Cry Me a Murder (Part three) The Sun, the Sea and the Silent Scream
#3 of Cry Me a Murder
"I'm putting you into room 110," said Fernando. "It comes with a wonderful view over the rye fields." The manager was a tall, slender man in his late fifties. His hair was almost silvery gray but with no sign of baldness setting in. Thirty years ago, he would have been considered handsome, a heartthrob even. Now most would say he was simply aging with grace.
He closed the office door behind us and poured two glasses of Mezcal.
"It's driving me crazy, Mr. Kent!"
He took a bulging manila-folder from his desk drawer. It was stuffed with pencil drawings of tentacle-like monsters, all sickly pale with expressionless eyes and small, sharp teeth. He must have had at least fifty sketches in the pile of that same creature. Fernando was no artist, but the detailing grew better with each sketch, he even tried to fit a young woman in some of the later drawings. I hadn't met Catalina yet, but I guessed it was meant to resemble her. The creature had wrapped itself around her like a boa constrictor and was tugging at her and dragging her towards a black cloud that hung suspended mid-air. Fernando emptied his drink in one gulp and poured himself another shot of Mezcal.
"Every night, I can't sleep. Every day, I can't work."
"This!" he singled out a sketch of the creature in close-up, "is wrecking my mind."
"Listen," I said. "Quinn sent me here because I see things too. Especially when I'm overworked and under-slept. I've seen that same monster."
"The one from my drawing?"
"Same guy, right down to those beady little eyes and four nasty fangs."
Fernando leaned back into the chair and began to relax. "Catalina always tells me to chill out and unwind."
"I see crazy shit like that when I'm stressed out," I said.
"Happens all the time."
Fernando poured himself another shot, his third in ten minutes, and pushed the pile of drawings away. You could tell my words had calmed him down. Slowly, his eyelids dropped and he rested his chin on his chest. Soon the old guy was snoring.
Apart from Fernando and myself, the current guests counted Darleen who shared a room with Paul Slater. Artie Phelps, the shoe salesman and an elderly gentleman everyone called Mister Tejón, also had rooms on the ground floor. On the top floor, three rooms had been reserved by someone named Jack Tell. Tell was some kind of businessman who stayed in his own room, separate from that of his son, Chris. Tell kept to himself most of the time, making phone calls that Fernando described as "very shouty". His son was confined to a wheelchair and was looked after by a full time nurse, who had her own room next to Chris.
"There's so much to do." Fernando picked up his drink and gazed out of the window. It faced the trout farm where Miguel was repairing an air pump. After a few moments in thoughtful silence, Fernando turned and spoke in an almost inaudible voice.
"Could I ask you... to take a look at room 203?"
"Sure." I had little desire to stand face to fang with the creature from Fernando's sketches, but the calm of the place convinced me that whatever had happened, was caused by an overworked mind. So, I followed Fernando up the flight of stairs to the top floor. The hundred year old hotel was built low, and someone taller than myself might feel claustrophobic from the low ceiling. Fernando unlocked 203, and even though he tried to keep his hand under control, it was still shaking when he turned the key.
"Here it is," he said in a voice, little more than a whisper. "I saw the monster coming out of nowhere, right... here." He pointed with both hands to a space in midair, as if drawing a frame around an invisible figure.
"Some kind of hole. Black, but burning with purple flames."
"And you threw a vacuum cleaner at the thing?"
Fernando shrugged. "It was the only thing I could get my hands on. I must have hit the creature, because it let go of Catalina and slithered back into that... cloud."
"And she doesn't remember a thing?"
Fernando grabbed me by both shoulders and looked as if he was about to burst into tears.
"Nobody believes me, Mr. Wolf; not Miguel, not Raymundo, not even Catalina. They all believe I'm going loco."
"Maybe you panicked when she fainted, and it made you see things?"
"It's possible, si! But how do you explain my Hoover going missing?"
