Saturday, July 30, 2016

Nothing Good Ever Happens Here: Part 5 by Katherine Harbour

NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS HERE (2012)

Christie missed the morning panels, but he was prepared for the reading when it was his time at three o'clock, and arrived at the convention center early. He recited his poem--it was a long one--and received a pretty medal. He returned to his seat next to the other winners, where Leon nudged him. Marisol was next.
   "We're going out later. Come with us? I mean, it's our last night here."
   "Let me see if I can get Clara to come." Christie hadn't seen Clara at all today.
   "Who's Clara?"
   "The daughter of the hotel owner. Don't smile at me slyly."
   "That's just the way I smile. We'll never find out about the haunts." Leon sounded disappointed.
   "I'll ask her," Christie promised. "I'm sure she'll tell me the hotel's haunted. That pond is. Drownings. Devil worship. It has everything."
                                                                      ***
Christie, Leon, and Marisol walked around the neighborhood and had lunch. Afterward, Christie returned to his room, where he decided to crash for a little while before attempting to find Clara.
   He woke in the dark because he thought someone had whispered his name.
   Deciding that his phone must have buzzed, he fumbled for it. There was a text from Leon: WHERE R U? WE'RE 10 MINUTES AWAY. There was an address. They had left without him? He felt wounded.
   He was showered and dressed and in the hall in fifteen minutes. He took an empty elevator down to the lobby, which was also deserted but for one desk clerk.
   As he stood outside in the chill, a cab slid to the curb. He ducked in. The cabdriver, a black man with silver hair, looked at him funny. "What are you doing out on the border like this?"
   That was a weird way of defining the city districts. Christie said, "I'm attending a poetry convention."
   The man looked back over one shoulder. "Why're you standing outside of that place?"
   "I'm staying there."
   "You're staying in a place that closed up ten years ago?" The driver narrowed his eyes in the rearview mirror. "What are you up to, son?"
   I am so not in the mood for this, Christie thought, wondering if the man was senile. "Let me tell you where I'm going? Friends are expecing me."
                                                                       ***
Christie didn't find Leon and Marisol at the restaurant. He texted Leon. He didn't get an answer, but he did get a take-out meal, and had to call for another cab, whose driver kept blissfully quiet the entire time.
                                                                      ***
Christie did it out of curiosity: He snapped open his laptop and Googled The Barrington Hotel.
   The Barrington had been a hot spot in the 1930s. It had hosted gangsters and actors. One actor had drowned in the pond in the back. Accompanying the article was a black-and-white photo of a young man with slicked-back hair and one of those annoying faces that seemed chiseled out of marble. The hotel's owners, Edward Barrington and his socialite wife, Zelda, had died in a fire in 1938. They had had a daughter. Her name had been Clara.
   Christie stared numbly at the black-and-white photograph of a girl who looked like the Clara he had met, down to the little white dress and marcelled blonde hair.
   The room was too cold. Autumn wind howled outside. He switched the TV on just to hear the normalcy of a sports game. He felt dizzy. He looked back down at this computer screen and scrolled to a picture of the hotel from 2005. The next tragedy had involved the hotel shuttle bus, transporting several guests to The Barrington. There had been a crash. All the passengers had died. The passengers were listed, with photos.
   Christie had once fainted from hunger when on a camping trip with his dad and brothers. He felt that awful vertigo now, as if his brain were lifting from his body. He stared at the photos as his mind worked to find a solution that made sense.
   The lights went out. In the gloom, Christie lifted his gaze from the laptop to the window.
   The window was now boarded up, the curtains around it now tattered. The wallpaper was peeling. The bed beneath him was soggy. The acid reek of mildew made him retch.
   He hurled himself off the bed. He slammed back against a wall and slid down, squeezing his eyes shut. "This isn't real. Stop it."
   The wind ceased howling. He opened his eyes. The room was as it had been, neat and brightly lit. A malevolent thing in disguise.
   He jumped up and shut his laptop, threw it into his suitcase, zipped up the suitcase. Luggage in hand, he stumbled to the door. He was shocked when it opened.
   The hallway seemed safe. As he passed Leon's room, he hesitated. One of the photographs of the passengers on that doomed shuttle bus had been Leon Emmet. Another had been Marisol Hernandez.
   He knocked on Leon's door. No one answered.
   The lights at the end of the hall went out.
   Christie fled, rushing through the door to the stair.
   In the lobby, all seemed deceptively well. The desk attendant stood before the Art Deco mural of Native Americans. The auburn-haired girl from the old bookstore and the red-haired boy who accompanied her stood in the lobby talking. They looked at Christie. Their eyes glimmered silver.
   He pushed out the doors, into the garden.
                                                                            ***

