Chapter 9
CHAPTER
NINE
He woke to a ringing phone and a splitting headache.
Groping blindly for the receiver, he mumbled, “What day is it?”
“Wake up, motherfucker!” cried Boris, undeterred. “And, uh, it’s the seventeenth? Yup, the seventeenth. Tuesday.”
Jack let out a sigh—of relief or exasperation, he couldn’t say. “Thanks.”
“Yeah, yeah.” A click, a dial tone.
Jack brushed his fingers over his lip, along his front teeth.
“Thank fuck,” he groaned, hardly daring to believe it. His head felt as if it might explode, but his teeth had returned and his nose had regained its structure.
He did not rise from bed until well into the afternoon, when the sun streamed through the velvet curtains and heated the room until it became unbearably hot and humid.
Head pounding, he filled the ice bucket again and spent the rest of the afternoon sucking on ice chips, watching reruns of an old show called Staring Down the Barrel.
A gruff, cigar smoking detective named Buck and his grouchy but sensual assistant, Nora, solved crimes in a gritty, downtrodden city.
It wasn’t terrible, Jack decided. A bit dramatic and too on-the-nose, but the characters were interesting.
Every episode had a twist ending, so he was never bored, even when he’d settled into the rhythm.
Nora was as gutsy as she was beautiful and Jack rather enjoyed watching her move across the screen, graceful and deadly as a lioness, gun in hand.
Conversely, he enjoyed Buck’s analytic prowess, his sharp, biting humor.
By the time the sun set behind the trees, Jack’s stomach growled mercilessly, so he dragged himself to the gas station, change rattling in his pocket.
It took great deal of effort to change into his suit.
He didn’t bother to shave and found himself on the receiving end of a few critical and pointed stares.
He may as well have gone out in his pajamas. What did it matter? At least he’d be comfortable while other people judged him.
Buck Hawthorne doesn’t need to shave to solve mysteries, thought Jack listlessly as he paid for what felt like his umpteenth hot dog. So why should I?
Because that was what he was doing, he realized. The bright lights of the gas station grew sharper, more vivid. His mind raced and his heart pounded. The hot dog nearly slipped from his fingertips.
He was solving a mystery.
The hotel was empty at night. No patrons slamming doors, demanding new towels, or complaining of lost keys. Boris sat at the desk, alternating between naps and magazines. Jack roamed up and down the halls, watching for anything unusual. Anything that might shed light on his plight.
Though he was quite convinced that the hotel was not the problem, it seemed a logical place to start. At any rate, there was nowhere else for him to go tonight, so he might as well do a little investigating.
Jack wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Doubted it would be anything obvious, but he had to try.
After all, there was nothing else to do but while away the days until the eighteenth. Until the clerk decided to accept his train ticket. Until, until, until…
Drifting up and down the hallways like a specter, Jack glimpsed the shadows in his peripheral vision, mistook them for darting cats, and felt a sharp pang. He’d never been apart from Rainy for so long. Did she know that he hadn’t been home? Was she stuck in this terrible loop, too?
For that was surely what this was. A time loop. The same day, over and over and over again.
And Jack had no idea how to escape.
He meandered through the halls, musing. Perhaps he could do something differently? But what? Without any idea what might’ve prompted the loop, he couldn’t possibly fathom how to end it.
Worse, it may not be under his control. If something external had triggered this, then there was nothing he could do.
No one else seemed to be aware of it. Not Dan, not Kathy, not his neighbor, and certainly not Boris, who would happily spend eternity flipping through magazines and drinking whisky out of a paper bag.
He wouldn’t even mind, thought Jack bitterly.
For all that Boris resented his job, he seemed content to sit behind the desk and wreak havoc.
Jack briefly considered that perhaps everyone else knew about the time loop, too, and were simply afraid to say anything.
But that was impossible. Dan ought to have remembered that the factory reported the audit complete, even if the information was gone the next day.
Kathy should have remembered talking to him on the phone.
No, even if they were deliberately misleading him, it would be too much trouble to keep the story straight. It would be far easier to fire him than to fuck with him like this. Getting so many other people involved—the train conductor, the clerk, Boris—would be next to impossible.
Even knowing this, the weight of paranoia settled upon his shoulders. Shadows shifted as he wandered the halls. He began to wonder if he was being watched.
