I was doing ninety-something down I-15 when the woman in white stepped into view. One second, empty roadside desert stretched all around me, barren both of cities and of cars. Wind bore my convertible home down cracked asphalt, and speckled stars chased overhead.
The next, I slammed on the brakes, hard enough to fishtail across three empty lanes and send tire screeches shattering through the silent night. One wheel stopped inches from the hem of her dress, and I saw it flutter aside, drifting as though the fine fabric were underwater.
“Jesus Christ, la—” I snapped, only to be cut short by her smile.
“Why, I am so sorry to startle you,” she said, soft and liquid. She seemed unruffled by the near-fatal collision.
My mouth jumped into autopilot. I leaned over in my seat, putting an arm on the open window.
“Startled? Nah. Pretty thing like you couldn’t startle me.”
She chuckled, the sound like rain on a hot summer morning. White-gloved fingers brought one of those slender, fluted cigarette holders to her lips. Firelight played over her angular face in the dark.
“Flatterer,” she said. “You’ll get yourself in trouble.”
“Oh, I plan on it,” I answered. Whatever she was smoking, it wasn’t tobacco. But if it was pot, it was better stuff than I’d ever been lucky enough to try. “What’re you doing out here, anyway?”
Another puff of smoke, pluming from her nostrils as she answered. She pointed with the cigarette tip. “Car trouble. It’s the oddest little thing.”
I followed the glow, and only then did I start to wonder if I’d lost it. At the end of a long, black tire streak, a second car hung from the road. Two wheels vanished into a sandy ditch.
But that wasn’t the weird part.
See, I was a car guy. My silver Corvette was the reason I was married, and the reason I was bad at it. What could I do? The girls fawned over my car, and by extension, me. What happens in Vegas, right?
But I didn’t have to be a car guy to recognize that the Mercedes-Benz I was looking at was old. In great shape, mind you, but definitely vintage. With that gorgeous curved hood and bird-cage grille, it was the kind of car Marilyn would drive.
I eyed the woman in white again, took in her slim dress and pearl necklace. Out here, on a night like this, I could almost believe in ghosts. But this wasn’t Marilyn. Her hair was dark, not blond, and in the orange glow of her cigarette, her dusky gaze was almost violet.
“Want I should take a look?” I asked her, then smirked. “At the car, of course.”
She laughed again. “Oh, no. I can get it fixed, but I do so need a ride.”
“Sure,” I stepped out of my car, and circled around to get the other door. “Where to? Last town before the border is Primm. Then it’s all national park.”
She climbed in, and I didn’t even mind that she kept her cigarette alight. I could clean out the ash.
“Town?” she asked, making the word a lazy drawl. I shivered, and hurried back to my seat. I wasn’t going to keep her waiting. “Why, no silly,” she continued. “Just up the road there, to my hotel. You see the lights?”
I squinted through the windshield. Without the sun baking the ground and setting the air to shimmering, the view was crisp. Just as my new friend had said, lights glittered maybe two miles down the straight road, barely discernible from the stars.
“I’ll be damned,” I muttered. “Is that new? I drive this way all the time.”
“New?” she asked. Puff, puff on the cigarette. “It’s always been here, sweetie, as long as people have been.”
“Huh. I never noticed.”
I put the car in drive, and it shuddered forward. We’d been sitting just long enough for the engine to cool. I swear, it was so quiet out there that even the Corvette’s grumble seemed faint. We glided on whispering tires, their susurrus making music in the dark.
Such a lovely place… they murmured, a cadence born of cracked pavement. A lovely place.
Those odd lights bloomed as we drew closer, growing concentric halos in all manner of colors. And out of them, silhouetted like faces seen from a stage, rose...
I nearly floored the brakes again. This wasn’t right. My business trips took me up and down this highway ten times a year. If there’d been a big old hotel right on the side of the highway, I’d have seen it.
I mean, how could I miss the nine-story tall building, the only vertical surface for miles? How could I not detect the wisps of delicious foods carried on the breeze, or look past the way those lights glistened beneath gilded marble walls?
I glanced at the woman. She watched the hotel slide closer, a small, rose-colored smile tilting one corner of her mouth.
“Okay, you’re messing with me,” I decided.
Violet eyes. They really were violet. “Oh?”
“Yeah. What’s that you’re smoking? It’s damn good stuff.”
