Wayman
A gritty Southern noir unfolds at a rundown motel, where a bloodied stranger's arrival disrupts the night's eerie calm. An excerpt from the upcoming novel Lay Your Armor Down.
The motel was a squat row of eight rooms and sat at the end of a diminishing stretch of liquor stores and smoke shops and a boarded up juke joint. The last stop or the first stop of the town limits depending on which way you were going.
The dark highway stretched out into the night and the great big mouth of blackness reached to swallow the last room of the row. A light shined from the motel office and a chainsmoking woman with curlers in her hair sat in a swivel chair that creaked with the habitual movement of hand to mouth. She wore a fuzzy robe and fuzzy slippers and she was watching a scary movie she had seen a handful of times so there was nothing scary about it. She knew when the bad man in the mask would appear from the dark and she knew who was going to get it and she knew when to look away when the gore was more than she could handle.
Only two of the eight rooms were occupied and all eight rooms were the same. Two beds and shaggy green carpet and plastic curtains. She always booked the rooms starting from the far end so she could better ignore the shouts and sights of the comings and goings and she sat content in her smoke and solitude as the night had been quiet and looked like it was going to stay that way. She dabbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on the desk and picked a flake of crust from the chicken bone left in the greasy box and it had hit the time of night when she could doze if she wanted and she felt it coming on. She turned down the volume on the television and she tapped the screen. He’s right there, she thought. Trying to tell the young woman that the thing of nightmares was waiting for her on the other side of the closet door.
She spun around in the chair and looked out of the office window as the headlights appeared from the highway. Little bright eyes rising out of the dark. She got up and turned off the overhead light in the office in hopes that the car would keep going and she felt the irritation when it slowed and turned into the parking lot. But there would be no more work to do as she recognized the car from belonging to one of the two occupants. It parked at the end of the row. The headlights turned off and she waited for someone to climb out but the silhouette behind the wheel only sat there for what felt like a long time though all stillness felt like a long time in the pit of the night. She folded her arms and wondered. The driver was alone or she would have otherwise figured there were dirty things going on inside the car that couldn’t wait for the closed door of the room. Dirty or illegal or both. She gave it another minute and when nothing happened she sat back down in the swivel chair. The man in the mask had killed the young woman and was moving along the treelined sidewalk in a slow stalk with blood dripping from the blade as the one-note hum promised there would be more carnage to come.
She saw him in the meager light of the parking lot. The claw rips down the sleeves of the leather jacket and the bloodsoaked shirt and the hair falling around the bloodied face of the hanging head.
With the volume turned low she heard the bump of the car door closing. She looked back out of the window and she saw him in the meager light of the parking lot. The claw rips down the sleeves of the leather jacket and the bloodsoaked shirt and the hair falling around the bloodied face of the hanging head. He limped to the front of the car and stopped. Leaned against it as if he had taken a last step. Then he peeled off the jacket and dragged it along the ground as he limped on to the door of the motel room. There was blood down his arms and down his back and she rose from the chair and put her face close to the window as if to make sure she was seeing what she saw. He made it to the door and he dropped the jacket. He pulled the room key from his pocket and unlocked the door and he collapsed inside. His feet sticking out of the open door.
She had seen enough happen in this parking lot and in these rooms to know better than to get close so she picked up the phone and dialed the room number. It rang and rang as she watched the feet in the doorway. They did not move and then she hung up. There was a first aid kit in the bottom drawer of the desk and she lifted it out and then she picked up the phone to call an ambulance but before she dialed she saw the feet move and slip inside the room. And then a bloodied arm reached out and dragged the jacket inside and the door closed. She lit another cigarette and paced around the office and then she grabbed the first aid kit. She left the office and walked down the breezeway, shuffling through the shadows in her slippers and not wanting to be a part of any of this and overcome with the feeling that she was next in line for the man in the mask but she fought back her dread and she set the first aid kit by the door.
She knocked. The room was dark but then a lamp turned on and gave a pallid glow around the edge of the closed curtains. She knocked again and then hurried away and when she got back inside the office the man in the mask was killing again and she clicked off the television. She stood there in the grayblack and watched the room and just as she was reaching for the phone again the motel room door opened and the same bloodied arm reached out and pulled the first aid kit inside.
About the author
- Michael Farris Smithhttps://www.salvationsouth.com/author/michael-farris-smith/
