The Sun Down Motel
Then he lifted a hand and pointed down Number Six Road. I froze still. There was a figure on the side of the road—a man, walking quickly along the shoulder, his hands in his pockets, his head down, his shoulders hunched. I peered into the darkness, trying to decide if I recognized him, trying to see if he was a living figure or a dead one. I didn’t know the difference anymore.
But before I could decide either question, the man approached the motel and ducked around the corner toward the office, out of sight.
I looked back at the parking lot, looking for Henry. But the parking lot was empty. He was gone.
* * *
• • •
The office was dark, but someone had kicked the door. Nick and I had heard the thumps as we left his room. Now even in the reflected light from the road sign I could see the marks of a shoe where it had hit the wood.
“What the hell was he thinking?” Nick said, his voice low. “Did he think he could get in?”
I stared at the shoe marks, unsettled. “Callum MacRae followed me from town,” I said. “I had to drive to Alma’s place before he left me alone.”
“MacRae,” Nick said. “Do I know him? His mother is a professor at the college, right? What does he want with you?”
“I’m not really sure.” Callum’s interest in me had sometimes seemed personal, sometimes not. “But tonight he wanted to tell me that he’s Simon Hess’s grandson.”
Nick paused, then shook his head. “Fuck it, I’ve been gone too long. I don’t know all the town gossip anymore. If I ever did.” He stepped back and looked around. “If he followed you, then he was driving.”
“Yes.” Though that didn’t explain why he was walking along the side of Number Six Road now. Or kicking the office door. If it was even Callum at all.
“He didn’t go back to the parking lot. He must have gone this way.” Nick walked around the corner toward the empty pool.
I followed him, shoving my hands in the pockets of my coat. It was darker back here, on the other side of the building from the corridor lights. The dark made it seem colder. I kept close to Nick as he walked toward the broken-down chain-link fence around the pool, his boots scuffing in the layers of dead leaves.
“MacRae!” he shouted.
There was no answer.
“Let’s just go back,” I said.
Nick held up a hand. “I hear him.” He took a step and paused. “MacRae!”
I looked around, trying to see in the darkness. The empty pool with the fence around it. The broken concrete walkway that had once been the path that guests would take to the pool. The back doors that led to the utilities room and the storage room. From the other side of the building a truck went by on Number Six, making a loud, throaty barreling sound. There was the faint click I recognized as coming from the ice machine in the AMENITIES room, forever making ice that no guest ever used.
“There’s a break in the fence,” I said. I picked my way toward it, trying not to trip on the broken concrete. It was on the far side of the pool.
“Wait,” Nick said. “Be careful. Let me check it.”
“I can’t tell if it’s recent or not,” I said, touching the edge of the break without going through it toward the pool. “This fence is so old it might—”
A shadow came out of the darkness. Big hands grabbed me and shoved me through the break. I stumbled back toward the pool, letting out a scream.
“Carly!” Nick shouted.
The hands shoved me farther. My ankle bent and I tried to keep my balance on the broken concrete. Whoever it was was in shadow and I couldn’t see his face. But when the voice spoke, I recognized it.
“Fuck you, bitch,” Callum MacRae said, and pushed me backward into the empty pool.
Fell, New York
November 2017
CARLY
I landed hard on the concrete, and everything happened at once. Pain lanced up my back and my shoulder, reverberated through my chest. My head hit the ground and my glasses came off. The breath left me in a whoosh and for a second I was curled up and gasping, trying to breathe.
“Carly!” came Nick’s panicked voice. “Carly!”
I opened my mouth. I’m okay. I don’t think anything’s broken. The words were just a thought, a whisper of breath. I couldn’t make anything come out of my lungs and into my throat.
“Carly!”
“Nick,” I managed. I was lying in a pool of garbage and leaves, old beer cans and fast-food wrappers. I couldn’t see much in the dark without my glasses. Pain was throbbing through my body, from the back of my head and down to my tailbone. I managed a deep breath and tried again. “Nick. I’m okay.”
I heard him at the edge of the pool above me, the rustle of his footsteps. “Are you hurt? Do you need help?”
The only thing I could think of was Callum MacRae running off into the trees, getting farther with every second. The thought put me into a dark, black rage, and for a second I was more furious than I had ever been in my life. More furious than I had ever imagined being.
“Go get him,” I shouted at Nick. “Don’t let him go.”
He must have heard something in my voice that said I wasn’t helpless, because he swore and the next thing I heard were his boots taking off over the concrete, swift and hard.
I wondered if Nick would catch him. I wondered if Callum was armed. I wondered if Nick had his gun.
Fuck you, bitch, Callum said in my head.
“Fuck you, bitch,” I said back to him, my voice throaty as I still gasped for breath. I rolled onto my back and took stock.
I had a bump on the back of my head. My shoulder was screaming with pain, and when I rotated it, it made a sickening click sound that said it had been dislocated. I screamed through my gritted teeth, then took more breaths as the pain eased a little.
I had taken most of the impact on my back, and it throbbed from top to bottom. I moved gingerly, patting the leaves and garbage around me, looking for my glasses.
Feet shuffled in the dead leaves next to the pool, a few feet behind me.
I went still. At first I couldn’t see anything in the out-of-focus world around me; then I saw a smudge move from the corner of my eye, like someone shifting position.
“Nick?” I said.
There was no answer. I was cold, so cold. Trying to keep an eye on the blur, I felt for my glasses again.
A voice came, high and sad, almost faint. “I don’t feel good.”
My mouth went dry with fear. It sounded like a child—a boy. The boy I had seen. The boy who had hit his head in this pool and died.