The nine stairs were uneven and slippery, threatening to toss her, suitcase, cat carrier, backpack, and all, down into the black depths of the area in front of the house. When she slid into the railing and it bowed dangerously, she refused to consider it an omen. From the unsheltered porch, she could see neither knocker nor bell but, considering the night and the weather, that meant very little. There could have been a plaque warning travelers to abandon hope all ye who enter here, and she wouldn’t have seen it—or paid any attention to it if it meant getting out of the storm. A light shone dimly through the transom. Holding her suitcase against the bricks with her knee, she tried the door.
It was unlocked.
Another time, she might have appreciated the drama of the moment more and pushed the heavy door open slowly, the sound of shrieking hinges accompanied by ominous music. As it was, she shoved it again, threw herself and her baggage inside, and kicked it closed.
At first, the silence came as a welcome relief from the storm, but after a moment of it settling around her, thick and cloying, Claire found she needed to fill it. She felt as though she were being covered in the cheap syrup left on the tables at family restaurants.
“Hello? Is anybody here?”
Although her voice had never been described as either timid or tentative, it made less than no impact on the silence. Lacking anywhere more constructive to go, the words bounced painfully around inside her head, birthing a sudden, throbbing headache.
Carefully setting the cat carrier down beyond the small lake she’d created on the scuffed hardwood floor, she turned to face the counter that divided the entry into a lobby and what looked like a small office—although the light was so bad, she couldn’t be sure. On the counter, a brass bell waited in solitary, tarnished splendor.
Feeling somewhat like Alice in Wonderland, Claire pushed her streaming hair back off her face and smacked the plunger down into the bell.
The old man appeared behind the counter so suddenly that she recoiled a step, half expecting an accompanying puff of smoke— which would have been less disturbing than the more mundane explanation of him watching her from a dark corner of the office.
“What,” he demanded, “do you want?”
“What do I want?”
“I asked you first.”
Which was true enough. “I’d like a room for the night.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously. “That all?”
“What else is there?”
“Breakfast.”
Claire had never been challenged to breakfast before. “If it’s included, breakfast is fine.” Another time, she might have managed a more spirited response. Then she remembered. “Do you take pets?”
“I do not! That’s a filthy lie! You’ve been talking to Mrs. Abrams next door in number thirty-five, haven’t you? Bloody cow. Lets her great, hairy baby crap all over the drive.”
Beginning to shiver under the weight of her wet clothing, it took Claire a moment to work out just where the conversation had departed from the expected text. “I meant, do you mind pets staying in the hotel?”
The old man snorted. “Then you should say what you mean.”
Something in his face seemed suddenly familiar, but the shadows cast by the single bulb hanging high overhead defeated Claire’s attempt to bring his features into better focus. Her left eyelid began to twitch in time with the pounding in her skull. “Do I know you?”
“You do not.”
He was telling the truth although something around the edges of his voice suggested it wasn’t the entire truth. Before she could press the matter, he snarled, “If you don’t want the room, I suggest you move on. I don’t intend standing around here all night.”
The thought of going back out into the storm wiped everything else from her head. “I want the room.”
He dragged an old, green, leather-bound book out from under the counter and banged it down in front of her. Slapping it open to a blank page, he shoved a pen in her general direction. “Sign here.”
She’d barely finished the final “n,” her sleeve dragging a damp line across the yellowing paper, when he plucked the pen from her hand and replaced it with a key on a pink plastic fob.
“Room one. Top of the stairs to your right.”
“Do I owe you anything in ad…” Claire let the last word trail off. The old man had vanished as suddenly as he’d appeared. “Guess not.”
Picking up her luggage, she started up the stairs, trusting to instinct for her footing since the light was so bad she couldn’t quite see the floor a little over five feet away.
Room one matched its key; essentially modern—if modern could be said to start around the late fifties—and unremarkable. The carpet and curtains were dark blue, the bedspread and the upholstery light blue. The walls were off-white, the furniture dark and utilitarian. The bathroom held a sink, a toilet, and a tub/shower combination and had the catch-in-the-throat smell of institutional cleansers.
Given the innkeeper, it was much better than Claire had expected. She set the wicker carrier on the dresser, unbuckled the leather straps, and lifted off the top. After a moment, a disgruntled black-and-white cat deigned to emerge and inspect the room.
As the storm howled impotently about outside the window, Claire shrugged out of her coat, wrapped her hair in a towel and collapsed onto the bed trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore the drum solo going on between her ears.
“Well, Austin, do the accommodations meet with your approval?” she asked as she heard him pad disdainfully from the bathroom. “Not that it matters; this is the best we can do for tonight.”
The cat jumped up beside her. “That’s too bad because—and I realize I risk sounding clichéd in saying it—I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Claire managed to crack both eyelids open about a millimeter. No one had ever been able to determine if cats were actually clairvoyant or merely obnoxious little know-it-alls. “A bad feeling about what?”
“You know: this.” He paused to rub a damp paw over his whiskers. “Aren’t you getting anything at all?”
She let her eyes close again. “I seem to be getting MTV on one of my fillings. It’s part of the Stomp tour.” Flinching at a particularly robust bit of metaphor, she sighed. “I’m so thrilled.”
A furry, ten-pound weight sat down on her chest. “I’m serious, Claire.”
“The summons isn’t any more urgent than it was this morning, if that’s what you’re asking.” One-handed, she unbuttoned her jeans, pushing the cat back onto the bed with the other. “Nothing else is getting through this headache except a low-grade buzz.”
“You should check it out.”
“Check what out?” When Austin refused to answer, Claire decided she’d won, tossed off her clothes, and got into a pair of cream-colored silk pajamas—standard operating procedure suggested night clothes suitable for the six o’clock news, just in case.
Tucked under the covers, the cat curled up on the other pillow, she realized why the old man had looked so familiar. He looked like a gnome. And not one of those friendly garden gnomes either.
Rumpelstiltskin, she thought, and went to sleep smiling.
“This is weird, my shoes are still wet.”
Austin glared at her from the litter box. “If you don’t mind!”
“Sorry.” Claire poured liquid out of the toe of one canvas sneaker, hung them back over the shower curtain rod by their tied laces, then made a hasty retreat from the bathroom. “It’s not that I expected them to be dry,” she continued, dropping onto the edge of the bed, “but I was hoping they’d be wearably damp.”