by Terri Reid
The thud of the trap door echoed throughout the room.
Chapter Seven
Stacy woke up to someone gently shaking her. “Stacy? Honey? Are you okay?” The room was blurry and the voice muffled. Slowly, everything began to come into focus as the voice became clearer. “Stacy, wake up. Stacy? Are you okay, Stacy?” The soft voice became clear and the room lost its fog. Sitting up in her bed, she placed her palm on her head and tried to blink away the headache.
“Yeah, honey. I’m fine. Just a bad dream, that’s all. Why?”
“You were screaming in your sleep again,” her husband replied, concern etched into his features. “You’ve been having those dreams more often. Are you sure you don’t want to see someone?”
“I’m fine,” she said, shaking it off. “I’ve just been reading too many paranormal books lately. I’ll be fine.”
The ringing started as soon as she yawned. That was one feature of these kinds of dreams. They always left her scared. However, when she tried to remember them, she never could. Then, the ringing would start, convincing her to stay away from the dream.
Her husband got out of bed and walked over to the bathroom a few feet away from their bed. He opened the door and walked in. “So,” he said, quizzically from the small room, “Did you have the nightmare about being kidnapped again?”
He got undressed and opened the shower curtain, stepping inside.
“Yeah,” Stacy replied. “I can never remember the details. But, this time I remember a ritual. And a metal ring…”
The ringing in her head grew louder as she tried to claw at the nightmare. A ring…why did this ring have so much sadness attached to it? A cold piece of metal, with so much meaning around it. What was it trying to tell her? Why was she so sad? So scared? Who gave her the ring…
“Stacy.”
The ringing abruptly stopped as her husband pulled her out of her thoughts. He was now out of the shower, and wearing a blue shirt with the top button undone, a red silk tie that hung loosely around his neck, black pants, black shoes, and his leather belt. He had his hand gently placed on her shoulder.
“Yeah, honey?” Stacy said, looking at him.
“Have you been listening to anything I said?”
“Oh…yeah, I think,”
He moved his head closer to hers and looked her in the eye. “Are you sure you’re okay? I can stay home if you want me to.”
“No,” Stacy said grateful for his concern, but gently pushing him away. “I’ll be fine. You go to work, and bring home that sweet bacon.”
She lightly smacked his butt as he walked to the mirror near their bed.
“Alright,” he said, smiling back at her. “If you insist.”
He brought his fingers to the top button of his shirt and worked at buttoning it. “You remember that we are having dinner with Amber and her husband, right?”
He looked away from the button to look at her reflection in the mirror.
Stacy let out a groan. “Again? Didn’t we see them a few weeks ago?”
Her husband let out a soft chuckle as he tightened his tie. “Funny how friends want to see other friends more than just once a month, isn’t it?”
“That means that I actually have to clean the house a bit and make dinner, doesn’t it? Man, having friends is rough.” Stacy concluded wryly, lying back down on her pillow.
“Oh, come on,” her husband said, walking back toward her. He sat on the edge of the bed and put his hand on the side of her face. Stacy looked into his eyes. He looked back into hers. “After all,” her husband continued, a smile touching his lips, “she was the one that introduced us.”
Stacy rolled her eyes. “You’re right. I guess friends are good for some things. Now, seriously, Phillip, you need to get to work. You’re going to be late. I put your lunch in the fridge. Grab a banana before you leave.”
Phillip smiled and kissed her forehead. “Have I ever told you what a wonderful wife you are?”
Stacy blushed and smiled back, “Yeah, but I can always hear it again.”
“You are an amazing wife. Stacy, I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Phillip stood and grabbed his suit jacket and headed for the door. He paused as he was about to open the door, and turned to look at Stacy.
“Honey, I’m going to talk to someone about the dreams. You won’t have them anymore. I promise. Okay?”
Stacy smiled at him, his concern warming her hear. “Okay.”
