The Ninth Nightmare

looking for. A pattern? An ennead — whatever the hell that was?

Five of the rooms he had thankfully found unoccupied, but when he had knocked at the doors of all of the others the patter had always been the same. ‘Good evening, sir, madam. Real sorry to disturb you but my name is Detective Wisocky from the University Circle PD and I’m making a routine security check of all of the rooms in the Griffin House Hotel. Do you mind if I take a quick look around? It will only take a moment.’

Almost every time, the guest had asked him, ‘What exactly is it you’re looking for, detective?’

‘Signs of disturbance.’

‘Oh.’ Pause. ‘So what do they look like, these signs of disturbance?’

‘Hard to describe. But — you know — we always recognize them when see them.’

‘Oh.’

Maybe Charlie had been talking b… but in some of the rooms that Walter had walked into — not all of them — he had felt a distinctly unwelcoming atmosphere. Not exactly a tangible chill, but a feeling that there was somebody else’s presence here, somebody hostile, apart from the current guests. It had given him the same discomfort that he felt when he walked into an unfamiliar house, when the owners were away, or when they had been killed. Even the family photographs over the fireplace seemed to frown at him disapprovingly.

After he had finished checking every room on the sixth and seventh floors, he sat down on the couch next to the elevators and unfolded his hotel floor-plan. Taking out his pen, he marked a cross against every room where he had felt unsettled. Five on the sixth floor and three on the seventh floor. Only eight altogether. But when he laid one floor-plan over the other, he saw that it would have taken the addition of only one more room to make a nine- cornered star.

He sat back. Now, was this a coincidence or what? He was tempted to call Charlie and tell him what he had discovered. But he had picked those eight rooms only because of some indefinable feeling of unease, and not because of any empirical evidence that Mago Verde or Mago Verde’s successor had ever been there. OK, so he was Hunch Detective, but maybe this was one hunch too far. He didn’t want to look like an asshole.

He looked at the floor-plans again. The room which would have completed the nine-cornered star was Room 702, which had been unoccupied. Maybe he hadn’t experienced that unwelcoming feeling in Room 702 because Mago Verde hadn’t yet visited it.

He took out his cellphone and called the front desk. ‘Detective Wisocky here. Can you tell me if Room Seven-Oh-Two is booked for tonight?’

‘Please hold on a moment, sir.’

Walter sat and waited. As he did so, he felt a sudden draft, as if somebody had walked past him, yet the corridor was completely deserted. Shit, he thought. I’m giving myself the heebie-jeebies. I don’t seriously believe in any of this dream crap.

The desk clerk came back to him. ‘Yes, sir. Room Seven-Oh-Two is booked for tonight. One night only.’

‘Under what name?’

‘Wisocky, sir. Same as yours. Now, that’s a coincidence, wouldn’t you say?’

‘It’s been booked in the name of Wisocky?’

‘Yes, sir. Cash in advance.’

‘Shit. When was it booked?’

‘This evening, sir. Six ten p.m.’

‘Shit. Why the fuck didn’t you tell me? I’ve just spent two hours knocking on every goddamned door on the sixth and seventh floors and I needn’t have bothered.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. You didn’t ask.’

‘What did the guy look like?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘The guy who made the booking. What did he look like? Thin, fat, short, tall? Black, white, Hispanic, Chinese, what?’

‘White, sir. Thin. Not too tall, not too short. I can’t say I got a really good look at him.’

‘He made a booking right in front of you and you didn’t get a really good look at him?’

‘No, sir. I can’t say that I did.’

‘What about his address?’

‘Give me a moment, sir. Oh, yes. Here it is. Five-one-oh-two, Pearl Road, Cleveland.’

‘You know where that is?’

‘Not exactly, sir. No.’

‘It’s the fucking Clown Museum.’

Walter snapped his cellphone shut. Again, he was tempted to call Charlie, but then he thought: this is beginning to smell more and more like some kind of practical joke. Maybe Charlie wasn’t in on it, but that Henry Marriott could well have set it up. As elderly as he was, he was still a clown, wasn’t he? And what did clowns do, except trip people up and make them look like suckers?

Stepping into other people’s dreams, for Christ’s sake. Henry had almost had him believing it, and Charlie had been taken in, hook, line and sinker.

He followed the sign to Room 702. He found it right at the end of the corridor, with a Do Not Disturb tag hanging on the knob. He knocked, and called out, ‘Open up, sir! Police!’

He waited, but there was no response. He knocked again, ‘Police! Can you hear me, sir? You need to open this door right now!’

Still no response. He took out the pass key that the hotel manager had given him, and unlocked the door. He eased it open an inch, and then he lifted his gun out of its holster.

‘This is the CPD, sir! I want you standing in the center of the room with your hands where I can see them!’

He pushed the door wider. As far as he could see, there was nobody in the bedroom, although the bedcover was turned down and the bedside lamps were both lit. He edged his way past the closet, holding his gun up in front of him. He slid open both closet doors as he passed, and quickly glanced inside, but there was nobody hiding there and no clothes hanging up.

He checked the bathroom. There was nobody in there, either, and none of the complimentary toiletries had been used. It looked as if ‘Mr Wisocky’ hadn’t arrived yet. If this was a practical joke, he probably wouldn’t arrive. But why spend nearly two hundred dollars to book a room, just for the sake of a practical joke?

He backed out of the bathroom, stowing his gun back into its holster. As he did so, a hoarse voice behind him said, ‘Well, done, fatso! You worked it out!’

He turned around, yanking out his gun again, but two muscular hands gripped his wrist and twisted the gun away from him. He found himself confronted by a tall, angular man with wild white shoulder-length hair and a pale gray face. His eyes were surrounded by smudgy black make-up and his lips were painted into a glistening green grin. For some reason, Walter found it hard to focus on him, as if he were seeing him through a steamed-up window.

‘Got you now, tin man, don’t I? Thought you could stymie my sacrifice, did you? Well, now you can make amends! You’d like to make amends, wouldn’t you?’

‘Sorry, pal,’ Walter retorted. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’ His gun had been thrown on to the bed and he glanced at it quickly, trying to work out his chances of diving across the quilt to reach it. Probably nil, for a man of his bulk.

‘You and your friends caused the Grand Freak a whole lot of heartache last night,’ the clown told him. ‘Killing Doctor Friendly, and the Grand Freak’s favorite fire-breather, and his harlequin, too. He never cared too much for Brown Jenkin, but then who did? But you still made the Grand Freak very angry by blowing Brown Jenkin’s head off.’

‘I told you,’ said Walter. ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re blabbering on about. However I do know that you’re under arrest for assaulting a police officer.’ He took out his cellphone and flipped it open, but when he tried to call Charlie, all he could hear was crackling. He hit the phone several times against the heel of his hand, but it still didn’t work.

‘OK,’ he said, unclipping his handcuffs from his belt. ‘Turn around and put your hands behind your back. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.’