The Grille seemed to have suddenly become crazier. That maddening music was thumping in his skull as he passed a table of ugly dirty men pounding their fists on the wood in unison, shouting a phrase that he could almostâbut not quiteâunderstand. Unbelievably, Jackie Gleason and Anna Nicole were half-naked in their booth, rubbing ketchup on each other.
One of the secretaries jumped on stage and took off her top to the drunken cheers of the other patrons, her huge breasts jiggling in time to the music.
He reached their table. “We're leaving now,” Rachel said, lips tight. He didn't know how he could understand her amid all of the noise and chaos, but he could, and he nodded his agreement. He pulled the twins' collars to get them out of their chairs while Rachel took Ryan's hand and led him away from the table toward the exit. The twins, no doubt, would have liked to stay and see where this was all goingâhe'd been young once himself, he knew how teenaged boys thoughtâbut there was something not just unsavory but
dangerous
about the mood of the crowd here tonight, and when they were finally outside and he heard a young woman scream into the microphone, “Look! I'm on my period!” he was glad that they'd left when they did.
The night air was warm but felt clean and good after the stifling atmosphere of the Grille. Curtis and Owen asked if they could join their friend David and his parents, who were swimming at the big pool, but they asked in a restrained and hesitant manner, as though they already knew the answer to their question and accepted it. An angry Rachel told them they were staying in their room tonight, that she wasn't about to let them consort with those used pieces of white trash from the Grille, who no doubt would move their drunken revelry to the pool once they tired of karaoke.
Lowell agreed, telling the boys that they could watch TV instead, and the five of them started silently back down the path toward their suite.
Later, in bed, when the boys were in their own room and asleep, Rachel was all over Lowell, roughly yanking down his underwear and grabbing his penis, pulling on it with one hand while she cupped his balls tightly with the other. She made him erect, almost against his will, and then climbed on top of him, guiding him in.
“Fuck me,” Rachel whispered in his ear. “Fuck me hard.”
“The kids . . .” he whispered.
“Fuck me!” she ordered.
He didn't know what had gotten into her, and while ordinarily he would have been thrilled with such a command, he found it unnerving tonightâ
Look! I'm on my period!
âand it took all of his powers of concentration to maintain his erection as she thrust lustily against him, trying to drive him in deeper.
Thirteen
Patrick awoke in darkness. Ordinarily, he slept all the way through the night, not stirring from the time his head hit the pillow until the sun rose in the morning. But the racket from the room next door had penetrated even his deep slumber, and he opened his eyes and groggily searched for the blue LED numbers on his nightstand alarm clock before realizing that he was not at home, he was at a hotel. He vaguely recalled seeing a clock somewhere in the room, but he could not remember where and, swiveling his head, could not seem to find it in the pitch black space.
He could see nothing, but he could hear plenty. It sounded like a group of rock stars were having a party next door. Through the wall, he heard breaking glass and loud thumping music and peals of raucous laughter that
almost
drowned out the shouted conversations. A dog began barking, a big dog like a Labrador or a Saint Bernard, and it kept barking, its baritone yelps constant through the seemingly paper-thin walls.
Patrick sat up, fumbled for the switch to the wall lamp next to his bed and turned it on. If anything, the noise from the next room seemed even louder in the light. He picked up the phone and immediately dialed the front desk. “Hello,” he said. “This is Patrick Schlaegel in room 215. The people in the room next to me are having some kind of wild party, and it's so loud I can't even sleep. Is there some way you can make them tone it down?”
The female desk clerk seemed singularly uninterested in being helpful. “Which room would that be, sir?”
“The one next to me.”
“I need the number.”
“I don't know the number,” he said, exasperated. The barking seemed to have grown louder. “Do you want me to put my clothes on and go outside and check? I'm sure you know the numbers of the rooms here. Even if you don't, wouldn't it be easier for you to just grab one of those maps in front of you and look it up?”
The woman sounded offended. “Is the noise coming from the room to the north of you or the south?”
“North.”
“That's 217,” she said curtly.
“Well, do you think you could tell them to knock it off? It's”âhis eyes sought the clockâ“after two.”
“I'll see what I can do.”
“They have a dog there, too. Are they allowed to have dogs in their room?”
“No. Pets are not allowed in rooms at The Reata,” the woman said. “We discourage guests from bringing their animals here at all, but for those who are unable to travel without their dogs or cats, we provide a pet boarding facility.”
“Well, the dog's barking right now. Can't you hear it?” He held the phone closer to the wall, the noise of the animal distinctly audible above the general din of the party.
“No, I can't, sir. But as I said, I'll see what I can do.”
The connection was terminated, he was left with a dial tone droning in his ear, and Patrick hung up the phone. He waited a few moments, listening to the ruckus, then put his ear to the wall to see if he could make out any of the conversations. He frowned. What had sounded like party talk from a distance was now differentiated into more ritualistic sound lines. There was a deep low voice chanting the same unintelligible word over and over again while two shouting female voices punctuated the litany at regular overlapping intervals. He couldn't really tell what they were saying, but he thought one of them called out “Apples!” although that didn't really make any sense. Several male voices, less deep than the first, were talking loudly in cadences that suggested they were reading poems. The dog barked randomly.
He moved his ear away from the wall, and once again it sounded like a wild chaotic party. He heard laughter, screaming.
Patrick waited several more minutesâten by the clockâand when it became clear that the resort's management was not going to do anything to quiet his neighbors, he dialed the lobby again. This time he got a busy signal.
The party grew louder.
