The Resort (26 page)

That he was unwilling to do.

He imagined himself creeping silently forward, peeking carefully around the corner—and then grabbed by a slimy bullet-headed monster and eaten.

No thanks.

He took a step backward, and next door the party suddenly started. Dogs barking and everything. It was just as it had been last night, and the eerie thing was that it arrived full force, not growing in volume as layers were added but starting at its peak, as though it were on tape and the recording had just been turned on.

That was possible, and he wondered if all of this wasn't part of some bizarre attempt to drive him crazy, some
Let's Scare Jessica to Death
situation. But he thought of the wolves and the snakes and that creepy exercise pool, and rejected that idea immediately. There would be no point to it. And besides, he was sure that whatever was happening at this resort was not the result of human intention.

Through the wall, someone screamed, and there was once again that muffled gunshot sound.

The noise of the party gave him cover and gave him confidence, and he took three quick steps forward to look around the corner into the bathroom, ready to bolt instantly if need be. But there was nothing in the tub or on the toilet, and behind the clouded glass, the shower stall looked clear. The only other possibility was that someone or something could be hiding behind the open door, but he could see through the crack next to the hinges that that was not the case.

Emboldened, he walked into the outer part of the bathroom past the vanity and the sink. “Hey!” he called. There was no answer, no noise but the sounds of the party next door, and he poked his head through the doorway, prepared to jump backward should something leap out at him or the door try to slam shut. Nothing happened, however. The bathroom was empty, and he walked inside, still clutching tightly to his briefcase, which was both his shield and sword right now.

He saw here what he could not see from farther away: there was a large black bubble at the bottom of the water in the otherwise clean toilet. It was perfectly round and shiny, like blown glass, and it appeared to have emerged from the hole at the bottom. Patrick had no idea what it was, but the flawlessness of its form frightened him for some reason, as did its jet opacity, and he had no doubt that it was connected to that cellophane crinkle and that heavy shifting sound.

Had it? He wasn't sure because he hadn't seen it clearly, but it had been dark, and it was only a short leap from that to this. Tensing himself, ready for anything, Patrick leaned over, pressed down on the handle to flush the toilet and jumped back.

The bubble popped, dissipating into crescent-shaped fragments that looked like pieces of fingernails and were sucked down with the water. A foul stench arose from the toilet, an odor of rot and decay that reminded him of spoiled meat. Then it was over and gone, the water was clear again, the bathroom was empty, and there was no sign that anything unusual had ever occurred here.

He breathed deeply, allowing the first full complement of air into his lungs since he'd walked into his room.

The spider had been black,
he thought.

The spider was gone. But he could still smell the poison.

Just to be on the safe side, he checked every corner of the room, looked under every piece of furniture and inside every cupboard and drawer before finally putting his briefcase down and setting up his laptop to write.

He was in love.

Owen knew how that would sound if he said it aloud to anyone. Hell, he knew how
he
would have reacted if anyone before today had told him such a thing. But it was true. Through some chain reaction of fate and circumstances, he and Brenda had ended up in the same place at the same time, and if one thing had gone wrong, if his family had taken their vacation a week earlier or her family had decided to stay at another hotel, even though they lived in the same county of the same state they never would have met.

But they had.

It was meant to be.

He cringed inwardly even as he had the thought. Mush like that was for romance novels and women's TV movies, not real life. But it was what he felt, and there was an electric excitement associated with it, a feeling that he'd experienced in flashes prior to this but that he'd never savored in its entirety.

Love.

He and his brothers had gotten to the pool well before the movie was supposed to start, but the place was already filling up. As soon as their parents left to go back to the room, Owen set about searching for Brenda while Curtis and Ryan took the two chairs that David had been able to save for them amid all of the families jostling for position by moving and scraping the pool furniture across the cement. He finally found Brenda in the water, seated on the steps in the shallow end. There was a light behind her, far away in the deep end, but it was so faint by the time it reached her that it was impossible to tell whether she was wearing a bathing suit or was naked.

She looked naked, though he knew she wasn't.

He wished she was.

He got into the water next to her, surprised by its warmth. It must have absorbed the heat of the afternoon sun and retained it. “Do you have a raft?” he asked.

“No. You?”

He shook his head. “I guess we could just sit on the edge.”

“Or stay here in the water.” The lights in the palm trees above had dimmed, in preparation for the movie, he supposed, and it was impossible to see her face. The effect was strange, and he found that he was unable to read her emotions from her voice alone. He waded out a bit and turned around so the light from the deep end would make her less of a silhouette and easier to see. She reached for him, took his hand, and the touch of her fingers made him tingle. “Come on. Let's swim out a bit and get away from this crowd.”

The steps had been invaded by several fathers with their small children, and Owen allowed himself to be led into deeper waters. In the back of his mind, always, was the location of the body he and Curtis had seen, but he would make sure to steer Brenda away from that area if they got too close.

He needn't have worried. She stopped somewhere around where the water was up to his stomach and her chest. The lights were still dimmed—maybe they were going to stay this way—and out here no one could see what they were doing. They stood close, talking low and tentatively touching, accidental contacts with feet and thighs and arms and elbows that were not really accidental, brushes up against each other that were played off as casual but meant far more, boundary tests that lasted a beat too long, until they were finally and fully kissing. It was the most wonderful thing he'd ever felt, the closest feeling to perfection he had ever experienced. Her lips were soft, her tongue inquisitive, and he wondered how he had gotten so lucky that this should be happening to him.

Owen had no idea where his brothers were at the moment and didn't care. All he knew was that he wanted this night to last forever.

