It’s a crisp Friday in autumn, the day before my brother Aaron’s wedding, a week before Halloween. Aaron and his bride Kristina have planned a getaway in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, among the forested hills of the Ozarks. Eureka Springs is a tiny tourist town, once a mining empire and luxury resort, now reduced to a faded Victorian Era strip of generic art galleries and pottery shops, Vegas-style wedding parlors, and after-dark ghost tours. We’re staying at the Hidden Springs Inn: a grand historic resort, known for both its picturesque weddings and its rumored hauntings.
I’ve been appointed maid of honor, which would be great except I hate weddings, and dresses, and “vision boards,” and to be perfectly honest I’m not crazy about the bride. Neither are my parents, though they’re mostly hung up on the fact that she has a kid whose father isn’t in the picture, and Aaron, we love you dear, but aren’t you taking on an awful lot of responsibility?
Me, my mom, my dad, and my eighty-seven-year-old grandmother enjoy an appropriately nightmarish plane ride together. (It’s nearly Halloween, after all!) Gran curses joyfully at security and farts in the aisles and torments the flight attendants, while my parents pretend not to know her. Then there’s an hour-long drive, on a winding two-lane highway flickering in and out of steep, rocky hillside. My dad takes the curves too hard and my mom white-knuckles it all the way, gasping at every glimpse of the valley below.
By the time we reach the hotel, all I can think about is the fact that it’s 5 p.m. and I need a fucking drink.
* * * *
Kyle, my brother’s best friend and best man, is already at the bar and three beers deep. “Hey, Hillary,” he says, grinning broadly. We have always disliked each other, especially since an unfortunate incident that took place about a year ago. (We got too drunk. Mistakes were made.) He’s cocky, obnoxious, the quintessential bro, and he would be really stupid if not for the fact that he’s actually pretty smart.
While I’m ordering a whiskey and Diet Coke and trying to ignore him, he decides to bound right over and force me into this over-the-top fake hug. “Hillary! I left like a hundred messages on your answering machine. You never called me back.” (He’s being sarcastic. I think the joke is that he never called. Actually, I’m not sure what the joke is, but I’m pretty sure that I’m its punch line.)
“I’m filing a restraining order,” I say, and sip my drink, already certain this weekend is going to be the worst.
“How about this hotel, huh?” Kyle says. “Freaky. It’s like some Jack Nicholson shit.”
“It used to be an insane asylum,” I say. “And a sanatorium for people with incurable diseases. That was after it was a luxury resort for people with more money than God.”
I’d read about it, a bit. The Hidden Springs Inn was built in the 1880s when the town was a bustling metropolis, a luxury oasis for the millionaires who’d made their fortune on the backs of dead bodies now lost and buried inside the mines. Then the economy faltered, the veins dried up, and the town faded. The grand old hotel, with its sweeping ballrooms and crystal chandeliers, was repurposed as a hospital with experimental aims. Later—much later—after it became gauche to ship the mentally disturbed off to unsupervised prisons where they’d sit chained in their own feces, a renewed interest in history led preservationists to rebuild the old hotel. Though never restored to its former glory, at least it clung to a shabby dignity . . . and its tourist trade.
“I hope I see one of the sexy ghosts,” Kyle says. “You know, the ones who died in their lingerie and now they have to wander the halls with their tits eternally hanging out.”
Luckily, right then Aaron arrives and sits between us, intent on keeping the peace.
Aaron is a wonderful brother, and a wonderful person; accomplished, talented, attractive, nice. Maybe a little too nice, like the kind of nice that doesn’t really pick up on the fact that people who call you their knight in shining armor might actually see you as an easy mark.
Kristina had been a single mom since seventeen—her people didn’t believe in averting such things in the usual way. Her parents helped raise the kid, by spoiling him within an inch of his life, while Kristina earned a certificate in sports therapy and massage. They met after Aaron suffered an injury on the football field, which sounds serious until you find out that the football field was actually a casual Thanksgiving get-together and the injury was a tweak in his lower back. His angel appeared with scented oils to nurse him back to health. Less than two years later, here we are at the wedding. It’s either a fairy-tale ending or an embarrassing cliché.
