Graham Masterton: The Ninth Nightmare

She switched the light off. She was back in the laundry room. The faucet was still dripping and the rain was still pattering against the window. She breathed in and she could smell something, too. Something bleachy and faintly fishy. She breathed in again, and this time the smell was even stronger, so that she could almost taste it. American Value Bleach and rancid tuna.

She switched the light back on, and this time she left it on. Maybe she was suffering from exhaustion, or jet lag. After all, she had visited seven cities in as many days — from Atlanta to Houston and then to Albuquerque and Phoenix and Los Angeles and Sacramento. Maybe she had picked up a flu virus, or maybe she was experiencing some kind of weird reaction to her new birth-control pill. But whatever was causing the laundry room to appear when she switched off the light, she didn’t want to see it again.

She closed the bathroom door behind her and climbed back into bed, dragging the covers up to her chin. She looked across at the bathroom, but the door remained shut. She was tempted to go back and try turning the light off one more time, to see if the laundry room reappeared, but she decided against it. If she was hallucinating, or pining for some sickness, she was better off staying in bed and getting some sleep.

She reached across and switched off the bedside lamp. The digital clock read 12:09. The room was not as dark as it had been before, because light was shining from both the bathroom and the corridor outside. She turned over, with her back to the bathroom, and closed her eyes.

Ten minutes passed. A woman came along the corridor singing I Will Always Love You . A man said, ‘Shut the fuck up, Lena, will you, for Christ’s sake? You’re drunk.’

Another ten minutes passed. Katie sat up in bed again. Maybe she should check the bathroom just once more. Then, if it turned into the laundry room, maybe she should call David and tell him what was happening. After all, David was a qualified shrink. If anybody knew what had led her to believe that her hotel bathroom had turned into another room altogether, it was him.

She stared at the bathroom door. Maybe she should call the management. Maybe there was some kind of noxious gas coming out of the bathroom drains that made you see things that weren’t really there.

She switched on her bedside lamp. Instantly, the whole bedroom was different. It was no longer a comfortable four-star hotel room. It wasn’t even on the seventh floor any more; it was down at ground level. The walls were blotchy and discolored and the plaster looked diseased with damp. All the way around the room there was the same wooden paneling as the laundry room, with chipped cream paint. The floorboards were bare, except for a frayed, rucked-up rug, and it looked as if the floor hadn’t been swept in years.

At the single window hung a shredded net curtain, gray with dirt. Through the grimy window-panes, Katie could make out the back of a row of houses, with roofs that were shining wet in the rain, and fire escapes, and sodden washing hanging hopelessly from one balcony to another.

She looked down at the bedcover she was holding in her hand. It was olive-green, thin and greasy, and it was covered in brownish stains. Her pillows were stained, too, and deeply indented, as if the same person had been sleeping on them every night and never changed them or even turned them over.

The bed stank, too, of dried sweat and dirty hair and other people’s sex.

Katie switched off the lamp. Her hotel bedroom returned, Room 717, comfortable and warm and quiet now, and smelling of nothing but her own Chanel Premiere perfume and freshly-laundered sheets. In spite of that, she was shaking with fear and disgust, and she felt as if the floor were tilting underneath her like an ocean liner in a swell. She tried to stand up, but she lost her balance and had to sit back down on the bed again.

She stayed there for a moment, breathing deeply, trying to steady herself, and then she picked up her cellphone and called David’s number. It rang and rang but he didn’t pick up. Eventually she was put through to his message service.

‘David, darling, it’s me. Can you call me back as soon as you get this? It’s really hard to explain but there’s something wrong.’ Her voice started to waver, so she took a deep breath. Then she said, ‘It’s probably just me , being hysterical. But I’m so frightened. I daren’t switch off the light because when I switch off the light everything’s different and horrible. Please, please call me.’

She sat and waited about a minute longer. Then she thought: this is ridiculous. I know I’m not going crazy, so there must be something wrong with the room . She picked up the house phone and pressed zero for reception. She didn’t care if it was almost twelve thirty in the morning. She just wanted to change rooms.

Again, the phone rang and rang but nobody picked up. She hung up and tried again, but still nobody answered. She tried room service, and then housekeeping. No reply from either of them.

There had to be somebody on duty. A night porter, or a security guard. She put down the phone, went over to her suitcase and took out a mustard-colored roll-neck sweater and a pair of jeans. She dressed herself quickly and tugged a brush through her hair. She stared at herself in the mirror on the back of the closet door and tried to look determined. I want another room, and I want it now, and I don’t have to tell you why.

Katie opened the door and stepped outside. The door closed itself behind her, with a soft, complicated click. The corridor was in darkness. Maybe the lights were on a time switch, or maybe a breaker had tripped. She put her right hand out to feel the wall beside her, but instead of the silky fabric which she had expected, she felt scabby paint and rough, damp plaster.

‘Oh God,’ she said. ‘Not out here, too.’

She began to see shapes in the gloom, and she realized that she wasn’t standing in a hotel corridor at all, but in the hallway of somebody’s house, with coats and hats hanging on pegs like a row of witches hanging from a gallows. She could dimly see a hall stand, with umbrellas and walking sticks in it, and the stained-glass panels in a front door, in amber and sickly yellow. She could see that it was daylight outside, and she could hear that it was raining.

There was a smell , too. Not bleach and fish, like the laundry room, but dust and dry rot and stale flower-water. It felt to Katie as if the occupants had left the house in the expectation that they would soon be returning, but never had.

She closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them again, she was still standing in the hallway. She listened, and she was sure that she could faintly hear a radio playing, and the laughter of a studio audience.

‘Hallo?’ she called out. She took three steps along the hallway, until she was standing next to the witch coats. ‘Hallo?’ she repeated, louder this time.

She took another two steps forward, and now she could see that the living-room door was ajar, and she could hear the radio much more distinctly. A woman’s voice was saying, ‘ It’s my birthday tomorrow, George, and I’m expecting you to buy me a present .’

‘ So …’ replied a man’s voice. He sounded like an African-American. ‘ You finally hit the roaring forties .’

‘ I’ll have you know that I didn’t see the light of day until nineteen-thirteen ,’ the woman retorted.

‘ Holy mackerel! ’ said the man. ‘ You must have been walking around for the first ten years of your life with your eyes closed! ’

There was a surge of laughter from the audience. Katie took a step backward, and then another. She had never heard the show before, but she knew where the catchphrase ‘ holy mackerel! ’ came from. Kingfish, one of the characters from Amos’n’Andy, which hadn’t been aired on the radio since the mid-1950s.