What the #@&% Is That?

by John Joseph Adams

  Behind me, Kristina is yelling at the manager. “I just want to know . . . could someone explain . . . why does my son have blood on his clothes?” Gabriel stands beside her, perfectly calm, still wearing the cowboy pajamas he wore to bed. They do appear to have some stains.

  “You people have no idea,” the groundskeeper rebukes us all, and for an instant, what I see flickering in his eyes is even worse than the carnage here on the hillside. “No clue.” Shaking his head, he turns hard on his heel and strides away. The manager throws up his hands. The groundskeeper disappears into the mist.

  “Um, why don’t we all head inside?” the manager says briskly. “Can I offer you breakfast on the house! Oh, what a romantic weekend for a wedding!”

  The breakfast buffet is jarringly cheery. Soon, everyone is milling around, loading their plates with leaden pancakes and grease-laden sausage links. I grab a cup of coffee and sit across from Kyle.

  “To what do I owe the pleasure?” he inquires jokily, but I can tell his heart’s not there.

  “Something weird happened last night,” I say. “I don’t know why I’m telling you.” But actually I do: It’s not like I can tell my brother, or Kristina, not right now. My parents would tell me I’m being crazy. I have no idea what Kristina’s parents would say. And of all the happy couple’s friends and acquaintances gathered here, Kyle is the only one I actually know, and not just in the Biblical sense.

  So I tell him about the hidden half-hallway, and the missing door, and the creepy conversation I had with Gabriel, who was probably just being a kid, but come on, right? And then I fill him in on the 2 a.m. incident, which he somehow slept through, that lucky son of a bitch.

  “You’re not just pulling some stupid prank to get me back or something?” Kyle asks, and I can’t tell if he’s concerned that I am, or concerned that I’m not.

  “You think I snuck out this morning and slaughtered a dozen fucking woodland creatures just to fuck with you?”

  “Hmm,” Kyle says, like he’s not sure either way. I can see why he’d be concerned; if this was a prank, it would be beyond epic. He’d definitely have to acknowledge my superiority from here on out.

  “I’m not fucking with you.”

  “Will you show me that hallway? My room’s on that floor and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Sure.”

  He snags an extra handful of bacon and together we head upstairs, pretending not to notice the family’s too-interested looks.

  “Or maybe,” Kyle says speculatively as we ride the elevator, “maybe this is some kind of ploy to interrupt the wedding. You guys can’t be too happy about this whole thing either.”

  Not entirely sure what to say to that, so I settle for “It’s not a ploy.”

  But once we’re on the third floor, I can’t find that hallway anymore. I can still picture the wallpaper in my mind, the twisted, scrolling paisley with its slight metallic sheen, oddly textured to the touch. I can see the five doors, unmarked. I can remember the way it jutted off, up on the left. But it’s not here, and there’s no way it could be here; the geography simply doesn’t make sense.

  Kyle keeps looking at me like he’s waiting for me to let him in on the joke. “You’re kinda freaking me out, Hil,” he says finally. “Like . . . what’s really going on with you right now?”

  “Fuck it,” I say. “Never mind.”

  But I’m totally freaking out too.

  * * * *

  By 11 a.m., I’m at the salon with Kristina, and both moms, and all Kristina’s giggly bridesmaids. (Gran wisely sat this one out, opining that she’s eighty-seven years old and knows better than to try to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.) The ladies talk everything over, and then talk everything over again, and by the time we get to updos, it’s decided that Gabriel is acting out because he’s excited to finally have a real dad, and Lydia is suffering from exhaustion after helping her lovely daughter plan this incredible wedding . . . and who knows what was up with that crabby groundskeeper? Solutions: some one-on-one time for Aaron and Gabriel, another glass of champagne for the mother of the bride, and no one mentions the unavoidable conclusion that our cherubic six-year-old was outside slaughtering tiny animals in the hours before dawn.

  I’m the only one who isn’t participating in the conversation. It’s because I know things that they don’t know, and I’m almost certain this isn’t over.

