CHAPTER ONE

Motel 30, Chair by the Window

Maine, they say it’s “the way life should be.” Whoever said that was right. I bought my motel business in Maine almost two years ago. The motel is located on Route 13 in the middle of nowhere, about seven hours north from the New Hampshire and Maine borders. It’s right up the road from the old diner, called Mamas Roadside Diner. My large white house with black trim is located about one hundred feet off of the main road in front of my motel that has a large forest and mountains for its view. Tall trees surround both of the buildings, and in front of my house is a beautiful lawn, which is now covered with about five feet of snow. One can barely see a small black and white sign that reads “Motel 30.” To the right of my house is a dirt driveway that passes along the right side leading back to the parking lot in front of my motel. The white motel with black trim is in a v-shaped format and has forty small rooms, ten rooms on your left side when you enter the parking lot, and thirty in front of you as you enter the parking lot to your right side. The roof of the motel is sloped and is made out of an old black metal so that the snow will slide off in the wintertime. All of the small rooms have double beds, dressers, a television set, a closet, two lamps, and a bathroom. Outside of the motel, in the large parking lot, is the a single wooden lamppost, which is about twenty feet high, shining a dim light down onto the dark parking lot at night. Being an author I thought the isolation would help my writing so that one day I might get something published.

I grew up moving around a lot from town to town in the wonderful state of California. When I got older, I moved across the country to the big “little” city, Boston, Massachusetts. I have one brother, Josh, and one sister, Amy. Josh and his wife, Ellen, live in Swampscott, Massachusetts, on Pine Street during the winter. Summers they spend living on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Amy lives in California. She told me that she would love to move to Massachusetts one day so that she could be with us. However, I don’t believe Amy will ever leave California.

I worked in Boston for the local phone company for a while. It wasn’t what I wanted to do with my life, but it paid the bills. My first apartment was located in a nice part of the city near the beach that the locals called Southie. But to the rest of the world, it was known as South Boston. Because my parents moved us around a lot, I never felt like I had a place to call home. But in time, Southie became my home. The people who lived in Southie were great. So long as you didn’t steal their parking spaces in the wintertime,
especially after they had just spent their time shoveling out the parking spot and placing a trash barrel or chair in the spot in order to keep it. City parking was tight, and people took it seriously. My life flew by; I made friends and had lots of fun over the years. I never got any of my writings published, not that I tried to. I spent more time talking about publishing my work than actually mailing off materials to publishing
companies.

I spent a lot of time on the Cape surfing the waves off of Whitecrest Beach. Growing up surfing in California, I was very surprised to find out how popular the surfing was in New England, where it really wasn’t a summertime sport. Late in the year, around wintertime, was the best time to surf in New
England because you could find good waves. Nantasket Beach in Hull, Massachusetts, was my favorite place to surf. Surf shop a few towns over in N. Scituate on Gannett Road, met all my surfing needs, and was the spot where I bought my first winter wet suit.

After a few years, I finally got married to the woman of my dreams. That was up until a few months ago. My wife, Kristen, left me; she took our only son, Billy, and headed to her mother’s house in western Massachusetts. She said that it was the little things we didn’t have in our relationship that mattered the most to her. I tried to get her to stay. I even offered to leave this place that I loved so much and try to make things work back home in California. There was no changing her mind. She told me that the relationship wasn’t going to work and that was that. I think losing my son hurt me more than losing my wife. My son and I talk on the phone occasionally, and I hope to visit him soon.

As far as my wife goes, I don’t know what the future has in store for us. Josh is planning a vacation in Vermont next summer at his wife’s family home. I do hope that Kristen will go with me when the time arrives.

This year will be my first winter alone in this big old house we used to call our home. The six bedrooms, ten large rooms, and the empty hallways, will never be the same without her soft voice to fill the emptiness. I try to keep my house of lonely souls nice and dark, lit only with candles in memory of her.
Some would say that was crazy, but she always loved candles.

The winter has always been the slowest time of the year for me, and I should have been in bed by now. Besides a few people who stayed at my motel a few weeks ago, one gentleman and his wife, and another man who drove a ’71 Chevy, I really haven’t had much business lately. The gentleman and the woman who stayed with me were nice people. The man’s name was Richard. I can’t remember his wife’s name, but she was a pretty little thing. The other man, who drove the ’71 Chevy, was kind of weird, but a customer is a customer when business is slow, and he seemed harmless. Well, back to the reason why I wasn’t in bed yet. Amy and her fairly new husband, Ed, were coming up for the week with their daughter, Rose, and they were very late. They were supposed to fly into Boston Logan International Airport sometime today. Amy, who loves to shop, probably stopped off at the mall to do some shopping. I gave her directions to the Fuller Mall just in case she wanted to do so.

