31. Hoight's Long Night.
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The Palmer Hotel
I sink below to the grand dance and twirl for a while. Then I open my eyes.
I can just make out the lobby through the half-circle of glass at the end of the darkness. I hear the echoing tick-tick-tick of the clock’s pendulum. Between the hour and second hands, I see the man who killed me.
He taps his finger to the pendulum’s rhythm on the top of the front desk. He stares at the clock, but not into it. Not at me, whatever I am, here on the other side.
I hear the squirming coterie approach from behind, and I’m enveloped within its tendrils. They feel warm and slick. They form around me, control my arms and legs, my head, fingers, and eyes. They’re inside of me too, puppeteering whatever’s left in there.
They spin me away from the lobby into the hidden corridor. Pull me past the hanging notebooks that remain unmoved by my presence. Through the wooden chairs that have been laid out against the corridor walls. Up the tunnel to the eighth floor.
Through a portal I see the courtyard. It’s bathed in moonlight and flickering red. The limbs move me down a corridor dotted with pinholes of light. They bring me to the one marked 809 and push my head forward, forcing me to look inside.
My furniture is gone, carpets removed, closet empty. Paint buckets, rollers, and sheets of torn plastic have been left behind. I hear a noise behind me: the coterie twists me around.
I see my assassin’s faded outline. A dark aura with fuzzy borders and a jittering interior. Its movements blur as it approaches. I feel the sharp pain in my guts. I feel the stabbing deep within me, fresh like the first time. My assailant disappears.
The limbs make me stagger down the corridor, then force my hand to tap-tap-tap against the ground. They hoist me to look through the portal into the courtyard’s glow. Almost as if they’re taunting me with a view of the world I’ve been torn from.
I see the faint outline of a woman’s face, diffusing into tufts of gossamer. She’s barely there.
The limbs squeeze my insides and force me to scream, so I do.
The woman falls. My eyes close.
I sink below to the grand dance and twirl for a while. Then I open my eyes.
Through the glass I see someone new behind the front desk. A stranger. Short, red hair. She thumbs through a paperback as a guest patiently waits to check in.
The slick limbs spin me around, through the corridors, up to the eighth floor, lit in flickering red.
There is Stroud on his night shift, still a being of flesh and blood. He stoops in a chair, then leans forward towards a pinhole. He backs away, scrawls in his notebook, and peers again.
I pass into his body and am struck with a feeling of simmering rage. It wafts like burnt engine oil into my nose. Then the limbs carry me through where he sits to 809. They make me look inside.
My room is no longer my room. Gone are the shelves, gone are the drapes, gone is the hotplate. A man sleeps in my old bed. His feet stick out from the covers. He snores.
The limbs spin me, and I see my assassin’s jittering shape again. It approaches in a blur.
It passes through the corporeal Stroud who still sits there taking his notes: The two entities from different times blend momentarily together in a shimmering solidity. And then I feel the pierce of my stomach, awful, a shocking new pain.
The limbs drag me to the floor to issue my taps, then to the courtyard portal. That woman’s face again, clearer than before. Long brown hair, aqua blue eyes, wrinkles of worry on her forehead. My insides compress like a squeezebox to make me scream, and I do. The woman falls. I close my eyes.
I sink below to the grand dance and twirl for a while. Then I open my eyes.
A man stares back through the half-circle in the clock. He presses at the corner of his mustache, then turns around to see a woman in red behind him. She’s familiar, but I can’t recall her. The man turns back with a smirk and pulls his mustache off. I know him, but don’t know why.
The limbs spin me, float me down the corridor and up the ladder to the pinhole that peers into my old room. It’s now empty. They spin me to my shaded killer and I feel that ghastly pain, searing and crisp. They make me strike my taps, then aim me at the portal.
The woman’s face beyond is now clear and real in the flickering red strobe. She’s out there, I can feel it. She’s hesitant in her steps, worried about falling. She can see me.
I try to remain silent, but the tendrils clamp down on my insides, urging me to scream. After I do, I watch the woman’s eyes widen with fear as she steps back off the fire escape. Then I watch her fall.
A moment later, another figure falls past. He thinks of what a strange world it has been. I hear a grotesque sound of shattering bones and splattering flesh. I close my eyes, now filled with tears.
