1

There was a time in my life when I found myself somewhere that I wasn’t supposed to be. I don’t mean that I was a squatter, but rather I accidentally drifted somewhere else, and I violated some unknown law of nature. I was a cosmic squatter.

I’m sure that this case almost killed me.  

            I was returning home to California through the Mojave Desert. Thankfully, I was passing through at night and so was spared the white-hot view of that bleak and barren expanse of grit. Don’t get me wrong, it has its charm and the locals possess a kind of filthy endurance that I find charming, but it’s still a downward, dismal crawl through decreasingly interesting landscapes if one is coming from the East, which I was.

            If you’ve crossed the Desert at night then you can relate to the sagging, itching eyes and the taste of dirty coffee which has lost its earthy appeal. Maybe you remember the smell, like I do, of sweaty upholstery and cigarette smoke or the ever present (and slightly intrusive) smell of sage brush. Or you’ve felt the fuzz start to creep into the edge of your vision, and wool start filling your head while the hypnotic expanse of flat darkness inches by on either side.

            I enjoy being in that state of mind. I mean, I don’t but it fits into the image of myself as a lone rider… The Stranger. The nuclear glow of the dashboard is my lantern in the sea, the old Mercury my waterlogged sloop, boards creaking. I like to be alone, and it’s hard to be more alone than driving through the Mojave at near-midnight, not a not a pair of headlights to keep me company while I cross a bleached line of asphalt.

            It had been hundreds of miles and tens of hours at this point, and I had to be honest with myself and admit that I wasn’t going to complete the crossing.  

            I tried to remember that last time I had seen a rest stop or a motel. There aren’t a lot of rest stops in that part of the country, but there are some. And there are truckers. Theoretically there are truckers on the highway, so why hadn’t I seen one in hours? Or had it been hours? I was about as sharp as pea soup by this point.

            If I’d been in a more lucid state of mind, it might have occurred to me that I couldn’t remember the last time I had seen anything on this highway. Worse, I can’t to this day remember what highway I was on.  

            A sign for something called The Pelican Inn drifted by on the right. I pulled off the highway into a poorly lit parking lot. A sign depicting a cartoon bird promised good rates, cable, and a vacancy.  

            The Pelican was so typical of the ancient roadside motels in that area. It was built into that standard L-shape with a shallow overhang shading wooden doors the color of dusty sage. The windows were all dark, and there were no cars in the lot except for mine. Tumbleweeds strained through cracks in the pavement underneath an old streetlight. A dingy gray square of fluorescent light streamed into the parking lot from the main office, the door propped slightly ajar as an invitation to travelers. I smelled the tangy odor of chemicals burning in the distance, no doubt because of the efforts of the local meth suppliers. Overall, it gave me the impression of a toad squatting by the side of the road.

Nothing about the place was anything but completely mundane, and yet I found myself intentionally avoiding the sign with the cartoon pelican. There was nothing abjectly grotesque about the sign; It depicted a cartoon pelican eating cartoon fish, the rendition was clumsy so that the bird’s proportions were all slightly off in a way that made the bird look ungainly. The mouth yawned open to swallow cartoon fish, whose mindless smiles I found completely inappropriate for their situation.

            I ignored the chill which crawled under my skin and stepped into the office. A small, electronic buzzer announced my arrival.

            The office had kept the same theme of faded, dusty green. It reminded me of the color of desert sage. The floor was cheap, peeling linoleum the color of wet brick. A moth was banging rhythmically against the dim bulb above the check-in desk, which was occupied by a bored man who sat with his back to me. There was nothing altogether unwholesome about the office, but I still felt my skin tingle as soon as I passed through the threshold. True, the scab-like mold in the corner was putrid in a way I had never seen before, but it didn’t look particularly threatening. I decided it was the clerk, and his perfect stillness.  

