The Nightcrawler (12 page)

Without getting in the car, he shut the 440 down and removed the keys. Wayne was just getting to the side door of the Best Western when Scott slammed the door, the noise echoed loudly through the still morning. Scott watched Wayne enter the building, amused at the way the light over the door reflected off the top of his shiny head. It wasn’t until Wayne was out of sight that he noticed the orange glow of the rising sun silhouetting the hotel.
 

He looked down at the pavement and followed what he thought was the slime trail left behind by the worm he was watching before Wayne’s arrival. He couldn’t be sure it was the same one. The parking lot was crisscrossed with glistening lines that headed in every direction but didn’t seem to go anywhere.
 

He didn’t know why the gooey trails held his attention but his eyes followed one after another. He amused himself imagining the lines as a map of the LA freeways. This one’s the Harbor freeway, that one’s the Santa Ana and the one over there’s the Hollywood Freeway. He was about to start naming the surface streets when he heard it. That sound, the clicking sound the bum made with his tongue. He could feel his heartbeat quicken and had to force himself to breath.

He fought back the fright taking over his conscious mind and slowly looked in the direction of the noise. It wasn’t him. It wasn’t even human. Twenty feet away a huge crow stood on the curb with a foot long worm dangling from his beak. He felt a bit of rage thinking that was his worm, the one he watched earlier. How stupid was that, getting mad at a bird for eating a worm. The bird was staring at Scott. It had no fear in its eyes. It was defying Scott to come closer.

The crow flipped its head back and the worm disappeared down its throat. Then Scott noticed a shadow beneath a tree on the lawn about twenty yards from the Best Western sign. The shadow was moving. He squinted hard trying to focus on the shadow.
 

“What the hell is that?”
 

The sound of his own voice gave him a start. He took a step toward the crow, trying to make out the moving shadow.
 

“Holy shit.”
 

Two steps closer. The ground was moving. It wasn’t a shadow moving, it was the ground, dark brown wet soil moving in a wave like a mudslide after a heavy rain on a deforested hillside. The wave moved over the crow, engulfing it. The mud seemed to collect on the crow. The pile was getting taller and taller but it didn’t advance onto the parking lot. It was four feet high as Scott stepped closer. His curiosity temporarily overwhelmed his fear. He had to figure out how mud could form a pile on its own. He was in horror when he realized it wasn’t mud. It was worms. Thousands of thick brown nightcrawlers, squirming higher atop the now buried crow.

The pile grew to over five feet tall and began to ooze and gyrate; making a hideous wet sticky sound. It continued to get taller and thinner and formed into the shape of a man. Scott wanted to run, needed to run. Run as fast as he could, but his legs were paralyzed with terror. The worms pulled tighter and the shape began to look familiar. It was him, the bum from Detroit. The yellow light from the Best Western sign and orange sunlight cresting the horizon behind the building gave the abomination a devilish color. A slimy reddish arm extended and cocked a finger like a gun, pointing at Scott. Like gawkers passing a car wreck, Scott found he was unable to avert his eyes. He wanted to look away. He wanted to turn and run, but he stood immobile and stared right at it.
 

A sound came from deep inside the thing. That same clicking sound and the worms fell into a puddle on the grass. The crow emerged from the pile, picked up a six-inch nightcrawler and flew off cawing repeatedly almost as if he were laughing. As if he laughed at Scott.

He watched the bird fly off then returned his gaze to the grass. Thousands of worms crawled around. Not going away, just squirming around on top of each other. Scott felt his knees weaken and his stomach twisted into a knot so tight he was sure he would vomit right there. He staggered back inside, with every step back to room 218 he tried to rationalize what he just saw. He hadn’t eaten, it was a hallucination brought on by extreme hunger, worms can’t sculpt themselves into people. He’d been under a lot of stress and it was getting to him now that the pressure had abated. That’s all it was, his mind playing tricks. He’d check out of the hotel, have a good breakfast and laugh about what he thought he saw.
 