Friday, July 22, 2016

Nothing Good Ever Happens Here: Part 4 by Katherine Harbour

NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS HERE (2012)

Christie was awakened by music--eerie, manic fiddle music. The slight discordance was what jerked up his head from the pillow. The room was freezing. The heat had apparently stopped working.
   Grumbling, he got up in the light of the television and checked the wall thermometer. He didn't believe it when he saw that it was sixty degrees. He moved to the window, which overlooked the garden maze. Another party was being held in the furthest reaches of the garden, near the pond. He could see lights and moving figures. The music came from there.
   When a humming sound pulsed in his ears, he shivered. The humming faded, but the nape of his neck prickled. He heard laughter and voices in the hall, a girl singing sweetly, as if a group of drunken guests were passing by. He hurried to the door, looked out of the peephole. He didn't see anyone. He grabbed his phone and texted Leon: DID U HEAR THAT? NO 1 OUT THERE.
   A second later, Leon texted back: ON 3, WE STEP OUT, OK?
   Christie counted, then yanked the door open and stepped into the hall.
   Leon was there, looking bewildered in plaid pajama pants. He shook his head. "Weird."
   "There's a party going on at the pond."
   Leon looked back into his room. Then, with one hand on the doorknob, he leaned slightly toward Christie. "I've got company."
   "You're hooking up?" Christie felt betrayed. "Is it Mari--"
   Leon widened his eyes and slid back into the room, whispered, "No time for ghosts."
   "Well, no," Christie muttered as his door shut. "You're getting laid."
   He thought of the party and the pond and felt a thrill of daring. Was it some of the locals? Did Clara know about it?
   A whisper of sound made him turn quickly. He thought he glimpsed a pair of spindly shadows cross the wall at the corridor's end.
   He walked cautiously over and saw that the wallpaper was stained, as if by smoke, forming shapes that resembled two gaunt people.
   He returned to his room and made some coffee in the brewer. He gazed out the window at the moving figures and lights near the pond.
                                                                      ***
Fifteen minutes later, dressed in a hoodie and boots against the cold, he left the hotel by the garden entrance and strode down the labyrinthine path, toward the thicket of trees around the pond. The night was eerily quiet. He heard only leaves rustling and the sounds of traffic in the distance. He knew he wasn't supposed to be able to catch such delicate sounds. Fireflies winked between the trees. When he came to the last part of the garden, he found it deserted.
   Maybe I went the wrong way. And maybe the revelers had headed back around the pond.
   He pushed through the thickets, his heart galloping. The moon, reflecting from the clouds, created a bright illumination.
   He saw a structure near the pond, a makeshift temple, its roof of tin, its pillars made from mismatched timbers painted with symbols. Arching over it, its roots snaking into the pond, was a giant yew tree.
   The party had ended apparently, but Christie found no evidence of it--no beer cans or footprints or any sign of a group of people. He stepped up into the temple, and halted.
   Someone had placed a goat's skull on a pedestal. Green candles surrounded it. Flowering vines draped it. Shells and little statues had been placed around it.
   Rotting wood gave way beneath one of his feet. He fell backward, his head smacking against the boards. He lay there for a minute, until the stars stopped flashing behind his eyes. Dread crawled up through his stomach.
   Then he heard something splashing in the pond, something big.
   He rolled over and eased up onto his knees. He gazed at the pond glistening darkly beyond the trees. When he heard a noise like a bull bellowing softly, he pushed to his feet and lurched out of the temple, in the direction of the hotel. Every instinct within him warned him against turning his head and looking at that pond again.
   Don't. Don't. Don't.
   But he did.
   He saw a large figure standing there, facing him, its back to the pond. Moonlight glistened on skin so white, it reminded him of things long submerged in watery depths.
   When a hand clamped down on his shoulder, he whirled, one fist drawn back.
   "Hey." Leon raised his hands. "I can't believe you came down here on your own."
   "Did you..." Christie turned toward the pond.
   "Come on back." Hunched up in his jacket, Leon looked around. "That place is not scenic."
   "Boys." They turned to see Marisol approaching. "It's freezing out here. Where's the party?"
   "I told her." Leon shrugged when Christie glanced at him. "There's no sign of anyone. Are you sure--"
   "Don't ask me if I'm sure." Christie started back up the path. "They're gone now, whoever they were. But I'm sure they were here."
                                                                        ***