Tinkling laughter. One gloved hand brushed my knee. “You’re a card, you really are.”
I looked at her hand where it rested on my thigh. My wife didn’t expect me home until morning.
The hotel towered overhead, but it was far too beautiful to be imposing. I swung the car through golden gates, their spiked tops decorated with intricate crescents. Artificial streams flowed through gardens of tiger lily and marigold.
“Oh, thank you,” said the woman. “You’re ever so kind. You can just drop me off here, and I’ll be on my way.”
I think I said, “You’re welcome,” but I was so busy staring slack-jawed at the place that I don’t even remember. I sort of drifted to a stop, mostly in a parking space.
“What is this?” I asked her.
“Hmmm?” Her cigarette smoke smelled even sweeter now. Heady and enticing. “This little old place? It’s just a hotel, darling. A place to stay for people who need it.”
I swallowed. I wanted inside this place; I wanted it bad.
She was already halfway to the door, and I jogged to catch up. No one moved to stop me as we crossed the threshold from a winding gravel path onto smooth, cold marble. Pure white marble, without a fault or stain to be seen.
This was grandeur like I’d never experienced. The bougiest hotel in Vegas couldn’t hold a candle to this place. They had actual candles. And ice sculptures recessed in little alcoves. The damn ceiling was painted, like pictures I’d seen of the Sistine Chapel.
“Mr. Alighieri?” someone asked. I started, and found myself before a desk. The concierge smiled with huge, pristine teeth, setting down a wired telephone. He fit right in here, from his neat blond hair to his three-piece suit. “Jason Alighieri?”
Had I introduced myself? The woman in white stood beside me. Had I told her my name? I don’t think she even told me hers.
I shook my head, trying to clear it. Somehow, the concierge’s face...well, the only way I could describe it was beautiful, like the frozen eyes of the sculptures all around. But in my state, his pleasant smile swam with that ethereal quality of old, fuzzy photographs.
I think her smoke is getting to me.
“Ellie,” said the concierge, turning to the woman. “This fellow’s barely upright. Maybe you could help him to his room?”
I held up my hands. “Oh, um...I’m not a guest, sir. I’m sorry. I was just helping, um, Ellie here. Her car broke down, a little ways back.”
Ellie steadied me with a hand on my arm. At her touch, my thoughts cleared, burning away the fug of smoke and exhaustion.
The concierge’s eyes seemed to brighten, too, reflecting the candlelight. “A new guest? Oh, dear me, how exciting!”
I grinned and stepped back. “I recognize a pitch when I hear one, man. That’s what I do all day long. But this place is way out of my price range. I don’t have too much further to go.”
His smile grew even wider. Cool air brushed past my cheek, and I shivered, looking for a vent. I supposed they had to keep the air low in here, what with all that ice around.
“You’re in luck, Mr. Alighieri,” he said. “I won’t lie to one so savvy as yourself; this is most certainly a pitch. But hear me out. See, we win over new guests by offering them one night, for free, exactly once. It’s quite literally a once-in-a-lifetime chance.”
“So if I say no, I can’t come back?”
“Of course you can come back! But you’ll have to pay full price. One night, on the house. What do you say?”
Ice sculptures glittered around us in the firelight. Above, painted cherubs and saints laughed on clouds. The soft smell of Ellie’s smoke washed over me again.
“I took the deal, Jason,” she said, matching the concierge’s smile with her own. “You won’t regret it.”
Hell, what happens in Vegas. It was either this or jump back in the car and drive another four hours.
“Why not?” I said. “Sign me up.”
“Excellent!” beamed the concierge. He turned, addressing the employees behind him. Three men plunked away on computers. “Get Mr. Alighieri set up please.”
The nearest one turned. He was an older guy with a circle of patchy hair. A ring of dark liver spots and bruises shown clear against the pale skin of his neck. “Penthouse, Sir?”
“No…” the concierge considered me for a moment, his eyes once more alight with reflected flame. “Level two will do.”
“Yessir,” droned the man, and keyed several commands into his desktop. After a moment, he produced a plain white keycard. The concierge passed it to me.
“Level two,” he repeated. “Well, second one from the top, that is.”
“Huh?” I asked. I turned the blank card over in the light, but saw no markings.
“Just take the elevator up to eight, and you’ll be the first door on the left.”