I sink below to the grand dance and twirl for a while. Then I open my eyes.
Over and over I cycle through the Palmer, forced to obey the orders of the greasy arms and legs that slither through the interior corridors. They drag me from clock to corridor, up the ladder to my stabbing, to the floor, then finally out to view the courtyard portal.
And every time, the woman in red glares back with mounting fear. And every time I’m forced to scream. And every time, she falls.
I begin to notice new awareness growing in her blue eyes with each cycle. Confusion, pleading, acceptance, hope, then acceptance again. But nothing changes in our routine. The limbs make me scream, she falls, and we do it all over again.
I sink below to the grand dance and twirl for a while. Then I open my eyes.
The lobby is full of commotion. Later, there are fewer guests. Later still, it’s empty save the red-haired woman with her paperback. Then, she’s gone and no one’s left. Later, there’s a flock of roving headlamps perched on top of shadows who are wheeling in carts of supplies. Later, it’s empty again.
Later, the lobby is lit brightly with new furniture. A large man stands behind the front desk dressed like a security guard. He buzzes people in through newly installed glass.
I feel the corridor shake and watch the guard bolt from his position and through the revolving front door. In the empty lobby, lamps topple off their tables and crash to the floor. I hear silence and realize that the clock’s ticking has stopped. The gelatinous limbs pull me back.
I sink below to the grand dance and twirl for a while. Then I open my eyes.
The lobby is candlelit. Shadowy figures roam about. I see a table in the center occupied by a circle of people, finely dressed and holding hands. There is a strange electricity in the air.
From the table, a woman in a long white dress shouts an incantation. Confusion grows on her face. She rises toward the clock, toward me, stuck on the other side.
She peers through the glass. I know she can see me. She whispers to me, telling me to be free. I’ve never thought of this before, so I take her up on it.
Before the squirming coterie can grab me, I reach out this woman in white. As I do, I feel a flash of hot energy spark through the air, then see the woman ejected away, as if struck by a thunderous bolt. She crashes violently into the crowd. Everyone screams.
I pause within the lobby. Free from the writhing captors on the clock’s other side. The partygoers freeze in a tableau of intertwined limbs and strained expressions. A diorama of horrors.
And then in its place before me opens up the entirety of my past.
It’s an expanse of pure black speckled with slim fissures of light. Millions of them. A wall of stars. They shine in varied rhythms like lights from a disco ball.
One pulses brighter than the others. I step into it.
I’m in Room 809, but it is not yet my home. I’m being held by my mother. I know her by her smell. Dimples form in her brown cheeks, then her eyes wince with pain, blur with tears. I’ve seen enough. I withdraw from this fissure.
Another star pulses brightly in the wall, so I step in.
I’m at the corner table of the hotel’s dining hall, across from Mrs. Abernathy. I still remember her name. She holds the rose that I’d just given her. I speak in my prepubescent voice, telling her that her boy will be back soon. I see a thankful look appear on her face.
I withdraw to the wall of stars.
It pulses in a pattern I cannot decode. I try another.
I’m in the hidden eighth floor corridor. I feel the stab wound in my belly, bleeding out into the wood. I pound on the floor in desperation; then, I find myself at the portal, staring out into the courtyard. The outline of the woman’s face is there, barely, in the flickering red.
I desperately want to scream—for help, for pain, to make one last sound before the life flows out of me forever. But instead, I use my remaining strength to bite my lip, to swallow my pain, to stay silent as a mouse.
The dim figure of the woman descends down the fire escape to safety.
I withdraw to the wall of stars.
Beyond the veil behind the wall of my past moments, the bodies in the lobby remain frozen in time. But something has changed. Some of the stars have blinked out, others now pulse brighter than before.
I stay still and examine the wall in this place between time.
After hours, or years, or perhaps all time, all at once—I learn how to read them. I know precisely where each star leads, to which moment of my life within this hotel it will transport me. I ponder this knowledge for hours, or years, or perhaps all time, all at once.
I return to a day in 1962. I’m behind the front desk, checking in an old man with a nervous girl on his arm who’s old enough to be his granddaughter. Twin streaks of blue eyeshadow run down her cheeks.
