Creepy - Goatman & The Nowhere Hotel

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

GoatmanWritten By: J. FederleNarrated By: Alicia AtkinsContent Warning: Mentions of suicide, teenage death, slight body horror***The Nowhere HotelWritten by: NowherealoneNarrated by: JV Hampton-VanSantContent Warning: Miscarriage***Find our reward tiers at patreon.com/creepypod***You can also subscribe to us on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/creepypod***Sound Design by Pacific Obadiah***Title music by Alex Aldea***Intro/Outro Narration by Joe Stofko Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the bloody disgusting network. No. This is creepy. A podcast dedicated to sharing the most famous chilling and disturbing creepy pastors and urban legends in the world. Whether these stories truly happened or are simply fabrications is for you to decide. These stories may contain graphic depictions of books. violence and explicit language. Listener discretion is advised.

Creepy presents. Goatman. Written by Jay Federley and narrated by Alicia Atkins. I wanted Ava to be my best friend the moment I met her in fifth grade Girl Scouts. It was late 90s in Kentucky, but even so, Ava could think for herself. The first time we met, I was ignoring some kid at the lunch table who liked anime. I didn't even know what anime was,

but I knew everybody else picked on this kid, and I'd never heard of anime before, so I wasn't going to help this weirdo join the conversation. Then Ava walked over, smelling like a barrel of fresh green apples. And instead of sitting next to me, even though I'd gotten closer to the cool girl's group, she sat next to the weird kid and started talking to her.

Before I knew it, I felt like the one at the table left out. Turns out I love anime. Found out pretty soon I loved green apple body spray too. And about four years later, around age 16, even though any four letters richer than shit still made me blush, my dumbass figured out I had a crush on Eva. As a result, the summer after our third year high school, when Ava asked me to check out the haunted train trussle with her,

I said yes. Shoot, I shouted yes. Dad's got a meeting out of town, Ava said. Her dad's company covered transport, so him having a meeting meant the car was ours. If we told Ava's mom would be at my house, but told my mom would be at Ava's, we'd get at least four hours of unchecked freedom.

Add to all that, the trestles allure. We both knew damn well you weren't supposed to get close to it. The trestle was built in the 1800s, and from the pictures we'd seen, it looked like it, too. It was a single, skinny line of rusty train tracks 100 feet up, running through the air above Poplick Creek. The thing is, it's still active. Kids in the last few years have gotten killed trying to run across it. If a train comes while you're standing on those tracks,

you either get crushed or you jump. Bad outcome either way. Neither Ava or I had seen the trestle in person, but the trestle's history was all common knowledge. Not a lot went on in Kentucky high schools. A haunted train trestle was an evergreen topic. Ava scooped me up after lunch that Saturday, honking the horn as I came jocking out.

She had her brown hair down, and the whole car smud like green apples. Her body spray jiggled in her cup holder as we drove, a neon green plastic bottle with a red cat. She'd switched brands a few times, but always stuck with the same scent. Marjorie told me how to climb the fences, she said. We plotted how to sneak off the bike trail, over the fences, so we could explore around the trestle's feet. We agreed if nobody was around, we'd try to climb the hill, too.

Get up high enough to look across the bridge itself. Not to go on it, because we weren't dumbasses, but just to look. Marjit said the hill was steep and overgrown, but Ava and I were both in gym shoes and jeans and had summer fever. As the trees on either side of the road got thicker, Ava asked what I'd heard about the goat man. The goat man lives under the train trestle, or on it, or maybe in the woods around it. Depends on the storyteller. It's half-man, half-goat, with varied origins. Sometimes it got there because a circus train either crash,

or got struck by lightning or both, which let the goat man escape. Sometimes the goat man is a demon, sometimes the vengeful ghost of a man. Whatever he is, the goat man lures you onto the tracks. He uses hypnosis or mimic sounds, things like a baby crying, or the voice of somebody you know calling for help. Once you're far enough out, he drags you off. Or he lets a train do the, dirty work. I asked Ava what happens after that, and she shrugged and said,

