Eventually, her slow heavy breathing matched my own and we fell to sleep.

My eyes opened at light coming in through the window by the bed; as I pushed the blanket off and slid my feet to the floor, I saw Beth was still sleeping. The drive had really done her in. I went to the bathroom and shut the door so as to not disturb her then urged my bladder to empty itself while I fought through a series of yawns.

After fidgeting with the shower to get the right temperature, I received approximately two minutes of hot water before I bit my tongue through the shock of a sudden icy cool shower. Giving up after a quick wash, I swiped my body with a towel and stepped out of the bathroom wearing nothing. Beth’s drooling face slobbered down the side of her pillow. That. That right there is the woman I love.

A draft met my exposed skin, and my eyes went to the door leading to the hall. It stood open no more than a crack, but my stomach twisted at the thought of someone peering in. I rushed to the door and pushed into it, locking it. Beth telling me about the way ‘I’ tried ‘getting fresh’ with her the previous night flooded my mind and my extremities went cold as a dizzy spell forced me to the bed. Were the old couple playing a sick joke on us? If so, it wasn’t funny. Could I have somehow forgotten to lock the door the previous night? Had I even shut the door? I was being forgetful, surely. The drive must’ve sapped me so badly— plus I’d drank a bit of liquor— I’d totally forgotten to shut the door last night. I knew that was a lie. I knew I’d locked that damned door. My skin crawled at the thought of someone looking in on us while we’d slept. Had they tried ‘getting fresh’ after we’d gone to bed? Had someone touched us in our sleep without us knowing? I felt sick, but more than that I felt scared; even if I tried to pretend that I wasn’t.

My gaze drifted to the plank hanging over the doorway. Happy Are Those That Share Their Toys. The most creative and absurd part of my brain insisted this meant something. What? I couldn’t be certain.

I shook Beth awake and she groaned, pushing me away to bury her head beneath the blanket. “Honey, wake up. It’s a blue sun shiny day!” I tried that last sentence in a mock falsetto.

“I’ll kill you,” she said, whipping the blanket down.

“You know, if you tried caffeine once in a while, it’d help.”

“If you tried not waking me up, it would help you in living longer.”

“Yeah-yeah. Did I lock the door last night?”

Her eyes shot wide open, and she propped herself against the headboard. “I’m sure you did, didn’t you? What’s the matter?”

“The door was open this morning. I’m probably being silly, but it gave me the creeps.”

“Yeah, that’s pretty creepy.”

“I’m thinking we should get a hotel or something.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Maybe.”

She rubbed sand from the corners of her eyes. “We’re probably just being silly, right?”

“Sure,” I agreed without believing it. “But what if we’re not?”

“It was a long drive. That’s probably the reason for it. It’s just got us on edge.” She pushed herself off the bed and stood by the window, removing a band from her wrist to wrangle her hair into a sloppy bun. “Besides, I’m hungry. I’m sure it’s just our mind playing tricks on us.”

“Okay.” An unwilling sigh escaped me. “But if we keep getting the creeps, we’re leaving ASAP, right?”

“Right.”

I got dressed as she showered— her initial squeal at the cold water forced a laugh out of me— and waited for her to blow dry her hair before I would leave the room. I would never have admitted it aloud, but I did not want to leave her alone again— I also did not want to go downstairs by myself.

From somewhere below, I could hear the faint sound of a woman’s voice— a voice that I was sure belonged to Patsy Cline— John had undoubtedly placed his record player somewhere in the common room.

Once Beth was dressed, I cracked open the door to the hallway and nudged it open centimeter by centimeter. My stomach dropped into my shoes. It took me a moment to realize I was staring into the still face of a circus clown. My breath caught in my throat, and I flung the door open in a burst of energy, ready to confront the thing. It took a full second of staring at it before I realized it was the clown doll that we’d passed in the hall the night prior. Its dead eyes stared blankly up at me from its seated position in that small chair. I walked to it and flipped the thing backwards. Just then, a ludicrous thought entered my mind. Old couple. Secluded house. Lots of dolls. What if the dolls were alive? I laughed at myself for being so ridiculous. “Whoever thought clowns were cute? Fucking weird.” I was just angry it’d startled me.

