Hotel on Shadow Lake by Daniela Tully

Author:Daniela Tully
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Legend Press

Maya

Day 4

Maya lay in her dark room for hours, staring at the ceiling, the booklet on her lap. Why did the librarian have it? Why had she given it to Maya? She turned her head toward the window; it was pitch black outside. She would need to wait until the morning to set out and find her, Paula. Maya closed her eyes to find sleep, but she was too agitated. In her mind she replayed the day she arrived. The remains they found in the landslide were your grandmother’s? Paula had asked. She remembered the way Paula’s eyes had lingered. She had been nervous, a bit strange. Or was it just playing out like that in Maya’s imagination after an exhausting few days?

She tossed and turned in bed. The demanding cries of a baby next door were oddly comforting; she wasn’t the only one having trouble sleeping. She heard the shushing sounds from one of the parents, which failed to have any effect.

Her thoughts wandered back to Paula. What else had Paula said when she gave her the booklet? She had said it was a historical guide.

It’s much better than the others, Paula had said. Had Paula also slid the fairy tale under her door?

And then, suddenly, the baby was quiet. And its cries were replaced by different cries. Cries that came from the woods. They sounded like a group of women screaming, outside in the darkness of the night. And the screams got louder and more aggressive; they were coming closer, encircling the hotel. And the closer they came, the clearer the sounds became. Then Maya realized that the sounds came from a pack of coyotes. She sat up, giving up on sleep. The coyotes sounded famished for food, for helpless prey that would fill their empty stomachs. And then the baby began to cry again—but this time the cries sounded different. The child had changed its tune. While the baby’s cries before had been the pleading cry for sleep that simply would not come, this time, it was a pleading for help, for company, a message from one mammal to the next. The baby cried for a bit and stopped as suddenly as it had begun, awaiting the coyotes’ response. And when they did reply, they, too, had changed their tune: it now resembled a call that carried a promise, a promise that they would help the helpless mammal in the night. She remembered the tales about wolves who’d raised a baby found in the woods among themselves, instead of letting Darwinism rule over their animal kingdom. Now they had come to look for the infant, to rescue it. The baby started again, almost sending a melody out into the dark. And the wild beasts outside echoed its pleading, getting more and more desperate, getting closer and closer. Their screams were almost deafening, overriding the baby’s cries.

And then there was utter silence.

Maya felt him in the room before she actually saw him—the faceless man from the woods. He hovered right next to her bed, the flat surface of his face turned in her direction.

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