Ted grabbed one suitcase out of the trunk and looked over at Jill, eyebrows raised with a question. She shook her head.
“I’ll need my makeup case, too.” Jill said. He nodded and took it out for her.
Ted allowed Jill to step ahead of him until he got to the door, then held the suitcases under one arm and got the door for her with the other.
“You didn’t have to do that, dear.” She said. “But thank you.”
“Yes I did. I have to make up for being a chump on the way here.”
Jill gave him a small smile, shook her head, and entered the massive foyer. Oak wood floors and furniture polished to a mirror shine. Fresh flowers on a center table brought spring indoors, and the tick-tock heartbeat of a grandfather clock greeted them with a half-past chime. It seemed almost alive to her, and she was standing there, open-mouthed, enchanted by the crown moldings and the decorated ceiling of white fleur-de-lis.
Smelling tobacco and clove smoke made her look to the front desk. An older, pale-skinned woman, with gray eyes and dark hair, sat smoking and reviewing her ledger. The strangest looking fluffy red cat lay sleeping on the corner of it, near the woman’s arm.
The cat stared at the both of them, and Jill would swear it was intelligent looking. Intelligent in the way an alligator looks—crafty, as if it were plotting something. Jill backed up near Ted, her heart skipping a beat.
The woman at the counter didn’t look up, enamored by her ledger. “The cat won’t bite,” she said. Her voice was husky, the way smokers’ voices got after years of the habit.
Ted walked up to the desk. The cat sniffed him, and sat up, stretching. Ted offered his hand. A few sniffs, and a head-butt later, the cat purred. The woman looked up at the couple.
“He likes you. You can stay,” she said.
Jill tittered. The woman looked at her, unsmiling.
“Something amusing, young lady?” she asked, raising one well-groomed eyebrow.
Jill’s face fell. The cat looked at her, his eyes making fun of her as he gazed. Jill tried to shake it off. “No, ma’am,” she said. “I’d just never visited a place where we had to be screened by cats before being allowed to visit.”
The woman smiled. “That’s all right. Oscar is special. He knows whether people are good and whether they’re trouble.”
Jill approached him, afraid that ‘Oscar’ wouldn’t like her. Then what would they do? Would the lady ask them to leave?
Oscar sniffed Jill’s hand and licked it.
The woman at the desk laughed. “He likes you, so don’t worry.”
Jill breathed a sigh of relief.
“I’m only teasing,” the lady said. “I would let you stay, even if Oscar didn’t approve, you know,” she stubbed out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray and blew out the smoke. Oscar backed away from the trail of blue-gray and settled back down at the end of the desk. “But I’d just make him watch you.”
Ted chuckled and Jill tried to relax, although Oscar kept watching them with intent, and she squirmed under his firm gaze. It’s just a cat, Jill thought, let it alone.
“Fill out the form, if you please,” the woman handed a registry sheet to Ted. He took it and scribbled their information on it. “And you two are?”
“I’m Theodore Braxbury, and this is my wife, Jill,” Ted said without looking up.
The woman checked the register, put a check mark next to their names, recorded the time and date, then handed him another piece of paper. “Ah, yes, Mister Braxbury. The deposit charge is on the slip. Calls outside the territory cost extra, and there is a telephone in each room for your privacy. We expect the standard deposit now, and you can settle up calls at check out. Meals are part of the total price, and dinner is served at eight o’clock this evening. There are four others—two couples—who will dine with us tonight, and we dress for dinner.”
The woman handed Ted their key and continued her well-rehearsed speech. “You’re in room five, which is upstairs on your right. For the record, I am Elizabeth Maxwell-Hunter. The co-owner, whom you shall meet tonight, is Mary Sellers-Watson-Kellogg.” She rang the bell and looked over at Jill, giving her a wink. “Tough to fit that on the sign, you know.”
Jill smiled. She had just been thinking those were long names. Names like that meant they were important people, she thought. Jill wasn’t important until she met Ted—then she had money, a standout surname, and a chance to educate herself to act like a proper lady. Her meager beginnings were all but forgotten now she was Missus J. Braxbury, of the Braxbury Soda Company.