Monday, July 18, 2016

Nothing Good Ever Happens Here: Part 3 by Katherine Harbour

NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS HERE Part 3 (Year 2012)

The cocktail party at the hotel that evening was attended by a number of people in fancy clothes. Attempting to procure liquor, Christie and Leon were shot down by the bartender.
   Christie straightened his tie as he and Leon turned away. "I guess I don't look as grown up as I thought."
   "You nervous about reciting your poem tomorrow?" Leon, who was wearing what Christie suspected to be a designer suit, looked around the garden.
   "No. You?"
   "No. Marisol is." Leon suddenly smiled. "There she is."
   Marisol was weaving toward them. She wore a little black dress and her hair in a single braid. Glancing at Leon, Christie said, "Why don't you go tell her how nice she looks before I'm tempted to?"
   Leon rubbed a hand over his scalp, then grinned and moved toward Marisol.
   Christie snagged one of the non-alchoholic drinks carried on trays by waiters. He wove toward the table scattered with a paradise of appetizers and began stacking them on a plate. Life was good.
   As he nibbled shrimp on a toothpick, he saw Clara moving toward him through the crowds. She was a pale flame against the chic darkness of the other guests. She selected a tiny pink cake from the spread and idly asked, "Are you having a good time?"
   "Not really, no." He spotted a large bird moving across the grass. "That's a peacock."
   "I saw someone leading a zebra  couple of minutes ago. This is very extravagant." Clara ate her cake.
   Christie was disappointed he hadn't seen the zebra. "It is swank."
   "There are others." Clara nodded toward a group of people their age--the other winners, he assumed, of the young writers' award.
   He said, "I should go over and introduce myself."
   "Or you can come with me." Clara set an Emily Strange lunchbox on the table and opened it. She began putting appetizers and little cakes into it. She shut the lid. "Come on."
   Thrilled, he followed her. As they passed the bar, she snagged a bottle of wine while the bartender was distracted. Her high-heeled red shoes clicking on the paving stones, she led him back toward the hotel, which seemed quiet.
   "Clara," he felt compelled to ask, "where are we going?"
   She opened a door and glanced back at him. She grinned and moved up a spiral of wrought-iron stairs. He followed her up the staircase, to round room at the top of a tower, where a chandelier of pink glass cast a rosy light over them as Clara opened the lunch box and set the canapes and petit fours on the balustrade. He walked to her side and gazed down at the grounds, which seemed more extensive than he'd thought. He saw fireflies sparkling in the trees. He looked out the other side of the cupola and saw the city of Detroit, lit up and modern.
   He glanced back over the grounds, where the small wood surrounded the pond that gleamed like a black mirror. The sight of it made him uneasy.
   Clara leaned back against the balustrade and tilted her head, watching him. "You see that pond? The Huron-Wyandot tribes worshiped something there. Later, it became a witches' meeting place. Not good witches. People have seen something that looks like a goat walking upright."
   "I live in a town where all sorts of werid stories like that get around. I'm not impressed."
   "No?" Clara turned and picked up one of the canapes, bit into it. "In the 1920s, a young man who was on the verge of becoming a movie star drowned there."
   "So, do you think if the white people had listened to the natives, they would have been advised to not build anythinge there?"
   Her cherry lips curved. He decided to take a chance. He kissed her. Heat dazzled him as she knotted a hand in his hair.
   His heart plummeted when she stepped back and said, "That was nice. Why do you like poetry?"
   He breathed deep and reached for the bottle of wine. He took a swig. Then he said, "Because it's powerful. Words, combined in a certain way, are like magic spells."
   "I never thought about it like that. Do you know what 'abracadabra' means?"
   "Tell me."
   "It means 'I create as I speak' in Aramaic."
   "You're an unusual girl. I like that."
   They finished off the bottle of wine and talked some more. They didn't kiss again, although Christie kept thinking about it.
                                                                               ***
He chivalrously escorted her to the elevator which went up to the penthouse where her family lived. She kissed him again before stepping back. The doors closed over her.
   He returned to his room and, dizzy from the alcohol, collapsed on the bed.
                                                                             ***

