MELISSA

Melissa

The sign in the lobby said in its crimson letters: NO SMOKING. But Melissa needed the quick fix of nicotine and pulled out a Newport, crushing the empty pack in her hands and tossing it alongside the windowsill. Cigarettes were the savior from final examination cramming. She took in the cancer. The stairwells were filthy, creaked under the softest step, and smelled of the lingering reek of smoke. It was not just of cigarettes. She pocketed her lighter inside her red sweats and took a few pulls, breathing in relaxation, exhaling out the half-open window at the top of the stairwell. Rain splattered against the glass and a bolt of lightning lit up the dreary city in the distant beyond. Thunder complimented the bolts which illuminated the skies to the west. It’d been coming down in sheets since around nine when she sat in a heap, exhausted, watching Larry King. The coverage was on the town of Northport and the brutal murder of Cory D’amura, a rich corporate businessman’s son. The caption read “Northport Horror Still Mystifies.” It wasn’t even a school shooting. The body had been discovered by authorities this morning, face-down floating down river. No weapon, just a horrifically contorted mound of lifeless flesh.
“What’s wrong with these fucking kids….Jesus….” she said in soft disbelief, pressing the cigarette into the wet brick then let it fall to the desolate rain-slicked street below. Two golden-eye lamplights at opposite corners were the only illumination, lighting up the corroded wood of the next house over identical to this. Six in all. All were bi-leveled. The buildings, or rather broken-down houses were haphazardly placed among the wet-dirt ground in a way that signaled their connectivity. There was no parking lot, just two oddly-welcoming human-sized lampposts emitting powerful glows then the houses, rain beating down upon their old boards. The establishment was placed away from the nearest streets, a good two hundred feet from the last store on the town outskirt.
Melissa scratched below her knee and felt the tiny prickling of blond hairs and the roughness surrounding them. Friday, two days, and she was intent on break out the razor again.
Gripping the banister which became unsteady at the slightest applied pressure, she headed downstairs and into the doorway towards her room at the end of the hall. The only sound was rain and the only light was from the dim bulb that hung above the time-devoured wood. It flickered in bad storms, shifting the hall in and out of darkness.
A doorknob sounded on the other side and brought forth a long disturbing creak that could wake those next door from deep sleep. The manager. Possibly because of the smoke. Her socked feet slowed down their pace, creeping along the last few steps in silence across the concrete ground, the sensation of solid cold alive beneath. A little pool of water still-as-death collected by a crevice; a dead roach floated inside of it. The wooden walls were older than centuries, chipped heavily at every angle like some primitive beast had ferociously clawed away at them. They darkened on further down, escaping the outside illumination into where no light lived. A finger-long spider scuttled up its web into its lair of darkness inside the ceiling beam above.
These hallways were filthy beyond comprehension, like a desolate prison and it mortified Melissa at first sight. She nearly dropped her bags. Dust covered everything and insects slithered in their path beneath dingy lighting that periodically flickered in and out of life. Within the twisting hallways the shadowy shapes of man hid in corners, silent and smoking. Melissa avoided them. The smell was not of cigarettes.
The crippled man whose face was gaunt and scarred gripped his spiral-shaped black cane tightly, struggling to support his weak self down the stairs which made prolonged screams as the cane pressed into them. When she offered help he coldly refused with a sway of his hand and made exit.
The hotel manager had handed over a single rusted key. “I hope you enjoy your stay with us.” She hesitantly took it from his strangulating-capable hands. “Building six miss,” he directed with his finger. “Out around that way.” The crimson “No Smoking” sign was taped to the desk right before his gargantuan figure and as Melissa nervously thanked him she exited and caught a piercing nose-full of nicotine from his breath.
These things and more-they were disturbing to the mind. Melissa, since last night had been plagued by a seething paranoia whenever she eyed a dark figure with cigarette in hand falling back into the shadows. Despite the sole denim jacket she’d brought, her arms were cold and shivered in the moonlight, white blocks that entered through the window glass.
It’s some kind of a twisted network, she thought yesterday-Thursday night, in bed, shifting her clammy legs through the sheets to find a less harsh position.
A twisted network, she thought once more. They are all interconnected like the threads in a spider’s web and everyone watches the other with hawk-like precision. That was how it appeared. Eyes stabbed at her turned back as her hand fumbled inside a pocket for the key. You never knew who shady people truly were. Never. But there were worse things right now.
The nightmares. They’d been occurring more frequently; these past two nights at the hotel had been horrifically intense. Intense to where parts of the pillows were saturated by her wet hair strands when she awoke crying. The relief of coming back into reality was short-lived; for as the hours passed, nerves forced the terror back into her mind. The terror came where she was most vulnerable. In dreams.
In the hours before dawn, Melissa awoke wide-eyed and sweating. The last image she remembered was a monstrous shadow-figure knocking on her home door with a gleaming hatchet in hand.
An elderly widow roamed the hallway last night mumbling incoherencies to herself through sniffles and tears. There was a man who slept on the stairs, curled up in a corner like a caged animal for experimentation. Melissa feared junkies. She took the opposite stair around, and encountered the man once more with his cane sluggishly limping with anger carved in his bloodless face. She refused to acknowledge his presence, just made way downstairs, out the number six building of the motel complex to her Acura.
Melissa unlocked the doors and went over to the passenger side, opening the glove compartment and rummaging through a few items. On the left was where she remembered leaving it. Looking up while still feeling around, her eye caught the weakened flicker of the dim blue neon lights. It spelled “HOT L,” the “E” light busted yet the “vacancy” sign below shone like high beams in a desert road. Her hand then located what she’d been looking for.
Going underneath the doorway beam, her left eye spotted movement from behind a bench. The silence of the trees was broken as a shadow fell back into them, back into the dying leaves away from the world but had uttered a whisper. Melissa just stared in silence and forced the lump down her throat. The shadow had whispered, “dream…”

