25. Aspen
ASPEN
I can’t sleep again.
I’ve been tossing and turning for hours now.
I’m scared that if I fall asleep, I’m going to find myself right back in that maze, lost again, with the certainty that someone is following me.
I hate questioning my own version of events.
I’d been so sure someone had been with me, but now that I look back on it, I’m wondering how it can be true. I’d have seen them, wouldn’t I?
I let out a deep sigh and roll back over in bed, throwing my arms out to either side. This feels utterly hopeless. What’s the point in just lying here when I know I’m not going to sleep?
I remember when I’d been a small child and hadn’t been able to sleep. My dad had always warmed some milk for me, and drinking it had sent me off to the land of nod. I don’t know if it was the warmth, or having something in my stomach, or just the comforting routine of it, but it had always worked.
Blake told me to treat this place as my own, so I’m sure he won’t mind me going downstairs to make myself some warm milk, even if it is—I check the time on my cell phone—almost half past two in the morning. I’ll be quiet, so I won’t disturb anyone.
I slip out of bed and grab a zip-up hoody from the back of the occasional chair. I already have some loose pajama pants on and a camisole, so I’m decent.
Stepping out into the hallway, I strain my ears for any sign that I’m not the only one awake at this time, but there’s no other sound.
I tiptoe down the length of the hallway, past all the closed bedroom doors.
Knowing almost all of the rooms are empty behind those doors feels spookier than if they’d contained people.
I reach the top of the stairs and run my hand down the dark wood handrailing. An ornate chandelier hangs from the ceiling, suspended over the stairwell.
Maybe I should turn on a light, but I don’t want to disturb anyone. There’s enough moonlight coming through the tall, vaulted windows to ensure I’m not going to fall down the stairs and break my neck.
At the bottom of the staircase, I cross the hall to the door on the other side.
Though most of the renovations on this wing have been completed, there’s still work going on in the entrance hall.
There’s plaster drying, and a stepladder, and plastic sheeting hung to protect the woodwork and tiled floors for when it’s eventually painted.
I scoot past it all, careful not to knock anything over, and head into the kitchen. I take a gallon of milk from the refrigerator and open some cupboards for a mug and a saucepan.
After pouring the milk into the pan and lighting one of the rings on the stove, I stand with my hands held out, appreciating the warmth.
I stare out of the window, but it’s dark out there.
I suddenly become aware of the vastness of the space on the other side of these walls, and just how isolated we are.
Anyone or anything could be out there, and I’d never know about it.
A shudder wracks through me, and I huddle deeper into my hoodie. I’m starting to wish I’d stayed in bed.
Steam rises off the pan, and I turn off the heat. I don’t want the milk to boil. I carefully decant it into a mug and rinse out the saucepan.
With the mug clutched between both hands, I leave the kitchen, eager to get back into bed. The heat from the drink warms my palms, but I’d swear the temperature has dropped.
I pass the open doorway to the dining room but don’t turn my head, focusing only on the space directly ahead, as though I’m frightened of what I might see.
I’ve got the horrible sensation that I’d find someone—or perhaps more than one person—sitting at the table, waiting to be served a meal that will never come.
The old inhabitants of the hotel, perhaps, still in their old-fashioned clothing, only now they’d be pale and ghostly.
Watching me.
I hurry past.
The tiled floor of the entrance hall is icy beneath my bare feet, and clouds of my breath form moisture particles that cling to the air.
My skin prickles with goosebumps, and I suddenly find myself filled with a sense of irrational fear, like when I was a child and had jumped from my bedroom doorway to my bed to stop something reaching out from beneath it to grab my ankle.
My heart is beating too fast, and I resist the urge to toss my warm milk and just run.
The protective plastic sheeting hangs in swathes like a macabre version of white fabric draping at a wedding venue. It catches the beams of moonlight glancing in from the tall windows above the front doors.
From behind the plastic, there’s the movement of a shadow, a form that I’m sure is in the shape of a man. I let out a panicked cry, and my heart kicks up a gear.
People always used to say there were two forms of fear response—fight or flight. But there’s a third, freeze. That’s what I do now, my bare feet seeming to glue to the floor, every muscle in my body growing rigid as I stare at the spot where I’d seen the movement.