I didn't answer the question. I could think of a myriad ways for a vacuum cleaner to go AWO, none of which involved abduction by tentacles. Maybe Fernando was going batshit. But batshit was something I knew how to deal with. I've heard voices and seen things since I was seventeen, and I desperately wanted to believe, nothing out of the ordinary had happened in room 203.
I envied Quinn. He didn't have to worry about living intestines bulging out of the abyss like a trans-dimensional hernia. Right now, he was comfortable back in Oakfort, downing espressos and telling street gangs not to kill each other a fifty Dollar rock. I wanted Fernando's creature to be a figment of an overworked brain, but I decided to stay behind in room 203 to make sure.
Fernando opened the built-in closet where someone had left a plain cardboard box that contained six bottles of Farvale Bourbon.
"Mr. Quinn said you needed them for your investigation?"
Son of a bitch!
If Quinn expected me to drink myself shit-faced and trigger an episode, just so I could help out his buddy...
...he was probably right.
"I'm sorry?" Said Fernando when I hesitated.
"It's a little private joke between Quinn and myself." I forced a passable laugh and patted Fernando on the back.
"Quinn is such a funny guy."
Fernando's somber face lit up in a smile. He nodded and gave the room key before leaving me alone in 203. It was the honeymoon suite, and the largest room in the whole hotel. The suite was facing west with a view over Miguel's beautiful garden. The afternoon sun poured in, warm and deeply yellow through the double window. I uncorked a bottle of bourbon and stretched out on the king size bed. I drank straight out of the bottle and tried to get a vibe on the room.
Alright, show me something!
I took another swig when nothing happened, but I couldn't relax. What if I DID see something?
The next swig made me lightheaded. Screw it, I thought. I'll just drink for the sake of getting drunk and crash out for a few hours before...
"He's crying"
The voice came out of nowhere. It was faint but clear, as if the guest next door had left their radio on.
Say that again?
I held my breath and listened for any voices hiding in the outside breeze, or in the swoosh-swoosh-swoosh of the ceiling fan, or in the engine sound from a passing motorcycle.
Say something, curse you!
A sudden wave of sadness washed over me. The sensation was much stronger than anything leaking out from the abyss and I felt lost, betrayed and hurt. The sensation was so powerful I fought to catch my breath and my lungs spasmed painfully, as if I was sobbing uncontrollably. Whatever had happened in this room involved great emotional pain. I needed air and opened the window. The feeling of grief evaporated with every breath of the outside air and I tried to calm down.
Where were Karen and The General when I needed them?
I checked the window and discovered a rusty smear on the glass. I remembered Quinn telling me about Catalina scrubbing at a smear that wouldn't come off. Maybe this was the one? I wiped at it with a Kleenex from the night stand, when I discovered the reason why it wouldn't come off: the stain was on the outside of the window. The windows opened outward and I had to lean out to reach the smear with the Kleenex. The color and smell left no doubt; it was a dried smear of blood. The hotel was built low and climbing or jumping from the window into the soft soil below was quite possible, but any footprints were gone by now. It looked as if someone had gone over the dirt below with a rake.
All was quiet and the room was back to normal. I turned on my heel and was about to leave, when I felt something small and hard under my shoe, like a pebble or a piece of chalk. I bent down and discovered the empty brass case from a 9mm bullet. The acrid scent of gunpowder was fresh, and you didn't need Quinn's werewolf nose to know it was a recent shot. My mind was woozy from drink and I staggered back to the bed. Maybe I could read more from the room if I hung around, but I nodded off within minutes. I was out cold for two hours when Catalina knocked on the door. She was a pretty brunette with a carefree attitude, but she was just as overworked as Fernando and Miguel. I followed her downstairs and into the hotel kitchen.
"Tell me what happened in 203."
"I was wiping the window when Whiskers rubbed against my ankle."
"The smear that wouldn't come off?"
She shrugged and smiled at me. "I never got it off, because I fainted and Fernando won't let us go back into 203."
