Extended Stay, page 14
The hallway stretched longer than the ones on the floors he knew. He had never walked down this particular hallway, he was sure of that much at least. But it was just an unusually long passage, narrow and thick with the same bad, vinegary air of the passage he had helped Winifred open, but there was nothing he needed to see. B. was just wasting his time, leading him nowhere.
B. flapped his arms, both arms fully extended, and it was only then that Alvaro saw what B. had wanted to show him all along.
The floor didn’t hew straight. It curved and rippled. The floor below them warped, the floral carpet dipped and rose as though following a hiking trail in a field. None of the doors were quite straight either. The doors curved and sank, the room numbers unreadable. They looked like numbers only if you didn’t stare at them for too long. Corridors spiraled from the hallway and curved as he followed B. The floor branched off. Alvaro thought of ants and worms, of the paths they left behind, the homes they made with their mouths.
They had gone deep underground.
B. said, “We found these yesterday.” He pointed at a fork where the corridor split into four cavernous openings. “They keep growing. The hotel’s just making us more rooms. Isn’t that a hoot?” He jerked his head up. “Plus, Seattle’s doing this funny thing. See?”
Alvaro didn’t, not at first, and then he did: strings stretched from the ceiling into the darkness. Someone had nailed the strings along, nearly all of them red—a single string was green. Green was the one that mattered. Red meant stop. Green likely meant a way out, back to the passage and the solid geometry of the world above. Light poured from what looked like the same fluorescent lights as the ones upstairs, but even the light felt counterfeit. And the strings—why strings? From B.’s description, it didn’t even sound like B. knew. All B. knew, all B. seemed to care about, was that the hotel was growing, that it kept growing, and that they’d soon have room for as many people as they wanted. Infinite rooms. Maybe the pit would grow too. Wander long enough and you’d find a roulette table that felt soft and moist. Alive. Nothing would be straight or tooled. Nothing here would feel like what you’d find upstairs. They were inside something else. Something wonderful. Something alive and magical.
“You see?” B. asked. “You feel it?”
Alvaro could. The voice he heard inside his head was much louder, much clearer here, much more persuasive.
He couldn’t wait to show Carmen.
She’d love it. Who wouldn’t?
Wouldn’t you?
But better to wait, better to keep this revelation from her until she was ready. She was so angry right now, and so afraid. Better to let her settle down.
* * *
They followed the green string back to the mouth of the original passage, and it was only then that he sensed how truly gigantic the Alicia was—how fast and how enormously it had grown in a single day. I’m part of this growth, he thought. It was why he was there. He had been chosen. B. had asked, How’s your sister? She walked the same floors, breathed the same thick air. She was here too. With them. With all of us. She was part of it. He’d tell her soon. And she’d see—the promise of this place, its great and strange beauty. She had nothing to worry about. They could come down here, she could draw these wavering corridors and patches of live light. She could get it all down on paper. It’d be better than their time in the park, better than Colombia, better than anything. And they’d follow the green string home—back to their rooms, back to safety. You couldn’t get lost. B. and the people of Cara had seen to that. All you had to do was follow your path. Such an easy thing. You did the same thing in large airports. You picked the right color on the carpet, on the tile, on the arrows—there were signs everywhere, you just had to know where to look. They were safe here. Taken care of. All was in order.
He heard a scream. Distant. A woman’s voice.
I didn’t, he thought. I imagined a voice. Or I’m confused. I confused one thing for another.
No one moved through this floor. No one knew they were here. The doors were still wet from their birth. No one living belonged this far below.
You could get lost. You could, if you didn’t belong.
Alvaro said, “The waitress could have gotten lost in here.” He coughed.
They had already taken a few steps up the original passage, the air just as moist and thick but nothing you couldn’t live with. Not as bad as he remembered. Why had it bothered him so much? B. grunted, busy navigating their way up, his breath heavy with exertion. It was possible for Marisol to be down here. Maybe she’d wandered in by mistake. Maybe she’d heard a voice in the darkness and followed it down to the corridors, and now she was lost. Because no one told her to look up. No one said, Follow the green string. Maybe that’s what happened, or maybe she had decided to leave her job and boyfriend and tell no one. People did that. You didn’t necessarily have to assume the worst. People came, people left.
A part of him doubted the other. A part of him became convinced that he could hear Marisol asking him to come back, to find her. She had turned the wrong corner or opened the wrong door, and now she had no string to guide her, no room number to read, nothing to go on. She opened door after door and they all led downward. She stumbled down the roots of the Alicia and the lights that were not really lights flickered, and her screams grew more distant, harder to hear.
He stopped.
He didn’t know if he had imagined those screams.
“You hear that?” Alvaro said.
“No,” B. said. “Hear what? There’s nothing down here. No one. Not yet.”
“I’m going back,” he said.
B. grunted, and the grunt felt like enough of an answer. Suit yourself. “Phones don’t work down there,” B. said. “They go off. You can’t even turn them on.”
“I’ll be fine,” Alvaro said. “I’ll follow the strings. I’ll find my way back.”
