"The difference between a belief in a deck of tarot cards and the belief in Santa Claus is that only one of them can physically make it down a chimney. The other one is Santa Claus."
~ Zandra, to a skeptical client
"Alas, how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished."
~ Francis Church, New York Sun newspaper, 1897, to Virginia, age 8
It's a shoe.
"A shoe?" Zandra says to herself.
Yes. A shoe. It's too clean to not have been removed from its foot recently.
I'll be damned.
Zandra scoops up the shoe and slides out from the cabinet. It's an otherwise unremarkable athletic shoe except for one feature.
That tread looks familiar.
Were the room still in its previous, unkempt state, Zandra could compare the shoe's aggressive tread with the imprint left on the bed. That's no longer an option, but the logic of finding a shoe in a hidden passageway explains itself.
Zandra pieces through what's left of the square. The light of the lamp catches the glint of something metallic. Bringing the lamp closer for inspection, her suspicion is confirmed. A metal latch strongly suggests the square was locked in place from the other side of the drywall.
Whoever it was left in a hurry as they latched the square into place, because they're missing a shoe. Obviously.
But how did the shoe get here? Is this what I think it is?
What waits farther into the space is beyond the reach of the lamp, but a probe with Zandra's arm confirms there's plenty of room behind where she found the shoe. Someone nimble could wiggle through.
It's a tunnel.
Zandra backs out of the cabinet.
"I need an extension cord. A long one. Longest one you have," Zandra says after dialing the front desk with the phone by her bed.
"Is everything alright with your room?" the voice on the other end says.
Zandra conjures an excuse without a second of hesitation. She says, "I dripped water all over the floors in here after getting out of the shower, so I need to walk around with the hair dryer."
"One of our cleaning staff could help you with that. Would you like us to send someone up?"
"Just send the cord," Zandra says.
"Of course."
Zandra keeps the ruse up after receiving an orange extension cord outside her door. She runs the hair dryer from an outlet by the sink. Meanwhile, the lamp connects to the extension cord. The cord measures 50 feet long, according to the tag.
I hope that's long enough.
With the lawnmower knife sheathed and the mask still wrapped to her face, Zandra twists her whole self beneath the sink and into the space beyond, the desk lamp leading the way.
A few feet in, there's no doubt about it. She's crawling into a tunnel. Judging by the sheet metal lining all sides of her body, someone built the passage with purpose.
Someone who must've backed in feet-first on the way out of the bathroom. They knew their way around.
The height and width of the tunnel barely clear the width of her shoulders, making the turn to the right a few feet up ahead all the more claustrophobic. The squeeze forces Zandra to breathe in short, sharp breaths through the mask.
What if I get stuck in here?
Hell, what if I don't get stuck in here and make it through to wherever this leads?
She focuses on stretching her head as far as she can around the right turn. The light from the lamp bounces down a long stretch of sheet metal with another right turn at the end of it. She can't tell where the turn goes from there, but she can see that the tunnel doesn't incline or decline. That means one thing.
The other end of this tunnel is on the same floor as my room.
Zandra plays with that thought for a minute. Her room is on the third floor. Sunglasses is on the fifth floor. The yawning man is on the third floor, in room 327. However, room 327 is on the other end of the building. Wherever the tunnel terminates, it must be in the same hallway as Zandra's room. Unless, of course, it's longer than what Zandra can make out.
Per state law, every hotel room comes with a map of the floor plated to the inside of each door. The map shows how to escape in case of fire. It also lays out room numbers. Zandra decides to check it once she's out, and another thought grabs her attention.
Does this still make sense? Am I missing something?
This asshole lost their shoe after exiting the tunnel, right? They would've been walking around the bathroom with one shoe on. So why didn't I see a wet tread on the tile in the bathroom if they were hiding behind the shower curtain?
Maybe it's just a coincidence. Maybe the shoe-less foot got wet while the shoe didn't. Maybe it's nothing more than that.
There's a fucking tunnel underneath the bathroom sink. There's no reason not to overthink things at this point.
That will have to wait. Zandra finds herself in a more pressing situation, literally. She's stuck.
Despite her best efforts not to go too far into the right turn, her peek around the corner slid her shoulders into place against the angle. Her upper half can't twist or wiggle, preventing her from leveraging off the sheet metal to move the rest of her body.
What's more, she can feel something in the sheet metal, even as she's wrenched into her awkward position. It starts out slow, but it grows into a steady beat that vibrates the metal against her body.
Oh, shit.
Either someone is walking with heavy feet in a room nearby, or someone is wiggling their way through the tunnel from beyond the right turn at the end of the stretch.
Zandra kills the light from the desk lamp. Inside the tunnel, the sound of the click of her doing so ricochets off the sheet metal. The vibration stops. Zandra's eyes fix to the right turn a distance away. A shimmer of light dances across the metal.
Someone is crawling toward me with a flashlight.
The vibration starts again. She can hear someone breathing.
A tickle in her throat makes her cough. Her instinct to aim into her sleeve kicks in, but she's left hacking into the metal.
That doesn't deter whoever is on the other side of the stretch. The vibration continues, and now a star of light grows larger and brighter opposite Zandra.
Zandra's hand reaches for the lawnmower knife in the sheath, but she pauses.
What am I going to do with a knife in here? Whoever this is will blind me with that light anyway.
Something clicks, this time in her head. She leaves the knife sheathed and flicks on the desk lamp instead. She washes the stretch of tunnel in light.
The vibration grows stronger as the light in the tunnel grows even brighter. Zandra tucks her closed eyes against the sheet metal, but she still sees spots in the dark of her eyelids, knowing whoever is at the other end must be experiencing the same as they round the turn.
She's right. The dueling lights remain bright, but the vibration stops. Zandra hears other breathing mixed in with her own. She sneaks a peek down the stretch but quickly squeezes her eyes shut again.
In addition to the light, the heat from the lamp's bulb in her outstretched hand warms the sheet metal. The tiny hairs on her arm start to curl. She can't hold on much longer.
Do I say something? Do I wait for this person to say something first?
No voice calls out to her. The vibration starts up again, and the light opposite her in the tunnel starts to dim. A moment later, the vibration is gone.
Zandra spends several minutes listening to make sure she's truly alone. That may well be true, but she's still stuck. Even worse, a cramp starts to sneak its way up her calf. Not that she spends much time in the pool, but it feels like a swimmer's cramp.
Can't be having that, not in here.
Zandra stretches and kicks her legs to work out the cramp. It comes anyway. She stretches and kicks harder, trying to stave off the pain. The cramp is still there, but all the movement shakes her loose. Little by little, she works her shoulders free, followed by the rest of herself. The cramp provides the motivation she needs to back out of the tunnel, dragging the desk lamp behind her.
The pale light of the bathroom signals her relief, and Zandra hobbles to her feet to bend and stretch against the counter. A cloud of dust and filth from the tunnel follows her out. She shakes her purple gown out over the bathtub.
Zandra barely has time to collect herself before there's a knock at the door.