Resonance - Chapter 5

She woke up without remembering where she was, almost rolling off the couch before catching herself. Though her nap felt like it had lasted a good few hours, she got the inexplicable idea that time had not passed at all. She must have only dozed off for a few minutes - which would explain why the sunbeams had neither brightened nor dimmed - but it seemed to be more than that. The air felt still in some indescribable way. Stopped, almost. Cut off from the rest of the world. Apart from the bizarre book, the church basement had been generally pleasant. Now she had no desire to hang around.

She left the church and went off to try more houses. Someone would have to be home.

And what if they aren't?

Let's not think about that.

She walked street after street without success. Her knocks on random doors went unanswered, and all of the houses looked deserted in the same way. Without exception, windows were covered and doors were closed as if the town had tucked itself away for storage.

To hell with it. This was giving her a workout that seemed quite unnecessary after all that wandering around in the woods. And based on her previous luck, perhaps she would be best off staying still. She wandered onto a random porch, put her backpack down as a cushion between her butt and concrete, and waited for someone to come home.

The sky deepened into slate gray and let forth a drizzle. As she thought about getting a move on - maybe finding a less boring place to sit - the drizzle broke into a downpour. At first, it was rather soothing with the rain pattering on the porch roof above her. Then the wind picked up with a chill knife edge. She put her sweatshirt back on. It made no difference.

Where is everyone? Shouldn't church be out by now? I've heard of all-day service, but this is just ridiculous.

Indeed, night was on its way. As the houses around her dissolved into darkness, no lights appeared behind the curtains and blinds. She dug out her flashlight to keep her company.

Shit. Now I'm really going to be cold. She tucked her hands into her sweatshirt pocket, huddling as well as possible. Maybe it was her imagination, desperate for anything distinctive in this curtain of driving rain, but she swore she could see her breath.

And then there seemed to be something else. She jumped up and called out and waved her flashlight.

The rain continued to fall without comment.

She opened her mouth and screamed. Any minute now, a light would go on. Any minute now, a window would be raised. She might get hollered at for waking someone up, but they would surely be sympathetic.

By the time she got it through her head that nobody was around to hear her, she had nearly gone hoarse. She dropped onto the porch hard enough to bump her tailbone, biting back tears as she stared into the dark rain. Over the hills and far away was a warm and cozy room where she ought to be stretched out on the couch with a book or a magazine or a campy late night movie on TV, chilling out as opposed to freezing her ass off in this bizarrely still town. She should have stayed at the ranger's station. She should have gone the other way on the trail. She should not have gotten lost in the first place. Nice work, Einstein.

And this is helping? Look. This town isn't abandoned. It's too well-maintained for that. Did you see any graffiti? Broken glass?

She took another look at the porch that served as her temporary campground. The siding and window frames were freshly painted. The welcome mat seemed new. Her khakis showed no smudges of dirt from the floor.

The rain died down, taking her frustrations along with it. Her voice of reason was correct. Though Resonance looked deserted, it was not truly dead. Who knew where everyone was right now, but self-flagellation would not conjure them out of hiding - or help her find some place to spend the night.

She had walked past an aging brownstone hotel on the main street. If it was open, great. If not, she could always take her pick of the random porches around here.

Her memory of the hotel's exact location was worse than she had thought. The sky opened back up again while she searched for the place, drenching her pretty well by the time she found it. The front door was unlocked - unsurprising, given the window sign advertising a VACANCY. She had missed that last time, but it was irrelevant either way. Sign or no sign, the hotel would certainly be more welcoming than the church basement.

The lobby was dark. This made sense, as none of the windows were lit, but it seemed a bit odd in a hotel with an open front door and an advertised room. Or maybe not. Small towns tended to operate on their own set of rules. Trust in strangers was one of them.

"Hello?"

No response.

"Anybody home?"

She awaited sleepy footsteps, the glow of a distant lamp, or a flashlight bumbling through the darkness. When none of the above showed up, she saw no point in standing around. She hung her soggy sweatshirt on a coat rack by the door, parked her damp backpack nearby, and found a bank of wall switches for the assorted chandeliers and sconces in the lobby. The bronze fixtures glowed to life, revealing an inviting room of dark wood and plush rugs and soft ornate furniture.

She kicked off her shoes and stretched out on one of the longer couches, nestling a pillow under her head. It would make a reasonable bed, but she was not yet tired enough to use it. The warmth of the hotel, akin to sunshine after all that wandering through the dank night, had given her a second wind. Perhaps she could find herself a room.

