Part Nine – Night Terrors
Holding the towel tight on my wrist I went down the steps of the grand staircase as fast as I could without passing out. At the bottom of the staircase I turned right toward the front desk. Standing in front of the desk, talking to the clerk, was the janitor I had seen yesterday. He held a mop and next to him was a pail of dirty mop water. I could smell the mop water, it smelled of old dirty wax. A little like the Mop and Glow, I used to use on my first job. When I was in eighth grade I helped a barber friend clean his shop every weekend. Moping the floor with Mop and Glow was one of my jobs. As I approached the desk, the janitor backed away from the counter and nearly fell over the pail.
I turned toward the clerk and told him that I needed help. The clerk came from behind the counter and he and the janitor helped me to one of the overstuffed chairs by the fire.
“I’m in room 202.” I explained sinking into the chair. “I have just been attacked by a dog.”
The clerk glanced at the towel covering my wrist. The janitor grabbed a filthy rag from his back pocket and started wiping his hands. Then he reached for my arm with his dirty hands. I turned away from him so he could not touch my arm. “I think you might want to call an ambulance.” I managed to say, through the pain. I removed the one of towels from my wrist, there was no blood. I removed the other towel, still no blood. Both towels were dry. My vision started to blur as I looked down at my wrist.
When I woke up a few hours later I was laying on a cot in the room behind the check in desk. The room looked like it was the place the clerk settled when there was nothing to do. There was a chair, a couple of lockers, and a small television in the corner of the room. There was an infomercial on the TV, talking about some special type of green frying pan. The clerk and the janitor were standing over me.
“How are you feeling bud?” the clerk asked. I could tell he was high. He sounded vaguely like the Sean Penn character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
“You gave us quite a stir.” Said the Janitor.
I held up my left wrist and looked at it closely. There was nothing there. No bite marks, no puncture wounds, not even a scratch. “What the fuck?” I said under my breath. I remembered the pain quite clearly. I propped myself up on an elbow, still staring at my left wrist. I finally pushed myself up into a sitting position on the edge of the cot. A cold wet rag fell from my forehead, into my lap. I held my left wrist up again. Convincing myself that there was nothing there, I stood up, still a bit shaky I asked, “What time is it?”
The clerk looked at his watch and said, “It’s uh…six o’clock.” He said it like he was trying to convince himself that it was really six o’clock. “Hey man.” He slurred, “Do I still need to call an ambulance?”
“Maybe for yourself.” I thought, and then “No, no ambulance needed, I guess.” My mind was spinning and I just could not believe I had dreamt the whole encounter. “No such thing as ghosts.” I said to myself, “There must be another explanation.”
“For what son?” The janitor asked. I looked at the janitor and wondered why he was calling me son. He couldn’t have been much older than I was.
“Never mind.” I said. “You guys just forget the whole thing. I must be out of it.”
“No problem.” Said the clerk, “It’s forgotten.”
“Sure.” Said the janitor. “You must have been dreaming. You know my uncle killed his first wife while he was sleeping.”
I looked at him, confused.
“Yep, stabbed her in his sleep. Got off too.” He added. “Said it was something called Night Terrors. He’s dead now.” His voice trailing off, loosing himself in a thought. “Yep, dreamed the whole thing.”
He took his dirty rag out of his back pocket and began wiping his hands again. “I’m going to head back to my room.” I told them. “Thanks for taking care of me guys.”
They both followed me out of the room and into the lobby. “Man, you take it easy.” Said the janitor, still wiping his hands. “Them night terrors ain’t nothing to play with.” I did not turn around, but kept walking. Before I knew it, I had passed the grand staircase and had walked all the way to the other side of the room. I was standing at the entrance of the grand ballroom. I stared blankly at the grand piano sitting on a small stage at the far side of the room. As I turned back to the grand staircase, I saw a poster on the open door of the ballroom. Séance Tonight, it read. Grand Ballroom, Main Lobby. Twenty-five dollars. Come join us for Sir Ivan Geoffrey, Medium. The show starts at 9:00. The lettering of the poster was meant to signify something spooky. It looked like a poster for a cheesy horror movie. In the middle of the poster, a tall, heavy set man, with a handlebar moustache was striking a magician pose. I walked back to my room in a trance.
The bed had obviously been slept in, other than that there was nothing out of place in the room. Not a drop of blood anywhere to be found. Nothing had been disturbed. I heard water running, at first I thought it was coming from the waterfall outside my window. I walked into the bathroom. Except for the missing towels nothing in the bathroom was out of place. I turned the water off and walked back toward the bed scanning the room for my wire hanger weapon. It was gone. I smelled that dirty mop water in the janitor’s pail. The smell made me dizzy, I fell on the bed and passed out.
I woke up at noon and spent the rest of the day in my room. I forgot all about my reservations for the Rocky Mountain Rush tour. The phone rang several times during the day and I remember hearing someone knocking on the door. It all sounded like background noise to me. Like It was off somewhere in the far distance. I was busy searching for answers on my laptop.
Night Terrors is a sleep disorder. According to several web sites, this disorder is more common in children than adults. It seemed like Night Terrors occurred because of a disruption in REM, Rapid Eye Movement, sleep. Night Terrors can cause a person to be inconsolable, like they are having a panic attack.
This did not feel like what I was experiencing, it was close, but not an exact fit. Researching Night Terrors, led me to two more disorders called parasomnia and somnambulism. In layman’s terms this is unusual movement during sleep and sleep walking. In adults, alcohol, sedatives, and other medications can also cause sleep walking. My mind immediately went to Vicodin. Were these pills causing me to have nightmares and walk around in my sleep? I was not convinced, but thought about the three missing pills.