Saturday, July 16, 2016

Nothing Good Ever Happens Here: Part 2 by Katherine Harbour

NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS HERE Part 2 (Year: 2012)

The hotel lobby was busy the next morning, which made things normal. Christie and Leon met up and decided to search for the other five writers of the young poet contest.
   "There." Leon pointed to a girl with her black hair in braids. She looked up at them from the coffee bar, then sauntered over, a Styrofoam cup on in one hand.
   "Marisol." She held out her other hand. Christie shook it and he and Leon introduced themselves.
   "Do you think it'll get wild later on?" Christie indicated the other guests.
   "Poets aren't as rock star as they were way back when." Marisol indicated the front entrance. "Someone told me about a great cafe nearby. Want to walk?"
   "Let's go." As Leon headed for the doors, Christie swept a glance around the lobby, looking for the intriguing auburn-haired girl he'd seen last night.
                                                                          ***
Marisol was from a local suburb and knew her way around the area. She took them on a brief tour after breakfast. They wandered down streets lined with old houses, some of which were boarded up, their yards now jungles of weeds and creepers. They found a used bookstore and argued mildly about which poets deserved their fame and which ones were overrated.
   They reached the convention center and stayed together to attend panels and explore the booksellers' stalls. Christie learned that his new friends had each written pieces that, like Christie, they would be reading tomorrow.
   They took the bus back to the hotel and separated with plans to meet up later.
   Restless after being inside all day, Christie wandered into the garden, which seemed wild despite the topiary and the paved paths leading to roundabouts, the last path ending near a wood of tall pines, dark and foreboding. He saw the black glimmer of water beyond the trees.
   He turned and found a girl sitting on the base of a statue depicting a Native American chieftain. Her golden hair was fashioned in a stylish bob. Despite the cold, she wore a little white dress and a red hoodie that matched her sneakers. She was watching him, her face remote.
  "Are you one of the poets?" she asked idly.
   "I am. Are you?"
   "No. Didn't you hear me coming up the path?"
   He didn't want to explain why he hadn't heard her. "Were you trying to sneak up on me?"
   "I've been sitting here watching you for about five minutes."
   "I'm flattered, really. 'And this is why I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering, though the sedge is withered from the vine, and no birds sing.'"
   She narrowed her eyes. "Why did you choose that particular line from that particular poem?"
   Usually, girls who weren't into poetry assumed he'd made up any he spoke. He figured their deceased authors, most of whom had been players, wouldn't mind. "I thought you weren't a poet?"
   "I'm not." She stood up and began to walk along the rim of the fountain. "My family owns this hotel. My father. My mom is probably somewhere in Morocco or Paris having cocktails."
   "Oh." He didn't know how to respond to this bitter and light-hearted statement about parental abandonment. "I'm Christie."
   She glanced at him. "I'm Clara."
   "Is that a pond or a lake?" He peered through the trees at the black shine of water.
   When she didn't answer, he tapped his ear. He heard a slight buzzing and turned his head.
   Clara stood with her hands over her face. Concerned, he moved toward her. "Clara? Hey--"
   "I have to go." She whirled and ran back along the path.
