Centralia (12 page)

Peter sat at the small round table by the front window of their room in the Oceanview. The room offered nothing more than your typical lonesome motel, inaccessible to any major thoroughfare. It had two double beds, the table and two chairs, and a TV on a dresser. The seashore motif continued in the room with more teal carpeting, a seashell design bedspread, and white oak furniture. The room was at least clean. Whether it had been cleaned this morning as the manager had claimed was doubtful. A musty, earthy odor hung in the air as if the windows hadn’t been opened in days, maybe weeks. As Peter leaned on the table, he wondered if clean, salty ocean air from a distant sea would magically waft through the room if the window were open.

Amy sat on the bed, one leg tucked under the other, and stared at the wall.

“What is it?” Peter asked.

She glanced at him. “What do you mean?”

“You want to say something.”

“I do?”

“Don’t you?”

“How can you tell?”

He smiled. “You have that I-need-to-say-something look on your face.”

“You know, I think you make half this stuff up.”

He waited a moment, then said, “Well, don’t you want to say something?”

“I thought I was supposed to be the psychologist here.” Then, sheepishly, as if caught in a lie she’d been keeping for years and now must finally reveal, Amy shrugged and said, “Actually, I do have something to say.”

Peter waited. He could tell it was something weighty, some burden she’d been carrying and needed to unload. The tension in her face and hands and the way she nervously shifted her eyes gave it away.

After a few silent beats, Amy sighed. “I’m sorry, Peter. Very, very sorry.”

“For what?” He thought he knew what she was referring to but wanted to hear her say it. The air between them that had been polluted and fogged with regret and resentment and discord needed to be cleared once and for all.

They’d been working together on a professional research paper on circadian rhythms and chronobiology with a goal to submit it for publication in
Biological Psychology
. The project had required them to spend a lot of time together. Time outside the office. Time at Amy’s home. Amy’s behavior had changed subtly at first, so
subtly he didn’t even notice. But things had escalated, and one day at her house she told him she thought she was falling in love with him. He was floored and flattered at the same time. He initially downplayed her interest in him, told her
 
—and himself
 
—it would pass, that they just needed to keep the focus on the project. They needed to finish it and get it to the review board. But as time passed, her interest didn’t. Finally Peter had to cut it off. He told her the feeling was not mutual and that she needed to put a stop to her behavior.

But instead of setting aside her personal feelings and resuming their professional collaboration, Amy put a stop to the relationship altogether, publishing the paper under her own name and intimating that Peter’s research was flawed and unusable. Peter lost credibility at the university and nearly lost his job. As a result, hateful words had been spoken and the friendship had shattered.

“I’m sorry for what happened between us. I don’t know what got into me. I was irrational and did and said some really stupid things.”

“Well, I can’t argue with you there,” Peter said. “But you already apologized. I remember it well.”

A month after the blowup, Amy had shown up at the Ryan house with tearful eyes and apologized to Peter. She’d said that if Peter never wanted to speak to her again, she would honor his wish. He didn’t argue and said that was probably for the best.

And that was it. Though he’d pass her on campus or catch her eye in the science building, he never spoke another word to her until he called her this morning, asking for help.

Amy hesitated. “I’m not sure I fully meant it then. I was so hurt. So ashamed. So embarrassed. I did what I thought I needed to do to make it all better.”

“But it never got better. Not really.”

“No, it didn’t. I wanted so badly to make it all right, to make it as if it had never happened.”

“But it did happen.”

“I know.” She wiped a tear from her eye and hooked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “How can I ever make it up to you?”

“Why do you feel like you need to?”

Amy lifted her shoulders and let them drop. “It feels like something needs to be done.”

Peter shifted in his chair, pushed the curtain aside enough to see most of the parking lot. “I think you’re doing it now, being here with me. Being here
for
me.”

“Is it enough?”

He let the curtain fall back in place. “Right now, it’s everything.”

A moment of silence passed between them until Peter finally said, “You know, I’ve been having this recurring dream.”

Amy smiled. “What’s the dream?”

He told her about the house and the open doors that led to rooms full of memories. He also told her about the one room with the locked door, the room he could never gain entrance to no matter how frantically he tried. The room with the shadow, the secret. He failed to tell her, though, that he thought the room likely harbored some evil from his past, some part of his history that his mind had tried to lock away, imprison forever.

When he was finished, Amy said, “Did you tell your shrink about this?”

“Yes. I told her.”

“And what did she say?”

Peter ran his finger over the table’s top, making concentrically
enlarging circles. “She told me I need a key to open it. That the challenge was going to be to find the key.”