10:47 her cell phone read. And the first traces of sleepiness had already come to curse her. A yawn followed as she pocketed the E-Z wider and continued. Her hand would tremble involuntarily in short phases, the cold air only partially responsible. Melissa needed to calm down. In this place, the shadows, the non-cigarette smoke, the appearance of textbook definitions of societal outcasts—it was eating away at her shreds of sanity. Melissa licked the ends. Just one more night…
She walked down the silent hallway of the sixth floor. Watery drips fell from a broken pipe above, rusted like chains in a warehouse abandoned for decades. No one was here. The only shadows took non-human shape. Nearer the windows, where the only light was, across the stair was an alcove large enough to fit a human yet small enough to avoid detection. A man was smoking marijuana in there yesterday in the middle of a dreary gray-skied afternoon. None spoke. None probably cared.
Melissa put fire to the paper and inhaled deep the tranquility. After this, the bed awaited. This was the final night she’d be forced to spend in this shithole. Marijuana took away the paranoia, a paranoia ever fueled by what she’d been experiencing night after night. For some unknown reason, in here, in this decrepit place the vividness of the nightmares came alive, not merely “seeming” all-too-real. They were all-too-real. Melissa shuddered as if a layer of frost suddenly coated her back. Chapped lips sucked furiously at the tetrahydrocannibinol.
The minutes passed like the onset of death in your hospital bed. She glanced back with overly-suspicious eyes several times. Paranoia killed the enjoyment of getting high.
At a few minutes passed eleven, Melissa doused her joint on the windowsill then headed back out the alcove. The only sounds were drips of water falling in singularity, joining the small puddles below. She saw no eyes, but felt them there. Certainly, she felt them…

At first Melissa thought it was a cave, for there was no light. Odd-shaped shadows stood dead still among the rocky jagged-edged interior. There was only the sole candle in her hands. Excess wax dripped then hardened onto her thin fingers. Against the black, the yellow, deep-orange shades of the flame were clearer and ten times more beautiful than anything a fireplace could produce. Much of the melting wax had dripped into the golden cup-shaped holder.
The surface was hard, like diamond, and by the light of the fire, the protrusion of solid, brown rock formed floor and wall. Above was no rocky ceiling. Just black, as the illumination couldn’t reach. Melissa moved forward or at least in the direction she figured was such. Forward, backward-it was all the same, continuing on in this pit of darkness.
The solid ground was coated with thin layers of dirt forgotten by time. The bottoms of her bare feet walked on the jaggedness and collected dust with each step. The hem of her nightgown dropped to her shins and scraped against the heads of rocks. Pebble made indentions underfoot. It was dirty and noticeably cold; the fiery illumination didn’t reach four feet past her. Beyond could have been a crevasse or wall, someone or many. The unknown made Melissa uneasy.
Yet…there was something drawing her closer. Something that enigmatically kept pushing her to walk on, to venture deeper. Like the instinctual drive of a wild beast to kill its pathetic prey, in the far corner of her mind, Melissa Anders found its call powerfully irresistible. It called with no voice and no words.