Amy was having a lot of relationship problems with her new husband. She told me Ed and she had been fighting a lot over their newborn baby. Amy didn’t want to get into the whole problem on the phone and wanted to tell me something in person. Amy’s visit was going to be the first chance I had to see
little baby Rose, and also meet Ed. I couldn’t wait. I have spent the last few weeks alone in this old house; I really haven’t spoken with anyone or gone into town to get supplies. I have what I need to
get by for a few more days. Sometimes the loneliness gets to me; I try not to think about being alone too much. It’s funny how the loneliness can play tricks on your mind. That’s why I am really looking forward to seeing some family that I haven’t seen in a while.

Sometimes my writing causes me to have nightmares. Even though I know that my words are not real, I can’t control my dreams. In fact, I just had another bad nightmare last night and having people in the house with me again will be comforting.

I sat in my office chair in my house, in candlelight, still waiting for Amy to arrive. I could see the snow falling down through the foggy, frosted, small square windows located on each side of the wooden door. I have always loved the snow ever since I was a boy living in Northern California. My little office,
where I now sit, faces the dirt driveway that leads back to the parking lot in front of my motel. The office has blue wallpaper, which I had hung up last summer, which covers the four walls in the room, meeting the shiny hardwood floor at the bottom. The heat from the vents in the office makes it seem really cozy and warm, especially when the snow falls. A little white and red sign hangs outside and over the doorway, and reads “OFFICE,” letting customers know where to go for a room.

Behind me is a doorway that leads into my living room where a fire is still burning in the fireplace. I can hear a crackle from the fireplace sporadically breaking the silence of the night, and I can smell the burning wood. If I really listen, I can almost hear the cold snow touching the dirt ground outside or hear a car passing by on the main road. I thought to myself, This is the reason why I moved to Maine in the first place.

After sitting there for a while at my desk in my office, I started to get really tired and felt like going into the other room to lie down on the couch. But instead, I placed my head down on the hardwood desktop so I could see the clock in front of me. The last thing I remembered as I started to doze off was the date and time, Friday, 11:02 p.m. That’s when I heard the bell ring over the front door, and before I could
look up, I felt a feeling of relief. Thank God, I thought to myself, they are finally here. My tired head lifted off of my desk, and I fixed my eyes on the wooden door leading out to the driveway.

As my eyes started to focus, the feeling of relief went away as quickly as it had arrived. Standing in the doorway was the outline of a snow-covered man. The man walked out of the shadows and into the light of the candles that were on my desk. It was hard to make out his face at first because of a shadow
that was cast on it from the rim of his black fedora. I could tell he was an older man, maybe in his late fifties. He was dressed from head to toe in old raggedy, dark clothes, and boots.

In his left hand was a cane, and as he walked towards my desk, it made a
banging sound on the hard floor, breaking the silence in the room. That sound kept echoing through my mind with each step the man took towards me. As the man walked over to my desk, I felt a chill run through my body, a chill that I had never felt before in my life. The room around me started to feel cold,
almost like the heat had stopped venting into my office altogether. I could now see my own breath float across the room like I was outside in the cold, dark night. And though this man gave me an eerie feeling, I blew it off as meaning nothing. I figured that the cold air entered the room from outside when this man
entered my office. But unknown to me at the time, I was very wrong.

A second later my thoughts were interrupted by the man’s voice speaking in an old rusty tone asking for a room. I still couldn’t see his eyes under his fedora. He would need the room for a week or more; he requested room number thirty. I handed the man a card to fill out with name, address, and
license plate number. The man reached down and took the card out of my hand; the brim of the man’s hat lifted revealing the man’s cold, expressionless face. Our eyes met for the first time. His eyes were evil, yet
very familiar to me. I felt like I knew him in some weird way, and this feeling forced me to look away.

The man turned and wrote something on the card. He reached into his pocket and paid me for the motel room in cash. I turned around and grabbed the keys to room number thirty and handed them to him. The man handed me the card, and I placed it down on the top of the counter. The man put the key into his right pocket, and as he was walking to the front door said, “I like what you did with the office.” I didn’t know what the man meant by that, but by what he said, it sounded like he had stayed at my motel before.
After the man left, a warm feeling of heat rushed into the room, and I could no longer see my own breath. I grabbed the card off of the counter and looked at the information on it; the card was blank except for a first name. That didn’t surprise me because most people hate to give out their personal information.
I looked at the name the man wrote on the card: Carl.

I got up and walked over to the wooden door and locked it. I sat back down at my desk for another hour or so but my sister never showed up. I decided to go to bed; I figured that Amy would call me the next day.
The next day I drove into town to pick up some supplies that I needed for the week. Like I said before I hadn’t been in town in a while. Aunt Barbara, who lives in town, is a nice lady, like most of the local townspeople. She always has yummy baked goods for me that remind me of home. She also
reminds me of my own late grandmother whom I lived with when I was younger.

That night I finished washing some dinner dishes and decided to phone my Amy in California. They were late in arriving here and never called. There was no answer; this worried me, and I wasn’t sure what to do. I walked into the living room and turned on my television.