The smell of coffee met me, and I momentarily let me guard down; it smelled good! Me and Beth held each other’s hand, moving around the corner to the second-floor landing; we took the stairs slowly, on our tiptoes so as to make as little noise as possible. By the time we met the common area, the voice of Patsy Cline belted out the lines to “Sweet Dreams”. Two glass bowls sat on the table in the nook; we timidly approached them like we expected them to leap from the table. They were yogurt with a healthy sprinkling of granola and blueberries. Our hands relaxed in one another’s.

The door marked PRIVATE slammed open, and we were greeted with the grinning enlarged eyes of Retta. “Good morning!” she said. “How’d you sleep?” She wiped her hands down the front of a white apron.

Before I had a moment to tell her, Beth spoke up, “It was wonderful.” She shot me a look.

“Oh! I’m happy to hear that. Coffee.” She pointed at me and then Beth. “And would you like some OJ?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Alright, I’ll be right back with your drinks. I’m still working on the waffles, but I put out some yogurt for you two.” She nodded at the bowls in the nook.

It was delicious and I finished the bowl off in less than five or six scoops. Beth picked at hers, chewing on each individual blueberry.

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The waffles looked divine, the coffee was good, but the thing that really bothered me was after Retta had returned with a syrup container and a third chair. The only thought I had was something along the lines of ‘please don’t sit down with us’. She did not. Instead, she delicately placed a ragdoll in the third chair and pushed the glasses up on her nose.

“I hope you two don’t mind if Maggie joins you for breakfast. She’s not a big eater or much on conversation, but she’s a really good listener.” Maggie merely slumped in her seat, staring me down with her glassy black eyes.

“Uh,” I started.

“That’s fine,” said Beth, touching my leg under the table with her foot.

Retta returned behind the PRIVATE door.

In a hushed whisper I craned over the table, “She’s fucking crazy.”

“Oh, c’mon,” said Beth, “She’s just an eccentric old lady.”

“This is fucking creepy, and I hate it. You said if things got too creepy, we would leave. I lifted the doll by one of its mitten-shaped hands. “Is this little shit creepy enough for you?”

“Alright. I admit. It’s a little off-putting— but if you pretend it isn’t there, it’s not so bad.” Beth offered a meager smile, but it felt empty.

“Really? For all we know, Retta’s the one that snuck into our room last night.” I couldn’t admit the weird thought I’d had about the dolls coming to life.

“Well, what do you want to do? Pack up our things and find a hotel? Don’t you think they’d feel like we were leaving because of them? You want to leave over what was probably a dream I had?”

“Maybe. I’d rather be alive than rude.”

“Relax, Greg. It’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a doll. It’s just a couple of weird old people.”

I dropped Maggie into her seat but couldn’t bring myself to eat the waffles with the doll watching me. Feeling defeated but hoping to pivot the conversation to leaving, if only for a little while I said, “I was thinking we could go up to Acadia today. I heard it’s supposed to be great this time of year.”

“That sounds fine to me.” She sliced into her waffle with a butter knife and slammed a bite into her mouth.

The thought of leaving the bed & breakfast made me feel better, if only a little.

Once we finished, we stepped out onto the front porch; it was a perfect summer day— windy and sunny.

As we approached the car, my stomach knotted and sweat broke out across my forehead; I felt physically ill by what I was looking at. The two front tires of the Fiesta sat under the weight of the vehicle, totally deflated. “What the fuck?” I panicked and charged over to the nearest tire, touching it with my fingers. I had to be sure it was real.

“Oh my god,” said Beth.

In my mind, I knew immediately it was them. One of them had come out and slashed our tires the previous night. That’s the only thing that made a lick of sense. This wasn’t a joke, this wasn’t our mind playing tricks on us, we had irrefutable evidence.

“I-I can’t believe this,” I stammered. My eyes locked with Beth’s as I stood and dusted off the knees of my jeans. The absolute horror of being stuck in the middle of nowhere creeped up my body and I imagined my expression matched that of Beth’s: shock, panic, grasping for rationality. “These psychos slashed our fucking tires.”

“N-no,” she hushed.

“What else?”

“The rotors?” asked Beth. I knew what she was doing; she was attempting any other option. Anything besides the obvious. I believe that for the first time in my life I understood the willful ignorance of characters in horror flicks.