Scott returned to his room without experiencing the passage of time it took to get there. He didn’t notice the neatly folded newspapers on the carpet in front of each door. The smell of Pine-Sol on the freshly washed stairs still damp and slippery didn’t register in his brain. He didn’t acknowledge the lady from housekeeping who said good morning as he entered the second floor corridor from the stairwell. He didn’t even notice the local weather coming from the TV as he opened the door to the room
.
“Last night’s rainfall is going to bring in a day of high humidity and we have a real possibility of scattered thunder storms this afternoon. The five day forecast coming up right after this.”
 

He stepped into the bathroom, closed the door then fumbled in the dark for the switch. The bathroom lights flickered on with a harsh flash causing Scott to wince. His breathing was quick and shallow as he stared at his reflection in the mirror. His face was wet with perspiration and his eyes looked back with unease. He turned the water on, cupped his hands and leaned over the sink splashing water on his face. Each handful washed away a little of the image that had shaken him to his core. After several rinses, the worms were like a bad dream that faded almost immediately after waking.

Eyes closed, he scrambled around for a towel. The next thing he saw caused him to stagger back until he banged into the wall. The reflection in the mirror was no longer his own. It was the fucking bum. The bastard was standing behind the glass, his yellow teeth grinning with malevolence. For the second time in ten minutes, Scott lost his ability to look away. He closed his eyes jamming the heels of his hands against them as if to punish them for their betrayal. The man in the mirror replaced first with total blackness and then as Scott applied more and more pressure to his corneas his optic nerves began to send visions of exploding stars to his brain. Then the pain, Scott was putting so much force on his eyes that he was close to passing out from the pain. Dropping his hands, he slid down the wall to a seated position and rested his head between his knees.

A light tapping brought him out of the trance. Confused, he looked around the bathroom. His vision was unclear and streaked with odd floating shapes as his eyes recovered from the abuse. He started to think. Why was he sitting on the floor? The damn headache was back. Why were his eyes hurting? What the hell was happening to him? He had always been in control. He had never been into drugs. He didn’t hallucinate, so why now? It couldn’t be stress. He’d been working his ass off for five years with Cobra. He’d worked harder than this. Then the tapping came again. Was that real or just another figment of his imagination? He was scared. He couldn’t remember feeling fear before; not since childhood anyway. More tapping, a little louder this time.
 

“Are you okay?” Ashley’s voice came through the door, mousey and barely audible.
 

Scott pushed himself up the wall, and stared into the mirror at his own reflection. He regained some composure and Ashley called through the door again.

“I’m fine, I’ll be right out.” His voice was tattered and old sounding. He continued to stand there watching his own chest rise and fall with each breath. He was trying to psychoanalyze himself. Was he cracking up? He was in the middle of Missouri, in a hotel with a girl he didn’t know, preparing to finish his cross country trek in a car that wasn’t his, being stalked by a man who could not possibly have left Detroit let alone made it half way to the Pacific coast. Then there were the worms. Shit, looking back, the beer he drank in college didn’t get those kinds of results. Whatever this was, if he could put it in a pill he could make a fortune.
 

He took one last deep breath, exhaled and opened the door. Ashley was sitting cross-legged against the wall staring up at him.
 

“Are you okay? It sounded like you fell down in there.” Her face had lost all the confidence she had displayed when she climbed into the car. Ashley was scared. She looked more like a six-year-old who lost her mommy at the mall. For the first time since she left the note on her pillow and snuck out at five in the morning three days ago, she was homesick. She needed her mom. She had been positive that the only way she was ever going to make something of herself was to get out and do it and to do it she had to go to Hollywood. Ashley always felt a movie star inside her, and she wanted to let it out. Mom, however, was certain that the only thing in Ashley’s near future was college and a career. In the middle of the night, Ashley packed some things and took a city bus to the end of town where she stuck out her thumb. The first one to pass by was the batter, and climbing into the truck, she was sure it would be easy to get to Hollywood. Now she felt defeated. Her first ride was a perv and this guy looked sick, crazy, or maybe something worse.