"Did he tell you anything about the moment he found you?" I asked.
"Si! He showed me a drawing of the creature." Catalina broke eye contact with me and stared at her shoes instead. She was uncomfortable talking about the attack.
"Fernando once had an uncle Hernandez," she whispered. "He went loco and saw all these horrible things."
We were interrupted by a tiny buzzer above the stove going off. A red LED flashed on a wooden board with the numbers 210 in handwritten letters below it.
I've got to go," said Catalina. "That's young Chris' room."
"You put a guy in a wheelchair on the top floor?"
"Mr. Tell wanted his son to have a view over the fields, but room 110 smells of bad plumbing."
"Hey, that's the room they gave ME!"
Catalina blushed. "We meant to put him in there, but Mr. Tell blew a fuse when he noticed the smell."
She stood up straight and pushed out her stomach, bowed her head and rested her chin on her chest as if doing an impression of someone with a double chin. "I'm not paying fifty bucks a night to have my son sleep in a sewer," she growled in a deep voice. Then she burst out laughing. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't make fun of our guests, but Tell is very demanding."
The buzzer went off again, and Catalina gave me a quick look-over. "Say, you're pretty strong aren't you?"
I was flattered by her remark, though it was hardly true. I don't eat enough, I don't work out and I smoke too much.
"I... try to stay in shape," I replied.
"Come along, then." Catalina waved at me to follow her. This time we took the elevator to the top floor. It was only large enough to fit the two of us, but still we stood close together, which made me feel a little uncomfortable. I was convinced my breath still reeked of cheap Bourbon, so I pretended to cough into my sleeve and tried to smell my breath to make sure.
"Hey, don't rock the elevator," She said. "You'll make it stop between floors."
"You're kidding me?"
"One of the sensors is a bit... hypersensitive."
I loathe elevators. They make me claustrophobic, and getting stuck between two floors is not on my bucket list, so I stood like a statue for the remainder of the short ride.
Room 210 was right above my own room, at the far end of the hall, and facing north.
Three people were waiting inside: Jack Tell, his son and a nurse. Tell was an overweight man in his early forties. He wore a blue shirt two sizes too small that was buttoned up all the way to his neck. It made his double chin spill over the collar like a curtain of pink flesh.
"Chris wishes to sit by the window," said the nurse. "But the bed is in the way."
The voice of Mr tell cut through the conversation like a rusty saw-blade.
"I'm not paying fifty bucks a day for a blocked view. I want that bed moved out of the way."
The bed was pushed all the way up to the window, leaving no room for the wheelchair, so Catalina and I pulled the bed further into the room. It wasn't an elegant solution, but now the boy could enjoy the view over the small field of rye just outside the hotel. The nurse wheeled his chair close to the window, but apart from a slight movement of his head, the boy remained unresponsive. I estimated Chris to be around seventeen. He was tall for his age and thin to the point of being scrawny. I tried to make eye-contact with him but he seemed completely catatonic. His pupils were fully dilated and looked like black basketballs surrounded by thin brinks of gray mud.
"What's wrong with the boy?"
"They're still working on a diagnosis," said the nurse and wiped off a strand of drool off his chin with a Kleenex.
"Chris is such a rare case."
"Rare case, huh?" I took an instant liking to the boy. Here was another case without a diagnosis and a bunch of professionals all scrambling to pin a label on him.
"The kid's lame," intervened Mr. Tell. "His mind doesn't work either." He snapped his fingers in front of the young boys eyes, but he neither flinched or paid any attention to his father's waving hand.
"Hey, snap out of it, boy!" commanded Tell, but when the boy kept ignoring him, Tell finally shrugged and gave up.
"Some days are better than others," he said. "Today the kid's all in cuckoo land."
Slowly Chris turned his head towards me. He raised his right arm and curled his fingers into a half-fist. He pointed his index and middle fingers at me, as if aiming a pistol.
"Bang!" He said.