When am I?
Zacari came to the median of sleep and wake, where time is fickle and lithe. She sensed she was being carried, but that was all she could discern. It was comfortable for time to be undecided, a plain canvas bursting with promise and void of disappointment. But too easily she grew bored of comfort and decided the time herself.
She was five. She vomited twice and spent the rest of the night watching cartoons on the couch until she finally she drifted to sleep. Very late, or very early, her father scooped her up and carried her into her parents' bedroom. She slept in between them like the cream of a cookie, until her father left for work. Zacari knew the memory by heart. She'd wake, watch more cartoons, stomach toast with her mother, and in the evening her father would come home. Everything would be wonderful until it wasn't, but that would be two years later. Was there something she could have done differently, so he wouldn't have to leave –
"Cari. Cari." Zacari blinked awake to the calloused hands of her father cradling her like she was five again. He set her on her bed. "Why you sleeping on the floor?"
She stared at her father's face. His hair and goatee were flecked with gray, like metal flakes had been dusted across the top of his head. He was a leaner now too. But he didn't look much different from the father Zacari knew as a child. His eyes were still dark and clever, and his mouth could still work itself into a charming smile. Strange how unchanged this father and the father from her childhood looked, yet in her mind they were two different people.
"Just 'cause," she muttered. It'd been a nice dream, but it was dangerous to forget her anger. Her father was predictably unpredictable. Luckily, she only had to recall the watery mix of slush and the silent car ride home to fortify her disdain.
"I know you love Googles, but you don't have to sleep on the damn floor with her. Put her in bed with you. Jesus," he sniffed. "I think she pissed on you. Give me your hoodie and I'll throw it in the bathtub for now."
She tugged off her hoodie and opened her mouth to ask where he'd been but decided it didn't really matter. She stayed out of his business, and he stayed out of hers. He took the damp hoodie from her and chunked it in the bathtub.
"You feel alright?"
"Absolutely peachy. Night."
Her father grumbled a good night and slumped into bed.
She wasn't pleased with him, of course, but as shadows of Baker encroached her mind her father's snores were a comfort. Mocking against the lamplight, the windows were cracked, and the bathroom door was ajar as if nothing had happened. But it had; she'd agreed to hear out a notoriously atrocious doctor whose medicine had ended so many lives. Lela trembled against her like a last autumn leaf, as if Baker hadn't left the lounge. Zacari turned over away from the windows and noticed the camera perched at her bedside, staring open lensed at her. She capped it and turned back over, wondering, What have I gotten myself into?
She hardly slept, and when she did, fretfully. The sky turned from dark to watercolors, and she admitted defeat, rising to find Lela something to eat. Surprisingly, her father had remembered to get dog food. It was crumpled on its side next to the minifridge, a discount sticker slapped on the face of an English Mastiff. She peeled off the sticker. Pedigree for big dogs. She sighed and poured a bit into an empty takeout box and set it on the floor, then grabbed a paper cup from a sleeve on the dresser and went to fill it with water from the bathroom tap. She caught a glimpse of her reflection and recoiled, her "frown-dimple," as her mother coined it, appearing on her right cheek. There were bags under her eyes and two zits above her left eyebrow, and it looked like someone had taken a leaf blower to her hair. She set the cup of water beside Lela's food as she crunched on an eyeball-sized piece of dog food. Zacari's own stomach protested, yesterday's spaghetti miles away.
"Dad. Dad. Dad." She violently shook his shoulders. "Dad."
"Christ, Zacari, what?"
"I'm hungry."
"Oh. Right." He sleepily reached for his wallet and handed her a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. "Here. There's a pizza place on our floor."
"Have you eaten there or something? Is it good?" But he was already snoring.