I remember when this had first happened. An ambulance had showed up a few hours later to take her out in a stretcher. This time, I tell the man that the hotel is booked up. They exit out through the revolving doors. I feel some type of satisfaction. Maybe it will make a difference. Maybe not.
I withdraw to the wall of stars.
I return to a day from 1983. I’m outside of the front of the hotel, holding a picket sign. I see a man approach, old and angry and muttering under his breath. He looks into the lobby and I follow his gaze to see Stroud—that bastard Stroud—on the door’s other side. He waves the angry man around.
I follow the man down the street, screaming as I do. Screaming bloody murder. I call him a piece of shit, a fucker, a scab.
On the side of the hotel I see Stroud, that bastard Stroud, holding open the side door. I see the wheels spinning in the angry old man’s head, then something clicks. He crosses the street and heads for an approaching train, forgoing the Palmer entirely. Stroud closes the door with a grimace and retreats inside. I rejoin the picket out front.
I withdraw to the wall of stars.
During these journeys—as I step through into my past, shift the course of things, and then retreat again from the time-bound realm of the living—I notice something peculiar. Now and then, I see other faded figures lingering throughout the hotel. Spiraling and going through their own cycles. Like I once did. Souls imprisoned.
While the woman in red has been freed, these others—hundreds, thousands, maybe more—all go through their tortured routines, grasped by the limbs, forced to their fates by the puppeteering entities that reside within this cursed structure.
I stand in front of the wall of stars, the partygoers all still frozen in their moment in time, and contemplate my options.
After hours, or years, or perhaps all time, all at once, I recall an entry from Stroud’s notebook that hung near the grandfather clock:
October 31st, 1968 / Hoight dressed like a child.
I formulate a plan. To kill two birds with one stone.
I return to a day from 1957. With no one around, I wheel a metal cart into the ballroom, then down to the hidden space below the stage. I load the cart with concrete blocks to weigh it down, making it immobile. It sits there, unremarked and unmoved, for over a decade.
In 1959, I order a shipment of ammonium nitrate. Then, weeks later, return for the package’s arrival. I haul it under the stage and maneuver it deep into the hidden corridors, making sure it’s out of sight.
In 1960, I bore holes through the face of grandfather clock and run wicks through.
I traverse the years, entering the stars to times in my past when no one was around—often the middle of the night, awakening in my room—to hurry to the ballroom and disperse the explosive materials throughout the labyrinth of the corridors.
When my plans are complete, I enter the stars and leap to Halloween night, 1968.
I wait behind the front desk, handing out candy next to my lit Jack-o-Lantern, until I see a flash of white light from within the grandfather clock. That’s Stroud making his mistake. Bobbling his flashlight. That’s my signal to finish my job.
I sprint to the ballroom, crawl under the stage, and brush the cobwebs from the metal cart that’s been ignored in the corner. I remove the bricks that I’d placed on it a decade ago, push it in front of the concrete slab door, and weight it down into immobility. No one will be coming in or out of the corridors anymore. It’s been sealed for good.
I spend the rest of this final journey winding my way through the hotel. I knock on every door and tell every guest that there’s a bomb threat. I say they need to evacuate to a nearby park for further instructions. They trust me. The bellhop uniform comes with a certain authority.
When The Palmer Hotel is clear save one soul in the guts, I return to the lobby.
I use a small hammer to smash in the face of the grandfather clock. On the other end, I see Stroud’s eyes staring back.
“Do you want company or privacy?” I ask.
He remains silent.
I light the wicks that I’d planted beside the clock’s pendulum. I see the flames flow back through the hidden corridors. I watch Stroud’s shadow scurry off down the corridor, towards what he believes to be safety. I know better.
I take one last look at the grandfather clock, then the empty lobby where I’d spent so much of my life. I push through the front revolving doors with enough force that they keep spinning long after I cross the street to the train station nearby.
I have a view of the hotel as my train leaves the city. In an instant, its windows shatter in an immense concussion, and the entire façade erupts into flames. I begin my journey to wherever is next.
Artwork by Tiffany Silver Braun.
If you like Tales from the Palmer Hotel, tell a friend. If you really like it, the suggested donation for the series is a one-time payment of $6.66. Venmo (@Rick-Paulas) or Paypal (rickpaulas@gmail.com).