Back in reality, Melissa tossed in her sheets. The sweat had started coming down in beads…

Silence. That’s what there was. That’s all there was. She held the candle above and stood painfully on the tips of her toes in attempt to light the area above. Nothing. The dark above was as below. The flame had burned down slightly; a wax drop fell on her index ring, a half inch from her ring. It hardened, then she peeled and tossed it.
She paused abruptly in mid-stride and stood perfectly still. Her eyes moved around in front like something was there. Nothing physical, but something... The something had called again. From the left.
This way…
Melissa slowed. Its presence got stronger. Whatever it was, undeniably, it had gotten stronger and she felt it looming deeper in the darkness. She had to get closer. It called…
Then, as her foot stepped upon a flat jagged-edged stone, a split-second flash came out of nowhere-an image of a familiar-looking house. One of the motel houses. Hers. The sixth and final one.
Then, as quickly as Melissa’s mind processed it, the image had simply gone. After pausing a few seconds Melissa closed both eyes and awaited. Sometimes you can see more in the dark. The candle’s heat warmed her hands, counterattacking the coldness beneath her feet. Her toes gripped dirt.
There! She spun around so fast the candle almost dropped from its holder. Its invisible presence re-appeared much closer than before. Maybe two hundred feet. To the right. Melissa then realized. It was playing a game, daring her to search it out. Daring her to chase it in this blackened world. The something wouldn’t approach her. She had to chase it. And it was forcing her to play into its strange game, where Melissa knew only one rule: follow her mind to the source.
Do not go astray. Follow your heart. Just follow me…
And she did.
The bottoms of her feet were absolutely filthy. Her first impression was that she’d awoken in a cave. Then her mind excluded it. Solution Caves of the modern underground world were formed by the constant bombardment of groundwater. Those tunnels echoed your every cry. Ages of time and nature’s result. Speleology had been an interesting course elective. No, this was not a cave. More like the bottom of an abyss, never to be discovered by humankind.
In a white-light flash, another image came. A familiar-looking hallway, long and dark. Hers. The sixth hallway of the motel.
Melissa’s left hand then shivered as if feeling the icy breath of Glacius. It twitched for two seconds then stopped. Her right hand still withheld the candle, yet its fire was dwindling. The cup’s inside was spackled with dots of wax.
The presence called her forth, and subconsciously pulled her. It wanted Melissa to be left blind, with eyes open. She walked faster.
Do not go astray. Follow your heart….
Suddenly, she winced in pain and felt herself trip forward, watching the candle fling from her grip. Hands first Melissa hit the hard ground and the right side of her face smashed into a rock. The world went black. Literally. But she was still conscious, feeling liquid drip down the side of her face, clutching her foot in screaming hysteria. She’d violently stubbed her right foot and it throbbed in a collection of pain.
Oh Lord! Melissa then realized. Her body shook in paralyzing fear. The floor! The sixth floor! Oh my God…!
Melissa’s palms claws at the hard floor. Her cranium was pounding like someone had punched her multiple times. She smelled the smear of blood on the rock’s face and cried in a helpless heap on the ground. Her foot throbbed in pain, her big toe stinging ferociously like a piece of skin had been torn from it.
The black surrounded her. A slight trace of smoke was still lingering in the air but slowly disintegrating. The tears came down her cheeks. There was also another smell…
Do not go astray. Follow your heart…
It was not of cigarettes.
Do not go astray.
Oh, but she had.
And there was no getting back.
The sixth building! The sixth floor! Oh Lord help me!
Do not go astray. Follow your—
NOOO!
Melissa’s eyes started to close and it made absolutely no difference. Everything was the same. She cried deaf into the dark as waves of pain went through her body.
She lay there fallen, crying all alone. Her mind screamed, writhing in hurt. Her body suddenly went cold as a chill harsher than Antarctica went through her.
The game wasn’t over.
Melissa’s breath then all of a sudden stopped and she went wide-eyed as her soul immediately froze and the most intense feeling she could possibly fathom went surging throughout her body in a hyper blast rush. The intensity of it was so unexpected the pains from the fall virtually disappeared. She inhaled deep. Her body was freezing, though her blood became liquid fire.
The third and final image in a split-second flash of blinding light. The door. The door to her hotel room.
She screamed. The number on the old wooden door was six.

And just like that, as if the something had been listening to her cries all along, the familiar eerie presence worked its way back. It was coming much faster, directly towards her. She felt it move hauntingly, but was so disoriented and helpless she couldn’t pin-point its direction. Melissa only knew that it was coming, less then a hundred feet.
Her body wriggled helplessly like a shot criminal.
The chill in her body came back as the presence began to materialize out of the dark. It came closer. She got colder, not even aware if her eyes were open or not.
The air felt as cold as an ice-blasting storm wind.
The sixth floor….of the sixth building….the sixth door.
Melissa cried and looked down, down and away.
It had come.
The pain in her body instantaneously disappeared and so had the extreme rush coursing through every blood cell. Then it appeared…

Back in reality, the rain came down upon the windowsill. Lightning lit up the world outside and footsteps thudded on the floor of room number six. The wood creaked underneath with each step. The television had been left on. The air reeked of a smell that was not cigarettes.
Looking down into the bed at the horrified expression on the dead woman’s face which only minutes before had been begging for life, Melissa Anders felt a blood-curling smile form on her dead skin face.