But B. was no longer there, and Alvaro was not sure if he was talking to his boss anyway. Maybe he was talking to himself, or to Marisol, or to you. He was sure of one thing at least—the hotel wouldn’t lead him astray. He was home. You couldn’t get lost if you had already found your way home.
Chapter 17
Alvaro missed Carmen. He wanted her next to him under the bad light of the soft corridor. She would see what he failed to see. She could draw the impossible geometry of the Alicia. She would guess why the place had changed, and she’d do so as easily as she had guessed why the albino goose followed the old man at the park. She was so quick.
He felt slow.
The sour air had shifted and thinned. It was difficult to breathe, difficult to move, but he moved all the same, keeping his eye on the red strings nailed to the ceiling. I’m bound to find a work crew, he thought. Maybe they’ve seen Marisol. Maybe they’ve heard her. Marisol had screamed. That must have been her voice. He was sure he’d heard a voice, faint and afraid, even if he couldn’t quite bring himself to believe it. He was also sure that he had a job to do—that’s why B. had brought him here, why he’d showed him the corridor (Nothing bad), and this was his fault after all. Marisol wouldn’t have come here if—
We found these yesterday, B. had said.
Alvaro had not put it together until now. The Alicia had opened up her secrets right around the same time he had helped Winifred unlock the corridor above. It would have been directly above, he’d tell you—he’d insist—and when you asked him how he knew, he’d smile and promise you he’d explain, but that he had to keep going, because we were running out of time. How long did Marisol have? The unlocking of the upstairs padlock, the birth of these passages, Marisol’s absence. He didn’t have to tell anybody that he played a part. When he found Marisol, when he brought her back, she didn’t need to know that it was his fault—that he played a part in her absence. Umberto didn’t need to know either. Alvaro didn’t need to confess. He just had to fix what needed fixing.
Did Winifred know? They had opened the passages above and had triggered this, whatever this was, below. This growth. This life.
The corridor splintered into four malformed fingers, each with its set of melting doors fading into darkness. He wouldn’t follow any of those.
No strings on the ceiling, no way to get back. He shuddered.
She keeps growing, he thought.
He hadn’t seen those corridors when B. had led him down this way. He must have missed them, and again he wished he had Carmen along—his sister, who missed nothing, who wanted out of the hotel. Even if the hotel had their best interests at heart. Nothing bad. Nothing to fear. He steadied himself. Carmen wanted out but she kept a cool head. She’d make fun of him for being such a worrywart.
She must be in their room, cleaning up her mess. How did you erase the insects? An eraser would smudge, and she didn’t have paint. He didn’t know how she would fix it. She said she would. She kept her promises.
You have to talk to Jacob, she had said, and he would.
Oh, he would. He’d tell the old man to leave his sister alone. She was young and troubled, and she could not sleep, and Jacob had no business telling her lies. Even if the lies were the truth. Carmen didn’t need to know about the forest and their family. Jacob needed to understand that they had no one left, no one living, and the calls had followed him to Barranquilla, the voices had promised a reckoning, and so they couldn’t go back. Colombia wasn’t home. What he’d say to Jacob was what he said to himself—yes, he knew he had promised her they’d go back, but he needed to calm her down, he needed to buy some time, to make things right. And if Jacob didn’t listen, he could choke the life out of the old man. It’d be easy. Jacob was frail. You could break his bones. You could pulp his face until it revealed its true face, the true face of us all—raw, red, wet, and soft. Better to punish Jacob than to admit failure. He wouldn’t keep his promise to Carmen, they wouldn’t go back, but Alvaro was in charge, and that’s what you did when you were in charge.
Don’t touch the wall, he thought.
He touched the wall.
He sank a finger into what looked like wood and paint and plaster. The corridor yielded, the stuff inside wet and spongy. He had torn a hangnail earlier in the week, he must have cut himself when he was prepping—nothing major, a tiny cut, it hadn’t really registered—and he knew only because the stuff of the Alicia burned on the cut and the hangnail.
She’s disinfecting me, he thought. His finger stung. The wall hissed as it took him in.
He popped the finger out when the wall sucked at his body. The wall had tried to pull him in. He hoped Marisol hadn’t made the same mistake. The wall wanted him. It was hard to resist—he felt the same vertigo he’d felt anytime he walked along the edge of a cliff, when he was very high up and a perverse part of him told him to jump. He could imagine himself jumping, he could see himself doing it, and what frightened him most was how easy, how reasonable the suggestion sounded. Why not jump? And he could. He could dive into the soft walls, and where he’d go, how far he’d fall—he wouldn’t know until he tried. He stared at the green string and thought, You’ve been here long enough. They need you upstairs. You need to make sure Carmen’s OK, and you need to help Ellie, and you need to talk to Umberto.
He had only taken a few steps when he heard her again. He hadn’t imagined it.
The sound was faint and distant, but unmistakable.
A woman screamed.
* * *
He followed the scream to a knot of corridors, each leading into darkness. The strings ended right before the black began, the strings dangled and brushed the carpet. B.’s associates had only made it so far, or the corridors were new, or the strings had been cut.
Cut with teeth.
With pincers.