From the looks of the front desk and the peg board behind it, the proprietor had taken all the room keys and locked up afterward. The nearby OFFICE was shut tight as well. She shrugged, choosing to look on the bright side. At least that couch was an upgrade from that itchy old one she had crashed on earlier.

The lobby opened into a large square space with overstuffed chairs and a grand staircase up to the hotel rooms. Huge landscape paintings hung on the paneled walls. Shelves displayed sepia photographs of farms and musty cloth-bound books whose titles had worn off long ago. Across the room was a set of double doors with leaded glass insets and a nearby brass placard that read RESTAURANT. Her stomach awoke with a wrenching growl. Hopefully she could find something edible in here.

Scratch that. She had better find something edible in here. She was starved.

Ignoring her conscience's meek question of how and when she would pay for the food, she turned on the dining room lights and meandered past white-clad tables. At the back of the room, swinging doors led to a culinary oasis of steel and tile with a massive refrigerator humming away in the corner. She yanked open the heavy metal refrigerator door, boggling at the cornucopia within.

Fruit. A vegetable and dip tray. Cut sandwiches wrapped in clear plastic. An old-fashioned glass bottle of milk. Tempting as it was to dive right in and stuff herself, she approached the food with caution. It could be spoiled, and the last thing she needed was a miserable day on the toilet. She picked up a sandwich. It was cold, as if it had been refrigerated for hours. She removed the plastic wrap and inspected each layer in turn. The lettuce was crisp, the meat and cheese untouched by mold. She took a bite.

It was delicious.

And gone before she knew it. After three more sandwiches, a tart wormless apple, and the bottle of milk, she deposited her garbage and headed back out through the dining room. Something metallic glimmered on a table off to her left. It turned out to be a key tagged with a brass oval reading 301.

She pressed a cautious fingertip to the brass tag. Its temperature felt indistinct. Bland. Neither oddly cool nor warm as if someone had just been holding it.

It could have been sitting on the table the entire time. Then again, it could have been in a pocket or purse.

So what if it was? Had she not been actively looking for a real live human being before the damn downpour started up?

Yes, but said human being ought to broadcast more signs of their existence. Like footsteps. A room key appearing out of nowhere was just plain creepy.

Maybe she had not heard them. After all, she had been sitting next to that noisy refrigerator.

Did it matter? Did she have any reason to be spooked? By all indications, this was an average small town hotel, home to nothing more worrisome than dust bunnies and boring artwork. Besides, the hypothetical real live human being might be staying in 301. This key was as good of a clue as any to finding someone to help her get home.

She took her belongings up to the third floor. The night was an inkwell outside the mullioned windows, and the hallway felt similarly cold and unsettling until she found a nearby switch that lit up the wall sconces and revealed an ordinary slice of a comfortable old building. 301 looked ordinary, too - a brass-numbered wooden door identical to the others in the hall. After it failed to respond to her knocking, she let herself in.

The room welcomed her with a homey sort of charm. Its sitting area was decorated in pink and green floral patterns, and its white tiled bathroom had an enormous claw-footed tub. She experimentally let the bath water run. A few minutes later, it had become hot.

And a few minutes after that, she was up to her chin in divine warmth watching steam lazily wind its way toward the ceiling. See? This is why we don't get all paranoid over lucky finds. After enjoying a good long soak, she washed up and got out before the water began to cool. She dried off, wiping the mirror with a corner of her fluffy bath towel.

What she saw made her wish that she had left it fogged up. Although her face was close to the mirror, she appeared to be several feet away inside the reflected room. The room's proportions were skewed somehow. Stretched. As if it were pulling her back.

Or maybe you're just loopy.

Regardless of the actual answer to her concern, she pointedly ignored the mirror while finishing up her preparations for bedtime.

The bed embraced her like a warm billow of cloud. A few soft creaks and complaints emanated from the mattress, including some that sounded unlike any cranky box spring she had ever heard. And they seemed to be coming from the wall behind her. She stayed still and cocked her ear, wondering if her imagination was running wild. There was definitely some rhythmic sound, but it could be water pipes or miscellaneous old building noise distorted by her exhausted brain.

Then a clear high vocal floated away from the background.

"Hush my darling, don't fear my darling, the lion sleeps tonight..."

That was music. Someone else was in here. She tried to push herself out of bed, but her limbs refused to cooperate.