“Oh, swell!” Ellie chirped. “You’re right near me! I’ll walk you up there.”
I paused. “Wait, hang on, what about your car?”
She waved that away. “I’ll worry about it in the morning. I’m beat.”
“Are you—”
Ellie turned, fixing me with half-lidded violet eyes. Cold air rippled gooseflesh up my arms. She raised dark eyebrows.
“I said, I’ll. Walk you. To your room. Are you paying attention?”
Oh, yes I was.
“You kids have fun, now,” said the concierge, smiling his huge smile.
Ellie crossed the lobby, her heels clacking on the marble, and called the elevator. After a moment, the gilded doors squeaked open, and a truly ancient man blinked cataract-clouded eyes up at Ellie. They turned to me with unnerving intensity.
“Son,” he croaked, as creaky as the elevator he operated, “You sure about this, now?”
“Oh, lay off, Mr. C.,” Ellie said, giving him a playful swat on the shoulder. She passed him a small coin.
I spared a glance for the old man, but my attention was all on Ellie. With a rasp of a sigh, Mr. C. pocketed the coin and hit the button.
***
Later, I lay regarding my reflection in the ceiling over our plush bed, smug and red about the cheeks. I matched everything in that hotel room: thick crimson carpet, scarlet curtains, pink champagne.
Ellie dozed beside me, the room’s ambient fireglow casting her lovely face in bronze.
Vegas schmagas. If I could expect this treatment every time I came here, who needed the extra hours on the road? I drifted, wondering idly about the going rate of a second night.
Such a lovely place...I thought, a refrain born of red, soft bedsheets.
A lovely place... came the chorus, from the surreal landscape of my half-formed dream.
A lovely place…
A lovely place.
A love-LY PLACE.
A LOVELY PLACE.
The whispered words hissed and spit. Louder, they snapped. I could feel their spittle against my ear. I could feel their breath on my skin.
I bolted upright in bed, and Ellie screamed.
Wind and light tore through the room. Those blood-red curtains ripped free of the wall. Plaster and wood splintered into spinning fangs of jagged rubble. The whirlwind jerked the bed free from the floor and dumped us over, bed covers and discarded clothing tangling my arms and legs.
Ellie screamed again and seized my hand. I clung hard, only to feel my arm jerked up and away. Her fingers flew from mine, while still she screamed.
“Ellie!” I shouted, grappling with the sheets. I couldn’t see, couldn’t move. The wind howled and roared.
In only a moment, the bedclothes vanished, too. I tumbled from them, rolling several feet and slamming my back against the wall. Debris whipped through the tiny room, marking out the invisible tornado.
Out here? I thought, frantic.
I couldn’t see Ellie, but I could hear her, shrill and terrified. Holding my arms before my face, I clambered upright and shouted her name again. My hair and flimsy underclothes billowed behind me, threatening to topple me just as surely as the wind itself.
Wildly, I yanked open the door. I don’t know whether I thought that would help, or whether I was getting ready to run away, but it didn’t matter; more wind grasped through the doorway and jerked me from my feet. I flew down the scarlet-sheathed hall. This time, I lost my breath entirely as I smacked against a second wall, and my scream barely started cut short.
More people spun in the wind, banging into each other, into walls, into uprooted furniture and decor. All of them were dressed as Ellie and I were, or not at all.
How the hell did you help people caught in a tornado? And how long before I was swept up once more? Were there emergency vehicles outside? Had someone called them?
I patted my hips, trying to dig out my phone, before I realized I wasn’t wearing pants. My phone and wallet and keys were all back in the demolished room.
The windstorm bore down on me, carrying its shrieking people and deadly debris. Through the cloud of bodies, I could just make out the elevator doors. There was no way I was getting back there.
“I’ll—I’ll go—” I gasped. “I’ll find—just hang on or…something!”
As soon as I turned the handle, the stairwell door banged open, pulled by the whirlwind. It strained at creaking hinges, the entire frame jittering, swinging every which way. I stumbled through and out onto the landing, terrified that the wind would throw me from the bannister and send me plummeting eight stories down.
Instead, the moment I fell through, the wind shifted. The door clanged shut again, and suddenly, all was still. I could hear my choked breaths, hear my heart pounding.
Dazed, I pressed my ear up to the door, and I could just make out the roar of wind and screams.
