My Uber ride stops outside a bricked and flashy hotel, the Silver Score, a towering shadow that's caught in a furious and merciless blizzard. Such is life.785Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ8xpGO5wFt7
I am a twenty-five year old New Yorker in Chicago on New Year's Eve adjusting my fogged glasses and charcoal scarf. I thank my driver, step out into the gray biting flurry, slam the car door, and hurry across ice and sleet and sludge into the Lobby. So fricking Midwestern cold. The silver luxe and painfully bright chandeliers take me back a century, to swanky echoey 1918, and the skylights cast many wild shadows.
The clerk at the desk stands a proper gent in a gray button-up shirt and khaki pants. Manicured and wrinkle-free. A metal label pinned to his flat chest states his name as Stanley. He smiles politely as his dull black eyes stare through me unblinkingly.
"You're new. Checking in?"
"No," I say. "I'm just here for my grandmother. Mrs. Mint."
"Ah," Stanley the clerk says with a creeping smile. His eyes waver. "January Jane... That'll be room 419. On the fourth floor."
January Jane? I wish I had asked him what he meant, but he was unclear and mysterious on purpose, was he not? And to be honest, I wasn't in the mood to spend anymore time with subtle Stanley.785Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡpOZDn2qUWd
From the elevator, I spy on him watching me with that smile until the doors close. I pull out my phone from my black purse and see it is at 1%. It dies in my hands. Fantastic. I curl back my red short hair and try to remember what my grandmother looks like. Think of Old Rose from Titanic, my mother had told me earlier, but the back of my mind holds a shred of memory, a blurred reflection of a shrieking, outraged Wicked Witch of the West with sharp nails. And sour brown liquor pouring all over me, and her weak thumb snapping at a lighter, snapping for a fire. That couldn't be real, I chuckle weakly. If I was ever attacked let alone be burned by my own grandmother, I'd remember. Mom would've mentioned it.
As the elevator rises, thoughts of my life in New York flood back. Getting fired, getting towed, and getting dumped. Now this phonecall from my mother about her mother in Chicago demanding a visit from me or otherwise she'll jump out a window. I figured, she needed me and I needed her.
The doors open on the fourth floor, a shadowy gray hallway so silent the dense black carpet seems to absorb my footsteps. The ceiling is wallpapered with outlined white roses and black thorns. The walls rumble with the persistent snowstorm passing us like trains. But the rooms sound so empty. So unlived in. My nails dig into the edge of my palms, something I haven't done since... I realize then and there the sharp nails was actually mine.
The brewing odor of whiskey and musk grows stronger and pervading as I near room 419, the darkest part of the corridor. Each heavy muted step I take convinces me I'm walking deeper into a nightmare. The fragrance of rue, the stench of sorrow. I shiver as I near the door.
I knock three times, quick and casual. She knocks once. My feet root to the floor but I feel like I'm falling. I can't help but stare at the door. It looks like it's opening but it doesn't open. She knocks twice. My mouth drops but no sound slips. She's clinically insane and beyond help, I Angeline Woods, New York psychiatrist have officially diagnosed. Clearly this is maddening behavior that can only result from such a despicably gloomy place as the Silver Score hotel. Of course she would want to jump out the window.
I stammer, "Grandma? It's me, Angie!"
"Angie?" Comes a tiny disembodied doll voice. Oh don't do that, you very sick lady. She knocks the third time. "What are you doing in the closet? Come out of there!"
Fed up, my hand goes to the crystal doorknob. I twist it to a limit. It's locked. I twitch with anger. "You lock your closet?"
The deadbolt slides and slams. The doorknob wiggles violently. I stagger back and the door swings wide open. Bang. It hits the wall, and there stands a short woman with long silver hair. Hair that flows down past her jean overalls and slicker boots trailing on the floor behind her.
"Marigold? Where's Angie?"
Gripping the walls, Grandma peers left and right in the hallway, searching for six-year-old me. She scowls at twenty-five-year-old me who looks like my mother. Her eyes look betrayed deep and horrified as she storms back to her recliner and static channel. "I told you to bring me Angie! You never do as you're told! You don't love me."
I exhale slowly. What the frick... I grab my phone trying to dial mom before I remember it's dead. Oh. I tuck the phone back in my purse. Right. I glance at the elevator. The static hisses loud from inside the room but even louder is the announcer shouting ten, nine, eight!
My heart stops pounding, and I go into room 419. I close the door behind me.
Four! My grandmother turns her long-haired head. Three! Her wrinkled eyes are closed. Two! My heart begins pounding worse. One!
Her sleepy eyes slowly open before narrowing with hysteria.
2018! Happy New Year! January Jane starts screaming, yanking at her hair, looking at me and away from me and repeating. It startles me the first few times but I chuckle uncontrollably, okay how can I take this seriously? Her screaming stops short.
I panic again when she lunges into the kitchen, past a corner ... out of sight. I hear clattering. Some light but some heavy.
Knives? The thought crosses my mind. I wait for what seems three seconds before my grandmother peers around the corner. Head first. Then she mischievously smirks under that long entangled silver hair and makes a twirling wave with one free hand.
She steps out with the other hand behind her back. "I'm sorry. Come to momma."
I rummage through my purse and bring out my pepper spray. I take aim.
"Grandma. It's Angie. Your granddaughter."
"Come here, Marigold! You do what you're told!" She stamps a slicker boot down on her hair. Her right bony arm still hides behind her bent back. I stare in shock at her. She nods to insist. "Come here. Come here. I've a surprise for you."
"Me too," I jiggle my pepper spray. "You psycho in desperate need of a haircut!"
She brings out a loaded shotgun.
I nod. That's that, she wins. I turn back and swing open the door and run into a closet. A small, cobwebbed closet that was not there before. Impossible. My hands slam at the wall. I just came through the door. There is no way. I hear my grandmother humming.
I look back at January Jane, her neck sticking out, head tilting, eyebrow raising, a stifled smile going mmmhmmhmm.
"Mmmarigold, Marigold, Marigold... What are you doing back in the closet? And where is my granddaughter? I told you to bring me Angie. You think you can --"
"I'm Angie!!" I scream at her. "It's 2018!"
She laughs hysterically harder and falls on her butt waving the shotgun, "You wish it were 2018. It's 1999! It's always 1999!"
I look around the closet bewildered at how I'm ever getting out of her madhouse as she sings the number nine, over and over.
TO BE CONTINUED/CONCLUDED
