The radiator at the Hotel Chelsea knocked like something was trying to get out.
Sid lit a cigarette, leaned against the nightstand, staring at two mystery stains on the bedspread.
The place was a dump.
Nancy laughed from the bathroom. Not a happy sound. Her laughs never were. This one had no air behind it, like it had been kicked out of her.
“Oi! What’re ya’ doing in there,” Sid called.
Her laugh cut off mid-note.
Sid sat on the mattress, looking at the mirror above the dresser. The bedroom appeared to tremble a moment, then leveled, as if deciding to become a room again. He also thought his reflection lagged a fraction too slow. It didn’t match reality. Could’ve been the smack, or too much of it, but, Room 100 wasn’t right. They agreed on that when they first opened the door.
Nancy said, “someone died in here,” as soon as they crossed the threshold.
“You okay?” A thud from the bathroom answered him.
“I see something,” her voice sounded like she was speaking from beneath the gap in the door.
He shuddered. “What?”
“I see…the wrong me.”
He rubbed his eyes until stars formed behind his lids. “You’re scaring me, Nance.”
“I know.”
The door cracked open but she didn’t come out. A skin-crawling dark did. That raised the hairs on his neck.
“Stop screwing around. I have to piss.”
“Don’t come in,” she said, but now, her voice came from behind. The mattress depressed near his thigh as if some invisible thing put both hands on the bed for balance.
His skin tightened. “I’m too high for this shit,” he snapped.
“I don’t want to fight anymore,” she replied.
The radiator knocked louder. Then came a long scrape, like the sound of a body being dragged through a pipe.
The wet sliding caused him to stand up too fast. He dropped his cigarette into the carpet.
“Nancy!” He was frightened. “Come out from there!”
“I can’t.” Her words squeezed through clenched teeth. “It…it won’t let me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“The thing you brought.”
He laughed a brittle bark. “I didn’t bring anything here.”
“The hotel thinks you did.”
He started towards the bathroom then stopped. The carpet changed texture beneath his boots. Patterns flipped; reversed direction.
The little silver flowers now leaned toward the open door like iron filings chasing magnets.
“It’s behind you, Sid.”
He turned.
Something sat in the armchair across the room.
Not a person. Not solid.
Wide-eyed, Sid traced a vapory human outline.
Reality bent around it the way heat warbles off asphalt. The seat cushion sagged under a body that never was. Sid understood it was not meant to be seen completely.
There were only impressions; a floating watch where there was no wrist, a grin without a face, a length of rope twisted around where a neck should be. Bathrobe belt flaccid, cinching nothing.
It didn’t just watch him. It waited to become aligned with something. Patient–knees pressed together; ghostly hands folded in earnest.
Sid backed away.
“I’m too high,” he repeated.
“Just the right amount, actually.” Nancy’s voice floated around the bedroom. “It prefers open doors.”
“I didn’t open anything!”
“You did,” corrected the presence from the chair. Its voice was brittle as glass.
Some impatient thing knocked from inside the radiator again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The bathroom door widened an inch. Sid yelped as a biting cold shadow rushed past.
“Nancy, grab your shit. We’re getting out.”
The specter replied, “you already are out.”
Then Sid heard humming from inside the bathroom. Droning, childlike. He remembered Nancy humming like that on those heroin mornings she couldn’t wake up right.
“Stop it,” he snapped. “STOP!”
The humming continued.
Sid reached for the table lamp, a heavy lead-glass base, and flung it at the seated entity. The lamp sailed out straight enough to connect, but Sid watched it deflect midair, dropping to the carpet, as if slapped down with force.
“You’re not real,” he said. “What the fuck are you?”
“An editor.”
Sid noticed those stains on the comforter spreading — two hand prints pooling into immense darkness.
“We’ve made an adjustment to the story,” the thing continued. “This way, all the pieces fit.”
“What pieces?”
A scream echoed through the suite then cut off abruptly, like a radio unplugged mid-broadcast.
Sid ran towards the bathroom, kicked open the door. Darkness bulged onto him like an overfilled lung. For a split second, he saw her — Nancy, but a wrong version — crumpled on the floor behind the sink, only she was distorted, as if he was viewing her reflection in a spoon. Her inky eyes dragged down. Her mouth, pale and twisted.