My parents won’t say anything too pointed, because they practice courtesy as if it were a cult, but they don’t really have to. Aaron’s not dumb; he just pretends to be.
Still, I know, from the subtle hints they’ve dropped, and some less-than-subtle comments delivered on the harrowing journey here, that if in these final moments Aaron were to suffer cold feet, they wouldn’t be overly disappointed. And, as maid of honor and trusted older sister, should I find myself in position to sow a few fast-growing seeds of nagging doubt . . . well, who would they be to cast blame?
We’ve been catching up for a while when Kristina arrives in a dress and heels and greets me with way too many air kisses and oh my gods. And then she’s like, “Aaron, honeybear, did you ask?”
“Sorry, pumpkin,” Aaron says. “I forgot. Hil, would you mind watching Gabriel for a few hours? We’ve got dinner with both sets of parents.”
Somehow, I manage to both (a) not choke on my drink and (b) gracefully agree. “Sure thing. Let me tab out and I’ll be right up.”
Kyle snickers at me mockingly. He knows that I really hate children. Even more than I hate weddings. Or him.
* * * *
As I ride the elevator up to the third floor, I give myself a pep talk. Gabriel is bratty, but how bad can it be? It’s just a couple hours. Just a couple hours of sticky little hands, nonstop nose-picking, and endless six-year-old monologue, voiced like nails on a blackboard.
Kristina and Aaron point me to a stack of kids’ DVDs, then head out. At Gabriel’s request, I put on the most uninteresting film in history. While it plays, he warbles nonstop, just enjoying the sound of his own piercing voice. Then he demands fruit snacks and goldfish crackers, and a second movie to follow the first.
Finally, he settles down. His breathing slows, his eyes drift closed, and I think maybe, if I stay very still, he’ll actually go to sleep.
Next thing I know, I’m waking up in a dark room and the credits are playing and my mouth feels like the inside of a wool sweater that’s been in the back of a closet for years.
And Gabriel isn’t here.
I panic and start searching the room even though it’s obvious there’s nowhere he could hide; I check inside the bathtub, yank away the drapes. Then I come to my senses and dash out into the hall, calling his name.
I power-walk my way up the corridor and around the corner, hoping I can find him before anyone else does.
The hallway smells of must and mildew. The dark floral carpet is patterned with odd blotches and mysterious stains, and feels weirdly spongy underfoot. The signage is inadequate; brass room numbers are affixed to the dark-painted doors, but several of the numerals are missing. The corridors, routed and rerouted several times in the past century and a half, suddenly feel like a maze.
Maybe it’s the counterintuitive geography. Or maybe it’s my sleep-bleary fear. But a minute into my mad scramble, I’m completely lost, standing in a corridor I don’t recognize.
Up ahead, on the left, I notice another hallway, jutting diagonally to the left. This makes no sense; I must have circled two or three times by now. But I run toward it.
It turns into a dead end, with two doors on the right-hand side and three on the left. Gabriel is standing there, staring intently at the twisted paisley patterns on an empty stretch of wall.
“Gabriel?”
He doesn’t respond. I approach slowly, wondering if he’s sleepwalking, suddenly even more afraid. Do I try to wake him? This whole thing is giving me the creeps. The skin on the back of my neck is prickling and I feel as if I’m being watched.
I rest my hand on his shoulder, dreading the moment he recoils, or screams, or goes catatonic. Instead, he turns and looks at me. His eyes are droopy, but he’s definitely awake.
“Hello, Aunt Hillary,” he says politely, which is the weirdest part of all.
“Um. Whatcha doing there, partner?”
“I had to let the little boy out.”
“You mean yourself? You let yourself out of the room after I fell asleep?”
“No. Not me. The other little boy. He’s been locked in that room a really, really long time. That’s why he was crying. So I had to let him out.”
“Um, okay,” I say, ready to not be having this conversation. “That’s . . . freaky. Why don’t we go back to the room now?”
He ignores me and keeps on staring at the wall. “I thought we were going to play, but then he ran inside. And now he won’t come out.”
“Um . . . ,” I say again. “Inside where?”
He shrugs, then gestures at the wallpaper. “That door there.”