Jesus, that’s one thick door, drawled my punch-drunk brain. I clutched my arms and looked around, feeling very exposed in my boxers and ratty undershirt. Down the stairs, I supposed. Where else was there to go?
Screams echoed up the stairwell, tinny through closed doors. Mingled among them, I heard hissing, guttural noises that had to be coming from the storm, though they seemed far too faint, dancing at the edges of my perception.
Lights flickered and buzzed at the next landing. I frowned up at them, still fuzzy. Hadn’t there been candles before? Maybe that was just the lobby. Paint peeled in chipped flakes as I brushed the wall.
Aside from the neglect, this landing was identical to the one above, a small square encircled by a rusty railing. The door bore a tarnished bronze number 3, right in the middle, along with the same crescent design I’d seen outside on the gates.
Had the storm made it this far? I leaned against the door again. I didn’t hear any screams, but there was an odd sort of squelching schlurp, like boots stuck in mud, or pasta dropped on the floor. Water trickled down from the ceiling and plinked onto my forehead. Maybe the place had flooded.
Just get downstairs, Jason, I told myself. Call 911.
Even as I reasoned myself away, my fingers drifted to the door and pushed. It slurped across wet carpet.
The smell hit first; drains and mildew and rotten food all rolled into one big ball of disgusting. Moans burbled up from vile brown sludge, and more water poured constantly into the hall like rain.
“Holy shit,” I choked, staggering back.
Horrible, distended...things groveled in the water, grasping like mold-covered branches in some old-world swamp. So disfigured were they, that it took me several seconds of transfixed staring before I realized what I was looking at.
There were people in there.
Bloated and rotting, crawling around in the muck and bumping into one another. They were like ambulatory drowning victims, all blue and swollen. And above them loomed a shape I couldn’t quite make out, a shadow full of lashing teeth and snarls. When one of the drowned got too close, fangs wrenched him up and threw him into the rain. It caught and shook him like a dog, growling and tearing.
Burning red eyes found me, and shadowed lips curled. I screamed and slammed the door closed.
A string of nonsensical, hysterical swearing started in my head, and eventually made it to my mouth. I tripped down the stairs three or four at a time, landing once on my ass and nearly tumbling the rest of the way. I fled in panicked jerks.
Doors flashed by, open now. Arid heat washed out of one, and I got a glimpse of great rocks smashing against each other. The next had more water, and a snarling, wild-eyed lunatic lunged toward me, blood dripping from yellow, jagged fingernails. I dodged past tongues of flame, leapt over boiling, hissing scarlet liquid seeping through yet another.
Ellie, came the wild thought. Her smoke.
What else could it be? I paused to catch my breath on a landing that at last seemed quiet, only one story up from the lobby. This door, marked with a cracked number 8, was open too, but all I could see was a yawning stone chasm. Some kind of flying thing soared high above the rocky crags.
Seeing this, strange relief washed over me. I don’t know, maybe the storm had actually happened, and maybe something was loose in that flooded hallway. But this...this couldn’t be real. I’d seen the outside of the hotel, and there was no way in hell it could hold a room this big. I had to be tripping balls right now.
Viewed in that light, it was almost funny. I could just picture myself running screaming through the halls in my boxers, shouting about monsters and rivers of blood. I was lucky no one had called 911 on me. Maybe they thought that what happened in Vegas should stay there, too. I wondered if the old man, Mr. C., had seen me.
I pressed shaking hands to my eyes and tried to control my breathing. Through the door, a wailing, lonely wind moaned over the mountain peaks. I could just make out the steady flap-flap-flap of giant wings.
Such a lovely place...came the choir, a staccato spun from haunting wind.
“Stop saying that!” I snapped, waving my arms ineffectually. Giggles bubbled up in my throat, unwanted and uncontrollable. “Moaning wind…” I muttered, mocking myself. “Singing voices. Pull it together, Jason.”
Could someone be allergic to drugs? Had I somehow gotten this high just on secondhand smoke? I brushed myself off and took a breath. Through the door, the giant flying thing watched me, eight pairs of eyes in four different faces.
I needed a doctor, bad. I remembered the concierge had a phone downstairs. Or maybe I’d just get in my car and drive as far away from here as possible.
Except I didn’t have my keys.
“Son of a bitch!” I spat. “Fine, then.”