I guess you're dead. The end. We laughed like hell, blasted music, and found the parking area March had described within an hour. The trestle was a short walk away. A thin old bridge on long steel legs, beams criss-crossed underneath. It only took ten minutes to shimmy through the half-ass bike trail fence down into private property. With the trees and rusty beams, the tall weeds. We were easily hidden from any bikers going past. Up close, the trestle looked like ancient ruins. Layers of paint flaked off each leg's base, green under white under gray. The city must have given up painting it ages ago. We touched the rough rust on the rivets, sat on the lowest girders, relished how many rules we'd broken. And when we got bored, we turned to the other fence, the one blocking

the hill up to the tracks themselves. Marge wasn't lying, Ava said, sounding discouraged. Sure enough, this fence was taller and the hill was no joke. It was hot out, late afternoon, and we hadn't brought water. To get up that hill, if we managed to hop the fence, would mean scrambling through thick weeds up an almost 90-degree incline. Neither of us were keen on snakes or spiders either. We would, waffled a little longer before rationalizing the day's adventure as a scouting expedition. Next time, since we knew what we were doing now, we'd come back with water and garden gloves and hike to the top. Next time, we'd go the whole way. Next time. Once the decision was made,

Ava feigned like she was fainting. She leaned back into the gird or she'd been sitting on in a fake swoon, reaching out so I'd grab her hands, pull her to her feet. Whenever I did, when I pulled her up, she stumbled into me. We stopped for a breath, together like that, looking at each other. It was one of those teenage moments where the air goes crisp and you can taste the maybe, you know? Like, if almost were a noun, it would describe moments like that. That day. We had an almost.

I've wondered about that moment ever since. I've wondered if that moment was truly for me or if Ava had sensed it before I did. Maybe it reached her mind first, and that's why she paused. I tried to believe she paused for me because I consider that moment the last one I really had with her. That moment is how I want to remember her.

There wasn't a warning. No rustling in the day. trees, no chill in the air, nothing like that. We just both turned, and it was there, maybe 20 feet away. It stood at the edge of where the trees started. The sun hadn't gone down yet. The light was so orange. The world around it wobbled and gleamed, like its body was encased in ice. The way leaves get crystallized if it rains in winter. What I could make out, or what I can remember, was wrong. It stood on two animal legs, all thigh and sinew, but caked and sores that had eaten away the fur. And another leg, a naked human leg, emerged from its gut,

serving almost like a cane. The pale skin on that leg was bruised, lined with red scratches. The whole time we watched it, I burned. I imagined my whole body dipped in hot wax. Every pore groaned, open too wide. My scalp stung, and my eyes watered like each eyelash was a splinter. My teeth ached in my jaw. I felt every nerve shrivel and pulse like a plucked wire.

Thinking about it too long makes me dizzy. The rest of its body was chaos. Limbs too short to reach the ground clawing their way out of a swollen pulsing torso. Hundreds of deer antlers jutted from its hunched back like spines. Where any thick brown fur survived, bird wings and the little pink hands of vermin flexed. within it, stretching and contracting in spasms. In one inflamed patch of bare skin, a human hand reached out. The fingers grasped at the air. The one thing I remember clearly is its head. Its head rose, or at least the head closest to us rose. And it was a goat's head,

orange eyes, same color as the afternoon. Nobby horns curved over its skull. Black eyes alert. It stared at us, jaw jerking open and closed. My guts twisted as it did. My intestines seized or slithered. I felt them writhe and dependent of my body. To this day, my stomach gives me terrible pain sometimes.

and doctors don't know why. I couldn't move while it looked at us, but I could feel Ava screaming, even though I don't think we made a sound. And the worse was that I could feel it screaming too. The three of us, we stood together under the trestle, and we screamed in frozen silence for, I don't know how long.

Since that day I've skydived, gone bungee jump. I've stood on the lip of the Grand Canyon. Nothing compares. I've never felt the searing panic I felt during these seconds or minutes ever again. It did have the quality, though, of standing on a precipice. My mind towed up to a ledge over a vast, endless void. But before I snapped, before it could drag me off, the goathead

gagged. The body heaved, doubled over, light refracting at dizzying angles. When the head rose again, his mouth opened wide. A tail spilled out. A long, bushy red tail. A foxes, maybe a dog's. The orange eyes rolled up to whites. My mind snapped back into my body. I snatched Ava's hand and yanked. It felt like I had to pull her back to shore, swimest out of the ocean. I threw myself into a sprint, and she fell into it with me. But she screamed the whole way. Real and hysterical screams that shook her whole body as I towed her along. Somehow, I got us back to the car.

