Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, FUCK.
This isn’t how I thought I’d start my next update, locked up in my parents’ guest room a couple nights later, alone, sweating buckets, and having the second worst panic attack of my life.
The first worst panic attack I had, meanwhile, was back in that bed and breakfast, where everything, and I mean, EVERYTHING, went wrong.
The first question I remember popping into my head when I woke up was this: where were all the other guests?
I remember the concierge had told us the place had been booked up. It was the holidays after all. But I hadn’t seen–or heard from–a single person who wasn’t in my immediate family.
I exited the concierge’s room, expecting to see other people traipsing down the halls, but no. It was all completely barren, almost as barren as the room I had left behind.
There were half a dozen doors interspersed between the walls of paintings, but they all appeared to be vacant. I tried opening the one closest to me, and it was almost like it had been glued shut.
My eyes traveled over to the painting I’d seen the night before. The one with the symphony orchestra, the one with the bespectacled man playing the piano.
The music was quieter in my head now, the piano, violin, cello and a new instrument, a flute, hadn’t stopped the entire night but it did get muted enough that I was able to go to bed.
It’s probably just a coincidence, I thought as I made my way down the staircase. It’s not like piano players would be super jacked or anything. It makes sense you were thinking of someone skinny. Someone with glasses because piano players are obviously nerds. Dorks. Dweebs even.
But there was also the British violin player I’d seen in my vision, who was also there. That couldn’t be a coincidence. The strangest part of the painting, however, was that some of the seats were empty, despite the fact that the instruments were there, floating in mid-air. Waiting patiently for their virtuoso.
So either the painter had made a conscious choice not to add them in. Or he didn’t have the time.
“Good morning, sir.”
It was the concierge again. He pulled a chair out for me as I approached the dining table, where my family sat, digging into the lavish breakfast spread the man had prepared for us.
“Good morning,” I said timidly, sitting down.
“Look, daddy,” Selena, my youngest, said. She turned her plate toward me. On it sat a giant slab of steak with two mustard eyes and a ketchup smile. No wait, not a smile. The mouth was upside down–it was a frown. That’s also when I noticed two ketchup droplets falling down from the steak man’s eyes.
“Oh, uhh,” I said, trying my best to smile. “That’s… great. Who’s this supposed to be?”
Selena grinned. “It’s you.”
I looked down at the steak again, admittedly a little spooked by it now.
“Me, huh?” My tongue suddenly felt heavier than normal. “Why–why am I–”
“Honey, you must be starving,” my wife interrupted, passing me some salad.
“Sure,” I replied, taking the bowl from her. I didn’t have enough time to decrypt Selena’s steak because she’d started devouring it now. Who the hell served steak for breakfast anyway? “Yeah, starving.”
We ate in silence after that, with the concierge watching us the whole time from a corner. Well, the girls ate, I wasn’t even able to make it past my first bite. The steak wasn’t bad, it was a little too gamy for my taste. The salad tasted weird too. I turned to look outside the window at one point, hoping the blizzard would’ve cleared out by now, but it didn’t look too good.
It actually seemed to have gotten worse. It was a full blown winter apocalypse out there.
“I was thinking,” my wife finally said after a long stretch. “I was thinking we stay here another night. The storm hasn’t gotten any better and the nearest town is likely miles away. What do you think?”
What did I think? I glanced at the concierge again, who’s eyes were fixated on me. I looked back at my wife, hesitant. Here we go.
“Sweetheart,” I began rather quietly. Almost in a hush. “Honestly, I think we’ll be fine. We managed to get here yesterday, so I don’t see any reason we can’t make it anywhere else. I don’t really know how I feel… how I feel about staying here. All I know is that the feelings are bad enough that I want to leave.”
My wife didn’t say anything at first. She dabbed her lips with a napkin. The red juices from the meat still dribbled down her chin, however. Then: “how about we put it to a vote?”
“A vote?” I let out a nervous chuckle. “Since when did you start valuing democracy?”
“Since now,” my wife said, but she wasn’t laughing. Something was really off about her. Sure, she was usually a little austere, she’d grown up practically an aristocrat. Asshole hedge fund father. Vapid trophy mother. It was the perfect recipe for apathy. I personally thought her entire older-authoritarian-professor routine was hot but this? This wasn’t hot, it was just ice-cold… nothingness. Emotional vacancy.
“Girls, raise your hand if you agree with mommy and think we should stay here another night,” she said, raising her own hand. “And don’t raise your hand at all if you agree with daddy, who wants us to go outside and die of hypothermia.”
So, my girls being the non-suicidal pragmatists they are raised their hands at once. I made eye contact with my wife, irked, intending to snap. What the hell was wrong with her?
But that’s precisely when the music in my head became louder.
