The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) (10 page)

The ice machine rumbled and roared,
propelling my hysteria to new heights as she reached a gloved hand
to her face. She wrapped her fingers around the veil and peeled it
away. The face of nothingness stared back at me. An empty void
inside the niqab.

The lights clicked off without any theatrics.
No exploding bulbs or popping circuits. They didn’t so much as
flicker. Just instant blackness.

My jaw chattered as the chill increased
triple-fold. When I couldn’t take it anymore, I closed my eyes and
whimpered. I stayed that way, eyes squeezed shut like a dope, until
the ice machine ceased its psychotic production.

The buzzing of the lights returned and I
could see it shining through my eyelids. I opened my eyes, and she
was gone. I looked around, relieved that no guests had witnessed my
cowardice, but at the same time disappointed that I was alone.
Nobody was going to believe me, I knew. My only evidence was a
mountain of ice on the floor, a mess which would only get worse the
longer I waited to clean it up.

I barely dragged myself into work the next
night. I was wired on coffee after tossing and turning to no avail.
Heavy gray bags under my eyes made me look like a washed up
rockstar, only I lack a rockstar’s edge.

I felt scared and alone. I have close friends
and family I could talk to, but I was afraid to tell anyone about
my frightening encounter for fear of what they might think. As
adults, we tell ourselves that the boogeyman isn’t real. The
monsters in our closets were long ago exposed as frauds. There’s
not a blood-covered ghost in the mirror waiting for us to say her
name three times. We tell ourselves that the deceased go to a
better place, and miraculously they all manage to get there with no
trouble, as there are certainly no lost souls among us. We consider
people who believe in the boogeyman to be crazy, or at least we
call them names like “weird” and “flaky”. That’s why I decided to
keep this to myself.

Though I had never been so scared in my life,
I didn’t let it show. I went about my usual routine. The hotel was
busier than usual, but the moments I spent alone seemed to drag on
forever. I did inventory to keep my mind busy, to avoid thinking
about the invisible woman… the lady who wasn’t there, whose
familiar clothes floated in the air as if watching me with unseen
eyes. My skin grew cold each time I thought about the frigid air
that swirled around her.

I looked through the front windows as a taxi
pulled to the curb, and to my shock, Sameer Ahmed emerged from the
car… with his wife! Yes, the elusive Mrs. Ahmed followed close
behind him. I’ll admit, I was ecstatic to see her, if a little
worried about my sanity. I had worked myself into a frenzy thinking
something had happened to her, and after seeing those terrible
things, it was a mixture of satisfaction and confusion to see her
walking toward me now.

The revolving glass door caught the red glow
of the taxi’s tail lights as they entered the building with Sameer
in the lead. It was close to his usual bedtime, and I figured they
were returning from a late dinner at a crowded restaurant. I had to
suppress a smile as I envisioned the impatient millionaire, forced
to wait for his meal. Though my smile faded as I wondered how Mrs.
Ahmed managed to eat through that veil.

He approached the desk and proceeded to
inform me that this would be his final night at the Ladford. His
new home was ready. He’d be leaving in the morning and needed a
luggage rack promptly at seven.

The moment he looked away, I stole a glimpse
at his wife. Just one last look to commit those gorgeous amber eyes
to memory. I feared I had suffered a mental collapse, and I was
hoping to replace the image of the floating niqab and its empty
veil with something more palatable.

But what I saw made things worse. It sent a
jolt of shock to my heart.

Her black veil was in place, with the same
rectangular slits for the eyes. But the woman’s eyes had changed.
They were different, no longer the glistening pools of honey I’d
admired two nights prior.

Her dark brown eyes showed no sign of
recognition as she observed me with indifference. The old Mrs.
Ahmed had always averted her gaze. She never looked directly at me.
Not until the night by the ice machine. Yet these chocolate brown
eyes studied me, so alert—the wrong shape, the wrong color, the
wrong personality!