He imagined the bugs his sister drew, the fat bugs with the wrong antennae, the bodies that moved like no bugs he’d ever seen. The woman screamed again. It didn’t sound like Marisol, but he wasn’t sure he could tell, if he could recognize anyone’s screams—no one sounded quite human when they screamed. He imagined the bugs running over Marisol, Marisol trying to brush them off and screaming and one jumping into her mouth.
“I’m here!” he said. “It’s going to be OK. I’m coming.”
He stayed put and faced the darkness and didn’t dare enter it.
The scream refused to die down.
No, he thought. I won’t. I’ll die. I don’t know what I’m walking toward.
A light flickered to life, as if on cue, the corridor closest to him now visible. He thought he could see handprints in the murk of the light and the bulbs flickered, the darkness ate the edges of the doors and carpet, and the light waned, greenish and alive.
A light that wasn’t a light.
A sign hummed, promised an exit, but the letters faded and a dark growth spread over the Plexiglas.
The scream was his mother’s scream, his sister’s scream.
He recognized their voices. He had never left the jungle, he was still there, and this corridor was a bad dream—a bad dream inside another bad dream.
He knew he shouldn’t walk into the newly lit corridor, that it was a trap, that nothing good would come of it (Nothing bad, B. had said—B. had promised) but he found himself walking in the counterfeit light, and so it was no surprise, no surprise at all, when darkness returned.
The light died. He was too deep into the Alicia to double back.
He was already lost.
The scream grew louder. He followed the sound because he had nothing else to follow, and because he had to help.
If.
If he could help, he would. Even if it wasn’t Marisol, he’d help. Even if he didn’t know what to do. He walked and expected to stumble, to hit a wall, to brush an insect from his hand, or for the wall to peel off and stick to him.
The strands brushed against him, he didn’t imagine the sensation this time, he could feel the mold on his arms and on the back of his neck, but he ignored it and moved toward Marisol, or toward what sounded like Marisol and also like his dead sister and his dead mother.
He wanted to let her know that he was close, that he was almost there, but he was afraid of what would happen if he opened his mouth. What would crawl in? He held his breath, he followed the swell of the scream, and stopped only because he was sure he was close, he was almost there. The woman screamed behind a wall or a door, she screamed behind the partitions grown by the Alicia, and the scream filled the dark with its urgency. Other sounds too. Rushing water. Skittering. He had to open his mouth. He had to reassure her. Calm her. He didn’t want to, because he was afraid, because the bugs would stream into his mouth, because he could hear the bugs, not imagined now.
The bugs crawled over the bare sliver of skin between his pants and his socks. One crawled up under his pant leg, and when he brushed it off, it plopped wet and heavy on the ground.
The same bugs from above.
The pipes will burst, he thought. They’re going to burst again.
The rustle and murmur rose. She’s in there, he thought. Alone.
Not alone: the rustle of the insects drowned all other noises. They must have to crawl over each other. The room must be thick with life.
“Marisol?” he said. He found the door and felt for the knob—hot, sticky, soft—and tried turning it. He was about to try again when the screams stopped.
“Don’t open the door.” The voice belonged to a little girl, to a bad recording of a little girl—low and rough and wet. A girl with a bad cough or a fever. No one he recognized. He tried the knob again and his fingers dented the soft, warm metal. An overripe fruit. It wouldn’t turn.
“Please don’t,” the little girl said. “Please don’t open the door. You don’t want to come in here. You can’t. You don’t want to see what’s here.” The little girl laughed. “There’s so much here. And Mom’s coming.” The bugs skittered in agreement. “You don’t want to be here when she comes.”
He remembered the old man’s warning. Charleen. The mother.
Charleen’s going to come up anytime now.
He said, “Esther?”
What he heard in response was an awful sound, a great, ripe fruit hitting the ground. Another scream. You wouldn’t know it was a little girl in there. He tried the door again and said, “Are you Esther?”
“That won’t work,” the little girl said. “You’re just making them angry.”
Esther’s SPECIAL things.
He said, “Where are we? What is this?”
“You’re in the dream,” she said.
“I’m awake,” he said, unsure.
“The dream of the Alicia. She dreams and we all dream with her.”
“I’m not dreaming.”
“We all are. We dream what she dreams, all of us who serve her, me and my mom and Jacob and your sister and you.”
“I don’t. I’m not.”
“Mom’s coming.”
“Charleen?”
“She’s been looking for you,” the little girl said. “She has a knife and a smile just for you. She loves you. She says she loves your whole family. We’re all a big family down here and we love you so much, we’ve got a song for you in the Nightmare Room. A song for you. A song for your sister. A song for Alba too. She’s been looking for you for so long and now you’re here, and Mom will be here soon. Don’t open the door. Don’t move. Stay here and we’ll sing, we’ll all sing together.”
The insects grew louder.
He could feel them crawl by the door. All you had to do was follow the river of sound. There were more of them. If you ran, you’d step on them. You’d burst so many of their fat, little bodies. Try not stepping on them. Try being considerate.
She had not said she was Esther.
Who was she?
“Don’t open the door,” she said again. “You don’t want to be here. She’s coming, she’ll be coming down the mountain, Charleen comes round the mountain with a song and a knife.”
“I’m looking for Marisol.”