It’s just a trick of the light, the way the moonlight filters in from the high windows. There’s no way someone is standing, hidden among the folds of plastic, watching… waiting. What possible reason could they have for being there?
My fingers tighten around my mug of warm milk—
Movement explodes in a sudden flurry, and something bursts out from behind the plastic sheet.
I scream and jolt back, dropping my mug. It smashes on the floor, hot milk and porcelain shards flying everywhere. My spine hits another of the hanging plastic sheets, and my feet tangle in it. I lose my balance, falling backward and dragging the sheet down with me.
Another scream rips from my throat, panic completely overwhelming me now.
All around me is movement, flapping and whipping the plastic as though it’s caught in a high wind.
I raise my hands, frantically trying to ward the person off, terrified I’m about to be smothered—whether it be on purpose or by accident.
It’s all looming shadows and menacing shapes.
“Pen? Aspen?”
Blake’s voice cuts through my panic.
It’s him, leaning over me, pulling at the plastic sheet threatening to smother me. Had it been him all along? No, I’m sure it was someone else—something else. I’d sensed the malevolence coming from it.
“There!” I cry. “Someone was over there! Standing in the corner behind that sheeting. They tried to attack me.”
“What are you talking about, Pen? No one is there.”
My heart is hammering, and I struggle to catch my breath. I’m shaking all over. I lift my trembling hand and point in the direction the person had come from.
“They were in that corner. They must have run away.”
Tears create a sheen over my vision.
“There’s no one there. I swear to you. Look.”
I’m terrified for him. It’s not that Blake isn’t perfectly capable of defending himself—he’s built like a man mountain—but something tells me that muscle alone won’t be able to fight whatever was waiting for me.
He pulls back the sheets with a rustle of plastic, revealing the half-plastered wall behind. “See. Nothing here.”
I stare around, trying to figure out what other hiding space they might have picked.
“They wouldn’t still be there,” I insist. “They rushed out toward me. It’s the reason I fell over and dropped my cup.”
“It was probably a bat or a crow. Sometimes they find their way inside the building. It was probably roosting and you disturbed it.”
Was that really possible? I cling to the idea that my fear can be explained away so easily. I was sure the shape had been far bigger, but it could have been a trick of the light. If the creature’s wings had caught the plastic sheeting, surely that would have made it seem much larger.
Something on the floor catches my eye. Still shaking, I bend and pick it up. I hold it between my thumb and index fingers, pinched, as though it’s something distasteful. It trembles in my grip.
I have to speak past the knot of fear in my throat. “What is this?”
Blake frowns at the little doll made from sticks and twine that I’m holding. “It’s a little stick figure.”
“I can see that. What is it doing here?”
His dark eyebrows draw together. “I have no idea.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve never seen one before. One was left on my nightstand, and then outside of my bedroom door, and now there’s this one, right here on the floor. Who makes them?” My tone is demanding now, interrogating him.
“How the hell should I know?”
“Is it you? Have you been leaving them for me?”
His eyes widen in surprise right before his jaw ticks. “What the hell would I have to do with a stick doll?”
Did he drop one just now to mess with me? God, had it been him behind the plastic sheeting? Why would he do that? He’s been nothing but welcoming to me ever since he came back into my life the day of my father’s funeral. He’d given me a home. Why would he try to chase me out of it again?
No, I tell myself, it’s far more likely to be Levi who is screwing with me.
I wave the stick doll in Blake’s direction. “Someone made this. Is it Levi?”
Blake at least has the courtesy to consider my question despite the fact he must be pissed at me accusing both him and his son. He pauses for a moment, biting at the inside of his lower lip before he speaks.
“I’ve never known Levi to make stick dolls before, but I guess it’s possible. Or maybe one of the contractors dropped it sometime. I don’t really see why this is such a big deal, Aspen. It’s just a bunch of sticks.”
“One of the contractors?” I can hardly believe he’s made that suggestion.
“Aside from the fact I haven’t even seen a contractor around here, would they have really left one in my room, on my pillow?
I found one outside my bedroom door, too.
Someone put them there as a gift to me, and now I find one here, too.
You say whatever I saw wasn’t a person, that it was a bat or a crow, but bats and crows don’t make these things, do they? People make them!”