Graham Masterton - The Ninth Nightmare

‘Good evening,’ he said, giving her a smile.

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied, still staring at him. She walked off, turning her head around twice as she made her way along the corridor, as if she were afraid that he was going to come after her. Lincoln watched her until she reached the lobby and disappeared out of sight. He thought: what the hell was that all about ? But then he shrugged and inserted his key card into the lock. She could have mistaken him for somebody famous. Grace maintained that he bore a strong resemblance to the murdered rapper Tupac Shakur, so maybe it was no surprise that the housekeeper had looked at him with such anxiety. He guessed that he would be anxious, too, if he met a man who had been shot dead in 1996.

He entered his room and switched on the light. Everything appeared to be normal. The chambermaid had closed the drapes and switched on the bedside lamps, as well as turning down the bed and leaving two chocolate mints in the pillows. Lincoln went across to the desk, picked up the phone and dialed nine for an outside line. While he waited, he rotated his head to ease his neck muscles. It had been a long, punishing day and he couldn’t wait to finish his dinner, take a shower and climb into bed.

Instead of an outside line, however, he heard that sharp blurt of white noise again, followed by the soft crackling of static.

Shit , he thought. Maybe there was something wrong with his home phone line. But he hadn’t even dialed his number yet, so how could that be? And how come he couldn’t get a line either on his cellphone or this regular landline? It didn’t make any technical sense.

He dialed zero for the hotel operator. This time, he got a response.

‘Operator, how can I help you?’

‘I’m trying to get an outside line from Room One-Oh-Four, but all I’m getting is this crackling sound.’

‘Hold on, Mr Walker. I’ll see what I can do.’

There was a moment’s pause, and then he heard the crackling noise again. He dialed the operator again and said, ‘I’m still getting it.’

‘I’m sorry, sir, you’re still getting what , exactly?’

‘The crackling sound, just like before.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I don’t hear it. All I can hear is a regular dialing tone.’

‘There’s no dialing tone. There’s only this crackling sound.’

There was another pause, and then he heard the crackling again. He tried the operator’s number again, and it rang, but this time nobody answered.

‘This is fucking unbelievable,’ he said to his reflection in the mirror. He would have to go to the front desk and see if they could dial his home number for him. He was growing increasingly annoyed now. His dinner was getting cold, he couldn’t get through to Grace, and everybody in this five-star hotel was talking five-star bullshit. He was beginning to agree with his late lookalike Tupac, who had once said, ‘ Reality is wrong. Only dreams are for real .’

He thought it would be a good idea to take a leak before he went to reception, so he made his way around the bed and headed for the bathroom door. His hand was already on the doorknob when there was a thunderous crash from inside the bathroom and the whole door shook as if somebody had thrown themselves against it. He jumped back, startled, and he almost lost his balance and fell over backward on to the bed.

There was another crash, and then another, and then a tumbling, squeaking noise like somebody falling into the bathtub.

‘Who’s there?’ he shouted. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

He took hold of the doorknob again and twisted it, but the door was either locked or jammed. He heard more squeaking and more knocking, and then, suddenly, a woman moaning. Her moan started off quite shivery and low, ohhhhhhhhhh , as if she were calling out in dread; but then it grew increasingly shrill and panicky, and then she started screaming at the top of her voice, and begging ‘ No! No! Please don’t do that! No! Please don’t do that! ’

Lincoln rattled the doorknob and beat on the door panel with his fist.

‘Who’s in there? Open up! What the hell are you doing? If you don’t open up I’m going to call for security!’

The woman’s screaming went on for four or five more seconds, accompanied by what sounded like bare heels drumming against an empty bathtub. Then, just as suddenly as the noise had begun, it stopped, and there was silence.

Lincoln waited, his ear close to the door. He tried the doorknob again, and this time the door unlatched, and opened. Inside the bathroom it was completely dark.

‘Who’s in there?’ he repeated.

There was no reply, so he pushed the door open a little further. He could make out the edge of the bathtub now, but it wasn’t the shiny white-tiled bathtub that he had been expecting to see. It was an old-fashioned high-sided tub, on four lion’s-claw feet, with two large old-fashioned faucets, both of them dripping. By the light that was shining into the bathroom from the bedroom, he saw that the tub was filthy. The sides were streaked with runnels of black and gray dirt, and the enamel inside was decorated with dark brown spatters and diagonal runs and dozens of handprints, as well as a thick greasy tidemark.

There was nobody lying in the tub, however. He must have imagined all that screaming and thumping. Nobody could have jumped out of the tub that quick — and where would they have hidden themselves, even if they had?

In the far corner of the bathroom, high up on the wall, there was a small grimy window, but even though the window was so dirty Lincoln could see that it was daylight outside, even though it was almost quarter of eight in the evening. He could hear a very faint pattering, too, which sounded like rain. He frowned. It had been very windy when he went outside to try and talk to Grace, but it had been totally dry.

He pushed the door open all the way. It met with some resistance; there was a sodden stained bath-towel lying twisted on the floor, as if somebody had been unsuccessfully trying to clean the tiles with it. The tiles themselves were mottled green, with brown splashes across them, and a complicated pattern of bare footprints, pointing every which way, as if somebody had been dancing around the bathroom without their shoes on. They were small and narrow, like a woman’s feet, or maybe a child’s.

Lincoln took a cautious step forward, and as he did so he saw that there was a shower stall on the opposite side of the room — a shower stall whose glass door was so filthy and fogged up that it was impossible to tell if there was anybody in there. He strained his eyes in the gloom, however, and he thought he could make out a dark hunched shape inside it, but he guessed it was probably nothing but a shadow. There was a toilet beside it, with its mahogany seat raised.

The smell in the bathroom was sickening — like drains clogged up with slimy gray human hair and unflushed urine that had turned dark amber, and something else, too — a horrible thick sweetness that filled up his nose and his throat and made him feel like gagging. It reminded him of the bathroom in his boyhood home in the Brightmoor ghetto — the bathroom in which his older brother Nelson had died on the toilet of a heroin overdose.

The question was: how had his pristine white-tiled hotel bathroom turned into this ? There was only one door to the bathroom, so he couldn’t have chosen the wrong door by mistake. And even if he had, he couldn’t imagine the Griffin House Hotel leaving any bathroom in such a disgusting condition.

He pulled the light-switch cord. As he did so, and the fluorescent lights popped on, he saw that he must have been suffering from some kind of an optical illusion. The bathroom was pristine. The bathtub was shiny and white, with gold-plated faucets. The hand basin was sunk into black streaky marble, and next to it there was a guest amenity tray with complimentary bottles of shampoo and body lotion and aftershave. The shower stall was sparkling clean, with an engraving of seagulls on its frosted glass door. There were towels, but they were all fluffy and dark green and neatly arranged on a heated towel-rail.