The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) (9 page)

I didn’t put in a proper two weeks notice
when I resigned from my position, a grievance that Eleanor was
quick to air (as tends to be the case with most of Eleanor's
grievances). On her bad days, she comes off as a real Ice Queen.
Those steely blue eyes could shatter diamonds if she concentrated
hard enough, I’m certain. But don't be fooled. Deep down she’s a
real softie. She insisted I write this letter, since I've left you
with little to no training. How could I refuse?

She owns four hotels and personally manages
each one, and I understand her concerns with making sure you
receive proper training because—quite simply—she’s too busy to deal
with it. She never sits still. She’s all business, and I'd hate to
play cards with the woman because she's got a poker face to rival
all others. I've seen her use it in response to difficult customers
and hotel drama (all of which you'll come to know too well). She
uses it in other circumstances, too, like when I think she’s caught
a glimpse of the Ladford’s unwelcome guest—the tortured woman who
now haunts my dreams.

I once asked Eleanor if she's seen anything
strange. She donned that poker face and shook her head, and I
couldn’t tell if her response was genuine or a bluff. The slightest
wrinkle of fear crossed her brow, though, and it whispered:
Yes.
I have seen her.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s back
up.

Eleanor has been my supervisor for more than
five years. Despite her tough exterior, she’s always shown me
kindness, which is why I agreed to write this letter. She asked me
to give you some pointers and share with you, my predecessor, all
the expert advice I’ve gathered in half a decade on the job.

This isn’t going to be that sort of letter.
If Eleanor has chosen you for the position, I'm sure you're plenty
bright and capable of handling things on your own. Besides...
there's something more important I need to tell you. Forget about
room keys and guest services for a moment. I need to warn you about
the woman in the niqab.

Three weeks ago, a Pakistani man by the name
of Sameer Ahmed came to stay at the hotel after arriving in the
states. The construction of his new home was running behind. It
would be several days before it was finished and ready to pass
inspection. He was stuck in limbo between his old home in Pakistan
and his newly built American mansion. He had paid good money, more
money than I could dream of spending on a house, and he was furious
at the situation.

The spoiled son of an oil company CEO, he
didn’t care for the public aspect of a hotel, sickened by the
inconvenience of being forced to lay his head where so many others
had laid theirs. He let his frustration show, always tense, biding
his time with every painstaking tick of the clock. His dark eyes
twitched when he spoke, his bronzed complexion flush with
impatience.

He had an assistant by the name of Tahir, a
short Pakistani man, very soft-spoken and polite though his English
was broken. Tahir was not staying at our five-star hotel, but
rather a ramshackle motel several blocks east, as his employer saw
fit. He had dark circles under the dark circles on his eyes, and I
was certain it was from dealing with the stressful antics of Mr.
Ahmed.

The wife, Mrs. Ahmed, remained a mystery to
me throughout her two week stay. I never learned her first name;
never dared to ask. She did not converse with men outside her
immediate family, only occasionally whispering in her husband’s
ear. She most likely didn’t know a word of English. With no reason
to establish a first name basis between the two of us, I accepted
her as a blank slate... an unknown guest. But after so many years
of getting to know my guests on a personal level in order to better
accommodate their needs, I admit, it felt odd to have this one slip
through my fingers.

You know how skimpy clothing is often
described as leaving “nothing to the imagination”? Well, Mrs.
Ahmed’s wardrobe left everything to the imagination. I was familiar
with such cultural garments from text books, television, and
newspapers, but I’d never seen one up close. A niqab, that’s what
they’re called.

A black veil concealed the entirety of her
face. It covered her eyebrows and even the bridge of her nose. The
eye slits were narrow, and I remember thinking it would drive me
nuts to have all that cloth in my peripheral vision. A head dress
draped her shoulders and hung down her back, and not a single
strand of hair could be seen.