The pizzeria had dainty two-seater tables and a small balcony facing the front of the hotel, the ideal view of the expansive parking lot and the miniscule crescent moon statue below. Stretches of cheese burned the roof of her mouth as Zacari devoured her second slice of pizza. It might have been delicious, or she might have been starving. Lela gave Zacari her best puppy eyes, both endearing and unsettling since she was remarkably wall-eyed, but Zacari loved her and fed her bits of crust anyway. She tapped the block of a camera sitting on the table and took a sip of orange juice. Every time she began to doubt the night before, the camera was a blunt reminder it had been real.
She searched the web for a good Hamilton meme to post on her Handleton Instagram page, which was working itself into a general Hamilton appreciation page. Not that she minded. How long could someone appreciate her painted hands lip syncing?
An unease suddenly prickled the back of her neck, like someone was boring holes into the back of her head. She froze. Had Baker come back to talk with her so soon? Even though she'd agreed to hear his story, she was still coming to terms with it. She looked up from her pizza, and the round face of a boy beamed at her from across the balcony.
"Hello!" he called, making his way to her table.
It took Zacari a second to respond. "Hi," she said finally.
"I know you."
"Oh – you must be a fan of Handleton!" She raised a hand and made it look at him. She really did have lovely hands. That was probably a part of the reason Handleton had taken off.
"Handle-what?"
Zacari looked closer at him. It was the boy who'd led the tour guide. He looked surprisingly normal out of his tour guide attire. He wore gray Nike shorts, a plain, pocketed, blue T-shirt, and faded Chuck Taylors. An irrational part of her assumed his outfits were strictly period themed.
She blushed and lowered her hand. "Um...nothing."
He laughed nervously. "You went to the ghost tour last night. And you ran out of there. Did you see something? Or was I doing that bad of a job?"
Oh, Christ, let me disappear. "No. It's just creepy down there."
"You're not wrong about that. I've never seen a ghost, but my mom says she has. She never gives me the details. But this entire place is pretty creepy."
"Yeah it is."
He eyed the chair next to Zacari. She gestured to the chair.
"Thanks," he grinned, taking a seat. "I like your dog."
Lela wagged her tail. There was a bit of sauce on her muzzle.
"Thanks."
"Can I pet it?"
"Sure," she said and scooted her chair a bit closer. His arm brushed Zacari as he reached to scratch under Lela's chin. Her heart skipped a beat. Which annoyed her.
"What's his name?"
"Her," Zacari corrected, not unkindly. "And, Lela."
"Cool. I'm Javier."
"I'm Zacari."
He gave her one of those ear-to-ear smiles.
"Something wrong with my name?" she snapped.
"W-what? No. It's just - it's pretty," he stuttered.
Heat spread across her cheeks. Again. Oof. You're kind of a jerk, aren't you, Zacari? "Oh. Thanks."
"No problem."
"So, do you work here?"
"Yeah. Well, kind of. I help my mom, she's one of the maids. I think – not to sound creepy or anything – but I think I tried to bring towels to your room the other day. I only remember because your voice isn't an old person's."
"Oh! That's when I found – " She stopped short. "– the towels. Later that day. Yeah."
Javier laughed. "Oh. Right. Sorry if I was annoying."
"No, you weren't. I probably was though. Do you always lead the ghost tour?"
"No, I only got to lead this one because the usual guy got sick and I begged Allison - the lady at the front, she sort of runs everything - to let me do it. I really like the history of the hotel."
"I thought you did a good job," Zacari said, genuinely impressed. "Kept me interested, anyway."
"Thanks." His ears had gone red. "Nice camera, by the way. May I? I'm a camera fanatic."
"Oh...sure." She watched him thumb over the camera, like he was whittling out details she couldn't see.
"I've got an earlier model of this I think," he mulled to himself. "I'm pretty sure this one's an Argus C3. Good condition." He popped off the lens cap and looked through the camera. Zacari held her breath. What would he see? He pushed down a little lever on the face of the camera, aimed it at Zacari, and clicked down to snap a picture.
"Oh!"
"What is it? Did you see something?" She frantically checked over her shoulder, expecting Baker to be smoking a fat cigar at one of the tables behind them.