They stopped kissing, pulled away from each other, looked into each other's eyes, afraid to speak, afraid to say anything that would ruin the moment. Feeling brave, he reached out to touch her, then moved his hand down her stomach until his fingers touched the elastic of her bikini bottom. He paused there for a moment, giving her time to object, to move away, to push his hand aside, but she did nothing, and his penis was fully erect as his fingers slid gently beneath the waistband and encountered the downy fibrous texture of her pubic hair. She smiled at him, her lips barely visible in the dark, and then he felt her fingers slipping inside his own suit, delicately closing around his stiff shaft.

He pulled away, not wanting to, but knowing that if he didn't he would explode. She seemed to understand and, rather than taking offense, took his hands in hers and giggled nervously. “Wow,” she said.

“Yeah,” he breathed, not trusting himself to say more until the physical sensation died down, until his erection subsided and his fingers no longer tingled from the delicious hairiness of her wet crotch.

A kid swam by them, a dark seal-like figure speeding past their legs under the water and splashing noisily to the surface a few feet away. His friend was yelling after him, paddling forward on a raft.

“It's getting too crowded here,” Brenda said, and ducked into the water, swimming toward the deep end.

Toward the body.

Owen remained where he was, rooted in place, watching the even rhythmic strokes of her long slender arms.
No,
he thought,
don't let it happen.
But she stopped exactly over the spot, then swiveled in the water looking for him, suddenly realizing that he had not come along with her. “Hey!” she called out.

He could only see the top half of her, but with her hair plastered down, her arms at her sides, she appeared almost bound, mummy-wrapped. She
looked
like the body, and, his skin a field of gooseflesh, he wondered if what he'd seen had not been something that had already happened but had been a premonition of things to come.

Then she was swimming back toward him and the spell was broken. She dived underneath the water as she approached, playfully bumping her elbow against his still stiff erection, and then burst to the surface right in front of him. “Where were you?” she asked, wiping the water out of her eyes. “Why didn't you come with me?”

He didn't have a ready answer and couldn't come up with anything plausible on the spur of the moment, so he remained silent, shook his head.

“I guess this is a good spot to watch the movie,” she said. “If that's what you want to do.”

He drew her to him, putting his arm around her shoulder, as an overweight woman floated by on an inner tube. “Yeah,” he said. “Let's watch the movie. It'll be fun. Maybe afterward . . .” He left the sentence unfinished.

“Yeah.”

He smiled at her, kissed her, but over her shoulder his eyes were focused on the spot where he'd seen the body.

 

Even under normal circumstances, Curtis always thought there was something creepy about hotels at night. Last year, they'd stayed at a Holiday Inn in San Diego, and when he had to go out to get some ice, the interior corridor through which he walked seemed never ending, like the endless hallway in the Haunted Mansion. He hurried past door after door, past the same repeating patterns on the wallpaper, the same geometric designs on the carpeting, and it was spooky, as though he were trapped in some
Twilight Zone
version of hell. He found himself wondering what was going on behind each of the closed doors, in each of the rooms, and the scenes that entered his mind were not of happy families writing postcards and watching television but psychos and sickos carrying out the evil will of unseen presences, committing murders in bathtubs, planning explosive demolitions.

Here at The Reata, all of that was multiplied by ten.

On the screen, Marlin and Dory, two computer-animated fish, were swimming along with a group of surfer dude sea turtles. In the pool, children were laughing. On the chairs, adults were chuckling. But beneath it all flowed a current of dread, a sense that this was ironic icing on a dark and evil cake. He cleared his throat, looking over at David. “There're people swimming where the body was.”

“What are you talking about, tube steak?”

But David knew exactly what he was talking about. Curtis could tell from the tight tense expression on his face, from the way the other boy would not look at him.

Neither of them spoke for a moment. Ryan, on the other side of Curtis, pretended to be scanning the pool for Owen and not listening.

“I think something's going to happen tonight,” David said finally, quietly.

A jolt, like an electric current, both terrifying and exciting, passed through him.
Yes,
Curtis thought. He stared out at the pool, his gaze stopping on what he believed was the silhouette of Owen and Brenda kissing in midwater. He was jealous of his brother, he could admit that, but there was still something about their relationship that rubbed him the wrong way. He had the same feeling about those two together that he did about The Reata overall: it wasn't right.

Wind began blowing high in the trees, swinging the palm fronds back and forth like whisk brooms, though it did not reach the ground. A few seconds later, the rain started. A drop landed on his bare leg. Another on his chest. There was nothing else for a moment—then the torrent started. Wind-whipped rain suddenly sheeted sideways, hitting his skin like warm wet pinpricks. Lightning flashed close by, followed immediately by a deafening clap of thunder. He, Ryan, David and all of the people immediately around them jumped up from the chairs and ducked for cover, scurrying under shade umbrellas or the overhanging roof of the snack bar, throwing towels over their heads and shoulders. More lightning flashed, and parents were ordering kids out of the pool so they wouldn't get electrocuted.

The three of them stopped next to the snack bar, looking for Owen and Brenda among the fleeing guests. On the screen, Disney's underwater world was fuzzy and wavy behind a curtain of rain. Thunder roared.

Something was wrong. Although Curtis did not know what it was for the first few seconds, he quickly realized that it was the people. Not the guests, not the men, women and children attempting to find shelter in the storm, but the people working for The Reata, the employees. The rain made it difficult to see, gave everything a surreal watery cast, yet with each flash of lightning, Curtis saw shifts in the appearance of the men and women, odd and inexplicable changes that started out subtly but almost immediately grew blatant and noticeable.

“Look at that,” David breathed. “Jesus fuck.”