The Sun Down Motel

I felt for my glasses again. They hadn’t fallen far. I ran my fingers over them. They were wobbly, but they weren’t broken. I picked them up and listened to them click as my hand shook.

“I don’t feel good,” the boy said again.

Slowly, I put my glasses on. I made myself turn around and look. He was standing at the far end of the pool, wearing shorts and a T-shirt. His arms and legs were thin and white in the darkness. He was looking at me.

“I—” I made myself speak. “I have to go.”

He started to walk toward me, the leaves rustling at his feet.

I sat up fast. I was bruised and filthy. When I moved a foot I heard a clink and knew there was broken glass in here somewhere. I tested with my palms before I put them down and pushed myself up, getting into a standing position as fast as I could as the pain moved through me.

The only way out of here was to climb the rusted old ladder that hung from the edge on the other end of the pool. I started toward it as the footsteps came behind me.

“Why don’t I feel good?” the boy asked, making me jump. But I moved one foot after the other, shuffling and limping, trying to gain speed, dirt and leaves on my clothes and in my hair. I likely looked like an extra in a zombie movie, but I kept moving. Slowly, too slowly, I climbed the incline from the deep end toward the shallow end and the ladder.

“I’m sorry,” I said as I walked. “I have to go. Maybe you’ll feel better soon.”

“Help me, please,” he said, still behind me, his footsteps still moving in the leaves.

“I can’t,” I said, my voice nearly a whisper of fear. “I really can’t.”

“Help me, please!”

The bolts on the ladder had nearly rusted to dust in the decades since the pool had last been used, and the ladder wobbled dangerously when I grabbed it. I swung my weight onto it and climbed out. Gritting my teeth in pain, I moved as fast as I could toward the break in the fence, but I couldn’t resist looking back over my shoulder.

The boy was standing at the bottom of the ladder, still watching me. I turned back and half ran toward the motel.

I could hear nothing from the direction Callum and Nick had run. No shouts, no gunshots. I felt in my pocket for my cell phone, then remembered I’d left it in my car because there was no service here. I needed to call the police.

My keys were in my coat pocket, and I fumbled them in the dark until I opened the office door. I flipped on the overhead light and walked around the desk. I picked up the desk phone.

Now is the moment when you realize someone has cut the phone line . . . someone who hasn’t left the motel.

“Shut up,” I croaked aloud to my overactive brain. “This isn’t a horror movie.” And it wasn’t. The dial tone came loud and healthy from the clunky old handset.

I dialed 911 and looked down at myself in the fluorescent light. I was streaked with dirt and old leaves, and there was a bloody scrape on my left wrist that I hadn’t even felt yet. My body begged me to sit in the office chair, as uncomfortable as it was, but I was afraid if I sat down I’d never manage to stand up again.

I told the 911 dispatcher what had happened: that I’d been followed, that I’d been assaulted and pushed into an empty pool by a man named Callum MacRae, that my friend Nick had taken off after my assailant. The dispatcher asked if I was injured, and I said, “Probably,” as pain ran up and down my spine. He asked if I could stay on the line as he sent police and an ambulance, and as he spoke the words I heard footsteps walking up the corridor toward the office.

The air went icy cold and I smelled pungent cigarette smoke.

“Miss Kirk?” the dispatcher said. “Are you still there?”

The footsteps came closer. Paced, measured. Not a soft tennis shoe or a woman’s high heel. A man.

I could see a plume of my own breath in the air.

“Miss Kirk?” the dispatcher said again.

“I can’t stay on the line,” I said, feeling bad about it. He was being so nice to me. “I really have to go.”

I hadn’t closed the office door behind me, and as I hung up the phone a man walked in.

He was wearing dress pants and a long, dark wool coat. His shoes were shined. He was a white man of about thirty-five, with dark hair neatly combed and a clean shave. An average face with even features. I could see the knot of his tie where it disappeared into his buttoned-up coat. He was carrying a small, old-fashioned suitcase.

And something about him scared me so much I almost screamed.

He looked at me for a moment. I couldn’t see the color of his eyes—gray, perhaps, or brown. All of the details of him—the composition of his face, the exact color of his clothes—seemed to roll off, to not quite take, like water that has been dropped onto a pool of oil. I blinked and my eyes watered. My stomach clenched in terror. My fingers were numb with cold. The smell of smoke was heavy and sharp.

“I need a room, please,” the man said.

His voice was like water on oil, too—what exactly did it sound like? I couldn’t say. I couldn’t even say if I had really heard it or if it was only in my head.

And somehow, I knew it: I was looking at Simon Hess.

Should I run? Was he a figment of my imagination? I had to get past him to get out the door. If I came close to him, would he vanish into nothingness, or—worse—would I feel something, as if he had some kind of corporeal body? I couldn’t get near him. So I stood there frozen as he looked at me. And he saw me—I was sure of it.

“May I have a room?” he asked me again. He held out a hand, palm up.

A key. He was asking for a key. I didn’t even think as I reached down and opened the key drawer. I picked a key without looking, the leather icy in my cold hand. I was too afraid to circle the desk and hand it to him, so I put the key on the desk, pushing it all the way to the edge farthest from me.

Simon Hess stood there for another moment, his hand held out. Then he dropped it to his side again. “Room two-oh-nine,” he said in that voice that was real and yet not real. “Home sweet home.”

I glanced down and saw the number 209 on the leather tab of the key on the desk.

“Thank you,” Hess said. He turned and left the room.

I heard his footsteps walk away down the corridor toward the stairs.

The office door blew shut with a loud slam, making me jump. A terrified whimper left my throat. And the lights went out.

Somewhere in the dark, in the office, a man coughed.

Outside the office door, I saw the sign go out.

Betty, I thought.

She was here. And so was her killer. I’d just given him a room.