Something pale and translucent drifted before him, gone in a blink. Jack bolted back to his room, the hair on the back of his neck prickling.
There was no reason to do the audit today.
No reason to go to the train station. After Boris confirmed that it was once again the seventeenth, Jack laid in bed a long while, watching shadows dance across the ceiling.
Eventually, the room grew hot and stuffy, so he dressed and made his way downstairs.
This time, he brought only his satchel, stuffed to the brim with his address book, date book, notepads, and extra pens. Satisfied that this was what Buck and Nora would’ve packed (minus a gun and lock-picking kit), he drifted through the lobby to the coffee machine.
“Nice purse,” said Boris, snorting.
Jack shrugged and poured himself a cup of coffee. He downed it quickly and scurried out the door before Boris could offer any more opinions.
The day passed slowly. Jack spent the morning examining the shops on the main strip, scribbling down their names and wares.
By tomorrow, the pages of his notebook would be clean once more, his blue chicken scratch erased.
But the act of writing was supposed to improve memory, so he meticulously documented everything. Maybe something would come in handy.
Three shopkeepers asked him how long he was staying. Two expressed disappointment at his short stay, while a third suggested he’d best get on with it, then.
By afternoon, he’d popped into every single shop on the main strip. He bought nothing, but knew the names of seven people, the personal business of three, and became intimately acquainted with the unreasonably high prices of To Wick Upon a Star.
Stuffed to the brim with books about Sasquatches, UFOs, malignant faeries, cannibals, and conspiracy theories, the bookshop was nearly unnavigable. The store owner glowered at him as he browsed and turned her nose up at any attempts at small talk. Jack left quickly.
He drifted past the quay, between warehouses and along the muddy back roads.
The ocean lapped against the docks. Gulls screeched and swarmed above him.
In the distance, nestled between the warehouses along the edge of the forest, was a cement building, square as a sugar cube.
Its walls were stained a deep, filthy grey, its solitary window boarded. The metal roof was rusting.
The urge to turn back overwhelmed him, almost like some kind of invisible force. He had to stop, breathe through it, force himself not to vomit.
With each step, his nausea worsened and his determination strengthened.
This was important, he concluded. It felt like someone (or something) didn’t want him getting any closer, but that couldn’t be true, could it?
Probably he was just sick. Regardless, he needed to know what was concealed within those cement walls.
Even if it kills me, he thought, pausing to inhale slowly, guts roiling. He doubled over, gagging.
“What the fuck?” he groaned, clutching his stomach, gasping.
The pain passed and he staggered onward.
A loud bang! echoed across the waterfront. Jack froze and turned slowly, half-expecting to see that a truck had crashed into a building, or a shipping container had dropped from a crane and onto the pavement, but there was no one around. Even the ever-present gulls had vanished from the sky.
Strange. Jack could’ve sworn that there were employees outside mere minutes ago. Heard their laughter and shouts over the wind roaring in his ears. They must’ve gone on break. There was only person nearby now; a beefy man in coveralls surrounded by a cloud of cigar smoke.
Jack returned his attention to the cement building, brow furrowing. A curious redness seeped beneath the door, dripped down into the grass.
He stared. That hadn’t been there before.
For one terrible moment, he was convinced it was blood. That someone inside had been shot, and he would be next.
But as he stood frozen, nothing happened. No shots rang out. No one fled through the single metal door.
The longer he stared at the stain on the ground, the more convinced he became that it wasn’t blood at all; just some strange, reddish liquid. Rust, perhaps?
No, the color was too dark. Jack frowned and stepped closer. Definitely not rust. But not blood, surely. Buildings didn’t bleed. Even if someone had been shot, it wouldn’t matter. Blood couldn’t leak under a reinforced steel door like that.
Could it?
Jack shuddered. Emboldened by curiosity, he approached the door and yanked hard on the handle.
It didn’t budge.
Of course not. Why would anything be so simple?
Jack scowled down at the lock.
A metallic screech. Something on the other side of the door crashed to the floor. Then silence.
Frozen and horrified, Jack waited, half-expecting the door to creak open, for some strange specter to beckon him inside. He thought of the translucent flash he’d seen in the hallway last night, and his stomach clenched. The muffin threatened a reappearance. He forced himself to stay calm.
Nothing happened. A gust of wind blew his hair away from his face, threatened to send his hat flying.
Jack all but ran from the quay.