Ethan
Kyla shook her head. “My grandfather was an engineer for the power companies. He traveled all over the country working on dams and shit. I didn’t find out until I was grown, but apparently, he committed suicide somewhere out here, coming back from a work project.
Just wandered into the desert and never came back.
Or at least that’s what my dad told me. Are you telling me my grandfather checked into this place that night?
That he got trapped here, the same as us? ”
Tabitha said, “I am so sorry. Our father and The Chief were playing with a power I don’t think either of them understood. There were… consequences.”
Or maybe he was imagining things. His head was throbbing. How was the pain getting worse with time, not better? He said to Tabitha, “So what exactly happened that night? After everyone checked in, what did your father do?”
“More importantly,” Ryan said, “what do we need to do?”
“I don’t know.” A blast of wind shook the back of the cafe.
Tabitha’s nerve seemed to be failing her.
“Father and The Chief kept us in the dark, right until the end. I served our guests dinner that night. Thomas poured drinks. We cleaned up. Father and The Chief gathered everyone together for a commemorative photograph, our grand reopening, and that was the last we saw of them. Father took Thomas and I to our room. He told us to bolt the door and not open it, whatever happened. Whatever we might hear outside. Father said that if all went well, we would wake up tomorrow, us and him and The Chief, like nothing was the matter. But then he gave us something strange. Two pieces of a silver material. Like metal, but softer. I know how odd this sounds, but he told us to swallow them. And when the silver touched our tongue, it dissolved like water.”
“What was it?” Kyla said.
“I have no idea. He said that it was a precaution in case anything were to go wrong.”
Outside, in the dark, a familiar sound came: one SHRIEK, three, a wave. Ryan said, “Those fuckers are getting restless.”
“We heard them that night too,” Tabitha said. “We call them the Guardians. They had never come out until that night. During all the months we spent preparing to reopen the motel, the desert was silent. The mountain—”
As if it heard its name, the mountain moaned.
“That night in ’55, the mountain grew noisome too.
The sounds outside were… awful. Thomas and I were terrified.
We thought my father and The Chief had acted too late.
That the seal had already broken. It sounded like the world was ending.
But then, a little after four o’clock, between one moment and the next, things just…
broke off. I don’t know how else to explain it.
We didn’t remember falling asleep, but we woke up in our beds.
It was morning. Everything was quiet. Normal.
Except we were the only two people here. ”
“Nine empty rooms,” Ethan said. “Twelve cold beds.”
“I think that’s how it looked from the outside, yes, back in ’55.
Thomas and I didn’t know yet, but we’d awoken today.
Now. In your time. We didn’t know, that first morning, how many decades had passed while we were asleep.
We found the motel just as we’d left it the day before, like it had been preserved in amber.
Only a few things were different. We found a letter and a pair of stone eggs in the office.
They were—they were the only real clue Father left us. ”
Tabitha faltered there at the end. Ethan knew, in an instant, there was something she’d chosen not to tell them.
Seemingly trying to cover the slip, Tabitha reached into her pocket and pulled free the folded piece of paper she’d taken earlier from her room.
She unfolded the paper and passed it to Ethan, who laid it out on the bar between Kyla and himself.
The writing was sloppy, clearly done in a rush, and the pain in Ethan’s head made deciphering it almost impossible.
Kyla did the honors. She read aloud,
“ ‘T and T. If you’re reading this, the ceremony has failed. I’m sorry I didn’t explain more—no time for it at this point.
You two are now the stewards of this place.
If we’re lucky, someone will come today, someone who has been brought here to continue the ceremony, and you must help them in whatever way they ask.
In the meantime, you must prepare this place.
Clean out the rooms and the luggage. Use the gas we set aside to fuel up the cars left behind by last night’s guests and drive them around the mountain, out of view.
Be prepared. Things will probably be uglier for you than they were for us.
That’s entropy. But everything depends on you.
Maybe life itself. Don’t give anyone a chance to escape.
Don’t deviate from any instructions you are given.
And if you awaken tomorrow and things are the same, then that means the ceremony has succeeded.