“There isn’t a door there,” I say, but I can’t help but glance up and down the hallway as I do, because I’m noticing three doors behind us, and two doors to the right, and we’re standing exactly where the third door would be, if there was one. And I have this awful feeling. It isn’t rational, but it’s powerful all the same.
“He said people always think that,” Gabriel informs me. “It’s not the kind of door you can see with your eyes, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s still a door. And I can see it just fine.”
“Okay,” I say, really sharply this time. “That’s enough. This isn’t funny anymore. We’re going back to the room.”
“No,” he says, but I don’t care; I’ve had enough. I grab his arm and pull him toward the end of the corridor. Then he melts down into full-on tantrum, so I’m forced to hoist him into my arms and carry him.
To my surprise, I wasn’t lost at all; the hotel room is right around the corner.
Of course, I’ve locked us out of the room, and my key, my phone, and my wallet are all inside. So I carry him to the elevator and down to the lobby.
As soon as we step off the elevator, we run into the bride and groom and both sets of parents, returning from dinner. Kristina runs over and scoops up her kid, whose tantrum has disintegrated into sniffles. He tells her the whole story, garbled and teary so none of it makes any sense, not that it made much sense to begin with. I play it off like he had a nightmare. Kristina’s mother, Lydia, who’s obviously drunk more gin and tonics than strictly necessary, offers to take over for the night. Gratefully, I hand off Gabriel, and since I’m several drinks behind, head back to the bar.
“To the future!” my brother toasts with a flourish.
Best drink up.
* * * *
At 2 a.m., I’m woken by a woman screaming. I leap out of bed, yank on a hoodie, and dash out into the hallway; this time, I remember my key.
My mom and dad are out there, plus Aaron and Kristina. “That was my mom, screaming,” Kristina is insisting, anxious and confused. “She has Gabriel. I can’t remember the room number. Thirty-six? Thirty-nine? Oh my God, I hope they’re okay. . . .”
It’s room thirty-nine. We pile in; Lydia is sitting up in bed, disheveled and pasty in her pink satin dressing gown. She appears to be hyperventilating. Gabriel is lying in the other bed, flat on his back; his eyes are open but he’s looking away. Kristina’s dad hangs off to one side, awkward and frumpy in his old-man pajamas.
“What’s wrong? What’s the matter?” Aaron and Kristina crowd around Lydia.
It takes her a while to get the words out; she’s gulping and gasping and sobbing a little. “Something woke me up. Like I felt something. I opened my eyes and Gabriel was standing right above me, except it wasn’t him, really.” She pauses to collect herself. “He was all changed; his eyes were big, and he was holding a knife. Just looking down at me, laughing, holding that knife.”
“It was only a dream,” Aaron tells her. “A bad nightmare. It’s fine.”
“So, can we all go back to bed now?” my dad says, so patiently that he’s obviously annoyed.
“But then I sat up,” Lydia says, gesturing wildly, “and he was laying in his own bed the whole time, like he never even moved.”
“You just imagined it, Mama,” Kristina says, sagging into a visible exhaustion. Aaron massages her shoulders.
“But I didn’t,” Lydia insists. “I know what I saw. It was so real.” She starts to cry.
“There, there,” my mom says, and sits beside Lydia; for her, this is not an insignificant show of affection.
“But let’s be reasonable,” my dad says, in that tone I detest. “If there was an awful little boy holding a knife, he’d still be here. He wouldn’t just disappear into thin air.”
That tone, that logic—I think maybe it’s part of the reason I never let myself get all emotional, not like Kristina or her mother.
“But there’s not an awful little boy,” my dad continues. “There’s just Gabriel, in his own bed, falling back to sleep. . . .” but his voice trails off because we all instinctively look over at Gabriel and he’s not actually falling back to sleep. Instead, he’s sitting up and staring intently at the television, which isn’t on. His mouth is moving, and he’s mumbling something too faint to understand.
There’s a long moment. “He’s just overtired,” Kristina says uncertainly.
“The wedding,” my mother agrees. “For a little boy. It’s a lot of stress.”
“It was so real,” Lydia repeats again, faltering and sad.
“We’ll take the little trooper back to our room,” Aaron says. “You all get some sleep.” He scoops Gabriel up into his arms, and I think maybe I’m the only one who notices that Gabriel seems to be lost in another world.