  My mother and Kristina chalk my sullen attitude up to the fact that I hate pedicures, and fancy chignons, and the prospect of wearing a floor-length purple satin dress. (This is true.) They lecture me about how it wouldn’t hurt me to pull myself together and take some pride in my appearance for a change. I should be grateful! I might look pretty for a day! “Ever since we let her join that softball team . . . ,” my mother begins, and since I’m deep in the land of sorority girls, debutantes, and ladies who lunch, I don’t even try to explain how offensive all this is. By this point, my hair is sculpted and shellacked and my fingernails are polished pink.

  By the time we’re gathered back in the hotel lobby, a few hours have passed. We’re met by Aaron—laid-back, easygoing Aaron, who looks rather unhappy and tense.

  “I’ve just been talking with the caterer. The manager was supposed to let them in a while ago so they could start the prep. Except he isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere. He seems to have just . . . left?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” my mother says. “He’s got a job to do. He can’t just leave.”

  “The front desk is empty too. I’ve been looking everywhere for someone who works here. So far, I’ve only been able to find a maid, but there’s a bit of a language barrier, and, like, I just don’t know what’s going on. . . .”

  Mystifyingly, one of the bridesmaids perceives this as a good moment to share her opinion that if those people are going to live here, they should really learn to speak English. Biting my tongue and wishing all these people would just go fall into the Hidden Spring, wherever it is, I volunteer to go look for the manager, or an assistant manager, or a bartender, or, really, anyone with the keys to the kitchen. Though really, the bartender would be nice.

  But I walk right past the front desk and no one even tries to stop me; the door to the manager’s office is open, the computer still on, the lights bright overhead. Loose papers are scattered everywhere and a ring of keys sits on the desk.

  Outside, the fog is thickening, and the lights are flickering overhead.

  * * * *

  By 4 p.m., an odd kind of darkness is settling in outside, the first edge of a storm. The lights are faltering more frequently now and everyone is reassuring each other that it’s normal for an old building like this one, surely there’s a generator, there’s simply no way the power could go out. The bride is having a meltdown. The mothers send me to the lobby to keep an eye out for the florist, who is supposed to be delivering a truckload of bouquets.

  The ancient elevator is creaking and moaning its way down when the lights go out, then blink back on. The elevator shudders, lurches, plummets half a floor, then jerks to a stop. The lights die.

  I’m standing in pitch dark, trapped in an elevator in America’s most haunted hotel, wearing a floor-length satin dress and eggplant-colored heels and trying not to hyperventilate.

  Somehow, I can’t bring myself to sit down.

  “Hello?” I yell out tentatively, but of course there’s no response.

  And then, sing-songing out of darkness, is a voice I almost, maybe, kind of recognize. Like Gabriel’s voice but different; it’s shrill and grating on the surface, but a rusty, rasping shadow is gathering beneath. “Hello,” the voice says back.

  In the edges around the voice I can hear my own ragged breathing, rattling jagged in my chest.

  “It doesn’t like to be locked in the dark,” the voice observes. “They didn’t like it either. They made it go away.”

  I want to scream and scream, but I can’t seem to make a sound.

  “They didn’t like that
little boy. They didn’t know what happened to him, down in the deep and the dark and the cave, but they knew he wasn’t the same. So they locked him in the dark and they disappeared the door. You’re not the same, are you?”

  It starts laughing and the laugh is horrible.

  “You know a little boy who’s not the same. It won’t be the same, not after this. It just needs more time to eat.”

  I’m aware of a sick, soupy feeling in the air, and a smell like rotting meat. There’s no oxygen anywhere, and I wheeze and gasp. I want to reach out my fingertips and feel; is there anything here with me, really? But I can’t move.

  “It doesn’t like to be locked in the dark,” the voice repeats.

  Then the voice is gone and the stench is gone and the lights flicker back on. The cage is empty; I’m alone. Slowly, achingly, the elevator begins lurching down toward the lobby once more. Somehow, I’ve managed not to piss myself.

  The lobby is empty. I trip and stagger my way over to one of the unwieldy antique couches, spraining an ankle in those unbearable heels. I sink down and rest my forehead on an overstuffed pillow.