It was seven o’clock when I finally closed my laptop. My eyes were tired from staring at the computer screen. I got up, took a shower, and dressed. My mind drifting to the visit by Amber and thinking that she must have been trying to get back at her husband. She was much too young and way out of my league. Even so, the slow creep of hope tried to crawl into my brain. “Hope is for the young.” I told myself.
Soon after my shower there was another knock on the door. I went to the door, it was Amber. She did not look happy.
I opened the door. She looked like she had been crying. “Hey Amber.” I said. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been cooped up in here all day.”
“Can I come in?” She asked. I knew she must have been really upset, because normally she would have just walked in the room without an invitation.
“Of course, you can.” I said. “I’m really glad you’re here.”
“Are you?” she asked. “Really?”
“Yes, I am.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her into the room. Forgetting everything I had decided in the shower, I kissed her.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you all day.” She said. “I had to go on that stupid tour alone. For some reason, I thought you would be there with me.”
“I have a confession.” I said, “I did reschedule the tour, same as you did. It’s just that something happened last night that kind of freaked me out.” She looked dejected. “Not you, Amber, that was great.”
She smiled, “Then what?”
I told her all about the sound under the bed, the dog attack, and the disappearance of the wound on my wrist. She listened in silence and did not respond right away.
“You think you have this sleep disorder called Night Terror?” she asked
“Not exactly.” I said. “But close. Look.” I opened my laptop and went to the web page about sleepwalking. She dropped her purse on the bed and read for a few minutes.
“It makes sense. But somehow I get the feeling that this is not quite it.” She finally said. “On Trail Ridge Road, you saw that white dog while you were wide awake.
“I know.” I said, “There has to be some sort of explanation, and right now this is the best fit.”
She stared off across the room, lost in thought. I noticed her eyes had locked in on something. On the bathroom counter was the action camera I had strapped to my Jeep. “Did you look at the video?” She asked.
“I can’t find the SD card.” I said “I’ve been looking for it all day. It’s not in the camera or the laptop.”
“Did you look under the bed?” She asked.
“Only place I didn’t look.” I said. “I couldn’t bring myself to look under there again.”
She had been sitting on the edge of the bed and suddenly dropped down and disappeared under the bed. “Careful.” I said, nervously.
She was under the bed for nearly a minute.
“Gross.” She said, and then “Got it!”
She crawled from under the bed and sat on the bet next to me. She looked a little disheveled and had a few random dust bunnies stuck in her hair. I picked them out of her hair as she said. “Ok, number one, what is that sticky stuff under the bed?” She asked as she held up her left arm. She had a foamy yellow substance on her forearm.
I went to the bathroom to get a wet washcloth. As I walked back to wipe her arm and she added. “Number two, what are those scratches under the bed? And don’t tell me it was a rat. There has never been a rat that big. I wiped the slobber off her arm. “And third, what’s on this SD card?” She held up the SD card and blew off the dust.
“I’ll show you.” I said as I took the SD card and placed it in the laptop, remembering that I had already downloaded the file, making Amber’s trip under the bed unnecessary.
I fast forwarded the video to the teenagers and their peace sign, and then slowed the video down. I could see her large eyes widen as she saw the white shape cross the road in front of the Jeep.
“Wait, back it up a minute.” She said. “Try to pause it when I tell you.”
I backed the video up and pressed play again. When the edge of the white blur hit the right edge of the screen, she yelled, “Pause it!” I pressed the pause button and the white blur was captured perfectly in the middle of the screen.
“That’s you’re fucking white poodle, right there!” covered her mouth with one hand and pointed at the screen with the other. How did I not see that?” her words were muffled by her hand.
She got up from the bed and began pacing the room, shaking her arms at her side. “This is freaking me out, Ken.” She said nervously, “This has nothing to do with some bullshit dream problem.”
She turned the laptop around so she could see the screen again.
“It does look like some sort of animal.” I said. “I thought maybe a Bighorn sheep?”
“Bullshit.” She said. “That’s a white fucking poodle. The sooner you wrap your head around it, the sooner we can try to figure this freaky shit out.”
I had not heard her curse this much. I guessed she cursed a lot when she got excited. In a way, I thought it was cute, like when my daughter first said “Shit.” She was three, we were in McDonalds and they had forgotten to give her a Happy Meal toy.
Amber’s pointed to the picture of the two ladies walking the white poodle. “Has this always been here?” She asked.
“It was here when I checked in.” I said.
“This is not a coincidence, Kenneth.” She said firmly. She was lost in thought and then, “When I came back from the tour I noticed them setting up for some sort of show in the grand ballroom. Some guy called, Sir Geoffrey. Let’s try to talk to him before the show tonight.”
I chuckled at the silly thought. “Sure thing, Ambrosia.” I said, in a poor attempt to counter the motherly “Kenneth”.
She pulled my Vicodin bottle from the front pocket of her jeans and placed it back on the nightstand. “Just remember, honey”, she said in her Texas twang. “These things will kill you faster than a rabid poodle.” She said nervously laughing with me.
We had an hour to kill before the show. Amber kicked her shoes off, slid back on the bed and held her arms out toward me. I went to her, kissing her hard on the mouth. She gently pushed me away. “I’m going to need you for longer than an hour, big fella.” I rolled next to her and as she raised her head I instinctively put my arm underneath her. We laid there in silence for nearly an hour. I kept thinking about that yellow slobber on Amber’s arm.
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