The Sun Down Motel(58)

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The cigarette smoke was pungent tonight. After she hung up the phone, Viv stood with her palm pressed to the office door, her eyes closed as she took breaths. It was definitely the smoking man, the man who had walked behind her the first night the ghosts came, his footsteps crossing behind her back as if he walked past an open door. There was another footstep on the walk, and with an inhale of breath Viv turned the doorknob and pushed open the door.

There was no one there, just the frigid cold darkness, the air that was starting to smell like snow. The wind hushed in the naked trees beyond the motel, and on a far-off street a siren wailed, the sound carrying high and faint.

I could disappear. I could die. Who would look for me?

Victoria’s own parents hadn’t thought to look for her because they assumed she was at a party. No one knew Betty was missing until she didn’t come to work.

There has to be a connection.

There was a distinct crunch of gravel in the parking lot, and Viv heard the snick of a door opening. Then another, and another.

Betty was awake.

Viv had come to think of it that way. Betty slept, and the motel slept; but sometimes Betty was awake, which meant the motel was awake. Usually she awoke when the traveling salesman checked in, but he wasn’t here tonight. Tonight there was no one here but Viv.

No one here but Betty and me.

Viv stepped out onto the walkway, past the AMENITIES room. Ahead of her, around the bend of the L, the doors were opening one by one, starting at the end and working toward her. She could hear them upstairs as well: Snick. Snick. Snick.

“Betty?” Viv said.

The sign flickered but stayed on, its garish neon colors strangely comforting in the darkness.

She pulled her collar up around her neck, let the wind lift her hair, and stepped off the walkway into the parking lot. The gravel crunched beneath her sneakers. I could just disappear, she thought. Become one of the ghosts here. No one would ever know. Maybe some future girl would work in the front office, and first she’d smell cigarette smoke, and then she’d hear the rumble of the ice machine, and it would start all over again. A year from now? Five? What would that girl look like? What would she think when she saw the ghost of Viv herself, scuffing gravel through the parking lot?

She turned away from the L, from the opening doors, and walked back to the office, though she didn’t go in. That door was open, too, though she couldn’t remember if she’d closed it behind her or not. Inside she was almost not surprised to see a man sitting at the desk she’d just left. He was older, skinny, and he was slumped over the desk, his head in his hands.

Viv stood in the doorway, her hand on the jamb to keep herself from falling. It felt like her breath was frozen in her throat. The air was suffused with the smell of cigarette smoke.

As she watched, the man raised his head and looked at her. His eyes were black and blazing.

“Goddamn bitch,” he said.

Viv backed away and walked on shaking legs around the corner, toward the empty pool. It was nearly pitch-dark back here, farther away from the lights of the road and the sign, and Viv made out the black shape of the fence, the inky pool filled with leaves and garbage. Her tennis shoes scraped loudly on the broken concrete. Overhead there was a sliver of moon that gave barely any light.

She made herself take a breath deep into her lungs, letting the cold sting her chest. She tilted her head back and looked up at the sky. The exhaustion had left her and she only felt the pumping of her blood in her veins, the humming of her own skin. She closed her eyes, then tilted her head down and opened them again.

In front of the fence was a boy, sitting on the ground, his knees up, his back to the fence. His skin was pale and he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts in the icy cold. He was the boy who had hit his head and died. He, too, raised his head and looked at Viv, though his expression was helpless instead of angry.

“I don’t feel good,” he said, his voice high-pitched and insubstantial in the chilled night air.

“I can’t help,” Viv told him. “I’m sorry.”

But the boy still watched her, unmoving, waiting, and Viv took a step back, unable to look at him anymore. “I’m sorry,” she said again.

He was still watching her when she turned and walked back past the office, careful not to turn her head and look at the man inside. She rounded the corner and saw that the motel doors were open—every single door on both levels, ajar as if someone had forgotten to latch them closed. The lights at the end of the row blinked out, and then the next lights, and then the next. On the second level, a woman in a flowered dress appeared in one of the room doorways, then turned away again.

“Betty,” Viv said, and this time it wasn’t a question.

Behind her, the motel sign went out. Now there was only darkness, growing and growing as each light went out at the motel. I’m alone in the dark, Viv thought. There’s only me here. But that wasn’t quite true. And this time, she wasn’t afraid.

She walked to the stairs and climbed them, her hand numb with cold on the railing. Her cheeks were losing sensation and her nose was starting to run. But she kept walking. She reached the doorway where she’d seen the woman and, with only the briefest breath of hesitation, she stepped inside.

It was dark in here, with a stuffy smell. Viv’s tennis shoes went silent on the old carpet. The wind skirled in through the open door, but it was no longer cold. It was airless in here instead, unpleasantly warm like a chair that someone else has just sat on, the smell a little sickening, like a stranger’s armpit. Viv made out a bed, a cheap nightstand, a mirror. And the woman.