"What? No. Sorry, it's just the shutters still work."
"Really?"
"Yeah. You push this little lever down here on the front, and then click the silver button on top." He guided Zacari's hands on the camera. His ears flamed and he pulled away. "But if there's film in there, it's all used up."
"Can we check?" she said, pulling on the little hatch door on its back.
"No! No, if you expose the film to direct light the pictures will be ruined."
"Oh. How would I develop them?"
"It takes a lot of chemicals and stuff." He picked up the camera and pushed up his glasses. "You've got to time it right. And you need a darkroom. I've just started getting into all of it, but...I could help you develop them. Might be cool to see what's on there, and I bet I could figure it out how to do it without completely ruining them."
"Would you really?"
"'Course. It'd be fun." He set the camera down and patted the top of Lela's head. "Where'd you get it anyway?"
"I...found it."
"Nice. Thrift shop?"
"No, my uh, my grandparents' attic."
"Oh, nice. I've only found busted cameras in the thrift shops around here." He stood and pushed his chair underneath the table. "Well, I've got to go help my mom. And, also, will, uh, you be hungry tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Pretty sure."
"Wouldyouwannagetbreakfastmaybe?"
"Come again?"
Javier cleared his throat. "Would you want to get breakfast tomorrow morning?"
Zacari shifted. "Yeah, sure," she said as casually as she could.
"Alrighty. Nine a.m. okay? At the Crystal Ballroom?"
"That works."
"Alrighty! See you then," he grinned.
Zacari warmly watched Javier trip over a chair.
Zacari changed into her swimsuit, a lilac one-piece with spaghetti straps, and made her way to the pool. Ignoring the "No Diving" sign, she plunged headfirst into the pool. The chlorine stung her eyeballs, but she opened them anyway to admire how the sunlight scattered into ripples and glimmers. The opposite of the hotel, which was all shadows and dark corners.
She wondered when she'd see Baker next. Night felt most appropriate for ghostly conversations, but then again, she'd first encountered Baker in the heat of midday. When she emerged from the water, Lela eyed her disdainfully from a tanning chair.
"You could at least try it," she said. She splashed a few drops of water in the chihuahua's direction. Lela gave Zacari whale eyes and turned her back on her.
"I wike your puppy!"
Zacari turned and recognized the little who'd had the ghost detector. Her mother was struggling to squeeze the child's chubby little arms into Paw Patrol floaties while simultaneously slathering her face with sunscreen. She smiled that strange smile adults sometimes do to apologize for their children, even when there's nothing to apologize for.
Zacari smiled back at them. Her mother worked at Sunnyside Daycare close to their house. Some evenings when her boss had her stay late, Zacari would walk to the daycare after school and keep her mother company. Zacari's mother cared for the three- and four-year-olds, a rowdy bunch who still needed naps but wholly opposed them. She loved them. Despite her YouTube and Instagram popularity, at school Zacari kept to herself, going quietly through the motions. But at the daycare the children were happy to see her, and she was happy to see them, even if they always chose Daniel Tiger over a good musical.
"You can pet her. She doesn't bite," she said, the second part mostly to her mother.
"Mama! Can I?"
The girl's mother grabbed her face and smeared more sunscreen on the bridge of her nose. "Okay, love. Thanks," she said to Zacari.
She patted Lela a little too hard on the top her head. Lela raised her upper lip, revealing an overbite of tiny teeth. Zacari pointed at her and shook her head and Lela resigned as the little girl stoked her roughly.
Zacari's phone went off from the tanning chair, but she dove back underwater, and the sound disappeared. It was undoubtedly her father. Let it ring. He didn't know she'd gone swimming, but so what? He was probably just going to go out again and do whatever he did. It's good for him to worry occasionally, she justified. If he really wanted to find her, he wouldn't have to look far.
