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He could see her from where he stood on the street below. She was halfway out of the tall window and though he couldn't hear it she seemed to be screaming. What in God's name was going on? Dodging traffic Pike crossed the street to see if he could get a better look. He wasn't being nosy; he was just a journalist out looking for his next photo op. But now he didn't have his camera loaded. The Nikon hung around his neck empty and useless. Pike patted his jean pockets and felt one familiar round canister against his leg. Well at least he had a extra roll, but did he have time to snap it into the camera before the girl disappeared. He'd have to try.
He pulled the canister from his pocket, popped the top with his thumb, clicked the button on the camera to open the film door and loaded it quickly. The lens was off and he had the view finder to his eye in a matter of seconds, head
thrown back, searching the row of windows for the girl. They were empty.
He let the camera hang back around his neck and sighed, maybe he should just keep walking. No, something about that girl didn't feel right. But what could he do now that she was gone; he had no idea how to find her in such a large building. Then he heard a scream and his eyes darted back up the flight of windows. She was there, screaming and physically fighting with someone. Quickly Pike counted the floors and windows from the ground to her and was inside the building and taking the elevator to the seventeenth floor. His photo op forgotten Pike rushed through the elevator doors and into the hallway. He ran to his left, counting doors and praying he'd get there in time. As quickly as his legs ran, thoughts flashed through his head. Why was he the only one here? Why weren't others stepping into the hall, confused and frightened, trying to determine the source of the screams? The hallway was wide and deserted, dark and dingy, and his thudding footsteps jarred the desolate air.
Room 1713 almost flew by, but Pike backpedaled to the door and began banging on it. Nothing but the echoes of his fist answered him. Raising his voice, he yelled, “Hello? Ma'am? Ma'am, can you hear me? Hey!”
1709's door was flung open, and a portly fellow stuck his head out into the hallway. “What's goin' on?” he called.
Pike stepped back and shot him an incredulous look. “There's a woman screaming in there!” he told him. “Didn't you hear her?”
“Din't hear nothin',” the man commented, and ambled out the door to investigate. Together, the two men stood before 1713, their heads cocked like the RCA dog, and listened for well over a minute. They heard nothing but their breathing, and finally the portly fellow gave Pike a look that suggested he visit Bellevue, and quick.
“Din't hear nothin',” he repeated, and went back to his room. “Maybe you was hearin' stuff.”
“Well, I heard!” Pike said, indignantly, but the man only slammed his door shut, leaving him alone in the hall. He knew he had. Again, he raised his fist.
As he pounded a tenth time, a scream sounded: one of such agony and despair that Pike's heart leapt into his throat at the same time his stomach plummeted down to squash his kneecaps. Wildly, he looked about, but no one else ran outside their rooms to see who was in trouble, who was interrupting their soaps, who sounded like they were being throttled to death, and only his eyes flew back to the closed door.
“Oh, God! Don't take her! Oh, God—NO!” the woman howled. Pike stared at the door and took a step back, unconsciously placing one hand protectively over his camera.
“Stand back! I'm coming!” he shouted, and a second later, his shoulder had rammed into the dark paneled wood of the door, breaking the lock loose from its flimsy hold. Pike stumbled and almost fell before righting himself and glancing around.
She stood silhouetted in the window, a fragile woman with thin red hair and features so pale they seemed to swim on her face. The bottom of her silvery slip hung crookedly below the navy blue dress she wore, and one of her black pumps was missing. In her ears were small diamond chips that nonetheless glinted in the dim light. He saw all this in the barest of seconds. She was sobbing uncontrollably, and panting, Pike ran across the dark, bland room to her.
“Are you all right?” he asked, reaching out to touch her, but she jerked back, hugging her arms to her wasted torso as tears continued to stream down her face. Hectic red patches were high on her cheekbones.
“My baby!” she screamed, and Pike was momentarily dumbstruck. That was the last thing he'd expected to hear; rather, he'd thought that she'd been battered, or mugged, or maybe even raped, but… a baby?
“Your—baby?” Pike asked, when he'd finally found his voice.
“He threw her out the window!” the woman sobbed, pointing away. Pike's gaze followed her finger to see another door standing ajar to the right of the double bed, and realized that was where the mysterious man he'd seen with her must have fled.
Oh my God, he thought, as his gaze crawled back to the window, his panic again welling up. A baby— As he began to lean over, to peer down at what he knew he couldn't handle seeing but had to confirm, the woman grabbed him. Pike gasped aloud as his upper arms were seized in agonizing clamps of pain.