Phillip opened the door and closed it behind him. Stacy listened as the front door closed followed by the sound of Phillip’s car starting.
She was just about to get out of bed when she looked at the dresser that was opposite the bathroom. It was a medium height, plain wooden dresser, with her jewelry on top, right next to her purple teddy bear. She stared at it for a moment, paying no attention to the ringing that slowly started up again.
There was something about that teddy bear that seemed wrong. She would normally look at the teddy bear’s sweet smile and be comforted. She loved to press its paw and hear Phillip say back, “Stacy, I love you.”
Today, however, she got a chill from the teddy bear’s fake smile, and dead eyes. Something was off, and the more she tried to figure out what it was, the louder the ringing got. She shook her head, dismissing the thought. There’s nothing wrong with him, she concluded. I’m just imagining things. He’s not watching me.
She walked over to her bathroom and began to remove her clothes to take a shower. She looked over her shoulder at the teddy bear’s fake smile.
She slowly closed the door to the bathroom.
The Hotel California
by
Donnie Light
I’d been driving through Hell for an hour before I began to reconsider the wisdom of my adventure and started to look for a place to get ice water.
Hell, in this case, meant somewhere in the Mohave Desert. My ill-considered adventure began with a spur-of-the-moment decision to buy a car in Vegas and drive back to LA and to the comforts of home for a few days. I had a week to myself before our next gig, and I looked forward to enjoying some downtime and getting my head right again.
My brand new ’77 Corvette clipped along a dark desert highway at eighty, and I listened to the rumble of the big V-8 under the fiberglass hood. Damn, it felt good to be away from the guys for a little while. Cruising through the middle of nowhere, the wind whipped my long blond hair out behind my head like a stallion’s mane at full gallop.
I looked up and saw the stars, millions of them, painted boldly on the moonless canvas above me. The lighter band of the Milky Way made me feel small for a few moments as I contemplated my life and where it had led me recently. And it was definitely life that led me, as I seemed to have no input.
My name is Adam Moss, (fans call me Hatchet), and I’m the drummer and primary songwriter for a rock band called The Fast Lane. That name still bugs me, as it was not the original name of the band, but the one the record company wanted us to use. No, let me rephrase that—it was the name they insisted we use—and that was that.
The band—me and three other guys I’d known since high school—was originally called Tulsa, because that’s the closest big city to where we all grew up. But the record company always knows best (or so we were told) so the marketing division came up with the name The Fast Lane and made us sign on the dotted line. Seemed like a good idea at the time.
I had a handful of tapes in my duffel bag and I dragged out a couple. I thought music would take my mind off my problems for a while, and stop this constant voice in my head that questioned my decisions of late. Was I really considering giving it all up so soon after getting there?
The first tape I grabbed was ZZ Top. Man, those dudes from Texas knew how to rock the house, but I wasn’t in the mood for them, so I considered a Stones tape for moment. They were my favorite band at the time, but the Stones just didn’t fit my current melancholia. The next tape I found was one of our own, so I tossed
it back. I’d heard those songs hundreds of times, and wanted to get away from The Fast Lane. One more grab and I came up with Bob Dylan, which I considered a perfect choice. I crammed the tape into the ’Vette’s cassette slot and turned the volume up to where I could feel the bass in the back of the seat and could see the vibrations in the rearview mirror. It was time to find that ice water. My throat had become as dry as the endless sand and scrub that surrounded me, but I didn’t see a light anywhere. All that lay before me was a black two-lane ribbon that seemed endless.
After Dylan’s third song, I decided that I really needed quiet instead. Life in The Fast Lane had gotten into my head, like a headache that aspirin wouldn’t touch.
We had signed with the record company two years before, and our first album did pretty well. Things were simpler back then, and being in the band had been a hoot. We didn’t have much money, but we’d never had any before, either. We were just four boys from the low hills of Oklahoma, playing a gig now and again at the local honky-tonks and county fairs. We all had day jobs, and played in the band for kicks. Sure, we dreamed of hitting it big and playing in sold-out venues, but none of us expected it to really happen.