* * * *
I wake early to dim light filtering through the gap between the blackout curtains and someone pounding at the door. It’s Aaron, telling me that Gabriel is missing again, and they don’t know where he is.
Kristina is standing in the hallway, wrapped in Aaron’s flannel shirt, crying and fidgeting. Aaron is trying and failing to be Mr. Fix-It. Everyone is texting and calling and knocking on random doors. Gran emerges, demanding to know what the goddamn never-ending racket is about, and what the damn hell was happening last night, anyway? Kyle shuffles—hung over and shirtless—into the fray, awake only because Aaron dragged him out of bed. Lydia is recounting her nightmare, or hallucination, to anyone who will listen. My parents are clearly thinking that this is Aaron’s future in a nutshell: a nonstop parade of petty disasters and emotional displays.
Finally, someone thinks to alert the manager, who promises to alert the staff. Five minutes later, Aaron gets a phone call. “Sssh, it’s him,” he says, pointing at his phone. (Meanwhile, everyone argues over where we should look next, and if a kidnapping is a likely scenario, and how far could a sleepy six-year-old get, really?) “Hello? Oh! Great. We’ll be right down.”
Gabriel is outside. A groundskeeper found him.
We crowd our way onto the elevator, through the lobby, and onto the hotel grounds: a complex maze of shaped hedges, moss-covered benches, and unkempt flowerbeds gone to seed. The Hidden Springs Inn sits high on a ridge; dense fog saturates the autumn leaves below. Up here, it’s misty and cool.
We catch a glimpse of the manager standing by a haphazard arrangement of cracked statuary, where he seems to be locked in an intense conversation with the groundskeeper. Gabriel fidgets on a nearby bench.
Kristina takes off running and soon enfolds Gabriel in a flurry of hugging and scolding. The rest of us edge closer to the manager and the groundskeeper, who are having a fight.
The manager is late forties or so but seems younger; dapper in his suit, which is perfect for a wedding, not so appropriate for a muddy hillside at sunrise. The groundskeeper is burly and gruff, and his standard-issue coveralls are stained with mud . . . and . . . is that blood?
“I’m telling you,” he says, with an aggressively pointed finger. “Not my job description. Not even close.”
“Now, let’s all just calm down here. . . .”
“I’ll do you one better,” retorts the groundskeeper. “I quit.” He rips off his gardening gloves and tosses them onto the ground. Next, he’s going for the back brace.
“What on God’s green Earth is that smell?” my mother wants to know.
Kyle catches sight of it first. The look on his face as he points: it’s naked as a scared animal. I’ve never seen him like that, far below the swagger and front. This scares me the most . . . until I see what he’s pointing at. A little ways down the slope, arranged on the damp grass in a sloppy approximation of a circle, are half a dozen freshly eviscerated carcasses, the stinking meat and hot blood and unraveled organs of a chipmunk, two bunny rabbits, a handful of squirrels.
I walk over, as if in a dream; I don’t want to, but somehow I’m compelled. And the feeling is exactly the feeling I had yesterday, standing in that weird half-a-hallway. There’s something very near me, so close it could tap me on the shoulder, except there’s nothing at all but the damp morning air, and the stench of death, and Kristina’s mother, screaming again.
Behind me, Kristina is yelling at the manager. “I just want to know . . . could someone explain . . . why does my son have blood on his clothes?” Gabriel stands beside her, perfectly calm, still wearing the cowboy pajamas he wore to bed. They do appear to have some stains.
“You people have no idea,” the groundskeeper rebukes us all, and for an instant, what I see flickering in his eyes is even worse than the carnage here on the hillside. “No clue.” Shaking his head, he turns hard on his heel and strides away. The manager throws up his hands. The groundskeeper disappears into the mist.
“Um, why don’t we all head inside?” the manager says briskly. “Can I offer you breakfast on the house! Oh, what a romantic weekend for a wedding!”
The breakfast buffet is jarringly cheery. Soon, everyone is milling around, loading their plates with leaden pancakes and grease-laden sausage links. I grab a cup of coffee and sit across from Kyle.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” he inquires jokily, but I can tell his heart’s not there.