“You have to get her,” the woman pleaded, her grips viselike, her fingers icicles. “Please! You have to get my baby! PLEASE!”
He considered himself strong, but he was a ninety-pound weakling compared to this slip of a creature. It was as if she had hidden wells of bottomless strength. Pike struggled uselessly as she turned him toward the open window, until his head was outside, the breeze fluttered his black hair, and the traffic below sounded more like death bells. His forgotten Nikon thudded painfully against his chest.
“I—I can't!” he breathed, wriggling futilely, his heart jackhammering hard enough to splinter his ribcage. Still she hung on, her hair limp in her face, her pale blue eyes fixed and dilated.
“You have to,” she breathed. For the first time, she did not raise her voice, and finally he smelled her: a rank, damp smell that grew underneath mossy rocks and flourished in caves.
Pike moaned as she told him, “He took her from me and you have to get her back.”
“NO!” he screamed, as he realized that the only way she meant for him to save her baby was to follow it down.
“STOP!”
The second before Pike would have plunged over the sill his arms were released. In a flash, he lifted himself up, only to bash his forehead against the edge of the raised window. A lightning bolt ripped through his head, and he really would have fallen out of the window if not for a new pair of bigger hands that gripped his upper arms and helped him back into the room. Wincing, Pike cautiously opened his eyes and saw a tall man with a mound of white hair staring curiously and sympathetically at him. The woman was gone.
“Who're you?” Pike asked, straightening up. “Are you… real?”
“I'm Mr. Taunton, the manager,” he answered, and stepped back, satisfied Pike wasn't going to take a header out the window. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah… yeah.” Carefully, Pike touched his forehead. A goose egg was growing there.
After studying him, Taunton quietly asked, “So… did you see Stella before or after her baby fell?”
Sharply, Pike looked up. “Stella?” he bleated, as the shakes began. “Was that her name?” Loudly, he added, “Did you see her?”
“This time, but it's been years… hardly anyone ever sees or hears her. I saw her a long time ago,” Taunton answered. “She tried to do to me what she tried to do to you.” He paused. “We both got lucky; someone found us before she killed us. Mr. Dingle in 1709 called me, said some nut was snooping around up here.”
“Ah, God,” Pike breathed, wiping a hand over his face, not realizing until he pulled it away that he was covered in sweat. Her eyes… her smell… they kept coming back to him, like a permanently looping nightmare.
“She came here fifty years ago,” Taunton explained. “To escape her husband. As I understand it, he beat her constantly, and hadn't wanted the baby. One night he found her here, and they had a fight. When he finally saw that she wasn't ever coming back to him, he paid her back.” Mr. Taunton stopped abruptly, as if the next sentence was too heinous to utter.
But Pike said, dully, “He killed the baby.”
“Yes,” Taunton softly affirmed. “And her. Strangulation.” He looked around the room. “Now she's here forever, constantly reliving it, if you can call it that. She wants someone to bring back her baby.”
Pike was exhausted from terror and his first ghost sighting. Taunton said, “We'd better get out of here before she comes back.” He put a strong hand on Pike's arm and began steering him toward the door. “We don't rent out this room anymore.”
Pike let out a slightly hysterical laugh as they entered the hallway. “Afraid of a wrongful death suit?”
“Afraid of someone dying, period,” Taunton said seriously, and Pike shut up. Taunton shut the door as best he could, but it would not close all the way. “Have to get that fixed today,” he murmured.
Pike stared at him, and felt something heavy on his chest. Looking down, he saw his trusty camera, his old friend. Taunton noticed it and asked, “Did you get a picture?”
“I forgot… I don't even think I would have had a chance,” Pike muttered, picking it up, staring into the lens. His reflection was shocked and pale, even in its dark eye.
“No,” Taunton agreed. “Stella really wants her baby back.”
As if to accentuate this statement, another hellish, tormented scream ripped through the air. Taunton jerked and stared at the door, but Pike could take no more. With legs that felt as if they were made of Jell-o and rubber bands, he took off for the elevator, forsaking it a moment later for the emergency stairs at the end of the hall.
Even for a seasoned journalist, he'd seen enough for one day. And definitely no more helping out damsels in distress.
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"S is for SUSAN who perished of fits
T is for TITUS who flew into bits..."--The Gashlycrumb Tinies, by Edward Gorey
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