Then the second album came out and, to our surprise, we had a big hit on our hands. A song called Mystery Momma hit the charts and climbed into the top ten. We got play time on radio stations all across the country, and even some play in England too. Of course, it excited us knowing that we had a big hit, and that’s when life really got interesting.
Sales shot skyward, and then that album produced another hit called Livin’ Loose. About that time, we went on tour with our own warm up band.
The next few months passed in a blur. Sometimes I couldn’t remember what state we were in, much less what town. Our old tour bus became our roadies’ bus, and we got a new one with custom paint and chrome wheels. A semi-truck and a couple of vans filled with equipment rounded out the little Fast Lane caravan that rolled steadily all year long.
Jimmy, Robbie and Max all seemed to dig it, and who wouldn’t? The money poured in, even though the bastards at the record company took the lion’s share for themselves and robbed us blind. It was big money, too, but none of us really cared. We had plenty, and our manager got us anything we wanted. I sent lots of money back to my folks in Wright City, and they put it up for me. I didn’t need much. Hell, the record company executives had us wearing worn-out jeans and threadbare tee shirts because marketing said that was cool and the fans would dig it. That’s what life turned into for me and the boys; someone constantly telling us to be here, go there, do this, sign that, drink this and swallow these.
At some point, I realized I’d been hit by a stroke of blind luck. By all rights, I should have been working in Daddy’s hardware store in Wright City. I would likely have married Brenda Jane and had a kid or two and maybe a small house somewhere.
What should have been and what actually was couldn’t have been further apart. Brenda Jane wouldn’t even speak to me, the big famous rock star, when I went home from time to time.
The last time I went home, Daddy took me into the store’s back room, amid the boxes of nails and lengths of black pipe. He stared me right in the eye and said that I looked like I’d aged a decade in the past two years; that I was burnin’ the candle at both ends. After telling me to be careful, he took out his pocket testament and read me a line of scripture. ‘For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’
That bugged me a little. I’ve always tried my best to do right, and I know Daddy had his reasons for reading that to me. To be honest, back then I sometimes felt like I had sold my soul to the devil, but I told Daddy that I heard and understood, and for him and Momma to not worry. I told him that I would get home more often, and that I’d get a haircut next time I was in town. He gave me a look like I was telling him a tall tale and that hurt me more than anything he could have said.
I brought my mind back to my Corvette and the desert night and realized I was doing over a hundred miles an hour. I took my foot off the gas and let the little silver sports car catch its breath. Up ahead in the distance, lights shimmered in the last of the heat rising off the hot desert floor. My head felt a bit foggy, and my eyes burned with a combination of weariness and confusion.
Closer to the lights, I realized it wasn’t a truck stop, but a small collection of various buildings. The first sign read La misión de las almas perdidas. I guessed it was some historic Spanish mission. A souvenir trading post boasting authentic Indian jewelry sat dark, closed for the night, and beside that, the CB radio shop was closed as well. The largest building hosted a sign that read Welcome to the Hotel California in Spanish style writing. The big hotel’s Southwestern architecture boasted lots of complex corners and portales, balconies and walkways. The ground lights cast harsh, eerie shadows, making it difficult to tell how much detail hid in the darkness.
It was obviously a nice place. Exotic cars filled the parking lot. Even in the relative darkness I could tell the grounds were immaculate. Several stately palm trees dotted the visible property in front of the building.
I killed the Corvette’s engine and sat for a moment, listening to the engine tick as it cooled. I watched the lighted entryway for movement and saw a couple enter the building through the main doors. It looked like an interesting place, so I entertained the thought of spending the night and finishing the trip the next morning. I have regretted that mistake every day since.
