One Night In The Murder Bed

One Night In The Murder Bed

J.L. Hohler III

© 2014 One Night In The Murder Bed

All Rights Reserved.

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed here are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Contents

Checking In

The Talent

Cabaret of the Dead

Up Close and Personal

One Night In The Murder Bed

Strangers In The Night

Nothing Good Happens After Dark

Unraveling

Diversionary Tactics

The End Is Near

A Matter Of Time

The Big Finish

After

1.

Checking In

Mr. Sampson wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes.  And even though he did see it, he still didn’t want to believe it.  Not even when he took those first curious calls of tentative interest in the weekend and the tentative interest turned into an outright flood of reservations, and deposits were put down, and he knew people were coming, because they’d paid their money, did he want to believe it.  After all, what kind of people would honestly stay in a hotel all just so they could win a night’s sleep in a bed?  Lunatics, that was who.  Certifiable lunatics.

Looks like it’s going to be a good night, Edgar said, when those same lunatics started lining up in the early afternoon to check in, filling the parquet floor of the lobby.  "A very good night."

Looks like, Mr. Sampson agreed.

We’ll probably reach capacity at this rate.

Mmm-hmmm, Mr. Sampson said.  He left it unsaid the Stanley Arms Hotel hadn’t run at capacity in years.

And I’ll say this, Edgar said, somebody sure knew what they were doing when they had this idea.

Well, Mr. Sampson reluctantly muttered, when he could think of nothing better to say, I guess it takes all kinds.

What was that, Mr. Sampson?

Nothing, Mr. Sampson said.  Look, I’m going to see that everything’s ready with the bed.  You think you can handle this for a few minutes?

Sure thing, Mr. Sampson, you take your time, Edgar smiled.  You’re in good hands here.

Edgar sent him off with a tiny salute and Mr. Sampson couldn’t decide if it was genuine or petulant.  Coming up through the ranks, all the way from bellhop to being general manager, he was naturally suspicious of those with a fancy education, especially those dropped in his lap out of the clear blue sky like Edgar was.  It didn’t matter the powers that be gave assurances Edgar would only be there temporarily, to learn the business, and then be on his way.  They could say anything they liked – and did – but it didn’t change the kid was really there to learn his job and then take it.

* * * * *

Edgar welcomed the lull in the action when it came, just short of four.  Normally, there were no more than 50 rooms occupied on the busiest night – in his six months since the Capital Group assigned him to the hotel, they’d only once had more.  That left most days to feel rather sluggish and the hotel to exist as a pale shadow of itself.  To suddenly have that turned over, and to see the hotel the center of the universe, if only for one weekend, was exhilarating.  And exhausting.

The lull, though, proved short-lived and before long guests were lining up all over again, filling the lobby with a vast array of disparate characters.  At once, Edgar recognized most for what they were.  There were the believers, the desperate ones of rapidly advancing age with a slightly-too-intent look in their eyes, clinging dearly to the notion of an afterlife in the hope of relieving their anxiety over the creeping suspicion that death truly was the end of the road They were the ones eager to know if the whole thing was true or not, but too afraid of the answer to actually ask.

Enjoy your stay, Edgar said to them, all the same, hoping to wipe some of the fear and anxiety from their faces.

Mingled amongst the believers were the skeptics, the ones who’d doubt anything, including the color of the clear blue sky over their heads.  They all had a sinister glint in their gazes, the look of a child taking more pleasure than necessary in pulling the legs from grasshoppers.

I’m sure you’ll be quite comfortable in your stay, he assured them, too, when they checked in.  The smile was always the same.

I doubt it, the skeptics inevitably said.  Or, if not that, then, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Edgar knew this bunch – the skeptics – would get on quite well with Mr. Sampson, cut from the same cloth as they were.  Personally Edgar didn’t give two hoots whether they believed anything or not, only their credit cards cleared.