A young man who still had acne spots on his face and baby fat on his pale cheeks came and took their suitcase. He looked at the key. “Room 213, if you’ll just follow me, sir. Ma’am.”
Elizabeth looked at them once again, and said, “Your bellhop, who seems to have forgotten his own name, is Edward Postman. If you want any room service, just let him know.”
Edward blushed. “So sorry, sir. Ma’am.” He bowed his head toward Elizabeth, who shook her head and looked away.
“It’s all right, Edward. Just because the girl is pretty doesn’t mean you forget yourself.”
Jill blushed as Edward looked like he wanted to melt into the floor. Ted laughed and clapped the young boy on the shoulder.
“It’s all right,” Ted said, “she’s a catch, I know it.”
Jill’s stomach turned, and not in a pleasant ‘butterflies in the stomach’ way. I’m not a damn fish.
She pushed the thought aside with another—a voice that sounded much more like her mother’s. Be grateful he considers you worth his time, otherwise you’d be a spinster slinging hash in a city shit-house.
When they were upstairs, the bellhop apologized for not introducing himself. “The owners aren’t local, and they’re real formal. I’m supposed to introduce myself before I take your bags. That’s how they do it in the big city, I guess.” He glanced at Jill and back to Ted, then blushed again.
Once shown to their room, Ted tipped Edward a dollar, and the young man’s jaw dropped for a moment before he recovered. “If there’s anything you need, sir, please dial four. That’s my line.”
“After dinner, if you would, bring a bottle of champagne to our room, well-chilled,” Ted said.
“Yes, sir,” Edward said. His voice had the eager edge that Jill sometimes heard in herself when Ted praised her for something.
“Thank you,” Ted said as the bellhop made his departure.
Jill grinned up at him, looking at his expensive suit, high-shined shoes, and wad of cash. Her heart swelled with a mixture of pride, lust, and love. All the times he spoke to her as if she were a slow child: forgotten. All the times he turned over and fell asleep while she wound up lying in the wet spot with a red face and a snarl etched on her lips: forgiven.
She turned away from Ted, taking in her surroundings. The room was sumptuous with velvet, satin, and silk adorning the room, plush carpeting underfoot and velvet drapes open to let the light in once the sun came out from behind the clouds. A rich perfume hit her nose. There were fresh cut spring flowers on the dresser, in a vase. Jill tingled all over and sighed with contentment.
Jill kicked off her shoes and sank into the rug, toes grabbing each fiber as an ecstatic smile spread over her face. Ted moved over to her, picked her up, and threw her on the bed. Jill descended into it, soft and warm.
“Ted, this place is wonderful,” she said.
He kicked off his own shoes and joined her on the bed, kissing her. “It is. You’ve got to trust me, Jill. I know what’s best.”
She exhaled to mask a sigh. Ted kissed her neck, unable to see her roll her eyes.
The afternoon breeze wafted in through the windows as the bed shook underneath Jill’s back—they had married seven years ago and had produced no children. This was met with their parents’ constant expressions of disappointment coupled with occasional hostility. They needed this second honeymoon. This was it. Tired of snapping at ea
ch other, tired of waiting for babies that would never come, Ted said that he wanted to try again. If they had the honeymoon they wanted this time, rather than what they could afford back then (before Big Mister Braxbury released the purse strings and let Ted get promoted), it would be the catalyst that would produce a son or daughter.
Jill was delighted with that idea. Not only did Ted have that promotion and they could afford to go to Nashton Lake for a week (even that buxom blonde starlet Scarlett Rose enjoyed Nashton Lake, the society pages said), she wanted children. Even when she was a little girl, she always favored baby dolls—dressing them, changing diapers, singing them to sleep, and feeding them their bottles before burping them and putting them in their cribs with little kisses to their powder-scented foreheads.