Give me the keys! I begged. The keys, Eva! When I gave up and dug the keys from her pocket, her eyes never focused on me. In her mind, she still stood in that clearing. She still stood with that thing, the two of them screaming and screaming together. I peeled out of that parking lot so fast the wheels squealed.

The wheels were almost as loud as Eva. The rest of that day is blurry. I sped home to my house, not hers, operating on sheer instinct. We shot into the driveway and my mom ran outside, hearing Eva. I remember Mom barefoot on the cement, smacking at the passenger side car window, trying to reach her. I was so out of it.

I couldn't understand what she wanted, that I locked the doors. When I opened my own door, Mom snatched the keys from me and got Ava's door open, knelt in front of her, tried to catch Ava's hand so she stopped clawing at her own cheeks. Dad must have called the ambulance. Somebody called Ava's mom. I learned later I went catatonic for an hour.

Mom and dad, mostly dad, have fed me details over the years. The paramedics arrived. They pushed to take me too, but Mom refused. Refusing wasn't hard. Whatever sedative they had administered to Ava hadn't worked, so communicating over her screams had been almost impossible. and they'd been keen to get her to the hospital. Still,

Mama's told me several times she regrets for fusing. I wanted to get my girl inside, to have my baby in the house. She says when we talk about it. We should have gone. Had you checked, so short-sighted. I've told my mom a hundred times it wasn't her fault

what happened that day, but I think, because she knows I haven't told her, her truth. In her mind, it'll always be something she didn't protect me from. Standing in the shower is the first thing I really remember. What brought me back was when I scratched myself with my own nails. I reached for something on autopilot, and I scraped my own arm. Only a day ago, Ava had painted my nails powder blue, but when I looked at them in the shower, I saw bare cuticles under the blue polish. It looked like two or three weeks.

of growth. I found the first dry patch a few seconds later, flaky rough skin on the underside of my left arm. I scratched at it and felt nothing, but something started to fizz near my feet. It was the skin flaking off. I scratched until the water foamed, my legs, too. I'd shaved that morning, hair had grown again. And God helped me. It wasn't my hair. It was great. It was great. It was coarse and gray and foreign, long enough to curl in some places. I shave so fast I left cuts up and down my shins. That evening, I visited Ava's room at the hospital. She'd been drugged enough to sleep, but as I stood at her bedside, gripping the plastic rail, I saw her eyes darted around under her eyelids. Her face had lost its color, despite the summer tan, fading as if a green

gray tone had settled into her skin, and her eyelashes were longer. The stupidest thing to notice, but I could tell they'd grown. I wanted to see her nails, too, to see if hers had grown out like mine, but her wrists and ankles were strapped to the bedrails and tucked under her blanket. Her mom begged me to tell her what had happened, to tell the doctors. She promised Ava and I wouldn't be in trouble, even if it was drugs or I'll alcohol or both. I said we started to climb the hill by the trellis and Ava had fainted. Then she'd just woken up screaming. Her mom started crying when I said that. I think she knew I was lying. I saw

Ava one more time. The last time. A few weeks later. Ava's dad called the house. Ava had been released from the hospital. The news wasn't good. He wanted me to come visit Ava because he thought it might help her. Mom said I didn't have to. I told her I should. Mom said she'd go with me, but I insisted on going alone. At Ava's house, right when her mother opened the door, there was a strange smell.

It had a chemical tang, but a hint of something sweet. A little like a food-scented candle gone wrong. I thought at first it must be all the desserts sitting out, casseroles and cakes gifted from neighbors, mixed with that sterile hospital smell, carried in with the bags of hospital stuff dumped by the door. Ava's mom motioned for me to sit in the living room. The sofa had big orange accent pillows, and I hugged one to my chest. I always did that on Ava's sofa.

But that day, I clung to it, shivering. It felt cold, like I was sitting in their cellar instead of a living room. clammy, a wet kind of cold. Her mom recited the hospital's verdict, a paralyzed vocal cord. Ava's speech was likely affected, though there wasn't a way to confirm. Ava hadn't been coherent enough to talk since that day. Acute stress, followed by PTSD. Her heart was damaged, but the extent wasn't clear.