            A television sat dormant on the countertop and the clerk stared numbly into it, unmoving. He wore a brown leather coat the same color as the rotten mold growing in the corners and said nothing. I could make out a greasy mane of yellow hair shooting out behind his stooped shoulders but could only see the faintest outline of his cheek. I hadn’t crossed the office, preferring to keep my back pressed against the door.

            I knew that he wasn’t asleep, but I cleared my throat anyway. He didn’t stir, but instead let out a low, wet sigh. The sound had a disturbingly intimate quality to it.

            “Evening… morning.” I started. “I’d just like a room please.”

            No response. I briefly tried to see his reflection on the curved surface of the dead television screen, but stopped myself before I could take in any details of his face. I decided that I didn’t want to.

            “…How much?”

            “Eighty-two dollars.”

            I’m still not sure if the voice came from the hunched figure sitting at the counter or out of some dark corner. Furthermore, the voice had the grainy and hushed quality of a very old audio recording. It occurred to me at this point that this man was enormous. He sat squat and low in a struggling office chair, and his posture which had seemed at first like a sleepy slouch now seemed like an impossibly huge man trying to make himself appear as small as possible.

            I placed the money on the counter, and the man extended his arm behind him without moving. The spindly arm was at odds with his broad back and shoulders, and the hand which slapped the key card on the table looked surprisingly delicate, with soft pink skin and long fingers.

            I thanked him curtly, picked up the card, and tried not to run out of the office. My host didn’t move again.

            My skin stopped itching somewhat when I was back in the open. I had a soft bed and a private room, that was enough. The pelican watched me approach room number 8, and I pushed my keycard into a bizarre electric slotted lock which I had never seen.

            The room wasn’t altogether unpleasant at first glance. A reading nook in the corner was illuminated by a lamp with a pink shade. The floor was ancient, polished hardwood which creaked unpleasantly under every upon which sat a queen bed.  Bright white light poured through a narrow door to a bathroom at the far end. I could hear the sink dripping softly.

            I took a quick shower to scrub the collective grime of 20 hours on the road off me and then collapsed into the bed, which could have been upholstered with barbed wire for all that I cared at that point.

2

The clock read 1:00 AM.

The sick yellow light streamed in through a crack in my heavy curtains. I grunted out of bed, feeling my joints pop pleasantly and I stretched and made my way to the bathroom to piss. The itching needles in my eyes had receded somewhat, and my brain felt slightly sharper after an hour of sleep. That’s probably why I started noticing the room’s more aberrant details at that point.

I washed my hands in the sink and I realized that the countertop had been set so high that it was almost up to my chest. I studied the sink. The countertop was far too narrow, and the sink was awkwardly shaped and unnaturally deep. It hadn’t been obvious in my exhaustion, but after a moment’s rest it was all too evident. In fact, everything in the bathroom was slightly off. The toilet bowl was broader and flatter than normal; It was too close to the ground, and it resembled a squat birdbath. There was a vent over the shower, but it was far too wide, and the slots were so far apart that it looked like a barred window. Weirder still, a dim light pulsed from inside the ducting so that I could see the dim reflection of steel walls within. Nothing was distressingly dirty, except for a small cluster of that same scab-colored mold which had been growing in the main office… this time it peeked out from the drain in the tub. It was the geometry of this place which was off. Every angle was just slightly skewed in a way which made the bristle and itch the longer I occupied it.

The only explanation that I could think of was that this bathroom had been designed for people who were shaped differently.

I fled the bedroom. Had the uncomfortable design of this place been enough to rouse me from a dead sleep? Was it possible for a place to be so subtly disturbing that it could have jarred me awake, or had something else woken me up?

The room, which had seemed fairly benign an hour ago now reminded me of carnivorous plants which had evolved to resemble their prey’s natural habitat or food source. The bed was wider than it was long with spindly, bent legs. The reading chair in the corner was hunched over like a vulture ready to tear flesh from the reader foolhardy enough to sit in it.

Worse, I could see the barest hints of that brown muck which I could now see was unlike any mold that I had ever seen. It slithered and churned like the elixir in a Witch’s cauldron.