A mother and a teacher. Those were the two things she wanted. Though she had gone to college, Ted said he would prefer she didn’t have to work. After five years of teaching while Ted worked at his father’s soda company, she could quit because he was making plenty of money with his steady promotions. Big Mister Braxbury didn’t just hand out work, even to his son.
Now, he was a VP in the company, and she had no way to justify working to Ted. So she quit. Her life consisted of bridge clubs, social gatherings, getting her hair done, cleaning house, making breakfast, lunch, dinner, opening her legs before bed, using her hand when Ted rolled over and fell asleep, getting up the next morning, and doing it over again. The constant loop of being a housewife. Tick-tock, tick-tock.
Bridge clubs and socials were nice, but shaping little minds was what she did best. The kids—high school kids, paid rapt attention to her and understood the lessons she gave in calculus, algebra, trigonometry, and geometry, and not just because she could have been that bombshell’s body double. No. She captivated them by making it fun—telling stupid jokes and admitting how stupid they were, throwing chalk at kids who fell asleep in class or getting the other students to prank them. Listening to them and their problems and being a mentor to the ones who were struggling. Housewifery wasn’t her. There was nothing wrong with it, but it didn’t excite her the way teaching did.
But Ted grew sullen and acted embarrassed that dinner wasn’t ready when he got home. He nit-picked the dust accumulating in his study. He got cross with her often.
“The guys at work ride me hard about you still working.”
“So?” Jill said, slicing white mushrooms for a casserole.
“So it’s ridiculous that you’re still working and our home life is Perdition. I mean, this place is a pig sty.” Ted said with a clenched fist. Jill looked around the kitchen. She’d just cleaned it yesterday after dinner. She said nothing. He kept complaining.
By the time she got to the onions, tears were streaming down her face, but at least she could blame the fumes.
So she wrote her letter of resignation.
The promise of two or three children kept her going. She purchased school supplies and chalkboards and put them in the two spare bedrooms hoping she could teach them once they got old enough. It would be her job to help them learn, grow, and be whatever they wanted to be when they were on their own.
They tried to have babies. After two years with no luck, and with the two of them snapping and at each other’s throats all the time, Ted came up with this gem of an idea. Well, Jill came up with it, but Ted would refuse it if he couldn’t get credit. Instead, the brochures and mailers wound up in conspicuous places in the den, mixed in with bills and accounts.
As soon as she packed, she had a tickle of hope in her heart it would work.
With some good fortune, she’d even catch this same afternoon. The air heady with perfume, the afternoon sun coming out from the clouds and streaming in through the windows, and the soft, plush bed underneath them, she felt it was possible.
This place was like paradise, the stars clouding her vision, the smell of Ted above her, and then nothing. Bliss took over her body until she couldn’t sense anything else but the pleasure.
It was possible this place was paradise. She hadn’t had that happen in months.
Jill dreamed of babies and stars, and a red cat running through the house, chasing shadows.
***
Ted ran about the bed-and-breakfast, chased by a thing he couldn’t see, but could at the same time. A shadow with long arms reaching out to him, yet the shadow was solid. He felt the wind from it as it reached out to grab him. His heart beat faster as he moved, closed in by wet, dripping walls. They formed closer, melting, collapsing, and Ted pushed against them, hands sinking into what was once firm wooden paneling. Punches against them stuck as if putting his hands in molasses. The gooey substance swallowed him as the walls expanded—it crunched him up and stretched him all at once. His lungs tried to expand as they crushed his ribcage. A pocket opened around his mouth, allowing thin strips of air for him to breathe.
Love cannot live here, came voices speaking as one from all directions. Enveloped by the void, he felt his whole body drain of energy.
The world began in darkness and will end in darkness, chanted the voices in the blackness.
Then it disappeared and Ted’s eyes snapped open. His limbs were heavy, immovable. He lay on the bed, gasping for air, a lump in his throat. Jill stared at him, her eyebrows knit, little wrinkles around her eyes.
“Are you all right?”