Any test to learn more would be invasive and risky on a non-complaintant patient. The smell in the house started to make me queasy. Her mom's monotone report only stopped when Ava's dad came down. I remember noticing he'd come from the master bedroom. I knew because I knew how their house creaked. He hadn't come from Ava's room. He'd come from his own bedroom. He hadn't been sitting with his daughter.

He'd been sitting alone. Want to come say hi to Ava? When he cut off his wife mid-sentence, she shut off like a machine put on pause. It was the same cheesy dad voice as always, technically, but I could sense the strain. He wrenched his face into a smile, I guess on my behalf. But it was so pained, he almost looked maniacal. I nodded and started up the stairs.

The smell got worse as I climbed. We turned left to go to her room, and in the short hallway leading to Ava's door, I could damn near taste it. That smell. Sour and syrupy at once. Once. Her dad's hand settled on my shoulder then. He steered me ahead of him, so I was in the lead. His hand trembled as he pushed me toward the closed door to Ava's room. Strange too. So strange. I'd thought Ava's parents were just like mine, two people orbiting their only child.

If I was ever sick, really sick, my parents would never let me leave my door closed. I doubt they'd leave me alone at all. yet Ava's parents had left her alone inside the room in front of me. The doorknob felt like ice. Sometimes, when I try hard to recall, I think my breath might have fogged in the air. At that point, her dad's hand squeezed tight enough to hurt. For all the warning bells, though,

the smell in the air left me drunk, dizzy. Everything moved like molasses, and I felt pulled into looking, as strongly as gravity would have dragged my body back to earth if I'd slipped over a cliff. The door opened halfway before she saw me. Ava stood next to her bed. Her hand stretched towards me, already, before she could even see who was there, opening

the door. Her skin glistened. It looked waxy and slick, coated in an oily sweat that reeked of that odor. The smell swirled in the room, a blend of turpentine and musk, and cutting through it all, a satirine stench of rotting fruit. There was a sound like steam escaping, like the hiss a tea kettle makes before it wails. I could tell.

I felt it. Eva was still screaming, even weeks later. She was screaming through her shredded vocal cords. Her dad gave this strangled cry, something between a sob and a groan. I didn't wait. I ran again, and this time to save only myself.

Her mom said nothing when I flew through the living room. She still stared at where I've been sitting on the sofa, at the orange pillow I'd left there. I sprinted home and vomited until I fainted. My parents asked what had happened only once. My reaction must have suggested asking again wouldn't do any good. A few days later, Mom called me downstairs to the kitchen table. Her eyes were red, so were dads.

They both said they loved me a hundred times before telling me. Ava had snuck out last night. Her body was found by some folks on the bike trail. Seems she'd fallen off the trestle. I knew, Ava's parents had let her go. I knew as soon as I heard. After graduation, I moved out of town. Traveled till my body and budget couldn't anymore.

After that, I worked odd jobs till I lost them. Doing on-your-feet jobs with crippling stomach problems? Yeah. I've managed to do data entry online, but I'm starting to have trouble with housing now. Several sound complaints filed by neighbors. Two or three times a month, I wake up screaming. Last month, I recorded myself every night till I caught a screaming night. Listening to the recording of that night, there's no wind-up, no warning, no muttering, no tossing and turning, just soft breathing.

Then suddenly I'm screaming like my body's on fire. I scared myself shitless listening to it the first time. I'd put it on high volume since I was sure I'd hear sleep talking or groaning or something first. From what I can tell, too, it's not my screaming that wakes me up. In the recording, I scream until a neighbor bangs on my door, shouting about how late it is. I wonder how many times I've screamed all night and never known. Last evening, my mom called.

A kid named Brent visited her, begged her to tell him about Ava. Mom said he's a good kid. She told him what she knows. It's not my mom's fault. Dad passed away last year and I know she's lonely. In the state I'm in, though, I can't keep her company. Piss as I am that he bothered my mom. I can't even blame this Brent kid either.

His sister disappeared eight months ago. Mom said Brent was on as far as she could tell. Brent told her his sister had a drug problem. He says the police have written her off as a runaway. But he swears the last time he saw her, she'd been clean, doing well. She and a friend were going to hang out under the trestle that after night. have some drinks where nobody would bother them.

