Before
NOW THAT THEY’D finally arrived at the Beehive Hotel, Teddy was so serious about nobody getting off the Lullaby Express that he left Brandy behind on the bus to make sure.
His passengers could not be trusted, especially not in public. And with the last order he’d heard through the seashell sounding more urgent than any of the previous others—telling him to forgo the list for now, and put rubber to the road toward Harrod’s Reach—Teddy couldn’t afford any more hitches.
No more dead bodies to hide or clean up or burn. No more delays because of the uncivilized. Just stay the fuck on the bus.
Teddy was still trying to mentally process how readily, and with so much enthusiasm, that freak, Firestarter Freddie, had burned Teddy’s childhood house to the ground. With their neighbor Mrs. Chastain’s decapitated body resting all peaceful-like atop the kitchen table, holding her own head like that other freak from Detroit had insisted she do. But the luster in Firestarter Freddie’s eyes had been something to behold. His passion for the project had been nothing short of extraordinary, and they’d had to physically move him back onto the bus as the insides of the house had started to burn. They couldn’t have him standing in the yard and clapping when the fire trucks pulled in.
But while Teddy had driven most of the way across the country to Harrod’s Reach, Brandy had driven the initial fifty miles after leaving the Lomax house behind. Belinda Lomax, resting in her wheelchair in the handicapped section behind the driver’s seat, had shown so little emotion watching her house burn that Teddy, unnerved that he couldn’t get any read on her current state of mind, had been hesitant to leave. And then for that stoic expression to turn to a grin so evil it made even his skin crawl; that was almost too much. He’d wheeled her up the ramp into the Lullaby Express and insisted it was time they go, so momentarily shaken he’d asked Brandy if she could handle the wheel.
Although it wasn’t only his mother’s demeanor that had him rattled. He hadn’t expected seeing his childhood home going up in flames to tug at him like it had done. He loved his room, yes, and the large, wooded backyard, yes, he’d miss the peaceful solitude of that. But seeing the curtain in the living room go up in flames and Freddie smile so stupidly when the flame somehow jumped to the folded blanket on the back of the sofa, had reminded him too much of what his mother had done to that tree in the backyard woods when he was a boy. That tree. The one he’d found during an otherwise monotonous day of hiking and trailblazing, and for weeks had been sneaking off to read and relax and talk to the voice in his head. To imagine he was really seeing what he was seeing, all those moths—which he at first thought were butterflies—clinging and crawling atop the bark of that tree. It had mesmerized him. For weeks he’d visited that tree, until it got to the point where he considered those moths his friends, only to accidentally mention them one evening over dinner to his mother. And once she heard about it, that was that. He realized now that she’d never asked him where the tree was. She’d somehow known, and marched him right into the woods to it. The tree next to the tunnel, which was really a small, one-way, covered footbridge no more than six feet long, stretching over a creek that wasn’t even there anymore, a creek that could have just as easily been stepped over back in its day. But this small footbridge out in the middle of the woods had never made any sense, not to them, not to any neighbors who’d ever lived near those ten acres of back-country Virginia woods before them.
His mother marched him out to the footbridge and found the tree immediately, covered in moths, some crawling, some flying away and landing again. And within the fluttering swarm were colorful vines of purple, pink, and gold, clinging to and around the entrance of that footbridge. And on the well-worn floorboard planks a large purple snake lay coiled, head facing the tree, as if waiting to strike.
Belinda Lomax hurried back to the house to grab her gas can and a book of matches, and doused both the tree and the footbridge and set them aflame, making Teddy watch as the wood snapped and burned, and the moths scattered in puffs of flame and smoke and hissing fury. Teddy had pleaded to Mother to stop, that the moths were hurt and screaming. But she stood there and made him watch, even as he cried and held his ears against the screaming moths.
That memory fueled him now as he approached the Beehive Hotel.
They’d arrived in the heavily forested town of Harrod’s Reach under the disguise of nightfall, with virtually no one on the streets. Harrod’s Reach was small and cozy and gridded by town squares. The Beehive, perched like a castle overlooking a kingdom, had not been hard to find. Still leery of any unwanted attention, Teddy had driven the Lullaby Express to the back lot, parking it off the pavement and in the shadows of the neighboring woods behind the hotel, so it wouldn’t be easily seen, even in daylight.