“There’s something important in that room,” Amy said. “Something terrifying and life-changing
 
—you know that, don’t you?”

Peter thought for a moment. He did know it. He’d been wrestling with just that fact since seeing that menacing shadow darken the light under the door. Again the thought squeezed its way into his mind that whatever was terrifying and life-changing might be a some
one
rather than a some
thing
. But it wasn’t Karen. Maybe Lilly. Maybe God. But if it was God, then Peter had to think that the Almighty didn’t want to be found. “I do. Is that why I can’t open it?”

“Possibly. You intuit that there’s some horror there and you don’t want to open it. Not really. The key will be a trigger, something that kicks your memory in the seat and tells it to remember at least part of it. Then you’ll have to make a decision on whether you want to find out the rest or not.”

“So where can I find the trigger?”

Amy tapped the bedspread. “It could be anywhere. It might be a very common item right under your nose, but until you see it in a certain light or under a certain set of circumstances, you won’t recognize it as such. Or it could be something totally unseen and unknowable until you see it, and then you’ll know. And it doesn’t have to be an object. It might be a word or a sound or a voice. It might be a simple piece of knowledge.”

“I think my shrink might have some competition,” Peter said.

Amy grinned. “Well, the competition needs to use the bathroom and wash up.”

She grabbed the bag of toiletries she’d picked up at the superstore and headed for the bathroom, closing the door behind her.

Peter parted the curtains covering the front window of the
room and surveyed the parking lot. The place was as barren as any uninhabited beach, minus the water and sand. Above the forest across the road, the sun bowed low, almost brushing the treetops, and cast long shadows that stretched nearly to the motel like dark, sinister hands inching closer, bringing with them a touch that would reveal every tenebrous mystery Peter hid. He shuddered and let the curtains fall back into place. As he did, another memory made itself known, but it was brief
 
—like the surfacing of a whale to draw in air before plunging once again to the ocean’s depths
 
—and gone before it had any chance to form fully.

It consisted wholly of stuttered images and the residue of a seemingly familiar odor. Karen, Lilly, and he returning to a hotel room after a day at the beach. Damp towels, sunburned flesh, sandy flip-flops, and smiles all around. The feeling of the chilly air on his warm skin the moment he unlocked the room’s door and stepped into the air-conditioning. The aroma of chlorine and sunscreen. The sweet music of Lilly’s giggles.

He tried to hold on to the memory, tried to grasp it and massage something more out of it, some scenario that he could probe. But as quickly as the images had materialized, they vanished, and he was left with nothing more than a feeling, that same feeling of needing to tell Karen something of importance.

Peter rapped his fingers on the table, drumming an unfamiliar tune from some distant, long-forgotten world. For some reason, like the beckoning of ancient drum telegraphy, the rhythm conjured another image in his mind.

Lilly is there, her sweet face turned up, her deep-blue eyes penetrating his. She holds his hands. Hers are so soft and tiny, so fragile, as if to squeeze too hard would break them into a million shards of china glass. “Jesus will take care of us, Daddy. Don’t worry, okay?”

“Jesus will take care of us.”
She had such faith; he remembered that. It was unshakable. Faith that could be possessed only by a child who had yet to experience the horror and pain the world had to offer and the doubt that accompanied both. Peter only vaguely remembered having faith like that as a child. But his memories of childhood were spotty at best, and he had no recollection at all of his parents. He knew he was raised in Indiana. North Manchester. But that was it; that was where his knowledge ended and disappeared into a fog of forgetfulness as dense as swamp water. And yet some kind of lighthouse was penetrating the fog, drawing him closer, still faint but seeming just a little brighter all the time. Something he’d once known
 
—or thought he’d known. Something deeply rooted in himself, if only he could access it.

From behind the closed bathroom door, Amy said, “Oh, great.” She opened the door and poked her head out. “Toilet doesn’t flush.”

Peter pulled himself from his jaunt into the past. “Did you jiggle the handle?”

“Of course I did. I live alone. I know how a toilet works. The chain in the tank is broken.”

Peter pushed back the chair and stood. “I’ll go tell the manager. He may have a spare one or he can take one from another room.”

“Be careful; that guy gives me the creeps. I wouldn’t be surprised if his name was Norman. Make sure he doesn’t have a kitchen knife behind that counter.”

Peter laughed. “I’ll be sure to ask him how his mother is doing.”

Outside the Oceanview, the air was cool and dry, the sky a gradient of blue to black as the sun slid lower on its downward arc, now nearly touching the treetops. Soon the light of day would be a thing of the past and the sky would become a speckled mantle. Darkness would move in, and shadows would rule the night. Peter would have to keep watch while Amy slept. Lately, shadows had a way of turning into something much more malevolent, and Peter didn’t want any more surprise guests.