Almost like it was warning me not to do anything of that sort.
Warning… weird. Why would I think the music was a warning?
The rest of the day didn’t get much better for me. I thought I’d try to get some work done, grade a few papers that I had to give back the following semester, but the pianist, violinist, cellist, flutist and the newest member of the gang, a oboist, were making it VERY difficult to do so.
“Dammit!” I slammed the stack of papers to the floor, tears swelling in my eyes as the orchestra continued to play their haunting tune at a heightened volume. “God, shut up.”
I was all alone in the concierge’s room. My wife and daughters were presumably downstairs, having the time of their lives in the games room. I wasn’t exactly in the mood to lose to a six year old playing Othello or Connect Four at the moment. Nor did I even want to be in the same room as my wife.
She was honestly starting to creep me out even more than the concierge did, which I thought impossible.
A sudden BANG interrupted my thoughts, however. I sprang to my feet at once, rattled. It’d come from outside. I scrambled to the frostbitten window, peering through it.
Beyond the darkness and bitter cold was a shadowy figure, seemingly armed with a shotgun, dragging something through the snow, tainting it scarlet. It was the concierge.
“‘The best sport in the world,’” I muttered in spite of myself, watching him as he disappeared into the nearby woods with his kill of the night.
“Daddy?”
I whipped around. It was Lisa, she was standing by the door, sheepishly.
“Oh, honey, hi,” I said, crouching down a little. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
“Do you hate mommy?” Lisa asked. She didn’t start bumbling toward me as she usually did when I came down to her level. Instead, she continued to stand by the door. Her eyes wide as saucers.
“No, what?” I frowned. “Why would I hate her? I love her, I love mommy.”
“Then why did she say you hate her,” Lisa said.
“She said that?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well it’s not true, okay?” I opened my arms a little. “Come here, sweetheart. No, I could never hate her, never. She’s just upset. We’re both upset.”
“Then why is she dead?”
The world could’ve ended at that moment and I still wouldn’t have comprehended it. Everything appeared to turn a little fuzzier than usual. Muted in both sight and sound. Except for the music.
It just got louder.
“Dead?” I repeated. “What do you mean–I don’t–dead?”
“Dead,” Lisa repeated, and I noticed she wasn’t crying. Emotionally vacant. “She said you didn’t love her, that you hated her. And now…” Lisa put a finger gun to her head and blew a raspberry.
My breathing grew increasingly labored. Was this some sort of practical joke? Where were the cameras? Where was the curtain that’d lift and reveal a laughing crowd?
“Lisa…” I stood upright, and slowly turned back to look out the window, out at the trail of red. “Lisa, Jesus, stay here. STAY HERE!” And I sprinted out of the room.
This was the loudest the music had been thus far. I felt like my head was about to split open, but I didn’t care. I ran and ran and ran, down the hallway, down the staircase, and I went flying through the front entrance. For some reason, the only thing I could think about were the empty spaces in that painting. Why had the artist not painted in the other musicians? What was the point?
The adrenaline struggled to keep me warm as I tried to blast through the blizzard, my bare feet sinking into the ground as I trudged forward. Keep going, keep going, I thought, but gravity took the better of me and I stumbled forward, plowing headfirst into the blood soaked snow.
I cursed through incoherent sobs, down on all fours now. “No, please, dammit.” I was crawling at this point, utterly helpless, just another animal. “NOOOOOOOOOO!” I shrieked.
I’d made it to the edge of the woods now, and it was there I found her body. Her head had been blown to bits. I could barely recognize her but I did. Oh god, the music. Oh god, was it loud. So loud.
I didn’t have time to mourn her, however. I had to find my kids. How could I be so selfish and leave two sweet, innocent children in that hell house? Two sweet, innocent rabbits.
It didn’t take me long to make it back to the bed and breakfast this time around.
“LISA!” I shouted as soon as I was inside. “Selene! SELENE!”
I hadn’t realized it, but three new instruments had entered my headspace. A viola, a harp and a trumpet. Seven fucking imaginary musicians were playing their hearts out despite the fact that I’d just lost mine.
And there stood the concierge, standing behind the help desk, underneath his morbid collection of animal head mounts. He was cleaning the barrel of his shotgun calmly.
His fingers were stained red, just like the snow.
“What did you do?” I growled, my throat burned raw, bounding toward him. “Where are they? Where are them you, sick fuck? WHAT DID YOU DO TO THEM?”
“Shhhh, sir, you don’t want to wake the other guests,” the concierge said, completely blasé. He put a finger to his lips.
“What guests?” I said, shaking, tears streaming down my face. “WHAT GUESTS? We’re the only ones here, I haven’t seen a single other person here–”
“They’re here,” was his only response.