Teddy had already decided if no one answered the hotel’s front door, he’d spend the rest of the night on the bus. But after he pounded on one of the Beehive’s two tall, wooden doors—one painted black, the other yellow—a lobby light turned on less than a minute later. Three houses down from the hotel, a living room light turned on and a dog barked, and in his mind Teddy urged the greasy-haired fucker he now spied through the hotel lobby window, hurrying toward the doors and tying a bathrobe, to hurry even more.
The guy looked through the window and his eyes grew big, surprised, Teddy thought, that the pounding had been on his hotel door. The guy mouthed, “We’re closed.”
Teddy said, “No, you’re not.”
This time the man shouted through the glass. “We don’t open for three more weeks.”
Teddy heard him but could also see some wheels turning behind those blue eyes, like perhaps this goon was expecting someone at some point, but wasn’t sure Teddy was the guy. Maybe taking this tall hat off would help, let him see these horns. Even though they’d long progressed past horns, according to Brandy, and Teddy, if he was being truthful, knew they were full-out fucking antlers now. Teddy removed his hat so the man could see, as he was getting a strong feeling that he wasn’t the only one on this earth getting messages. His mother had gotten that Beehive Hotel grand reopening flyer from halfway across the country for a reason.
After exposing the antlers, either the man would let him in, like he’d been expecting him, or would run instantly to call the cops, in which case things could get ugly.
The man didn’t run. In fact, he smiled, which bummed Teddy out a little. Part of him had been craving a fight. Some bruises or cuts and some blood. His tank was running low after the trip, and he needed some fuel other than sex with Brandy, which couldn’t, he knew, sustain him by itself.
The yellow front door opened. The guy beckoned Teddy inside and quickly closed the door behind them. Even with the lone light on above the entrance, the lobby was grand indeed. Tall and airy and spacious. According to the flyer, this was where the main party would be on opening night, with jubilant pomp and circumstance, with oysters and fancy hors d’oeuvres and signature cocktails from the original Beehive menu, all down to “the most minute historical detail.” The hotel man—Teddy assumed he was the owner or manager—despite the unruly hair and five o’clock shadow, was well-built and handsome, and carried himself with a confidence Teddy respected.
But he wouldn’t stop staring at Teddy’s head, at Teddy’s antlers, and so Teddy curled his hand into a fist and punched the man hard in the stomach, because even though he’d not been insecure for years, he didn’t like being stared at. The punch doubled the man over. From there, Teddy raised a knee into the man’s face, felt the nose crack against his kneecap, and blood squirted across the white-and-black checked tile floor. The man rolled onto his back and moaned, holding his nose as blood gushed. He blinked moisture from his eyes but didn’t fight back. But with each moan and with each gush of blood from those busted nostrils, Teddy felt his fuel tank grow full.
“My nose,” said the man on his back, although it came out more like my nothe due to the blood leaking over his busted lip and open mouth. The man’s bathrobe had come undone, revealing his shriveled, flaccid prick. He was quick to move a hand to close the bathrobe and protect what was left of his dignity. Still on his back, and eyes blurred with tears, he said, “The fuck wath that for?”
He had a lisp now like Firestarter Freddie.
“I need rooms,” said Teddy. “Nineteen of them to be exact.”
“We’re not open yet.”
Teddy leaned over him. “I have a feeling you knew I was coming.”
“I did,” he said. “Thort of. Just not yet. You’re early.”
“Early birds get the worm,” said Teddy. “So says Mother. Speaking of whom, make that twenty rooms.”
The man swallowed heavily, choked on saliva and blood, but nodded that he got it. Teddy could tell he was staring at his antlers again, which in the past days had begun to sprout boughs like a reindeer. “Are they real?”
“Yes, they’re fucking real.” Teddy gripped the lapels of the man’s bathrobe and helped him up from the floor, standing him upright so that Teddy could properly lower his head and aim for the man’s sternum. It had not been something Teddy had done before, or for that matter had even imagined, using these things as weapons, but he suddenly felt the calling to do it. Teddy took two steps back for some room, for some momentum, and then charged, ramming the tips of his antlers into his chest, piercing flesh in at least three places before pulling free. The man staggered, shocked and feeling the new wounds in his chest, now bleeding through his bathrobe.