  It occurs to me that I have the ammunition now to bring the wedding to a halt, just like my parents hoped.

  Or maybe I’m just having some kind of breakdown.

  Dress gathered in one fist, I tiptoe barefoot to the abandoned bar and snag myself a high-class bottle of scotch.

  I wait for an hour, but the florists never show up.

  * * * *

  Kyle is gripping my shoulder, shaking me awake. “On your feet, soldier. The wedding’s about to begin.”

  I blink and rub the upholstery pattern emblazoned on my cheek.

  “But there’s something I have to tell you.”

  “Okay?”

  “Gabriel is missing again. Kristina and Aaron don’t know. Your parents were supposed to be watching him, but they can’t quite remember when they saw him last.”

  Surely, they wouldn’t . . .

  “We decided it would be best to just go ahead. He’s just trying to get attention, they say. Just . . . don’t say anything to Kristina. Aaron told me she’s stressed to the max and a hairsbreadth away from calling it off.”

  “Isn’t that what we wanted?” I stupidly remark.

  “You know what, though?” Kyle tells me, serious now. “He really loves her. I think he even really loves that snotty kid.”

  Kyle’s right, of course; whatever else they are, Aaron and Kristina are madly in love. If I’m being honest, it’s been disgustingly obvious all along.

  We walk together across the hotel grounds, past the spot where the tiny, lifeless animals had been, but they’re already gone.

  We reach the picturesque white chapel at the edge of the woods and pause together at the side entrance. “In an hour, this will be over,” Kyle says. “And maybe, the labors of the caterers notwithstanding, it might be best to make like that useless manager and get the hell outta Dodge.”

  Suddenly, I remember a nightmare. “I got trapped on the elevator . . . ,” I begin, but then Lydia is opening the door, yanking us in, and scolding us for being late when the whole wedding party is poised and waiting to begin.

  The chapel is stuffy and hot and dimly lit. Yawns ripple across the audience like a breeze through cobwebs. Love is eternal, intones the minister. Kristina and Aaron are gazing deeply into each other’s eyes. Outside, the light has failed and wind is rattling the windows. It cannot be overpowered by fire or flood; it is stronger than death and even death is no escape. It can conquer the tomb and reach beyond the grave.

  Someone coughs.

  It will eat you alive. Till death do you part, and a long time after . . .

  Louder and fiercer than the rattling at the windows, there’s a creaking and banging at the door. The door flails open. The wind blows in.

  . . . I pronounce you man and wife. . . .We’re standing at the front of the chapel, so we see him first. Him, it, no longer sure? The thing that was once Gabriel, grown and changed. The too-tight skin stretching and tearing over the rapidly expanding frame, the fingers curling like talons, the glossy black shadows for eyes, the mouth dropping open like twilight and the entrance to a cave.

  Behind it are the tiny animals, bloodied and eviscerated, heads twisted at odd angles, but standing, marching with animatronic force. Larger animals, still dripping blood. A couple humans, or once humans, their necks broken, their limbs askew, their eyes black shadows too. One bears a striking resemblance to the caterer (but with half her head bashed in).

  One by one, the audience begins to shift and turn, alerted to the fact that something unspeakable is happening behind them.

  Gran breaks the silence and her scratchy voice reverberates throughout the chapel: “What the fucking Christ on a cracker is that?!” Kristina drops her bouquet.

  The thing begins to laugh. Like a spider, it furls and unfurls its limbs: it plucks Aunt Becky from the nearest row, and as she screams and writhes, it snaps her neck like a twig and runs its talon like a knife down her torso and slurps the viscera from the cavity around her heart. She becomes one of them.

  You’d think everyone would start running and screaming, but no one moves an inch.

  Then there’s a shout from behind. This is where everything gets fast and crazy and chaotic and slow: Behind the thing and its army of reanimated corpses is a crowd of people, pressing their way through to us. It’s drizzling now and they’re standing in the rain. They’re wearing masks and holding torches and pitchforks. Literal pitchforks. Among them is someone who looks like the groundskeeper, though with the mask, I can’t be sure. A woman is shouting orders.

