The Woman in Room Four Ethan
He hadn’t felt like himself for hours. Earlier this evening, not long after the truck ran out of gas, a strange silver light had passed over the sky, so bright it had almost blinded him.
The light had given both Hunter and him a monstrous headache.
Hunter’s headache had seemed painful enough, but Ethan’s temples had throbbed so hard he’d found it almost impossible to reach the motel.
Every step across the desert seemed to twist a screwdriver behind his eyes.
By the time he dropped their battered old gas can at the pump outside and stepped into the office, Ethan was almost afraid there was something seriously wrong with his brain.
It wasn’t just the pain in his head. An awful sense of déjà vu, sticky as the residue of a nightmare, seemed to be leeching through his skull. The feeling had only grown worse in the time Ethan spent in the office, spent in his room, spent with Hunter on his bed.
The feeling was more than just mere anxiety, the dread of all that had happened in the little town of Turner.
When Ethan looked back on that diner now, his horror didn’t seem to come from what Hunter had done to the fry cook: the depths of violence Hunter had revealed, the danger it had placed them in. Frank is going to kill you faggots!
Ethan’s horror, in retrospect, all grew out of the conversation he’d had while Hunter was in the diner’s bathroom, well before the chaos had broken out. A man in a gabardine suit. A bubble of frozen time that seemed to last for an eternity.
Nine empty rooms. Twelve cold beds.
See you soon, Mister Cross.
Ethan forced his aching head back to the present, back to the problems that had come up in this motel.
He’d come to dinner tonight because he needed to speak to Sarah Powers, the woman he’d met earlier in the motel’s office.
Ethan needed to understand something, desperately.
He knew he should ask Sarah not to reveal his presence here to some man in Fort Stockton named Frank O’Shea, seeing as Sarah worked for Frank and the fry cook at the diner worked for Frank and Frank wouldn’t look too kindly on Ethan and Hunter hurting one of his men and blah blah blah.
But for some reason, Ethan didn’t feel especially frightened of Frank. If there was anyone he was scared to meet again, it was the man in the gabardine suit, but what were the odds of that?
See you soon, Mister Cross.
No. When Ethan and Hunter stepped into the motel’s cafe, Ethan walked right past where Thomas stood at the bar, looking ready to mix him a drink.
Ethan went down the motel’s hall, toward the sounds of banging metal, and pushed open a swinging wooden door to the cafe’s kitchen.
He found Tabitha pouring mashed potatoes into an enormous silver serving dish. Her head snapped up, her face startled.
Ethan didn’t bother saying hello. He turned back to a bewildered Hunter. Ethan said, “I just wanted to be sure it was really her making all that noise in there.”
“Why?”
Ethan walked back into the cafe in a haze. “I really don’t know.”
Hunter seemed agitated, clearly anxious about Ethan’s condition. “We should go back to our room. I can come get us some food later.”
“No. No. I need to speak to Sarah.”
“Who?”
“The woman from the office. The one with the camera.” Ethan settled himself in the cafe’s corner booth. “I want to know why she lied about meeting my mom. How…”
Ethan trailed off. The other question was even more unnerving.
How does Sarah know who I am?
Watching the way Ethan rubbed his aching temples, Hunter made a little grunt of apology. “I wish I’d saved those cigarettes. They helped my head.”
The clock above the bar struck 7:35. The bell over the cafe’s door chimed. The Black girl from the Malibu, Kyla, stepped into the cafe, followed a few steps later by Penelope Holiday, the teenage girl from the Honda Odyssey. They scanned the room. They each looked distracted by their own problems.
Which is when something truly uncanny happened.
The clock above the bar struck 7:35. The bell over the cafe’s door chimed.
Kyla stepped inside, followed by Penelope Holiday, and with a rush of déjà vu, Ethan wondered if he was losing his mind.
It was like he’d remembered this moment—had anticipated it—even though it had never happened to him before.
He’d seen it coming a moment before it happened.
Had recalled the moment before he’d lived it.
Ethan thought of camera film: double exposures, two images recorded over each other. He rubbed his head. Somehow the pain was getting worse.
Kyla made her way across the cafe. He’d only met her in the office a couple hours ago, when she and her aloof friend Fernanda had come looking for towels.
Kyla and Ethan hadn’t said much to each other then—really, all she did was apologize for leaving him and Hunter by the side of the road—but in a funny way, Ethan felt like he knew Kyla well, or at least well enough to see she wasn’t faring much better than him.
Her face was clouded, her mouth set in a grimace.
She rubbed her head. She sat down across from Ethan and Hunter without a word, only to flinch, half stand, embarrassed by some mistake.
“Sorry,” she said. “I don’t know why I sat here.”
“It’s all right,” Ethan said. “Sit. Where’s your friend?”
“Fernanda? She went back to our room. I think her stomach’s fucked up.”
“Right.” For some reason, Ethan didn’t feel convinced by this story.
Down the cafe’s hall, a pan struck the ground so loudly Ethan and Kyla both pressed their hands to their heads. Thomas watched them from behind the bar. He looked almost anxious. “Did y’all not want something to drink?”
The teenage girl, Penelope, said, “My sister says it’s too late for that.”
“Your sister?” Ethan said, only to hesitate when his mind caught up with him.
How did he know her name was Penelope?
“A drink is the last thing I need,” Kyla said. Her hand was still pressed over her forehead. Ethan couldn’t see her eyes.
He said, “You’ve got a headache?”
“From hell,” Kyla said.
Hunter gave a little twitch in the seat next to Ethan. “Hold still,” he said to Kyla. “You’re bleeding everywhere.”
He was right. A smear of red blood shined where Kyla’s hand had touched her forehead. It was on her sleeve, on the table, on her cheek.
The blood was coming from the index finger of her right hand.
In that moment, Hunter revealed another flash of the strange new tenderness Ethan had experienced in their room.
Can I hold you for a minute? Just like this?
Here in the cafe, Hunter whipped open a roll of silverware to shake loose the cloth napkin.
He tore the fabric down the middle, folded it lengthwise, grabbed Kyla’s hand.
He squeezed Kyla’s first two fingers together until the wound closed, wrapped them in the makeshift bandage, tied it off with a tight knot.
Hunter didn’t smile once during this entire process.
Didn’t say a word, showed no real sign of worrying for Kyla’s well-being.
Yet in his every move there was a soft, unassuming kindness, a firm care, that felt wildly out of place in a man so hard.
You’d never think this was the same person who’d deep-fried someone not six hours ago.
Hunter tested the knot of the bandage. He released Kyla’s hand with a soft squeeze.
“You probably could use some stitches,” he said. “But it should clot eventually if you keep that tight.”
Kyla stared at him. “Thanks. I’m surprised.”
“Why’s that?”
“To be honest, you look like you kill kids for a living.”
Hunter went very still.
Kyla said, “Relax. It’s a joke.”
Another clang came from the kitchen. Ethan winced at the pain it sent through his head. He studied the bandage on Kyla’s finger, feeling the strangest certainty that this had never happened before.
But of course it hadn’t. He’d never been to this motel before.
Had he?
“How did you cut yourself so bad?” Ethan said.
Kyla, too, was staring at her fingers. A bloom of red was spreading through the napkin, bright and insistent as a buried memory. Judging by the look in her eye, Kyla was deep in a world of her own.
“The mirror,” she finally said. “The cracked mirror in our bathroom. It shattered.”