “Could I get a new room?”

  “Let me check.” She typed something into her computer, waited a moment, then shook her head. “I’m sorry. We’re all booked up.”

  “Well can you at least send someone over to check on that room? A janitor or security or someone?”

  “There’s no one in room 217—”

  “I’m not making it up!”

  “I didn’t say you were. I was just saying that there’s no one in room 217, but I’ll have someone look anyway, just in case.”

  “Fine,” he said.

  But it was not fine, and as he walked out of the lobby and back down the flagstone steps, there was a nagging thought at the back of his mind, a belief that whatever was going to happen could have been avoided had he done something differently.

  Whatever was going to happen?

  He’d seen too many movies.

  Nevertheless, the feeling persisted, and as he walked down the darkened steps toward the lighted blue lagoon pool, he felt cold. Townsend may have booked him at The Reata as a joke, but that act had set in motion a chain of events that now seemed increasingly threatening. He thought of that little boy and his father—fairy

  —and the rowdy gathering in the room next door, and while he didn’t know what it all added up to, he didn’t like it, and it was starting to make him extremely nervous.

  He walked around the outside of the fence that ringed the pool area and headed back toward his room. There were low-wattage ground-level lights lining the sidewalk, but in an effort to save money or simply to impart a sense of romanticism and class to the resort, there were no overhead streetlamps on the road and the end result was that the areas to either side of the walkway remained shrouded in a deep wild darkness. He passed the first building, and then the lights of the pool were blocked and the grounds before him were thrown into even deeper gloom, only those weak lights lining the walkway providing any illumination at all.

  He began to walk faster, the sound of his footsteps lonely in the stillness, simultaneously loud and small. As he increased his speed, he began to imagine someone or something was behind him, following him, stalking him. It was a Lewton-Tourneur moment, and if it hadn’t been so viscerally frightening, he would have slowed down to savor the delicious frisson of it.

  He kept walking, passed the second building. His room was in the one behind the one ahead, and he quickened his pace even more.

  There was a rattle from off to his left.

  And right.

  A quick snickering across the sidewalk behind him.

  Patrick was already jumpy—nature wasn’t his natural habitat—and these noises amplified his growing sense of unease. He cursed Townsend for booking him into a hotel
with such a remote location. How different this night would be if he were in downtown Tucson, on a busy street, near a 7-Eleven and a Subway, down the block from a well-lighted gas station instead of out in the middle of the fucking desert.

  But it wasn’t just the desert that unnerved him. No, as much as he tried to restrict his imagination to the physical, biological world, that was not what frightened him.

  He thought of the low chanting voice in the room next door, the poetic cadences.

  Fairy.

  There was something off about this whole place, something fundamentally wrong with the entire resort, and while he couldn’t name the movie of which it reminded him, he was clear in his mind that whatever lay at the root of all this could not be explained away with a logical real-world rationalization.

  There was movement on the sidewalk ahead, and he stopped cold, peering into the dimness. A pack of rattlesnakes slithered toward him, moving in unison, their undulations eerily synchronized. If he had not known it was a physical impossibility, he would have sworn they were remote-controlled and connected to the same command station. Behind them, spookily reflecting the dim illumination of the lights lining the sidewalk, he could see the eyes of what had to be a wolf or coyote, its furry bulk only a vague outline in the dimness. The animal growled savagely and, as if in answer, the snakes rattled in unison.

  What the hell was going on here? He glanced from side to side, expecting to see bobcats flanking him, but the area beyond the sidewalk was so dark that he couldn’t tell what was out there. In his mind’s eye, he saw the wolf leap at him and rip out his neck while vultures and other desert scavengers came to feast on his gutted remains. He knew he should run, get out of the way of the beast, but he had no idea if he’d be jumping from the frying pan into the fire, and terror immobilized him.

  There was sudden noise on the road up ahead: the hum of an electric motor, the clank of rattling metal. Low headlights illuminated the darkness, and the animals ran, the wolf dashing off into the night, the snakes slithering back into the shadows. A golf cart pulled up next to him, and painted on the side, above The Reata’s logo, was the word Security.

  A lamp went on in the small cab as the cart stopped. Patrick saw an overweight man with a buzz cut and a brown uniform. “Are you Mr. Schlaegel?”

  “Yes,” he said with relief. “Thank God you showed up. There was a wolf right here.” He pointed. “And seven or eight rattlesnakes.”

  “Yeah.” The security guard seemed underwhelmed. “Now, you complained about noise in the room next to yours, correct?”

  Patrick nodded.

  “Well, I checked out room 217, and if anyone was there, they’re gone now. You’re safe.” It was hard to see the guard’s shadowed face but it was impossible to miss the smirking derision in his voice. “Fairy,” was what the man was really saying, and Patrick felt not only embarrassed but defensive.

  “I never thought I wasn’t safe,” he emphasized. “I just couldn’t sleep because those assholes were making so much noise.”

  “Yeah,” the guard said noncommittally, putting his cart into gear. “Good luck with your wolves. And your snakes.”

  He couldn’t hear over the hum of the cart’s motor, but Patrick imagined the guard chuckling to himself as he drove away.

  He hurried down the sidewalk, passing by room 217 on his way back.

  The party was still going on.

  SATURDAY

  Fourteen

  There was a knock at the door.

  Jarred from his sleep, Lowell squinted at the clock. Six a.m.

  Jesus Christ. This was supposed to be a vacation.

