21. Nightmare in the Making
TWENTY-ONE
Nightmare in the Making
TARA
Tara stuck the lease agreement in an envelope along with a note asking for it to be signed and returned with the next rent payment. Grabbing the keys, she walked out the bookstore’s back door to explore. She hadn’t thought about going upstairs since she came home and probably hadn’t even been there since she ran around up there with her brothers and sister as a little kid. By the time she reached middle school it seemed too dirty, so she didn’t bother.
The Hyler building was originally built as a hotel and restaurant. It had a small handful of rooms on the first floor and eighteen hotel rooms each on the second and third floors: eight on each side splitting evenly between front and rear-facing rooms. In addition, each floor had two suites facing the square for the especially well-off guests. What was once a large garden and excessively large homes in the back was now an alley leading back through small plots for gorgeous old Victorian homes in various stages of upkeep.
Old pictures of the grand wooden staircase showed a wide, stately staircase centered in the back of the building that split halfway to go both left and right to each subsequent floor. After World War II, one side of the curved double staircase was removed in favor of adding a small elevator and a wider opening to the back alley for receiving deliveries. Tara loved that at least some of the original stairs remained. She ran her hands along the smooth, well-loved banister as she stepped up to the second floor.
When Tara’s great-grandfather bought the building, he converted half of the original hotel rooms above street level into a mix of office and storage space. Her grandfather made no changes when he took it over in the 1980s, beyond accumulating a lot more junk and turning part of the street-level space into a small arcade. His need for more storage outgrew his need for office space which left only half of the second and third floors available for office rentals.
When her parents took it over in the late 1990s, they converted the arcade back into additional retail space starting a long line of clothing boutiques that took up one half of the ground floor. While not as popular with the local kids, it made it a far more profitable venture. Her parents also actively sought business tenants for half the building as an additional source of income but only dabbled in converting the other half to apartments, relegating them to more of a wish than a reality. With only one completed apartment to date, most of had yet to even be started. The unconverted rooms that remained had years of dust and bathrooms with long-unused plumbing that would be a bear to fix up.
Smaller stairways provided exits at each end of the hall. Tara figured they were most likely used for housekeeping and other hotel employees when the building first started as a hotel so they could come and go unseen by the well-to-do guests who stayed there.
Starting at the end of the hall, she inspected one abandoned room after another, unlocking and opening the old wooden doors with frosted glass windows that reminded her of something seen in an old film noir as if she were Mary Astor visiting Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon . Seeing nothing of note beyond musty old chairs or empty metal file cabinets left there since long before Tara and her siblings were born, she closed and locked each door before moving on to the next.
Crossing to the side of the hallway closest to the front of the building and above the bookshop itself, Tara struggled to find the right key for the lone, windowless door. After a few unsuccessful attempts, she unlocked the door and stepped inside the next room. The whoosh of the opening door blew a colorful pamphlet onto the floor.
“Oops,” she exclaimed out loud when she found herself inside the two-bedroom apartment her parents rented out to the as-yet unknown tenant.
Inside, dirty clothes covered the couch and the sink was full of dishes. An old pizza box sat on the coffee table. Apparently housekeeping wasn’t a skill their tenant possessed. As long as he paid the rent, she didn’t much care.
“Sorry,” she said to no one in particular as she leaned down to pick up the pamphlet and replaced it on the narrow table against the wall. She paused long enough to catch the words on the front: Delaware County Rehabilitation Center. The first letter of each word was bolded in a bright orange color. She raised her head and allowed her eyes to dart back and forth. “Right.”
She did a quick about-face that would have made her Navy siblings proud and scampered out the way she came in. She rushed to lock the door and stepped backward until she hit the opposite wall. With a yelp, she raised her hand to her chest and closed her eyes to catch her breath.
“Shit!”
No one was in there, but she hated to intrude. “Note to self, Tara. Add an apartment number to the door.”
Tara wedged the envelope with the rental agreement in the doorframe and continued her adventure on the opposite end of the hall. A few offices on the opposite side were being rented right now, so she left those alone, but the rest were empty. Most new businesses were moving to the larger city of Delaware, Ohio, or they opted to set up on the north side of Columbus near the ever-sprawling Polaris Towne Center or even at Easton on the east side. Her parents had advertised for longer-term tenants but hadn’t yet landed any takers beyond three-to-six-month office rentals. They took them, of course, since it was a great source of income, but they hoped for something more reliable. They needed a local business owner.
Tara made a mental note to work on that while she was in town.
Wandering up to the third floor, she found the key to the lock on the first door. The door creaked as she pushed it inward. As soon as it opened, she let out a scream and stumbled backward. The key ring crashed to the floor, metal clanging against the hardwood with an echo that reverberated throughout the length of the hall.
Her fingers fumbled to grab the doorknob and slam it shut. “Oh my god!”
She placed her hand against her chest for the few long moments it took her to control her breathing and lower her heart rate. She looked left and right to make sure no one saw her. Probably a silly thought, considering all the rooms on this floor were currently vacant.
She licked her lips and glared at the room she’d just entered.
Well. Almost entered.
She steeled herself for the horror movie that lay in wait beyond the door that still had Nathaniel Gardner, Notary Public, etched in the frosted glass.
Pulling her shoulders back, she lifted her chin and reopened the door to come face to face with a roomful of mannequins left behind by the various clothing stores that had occupied the street-level retail space over the years. Many of them were stained yellow with cracks like jagged lightning bolts shooting down faces and torsos. Many were missing limbs and most stared right at her.
All of them were beyond creepy.
She swallowed hard. “Nuh… uh.”
Needing to escape from the nightmare that was the third floor, Tara shook her head and backed away slowly, grateful she decided to explore in the daylight.
Across the hall, Tara jiggled the last possible key on the ring to unlock the final room upstairs. Located directly above the two-bedroom apartment, she turned the doorknob but it was stuck. With her hip, she leaned in to give it a careful push so as not to break the glass. The door opened and she stepped into a large room that was full of, well, everything. A quick survey of the space confirmed it was four former hotel rooms’ worth of everything amazing and wonderful. Her grin widened as she took it all in.
“Jackpot.”