I sat in front of the television watching a show I liked. My eyes lifted away from the television for a second and glanced around the living room where I sat. A fire was burning and the smell tickled my mind with memories. I had my feet up on the coffee table in front of me. A warm blanket with the word “Maine” on it was draped across the back of the soft black leather couch. There were pictures of my family on a little shelf, and pictures of nature lined the walls around me. The house was always dark at night except for the lights from the television, fireplace, and the candles that were spread out everywhere.

As I sat there on the warm couch, out of nowhere in the silence of the night, I heard a faint sound from the backyard. It sounded like someone was screaming. I turned towards the television and hit the mute button. All I could hear now was silence and my own breathing. The screaming sound stopped!
I thought. Then it started again. After a few minutes, I knew for sure what the sound was and where it was coming from. It was a woman screaming from one of my motel rooms out back! Knowing that the man from the night before was the only one staying with me, I called the police. I told them that I could hear screams coming from motel room number thirty, and it sounded like the screams of a woman. I also told the police officer that a man, whose name was Carl, was renting that particular room from me, but I thought he was alone.

The police officer, whose name was Jack, was a retired federal agent who worked with a friend of my brother’s at the Federal Bureau of Investigation in New York City years ago. He told me that he would be right over.

When Jack pulled up to my house, I was shaking with fear. I was waiting for him in my office with the door locked. I told Jack again what I had heard, and he went straight up to the room and knocked on the door. I stood at a distance by Jack’s police car. When Carl came to the door, he was very friendly. Jack asked if he could look around his room, and Carl said “yes.” After a quick look, Jack saw no one else in the room and told him that he was sorry for bothering him so late. Carl said that it wasn’t a problem and closed
his door as Jack left.

Jack walked back across the parking lot and over to his police car and said to me, “Maybe it was the wind that sounded like a woman screaming.”

“Yes, maybe it was. It is windy out here tonight.”

“Is this his car?” Jack asked pointing over at the ’71 Chevy that was
parked by room number thirty.

I looked over at the car parked in front of the motel room. I couldn’t believe my eyes. The car was a ’71 Chevy and the same color as the ’71 Chevy the man who stayed with me a few weeks ago drove. I was surprised. Jack must have seen the look on my face because he questioned me. “Are you
okay?” Jack asked.

“I don’t know, Jack, maybe it is nothing.”

“What is it?”

“A different man stayed here over a week ago. And he was also driving a ’71 Chevy that looked exactly like that ’71 Chevy, same color too.”

“Are you sure?” Jack asked.

“Yes, I only know this because I am into old cars.”

“Well, if it makes you feel better, why don’t I take down the license plate number just in case I need it later? I can run it through our system in a few days when it’s back up and running. The damn thing is always down.” Jack laughed.

“Don’t worry about it. Like I said, it is probably nothing.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I mean he is a paying customer and I shouldn’t be harassing him.”

Jack got back into his blue police car and rolled down the window as he wrote down the license plate number, “Look, I will be up for a while. If you hear anything else, give me a call.”

“I am sure everything will be fine. Thanks for coming out, Jack.”

Jack smiled, rolled up his window, and turned his police car around in the parking lot. He drove down the driveway towards the main road. I thought, Maybe he was right; it could have been the wind. I felt a feeling of relief! After all, it was a windy night!

Later that night as I was falling asleep upstairs in my bedroom, I felt badly for Carl. I hoped that he wasn’t mad at me. That would be bad for business. The next night I went out to get a few errands done. I still hadn’t heard from my sister and I was very worried. When I came home, I made myself some coffee and I sat down in front of my computer to work on the book that I was writing. It was a book about time, death, nightmares, dreams, and sins. While I was writing, I heard a car pull into the parking lot and drive past
my house towards the motel. I stood up and looked outside the back window in that direction. I could see the ’71 Chevy pull up in front of motel room number thirty. Carl got out of the car and walked around the back of it to the trunk. He had parked his car so that the rear of it was facing inwards towards the motel room door. This did not leave much room between the trunk of the car and the doorway.

The man opened his trunk and pulled something out of it, a bag or something. Though I couldn’t see what he held in his hand, what I did see next I couldn’t explain. When the man opened the door to his motel room, a bright red light shined onto the cold snow. It hurt my eyes to look at it. So I had to turn away for a second, and when I looked back towards the room, the man closed the door behind him.

What was that light? I didn’t understand. Maybe he replaced all of my light bulbs with red ones, though it seemed too bright for that. And why would someone do something so strange? I decided to put a chair by the window and watch his room for a while to see what he was up to. From where I had placed the chair by the window, I had a good view through the trees of the parking lot and his room. As I sat there watching my computer screen blinking, which was my only source of light in the room, it was hard to stay awake.

I heard something that broke my sleepiness. The woman I had thought I heard the other night screaming started screaming again. I sat there in complete silence listening to her screaming really loudly! This time it was more terrifying. I could tell that it was definitely a woman. I also knew it was coming from room number thirty. I didn’t know what to do. This poor woman needed my help...

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PublishAmerica Baltimore Sins of the Mind - Ronald Lees
© 2006 by Ronald Lees. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written
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All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real
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ISBN: 1-4241-1512-4
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