“Something weird happened last night,” I say. “I don’t know why I’m telling you.” But actually I do: It’s not like I can tell my brother, or Kristina, not right now. My parents would tell me I’m being crazy. I have no idea what Kristina’s parents would say. And of all the happy couple’s friends and acquaintances gathered here, Kyle is the only one I actually know, and not just in the Biblical sense.
So I tell him about the hidden half-hallway, and the missing door, and the creepy conversation I had with Gabriel, who was probably just being a kid, but come on, right? And then I fill him in on the 2 a.m. incident, which he somehow slept through, that lucky son of a bitch.
“You’re not just pulling some stupid prank to get me back or something?” Kyle asks, and I can’t tell if he’s concerned that I am, or concerned that I’m not.
“You think I snuck out this morning and slaughtered a dozen fucking woodland creatures just to fuck with you?”
“Hmm,” Kyle says, like he’s not sure either way. I can see why he’d be concerned; if this was a prank, it would be beyond epic. He’d definitely have to acknowledge my superiority from here on out.
“I’m not fucking with you.”
“Will you show me that hallway? My room’s on that floor and I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sure.”
He snags an extra handful of bacon and together we head upstairs, pretending not to notice the family’s too-interested looks.
“Or maybe,” Kyle says speculatively as we ride the elevator, “maybe this is some kind of ploy to interrupt the wedding. You guys can’t be too happy about this whole thing either.”
Not entirely sure what to say to that, so I settle for “It’s not a ploy.”
But once we’re on the third floor, I can’t find that hallway anymore. I can still picture the wallpaper in my mind, the twisted, scrolling paisley with its slight metallic sheen, oddly textured to the touch. I can see the five doors, unmarked. I can remember the way it jutted off, up on the left. But it’s not here, and there’s no way it could be here; the geography simply doesn’t make sense.
Kyle keeps looking at me like he’s waiting for me to let him in on the joke. “You’re kinda freaking me out, Hil,” he says finally. “Like . . . what’s really going on with you right now?”
“Fuck it,” I say. “Never mind.”
But I’m totally freaking out too.
* * * *
By 11 a.m., I’m at the salon with Kristina, and both moms, and all Kristina’s giggly bridesmaids. (Gran wisely sat this one out, opining that she’s eighty-seven years old and knows better than to try to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.) The ladies talk everything over, and then talk everything over again, and by the time we get to updos, it’s decided that Gabriel is acting out because he’s excited to finally have a real dad, and Lydia is suffering from exhaustion after helping her lovely daughter plan this incredible wedding . . . and who knows what was up with that crabby groundskeeper? Solutions: some one-on-one time for Aaron and Gabriel, another glass of champagne for the mother of the bride, and no one mentions the unavoidable conclusion that our cherubic six-year-old was outside slaughtering tiny animals in the hours before dawn.
I’m the only one who isn’t participating in the conversation. It’s because I know things that they don’t know, and I’m almost certain this isn’t over.
My mother and Kristina chalk my sullen attitude up to the fact that I hate pedicures, and fancy chignons, and the prospect of wearing a floor-length purple satin dress. (This is true.) They lecture me about how it wouldn’t hurt me to pull myself together and take some pride in my appearance for a change. I should be grateful! I might look pretty for a day! “Ever since we let her join that softball team . . . ,” my mother begins, and since I’m deep in the land of sorority girls, debutantes, and ladies who lunch, I don’t even try to explain how offensive all this is. By this point, my hair is sculpted and shellacked and my fingernails are polished pink.
By the time we’re gathered back in the hotel lobby, a few hours have passed. We’re met by Aaron—laid-back, easygoing Aaron, who looks rather unhappy and tense.
“I’ve just been talking with the caterer. The manager was supposed to let them in a while ago so they could start the prep. Except he isn’t there. He isn’t anywhere. He seems to have just . . . left?”
“That’s ridiculous,” my mother says. “He’s got a job to do. He can’t just leave.”
“The front desk is empty too. I’ve been looking everywhere for someone who works here. So far, I’ve only been able to find a maid, but there’s a bit of a language barrier, and, like, I just don’t know what’s going on. . . .”