He pounded on the wall with his fist, but the noise continued unabated and he doubted his knocks could be heard above the racket. “Quiet down in there!” he shouted, slamming both fists against the wall in a staccato barrage. There was an earsplitting report from the other room, as of a gunshot, and he backed away quickly. The laughter came again, louder, other voices joining in, and then
several
dogs started barking.
This time he walked up to the lobby, putting on his clothes, trekking up the deserted sidewalk all the way past the pool to the patio, letting himself in through the south-facing double doors, determined to
drag
someone over to the room if he couldn't find anyone who would believe him. Even walking past, he heard screams and laughter and loud conversation and the incessant barking of dogs, and he was surprised that none of the other guests were complaining. Yet the corridor was quiet, the surrounding landscape bathed in darkness, and the tranquil nighttime setting lent the raucous room a spotlighted focus it would not otherwise possess.
The Shining.
The lobby was empty, as was to be expected at this hour, but behind the front desk stood a pert fresh-faced young woman whose appearance and demeanor did not jibe at all with the voice on the phone. “Excuse me,” he said, walking up. “I'm in room 215, and I just called to complain about a loud party in the room next door.”
“Yes, Mr. Schlaegel!” The young woman smiled brightly. “How may I be of assistance?”
He stared at her, astounded by her cluelessness. “You can tell the people in the next roomâ217, by the wayâto keep it down, other people are trying to sleep. Or, even better, you could transfer me to a different room so that I wouldn't have to put up with their noise any more.”
She typed something into the computer in front of her and frowned. “Which room did you say the noises were coming from?” she asked.
“The one next to me. On the right. Room 217.”
“Room 217 is closed for refurbishing,” she said. “There's no one staying in that room. There hasn't been since last fall.”
“That's ridiculous.”
“It's true.”
“I'm telling you, I heard them.”
“I'm sorry, sir, but that's simply not possible.”
“Yeah, well, I guess I made it all up. I woke up from a sound sleep in the middle of the night, put on my clothes and walked all the way up here just to play a practical joke on you, huh?”
“That's not what I'm saying, sir.” There was defensive-ness in her voice.
Good,
he thought. If his night was going to be ruined, he was damn well sure he was going to make someone else a little uncomfortable. It was going to take him forever to fall asleep now as it was; he'd probably end up dozing through one of the festival screenings in the morning. The least he could do was spread the joy.
“What
are
you saying?” he asked her.
“There is no oneâ”
“Yes there is.”
“I can assure youâ”
“How can you assure me?” he demanded. “Huh? You've been sitting here in the lobby all night. I was just
there
! They woke me up!”
“That room has been gutted. It's in the process of being remodeled. There's no furniture, no working lights, nothing.”
“Maybe workers are having a party in there. I don't know. All I know is that there's dogs barking and screaming and chanting and laughing and what sounded a hell of a lot like a gunshot.”
“Chanting?” The desk clerk looked pale. “A gunshot?”
He was being sucked into something that he didn't understand but that seemed awfully familiar.
What movie was it?
he thought.
“Yes,” he told her. “Why?”
She shook her head, the mask of resort desk clerk pulled once more over the human face that had momentarily peeked through. “Nothing.”
But it wasn't nothing, and it suddenly occurred to him that the reason the room was being gutted and remodeled when those to either side of it remained untouched was because a murder had occurred there, a ritualistic murder, and they needed to get the sprayed blood off the walls and floor and ceiling.
“What about a new room?” he asked. “Could I get a new room?”
“Let me check.” She typed something into her computer, waited a moment, then shook her head. “I'm sorry. We're all booked up.”
“Well can you at least send someone over to
check
on that room? A janitor or security or someone?”
“There's no one in room 217â”
“I'm not making it up!”
“I didn't say you were. I was just saying that there's no one in room 217, but I'll have someone look anyway, just in case.”
“Fine,” he said.
But it was not fine, and as he walked out of the lobby and back down the flagstone steps, there was a nagging thought at the back of his mind, a belief that whatever was going to happen could have been avoided had he done something differently.
Whatever was going to happen?
He'd seen too many movies.
Nevertheless, the feeling persisted, and as he walked down the darkened steps toward the lighted blue lagoon pool, he felt cold. Townsend may have booked him at The Reata as a joke, but that act had set in motion a chain of events that now seemed increasingly threatening. He thought of that little boy and his fatherâ
fairy
âand the rowdy gathering in the room next door, and while he didn't know what it all added up to, he didn't like it, and it was starting to make him extremely nervous.
He walked around the outside of the fence that ringed the pool area and headed back toward his room. There were low-wattage ground-level lights lining the sidewalk, but in an effort to save money or simply to impart a sense of romanticism and class to the resort, there were no overhead streetlamps on the road and the end result was that the areas to either side of the walkway remained shrouded in a deep wild darkness. He passed the first building, and then the lights of the pool were blocked and the grounds before him were thrown into even deeper gloom, only those weak lights lining the walkway providing any illumination at all.
He began to walk faster, the sound of his footsteps lonely in the stillness, simultaneously loud and small. As he increased his speed, he began to imagine someone or something was behind him, following him, stalking him. It was a Lewton-Tourneur moment, and if it hadn't been so viscerally frightening, he would have slowed down to savor the delicious
frisson
of it.
He kept walking, passed the second building. His room was in the one behind the one ahead, and he quickened his pace even more.
There was a rattle from off to his left.
And right.
A quick snickering across the sidewalk behind him.
Patrick was already jumpyânature wasn't his natural habitatâand these noises amplified his growing sense of unease. He cursed Townsend for booking him into a hotel with such a remote location. How different this night would be if he were in downtown Tucson, on a busy street, near a 7-Eleven and a Subway, down the block from a well-lighted gas station instead of out in the middle of the fucking desert.