Kara sighed and looked around. They were in a small, dust-choked room. The air was stale — no, stagnant was the word for it. It felt thin and tinny in her lungs, like no matter how much she breathed in, there was just no oxygen to it.
“How long you think this has been closed off?” asked Jeremy
“Forever, probably.”
Yellowed wallpaper hung in tatters, curling down from the walls. Kara examined it in the places it wasn’t. She saw the faded shape of a rocking horse. Tiny hearts. Balloons and ribbons…
“Look at that!”
Jeremy was pointing to the other side of the room. Butted up against the wall was an antique, turn-of-last-century, wrought-iron crib.
Kara looked quickly, then turned away wincing.
“Is… Is it…” Between the dust and the lack of air, she couldn’t form the words. “Does it have—”
“No,” said Jeremy thankfully. “It’s empty.”
Relief washed over her, replaced quickly by curiosity. Kara opened her eyes and scanned the rest of the tiny room. She saw an old wooden chest, open and empty. A rocking chair, draped with cobwebs.
“Well this was obviously a baby nursery,” she said.
Jeremy grunted in agreement. He grabbed the frame of another doorway off to the left, plastered over on the opposite side.
“This opening once led your room,” he noted. “Before it was walled off.”
She took a step forward, and that’s when it began. It started off as a tingle at first… an itch at the back of her head, right at the base of her brain. The room grew lighter, even in the darkness, and then suddenly Kara felt the familiar ‘whoosh’ of being thrust forward. Of being pushed through something… although she was never quite sure what.
She was still in the room, only now it was daytime. Light streamed in from the open doorway. A woman in a blue bonnet sat rocking her baby, gently humming. The chair was in a different place but the crib’s location was the same.
Kara peered closely, trying to focus. Using the best of her concentration techniques to discern details…
It was the woman from their room last night.
Everything blurred. Everything moved quickly. It was like watching a movie on fast-forward; an entire film in just a handful of seconds. Two films. Three. A dozen. The woman changed clothes, the baby grew bigger. Rocking, crying feeding… over and over and over again. And then all of a sudden, the woman was gone. A man took care of the baby now, an older-looking man with thinning hair and kind eyes. He rocked, he fed, he did everything the woman in the bonnet did.
But the woman never came again.
Eventually the baby and man both disappeared, lost in a blur of motion and time. The ‘whooshing’ noise reversed itself, like playing a recording backwards, and then Kara was spit crudely back into her own consciousness.
Darkness. Total, inky blackness.
Her chest heaved, her eyes hurt. She could feel her pupils re-adjusting.
“KARA!” Jeremy was shouting at her. He was shaking her by the shoulders.
“I— I’m okay.” She tried to take a deep breath and then coughed violently. The dust was too much.
“What just happened?”
He was holding her against his chest now, ensconcing her within two long, very strong arms. Her first instinct was to pull away, to stand on her own. But there was comfort there, so Kara didn’t object.
“I saw her,” she said. “I saw the woman. Her baby… she was taking care of it. Here. In this room.”
Jeremy held her quietly in the darkness, allowing her to search her feelings. It was the best possible move and he knew it. It gave Kara a stable emotional platform, allowed her to maximize her remembrance of the details in the crucial moments after an episode.
“I… I think she died. Here, at the hotel.”
She could feel Jeremy’s heart beating, deep in his chest. The sound was slow. Warm. Rhythmic.