The Sun Down Motel(100)

“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.

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