When his sister didn't come back, and the police didn't do shit about it, Brent went looking for the friend. The guy had relapsed, overdosed, dead. Only information Brent ever got was from the guy's dealer, who swore the guy had shown up already high as a kite, rambling about how his bones weren't his own bones. Mom forwarded some files Brent left her on a USB. She says Brent wants me to see. them. It's a collection of old news articles, park postings, a long word dock of notes and thoughts. Nothing that smacks of genius, though for a 16-year-old, it's an impressive effort. Seems he thinks there are patterns. Incidents only happen in hotter summers, only when the deer population in the area

increases, only in the late afternoon before dark, never in the morning or at night. I don't know what Brent expected for me. Can't have been what I told him over the phone, that Ava had a stroke. She fainted, woke up screaming. That it had nothing to do with the trestle, and that if he bothered my mom again, I'd call the cops.

That I'd message his parents on Facebook and told them he had been climbing the trestle. That his sister is gone. It's for his own good. His sister is gone. She's gone. and if he loves her this much, she must have been a good sister. She wouldn't want what's happened to her to get him too.

See, he's so bent on patterns because incidents seem to be increasing, getting more frequent, more kids falling off the trestle, more local disappearances of people last-sighted around the trestle or last reported as heading over there. And sure enough, the deer population is out of control. if Brent is right at all, or even if he's just obsessed enough, spends enough time at the trestle, that could end him. What I did is the least I could do.

Exposure to this thing. Look, I didn't get away. I didn't escape. When I saw Ava in her bedroom that day, standing there, she reached for me. When I've been in the mood for self-torture, I've told myself Ava recognized me in that moment, and she was begging for help or understanding. But when I'm honest with myself, I know that wasn't Ava at all. It was whatever had consumed her, sensing part of itself in me.

I ran away that day, too. But the truth is, I felt myself pulled towards. her into that room. I felt myself pulled back to the trestle every day since. I've had to be honest with myself more and more lately. Not a week ago, I had a screaming fit during a nap. It was the middle of the damn day and I nodded off, only to wake up to somebody banging on the door again.

But the thing was, for a few seconds after I woke up, I kept screaming. I couldn't stop. My body couldn't stop. In the room, when I could breathe again, had this odor, pungent, earthy, with a sweet chemical tang. It smelled like the woods, like animals, musky and a little damp. And mingled with it was that hint of simulated sweetness,

A fake fruit smell. I recognize it this time. Maybe now that I'm slipping closer to its way of perceiving things. It's the simulated smell of green apples. Just broken down into its base chemical components. It's the smell of whatever goes into making a teenage girl's cheap body spray. Creepy Presents The Nowhere Hotel.

Written by Nowhere Alone alone. and narrated by J.V. Hampton Van Sant. I came to the nowhere hotel to heal. I tell you this now, so that you better understand my reason for being in my current predicament, a sight and circumstance so maddening that I simply must confess it to someone else while there is still time. I am writing, alone, shut away in my room, my lounge chair thrust precariously under the door handle in this dead place, with these tangled ghost halls laid out all around me like webs,

meandering and winding through the dread heart of the structure. I am alone. I am afraid. And worse, I fear I'm beginning to lose my mind. If nothing else, this. letter signed as quickly as I can transcribe it, will serve as a warning, a final heed, a last wish. If you find this, please trust my sincerity. Stay away from the nowhere hotel. If I recreate this story at the origin, it began, as far as I can recollect, from the

a gentle conversation with one of my oldest friends and colleagues, a Mr. Henry Dubois, a world-wise literature professor, nearly 20 years my senior. We sat together on a gloomy Friday afternoon by the fading brick ledge outside my office at the University of Washington. I told him everything. I told him about my Helen. I told him about the miscarriage. 19 weeks into the pregnancy. I told him how we had already picked out her name, Violet, how I could see her really see her even though she had never been born. How I had known her somehow and loved her all just the same, loved her as my own.

I told him how it had deeply changed the woman I loved, how it had turned her heart against me, how she wandered restless through the house each night, bleary-eyed and distant each morning. I told him how she barely spoke to me anymore, and worse, that I could tell that she blamed me in some small measure at least. After some considerable thought,

and perhaps the greatest pause in conversation I had ever endured, he mentioned the hotel to me, the nowhere, nestled so neatly between rock and sea, that it looked like it had always been there, grown, bean by beam, stone by stone, straight out of the sand itself,

towering into those slowly, churning winter sea mists that whipped madly across the beach. He told me that, years prior, in his youth, he had stayed at the place himself for a long weekend, following a bitter engagement with a woman he met at university. He said that it was a peaceful property, distinct and set aside from other lodgings on the coast, distant and aloof, alluring in its quiet draw and singular calm.