Mystifyingly, one of the bridesmaids perceives this as a good moment to share her opinion that if those people are going to live here, they should really learn to speak English. Biting my tongue and wishing all these people would just go fall into the Hidden Spring, wherever it is, I volunteer to go look for the manager, or an assistant manager, or a bartender, or, really, anyone with the keys to the kitchen. Though really, the bartender would be nice.
But I walk right past the front desk and no one even tries to stop me; the door to the manager’s office is open, the computer still on, the lights bright overhead. Loose papers are scattered everywhere and a ring of keys sits on the desk.
Outside, the fog is thickening, and the lights are flickering overhead.
* * * *
By 4 p.m., an odd kind of darkness is settling in outside, the first edge of a storm. The lights are faltering more frequently now and everyone is reassuring each other that it’s normal for an old building like this one, surely there’s a generator, there’s simply no way the power could go out. The bride is having a meltdown. The mothers send me to the lobby to keep an eye out for the florist, who is supposed to be delivering a truckload of bouquets.
The ancient elevator is creaking and moaning its way down when the lights go out, then blink back on. The elevator shudders, lurches, plummets half a floor, then jerks to a stop. The lights die.
I’m standing in pitch dark, trapped in an elevator in America’s most haunted hotel, wearing a floor-length satin dress and eggplant-colored heels and trying not to hyperventilate.
Somehow, I can’t bring myself to sit down.
“Hello?” I yell out tentatively, but of course there’s no response.
And then, sing-songing out of darkness, is a voice I almost, maybe, kind of recognize. Like Gabriel’s voice but different; it’s shrill and grating on the surface, but a rusty, rasping shadow is gathering beneath. “Hello,” the voice says back.
In the edges around the voice I can hear my own ragged breathing, rattling jagged in my chest.
“It doesn’t like to be locked in the dark,” the voice observes. “They didn’t like it either. They made it go away.”
I want to scream and scream, but I can’t seem to make a sound.
“They didn’t like that little boy. They didn’t know what happened to him, down in the deep and the dark and the cave, but they knew he wasn’t the same. So they locked him in the dark and they disappeared the door. You’re not the same, are you?”
It starts laughing and the laugh is horrible.
“You know a little boy who’s not the same. It won’t be the same, not after this. It just needs more time to eat.”
I’m aware of a sick, soupy feeling in the air, and a smell like rotting meat. There’s no oxygen anywhere, and I wheeze and gasp. I want to reach out my fingertips and feel; is there anything here with me, really? But I can’t move.
“It doesn’t like to be locked in the dark,” the voice repeats.
Then the voice is gone and the stench is gone and the lights flicker back on. The cage is empty; I’m alone. Slowly, achingly, the elevator begins lurching down toward the lobby once more. Somehow, I’ve managed not to piss myself.
The lobby is empty. I trip and stagger my way over to one of the unwieldy antique couches, spraining an ankle in those unbearable heels. I sink down and rest my forehead on an overstuffed pillow.
It occurs to me that I have the ammunition now to bring the wedding to a halt, just like my parents hoped.
Or maybe I’m just having some kind of breakdown.
Dress gathered in one fist, I tiptoe barefoot to the abandoned bar and snag myself a high-class bottle of scotch.
I wait for an hour, but the florists never show up.
* * * *
Kyle is gripping my shoulder, shaking me awake. “On your feet, soldier. The wedding’s about to begin.”
I blink and rub the upholstery pattern emblazoned on my cheek.
“But there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Okay?”
“Gabriel is missing again. Kristina and Aaron don’t know. Your parents were supposed to be watching him, but they can’t quite remember when they saw him last.”
Surely, they wouldn’t . . .
“We decided it would be best to just go ahead. He’s just trying to get attention, they say. Just . . . don’t say anything to Kristina. Aaron told me she’s stressed to the max and a hairsbreadth away from calling it off.”
“Isn’t that what we wanted?” I stupidly remark.
“You know what, though?” Kyle tells me, serious now. “He really loves her. I think he even really loves that snotty kid.”
Kyle’s right, of course; whatever else they are, Aaron and Kristina are madly in love. If I’m being honest, it’s been disgustingly obvious all along.
We walk together across the hotel grounds, past the spot where the tiny, lifeless animals had been, but they’re already gone.