Not fatal wounds, for sure, thought Teddy, but ones that would scar, and he felt his fuel tank overflowing. He wished Brandy had been here to see it.
The man held out a hand toward Teddy, as if to keep him at bay. Like he didn’t understand why he was being attacked after willingly allowing this stranger inside his hotel.
But I’m not a stranger, am I? You’ve heard of me before. You knew I was coming.
“Don’t,” pleaded the man, his voice sounding better as his busted lip-lisp left him. “I’ll get you rooms. I’ll kick out some workers if I need to. When do you need them?”
Teddy checked his watch, stepped closer. “Within the next five minutes.”
“Don’t, please …”
“I’m done hurting you,” said Teddy. “But you needed to know who is boss, am I right?” The man nodded, frantically. “Because this is my hotel now,” said Teddy. And the man nodded at that too. “Good, I’m glad we’re in agreement.” Teddy pulled the yellow flyer from his pocket and unfolded it. “This was sent to my mother’s house. It had a profound effect on her. Why?”
“What’s your mother’s name?”
“Belinda Lomax,” said Teddy. “Does the name ring a bell? And why did she get one?”
“I don’t know. The name, yes, I remember sending it. But …”
“Do you hear voices?” asked Teddy. “No, check that, do you hear a certain voice?”
The man nodded, tried to plug the blood oozing from his wounds, but didn’t seem to know which ones were the most important to contain.
Teddy was tired of watching him struggle. “One of my passengers. She calls herself the Nanny. Claims to have been a nurse. I’ll have her attend to the wounds. Now answer my question.”
“Yes.”
“Yes what?”
“I hear a voice.”
“Who does it belong to?”
“Mr. Lullaby,” he said quickly. “He calls himself Mr. Lullaby.”
“How does he contact you?”
The man scrambled for the pocket of his bathrobe and pulled from it a light blue seashell the size of a baseball. His blood-stained hand shook, holding it. It surprised Teddy none that the man always kept it on his person. Teddy didn’t like to be away from his either, but this was interesting. So where were this guy’s horns? This told Teddy a couple of things: one, this guy was just another spoke in the wheel, being used, and two, Teddy felt now more than ever that he was the wheel itself.
The man held the shell up to his ear for a listen, as if to prove a point, and then lowered his arm again. “I can hear him. Through here. Sometimes.” He held up the shell. “I don’t know how but … it started when I …”
“When you what?”
“Entered the tunnel,” he said. “Two years ago.”
“Is that when you decided to buy this place?”
“Yes,” he said, wincing. “I’d had this hotel listed for years, trying to sell it. But that day, after leaving the tunnel, I heard a voice inside it. Maybe it was the wind. Or in my head. I don’t know.”
“What did the voice say?”
He chuckled, like an anxious reaction to the prospect of bleeding out on his hotel floor more than anything comical. “It said, yellow ball, right corner pocket. Yellow ball …”
“Right corner pocket,” Teddy finished for him. “Interesting, then what?”
“I’d only left the Beehive twenty minutes prior. I recalled seeing the billiards room doors open, when I typically made sure they were closed. It’s an ornate room.”
“Can’t wait to see it myself.”
“It packs more of a punch to open the doors and allow the prospective buyers an entrance. Like they’re being swooned. I returned to the Beehive, entered the billiards room, and right there on the table was a yellow ball and a cue stick. And inside the right corner pocket …” He held out the shell. “I found this.”
“And that, as they say,” said Teddy, “is fucking that?” The man nodded. Teddy stepped closer, held out his hand. The man flinched, probably thinking he was about to get hit again, or even gored. But instead, Teddy opened his hand for a shake, and said, “I don’t mind the blood.”
The man stepped closer, held out his bloody hand.
Teddy pumped it with a firm grip. “Teddy Lomax,” he said. “Only my mother calls me Theodore.” He surveyed the lobby, just a quick once-over before settling his eyes back on the hotel manager. “Love what you’ve done to the place.”
The man said, “The name’s Mickey. Mickey French.” He grinned, ear to ear, like he’d just realized something monumental, like he’d been waiting his entire life to say his next words. “Welcome to the historic Beehive Hotel.”