Imposter
, I thought but didn’t say.
He’s replaced his wife! Just like that! Replaced her!

A chill crept down my spine. I willed it
away, not allowing my body to betray my suspicions. I finished my
business with Mr. Ahmed, and I avoided any further eye contact with
the mysterious woman at his side.

The loneliest part of the night shift comes
around three in the morning. The drinkers and party animals have
all gone to bed. The early risers have not yet risen. The ticking
of the clock resonates in some deep part of the soul which
wants—no,
needs
to be around people. Because anything can
happen when you’re alone.

I was contemplating the woman in the niqab
and how she was not the same woman Sameer Ahmed had arrived with
several nights ago when the lights blinked off, one by one. All
around the lobby bulbs flickered and went out. The hallway to the
guest rooms was left in utter blackness. I remember noticing the
other electronics were still working—the computer and the vending
machine. I wondered what would cause the lights on several
different circuits to fail.

I felt a familiar chill in the air, a drop in
temperature which caused my jaw to chatter. The lobby became
downright frigid, and my breathing grew heavy despite my best
efforts to keep calm. I scanned my surroundings—the vending area,
the sofa and coffee table piled with magazines, the elevator, the
stairwell, the hall. I flicked my eyes from place to place and told
myself the coast was clear. Yet my eyes were drawn back to the
hall.

I gulped, and the wad of saliva stopped
halfway down my throat. Nervous bile rose from my stomach. I tried
to focus, to make sense of what I saw.

There was someone in the hall, but they
didn’t walk upright, which is why I hadn’t noticed them at first.
Instead they crawled through the darkness like a spastic inch worm,
clawing at the carpet with spindly fingers. One good leg propelled
them forward as the other dragged behind, seemingly useless below
the knee, foot twisted sideways like a broken doll. Shadows
contrasted the waxen skin and dark hair.

The figure kept coming, scraping along the
carpet like a wounded soldier through the dirt, and after a few
seconds, I made out the face of a woman beneath her hair, which
seemed to fall in every direction at once. Her neck was wrenched at
a painful-looking angle, her scalp and face pointing the wrong way.
Many of her bones were bent and twisted.

Her advance was sketchy. Her joints popped
with each movement, and her muscles strained, skin ripe with
bruises. She pulled herself into the light of the vending machines,
and I saw the blood crusted on her lips and chin, dark splotches
down her chest. I had plenty of time to call for help, to run over
and assist the injured woman. But I’m no fool. I may be a skeptic
in the matters of magic, demons, and astrology, but I recognize a
ghost when I see one.

Her raspy breathing caused me to hold my own
breath as she dragged herself into the lobby. She never looked at
me, not once, and I must admit I was relieved. The only thing
preventing me from running into the night screaming like a little
girl was the lack of eye contact she had bestowed on me so far. The
thought of this dead thing looking at me with those blackened eyes
and acknowledging my existence… that would have been my final
straw.

But it didn’t happen. Not even an upward
glance. She kept crawling in that slow, labored manner until she
had disappeared behind the sofa, leaving me to wonder what to
do.

I stood my ground, hoping the lights would
flicker to life or the phone would ring or a guest would come
wandering down the hall. Anything, anything to end this moment.
Every horror story must end, and I knew this wasn’t over yet.

I groaned. I couldn’t stand in the dark
forever, but this was her game, not mine. Why should I have to make
the next move?

I was scared, dangerously close to wetting my
pants. Half my attention was focused on my bladder, the other half
on the sofa. When no light returned to the room and no guests
appeared to run interference, I knew the ball was in my court.

I gulped and stepped forward. The snack
machine lit my path as I rounded the desk and made my way to the
lounge area. I kept going, around to the back of the sofa.

Sitting in the soft glow of the soda machine
was a large trunk I had never seen. It looked heavy, made from a
solid would craftsmanship that doesn’t seem to exist anymore. Dark
leather lined the surface with a metal latch in the middle and two
belt-like straps on each side. I was certain it hadn’t been there
before.