Sprinkled here and there were the largest group, the thrill-seekers, the ones who rode roller coasters to enjoy the feeling of approaching death without ever achieving it, and who lusted after the sort of deranged experience the hotel dangled before them.  They were just as desperate as the believers for the story to be true, for the excitement such a thing might pose – sleeping in a bed with a real ghost! – while secretly relieved when it proved otherwise.

Finally, there were the crackpots, come only to goof on it all, the same morbid souls who always made sure to stop and gawk at traffic accidents, unhappy in their days until they’d seen some honest-to-goodness disaster and more than a little aroused by the prospect of sleeping in a bed where a famous murder took place.

It will not disappoint, Edgar assured them all, when they asked over the bed.  It’s exactly what you expect it to be.

To a man there was relief with the answer, a pleasant feeling in hearing those words, even as Edgar knew, deep in his heart, that the bed was a bed and nothing more.

* * * * *

Charlie liked to call himself an original – he’d never missed a Frights and Bites Weekend.  Even all the way back in the beginning, when it was still called Bloody Con and they put it on in a conference room in the basement of the Mountain View Inn, before conventions had become the hip thing to do and they moved the whole enterprise to the civic center, and he’d had to convince his mother to let him go, he’d been there.

Why on earth do you want to go to that kind of thing? she moaned when he spied the first poster, a black and white handbill, tacked to a telephone pole, and he set to pestering her.  "All they do is talk about those movies and…and you know those will rot your brain."

He didn’t know it and said even if they would, he didn’t care.  He’d still want to go and so when she put up her resistance he redoubled his efforts until she finally broke and agreed to take him.

I’ll take you, but you’ll pay for it with your own money, she said.  I won’t be responsible for ruining you.

And she hadn’t been responsible, driving up and dropping him at that door and then driving off again.  She hadn’t even offered him so much as a dollar.

You’ll meet me back here at 6 o’clock, she warned, when he climbed from the car, because if you make me have to come in there and find you, you will regret it.

Older, he didn’t need his mother to take him any longer and honestly, never really felt a great need to go at all anymore anyway.  He didn’t watch the movies the way he used to when he was a kid and when he did, they didn’t really excite him the same as before – it was the unexpected side-effect of growing up.  Still, going to the Frights and Bites was like a family reunion, something he did every year whether he liked to or not.  Besides, he liked that he’d never missed a single one and could think of himself as the George Washington of the fest.

And if not him, he’d say, "then one of the other founding fathers."

Truth be told, he’d almost broken the string once before, when the best the festival could do was trot out some second-string Night of the Living Dead actor for the fourth time, to tell the same jokes and stories they all heard before.  Charlie all-but-decided he was just going to be done with it, for once and all, and he would have, if not for Marnie.

He couldn’t remember the first time he laid eyes on Marnie, she’d been a peripheral figure for a few years, flitting in and out of his sight and he hardly noticed.  It wasn’t until she broke ranks and left everybody else to dress up like their favorite movie monster, while she dressed as a Manson girl – one year as Sadie, the next as Patricia Krenwinkle – that she made an impression.

So, who’s it going to be next year? he finally asked her, when he worked up the nerve.  Linda Kasabian?

I don’t know, she said, impressed he could identify her costume so easily.  Most couldn’t.  I was thinking maybe Squeaky Fromme.

Her?

Why not her?

I don’t know.  Isn’t she just a little obvious?

Maybe, Marnie said.  What about Leslie Van Houten?

Charlie nodded.

Leslie Van Houten? he said.  I forgot about her.

They always do, Marnie said, then looked him up and down.  So what’s your story?  Three years you’ve been looking at me and the only thing you ever wear is but jeans.  What gives?  You too good for a costume?  Or too afraid.

I’m going for ‘anonymous victim’, Charlie said.  Or ‘third dead guy’.

Are you serious.

He shrugged.

I guess I just never had the urge for it.

"You don’t mind when others do it, she said, but for you, not so much?"

Something like that, he said.