She pushed herself out of the pool and sat in the tanning chair next to Lela's and relished the sun and the wispy clouds sailing through the sharply blue sky. Her phone rang again, and she silenced it for good.
As she closed her eyes a drowsiness swept over. Exhaustion was catching up with her two paces at a time and she let the tide of sleep pull her under.
Trees, bare and black like dark pillars surrounded her. Snow was a scorn beneath her bare feet and the cold air tore at her skin. A sliver of a moon dangled above, not nearly supple enough to cast a path home for her. She moved slowly, tree to tree, with no remote sense of where she ought to be heading. But the trees thinned and the snow thickened, and The Crescent rose into sight, windows flickering like lost fireflies.
Crunch.
Zacari froze. Ahead was a lumpy, long figure. It glowed bright despite or because of the darkness, and with each crunch it shoveled dirt and snow into a deep hole.
A grave? she wondered. But no. Hardly, she decided.
She took refuge behind a tree and realized the hands clutched around the handle of the shovel were utterly fleshless. As was the nature of the rest of the figure. Instead it was composed of something tumorous and wet, the sickly-sweet stench of death about it. It was a mash of bulbous clumps sticky together, some pus-colored and oozing, some paint pink filmed with clotted blood. And even some black with rot, and from those dark masses, maggots fell in the figure's wake like soft, wriggling petals. Each shovel of dirt sailed prettily into the hardly-grave and landed with a hush of secrets. These creatures, Zacari felt, were malignant.
And yet, she felt she knew the creature digging, and that she might speak with it. She stepped out from behind the tree with a question forming on her lips, but it died in her throat the instant the creature's place where the head might be snapped in her direction and sent a fresh spray of maggots into the snow. Where eyes should have been were two dark, hateful holes, so steep with malice she feared she might tumble in and no one would ever find her body. She gasped and ducked back behind the tree. She held her breath and waited for the thing to start after her. The crunch of the shovel resumed, and she let her breath go.
She watched cautiously this time, but it was only a few scoops more before the creature placed the shovel inside a hollowed, naked oak. The oak closed itself up, bare and black as the rest of the trees, as if there'd never been an opening. The tumorous thing disappeared in the direction of the hospital, its shadows following close behind. Zacari gingerly stepped out from the woods and approached the hardly-grave.
There was no premeditation when she dropped to her knees and dug her hands into the dirt and snow, slowly undoing the work of the creature. It was curiosity. It was necessity.
Snow fell in heavier sheets, lacing delicate designs on her hair and shoulders. Her fingers blackened and blistered with frostbite. It hardly mattered so long as she uncovered what slept at the bottom of the hardly-grave. And she was close, very close. Frostbite up to her knuckles now, snow cobwebbed to the roots of her hair, but just a few more handfuls –
There.
Her decaying fingers caught hold of fabric, only it'd become so stiff with cold it felt more like cardboard. She twisted it around her hands and yanked upward. And again. And again. And–
A slick, moldering hand snatched her wrist. Zacari screamed as the bones of her wrist crushed into themselves and sent searing pain up her arm and down her fingers. She was wrenched from the hardly-grave by strength rot alone shouldn't possess, and yet in seconds she was twisted around and face to face with the tumorous thing. The lack of structure in its face didn't stop the hate from surviving. In fact, it thrived, flowering from the two eye sockets, deep and hateful and hungry. She tried to turn away, but the sockets swallowed her whole, and she was falling into her own hardly-grave, unforgiving earth rising to meet her -
Zacari jerked awake, her chest heaving. The sky was laden with sagging rain clouds, and the pool was empty of people. Lela barked incessantly at her. Her two bulging eyes locked on Zacari as she pawed at her thighs, leaving tiny, forked imprints. Zacari shot up just to lower back down, acutely aware of the sunburn she'd acquired. Her skin was stiff and burnt and already her shoulders bubbled with blisters. She tried to wet her cracked lips, but her tongue was as withered as a raisin. A fat raindrop smacked her forehead and ran down the bridge of her nose, two more landed on her stomach. She gently pulled herself up off the tanning chair and slipped her phone into her backpack, every moment wrinkling her skin like fresh wrapping paper.