In a very timid whisper she asked again, “Are you okay?”
 

He looked down at her with unsympathetic eyes. He just had the shit scared out of him twice in fifteen minutes. His skin felt clammy, and a jackhammer had begun banging out a drum solo in his head, and he could feel his heart pounding in his chest.
So what was this kid’s problem?
 

“I’m fine.”
 

He walked over to the desk and began to pack his computer. Crossing the room, he grabbed his carry-on from the closet floor and went back to the bathroom to pack his toiletries.
 

Ashley didn’t get up from the floor. From across the room Scott looked down on her. Two weeks before her twentieth birthday and to him, she looked beaten down by life, like a young woman with the eyes of a little girl. It saddened him a bit. He liked the spark she had showed him yesterday and now she was beginning to ooze self-doubt. Maybe she wasn’t ready for this trip after all.

Putting whatever Ashley’s problems might be from his mind, his carry-on hanging off his shoulder and his computer case in hand, he asked, “Well, are you coming or not?”
 

She looked up at him as if hoping for some encouragement but all she got was, “Look, you don’t have to ride with me but you do have to get out of the room because I’m checking out. So what’s it gonna be?”

She got up, walked over to the first bed and picked up her pack. “I’m coming.” She had regained some of the attitude and swagger she showed in the car. Scott knew it was an act, but he admired her grit just the same.

“Okay, I have to check out then we’ll get some breakfast. Maybe some food will get rid of this headache.”

It was 7:38 according to the clock behind the front desk. The hotel lobby was empty but for the desk clerk. He looked up and smiled warmly.
 

“Good morning. Checking out?”
 

Scott nodded, “218.”
 

The desk clerk scanned the keycard into the computer and still smiling asked, “Was everything satisfactory, Mr. Randall?” Scott nodded again. “Would you like all the charges on your Visa, sir?”
 

Scott was so out of it when he checked in that he barely remembered giving his Visa. “That would be great,” he said. The clerk looked up at the sound of someone’s voice other than his own, this time he nodded, then printed out the bill and put it down on the counter.
 

“Thank you for staying at Best Western and we hope to see you again, Mr. Randall.”
 

Scott took the invoice off the counter and put it in the side pocket of his carry-on. He looked at the nametag on the clerk’s breast pocket. “Bill, is there an IHOP, or a Denny’s, or something similar around here? I am really in the mood for some pancakes.”

Bill just pointed out the front window of the lobby. Right across the street sparkling in the bright morning sun were the windows of IHOP.
 

“Okay then,” Scott said with a “stupid me for asking” tone, then with an almost airy quality he turned to Ashley, “Pancakes sound good to you, Ashley?”
 

She giggled and headed for the door. Scott followed her out to the car. He stood for a moment looking at the spot where the worm-man had been. The grass was green and lush. There was no sign of anything that would indicate a pile of worms had been there less than an hour ago. He opened the trunk and threw his things in.
 

“You want to put your pack in?”
 

“I’ll carry it. It’s all I have. If someone steals the car while we’re eating I’ll be screwed.”

He was sure what she really meant was, “I’m not going to lose my pack if you crack up, dude.”

Just as Scott opened the driver’s side door, he heard that clicking sound again. Looking toward the source, he saw a crow on the top of the lamppost. It had a long worm dangling from its beak. The crow flipped its head back just like it had earlier and the worm disappeared. Then it flew away making the same caw-cawing cackle as before. His gaze returned to the grass; a single shiny black feather lay exactly where the worm-man had stood. Correction Scott thought, where he imagined the worm-man had stood. It was a hallucination, caused by hunger or stress, or maybe it was post stress. Scott was sure some shrink must have put some syndrome or disorder name to it in order to publish a paper in the trades.