Well, maybe one of these years you should dress up, she said.  You could go as Tex Watson and we can make a pair.  What do you say?  Wonder Twins?

He said he’d think about it, even as he knew he wouldn’t.  But just because he wouldn’t dress up didn’t mean he wouldn’t think about Marnie, his Frights and Bites Weekend girlfriend, because he did, and when the email with the convention schedule appeared in his inbox his first thought was of her.  His second thought was the animated ad in the sidebar.

"The Stanley Arms Hotel Presents ‘One Night In The Murder Bed’," the advertisement screamed.

One night in the murder bed, Charlie said to himself and, intrigued, followed the link, expecting to see an advertisement for some local theater troupe, putting on a play or some other nonsense, scheduling it to coincide with the convention and draw a big crowd, but it wasn’t that at all.  Instead, when he clicked through he found it a different thing altogether.

"Your paid two-day reservation for Frights and Bites Weekend automatically qualifies you for the chance to win one night in the very bed where Ida Bell Washington met her grisly end, he read on.  Don’t miss your chance to lie down with history!"

The idea of sleeping in a murder bed was ghoulish to him, no matter how famous the story might be, but there was something in the thought of winning that bed and making it the first night he spent with Marnie that appealed to him and so, even though he normally stayed at the Ramada, a much more reasonable and convenient hotel – the Stanley Arms was clear across the other side of town from the Civic Center and fancied itself as being fancy and charged like it, instead of accepting what it was, which was tired and broken – he booked a room and decided if ever he was going to do something more than just sit on his hands, this was the year.

* * * * *

Mrs. Beadle was not born blind.  Until the age of two she’d seen everything there was to see.  From the bright blue sky above to the green grass below, she saw everything.  But then she’d taken down with the sickness – she couldn’t remember if it was Scarlet Fever or meningitis, because her mother only would say she took ill – and it stole her eyesight from her.  But though she’d once seen, at 73 years old her sighted-life was so long in her past it might as well never happened at all.  Often, she suspected it hadn’t.

But just because her eyes did not work did not mean the wonders of the world were a secret to her.  After all, there was Rachel, hired by the family to be her guide and companion and take care of the things that people with eyes excelled at, such as making reservations and doing the marketing.

Also, there were the visions.

While the fever – or meningitis – might’ve stolen her eyesight it’d left her with the visions and even if they came when they pleased, showing her what they pleased, and could never be predicted or truly understood, she wouldn’t have traded even a single one for all the eyesight in the world.  Faced with the choice of giving up the visions to cure the blindness, she’d long decided she’d rather be blind.

I think they’re ready for us now, dear, she said to Rachel, quietly, just as the clerk invited them to the desk.  Ms. Beadle could not see him but there in her mind was his name: Edgar.

How did you –?

Never mind, dear, Mrs. Beadle said and patted Rachel’s hand.  Then, to the clerk, I believe we have a reservation, young man – under the name of Beadle.

The clerk smiled, though he could see she was blind, and then set to tapping away at his computer.  Finally, he confirmed the reservation.

"Now, the reservation shows you requested two single beds, he said.  Mr. Beadle is not joining you?"

He’s not expected, Mrs. Beadle said.  There’s only my companion and myself.

I see.

He’s passed, Mrs. Beadle explained, though she needn’t have, these 12 years now.

Oh, the clerk said, a tone of embarrassment creeping in.  I’m sorry.

Never mind that, Mrs. Beadle said.  "After all, there’s always the possibility he will come, even if he’s not expected."

The clerk didn’t say anything, merely grunted uncomfortably and went on with his clicking and tapping away.

Now, you’re not going to put me in a smoking room, I hope, Mrs. Beadle said.  I can’t abide the smell.

No ma’man, he said.  Not a smoking room.

Good, she said.  Does it have a lovely view?  I’m so tired of having a room that faces a brick wall.

A view?

That’s right.

But, um…you’re…aren’t you –

Yes, spit it out, she said.  "I’m