Cortisol flooded my system and caused my skin to itch, but no predator lunged from the darkness. I peeked through a narrow gap in the curtain and saw my car still alone in the parking lot. The cartoon pelican stood sullenly in the darkness; its silhouette barely visible. A lone Joshua tree sulked underneath. It had the same bent and tortured look that all Joshua Trees had, as if it were convulsing in silent agony.

The pelican’s proportions which were clumsily drawn before, now took on a fearful intent. The wings were curled menacingly around a school of screaming fish, and the purple gullet gaped wide to swallow them.

But nothing moved. Just warm, heavy air and the dim wash from the office. I had expected there to be a foul, but there was none. There was only the persistent feeling of being unclean as one does crammed into a sweaty railcar in summer.

was still exhausted, and this might all just be the fever dream of someone too long alone and sleep deprived. The bed was less inviting, but I crawled in anyway and tried to ignore the electric orange and green buzzing from outside

3

            The clock read 2:03.

            I was jolted awake again, so frustrated that I felt a little bit like crying. That frustration was soon replaced by a heavy fear which pressed down on me like a wet blanket. I froze in bed like a deer who senses a predator. A mad preservation instinct insisted to me that I keep my eyes closed, but I let them open just slightly to try and get a surreptitious glimpse of my room.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

            There was a sudden shift in the lighting. The light from the parking lot still lanced through the gap in my thick curtains, but it hadn’t moments before. Something had been blocking the light, and now it wasn’t. Something in front of my window had just moved.

            Then came a sound, so soft that I could have mistaken it for the blood rushing through my head. A soft, rhythmic sigh of air. Someone breathing.

            I did not shift or stretch, and yet the moment that I consciously became aware of the breathing it changed. A soft rush of air became more ragged and urgent. I’ve read that dogs can smell whether you’re awake or not.

            I heard the tortured groan of straining wood. The door. My eyes opened completely to fully take in my room. I was alone. Almost. Kind of.

            The gap in the curtain filled me with intense vulnerability. It was a critical breach in the integrity of my lonely little sanctuary. I slithered out of bed onto the floor, ignoring the tacky feeling of unwashed boards and pressed myself up against the wall directly underneath the window so that my visitor could not peer in and see me. I hunched there like a fish hiding in reeds.

            I was immersed in darkness again as whoever was outside darted back to the window to peer inside. Some part of me understood that moving announcing that I was awake, but I couldn’t stomach the thought of this thing (and I became more and more certain that it was a thing) looking at me for a moment longer.

            The breathing became a hot, wet rattle of either excitement or anger. The visitor gasped and wheezed for several long moments, and I could hear a face being pressed to the glass, and a fleshy eye socket being pressed to the window, the bloodshot iris rolling frantically within to get another glimpse of me. I prayed that I was pressed far enough into the corner so that I wouldn’t be detected. It was an absolute certainty that if I were to make eye contact with whatever was out there that the game would end, and it would come crashing through the window.

            I felt pressure in my lungs. I had been holding my breath for several minutes.

            The light returned to the room and before I could breathe a sigh of relief, I heard wood bowing inward again as something massive pressed against the door with the inexorable slowness of a hydraulic press. The hinges strained and creaked and were about to collapse under the mass that was leaning up against it.

            The feverish breath continued wet and excited while this thing licked its chops. The pressure increased for a moment longer, then stopped as a shadow darted past my window, pattering footsteps faded, and a door slammed heavily. I was surprised by how small the silhouette was; No more than four feet tall with shaggy, matted hair… I had expected something the size of a bear but that shadow suggested a contorted, elfin creature with knobby, choking hands.

            I waited for several minutes before reaching up to the heavy curtain and tugging it closed to eliminate the offending gap. My security restored, I felt safe to stand again. I peered through the peephole and saw only my car in the parking lot, and the sign.