The light in the office was off, which was odd because motels usually expected late-night travelers to pop in unannounced, looking for a place to catch a few winks before heading back onto the road in the morning. The
V  ANCY
light was off as well.

Peter took off the sunglasses as he approached the office door,
only slightly cautious, and tried the knob. It was unlocked. He pushed open the door and, standing in the doorway, said, “Hello? Anyone still here?” In a remote location like this one, a motel with an oceanside theme most likely rarely saw any of those late-night travelers and no doubt was wont to close up shop early. Possibly the manager had stepped out to attend to some plumbing issues in the trucker’s room, or possibly he’d turned in for the night and saw no need to lock the office door. Or he was in another room having a heated debate with the skeletal remains of his mommy.

But in the back room Peter could see the flicker of a television. He rounded the counter. “Hello?”

A muffled growl came from the room, then a louder one. Peter began to backpedal as a pudgy bulldog sporting a severe underbite emerged from the room. The dog stopped five feet from him and chuffed. It eyed him with sagging, bloodshot eyes and snorted as if it couldn’t muster the strength for a real bark.

Peter knocked on the counter. “Hey. Anyone here?”

The overhead light flicked on and the manager stepped out from the shadows. He stood in the passageway between the front office and the darkened room, the dog at his feet. He had no kitchen knife in either of his hands. “Help you?”

“Hey, yeah, sorry to bother you. The lights were out and I wasn’t sure if anyone was here or not.”

The man scratched his head and shifted his focus over Peter’s shoulder to the front of the building. “Uh, I turn them out at ten. I’m the only one here and I need some sleep sometime, you know?”

Peter checked his watch. “But it’s only eight o’clock.”

The guy forced a little laugh and nervous smile. “Well, I mean, it’s not like we got a line or anything. On slow days I usually close up early.”

“Sure, sure. Well, look, the chain in our toilet tank is busted, and it won’t flush. You mind getting us another one?”

The guy glanced over Peter’s shoulder as if he was waiting for someone else to arrive and join their late-night get-together. He shoved his hands in his pockets, then removed one and ran his fingers through his hair. Furrowing his brow, he said, “The chain?”

“Yeah, you know, the chain that connects the plunger to the handle.”

“Oh, the chain. Okay. Um, yeah, okay. I need to find one. If you, uh
 
—” he started for the counter, then backed up
 
—“you know, if you just reach in and lift the plunger, it’ll flush. You don’t really need a chain.”

“You want us to manually flush the toilet every time we use it?”

The guy glanced at his watch. “Well, you know, you’re only here for the night. I mean
 
—”

“We paid for a toilet that works the way it should. Now, do you mind?”

“Uh . . .” He ran a hand through his hair again. “Do I mind?”

“Getting a new chain.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Sure. Of course. If you just want to head back to the room, I’ll find one and be right there.”

The guy was acting odd. Too odd. “Sure. Room five, then,” Peter said. “Soon as you get that chain.”

The bulldog growled and chuffed again, then ran a pink tongue up and over its nose. “Yeah,” the manager said. “Be right there.”

Peter left the office and hurried back to room five and Amy. He opened the door and quickly shut it behind him, then moved to the front window. To Amy, he said, “Pack the stuff up. We need to get out of here.”

He parted the curtains with his finger just enough to get a good
look at the parking lot. Nothing had changed. The truck was still in its place at the far end; the Oceanview Motel sign was still lit. The road was empty. The sun was almost hidden by the trees and the sky was darkening.

“What’s wrong?” Amy said, stepping out of the bathroom.

Peter kept his eyes on the parking lot. “The manager. He knows something. Was acting very strange. Nervous.”

“He’s a strange guy. I thought we’d already settled that.”

“No. There’s something else going on. He knows something about us.”

“You think we were on the news?”

“Possibly. Regardless, we need to get out of here.”

As Amy packed their belongings back into the bags, the sun continued to dip until it was completely behind the trees and the heavens turned a deep blue. A few stars dotted the sky and the sodium lamps in the parking lot cast tents of light onto the cracked and faded asphalt.

When Amy had finished, she placed the bags on the bed and said, “Okay, so what now?”

“Time
 
—” Peter stopped. Three pairs of headlights rounded the bend in the road and approached the eastern end of the parking lot. “Time to go.”

Before he could shut the curtain, the headlights came nearer and Peter could see the vehicles more clearly. Three black Chevy Tahoes. Tinted windows. No plates. Unmarked. And turning into the Oceanside parking lot.