The Sleep Tight Motel Read online

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2018 by Lisa Unger

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Amazon Original Stories, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Amazon Original Stories are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  eISBN: 9781542090308

  Cover design by Belief Agency

  People in their cars. They’ll do anything, as if they’re at home on the living room couch. In their metal boxes, shuttling through space, people fight: body language tight, hands flying, mouths wide. They pick their noses, do their makeup. I saw a blonde woman in the passenger seat of an old Volvo bent over the driver’s lap, his hand resting on her neck as her head rose and fell. Through the back window of a shiny minivan, a silent baby wailed as our vehicles hovered side by side. His face was red, mouth in a nearly comical O, eyes squinted shut, arms straight out. His mom, she just drove, face blank as stone. It was strange. It made me feel hollowed out inside that no one was comforting him. I waved at the woman in the driver’s seat, but she didn’t see me. I dropped back finally, let them disappear silently into the night until it was just me again, and the white beam of my headlights.

  I’ve been on the road awhile. How long? You know, I’m not even sure. Too long.

  The radio is off. I can’t stand the soulless pop music, the manic chatter, the static, not for one more minute. There is just the sound of the wind shearing over the car, the tires on asphalt—a deep, hypnotic hum. Underneath that, something else. The car. It’s not right, this shaky old Mustang. It’s making a funny sound, a kind of grind-thunk, grind-thunk.

  It can’t break down. It just can’t. I stroke the steering wheel. Just stay with me, I plead silently. The Mustang was my dream car when I was a kid. Not an old beater like this, on its last legs. Mine was red and glossy, fast and loud. I imagined myself behind the wheel, driving out West to exciting new places, music blaring, top down, hair blowing. Dreams come true, I guess, just not always how you imagine them.

  My phone comes to life where it sits on the passenger seat, the screen casting its blue-white glow on the dashboard, the ceiling. I pick it up. The glass is shattered, a spiderweb of cracks held together by the protective film. I try not to think about how it got like that.

  Where are you?

  It was one of the first things he texted me, and at the time I found it very sexy. The intimacy of the question, the suggestion that he had a right to know. Now it just makes my stomach churn. I don’t answer.

  You’re not going to get away with this. You get that, right?

  Headlights behind me, coming up fast on my left.

  There are no lights on this road; the night is pitch black on either side. Even the sky above has been abandoned by the moon and stars. In the city, it never does get dark, does it? But here, wherever I am now, it’s black. I push my foot down on the gas, my heart revving with the engine. Those lights in the rearview mirror are like eyes, bright with menace, bearing down on me.

  There’s no way he’s found me.

  There’s so much distance between us.

  He always had that gift, though, of being where I didn’t expect him. Finding me when I didn’t want to be found.

  It’s gaining. This car doesn’t have the juice to outrun something newer and faster. It’s shaking. So am I.

  When the black sedan pulls beside me, the windows come down.

  Oh, please, I pray to no one and nothing.

  When I can bring myself to turn my head, I see a vampire, a witch, a green-faced man with bolts in his neck. They wave and honk, yelling. The vampire pushes out his tongue, opening his mouth, wide and vulgar, neon fangs displayed. Then, pedal to the metal, they squeal off. I hear their whooping laughter as a voice carries on the night: Trick or treat! Then they swerve out of sight.

  Adrenaline drains from my system, replaced with a rush of relief. I’m almost light-headed with it. The road swims. I nearly laugh—on another night it would have been funny.

  Halloween. That’s right. It’s coming up fast—just a few days away now, isn’t it? I don’t know for sure. The last few weeks are just a blur. One bad mistake leading to another, and another—a train wreck. And here I am, alone in an old beater on a dark highway with Halloween looming. Why do we celebrate the monsters, the destroyers, the killers among us? Me, I prefer to run away. As fast and as far as I can get.

  The road rolls out ahead of me, a dark ribbon unfurling. I think it will go on forever, and I’ll just keep driving and driving. But then a string of lights slides into view on my right.

  SLEEP TIGHT MOTEL

  A low concrete line of a building, red doors in a tidy row. There’s a rocker out in front of each curtained window, a dim light on the wall, just above and to the left of each rocker. Behind the building I can see a tall stand of pine trees. The trees look like they go on for miles—a great black wave of nothing.

  I pass a sign:

  PLENTY OF ROOM.

  FREE BREAKFAST.

  RING THE BELL.

  Slowing—did I intend to slow down?—I see now that the sky above those towering treetops is milky with stars, more than I have seen in my lifetime, a twinkling swirl in the blue-black night. Fatigue hits me like a wall. The car slows to a crawl, crunching onto the rocky lot, finally coming to a stop before room number seven, as if of its own free will. Like one of those carnival rides that ends before you’re ready and places you exactly where it wants you to go. The needle is near “Empty.”

  I’m so tired that it’s an effort to hold my head up.

  My body aches from the endless drive. I extract myself from the car, joints cracking, neck stiff, like an old woman. I’m not old, but I’ve misused my body and let others misuse it, and I think it shows. I know I feel it, all the scars and broken places, visible and otherwise.