Life is safe.’ ” The next part was underlined.
“ ‘If that’s happened, you must repeat everything you did the night before. Repeat every moment as perfectly as you can. You CANNOT risk letting it break.’ ”
Ryan said, “The person who came today to repeat the ceremony—that was Sarah Powers, wasn’t it?”
Tabitha nodded. “Yes. Sarah came in the early afternoon, though she didn’t tell us much either.
I think she was terrified. We all were. All Sarah wanted was a dinner plate and a box of matches, and she asked that I bring her some food around eight o’clock.
Then she went to the old house out back.
She was there until five thirty, when Mister Cross and Hunter walked in from the road.
” Tabitha looked between Ethan and Kyla.
“That first night, and all the nights that followed, you two never met, not really. In all the original nights, Miss Hewitt and Fernanda arrived in their Malibu and shut themselves up inside their room. Mister Cross and Hunter came much later and did the same. Everyone came running when I found the body and lost my head. Everyone came to the office, and Thomas and I—we made a rash decision.”
Ryan said, “Y’all wanted to find out who killed her. You made up some bullshit story about having a place to hide when really you just wanted revenge. Or at least some sort of satisfaction.”
Of all things, Tabitha smiled. It was clearly a relief, after God knew how long, to come clean.
“Yes. In many ways, it was Thomas’s idea.
He was indignant. A crime had been committed on our land.
I was just frightened. I thought that with Sarah dead, the ceremony would never take place.
I thought we’d failed. That none of it mattered because the world would end that night.
So Thomas decided we should get revenge, like you say.
He wanted to torment the killer. Scare them.
We invented the ultimatum about having a place of safety, for all the good it did us.
That first night and the nights that followed, nothing seemed to change.
You all did the rational thing and barricaded yourselves in your rooms.” Tabitha hesitated. “For all the good it did you.”
Kyla said, “Jack Allen came that night, didn’t he? At midnight on the dot?”
“Yes. Originally, I think Thomas came up with the idea of making midnight the ultimatum’s deadline out of a…
a dramatic flourish. Something to unsettle you all.
Unnerve you. We had no idea that Jack Allen would come that night.
We had no idea how he could have come, seeing as we’d left him in 1955.
And even though he hadn’t aged more than a day in the intervening years, something had happened to him. He was different. He’d gone mad.”
“And he killed everyone when he got here,” Kyla said. “Just like he did last night.”
“I’m not sure.” Tabitha swallowed. “Thomas and I were the first to go.”
The light flickered over their heads again. Once more, at the edge of his vision, Ethan imagined he saw the shape of a man watching him from the cafe’s window.
He refused to look.
Kyla said, “But why? What does Jack Allen gain from killing all of us?”
“I don’t know. Truly. Just like I don’t know how he went from 1955 to now without aging a day. But he’s come every night since, at midnight on the dot. And just like us, he’s done the same thing over and over and over again.”
“Because of this letter from your dad,” Kyla said. “Even though it means you and your brother had to die every night, you’ve repeated everything as precisely as you can.”
“Yes. Something about it clearly worked. We awoke the next day and found the motel just the same. And so we did it again. And again. And again.” Tabitha swallowed as another moan shook the cafe.
“We went rather out of our heads for a while there, I think. Even with all the blood, it seemed like the right course of action. Look at what Father wrote at the bottom of the page.”
Ethan and Kyla scanned the letter again. There, written in a cramped hand near the bottom corner, was a short line, written even faster than the rest.
Kyla read it aloud, “ ‘Remember: death sustains it.’ ”
Ethan went very still. Ryan rose from his stool, anxious like a schoolboy stuck too long at a desk. He said, “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“That line is the great point of contention between my brother and myself. Thomas believes ‘it’ refers to ceremony. He thinks that the death—all of this death, from Sarah to us, and yourselves—he believes it necessary to sustain the ceremony. Thomas thinks that Sarah Powers isn’t the person Father referred to in his letter, the person who will come to continue the ceremony.
Thomas thinks the person responsible for continuing the loop, perpetuating the ceremony—he thinks Father was referring to Jack Allen himself. ”
“But that’s crazy,” Kyla said.