For a moment, Ted had no answer. Where was he? After a moment, he oriented—the bedsheet stuck to his skin, the cool air assaulted his bare chest. He felt that the room was watching him, but that feeling was fading as he heard tiny footsteps thrumming outside the door.
“Water, please.” Ted said, but could only croak out a hoarse whisper.
Jill jumped up and moved over to the basin and pitcher, which had two courtesy glasses on a tray. She poured him one, handing him the heavy crystal tumbler, and he drank it in two swallows. She poured him another. He drank that in three. The world returned to him, heart slowed to its quiet rhythm. Jill brought him one more glass. He drank this one a sip at a time.
“We’re due for dinner downstairs in about an hour,” Jill’s voice was soft. “Do you think you’ll be up for it?”
Ted nodded. “I think so. I had—I, I don’t know—an atrocious dream.”
“No, I think it was more than that, Ted. You stopped breathing. I had to shake you awake—you gasped for air just seconds before you woke up.”
He looked at her again. Jill was pale and her hands shook when she brought them to her hair.
“That happens sometimes,” he said. Though he tried to sound casual, he heard his voice crack, and took a drink of water. “It gets worse when I sleep in an unfamiliar place.”
Jill shook her head, lip twitched into a frown.
“It’s happened since I was a boy, Jill. But it’ll pass. It always does. Trust me,” he patted her leg. “It’s hard to believe you’ve never noticed.”
Jill sighed. Either in relief or exasperation. Ted shrugged and looked away, working on his water.
“Well, what happened was weird,” Jill said after a stretch of picking at the bedsheet. “I woke up because you were thrashing, and then you stopped breathing. Then, just before you gasped for air, that cat, Oscar, came scratching at the door. As soon as you breathed again, he stopped, and I could hear him chasing something. It was like—like,” she shook her head as she trailed off. “I could have sworn he was chasing something that was in here, or trying to, rather.”
Ted stopped drinking and stared at her with a raised eyebrow and wide eyes.
Jill opened her mouth to say something else until she saw the look on Ted’s face. Pink circles bloomed on her cheeks.
“It was just a coincidence, Jill.” Ted reached out and took her hand in his free one, giving it a gentle squeeze.
“I suppose you’re right,” she said. “You usually are.”
Ted nodded and smiled, then patted the hand he’d been holding.
“Let’s get dressed for dinn
er,” Ted said, voice more upbeat. The sweat dried on his skin and his shaking stopped.
Jill got up and showed him the suit she chose from the suitcase.
“It didn’t wrinkle,” she said. “I must have done something right.”
Ted bit back the urge to say for a change and smiled with his best party face. “Of course you did,” he said.
“Thank you,” she patted her husband’s arm. He got up and dressed, and she put his empty water glass upside down on a coaster.
They got ready for dinner in silence. Ted, who dressed and shaved well before Jill finished putting on her makeup, sat on the bed and read the evening paper, which had been brought to the door earlier. Once he saw it, he gathered that was what the cat, Oscar, had been playing with.
Jill must have been frightened by him not breathing enough to let her imagination run wild.
He hadn’t lied to her about the apnea though. That hadn’t happened to him in over ten years, maybe. The last time it had happened, he was in a place similar to this (there are other places of evil, you know that, Ted) and he had been alone. Once he started breathing again, awake and frightened, he had sat in the darkness, just trying to get oriented—taking in the time on his clock or watch, feeling his limbs against the bed or his feet on the floor, and rubbing his face and jaw to bring the blood back to his head.
It was just a dream—it was then, and it is now. Dreams like that were rare for Ted, but he wasn’t going to give in to a childish fantasy that there was something sinister about the place.
No, this was where they had started their second honeymoon, and this was just a small obstacle in the grand scheme of things. This would be a wonderful trip to Nashton Lake. He was determined to make it that way. If she got pregnant there was no way she’d want to go back to work anymore.
His wife working—now that was embarrassing. The looks his colleagues gave him when they found out his wife worked made him feel smaller than a chastised child. As if he couldn’t provide for her even on his salary.
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