But the room, other than that, was empty.
A dream, he thought when he looked into the next room.
Not men but things fornicating frenetically with two listless women tied down to a similar bed of pillows. Others stood round watching, an eager glint in impossibly huge eyes. A few of these watchers masturbated erections the size of rolling pins…
Yes. It must be a dream.
It had to be.
In the next room a similar scene ensued, only some of the queer-looking spectators seemed to be engrossed with plates of food. Women, however, moaned in unison as still more figures with strangely warped heads steadily performed cunnilingus. Inordinately large tongues, like pink snakes, delved without reluctance into the spread, moist fissures. One figure admitted an entire hand, while its glaze-eyed recipient tossed and turned in heady bliss…
A dream, he thought a second time.
In the next room, a bald woman seemed to be cleaning up, placing large, smudged platters into a plastic bustray. Her pubis was as bald as her head, and large, pert breasts seemed erected on her chest.
There was something—
Something, he slowly thought.
—that seemed uneasily familiar.
Then she turned and looked at him. Recognition widened her eyes.
“Paul!” she acknowledged.
Paul’s sight seemed to droop like warm putty.
“You,” he croaked, and in the same instant of grim recognition he was grabbed from behind, by the throat.
««—»»
The Inn felt dead, its long halls muted, vacant, and quiet as a crypt. Vera couldn’t quite calculate what impression coaxed her on. It seemed to be a cluster of thoughts so swarmed together that none of them could be singularly deciphered. Down in the atrium the great fireplace exhaled dying heat from its pile of embers.
Her nightgown and robe shifting, she traipsed around the front reception desk. To her surprise, behind the back hall, one of the room-service elevator’s yawned open when she pressed the up button. Generally they were locked. She got in and went up.
Feldspar said The Inn was closed, she remembered, so she needn’t worry about any guests popping up to spy the restaurant manager wandering about in her nightgown. She got off on the third floor and found it immediately cold.
No, very cold.
What the goddamn hell? she wondered.
She peeked into each suite on the floor and discovered them to be not only empty but barren. No furniture, no carpet, no fixtures. And each suite felt as cold as the walk-in freezers downstairs.
Same thing on the fourth floor. Each suite empty, unfurnished, obviously never occupied.
Just like Feldspar’s suite, she recalled.
Feldspar certainly had some explaining to do. What could he possibly say? Why were all the suites empty?
One thing was clear: despite The Inn’s being open now for months, no one had ever rented these suites.
So where did the guests stay?
The elevator took her back down to the atrium.
She cut through the darkened restaurant to the kitchen, flicked on the overhead lights. The kitchen’s long rows of stainless steel sparkled cleanly. Then, in another unbidden impulse, Vera approached the inner door to the room-service kitchen. What are you doing, you idiot? she asked herself. That door’s always locked—
—click.
Vera’s hand froze when she pulled back on the handle.
The door was not locked.
How do you like that? Look’s like Kyle’s getting careless.
The room-service kitchen sparkled back similarly, a carbon copy of her own kitchen for The Carriage House, if not slightly larger and better equipped.
What am I doing here?
She had to admit, she had no idea. And just as she prepared to leave, she heard—
A distant, long drone, which seemed to be moving closer. And then—
A thunk.
Indeed, a familiar thunk, like the strange thunking she’d been hearing every night.
The room-service elevator, she realized.
But it couldn’t be. For she was standing beside the room-service elevator right now.
It was dead silent, obviously not in use.
Then where’d that thunking come from?
Not the pantry—that would be impossible. Nonetheless, she pulled on the door’s metal latch—
And found it locked.
Another impossibility. The hasp on the door hung open. No padlock. Which could only mean—
Locked from the inside?
There could be no other answer, which made no sense at all. How on earth could anyone get into the pantry if it was locked from the inside? And who could possibly unlock it?
Unless…
Shit! her thoughts shrieked. She heard a quick rattling now—from behind the pantry door. This is crazy! she thought, ducking madly behind the service line.
Someone was in the pantry…
Squatting, she peeked over the stacks of gray bustrays beneath the cold line. Sure enough, the pantry door opened. Someone walked out, whistling some twangy C&W tune. Vera spied jean-clad legs and typical slip-resistant workboots. But from her low vantage point, she couldn’t see who it was.
“Goddamn it,” a voice muttered. “What a fuckin’ mess.”
Vera recognized the voice at once:
Kyle.
Next she heard a quick clang, as though Kyle were rummaging for a steel mixing bowl or carry-platter. Then the booted feet tracked back to the pantry. Vera risked giving herself away when she raised her eyes over the top of the cold line and peered across the walkway. It was only a glimpse: Kyle carrying some pan-pots back into the pantry cove. Yes, it was definitely Kyle, all right.
With just one incongruity—
He’s…bald, Vera dumbly realized.
Had he shaved his head? Had he been wearing a wig all this time? One or the other had to be true. But—why? Vera wondered.
And as he disappeared back into the pantry, he pulled the door to it behind him. Vera, finally, was in luck.
When the door closed, it didn’t catch.
Wait, wait, she ordered herself from her squat. Don’t move. Don’t get up yet. Wait and see if you hear the—
th-thunk
Then: the motor drone.
She knew now before she even entered the pantry herself. There was an elevator in there—another elevator that no one knew about. She couldn’t imagine a reason for this, but now she felt determined to find out.
She skirted in. As expected, at the end of the pantry stood a closed elevator door. Along the walls were shelves full of marinade buckets. A reach-in fridge lined the other wall, and through its glass doors she saw typical dinner preps in trays, kabobs, meat rolls, and lots of steaks, though she didn’t recognize the cuts. She hadn’t even been aware of this particular refrigerator, nor could she guess why it had been hidden in the pantry.
None of that, however, was the point. Right now only one thing interested her:
The elevator.
Vera, dressed only in a sheer nightgown and robe, approached the end of the pantry. The elevator’s brushed-steel face returned a vague reflection. This was the elevator, she knew now, that she’d been hearing all along, running into the wee hours.
And whatever the reason, she was about to discover it.