“Where are my daughters–?”
“Would you like to meet them?”
I stopped inches away from the desk. I sway a little, side to side. Side to side, almost to the rhythm of the music in my head. Processing this. “Meet… who? My daughters?”
“Meet the other guests,” the concierge said matter-of-factly. “And if there’s time, your daughters.”
I stared at him. “I don’t understand.”
“‘One man’s game can be another man’s nightmare,’” the concierge said, and he set his gun to the side, picking up The Most Dangerous Game instead. He smiled cooly. “Would you like to see yours?”
The concierge handed me the book, which’d now been stained red too. I didn’t accept it.
“What did you do to them?” I repeated, still shaking.
“Come with me, sir,” the concierge said and he shoved the book into my arms anyway as he left the help desk behind. He started up the staircase, not even bothering to look back. The orchestra was so loud at this point that I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to hear the concierge if he spoke to me, it just kept building and building as I considered following the man until–
Silence. For the first time in 48 hours. Pure, unadulterated silence.
And it was frightening.
It was almost like my time was up.
“Christ,” I said under my breath, and my attention turned to the shotgun the concierge left behind. On impulse, what was his had now become mine. I didn’t care for the concierge’s games, I just wanted to find my daughters and get the hell out of here. So I threw Richard Connell’s book into the fireplace.
“Hey!” I sprinted up the stairs, pointing the gun up at the concierge, who’d just made it to the second floor. He turned to look at me, eyebrows raised like it was a typical occurrence. He was even smiling again.
“Hey!” I said. “Look, I know this sounds crazy but I don’t actually want to use this on you, even though you fucking blew a hole through my wife’s skull just now and you don’t seem to give a fuck.”
“No, it doesn’t sound crazy at all,” the concierge said. “Because I wasn’t the one who blew that hole.”
“Don’t fucking lie to me–”
“I have no reason to lie.” The concierge chuckled softly. “What you’re about to see is much worse than that dead dog of a wife you had. She wanted to be put down and so she put herself down. She was miserable. You, sir, were the one who made her miserable.”
The gun in my grip had started to tremble. My finger was wrapped around the trigger but I couldn’t bring myself to pull it. “She put herself down?” The words hurt my tongue to say. Everything hurt.
The concierge didn’t seem to be interested in continuing the conversation, however. He’d turned around, a keyring glinting in the candlelight between his dirty, bloody fingers. He inserted it into the keyhole of the very door I’d tried opening this morning.
“I know you’ve been wondering who our other guests are,” he said in a whisper. “And they’re prepared to meet you. But are you prepared to meet them?”
Click. The door swung open slowly, revealing nothing but darkness inside. I took a couple tentative steps forward, shotgun still raised. But I couldn’t raise it for long. It cluttered to the floor as soon as I was able to take in everything that the room had to offer.
Mounted heads covered every inch of the space.
Yet none of them were small, oddly shaped or furry. They were all too familiar. They were… human heads.
Real life human heads, eyes gouged, stuffed, mouths hanging agape. What the actual fuck. What the fuck.
“I think you might already know two of them,” I heard the concierge say from behind me. “They’re a little younger than I care for but…”
Lisa and Selena. Their heads were at the very end of the row. Nothing had been gouged out as of yet, so I had no choice but to look into their pretty, almost identical eyes one last time.
I don’t remember much after that point. I must’ve ran from the place sometime after meeting the concierge’s guests, I must’ve also managed to get into my car and drive through the blizzard. No RedBulls and not even a dream this time.
Just nightmares.
I probably drove for four hours straight, stopping only for gas and looking back every chance I could get. I must’ve considered dialing the police, but it’s not like it would change anything. Besides, I had a sinking feeling that many people had called the authorities to report the man I’d just ran away from, but it hadn’t worked.
There was nothing I could do but drive, which is what I did, until I finally reached my destination.
And here I am, still here, locked up in my parents’ guest room a couple nights later, alone, sweating buckets, and having the second worst panic attack of my life.
I’ve understandably not been in the mood to give anyone an update these past few days, I’ve barely eaten, I’ve barely slept. I still hadn’t told my parents what happened because I was hoping the whole thing would pass and I’d wake up at some point in the future with Lisa and Selena sprawled across me. With my wife by my side.
But I knew it wasn’t.
I knew because the one night I was finally able to go to sleep, that being tonight, I had been woken up by none other but that beautiful yet haunting melody.
C-E-G-C#-E#-G…
It was just the piano this time.
And I suddenly understood why there were vacant chairs in that painting. I knew why the men in that painting were calling back to me, they wanted me to join them. They wanted me to join them and help warn the next sucker who ended up alone with the hunter, before him or his family became his prey.
That’s all I have for you for now (and hopefully forever). Good night.