I stomped down the last flight of stairs, gathering up my frustration and terror into a little ball I could throw at that damn smiley concierge. What business did he have letting someone smoke that shit in a hotel room anyway? She could at least take it outside.
My foot reached the bottom of the stairs, and promptly slid out from under me. Ice-cold marble struck my hands, back, and head at about the same time, and I found myself staring up at the painted ceiling of the hotel lobby.
Melted, twisted faces glowered back at me, pitted and scarred. Where once cherubs and saints had laughed, now they screamed; distended jaws and agonized poses, lit with fire and spiraled with blood.
“This is getting old,” I groaned.
Old...old...old...echoed my voice. It went on and on, Old...old…
After several seconds, the echoes faded, dissolving into a sound reminiscent of laughter.
I went to stand, and my hand slid. Even that tiny squeak echoed in here, deepening to a shriek. The lobby was cottony silent in that way that pushes on your ears. Shivers wracked my body.
I tried again, and this time, I was able to lever myself up using the stair behind me. My breath plumed out in little puffs like Ellie’s cigarette. A flat, empty plane of blue and silver stretched around me, dozens of yards across. High, high above, the suffering of those painted figures provided the only other color.
Pinpricks ran up and down my feet; I could barely feel them as I began to walk. My teeth chattered no matter how hard I clamped my jaw.
“Hel—l—lo?” I called.
Hello...Hello...hello.
There was nothing, nothing around. I couldn’t spot the desk; I couldn’t find the door. The gorgeous ice sculptures were gone, as if they’d melted and coated the floor.
I turned back, and now the stairs were gone, too. I swear the ceiling had gotten higher.
“Listen!” I shouted, ignoring the echoes. The shivers grew more violent “H—hey, c—c—concierge! I want out of here, you g—g—got that? I want to check out. I think I’m s—sick.”
Cool air rushed by my back again, but the rest of the room was so damn cold that it actually felt warm.
“Mr. Alighieri?”
I jumped and shouted, falling once again. My scream reverberated loudest of all.
There he stood, looking down at me with his weird, unfocused features. Behind him, the three other men tapped away at their computers.
“Are you dissatisfied with your service?” he asked. His voice didn’t echo.
With my whole body pressed against the arctic ice, I could hardly speak. “You...heard...I want...check out.”
Out...out...out.
“Check out?”
The air stirred again. The typing fingers halted.
“Yes,” I sat up. “I want to leave.”
Yessssssssssss…hissed the echoes. Ssssssssuch a lovely, lovely place.
A shadow flickered over the ice in time with the concierge's widening smile.
“Why, Jason,” he said, “you can check out any time you like.”
The shadow grew, and grew, and grew, spreading and congealing like oil over the frozen floor. Chairs squealed, the sound climbing until it pierced the entire room, sending cracks and tremors bolting across the ice. Each of the three men stood, now, watching with rictus grins.
“B u t y o u c a n n e v e r l e a v e,” they chorused, a discordant harmony of snarled notes. In it I heard the growling of the beast upstairs, the roar of the whirlwind. I heard Ellie’s scream.
Fire snapped in the concierge's glacial irises. His shadow splintered in two, still growing. The tide of screams rose with it, and within that cold and empty place, more wind blew back my hair, thundering with the pulse of massive wings.
“Welcome to the Hotel California,” he said, with a smile too wide and too full of pointed teeth. “Welcome home.”
My feet went out from under me again; I don’t even remember standing, but I remember falling. My cheek smacked against the ice, every piece of exposed skin so numb now that I didn’t even feel it.
From here I could see only the man’s feet. Ice crawled up and over his fine shoes, pinning him there. Within his black wings, faces pressed up against the ice; jaundiced eyes and blue-lipped mouths. They were screaming too, but no one could hear.
I scrabbled away on my hands and knees. Face after face after face, deep beneath the ice; their eyes watched me. All the while, the three skeletons behind the concierge laughed with rasping, grating mirth. Only their heads were free now, ice twining over their limbs and chests.
But he didn't laugh. He only smiled.
Without warning, the floor gave out. I shrieked, tensing for the final splash of ice water, for a plunge into the haunted dark. Instead, I tumbled down stone stairs and out onto sand. Dilapidated and twisted, the hotel towered over me.
And above the door, letters blazing scarlet, were the words,
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.