"Christ. Come on, Lela."
She wrapped herself in a towel and flung her backpack over her shoulder as thunder clapped overhead. They rushed inside as the clouds yielded a torrential downpour.
Water ran off her in puddles as she padded into the foyer. Ed the Bellman wouldn't be thrilled about that, so she hastily made for the stairs. A voice stopped her short.
"Zacari!"
It was her father. He threw up his hands in a what-the-hell? motion and stomped her way. Allison strode beside him and let out a sigh of relief at the sight of Zacari. Zacari frowned. She liked Allison, but she certainly had no authority over her and Zacari wouldn't hesitate to clarify it.
"Where have you been?" Her father's brow was knit and there were crevices on the sides of his mouth Zacari had never noticed.
"What? I was swimming. I was just letting you sleep."
"Zacari, it's six o'clock. Don't stand there and tell me you went swimming for six hours."
"It's six?" she said incredulously. But she'd only swam for an hour or so. Sure, she'd fallen asleep for a bit, but not for five hours.
Had she?
Fragments of her dream drizzled into her memory like ink in water, not so opaque she could make out the original color, but the essence she remembered. Trees and snow, the creature, the hardly grave - she swallowed and looked down at her hands. There was dirt embedded deep beneath her nails that hadn't been there before.
And neither had the ugly bruise that wrapped around her left wrist.
"Yeah, six," her father snapped. "Now go upstairs. And you don't run off like that, you hear? You ain't grown."
Anger flared inside Zacari like an old, infected wound, and she let her wrist fall to her side.
"Oh, me run off?"
There was a different sort of silence in the foyer. Her father faltered, "Zacari –"
"Well, there's a taste of your own medicine. I didn't even want to come here anyway. I just did it for Mom, and so did you. You've probably been off partying this whole time anyway. So, don't act like you care."
Allison gasped. Her father went to speak but didn't. She'd never seen him at a loss for words. He wore an expression she couldn't identify, and she didn't care to. She pushed past him and raced up the stairs and all the way to Room 218. The paint was peeled away, and there was now a large patch of lavender. She flung herself on the bed and clutched Lela and cried herself dehydrated.
She should get up, drink water, slather herself in aloe vera, but it was all secondary at the moment. She just wanted to go home. Swollen eyes and parched throat, she curled up tightly beneath the blankets and hated her father because it was easy to do and hard to do. How was it possibly to hate someone just as much as you loved them?
There was a creak to the door. She feigned sleep.
"Cari?" her father said.
Zacari blinked beneath the covers and stayed quiet.
"Listen, Cari. You don't have to like me, but I'm your dad. And I do care about you."
Yeah, right, she thought, but the words bled beneath her skin.
Her father sighed, as if he'd been holding in his breath over a long bridge. He showered and went to bed, but it was a long time before Zacari heard his snores. She wanted to believe the kind things he said, but whenever she did it backfired without fail. She only needed to look as far as his actions to determine the validity of his words, and they rarely aligned.
So she did what she could. She hated her father and went on.
She pulled the camera from her backpack. She was tempted to look through it and find Baker smoking on the lounge, but she had a feeling he wouldn't be here with her father near. An expedition thought the hotel hallways was due.
Zacari tip-toed to the bathroom and applied aloe vera over her burns, stripped off her skin-stuck one piece and slipped into soft pajamas. She pulled on her backpack and gave Lela a kiss on the head. Lela yawned and stretched in her sleep, but she didn't wake.
"Be right back," Zacari whispered, and pulled the covers up over the chihuahua's body.
She unlocked the door slowly and glanced back at her father. She'd be skating on thin ice if he found out she snuck away. Maybe she ought not worry him. Maybe she should just go to sleep.
She closed the door quietly behind her.