The Lobby of the Hotel McCoy
Originally published in the Flame Tree Fiction Newsletter (Flame Tree Press, March 2022).
994 words
Marin lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling, trying his best to ignore the rhythmic thumping from another bed against the shared wall of the hotel room. He’d checked in an hour ago and was supposed to text Jenn that he’d arrived, but something about the hotel manager bothered him. There was something not right about the man, something that worried about the edges of Marin’s subconscious like the fraying of a door’s weather stripping, gradually admitting a draft.
It was his hands, Marin finally decided. They had been dirty. Not just unwashed, but filthy, the way a mechanic’s often were. Black under the nails, grime around the cuticles, dark lines of dirt tracing the grooves of his fingerprints. Why should a hotel manager’s hands be filthy like that, Marin wondered? He could think of no reasonable explanation.
Abruptly the thumping stopped. Marin relaxed, allowing himself to sink into the silence of the night. After the ruckus of traveling, the headache of navigating the airport terminal, the traffic and the honking and the—
The thumping resumed in earnest. Marin sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. His phone buzzed. It was Jenn.
Hey, you make it to the hotel okay?
He dismissed the notification.
The temperature outside felt incredible. Mid-fifties. It was twelve below when he had left Portland. It felt like it had been winter in Maine for months—mostly because it had—and while he very much looked forward to seeing his friend and enjoying the weather, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something here was wrong.
His phone went off in his pocket.
Your flight landed two hours ago. Where are you??
Two hours? Had he really been here that long? How long had he been standing outside his hotel door, staring at the lobby, lost in his thoughts?
You’re obsessing again, he thought. A rare flash of introspection his therapist would have heralded as progress. No, not obsessing—he wasn’t supposed to use that word—fixating.
But this was real. It wasn’t like the lady at the bus stop, or the UPS guy—that had gotten him into a lot of trouble—or even his ex-girlfriend. The hotel manager had looked uneasy when he had checked in, shifting his weight from one foot to another, eager for Marin to take his room key and leave. He’d said almost nothing to Marin when he entered the lobby, instead hurrying back from some other room to stand behind a computer, sweat beading down his temple.
And then there was the matter of checking Marin in in the first place. It took way too long, the man hunting and pecking at the keys while glancing nervously at Marin, like he didn’t know what he was doing, like he didn’t know the computer system.
“Like he didn’t work there,” Marin whispered, staring at the lobby and the soft glow of the lights that spilled from the wall of windows that encased it.
He took his phone from his pocket and opened the note taking app, recording the time, date, and his observations about the hotel manager so far. He was falling into old habits again, patterns that had gotten him in trouble before. His sentencing had been a lifetime ago, his time long since served, but still he remembered what the judge had said at conclusion of his trial:
You’re not a detective, Mr. Duvall. You never were, and you never will be.
Zzzzt zzzzt. His phone. Jenn. Okay, I’m just going to come pick you up at the hotel. Whatever you’re doing, just hang out in your room, I’ll be there in 10.
Marin read her worry between the lines; she knew his past.
Everything’s fine, replied. Just checking some things out.
His phone immediately rang. He silenced it.
The lobby was deserted. It smelled heavily of bleach, when it hadn’t before. Marin approached the counter and peered over. Nothing appeared out of place.
“Except for you,” he muttered, checking the display on the phone that sat by the computer. Six missed calls. A red light flashed to indicate a voicemail. Had it been that way before, when he checked in? He didn’t think so. He made a note on his phone.
At the far end of the lobby was a room, and, finding it unlocked, he stepped inside. In one corner was a pile of ice cream bars, popsicles, and frozen candy bars. They sat beside a chest freezer, pictures of its disgorged contents plastered to its sides.
“What the hell?” he said, making another note on his phone. It had rung twice since he’d entered the lobby.
Marin approached the freezer and gasped, stunned by what he saw.
Staring up at him through the glass lid was a man, mouth agape, lips purple, knees folded against his chest. One eye was bloodshot—no, nearly completely red, the sclera no longer white—the result of some skull crushing trauma.
Marin felt movement behind him and ducked as a crowbar whooshed through the air above his head, the curved edge of it smashing and sticking into the drywall of the small room. He jumped backward, throwing his shoulder into the gut of the man behind him. Together they fell against shelving that lined the near wall, knocking supplies in every direction.
The struggle was brief. Marin eyed a box cutter that had gone skittering across the floor. He dove for it, flicked out the blade, and whirled around, slashing blindly. A red fissure opened up along the man’s neck, and, after a horrible series of gurgling and flailing, he fell still.
Marin panted heavily, standing over the body, pulse racing. It was then that he looked up, through the door into the lobby, and saw Jenn. Saw the horror on her face, her backpedaling away from him.
“It’s not what you think,” Marin said, struggling to catch his breath. “It’s not—"
But she had already left, and in the distance, sirens.