Part 1

Part 3

Another city, another hotel–

Or motel, to be precise.

A one-storey, C-shaped, 1950’s construction with nothing around but pine forest and a lonely stretch of highway. The best thing about it was a life-sized wooden statue of Smokey the Bear in the dingy reception office. Trucks and RVs filled the parking lot, and I noticed my father kept a much closer eye on us than he had before.

“It’s only for a little while,” he sighed. “Just try to stay where I can see you.”

Cayden and I splashed around all day in the outdoor pool, where we had playmates aplenty. I was so used to seeing other kids come and go that I didn’t notice the familiar voice until it was too late.

“Pardon me…but what are you doing?” it asked.

“Marco Polo!” I shouted without turning around. “Wanna play?”

“Oh, A game! I love games!” My blood seemed to freeze in my veins. It couldn’t be*.* I spun in the choppy water, and found myself looking at a familiar face: a face that could’ve belonged to a child my own age…if I didn’t look too hard.

“GOTCHA!” I nearly choked as Cayden dunked me from behind. “Now you’re Marco!”

I spluttered. Light streamed up from the bottom of the pool and into the night sky, illuminating the grin of the figure calmly treading water in front of me…waiting. I didn’t want to close my eyes while they were so close…

“Hurry up!” Cayden whined. I took a deep breath.

“...MARCO!”

I did my best to avoid the unnatural figure in front of me as I flailed blindly from one side of the pool to the other. I was usually a great swimmer, but fear had thrown me off; I was starting to despair of ever catching anyone when my fingertips brushed against something cold and rubbery. Only when I opened my eyes did I realize that it was skin–skin that belonged to the last thing in the world I wanted to touch.

That smiling figure from the other hotel.

“It’s my turn now,” they whispered quietly. Their grin was like the edge of a knife.

Before the ‘game’ could begin in earnest, I grabbed Cayden’s wrist and dragged him, whining, out of the pool. He sulked in front of the T.V. the whole rest of the night, but I told myself that at least he was alive. At least nothing had grabbed him from beneath the water and dragged him away to…someplace else.

Those twisted imaginings shaped my dreams that night, which were all of black doorways that opened in the bottom of late-night pools and the pale, long-fingered hands reaching out of them.

I refused to go back to the pool, which made Cayden furious. He didn’t understand why I had taken his favorite activity away from him. To make matters worse, we’d run out of chalk and library books, and those long summer days were starting to feel eternal.

We were sweating and listening to the cicadas when someone called out to us from the darkness of the vending machine room:

“Aww, what’s wrong? All out of games to play?”

“Yeah.” Cayden replied casually. Panicking, I reached out to grab his wrist, but he was already walking toward the voice in the darkness.

“I know a game that we can play. But we can’t play it here.” Eyes sparkled like silver-green orbs in the gloom of the snack room. For a horrible moment, I expected a pale hand to reach out and grab Cayden; instead, the door to the supply closet at the back of the snack room swung open–

And I couldn’t believe what was waiting on the other side.

Flashing multicolored lights, clinking coins, raised voices. A deluge of light and sound. At the time, I thought I was looking at some kind of fairy kingdom; only later would I learn that I was looking at the interior of a famous casino-hotel in Las Vegas.

“Won’t you come play with us?” Two more of them, those not-quite-children from the hotel hallway, beckoned from the other side.

Cayden was through the door before I could stop him.

I rushed after my little brother, and the door snapped shut behind me with a horrible finality.

For a moment I stared in wonder at the steel-and-crystal, air-conditioned paradise around me; then I remembered how I’d gotten there. They were already walking away with Cayden.

“What would you like to do first?” It was the one from the pool who spoke. Their rough-cut hair was blondish-brown and their eyes were silver-green, but that was all I could say about them for sure. Their features all seemed to blend together, neither male nor female, black nor white; they were innocently young and terribly old all at once. “Ah, the roller-coaster!” They clapped Cayden on the back. “An excellent choice!”

I felt sick when I saw that rubbery hand on my little brother’s shoulder...weren’t those fingers just a little too long?

“Hey!” I shouted. “If we’re gonna play together, I need to know what to call you! What’s your name?” My question was met with an angry, sour expression.

“Call me Merry. You can call this one Holly,” (Merry indicated another short figure with shoulder length reddish-brown hair that covered their face), “and that one, Wendy. Now, enough chitchat! Thrills and chills await!”

We cut the line and walked right past the dazed-looking ticket agent; as the heavy foam bars came down and locked us in place, I felt a terrible sense of foreboding. There was something so wrong about the stillness of the three figures around us. Everyone shrieked and put their hands in the air as the roller-coaster began to move…but Merry, Holly, and Wendy just stared straight ahead–smiling.

If they could open a door to this place, what else could they do? I wondered. Cause the safety bars to unlock and send us all plunging to our deaths? Trap us someplace where we’d never see our father again?

Frightened as I was, it was hard not to get caught up in the glow of the neon and the feel of the desert wind in my hair. After the ride, Holly snagged two bags of caramel popcorn right out from under the unfocused eyes of a kiosk attendant and handed them to Cayden and I.

“You must be hungry,” they whispered, and I shivered when their cold rubbery skin touched my own. The popcorn was sweet, salty, and delicious. If these were the “hotel people” my father had warned us about…well, maybe they weren’t so bad. A little…stiff, a little strange maybe, but they hadn’t done anything to hurt us. Not ‘yet,’ whispered a small voice in the back of my mind–but it was drowned out by the roar of the casino around me.

A few hours later, however, I realized that our father must be looking for us.

“Hey…” I whispered to Merry, “We probably need to be getting back…”

“Oh?” A look of barely-concealed rage passed over Merry’s face. “So soon?” Holly and Wendy shot them an odd glance, and they all twisted their lips into the same sweet smile. “Well then, I suppose it can’t be helped. This way.” The three child-sized figures pushed open a perfectly ordinary emergency exit door–

And we saw the snack room of our motel on the other side.

“It’s dark out!” Cayden gasped.

“Our dad’s gonna be so pissed!” I added, grabbing my little brother’s wrist and bolting for our room.

“Come back and play again anytime.” Merry, Holly, and Wendy waved until we were out of sight. When the storage room door swung closed, I knew that they were gone.

Moments later, I knocked timidly on the door of the motel room we shared with my father. It swung open almost immediately.

“WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU TWO?!” my father roared. A surge of guilt ran through both of us. Cayden bit his lip, trying not to cry. Neither of us had ever seen our father so upset before.

“We were playing…in the woods…” I lied.

“You need to let me know next time.” My father released his worry in a long, shuddering sigh. “Well, you’re here now, at least. I ordered takeout, so eat up and get packed. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

“I thought you said we’d be here for two more days…” I whined. Just a few hours ago I would’ve been thrilled to leave that boring old motel behind for good, but things were different now. What if I never got to go on another adventure with Merry, Holly, and Wendy? I could tell by Cayden’s expression that he was thinking the same thing.

“That was the plan, but things changed.” My father squatted down to eye level with us. “Boys, I need you to be very serious with me for a minute. Did you see any unusual adults around the pool last night? Any grownups who made you feel unsafe? It’s alright–you can tell me.” Cayden and I looked at each other. The only grownups at the pool had been the usual chain-smoking RV wives and sunburned truckers. The hotel people had been there, of course, but they weren’t adults–not exactly.

Besides, telling on them didn’t seem like a good idea.

Cayden and I both shook our heads, ate our cold Lo Mein noodles, and began to put what few belongings we had into our child-sized suitcases.

We had no way of knowing that the next place we’d be staying would be even worse.

X