I hid my discomfort as best I could, mindful
not to hurt the feelings of the woman beneath the shroud. Different
strokes for different folks, I always say. I noticed that even her
fingers were hidden beneath gloves. Her hands left no prints where
she leaned upon the counter, and I thought, “She might as well be a
ghost”. It was a perfectly innocent thought which seems so ominous
in retrospect.

I made sure to smile at the woman every
evening as she came to get a bucket of ice. I wished to make her to
feel as comfortable as possible. The move from overseas was a huge
one. I imagine adjusting to the change in culture was exhausting. I
have no way of knowing if she smiled back, but a couple times she
nodded in my direction before hurrying over to the ice machine.

I assume Mr. Ahmed had some personal use for
the ice, as he would yell for her to hurry up if she took a few
seconds too long. Perhaps he needed to soak his feet in a cold bath
after a full day of pacing back and forth and placing angry phone
calls to the real estate agent. One thing is for sure: his wife was
never fast enough. In a gruff foreign tongue, he barked at her from
down the hall, and although I could not understand his words, they
didn’t strike me as particularly encouraging.

Two nights before Sameer Ahmed checked out of
the hotel and headed for his newly built mansion, the woman in the
niqab encountered a problem on her nightly run to the lobby. ‘OUT
OF ORDER’ was scrawled on a sheet of paper and taped to the ice
machine, written with red permanent marker in all capital letters.
The daytime clerk had scheduled a repair for the following day and
scribbled a Post-it note to me, which now clung to the front desk,
drawing my attention with a nauseating shade of yellow.

Mrs. Ahmed couldn’t read the ‘OUT OF ORDER’
sign, of course, but a glance at the empty tray and a few
unresponsive clicks of the button told her everything she needed to
know. She hung her head in defeat, hugging the empty bucket to her
black-clad bosom.

I was quick to respond. “Mrs. Ahmed?” I said,
addressing her directly for the first time since she arrived. “I
can help with that.” I pointed to the bucket in her gloved hands. I
approached, and as I did, her eyes widened like a cornered
mouse.

Then something very unexpected happened... I
saw beauty in those eyes. It struck me. It held me captive!

Her eyes were not brown as I’d imagined the
countless times she had averted her gaze, but a brilliant shade of
amber which shined like bowls of honey in the sunlight. I reached
for the bucket in a cautious “I come in peace” gesture. I was taken
aback by her gorgeous orbs, and she by my close proximity. She
loosened her grip and let me remove the bucket from her
fingers.

I ran to the employee lounge, moving quickly
as I knew her ticking-time-bomb husband would run out of patience
soon. I filled it and returned to the lobby even faster than I had
departed. She was standing in the exact same spot, a motionless
niqabi mannequin until she nodded her thanks to me.

I held the bucket a moment longer and gazed
into those lovely eyes. Amber is a rare color, the color of my
first girlfriend’s eyes, the thought of whom still causes my heart
to race. I was irresistibly drawn to that color.

“We plan to have the ice machine fixed by
tomorrow evening.” I said. I was stalling, though I wasn’t sure
why. “There’s another one on the second floor if you need it.”
Recalling our language barrier, I frowned. Pieces of ice fell to
the carpet as I handed the silent woman her bucket, now brimming
with frozen cubes.

Then I noticed Mr. Ahmed six doors down, his
head poking into the hall. His olive complexion was flushed with
blood as he observed our one-sided conversation with an unpleasant
scowl. I immediately turned and made a beeline for the desk, hoping
I hadn’t caused the woman any troubles.

Thirty minutes later, I received a noise
complaint from room 110. A middle-aged business woman by the name
of Susan Bennet had been staying in 110. She was a quiet,
introverted woman. She tipped the staff well and kept her room tidy
without much help from housekeeping. She didn’t strike me as a
prankster, so I believed her when she told me she’d heard horrible
screams coming from the next room

I was suddenly tense. An icy knot formed in
my stomach. My mouth went dry, and all I could do was force a small
amount of saliva down my throat and try to locate my voice.
Needless to say, I had a bad feeling about Mrs. Bennet’s noise
complaint.