“Is it?” Tabitha said. “Something clearly worked that first night. And whatever our disagreements, Thomas and I do concur on one point: this cycle, this horrible night that repeats again and again, is serving to keep Te’lo’hi sealed away.”
“So where’s the contention?” Ethan said.
“ ‘Death sustains it.’ I don’t believe Father’s last line is an instruction.
I think it’s a warning.” Tabitha looked at the letter herself.
“These last few nights, I’ve come to fear that ‘it’ refers not to the ceremony, but to Te’lo’hi.
I don’t think Jack Allen is a component of the ceremony: I think he’s a scourge.
A danger. He seems to have devices of his own, and he’s clearly insane.
I fear that death—all of this death, this endless violence—might be somehow feeding Te’lo’hi, night after night.
And I think it’s working. The ceremony is breaking down.
Te’lo’hi is gaining the power to resist it. ”
“Like the crack in our bathroom’s mirror,” Kyla said.
“Yes. And the sheer fact that you’ve remembered last night—that’s never happened before.
I’m afraid Te’lo’hi is growing stronger with every night of slaughter.
And the longer we let the cycle of carnage repeat, it will simply continue to grow stronger until it’s able to break the ceremony entirely. ”
“So we need to figure out a way to stop the violence,” Kyla said.
Ethan stared at the wall of liquor behind Tabitha, not seeing it. He felt something stir at the bottom of his mind. He saw a flash of silver light. For a moment, the pain in his head abated.
He recalled—
he recalls the feeling of a wooden floor beneath his knees. Recalls the sensation of a sleeve against the back of his neck. He recalls that man, Jack Allen, staring with him at the thing concealed under the sheet.
He recalls Jack Allen saying,
Everything proceeds from her death. Like a river from a wound in the earth.
Ethan said, “I think I remember something from last night. Something Jack Allen told me before the end.”
As Ethan spoke, Fernanda reached down the counter, past Kyla and Ethan, to pluck up Ryan’s empty shot glass. No one paid her much mind.
“I don’t know what the ceremony is or how it works. But Sarah Powers is still the key. Her death is the source of everything.”
“Meaning what?” Ryan said.
“Meaning that maybe the twins were onto something in the first place when they made their BS ultimatum. If we could figure out who killed Sarah, maybe we could stop the ceremony from starting in the first place. I—what’s wrong?”
Fernanda had stiffened. Ethan turned and saw that she was staring at the film in her hand through the bottom of the shot glass.
When he leaned over to see what it was she’d found there, Fernanda lowered her hands.
She stood, stuffing the film in her pocket.
To Kyla, she said, “Where is the other roll of film? The one stolen from Sarah’s room? ”
“Ask him,” Kyla said, nodding to Ryan. “What’s the matter?”
“We might have time to develop it if we’re quick. I need to see what Sarah saw.”
Ryan clearly had his own misgivings. “That roll of film is in the supply closet. I’ll go with you. Stanley’s in there too—I don’t want him trying anything funny. Just… don’t get your hopes up.”
Ethan said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ll explain later. I need to check on Stanley anyway. He’s a crafty bastard—I didn’t mean to leave him alone for this long.”
The lights of the cafe stuttered, briefly threatening to go down. They survived, but the warning was obvious.
Ethan said, “Be careful. We don’t know how long the generator will last.”
Ryan plucked up Stanley’s Desert Eagle. He checked the magazine, motioned for Fernanda, started for the door. “We’ll be right back.”
Kyla shook her head. “We’ll be fine here. Take the film straight to Sarah’s room—there’s chemicals in her bathtub, you can use them to develop the negatives. Just hurry.”
Fernanda said nothing. She picked up the other handgun and stuffed it down the waistband of her jeans. She had her head down, her hands in her pockets, the amber thread of film jutting from near her wrist.
Ethan said to Tabitha. “Didn’t you say that the first night, the night in ’55, ended a little after four o’clock?”
“Yes.”
He looked at his watch, the clock above the bar. The time was already 2:37.