He returned better rested than he had ever felt, well-reasoned and prepared to endure the upcoming disharmonious weeks. I took him at his word, Henry. I took his voice measured and compassionate of that of a reason colleague, a caring companion. I didn't think for an instant that this place, with its ancient power and creeping attraction, had influence his mind just then,

worked its black magic and caused him to say that precise collection of words designed for me, specifically it seemed, whatever it took to draw me in, carry my ailing and battered mind here to this dead place as the sea salt rages against the old windows, even now bearing down and all around, barring me in. I think now that it was a deceit, all of it. I think now that Henry Dubois has never even been to this place.

Better yet, I know it. If he had, he would never have left, just like I will never leave. I packed my belongings and left for the coast the following week. I couldn't stand to be at my home anymore. I couldn't stand to be with her, Those haunting shadow looks, the pain and hidden loathing there. I couldn't take it.

I felt so alone, vilified. I hadn't hurt the child. I hadn't done anything to deserve this wrath. The gutted, piercing, hollow eyes that seemed to drift in and out and follow me only when they wished. She barely noticed I was leaving. She didn't look up when I closed the door. I was so happy to leave that I didn't think much about my destination.

Somewhere, anywhere, was better than this. It had to be. I followed Interstate 5 for nearly 200 miles south, and then west, leading closer with each minute to the sea. The daylight quickly shrank as I neared, the sunlight devoured by an impenetrable and complete darkness. I arrived, in somewhat of a trance, I imagine. I had been drifting along the route, numb, passing shadow vehicles,

wandering between lanes, barely aware of a trance. anything around me, pulled there more than anything if I allowed the terrifying honesty of it. It was as if I had been tugged along by a string, moved, steered like some great puppet, my very course and destination foreign to me, forced, ordained by some malevolent power that wanted me and my broken thoughts all to itself alone. Then I saw it. The building that rose before me was a monolith, a deranged, angular, monstrous form,

twisted and narrow, looming, and dangerously unbalanced. And the sign that illuminated roared. screaming crimson sign that pierced and careened oddly through the night, bathing the front lot in deep red. The nowhere hotel. I didn't leave my car. I couldn't. I sat for what felt like hours,

listening as a bleak winter torrent began to fall against the windshield, knowing somehow that I couldn't leave, that it wouldn't let me, that I would be swept from the roads in an instant and dashed against those horrible, jagged black rocks by the ocean. I gathered my courage and pressed on up and out of my car through those incredible red doors and into the bright lobby, where I was greeted by one of my car, by one of my car, and out of my car, and through those incredible red doors and into the bright lobby, where I was greeted by one of the warmest faces I had ever met, the night manager, Harlan. Somehow, he immediately set me at ease.

His smile climbed high on his face, and his laugh was light and natural. Curiously, I felt on more than one occasion during our conversation that this man was the very place itself, or as close to it as I could estimate, part of its walls, its being, whatever wickedness was here, that he was an instrument of some kind, one final deceit urging me forward and up to my room. Still, I shook the thoughts from my mind. They were ridiculous. I had come, All this way, separated myself from my home and the woman I loved, and risked my health and safety to make the perilous journey. I couldn't go home, not yet.

I couldn't face her, not without some rest, some peace, a chance to gather my thoughts and remind myself that it wasn't my fault, that sometimes bad things happen to good people, that it wasn't meant to be, that somehow we, we, would be okay. We would repair a broken marriage and find a way past this impossible tragedy. I collected my room key, smiled too hard, and felt my feet carry me up the stairs and down the corridor. Warmth and lights were everywhere. Too bright, cheery, glowing orbs. welcoming me, forcing me on. I replaced my damp layers and seated myself at the desk by the window.