I spotted key holes where the latches came
together, and I knew I couldn’t open it. Fine with me. I didn’t
want to anyway. I turned and prepared to walk away, and I told
myself three things: A) someone had misplaced their luggage, B) I
needed to see a shrink, and C) I needed to fix the lights before we
received a complaint.

The trunk began to rattle. I stopped in my
tracks and listened. It was such a low rumble I was barely sure I
heard it until the trunk started thumping and banging against the
floor. I jumped and spun around and watched with uneasy fascination
as it tremored, caught in the throes of a supernatural quake. The
locks clicked, and the leather straps danced as the trunk bucked
wildly on the floor.

Then it stopped. The metal clasps thudded
against the lid and slid down the arc, dangling at the trunk’s
sides. All was quiet for a few panicked heartbeats, and then my
ears picked up the sound of raspy, labored breathing coming from
inside the trunk.

It couldn’t be, I told myself. She couldn’t
be in there. A person couldn’t fit inside. Not unless… I froze as
the realization struck me. Not unless they were stuffed inside like
a rag doll, bones broken and bent at gruesome angles.

Trembling, I closed the distance between
myself and the trunk without any further hesitation. I knew what I
must do, and frankly I wanted to get it over with. I grimaced as I
reached for the lid. I flipped it open.

Her body was bent in half, limbs tangled in a
gory mess. A splintered collar bone protruded from her purple and
green splotched neck. She had been crumpled up and stuffed into the
trunk with no regard for broken bones.

As I contemplated the twists and turns of the
woman’s desecrated remains, she sprang to life. She grabbed me and
started pulling, and to my horror, I couldn’t fend her off. This
monstrous women was incredibly strong. I remember worrying that she
would pull me down into the trunk, into the deep, dark oblivion of
the empty niqab, the endless silence of her tortured unrest.

Fingernails dug into my flesh as she
tightened her grip. I recoiled from the stench of old blood on her
breath as she sputtered and moaned in what sounded like Arabic. The
grotesque angle of her battered face atop her twisted neck will
never leave my mind.

She pulled me close, so close... so that I
was looking at her eyes. Amber eyes. The eyes of Mrs. Ahmed.

The ice machine cranked to life, spewing
forth its bounty. Pain shot through my skull as something
rock-solid hit the back of my head. Stars and blackness filled my
vision.

I awoke on the floor next to a metal ice
bucket. It must have been what hit me, hurled by the force of the
broken woman in the box. The shape of the bucket’s rim perfectly
matched the fresh indent in my cranium. I looked around, but there
was no sign of the trunk or its monstrous occupant.

I shook the fog from my head, rubbed my eyes,
and checked my wrist watch. With over two hours left and my last
nerve dangling from a thread, I knew I needed to get out of the
hotel. I couldn’t think straight, couldn’t relax… and worst of all,
I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was being watched.

I texted Eleanor and asked if she could cover
the rest of my shift. “It’s an emergency,” I said. I broke the news
to her when she arrived. I was quitting. I wouldn’t be back. She
tried her best to guilt me, of course, but I had made up my mind
and no amount of shame would change it.

I did return the next day, however, one last
time. After restless hours in which I was unable to sleep, eat, or
concentrate on anything other than thoughts of the ghost, I decided
there was something I had to know. I apologized for my behavior and
groveled and gained Eleanor’s blessing to review the hotel’s
security footage. She didn’t ask me what I was looking for. Eyes
bright with denial, she donned that old, familiar poker face and
silently assured herself that I was in need of a shrink and some
anti-psychotics.

I spent two hours reviewing the surveillance
footage, and here’s what I found. On the last night of Mr. Ahmed’s
stay, he departed the building alone. There was no sign of the
woman in the niqab until he returned with her hours later. She
disappeared from the camera’s footage after our encounter by the
ice machine, only to reappear that strange, memorable night when I
noticed her eyes had changed.