And between them stood something vertical, like another door. Its sudden presence made Sid worry about portals or alternate dimensions. His fists balled when he saw what was peeking through. A ghastly face–purpled, attached to an elongated neck, and a tail of rope flopped down its greening spine.
It smiled. “Once isn’t enough. Do it again, but this time, with conviction.”
His voice shattered. “I don’t understand!”
“It’ll be months before you do.”
Nancy’s voice was far-off. “Listen to it, Sid. It’s been in this Hotel for a very long time.”
A different version of her was sitting back on the bed, in the stains. He’d not seen her cross the room. Her eyes were flown open wide, showing white all the way around. When she spoke, her teeth rippled like static. “You missed it,” she sighed.
“Missed what?” He tasted blood on his tongue. “What did I miss?”
Nancy offered a sad expression. “The part where you decided against me.”
“I’ve not decided anything!”
“You did,” she said.
He looked down at his hand. The knife in it. He stared, perplexed. The handle was warm like he had been holding it for a while.
He dropped it with a cry. It landed point-down into the carpet.
“There,” she whispered. “Now everything matches.”
“No — no —” He kicked at the knife. It skidded under the bed. “I didn’t do this!”
He caught his reflection in the mirror. He was standing beside the specter in the chair. The Sid in the mirror looked relaxed, peaceable; the way a lock relaxes when the proper key turns inside it. “There, there,” his reflection assured. “This will all make sense soon.”
Nancy slipped past, vanishing back into the dark bathroom. She sat on the tile, near the sink; head drooping off her neck like a spent flower. Both arms rested at her sides, posing for a photograph no one but detectives would ever need to keep.
“You said you’d protect me.” Her voice was an echo.
“Protect her from what, Sid?” asked the chair’s occupant. “You?”
Sid opened his mouth but had no reply — only a cold certainty of what he had done.
The tile beneath Nancy darkened, spreading from a single unseen point.
An animal sound tore through Sid’s throat.
The thing leaned into him, smirking. “Everything fits. Just as it fit for me. The Chelsea makes sure of that.”
Sid’s gaze steered to the top corner of the bathroom door. The outline of rope, a man dangling, still wearing his bathrobe and a tongue lolled out, spoiled green.
“I loved her—I didn’t hurt–” The sentence hung unfinished. Every realization looped back to the moment he discovered the knife.
“I understand,” it said, “but things in this Hotel have their way.”
To Sid, Nancy was lucky. She was someone who side-stepped a lifetime of pain.
Their bed was empty save two bloody hand-prints.
His.
Sirens rang far away — or perhaps, inside his head.
How could he tell?
Another guest must have heard her screaming. Him throwing the lamp. A violent man, they’d agree.
“Will they even see you?” Sid whispered to the chair. “Will they know I’m innocent?”
“No,” it replied. “They’ll see the version that fits. And when it’s your turn, a few months from now, they’ll only find the needles.”
Shaking, Sid backed into the corner, slid down the wall, hands covering his face.
“I want out,” he sobbed.
“You are out,” it said, rising without standing. “This is what out looks like…afterwards.”
A blur passed close by. Sid felt an unsympathetic kiss touch his forehead. As it floated back towards the radiator, he saw it clearer, not with sight, but with depth.
“Enjoy your stay,” it said.
The frantic kicking inside the pipes grew quiet.
Nancy stopped humming.
In the bedroom mirror, Sid saw what he thought was his own reflection lying down on the mattress. Then it turned its head, staring off into the bathroom, at the damage clotting the edges of time.
And, at a horrific fissure in reality, closing fast, forever sealing away truth.
When pounding finally came at the door, Sid couldn’t answer.
He watched the armchair instead, hoping that what sat in it stayed inside the room.
—
Author Bio:
J. M. Heluk is an American Horror Author and Affiliate Member of the Horror Writers Association. Her collection, Stitches and Other Stories from Nightmare Press is available on Amazon. Her novel, THIG, perhaps with any luck, will be available through Crystal Lake Publishing.
Fingers crossed.
Come follow me into the void @authorjmheluk on Instagram. www.jmheluk.com