  What hits me first as I close the car door is the scent—the clean, crisp air laced with the light, fresh scent of the pine trees all around. Then, the silence. The lightest breeze, a whisper on the air, but nothing else. Oh, how it used to grind me down, the ceaseless noise of the city—cars and construction, horns and shouts, rumbling trucks and hissing buses. Shouting, screaming, jeering, endless talking. The chatter of my phone, constantly ringing, beeping, pinging. The throbbing music of the nightclub where I worked. Now this quiet—it’s a salve; tension drops from my shoulders. I draw in the deepest breath I have in days—maybe months.

  I walk up to the office door and ring the bell. All the windows in the rooms behind me are dark. There are no other cars but mine. I have not seen another vehicle since the carload of ghouls, and I hadn’t seen one for hours before that.

  All the windows in the rooms behind me are dark. There are no other cars but mine.

  I ring the bell again. If no one answers, maybe I’ll just get back in the car, open the windows, and try to sleep for a while. Get on my way at first light.

  Get on your way to where? I imagine him saying. You have no place to go.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. I look at the spiderwebbed screen.

  Been trying to call. Everything okay?

  I stuff the phone back in my pants. I should get rid of it, cut the last tether to the life I’ve just set on fire. I can’t bring myself to do it. Maybe there’s a way out of this. A way back. I know there isn’t, of course.

  A ghost. A shadow in the window.

  No, a man, sleep-tousled sandy hair, five o’clock shadow, eyes a stunning mineral green. Kind. Kind eyes.

  He opens the door with a jingle.

  I point to the sign. “Sorry. The sign said ring the bell.”

  “Not at all,” he says, swinging the door wide, smile welcoming. “That’s why we’re here. Sorry it took me so long.”

  I step inside.

  Faded jeans, a long-sleeve brick-red T-shirt, Converse sneakers—a man who dresses like a kid. That and his obvious sleepiness, it’s vaguely sexy.

  “Get many late-night check-ins?” I ask.

  “Oh, we get folks all hours,” he says, shutting the door behind me.

  I almost apologize again, but I’ve been trying to stop doing that. It’s such a female thing, to reflexively apologize for everything, for your very existence it sometimes seems. I look around as he shuffles about behind the desk. Fishing-gear chic seems to be the décor we’re going for here. Mounted nets and rods, a framed collection of lures, lots of pictures of bearded outdoorsy-looking men, smiling, triumphant, holding high gigantic bunches of dead fish. Honestly, I never did get it. The killing of a thing for sport.

  “I see you parked in front of room seven. Is that the room you want?” he asks.

  “Oh,” I say, looking back at my car. “Whatever’s available.”

  I step across the rustic wood floor to move closer to the counter.

  He smiles. “Miss, they’re all available.”

  “Well, whatever is best then.”

  He shrugs. Again that smile—which manages to be somehow wise and innocent all at once. “Honestly, they’re all pretty much the same.”

/>   “Then seven it is.”

  He hands me a key from a hook on a board, from which dangle nine other keys. A chunky wooden pine tree is attached to the gold ring, the plain wood branded SLEEP TIGHT MOTEL on one side, the number 7 on the other. It’s solid and heavy in my hand, a well-made thing. Which is notable in a world of shoddily made plastic junk that falls apart, gets discarded and swept into the ocean, only to be replaced by more junk.

  He slides a clipboard over to me.

  “Just fill that out and we’re good to go.”

  “Sure thing.”

  I proceed to fill the entire form with misinformation, present a driver’s license that isn’t mine, then pay with cash I stole from someone who loved and trusted me. One day I will make up for all the things I have done in the last seventy-two hours. I swear it.

  “Always so quiet here?” I ask, sliding my dirty money and pack of lies back to him.

  “Summer’s our season,” he says. “That’s when the fish are running, and the whole place is packed for weeks. But, yes, it’s always pretty quiet.”

  I nod, gripping the key. I am reminded of a place I visited with my dad, a place where we fished and then cooked our catch over a fire by the riverbank. It’s such a peaceful, happy memory. Just thinking about that day relaxes me—the clear blue sky, the rushing river, the smell of the fire.

  “I sleep right back there,” he says, pointing down a hall to an open door. “Need anything, just dial zero on your phone, and I’ll hear it. Does the quiet make you nervous?”

  “No. I like it.”

  “Help you with your bags?”

  “No.” I give him a smile and a little wave. “I don’t have much.”

  “How long will you be staying?”

  “I plan to be gone in the morning.”

  He nods slowly. That smile tickles at the corners of his mouth but doesn’t fully form.

  I follow him outside and down the covered walk. He takes the key from me and fits it in the lock, swings the door open. It’s far nicer than I expected, with crisp white sheets and big fluffy blankets on the bed, a cozy reading chair and lamp, a tidy dresser, flat-screen television. The bathroom, white and gray, is small but spotless.

  “Everything look good?”

  “Yes. Perfect.”

  “There are trailheads behind the motel, easy to find if you just follow the path. If you feel like a walk in the morning before you shove off. I serve breakfast at seven, and it’s free with your room, so I hope you’ll stay at least that long. You can check out whenever you like tomorrow. Like I said, we’re not busy.”