Had the screams come from Mrs. Ahmed in 112?
Was she in some kind of trouble with her husband? I couldn’t help
but wonder: did I cause a fight between them? I didn’t think such
an innocent encounter would cause marital tension, but the look on
Sameer’s face had been so angry. I assured Mrs. Bennet I would look
into the matter, confirmed the time of her wake up call while I had
her on the line, and bid her goodnight and sweet dreams.

Beads of sweat formed on my brow as I made my
way down the hall. The couple who had stayed in room 108 had
checked out this morning, and no one else had rented the room. The
noises must have come from 112.

I approached the door and knocked, lightly at
first. Nobody answered. I knocked again, this time speaking through
the door as well. “Mr. Ahmed. It’s hotel management. We’d like to
make sure everything is all right…”

I heard him unlock the deadbolt and fasten
the latch. He opened the door about two inches and peered through
the crack. The metal latch prevented it from opening any further.
Mr. Ahmed was breathing hard. Perspiration moistened his forehead,
and his black hair glistened like an oil slick. “All is fine,” he
bluntly assured me.

I tried to peer over his shoulder into the
room, but he deliberately filled every inch of the opening and
cleared his throat as if to say,
Get on with it. What is this
about?

“A guest reported hearing a scream through
the walls. I was worried Mrs. Ahmed may have… taken a fall or
twisted her ankle.”

”All is fine,” he repeated, glaring at me
with dark eyes. He began to close the door.

“May I see her?” I asked. “You know… just to
follow up… to close the report.”

He stopped and flashed me an insulted
expression. “She is not veiled. No visitors. You can close the
report.” He shut the door in my face.

The next evening, I waited for the woman with
the gorgeous amber eyes to fetch her husband some ice. Hours ticked
by and she never showed. I sat alone at the desk, reading a novel
and trying not to notice the absence of a certain shrouded
lady.

I rubbed my arms, warming them against a
chill that had lingered in the lobby all night. No matter how I
adjusted the thermostat, a cold draft remained, coaxing my body
hair on end like a snake charmer. I thought maybe I was coming down
with a virus because I started getting really cold, to the point
where I started to shiver.

For a moment, I thought the woman in the
niqab must have slipped past me as I was reading my book because
the ice machine grumbled to life. I looked up, but nobody was
there. The lone machine hurled ice cubes with a steady clink,
clink, clink. It seemed louder than it ever had before and worked
aggressively, shaking back and forth as it spewed chunks of frozen
water into an overflowing tray.

I raised an eyebrow as I watched this
mechanical wonder, an appliance that turned on by itself and
whipped itself into a frenzy. “Some repairman,” I mumbled. I pulled
a bookmark from the drawer, set it in place and closed the book. I
could hardly concentrate with all the racket. Besides, I needed to
unplug the blasted thing before the carpet got riddled with
puddles.

When I returned my attention to the lobby,
Mrs. Ahmed was standing there. The silhouette of her robe-like
dress and loose veil stuck out from behind the machine. The
shapeless black figure stood stock-still, mostly hidden by the
possessed ice machine as it churned out cube after cube.

“Ma’am?” I rounded the desk and approached
her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with this machine. I
thought we had fixed it, but it’s not, and—” I stopped in my tracks
and began to back away.

In the harsh fluorescent lighting—which
Eleanor despises for the way it illuminates every speck of dirt—I
tried to make out a woman’s form beneath the garment. It hung loose
down to the ankle-length hemline, but eventually my eyes found the
shape of a human figure inside. Yet the fact remained that it was
floating, not standing—suspended, somehow, mid-air. Where usually
she wore dark sandals and socks, there were no feet, and that long
black dress looked menacing as it hovered against the off-white
walls, inches above the carpet, facing me.

The air grew colder as I looked up, searching
for an explanation in her amber eyes. What I saw snatched the
breath from my lungs in one fell swoop of terror. Her veil was in
place, tucked inside her head garb like it always was, the same
narrow slits for the eyes. Only… she had none. No eyes at
all...nothing but darkness where they used to be.