   "Fantastic." He turned to face the woods which seemed excessively dark for even an overcast afternoon.
   Then a shadow--tall and narrow--moved between one tree and the next, blocking out the water for an instant.
   Christie told himself, That wasn't anything.
   His phone buzzed. He nearly screamed. Teeth gritted, he pulled it from his back pocket.
   He frowned at the text from Leon. HEY. WHERE R U?
                                                                    ***
It was Marisol who suggested a cab ride to one of her favorite restaurants.
   As the cab made its way through a neighborhood where every other building looked as if it had undergone an individual catastrophe, Christie saw that phrase again, graffitied across another wall.
   Nothing good ever happens here.
   "Is this a safe neighborhood to be in?" Leon peered out the window.
   "Blight." The cab driver, an old man with a heavy Russian accent, glanced at them in the rear view mirror. "Urban blight."
   "Well, yeah, but things are getting better," Marisol said defensively.
   The cab driver said something in Russian. Christie whispered to Leon, "This is where he says something weird and disturb--"
   "They cause blight. When they are not happy." The driver shook his head.
   "Who is 'they', sir?" Christie tried to keep a straight face. Marisol nudged him.
   The cab driver didn't answer.
   They rounded a corner and Marisol said, "There is is. The best Thai food you'll ever experience."
   As Leon and Marisol ducked out into the rainy night, Christie handed over his credit card to the driver. The man said, almost absentmindedly, "In Romania, they are called leshi."
   "Excuse me?" Christie frowned.
   "The leshi..." The driver spoke matter-of-factly, handing the card back. "They have come into your cities--the worst of them."
   "The worst of what?" Christie stepped back. "Is that a gang or--"
   "You." The driver shook a finger at him as music pulsed from a club across the street. "Careful. They like redheads."
   "'kay..." Christie said carefully and watched the cab take off.
   Across the street, in front of a nightclub flashing neon letters that spelled out DIAMOND JACK'S, a group of extremely attractive people were gathered. Although their clothes were modern, they had a distinct antique look. The music from the club sounded wild, with a woman's voice wailing in another language.
   After dinner, Marisol took them to another used bookstore. Christie found a first edition Walt Whitman and an illustrated copy of Hans Christian Andersen's stories. As he selected some old copies of Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels--his friend Sylvie would love them--the bells above the door tinkled.
   A girl with auburn hair and a boy whose curls glinted like flames had entered. The girl wore a black suede hoodie and tartan trousers. A headband of tiny rhinestones glinted in her hair. She was the girl he'd seen in the hotel lobby. As she moved gracefully with her companion to the glass case of first edition books, she glanced over her shoulder and the fluorescent lighting made her eyes glow like a cat's. Christie thought he heard her companion, in buckled boots and jeans  and a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, call her Phouka, before they moved further into the shadows of the bookshop.
   Phouka, he thought, fascinated. What a fantastic name.
                                                                      ***

Friday, July 15, 2016

Nothing Good Ever Happens Here by Katherine Harbour

NOTHING GOOD EVER HAPPENS HERE 
(A Thorn Jack story set in 2012, before the events in Thorn Jack)

