“And when you woke up one night, the woman was on your bed.”
“She was,” Nick agreed. “And after that, I fell asleep again. It’s a weird thing to do, but I did. That’s what that place does to me, and I’ll take it. I don’t care about sounds or smells or strange women. I’m going back to the Sun Down tonight, because it’s the only place I’ve found in the world where I can sleep.”
I bit my lip. In the upside-down night world, it made a crazy kind of sense. “I’m not leaving, either,” I said. “I do have shit from my past that brings me here, as it happens. My aunt disappeared from the Sun Down in 1982, and no one ever found her body. I want to know what happened to her. That’s why I’m there.”
It was a testament to the strangeness of the night that Nick didn’t seem fazed. “Was she working there when she disappeared? Like you?”
“Yes. I came to Fell to find out what happened to her, because it looks like no one else ever bothered to. And they had this job available at the motel. So I took it.”
He nodded, like that wasn’t weird. “Was that her? In the dress?”
I shook my head. I was ninety-nine percent sure, but it had happened so fast. “I don’t think so. The clothes were all wrong, and her hair was the wrong color and style. I don’t think that was Viv.”
“I saw the dress when she was in my room,” Nick said. “It’s like a 1970s thing. At least, that’s what it looks like to me. It makes her too old to be your aunt.” A muscle in his jaw twitched. “But she’s someone. That much I know for sure. She’s someone.”
I stared ahead of me out the windshield at the ugly parking lot. I had seen things tonight that everyone I knew would say were impossible. But in the dark cab of this truck, they were real. Not only real, but understandable. Possibly even solvable. My eyes burned and my chest was tight. I felt like the night wouldn’t be long enough, that I wouldn’t have enough hours. That I certainly wouldn’t sleep. I felt like I’d never be tired again.
She’s someone.
“We can start with the dress,” I said. “We can find out what era dresses like that are from. We can look at the local newspaper archives. She died, we know that much. Right? There aren’t ghosts of living people.” I glanced at him.
Nick was watching me. He took a sip of coffee and shrugged. “I have no idea, but my guess is no.”
“So she died in the seventies, maybe. At the motel. That would be in the news. If she was local, there might be family still here. We could talk to them.” I glanced at him again. “I could talk to them if you don’t want to. The boy, too—he must have died at the motel. I didn’t see what he was wearing, but if a kid died at the Sun Down, it must have been in the news.”
“I thought you wanted to look for your aunt.” Nick’s voice was almost gentle.
Acid burned down my throat. “I do,” I said. “That’s what this is. I’m looking for her. Because I think . . .” I took a breath. “I think that whatever got the woman and the boy could have gotten Viv that night back in 1982. Which means she could be there with them.” I leaned back against the passenger seat. My eyes were still burning, but they were dry. “I might see her next,” I said. There was no way around it, but it was hard to contemplate: seeing the face from the newspaper clippings, those pretty eyes and that wide smile, coming out of one of the doors at the Sun Down. Hearing Viv’s steps like I’d heard the woman’s. Seeing her sitting on the end of a bed.
The thought was terrifying. And yet.
And yet.
This was what I was here for, wasn’t it?
She’s someone.
I was in the right place. And now it was time to go back to it.
* * *
• • •
It wasn’t until we pulled into the parking lot that I remembered about the motel’s other guest. James March, whose name was written in the guest book.
The lights were back on at the Sun Down, including the sign, sending its message out over Number Six Road. The corridor lights were back on, feeble and pale in the darkness. My phone said it was 1:23 a.m.
Nick and I got out of the truck and stood in the parking lot. The Sun Down looked like any normal motel, but we both knew it wasn’t. It was just . . . sleeping, maybe. Napping. Come on in, the building seemed to say with its jagged up-and-down lights, its blue and yellow neon cheeriness. Get some sleep. Take it easy until the sun comes up again. And if you see someone sitting at the end of your bed, pay them no mind. That’s just one of my secrets. And I’m not going to tell.
The rooms were all dark. The sign over the office door was lit, and the light was back on inside, but that was the only light in the building.
“Room one-oh-three,” I said to Nick.
He came around the truck, hunched a little into his flannel shirt. I remembered again that he didn’t have a coat. “What?” he said to me.
“There’s a guest in room one-oh-three,” I told him. “A man. Or at least there was before all the commotion started.”
Nick followed my gaze toward room 103, which was dark like the others. “Hmm,” he said, and strode across the parking lot toward the door.
“We shouldn’t disturb him in the middle of the night,” I said, hurrying to follow him.
“If he heard any of that shit earlier, he’s already been disturbed,” Nick replied.
“Do you think he slept through it?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Nick said. “I’ll ask him.”
But there was no answer to a knock on the door to the room. There was no light on, either. Instead, when Nick pounded harder on the door, it drifted open, as if it had been barely latched shut.
I looked at Nick as we stood in the dark, open doorway. He frowned at me, said, “Stay here,” and slowly walked inside. “Hello?” I heard him call.
A minute later, he came out again. “There’s no one in there. It doesn’t look like anyone’s been there, either. The bed isn’t touched, and neither is anything else.”
“His name is in the register,” I said. “Maybe he left.”
Nick came out to the corridor and looked over the parking lot, which held only my car and his truck. “What car was he driving?”
I thought back. There was a car. There had to have been a car. But I remembered pulling up to the motel office, finding it empty with the lights on. I’d thought that was strange at the time. I’d looked out to the parking lot and seen my own car, plus Nick’s truck. Like I was seeing right now.