We reach the picturesque white chapel at the edge of the woods and pause together at the side entrance. “In an hour, this will be over,” Kyle says. “And maybe, the labors of the caterers notwithstanding, it might be best to make like that useless manager and get the hell outta Dodge.”
Suddenly, I remember a nightmare. “I got trapped on the elevator . . . ,” I begin, but then Lydia is opening the door, yanking us in, and scolding us for being late when the whole wedding party is poised and waiting to begin.
The chapel is stuffy and hot and dimly lit. Yawns ripple across the audience like a breeze through cobwebs. Love is eternal, intones the minister. Kristina and Aaron are gazing deeply into each other’s eyes. Outside, the light has failed and wind is rattling the windows. It cannot be overpowered by fire or flood; it is stronger than death and even death is no escape. It can conquer the tomb and reach beyond the grave.
Someone coughs.
It will eat you alive. Till death do you part, and a long time after . . .
Louder and fiercer than the rattling at the windows, there’s a creaking and banging at the door. The door flails open. The wind blows in.
. . . I pronounce you man and wife. . . .We’re standing at the front of the chapel, so we see him first. Him, it, no longer sure? The thing that was once Gabriel, grown and changed. The too-tight skin stretching and tearing over the rapidly expanding frame, the fingers curling like talons, the glossy black shadows for eyes, the mouth dropping open like twilight and the entrance to a cave.
Behind it are the tiny animals, bloodied and eviscerated, heads twisted at odd angles, but standing, marching with animatronic force. Larger animals, still dripping blood. A couple humans, or once humans, their necks broken, their limbs askew, their eyes black shadows too. One bears a striking resemblance to the caterer (but with half her head bashed in).
One by one, the audience begins to shift and turn, alerted to the fact that something unspeakable is happening behind them.
Gran breaks the silence and her scratchy voice reverberates throughout the chapel: “What the fucking Christ on a cracker is that?!” Kristina drops her bouquet.
The thing begins to laugh. Like a spider, it furls and unfurls its limbs: it plucks Aunt Becky from the nearest row, and as she screams and writhes, it snaps her neck like a twig and runs its talon like a knife down her torso and slurps the viscera from the cavity around her heart. She becomes one of them.
You’d think everyone would start running and screaming, but no one moves an inch.
Then there’s a shout from behind. This is where everything gets fast and crazy and chaotic and slow: Behind the thing and its army of reanimated corpses is a crowd of people, pressing their way through to us. It’s drizzling now and they’re standing in the rain. They’re wearing masks and holding torches and pitchforks. Literal pitchforks. Among them is someone who looks like the groundskeeper, though with the mask, I can’t be sure. A woman is shouting orders.
“We’ve come to take it away,” she says. It turns to her with death in its eyes and murder in its limbs. She thrusts the torch forward and utters something in an ancient tongue. Her companions form a tight circle, pointing their pitchforks and humming incantations.
Kristina is running down the aisle, tripping on the fringes of her wedding dress. “But that’s my son,” she says.
“Mommy,” the thing says. “It doesn’t like to be locked in the dark.”
“Your son is gone,” the masked woman says. “The demon plants itself like a seed in an egg. The egg is the nourishment it uses to keep itself alive until it has enough strength to hatch. Soon, very soon, the shell will crack.” She and her compatriots prod it and poke it forward, trapping it in their circle of pitchforks and fire.
The rest of us follow, while Kristina tries to get closer and Aaron tries to hold her back. The zombie squirrels march implacably under feet, following their master. The minister dons a mask.
“What are you doing with him? Where are you taking him?” Lydia is demanding. I’ll say one thing for her, she always takes her daughter’s side.
“We’re taking it back to the crypt,” the masked woman says. “It’s eternal. It cannot be destroyed. Obliterate the shell and it simply moves to another host. It can only be contained.” She pauses for a while. “I don’t know how you found the door.”
We are not walking back to the hotel, as I’d imagined (me and my guilty secret, the hidden hallway, the invisible door). We’re taking a door at the back of the church, a door I didn’t know was there. We go down a steep flight of uneven steps—followed by the entire wedding party and half the guests—while Lydia pushes as close as she dares and says, “Well, what I want to know is who do you think you are and what gives you the right?”