  Next to him in the bed, Rachel had kicked off the blanket and was asleep on her stomach, legs spread wide, bare buttocks exposed.

  Fuck me! Fuck me hard!

  Lowell covered her and sat up. The knock came again. Shorter, harder, more insistent.

  He got out of bed, took one of the robes from the closet, put it on, and fumbled with the security lock before groggily opening the door. “Yeah?”

  “Mr. Thurman?” The athletic looking man on the doorstep had the appearance of a football coach and the smile of a Realtor. “I’m the activities coordinator. I’m just here to remind you that we have a tour of the chef’s gourmet garden this morning at eight, and then at nine is practice for this afternoon’s pool volleyball tournament.”

  Activities coordinator?

  He was having a difficult time concentrating, getting his mind around concepts that were no doubt simple and self-explanatory. “What?” he said.

  “Your wife expressed an interest in taking the garden tour, and we were hoping you’d join us for a little fun in the sun. We’re counting on you to help us out with our intraresort volleyball tournament.”

  It was too much information this early in the morning, a lot to absorb all at once. “I’m not really—” he began.

  “Oh, you’ll have a great time! It’s something we do each weekend as a diversion for our more active guests, a little friendly competition to liven up your stay, and a memorable part of The Reata experience. There are three teams: the Roadrunners, the Coyotes and the Cactus Wrens. We play both days, pool volleyball on Saturday and basketball on Sunday, and the winning team receives drinks on the house at the Grille.”

  The Grille.

  Now Lowell was awake. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not interested.”

  “Come on. The Wrens need you. The Roadrunners have a full team and so do the Coyotes. The Cactus Wrens are still one man short.”

  “Sorry. We have other plans.”

  “Too much of a pussy?”

  Lowell blinked, unwilling to believe he’d heard what the director had just said. “Excuse me?”

  “I just said that since the Cactus Wrens are one man short, that maybe I should be looking elsewhere for someone to participate.”

  Lowell slammed the door in the activities coordinator’s face. He was too old to fall for that sort of jock talk, the simplistic rhetoric that attempted to goad guys into action by making them feel obligated to defend their manhood. That idiotic tactic hadn’t even worked on him in high school, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to work on him now. Ignoring the continued knocking at the door, he shambled back to the bed, took off his robe and fell back onto the mattress, but he was wide awake and no matter how hard he tried, he knew he would not be able to make himself fall back asleep.

  He sat up. The knocking had stopped—the activities coordinator having given up and no doubt gone away—and Lowell looked at the telephone next to the bed, wondering if he should call the manager and complain. It was inexcusable that he should be harassed in his own room by a resort employee. Weren’t workers at The Reata specially trained to pamper their guests? That’s what their Web site claimed. And whatever happened to the once universally accepted motto, “The customer is always right?”

  But then he thought of what Rachel had heard in the bathroom, a manager berating an employee and throwing her against the wall. He remembered the spectral hand in the pool and the horrific zoo that was the Grille, and refrained from picking up the phone. For all he knew, The Reata had sent the activities coordinator here to do exactly what he had done. At the very least, the resort was complicitous by not ensuring that its employees treat guests with respect.

  There was movement on the bed behind him. Rachel was awake, but she looked groggy, stunned, almost drugged, and he had the unsettling feeling that if he mentioned last night’s bout of lovemaking—

  Fuck me hard!

  —she would not remember it.

  He turned away, looked toward the closed door that led to the boys’ room. Why hadn’t they all left? Why was he keeping his family here? It was a question that nagged at him but one for which he had no answer. The ostensible reason, the practical reason, was that they would still have to pay for the stay even if they left early. But the real reason was harder to pin down. By all rights, they should have decamped right after his experience in the exercise pool
, maybe even after their encounter with the room-stealing Mr. Blodgett. And they definitely should have packed up and gone after that scene at the Grille.

  But they hadn’t.

  Instead, they remained, and although these considerations troubled him intellectually, emotionally they didn’t really register. It seemed entirely natural not to complain about abuse from the staff, perfectly normal to plan the day’s itinerary assuming they would remain here through the end of their originally scheduled stay, and while he didn’t feel the least bit dopey, he understood that his behavior was as passively accepting as Rachel’s seemed to be.

  He knew he should be worried about that.

  But he wasn’t.

  Lowell reached over and gave his wife a quick kiss, ignoring her rather ferocious morning breath, then got out of bed, put his robe back on and went over to make some coffee in the coffee machine. A few minutes later, the boys came in to get muffins for breakfast, which they immediately carried back into their rooms so they could watch TV. “First shower!” Curtis called.

  “Second!” Owen instantly announced.

  “Last!” Ryan said, and Lowell had to smile. The kid had a sense of humor.

  Obviously his brothers didn’t think so. “What a dweeb,” Curtis said derisively before the door slammed shut.

  “Dillweed,” Owen seconded.

  Rachel, emerging from the bathroom, must have heard the exchange, too. “Do you ever think about how fast time is flying?” she asked.

  “All the time,” he admitted.

  “It seems like just yesterday that we were changing the twins’ diapers, and next year Ryan will be going to junior high school.”

  “How do you think he’ll do?” Lowell asked seriously. “You think it’ll be a tough adjustment?”

  “Academically?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “His friend Roberto will be going to Brea-Olinda, too,” she said hopefully. “And Yung.”

  He shook his head. “I just don’t see it being an easy transition.”

  “His brothers’ll be there.”