I snatched the duffel bag off the passenger seat and made my way to the front doors. The large lobby’s shiny tile floors seemed to go on forever in every direction. Just to my left at the counter, a strange-looking man in a suit watched me approach. He was thin—far too thin to look healthy. He wore a cheesy narrow mustache over slim lips, and dark circles ringed his eyes. He smiled when our eyes met, and a gold-capped front tooth glinted in the light.
“Good evening, señor,” he said. “Welcome to the Hotel California. Will you be joining us tonight?”
“Yes,” I said, still unsure that I wanted to, but so tired that I needed to.
“And how many in your party?” he asked, gold tooth gleaming like a beacon.
“It’s just me.”
“Very well.” He pulled some papers from below the counter, then efficiently filled in the lines, requesting information for each one. His writing was beautiful, full of graceful loops and precise angles. The ornate bracelet on his right wrist jangled as he wrote.
While he finished filling out the form, a beautiful woman walked up behind the counter. She wore a long black dress that emphasized her turquoise-colored eyes. Her black hair flowed over her bare shoulders like a dark stream over smooth stone. A large diamond pendant hung in the center of her cleavage, the diamond flanked on each side by three smaller stones. Sizeable rubies in gold mounts graced each earlobe.
Her eyes met mine and I could not look away.
“Do you need any help with luggage?” the man asked.
I held up my duffel bag. “Got it all right here.”
The woman put an arm around the thin man and gave his shoulder a gentle squeeze. “I will show our guest to his room, Hernando.” Her voice was as silky as her dress, and I found myself staring at her, admiring her striking presence.
She picked up a key off the counter, hung it back on the board, and took a different one. Then she curled a finger toward me. “Please follow me, señor.” Her long nails were polished the same color as her turquoise eyes. She walked toward a corridor on the far side of the lobby and I followed.
As I fell into cadence with her elegant strides, I could not help but notice the sway of her hips and the way her silky gown clung to her perfect form. The scent she wore wafted discreetly across my path, enticing me.
She stopped at a darkened stairway, reached into an antique cupboard and withdrew a tall, peach-colored candle in a silver holder, the kind I had only seen in old movies. She struck a ma
tch, and the flare lit her beautiful face in such a way that I could no longer remain silent.
“May I ask your name?”
She glanced sidelong at me while she held the match to the wick, awaiting the flame to catch. She then shook out the match, and I watched the curl of smoke lift from its shriveled head.
“You may call me Maria.” Her voice flowed from her like a finely tuned violin. I thought if I played music for the rest of my life I’d never hear anything so sweet again.
“Your room is at the top of the stairs,” she said. “Come, I will show you the way.”
There were no lights in the stairway, which I found a little odd, but as I looked over Maria’s shoulder to the top of the stairs, I could see a faint glow above her.
“This is the oldest part of the hotel,” she explained. “We have not updated it because some of our guests like the nostalgic feel of the days of old.” She reached the landing, stepped aside and turned toward me. “I’m sure you will find the room to your liking. If you do not, you will tell me, sí?”
I nodded, only because the look on her face seemed to be waiting for an answer. My mind was totally wrapped in her mental embrace; her presence like a thick smoke that filled the hallway. I breathed her in, unable to resist smoke so intoxicating.
She swung open the door to a room, moved to an old wall light that hung inside the door, and turned a knob. Weak yellow light joined the candlelight, and together they danced on the papered walls.
“There is electricity in the rooms,” she said in her elegant Spanish accent. “But the wiring is old and cannot power modern electronics.” She set the candle on the old desk in one corner. “But you did not come here to watch the television, am I right?”
Those eyes had me again. My mind was surely not working right, but no drugs pumped through my system, I swear. Only her. TV was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment.
I nodded again as she took the candle from its holder and used it to light another on the nightstand beside the bed.
“You came here to clear your mind,” she said, giving me that sidelong glance again. “This is the perfect room for that, señor.” She put her candle back in the holder, picked it up, then walked toward the door. As she stood in the doorway, I heard a bell toll and remembered the mission across the road. The key to the room dangled from her fingertips.