  “We’ve come to take it away,” she says. It turns to her with death in its eyes and murder in its limbs. She thrusts the torch forward and utters something in an ancient tongue. Her companions form a tight circle, pointing their pitchforks and humming incantations.

  Kristina is running down the aisle, tripping on the fringes of her wedding dress. “But that’s my son,” she says.

  “Mommy,” the thing says. “It doesn’t like to be locked in the dark.”

  “Your son is gone,” the masked woman says. “The demon plants itself like a seed in an egg. The egg is the nourishment it uses to keep itself alive until it has enough strength to hatch. Soon, very soon, the shell will crack.” She and her compatriots prod it and poke it forward, trapping it in their circle of pitchforks and fire.

  The rest of us follow, while Kristina tries to get closer and Aaron tries to hold her back. The zombie squirrels march implacably under feet, following their master. The minister dons a mask.

  “What are you doing with him? Where are you taking him?” Lydia is demanding. I’ll say one thing for her, she always takes her daughter’s side.

  “We’re taking it back to the crypt,” the masked woman says. “It’s eternal. It cannot be destroyed. Obliterate the shell and it simply moves to another host. It can only be contained.” She pauses for a while. “I don’t know how you found the door.”

  We are not walking back to the hotel, as I’d imagined (me and my guilty secret, the hidden hallway, the invisible door). We’re taking a door at the back of the church, a door I didn’t know was there. We go down a steep flight of uneven steps—followed by the entire wedding party and half the guests—while Lydia pushes as close as she dares and says, “Well, what I want to know is who do you think you are and what gives you the right?”

  “We protect you,” they say. “We always have.”

  We’re walking down the lost hallway: the dark, unmarked doors, the hypnotic paper with its twisted swirls.

  “The door must be physical and metaphysical,” the woman explains. “The door must be locked with a key and the key must be lost. The door must be paved over. The door must also be lost.”

  The impossible, invisible door opens on a cell, a dark musty cell that stinks of death and rot, lined with cinderblocks and iron and lead.

  “It is bloodthirsty but simple,” the wom
an says. “Simple but cunning. It comes from a time before time, a place before places, when language was powerful magic written into the substrata of the world.”

  The man that might be the groundskeeper says, “If we can lose the door for another generation, we’ve done our jobs. We can go with God in peace.”

  Kristina is crying and pleading. “You can’t put him in there,” she sobs. “Not in there. He hates to be alone. He’s afraid of the dark.”

  “We must,” they say, and push and prod him toward the darkness.

  “Mommy,” it says. “It didn’t mean to, Mommy. It didn’t mean to open the door.”

  “Then me, too,” Kristina says. “He can’t be alone. I’ll go in there with him.”

  “Forever?”

  “Yes. Forever.”

  For the first time, I see her, really see her. I understand in a rush how cruel and unfair I’ve been, judging her shallow and provincial when I was the one all along. I want to say I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter, and it’s much too late.

  “Me, too,” Aaron says, and steps forward, and pulls Kristina into his arms. “Together. We’ll go in there together. I won’t let you do this alone.”

  “Are you people fucking kidding me?” Gran demands, and her scratchy voice rattles through the hallway. “You’re going to let these Halloween assholes run the show? You think we can’t take ’em? We got ourselves a whole goddamn wedding.”

  Just like that, a brawl breaks out. They have fire and pitchforks and ancient magic; we have hysteria and passion and paranoia, and the bride’s cousin Ron, who came to the chapel packing heat.

  The thing has itself, its useless, eager, bloodied army, and its vicious desire to survive. In the chaos, it feasts on another extended relative. Now it looks almost nothing like a boy.

  With the gun and the fire and the crowded hallway, we battle each other to an impasse in two minutes flat. There is crying and sobbing and gunshot wounds, and Gran has been knocked over, trampled, bruised, and bloody. But amidst the struggle, the thing has gotten past us. Or maybe it opened itself a door?

  It’s gone. Perhaps it is about to hatch.