The Men

Death has got something to be said for it:
There’s no need to get out of bed for it;
Wherever you may be,
They bring it to you, free.



         John Applegate inserted the key card, pushing it a little too hard, and opened his hotel room door. He lugged in his small case and laptop, throwing them on the double bed and signed heavily as he looked around the room. Always the same, yet without that honesty of personal possession. Every damn room the same, every damn week. He hated the ‘hotel room’ familiarity – that almost musty feel that hundreds had been there before you, like all overnight hotels across the land. There was the swivel TV, the cheap kettle with its packets of coffee and tea and four sachets of sugar, and the terrible print artwork and lonely mirror that overlooked the bed. Oh, and the crappy bathroom with the dodgy shower and the rattling air con.

         If the work didn’t drive him away, the hotel rooms would.

         He absent-mindedly pulled his tie off and snatched up the TV remote, flicking on a random channel. He was dead-beat, shattered and had that feeling of pressure building up at the back of his head – the sure-fire sign that he was stressed. He worked across the country, selling juice contracts to small businesses and today he had sold not one contract. The boss would not be happy. But that was tomorrow; right now what John Applegate needed was rest, not more troubles.

         He moved his bags off the bed and lay across it, suit and all. He grabbed a pillow and rested his head on it, found the remote and flicked through the channels of late night hotel TV. Not even any porn, he mused. Before he realised it, sleep had taken him.

*

         He awoke suddenly and from the soupy darkness of sleep he realised he must have drifted off. The sounds of some late-night TV chat show filtered through the fog of sleep. The light hurt his eyes as he fumbled for the remote. Dreamily he scooped it up and turned the TV off. He moved from the bed and quickly set his alarm for the next morning, his thoughts desperate to fall back into dream-land. He chanced a look at the mirror in front of the bed, his tired reflection looked back, and then he changed out of his suit. He yawned as he pulled the cheap curtains and turned off the light, and then moved into bed, the covers a welcome feeling after his sweaty cloths. Within moments he fell fast asleep.


         He dreamt of something dark. Of being hunted. Of a chill so raw that it burned deep into him. Of things just out of sight. Of…

John woke out his nightmares with a jolt. His senses were immediately alert and sat upright in the bed. His eyes adjusted slowly to the darkness. He panicked slightly, taking a few moments to realise where he was. Hotel room. A light film of sweat coated his skin, which began to cool as his shocked body woke itself up further. The bed covers had fallen on the floor and John shivered due to the cool air. Even with the rattling air conditioning, it seemed pretty cold. He switched on the side light and retrieved his covers, waking even further as he did so. He wondered at what dreams he must have been having that woke him. He knew he was stressed, but waking up in the middle of the night in a panic was a joke! Maybe he needed to see the doctor for some pills after all – Cindy said he was getting too uptight after taking this job.

         Damn, but it was cold, even under the duvet. He edged over to the air conditioning and put his hand over the vents. Cool air was escaping. A quick look at the control panel suggested that it should be warmer in the room, so he assumed it must be broken and turned it off. Maybe the rattling had woken him. He checked his mobile for the time. It was only two-thirty. Time to try and get more rest.

         He moved to turn the light off when movement caught his eye. He turned, looking into the mirror above the TV, across from his bed. Must have been his arm he had seen as he had turned to the light. Without another thought he hit the switch, blanketing the room in darkness and tried to edge his over-excited brain to sleep. This time it took him a while to drift off.


         Ice. Choking for air in a prison of freezing walls that seemed to be closing in on him, crushing the breath from his body… John awoke from his dream-hell once more. Again, he was sweating, but this time he was shaking also. What was wrong with him? Was he ill? His tiredness faded swiftly, replaced with an unnerving feeling that he was being watched. It was then that he realised that the duvet was once more lying on the floor. He switched the light on and sat up, looking around the room. Nothing seemed out of place. Nothing had moved apart from his covers. He assumed they had fallen as he tossed and turned in his sleep. He looked at himself in the mirror and his tried face and messy hair looked back. No, was there something…

         Johnny shook his head. He was definitely going mad. Time to turn the light off and get some sleep and forget about his nightmares. That’s all they were – stupid dreams.

         He pulled the covers up from the floor, turned the light off and put his head on the pillow.

         He thought of his girlfriend and work as he tried to drift off to sleep for the third time that night. He was thinking maybe it was time for a change: maybe a new girl, or a change of job, he wasn’t sure.

         The duvet cover slowly edged off him, as if it was ever so slowly being pulled off the bed by another person. John tried to shrug the feeling off; he had slipped into his dream once again.

         It was then that he realised that he was still awake. He had not fallen asleep. And his covers were being pulled off of him!

         He gripped the edge of the covers and tried to pull them back. But whatever force had them was powerful and they continued to move to the end of the bed. The covers silently eased off the bed. John seemed struck dumb. He could not move and some innate reaction told him not to open his eyes. If he did not see what was happening, then it would go away.

         Then something caressed his leg. Fear and disbelief gripped him. His body chilled and his soul screamed for this to be over.

         He opened his eyes and looked through the darkness of the hotel room to see his assailant. As he did so, the phantom that had pulled his covers off and lightly touched his leg suddenly gripped his shin roughly. He screamed in terror. What in Gods name was happening? Then, his other leg has grabbed. He began being pulled to the end of the bed.

         The curtains diffused some small portion of light into the room, and John, thrashing and trying to free himself, finally caught a glimpse of his attacker. Or attackers. They looked like silhouettes, or shadows, of men. They looked unsubstantial. But that could not be! It was insanity! Two of them had vice-like grips of both his legs. This could not be!

         Then the unthinkable happened. More of the men appeared out of the mirror in front of the bed. Lots of them - clawing and scratching to get out of the mirror. They looked to be headed right for him. He screamed in animal terror, his lungs bursting with fear. It only seemed to make the shadow-men more anxious to touch him, to take him.

         He turned from the horror images and tried to hold on to the bed, to haul himself away from the impossible. The men clenched harder as more of them reached him. Their touch was glassy-smooth, but chilled John to the bone. He was slowly, achingly, dragged to the edge of the bed.

         Then off the bed, as more and more of the shadowy beings found his flesh. He felt as if he was being lifted into the air.

         Suddenly his feet seemed to freeze. Not just turn cold, like touching snow with your bare feet. But freeze into nothingness. After the shock, he could feel them no longer. That was worse than the cold – the feeling as if he had just lost them. The feeling crept slowly passed his ankles to his shins, moving further and further. He looked round and gasped in disbelief – he was somehow being dragged into the mirror! These beings, these things, where taking him. All of him. He tried to scream once more, but a smooth, dark hand clamped over his mouth.

         Finally, the men pulled him inwards and only his head, neck and arms remained outside the mirror. Johnny grabbed the frame, his nails turning bloody as he held on with all his remaining strength. Finally, scores of hands took hold of his head, snapping it backward and into the mirror.

         All that was left, in the end, was a single, torn nail, which was embedded around a small trickle of blood along with several human claw-marks, upon a mirror frame.