VACANCY & ARIEL

A tremendous bang shakes the cottage. Cliff squawks and drops the phone. Something scrabbles on the outside wall and then a woman’s face, bright blue, reminiscent of those Indian posters of Kali you used to be able to buy in head shops, her white teeth bared, her long black hair disheveled and hanging down, appears in the window, coming into view from the side, as if she’s clinging to the wall like a lizard. Her expression is so inhuman, so distorting of her features, that it yields no clue as to her identity; but when she swings down to center the window, gripping the molding, revealing her naked body, he recognizes her to be what’s-her-name, the witch who gave him the STD. The mole on her left breast, directly below the nipple gives it away. As does her pubic hair, shaved into a unique pattern redolent of exotic vegetation. Even without those telltales, he’d know that body. She loved to dance for him before they fucked, rippling the muscles of her inner thighs, shaking her breasts. But she’s not dancing now, and there’s nothing arousing about her presence. She just hangs outside the window, glaring, a voluptuous blue bug. Her teeth and skin and red lips are a disguise. Rip it away, and you would see a horrid face with a proboscis and snapping jaws. Only the eyes would remain of her human semblance. Huge and dark, empty except for a greedy, lustful quality that manifests as a gleam embedded deep within them. It’s that quality that compels Cliff, that roots him to the floorboards. He’s certain if he makes a move to run, she’ll come through the window, employing some magic that leaves the glass intact, and what she’ll do then…His imagination fails him, or perhaps it does not, for he feels her stare on his skin, licking at him as might a cold flame, tasting him, coating his flesh with a slimy residue that isn’t tangible, yet seems actual, a kind of saliva that, he thinks, will allow her to digest him more readily. And then it’s over. The witch’s body deflates, shrivels like a leathery balloon, losing its shape, crumpling, folding in on itself, dwindling in a matter of four or five seconds to a point of light that—he realizes the instant before it winks out, before the spotlight, too, winks out—is the same exact shade of blue as the Vacancy sign at the Celeste Motel.

It’s a trick, a false ending, Cliff tells himself—she’s trying to get his hopes up, to let him relax, and then she’ll materialize behind him, close enough to touch. But time stretches out and she does not reappear. The sounds of wind and surf come to him. Still afraid, but beginning to feel foolish, he picks up his cell phone, half-expecting her to seize the opportunity and pounce. He cracks the door, then opens it and steps out into the soft night air. Something has sliced through the porch screen, halving it neatly. He imagines that the amount of torque required to do such a clean job would be considerable—it would be commensurate with, say, the arc of an enormous sword swung by a giant and catching the screen with the tip of its blade. He retreats inside the house, locks and bolts the door, realizing that it’s possible he’s being haunted by a movie. Thoughts spring up to assail the idea, but none serve to dismiss it. Understanding that he won’t be believed, yet having nowhere else to turn, he dials 911.

Chapter 5

DETECTIVE SERGEANT TODD Ashford of the Port Orange Police Department and Cliff have a history, though it qualifies as ancient history. They were in the same class at Seabreeze High and both raised a lot of hell, some of it together, but they were never friends, a circumstance validated several years after graduation when Ashford, then a patrolman with the Daytona Beach PD, displayed unseemly delight in busting Cliff on a charge of Drunk and Disorderly outside Cactus Jack’s, a biker bar on Main Street. Cliff was home for a couple of weeks from Hollywood, flushed with the promise of imminent stardom, and Ashford did not attempt to hide the fact that he deeply resented his success. Nor does he attempt to hide his resentment now. Watching him pace about the interrogation room, a brightly lit space with black compound walls, a metal table and four chairs, Cliff recognizes that although Ashford may no longer resent his success, he has new reason for bitterness. He’s a far cry from the buzz-cut young cop who hauled Cliff off to the drunk tank, presenting the image of a bulbous old man with receding gray hair, dark, squinty eyes, a soupstrainer mustache, and jowls, wearing an off-the-rack sport coat and jeans, his gun and badge half-hidden by the overhang of his belly. Cliff looks almost young enough to be his son.

“Why don’t you tell me where her body is?” Ashford asks for perhaps the tenth time in the space of two hours. “We’re going to find her eventually, so you might as well give it up.”