  I look out the window to assure myself I can see the car from the room. I can.

  “Your car . . . ,” he says, letting the sentence trail off.

  “Yes.”

  “You seem worried about it. We could put it in the garage if you want.”

  I am worried; the car might be seen from the road.

  “If it’s no trouble—”

  “None at all. It’s not a garage exactly, just an empty old barn and workshop. There’s not much in it; sometimes rich folks from the city have a lot of expensive gear. We just lock it in there.”

  Outside, he walks past the rooms of the motel, then waits at the edge of the parking lot. I get in my car, then follow him along a gravel drive as he walks the short distance to a freestanding barn. When he swings the heavy wooden door open, I pull the vehicle inside. I grab the two bags I have with me and lock the car, double-checking the trunk.

  “Want me to lock it?” he says when we’re outside. He motions to the latch on the barn door.

  “Maybe not.”

  “In case you leave early tomorrow. Before breakfast.”

  Does he look a little disappointed? I feel that familiar niggle of not wanting to disappoint anyone, ever, for any reason. Another female quirk, isn’t it? Always be polite, meet expectations, smile when you don’t want to, cry instead of getting angry. Be pleasing. But honestly, I have really walked off the edge in that department.

  “Right,” I say. “Which I might.”

  “I’ll leave it open then.”

  He walks me back to my room. At the door, he says, “I have a prediction.”

  It echoes another moment, at another door, with another man, though the memory is faded.

  “What’s that?”

  “You are going to have the best night’s sleep of your life. And if you’re still here in the morning, the best breakfast too.”

  I smile. “Are you a psychic?”

  “Let’s just call it intuition.”

  “Good night, Mr.—”

  “Call me Drew.”

  “Good night, Drew.”

  “Good night, Madeline.”

  I almost correct him. Oh, no, I’m not Maddie. I’m Eve. I’ve said it so many times; my best friend and I look so much alike we could be sisters. That’s why her identification is working so well for me. I catch myself, smile, and shut the door.

  Maddie’s prettier than I am—fine, delicate features where mine are softer, less well formed. Her eyes are almond shaped, cat eyes. Darker—midnight, not chocolate. She’s a bit thinner, though I can squeeze into her stuff. I’m tougher, supposedly, or so I always thought; I’m the one to tell aggressive guys to fuck off, or to leave the clingers hanging, to ghost even the good guys when I’ve lost interest. Maddie’s the nice one. Too nice. The sweet girl who says yes when she means no because she doesn’t want to hurt anyone. Then she gets hurt.

  I realize I’m still clutching her driver’s license, glance at her smiling face.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to no one.

  People are addicted to all kinds of things. Maybe that explains why, after I’ve had a hot shower, changed into clean clothes, buried myself in the soft white bliss of a surprisingly comfortable bed, all I can think about is him. How can you desire someone who hurts you? How can you miss him so much your body aches? Maybe not him, the man he actually was, but the man I thought he was. We cling to our ideas of people, don’t we? We hold on tight even when all evidence points to something else.

  I’m about to drift off when my phone lights up the room.

  You will never get away from me. You must know that.

  He saw Maddie first. But Maddie was already in love with Henry, who was working late that night—which as a young associate in a big law firm he did a lot. So, Maddie had agreed to a girls’ night out with me. I saw him leaning into her at the bar, tall and svelte, dressed in black. He wasn’t her type; he wouldn’t have had a shot even if not for Henry. Maddie was turned on by smarts, by sweetness—not by whatever this guy had. Dark good looks, obvious wealth.

  I rescued her.

  “Hey, we’re waiting for you,” I said, dragging her back to the dance floor.

  She waved to him, and he watched her go. Then his eyes fell to mine; my imagination of course, but I swear there was an audible click. Something caught in my chest, fluttered into my belly. It’s like my body knew, right then.

  “That guy,” yelled Maddie. “He was . . . intense.”

  “What’s his name?” His eyes were still on me; I could feel their heat.

  “Erik.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He was asking about you. He thought we were sisters.”

  I looked back over to the bar. But he was gone.

  “Let’s go,” said Maddie. “I’m wiped.”

  “One more drink,” I coaxed. I didn’t have a Henry at home. I wanted to drink and dance and meet someone.

  “One more,” she conceded.

  Yes when she meant no. If only she’d dragged me out of there like I would have done to her if I wanted to go and she wanted to stay.

  Something wakes me, its echo still on the air.

  A hard thunk on the wall behind my bed has me sitting bolt upright; then I hear a crash. Silence. I wait, holding my breath. Then the sound of something being dragged heavily across the floor.

  I get out of the bed and dig through my bag, find the gun I have stowed there. It’s a .38 Special, a basic revolver, loaded with six bullets. My father taught me how to use a gun like this one when I was twelve years old, gave me one for my eighteenth birthday. He blew his brains out with his own .38 some years later. Alcohol. Depression. Lost his job. Done. How this world will grind you up if you let it. He thought my mom and I would get the insurance money; we didn’t. Suicide clause.