Nothing good ever happens here.
   As the cab drove past the remains of the boarded-up church, those words in graffiti across its doors seemed to glow in the fading light.
   This is the part in the horror movie where I'm like, 'Oh shit.' Christie grinned and returned to the book in his lap. It was an old book of W.B. Yeats's poems, one of his favorites. He figured he owed it a trip out of Fair Hollow. The book had inspired the poem that had won him a place at the three-day writers' conference which he and six other students from around the country had been invited to attend in Detroit.
   He tugged the wool hat from his curls and tried to make his legs stretch as far as they could in the cramped space. It seemed to be an overly long ride.
   "Here." The driver, a gaunt woman with coal-black hair and a crow's eyes, jerked the cab to a halt.
   Christie peered out the window at the Barrington Hotel, which had been described in the letter as 'grand and luxurious, with a history.' It did look grand and luxurious, but not in a comforting way . . . more as if something old in the throes of decay had put on a mask and some fancy clothes.
   He paid the driver and, hauling his backpack, got out. As the cab pulled away, he stood and gazed at the gaudy entryway with its stained-glass doors and stone ladies curving over the arch. He was sixteen. This was the first time he'd ever been away from Fair Hollow without his brothers and his parents.
   He was going to enjoy it.
   He pushed through the doors. The lobby was decorated in rose-reds and golds, with an Art Deco mural of Native Americans in feathers and paint behind the front desk. As he headed for the desk, a girl in jeans and a fur-lined aviator's jacket strode past him. Tiny stars glimmered in her auburn hair. she glanced back. Her eyes seemed to flash silver. She turned and continued out the doors into the rain-swept night.
                                                              ***
After exploring his room, he called Sylvie, Aubrey, and, lastly, his mom. At nine o'clock, he fell asleep in his clothes, watching The Lord of the Rings.
   He was awakened by the sound of a girl crying.
   He sat up, blinking in the light from the television, where Frodo and company were visiting the elves. He hunched up and listened to the girl sobbing in the room next door.
   I should see what's wrong, he thought. I should go over there.
   He slid from the bed, tugged on his boots. He switched on a lamp and stepped out into the hall, which was furnished in hues of purple and gold like some fairy-tale castle. The paintings on the walls were of forests with the distant figures of Native Americans in them.
   He peered at room 709. He didn't hear the sobbing now.
   The door flew open and a boy his age stared at him, startled, the lights harsh on his brown skin. "Hey."
   "Hey."
   "So why are you standing outside my door?" The other boy wore a T-shirt and jeans. On the bed behind him was a guitar.
   "Uh." Christie tried to figure out how to say he'd come to check on the guy's girlfriend because he'd heard her crying.
   The other other boy said, roughly, "Is your girlfriend okay?" He leaned in the doorway, eyes narrowed. "Did you do something to make her cry like that?"
   "My girlfriend?" Christie was offended. "I came here to . . ." He stared at the interior wall of the other boy's room. Then he leaned back to check the distance between his door and his neighbor's. His own room's wall ended near his door. That left an entire room's length between his wall and his neighbor's. But there was no room between them, no door.
   "What are you looking at?" The other boy sounded wary.
   "I don't have a girl in my room," Christie told him. "I thought you did."
   The other boy turned his head and stared at the wall.
   "There's a space between our rooms." Christie didn't know why he whispered. The hair on the nape of his neck prickled. The fancy corridor seemed suddenly exceptionally chilly.
   "Yeah. There is. Your room ends down there?" The other boy pressed an ear against the wall. He looked at Christie. "I'm Leon."
   "Christie. You're not, by any chance, here for the writing conference, are you?"
   "Hey, then, good to meet you." Leon grinned and reached out. Christie grasped his hand. They both turned and gazed at the wall.
   "It could have come from upstairs? Downstairs?" Christie was trying to ignore the creeped-out feeling that had begun to settle inside of him.
   "A vent." Leon decided. He took his phone from his back pocket. "Why don't you give me your number? If this happens again, we can check it out."
   Christie gave him the number to his cell and entered Leon's into his. They promised to meet up at the events tomorrow, the panels and signings at the convention center that, on the map, was only five blocks away.
   Christie returned to his room and sat in the middle of the enormous bed.
   He didn't know if he should have been able to hear what he'd heard. He'd been born partially deaf and his hearing aids were only supposed to assist, but as the years went on, he'd gradually begun to distinguish distinct sounds, the tonal qualities of people's voices. He'd tried telling his doctors this. No one believed him.
   There was a painting above his bed, of another forest, at night, with a tiny white figure in it, like a girl in a gown. He didn't like the look of that vast forest, the black glitter of water between the trees.
   He fell asleep with the lights on.
                                                                     ***