            The sign had continued its monstrous evolution. I couldn’t be sure from the dim light, and I was no ornithologist, but I’m certain that pelicans don’t typically have teeth. The lone Joshua Tree was nowhere to be found, and I wondered if it had been there in the first place.

            I shuffled into the bathroom to wash my face and hands. The sink was still at that awful angle, and the water had the brackish quality of cold sweat so that rinsing my face only made me feel filthier. I ignored the vent, which now swelled with purple-brown filth around the seams. The wide bars yawned open and breathed whatever sick air was coming from the internals of The Pelican.

             I imagine some of you are wondering why I didn’t leave right then. Why didn’t I make a dash for my car and screech  on down the road? I’ll try to explain the impulses which kept me there.

            First, even considering the perverseness of that room, it was still my room. It was serving as my port in a storm, and on some level, I felt that nothing could enter through the threshold without my allowing it. Second, that same part of me which considered my room to be safe was also entirely certain that the thing at the window was waiting in ambush and would scurry from the shadows the moment the door opened. Some part of me assumed that there were rules at play here, and that I would need to wait until sunrise. I knew precisely none of those things to be true, but that’s why I stayed.

            So, I turned on the TV to distract myself and was surprised to find that it worked. Some sitcom I had never seen was on, not that it mattered. I just needed some electric noise to distract myself enough that I could fall back to sleep.

4

The clock read 3:17.

            The hazy green light from the digital clock had become a silent tormenter. Time was crawling, and the safe wash of the dawn was still hours away. There was a smell now, and I felt something warm and damp in bed with me. I jerked the mustard yellow cover aside to reveal my foot, coated in a generous amount of scab-like mold. I convulsed in disgust and tore into the bathroom, turning the showerhead on to as hot as I could to submerge my foot under the scalding deluge.

The substance was tacky and sticky and sprouted little hairs the color of infected pus. When I looked closely at these, I was horrified to see them wriggling slightly like horsehair worms. I retched and gagged as I tore the towel off the rack and scrubbed furiously at the offensive mass.

            The substance coming off my foot was agonizing, and the flesh underneath was pockmarked and red like a revolting nest of some kind. The water flushing this grotesque sore was both torture and bliss as the horrendous substance came off me and sloughed towards the drain, followed by a healthy flow of scarlet blood from the deep tunnels in my flesh.

            I placed my foot back on the white tile of the bathroom floor, leaving bloody prints from my abused heel and I vomited at the sight of the brown mass while it protested down the drain. The side which had been attached to me was covered in puckering which gasped and dilated in protest.

            I vomited. It felt good. I imagined my body violently rejecting the horrid atmosphere of this place and throwing it down the toilet in a spray of yellow acid. The pain was raw and pure, unlike the filthy itching of that horrendous polyp in the drain.

            I spat one last yellow tendril of puke and I forced my heart rate to slow. After a few shaking breaths, I was able to focus. I could hear from the wheezing coming from the bedroom that my mysterious visitor was back, no doubt pressing his monstrous, gelatinous weight against my door.

            I turned to leave the sterile light of the bathroom when the television in the bedroom turned off with an electric thunk! The desert night pushed its way through my door and into my bedroom to stop just at the bathroom door and flatten itself against it like water in an aquarium. The dim specters of my bed and chair crouched like panthers in the darkness.

            This happened too fast to fully process, and I might have even simply walked back into the bedroom had the shower vent not caught my eye. The metal frame was twisted and scarred with fresh white lines and yellowed chunks of grout were scattered in the basin. There was no doubt that the grate had been forced violently inward, and then an attempt had been made to force the vent back to its original configuration.

            My gaze returned to the black wall of darkness and a wet stone of terror sank into my gut. Sounds which had been innocuous moments ago took on a horrifying new aspect. Was that ticking the sound of pipes, or of someone clicking their fingernails on the table in anticipation? Did I hear the heating system or a quiet moan filled with a longing? Was the churning in the other room imagined, or was I really hearing something swell its way towards me?