I found myself there for some time, staring into that stirring, ceaseless abyss of water that seemed to seep straight into the ink sky and its nightmare squall somehow all one. I thought of Helen, of my lovely violet, sketching her beautiful tiny face in my mind, where it could never be taken from me, where I could love her and keep her forever, safe, and sound. I must have slept then, because I can still not properly configure what happened next. I heard her, my violet, distant and low at first, but increasing in volume and vigor,

calling to me, cooing and crying just outside my room. I was stunned, but forced myself up and toward the noise. I do not know how I understood that it was my daughter. I don't know if this foul place invaded my mind and created the sound itself from thoughts that I had imagined just for her. I guess I will never know. But in that moment as the sea drowned the sky, I heard her, my unborn child who came to me only in my dreams, who fit perfectly into the crook of my arms and beamed up at me with such exorbitant love and hope that it ripped my heart into. I heaved the door open and stared into the corridor.

Nothing. The lights had dimmed and flickered with the howls of the wind against the old walls. I called out once hoping for a response. from the night manager downstairs, a neighboring infant in an adjacent room to set my mind at ease. Nothing. Worse, it felt like my call was silenced, squelch into nothing by those meandering, silent halls,

and strange fixtures that seemed to shift just out of sight. I shut the door quickly and barred it with the nearby lounge chair. My mind was playing tricks on me, of course, daft delusions brought on by the weary trip and the spirited winter downpour. Still, I couldn't shake that sound, that cry, violet, as certain as I could be, just beyond the threshold. told, calling to me, her father, begging me for help, needing me. Shaking, I made tea at the small bar and seated myself on the bed.

I was exhausted weeks of guilt and pain from Helen, the pervasive loneliness of the hotel room apart from her from everything. Yes, that was it. Nothing more, nothing supernatural. I could hear her again, coming closer, only this time her cry was more urgent, blood-curdling terror screams. I thrust my cup aside and ran to the door,

kicking the chair away and pressing myself through the entry and into the hallway. The door slammed behind me. I swear to you, it closed by itself, and that cry, that shrill, lurking, horrible squeal changed too. It became something else, something worse, a low, rumbling, growling laugh that bounded happily between the hallway, that seemed then to stretch into infinity. I turned to run, but my door was gone, replaced with a plain, smooth wall. The jeering, snarling laughter came again, cutting through the rotten air, knifing into my mind.

I was too scared to turn at first to look back down that hallway and see what I knew was coming, what I could feel was speaking to me from down the corridor, inching closer to where I stood with no escape. It groaned, gurgling greedily, breathing with false lungs, and I turned to it finally, in horror, knowing that it was almost upon me. It was her, violet, purple and black, morose, and folded all wrong, my miscarried, unformed child, dragging herself toward me and along the floor with mangled, spindly arms, crying for me with a lopsided mouth, crying for her father. I screamed and forced myself against the wall, collapsing, beating against it, fighting with everything I had to get as far away from that thing as I could,

knowing that this place was using my thoughts against me, twisting and distorting my consciousness to bring that evil to life, to ruin and bury me in its very walls. It was inches away then, howling madly with a fat, rotting tongue that drug along the ground. When I felt the knob, it was still there, my room hidden by the hotel behind that fake wall that it had built in my mind. I grabbed it and wrenched it free, throwing myself onto the floor. and kicking away from the door in horror as it closed behind me.

I have been unable to gather myself since, unable to reconcile my misshapent child, and that horrible, echoing laugh that seemed to fill and become everything around me. My heart is racing, my mind is spinning out of control with impossibilities, things too difficult to understand, the unyielding knowledge that this place in some capacity might have killed my daughter just to bring me here, shattered and alone, ripe, to be swallowed whole. I cannot shake the muddled realization that in some way it chose me, chose my life, my Helen,

my violet for this very moment to create the fissure that would ultimately bring me within his walls and destroy me here. I cannot stand the guilt. Yet I cannot leave. She is still there, just outside the door. I can see her shadow if I look long enough. If I refuse to blink. and force my eyes open through tears. I cannot face her again, my failure, my pain. In those long, treacherous hallways that bend and shift out of sight, there is only one way out. One.

The window, the night, the sand, the sand, the storm my own end I cannot go on anymore not with this not alone not knowing that if I was

stronger maybe she would still be alive maybe we could still be happy I cannot let it kill me I fear I will live on, as my daughter does, some distorted thing used to haunt and destroy others within these walls. I fear that she is here, because I am here. If I can leave, maybe I can save her.

Violet. She will not leave my mind She is always there She is just outside my room She is waiting for me I can hear her still The night calls me To the sea

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