“Hey!” We both whipped our head over to see John poking his head out of the front door. He offered a big grin and a questioning nod. “Everything alright?”

“Uh, yeah!” said Beth.

“Looks like you’ve got a flat,” he said. Like he didn’t know!

“Uh, yeah.”

John swaggered onto the stone path leading to the gravel lot, leaning over to get a better look at the tires. “Wow,” he said, “Imagine that! You’ve got two duds at once. I’ve never seen anything like that. Talk about bad luck,” He chortled. “Welp, there’s no helping it. Why don’t you two come back in and I’ll dial a mechanic?”

My skin tingled and my mouth was dry, but I managed the words, “H-how do we know you didn’t do this?”

He cocked his head. “Excuse me?”

“You two are big time-time weirdos. How do I know you didn’t sneak out here and pop our tires?”

John swiveled his head in bewilderment. “Why in the Jumping-Jesus would I do something like that?”

“I don’t know. Why would you?” My eyes darted to Beth for support, but she remained stone frozen.

“Are you alright?” he asked, “Listen, I told you, I’ll call a mechanic and he’ll come out and pick the car up, alright? Hell, if it makes you more comfortable, you can just as well wait out here for him. No skin off my nose. We open our home, and you go on acting foolish. Bah!” He threw up his hands and stomped to the front porch.

I nearly believed him. Nearly.

Me and Beth waited in the yard, with me sitting against the hood and her admiring the heart shaped garden. Flies buzzed around our heads as the sun made its full crest the trees. It became miserably hot. Forty minutes passed with me constantly checking my phone’s time and Beth sporadically commenting that I’d probably overreacted and that stranger things had happened. The look on her face paired with the way that John had acted forced even me to second-guess myself. Could it have been that this was all a misunderstanding? Could I have blown all of this way out of proportion?

Someone had possibly snuck into our room, opened the door to watch us last night, and now our tires were as flat as pancakes. No, these geriatric gremlins were up to something; we were leaving and if that meant we’d leave behind the bags we’d packed, then so be it.

I tried my data, getting only a single bar. “I think I’m going to try and call a tow truck myself. I don’t think John’s actually called them”

Beth, red faced, nodded along.

I paced back and forth with my phone over my head, trying to Google the number to any nearby garage that might have a tow truck.

A high-pitched womanly shriek jolted my whole body so that I dropped my phone— the scream echoed from the house and a row of loons escaped the lake and took flight. I scrambled for my phone just as the scream came again, much more desperate, anguished. Pulling my phone up to my face, I saw it was cracked down its left side; Beth darted towards the house before I even had a moment to realize what happened.

“Wait,” I said.

“She might be hurt!” Beth pleaded.

She’d reached the porch and disappeared within before I had the time to even start moving. I was angry, sure, and I did not want to go back into the Happy Place B&B, but I was also confused, hot, and worried.

Beth and I should’ve been more levelheaded than that. Should’a would’a could’a.

I nearly tripped over the welcome mat and fell into the wall. Standing there in the common area was Retta with her face disappeared behind her hands. She was crying. “Oh my god, he’s dead!”

My eyes moved to the old man on the floor, John— he was face down while Beth knelt by him, shaking his shoulder. A tower of books had fallen over beside him, like he’d attempted to steady himself against them before he’d tumbled.

Retta continued with her strangled caws, “His heart! Oh god, his heart! You’ve killed him!”

Hot illness kissed me— had I gotten the old codger worked up enough for his heart to shut off?

Beth motioned me over. “Help!”

What I was supposed to do, I don’t know. But I went to her. “I-is he breathing?” It was the only thing that came to mind.

“I don’t know,” said Beth. “I can’t tell.”

This is when I noticed Retta’s sobs had stopped; I felt cold fear slide down my body as I twisted around to face her. The old woman pressed her back against the front door; she wasn’t crying— she’d never been. Her hand reached deftly to lock our only escape.

A clammy hand pinched my forearm and I jumped, letting out a yelp. I was certain I was about to die, but it was only Beth. She’d fallen onto her bottom.

John shook with laughter. Shallow at first. Then deep, sick, maniacal.