“We protect you,” they say. “We always have.”
We’re walking down the lost hallway: the dark, unmarked doors, the hypnotic paper with its twisted swirls.
“The door must be physical and metaphysical,” the woman explains. “The door must be locked with a key and the key must be lost. The door must be paved over. The door must also be lost.”
The impossible, invisible door opens on a cell, a dark musty cell that stinks of death and rot, lined with cinderblocks and iron and lead.
“It is bloodthirsty but simple,” the woman says. “Simple but cunning. It comes from a time before time, a place before places, when language was powerful magic written into the substrata of the world.”
The man that might be the groundskeeper says, “If we can lose the door for another generation, we’ve done our jobs. We can go with God in peace.”
Kristina is crying and pleading. “You can’t put him in there,” she sobs. “Not in there. He hates to be alone. He’s afraid of the dark.”
“We must,” they say, and push and prod him toward the darkness.
“Mommy,” it says. “It didn’t mean to, Mommy. It didn’t mean to open the door.”
“Then me, too,” Kristina says. “He can’t be alone. I’ll go in there with him.”
“Forever?”
“Yes. Forever.”
For the first time, I see her, really see her. I understand in a rush how cruel and unfair I’ve been, judging her shallow and provincial when I was the one all along. I want to say I’m sorry, but it doesn’t matter, and it’s much too late.
“Me, too,” Aaron says, and steps forward, and pulls Kristina into his arms. “Together. We’ll go in there together. I won’t let you do this alone.”
“Are you people fucking kidding me?” Gran demands, and her scratchy voice rattles through the hallway. “You’re going to let these Halloween assholes run the show? You think we can’t take ’em? We got ourselves a whole goddamn wedding.”
Just like that, a brawl breaks out. They have fire and pitchforks and ancient magic; we have hysteria and passion and paranoia, and the bride’s cousin Ron, who came to the chapel packing heat.
The thing has itself, its useless, eager, bloodied army, and its vicious desire to survive. In the chaos, it feasts on another extended relative. Now it looks almost nothing like a boy.
With the gun and the fire and the crowded hallway, we battle each other to an impasse in two minutes flat. There is crying and sobbing and gunshot wounds, and Gran has been knocked over, trampled, bruised, and bloody. But amidst the struggle, the thing has gotten past us. Or maybe it opened itself a door?
It’s gone. Perhaps it is about to hatch.
A shout goes up among the masked order when they realize what’s happened. We follow them as they run up the stairs, into the chapel, out into the storm.
“We’ve got to find it. Call in anyone and everyone you can,” the woman instructs her people. “We’ll put together a search party. We’ll search until it’s found.”
She turns to us with contempt in her eyes. “Look for it. Look for it everywhere. You have no idea what you’ve done.”
I notice then that Kristina and Aaron are missing too.
* * * *
Two hours later, maybe three, maybe four. Kyle and I have been stumbling through the woods for what seems like an eternity, maybe longer, maybe less, looking for any sign. Kyle’s holding a flashlight; its beam has begun to falter. I’m holding his hand. Wet leaves and rough branches are slapping us, scratching us. We’re slipping and falling in the mud. Unspeakable noises whine from the dark.
“What’s that . . . over there?” Kyle asks.
So tired we can hardly move, but knowing we must, we trudge forward. Snagged on a sharp branch is a flutter of white—a scrap from Kristina’s veil.
A little farther ahead, what looks like one of Aaron’s shoes.
And then dropping open before us is the entrance to a cave. Pitch black. Reeking death.
The cave is a tunnel. We walk through darkness: forward, forward, down, and down. The tunnel opens into a yawning cavern, too high and too deep and too endless to be real.
Far off, beyond the gulf, is an immense stone throne. The bride and the groom kneel before it. There are fires burning, primal and fierce. The horde is larger and stronger than before.
The prince sits upon its throne. It has ruled before. It could rule again.
Simple and cunning, it fixes us with bright, burning eyes. We are ignorant, it says. We are selfish and monstrous and violent and cruel. We belong to the dark.
Beyond lies the hidden spring, where death bubbles forth from one of the many secret mouths of hell.
Kyle and I kneel weeping before it. It has seen us and known us for what we are.