            I was in Hell and the sunrise would never come. My safe harbor had been violated. This place wasn’t meant for me (or worse… it was) and I couldn’t leave.

            From the darkness there came a snuffling, like the sound of a badger nosing in the dirt. I imagined the squat, shaggy silhouette from earlier pressing its face into the sheets and luxuriating in the smell to savor its next meal like a sommelier swirling wine in his glass.

            I saw nothing in the next room, the television had been the only source of light. A part of me almost regretted closing the curtain earlier. Almost. Worse, I didn’t hear the sound anymore. The silence in the bedroom was the silence of hushed crickets in the forest; it was the silence of a hunter’s breath.

            I slowly moved my hand towards the bathroom door.

            I know that my actions didn’t make sense, but I couldn’t stop myself from assigning rules to my situation. I was doing that to maintain a sense of contro. In my mind, I had decided that there was something in my bedroom and it did not like the light (much like the child at night will know with certainty that if they open their eyes, the monster’s looming face will be there and get them). I knew that if the door squeaked even a little bit that the tension would be broken and I would die, light be damned.

            The bathroom door closed smoothly and without protest. I pressed the button latch closed with a metallic thud.

            Nothing from the other side. My security had now been relegated to a white, fluorescent box that glared at me from all sides. I had successfully trapped myself with the canniness of a B-Movie slasher victim. I had nowhere to go.

            I fell asleep. It felt like drowning, but I didn’t care.

5

            I don’t know what time the clock read, and I didn’t open my eyes. The inside of my eyelids was hot red from the bathroom light burning against them.

            I never fully roused but opened my eyes slightly to see gray, knobbed fingers straining underneath the door towards my face. I closed my eyes.

            Whatever was going to happen was going to happen.

6

            Sunlight streamed through the open bathroom door, and I was not in the Pelican. I was not in last night’s Pelican, anyway.

            The tile was pleasantly cool on my face, even though my body screamed in protest at having been forced to endure sleeping on a hard floor.

            I sat up and my joints popped like kettle corn. I wrenched my head from side to side, trying to get all of the stiffness out of my body and stood up.

            The bathroom counter was of an appropriate height. The toilet and drain ( and the shower vent) were all a standard shape. A painting of a New England beach hung over the toilet. It was so incredibly mundane that I found myself feeling more secure by the moment.

            The bedroom was padded with typical wall-to-wall carpeting. It was so banal that it might have been comforting had it not been the exact same color as that horrific, predatory substance from the night before. Echoes of the night sent ice through my veins, and I shuddered while I collected my pack from a very normal queen-sized bed upholstered in a mossy green comforter. The sheets had been torn and twisted as if I had spent the night thrashing in my sleep.

            I wordlessly left the normal key card on the reading table and stepped into a parking lot filled with perhaps six cars including my own decrepit Mercury. I sat down in my car, taking no time to enjoy the overstuffed driver’s seat, and ignited the engine. My tires almost, but didn’t, squeal on the way out of the parking lot as I drove past a sign depicting a very cartoonish pelican swallowing a school of smiling fish.

            A wet eye peered at me from the Pelican’s cartoon head, pink-rimmed and feverish as I flew past it. A pale blue iris stuttering wildly in the socket as it stared after me with rage and longing.

            I drove away from the Motel under the Mojave Sun, which I normally hate, and took comfort in its harsh white light.

            I’m a romantic, and I like to wonder about the secret places of the world. I drive down roads all across the country looking at abandoned barns and factories wondering what stories and secret doors are closed there. I drive by ancient Oaks in the middle of fallow fields and wonder what secret doors they might hold. I’m the kind of person who’s prone to see and think about Fair Folk and Ghosts.

            I would have never imagined stumbling into a world so ugly as that one. Or had a dream of a sick, hungry parody of a failing roadside motel.

            I still wonder about other worlds and secret doors, but now those musings are tainted by this memory of when I might have actually stumbled upon one.