The Sun Down Motel

I circled the desk, making my legs work as fast as they could. Something brushed me as I ran for the door, the feeling faint and cobweblike. I was too busy escaping to scream.

The doorknob wouldn’t turn under my hand. “No,” I moaned, jerking it and shoving at it, trying to force the door open. “No, Betty, no, no, no . . .”

Behind me, in the dark office, the desk phone rang, the sound shrill and screaming. I jerked the doorknob again and this time it turned. I burst out onto the walkway, my breath sawing in my lungs. I ran for my car.

Upstairs, the motel doors banged open one by one. The lights went out. The phone shrilled behind me. And when I got to my car, I realized I didn’t have my keys. They were back in the office.

“No,” I said again. I couldn’t stop saying it; it was the only word that would leave my throat. “No, no.” I wrenched at the car door handle and the door opened. I’d left the car unlocked, but I had no way to start it and get out of here.

I ducked into the car anyway. It felt safer than standing out in the open, waiting for whatever Betty Graham had planned. Or whatever Simon Hess had planned. Or both of them.

I dropped into the driver’s seat, but when I tried to pull the door closed, something resisted. I used both hands, crying out as the motion wrenched my aching back, but I couldn’t pull the door closed.

In the passenger seat, my cell phone rang. I jumped, my sweaty hands slipping from the door handle. It wasn’t possible; there was no reception here. Yet the phone lay faceup on the passenger seat, buzzing and ringing. The call display said NICK.

I let go of the door and grabbed the phone, swiping at it. “Nick?” I called. “Nick?”

There was no answer. Just a second of silence, and a click.

“Nick!” I shouted. I tried redialing his number, but nothing happened. No signal.

The wind gusted into the car through the open door. I had tears on my face, running down my cheeks, cold and wet. Even from here I could hear the phone ringing in the motel office, over and over, on and on. I tried to redial my phone.

Then there was the hum of a car motor, the crackle of tires on gravel. I lowered the phone and watched as a car pulled up next to mine.

The woman inside—I recognized her. Even thirty-five years later, her hair grown long down her back, a knit cap on her head. I knew that face. I’d looked at it so many times, I’d know it anywhere.

My aunt Viv leaned over and opened the passenger door. “Get in, Carly,” she said. “It’s time to get the hell out of here.”

Fell, New York

November 2017

CARLY



   The night roads flew by out the window. My body throbbed with pain, and my phone was hot and silent in my hand. Vivian Delaney sat next to me, driving in silence.

She looked older, of course. Her cheekbones had thinned and her face was harder, tougher. Her hair was grown long, the 1980s perm long gone. She wore jeans, boots, and a practical zip-up jacket, a knit cap on her head. She wore barely any makeup. She smelled faintly fruity, like cherry body wash.

“I’m not taking you far,” she said at last. “But it’s best to get out of the Sun Down, at least for a little while.”

“The ambulance is coming,” I said, my voice raspy. “The cops. Nick . . .”

“What happened, exactly?”

I made myself look at her. Really look. “You’re alive,” I said.

Viv said nothing.

“You’ve been alive for thirty-five years.”

She pulled into a parking lot. I recognized the sign for Watson’s Diner. “I couldn’t go home,” she said. “I had to run.”

I watched as she parked the car, turned off the ignition. My emotions were like blinking lights behind my eyes. Shock. Fear for Nick. Excitement. And anger. So much anger, quick and hot. “My mother died grieving for you,” I said.

Viv froze, her jaw working, and I realized she hadn’t known her sister was dead.

That told me everything I needed to know. I opened the door and got out.

 

* * *

 

• • •

“Okay, listen,” she said, following me into the diner. “I deserved that. You can be mad at me. I had to move on and cut ties completely or I’d lose my nerve. But we have to talk about what happened tonight. What’s still happening.”

I kept my phone tight in my hand. When I walked into the diner I saw that I had bars of service, so I called Nick. It rang, but no one answered.

I hung up before the voicemail kicked in and sat in a booth, my legs and back groaning in complaint. Viv sat across from me as if she’d been invited, even though she hadn’t. Part of me wanted to kick her out. But another part knew she was right: We had a lot to discuss. I had been in Fell for weeks now, living her old life. The least I needed to do was get answers.

I set my phone down on the table in front of me, faceup, in easy reach. I heard Viv order two bowls of soup from the waitress, but I barely paid attention. Nick, where are you?

But Viv’s next words jolted me out of my stupor. “We’ll start with Betty. What set her off tonight?”

“You’ve seen Betty,” I said.

“I saw her in 1982, yes. Saw her, heard her.” She picked up the cup of coffee the waitress had put in front of her. “In those days, she went crazy every time Simon Hess checked into the motel. But I haven’t worked the night shift in a long time, so I don’t know what did it tonight.”

“He checked in,” I said. I was talking about this like it was real. Because it was real. “He came into the office and asked for a room. I saw him. His voice was in my head. I put a key on the desk and he thanked me and left again.”

Viv’s knuckles were white on her mug, and she downed half the coffee in one swig. “You checked him in?”

I shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“Well, Betty is going to be furious. Does the motel have any other guests?”

I shook my head, thinking back to the guest book when I was in the office. It was blank. “Unless they didn’t sign the book. I haven’t exactly been there very much tonight.”

“Then no one else will get hurt, maybe,” Viv said. “Whatever happens there, it’s going to be bad.”

“There will be cops and EMTs there, if there aren’t already,” I said. “And my friend is there somewhere.”

The waitress put our bowls of soup in front of us as I called Nick again. No answer. “Eat,” Viv said when I put the phone down again. “You need sustenance, trust me.”