If Walls Could Talk

"If walls could talk," Joshua mumbled under his breath as he walked through the ancient old arches of the hotel. Approaching the wide check-in desk was like stepping back in time, but the image was ruined by the girl with her phone out and her AirPods stuffed in her ears. She was smacking her gum and paroosing facespace or tictacs or whatever people her age did. Joshua hadn't really had time for any of that in a while.

He hadn't seemed to have much time for anything these days.

The girl at the desk looked young enough to be his daughter, and her smile was that perfect mix of customer service charm and barely masked indifference.

"Good afternoon, sir. How can I help you?"

Joshua looked up at her, and she must have seen something that spooked her in his hollow eyes because he saw some of that indifference slip into something resembling concern. Not concern for him; that would have been a little too genuine an emotion to show to a stranger. She was concerned that he might be a weirdo. She had clearly been warned about spotting weirdos, the hotel likely got its share of rent and ditchers or guys who wound up naked in the hot tub at three am, and she was on the lookout for trouble before it reared its head. The hotel manager especially had them keeping an eye out for the sort of weirdos who became permanent residents.

If she saw that on his face, Joshua knew he'd be screwed.

He tried to fix his face, but it was a struggle.

"Checking in," he said, handing her his credit card and reservation paperwork. She looked at the paperwork as if the concept were foreign to her before turning to the computer and clicking away at the register. Joshua figured it was likely something she didn't deal with regularly. The Leeser Moore was not some posh establishment, not some trendy spot that housed celebrities or jet setters. It was an old hotel that attracted tourists and people who liked to bask in historic places. That's why Susan had come here, after all. She's been here to photograph the hotel for a travel magazine, her fourth assignment as a freelancer and her last.

She pulled him up, and Joshua saw her bite her lip when the room number popped up.

"Ooh, that's gotta be a mistake. Sorry, sir, but that room isn't one we usually rent out."

"I'm aware," Joshua said, "that's why I requested it."

She looked shocked, like she didn't know what to say, "I hate to tell you this, but someone went missing in there pretty recently?"

She had pitched her voice low like it was a rat problem or some mold that they could have steam-cleaned out.

Joshua wanted to be angry. He wanted to tell her that he knew someone had gone missing in there and that six months and five days wasn't recent to him. Six months and five days was when his world had crumbled, and it was a day he would never forget. He wanted to tell her that his wife was not some rat infestation or a mold colony that some cleaner, poison, or time would erase. He wanted to tell her all these things in a flurry of anger and hatred, but he knew she wouldn't understand.

"I’ve been informed. I like to stay in rooms like that and try to gauge paranormal happening. It's a hobby of mine, and since I was in the city anyway, I figured I would take that room."

The young woman sighed as she finished checking him in. That's good; she just thought he was a weirdo. Weirdo was fine. A weirdo might set up some cameras, pull out a ghost box or an ouija board, light some candles, and pretend to be a ghostbuster or a medium for a few days before leaving. One look at the suitcase probably told her he had brought all his toys with him so he could play pretend, but she had no idea what games he intended to play.

There was only one tool in that bag, and it wasn't for playing.

"And you're all set," she said, handing him his keycard, "please enjoy your stay at the Leeser Moore."

Her smile was back, that fabricated grin that hid her disinterest. She was just waiting for him to leave so she could get back to snapchatting or Twittering or whatever she was doing. She'd have something to tell her friends about tomorrow when she came in for her morning shift and heard about the mess he'd left in the room.

Joshua pushed the button for the elevator and rode it up to the seventh floor. The hallway was done in that early eighties cinema style that made you think the whole floor was furry and sticky. The carpet patterns shifted in slightly nauseating diamonds as he walked down the hall toward his room. The thought that this would be the last thing he saw was a little disappointing, but it was the reality of things. With any luck, his daughter wouldn't get his letter until Monday, not unless the post office near the college was feeling excessively ambitious. It would still be too late for her to stop him. Joshua had laid out everything he needed to, explaining that he couldn't live without her mother and that if her spirit resided somewhere in this room, he wanted to be with her. She could have his money, his savings, the house, the car, and anything else he owned so she could finish school and make something of herself.

All he wanted was Susan.

He came to the door of room 712 much too soon, and as he slid the key into the lock, he glanced at the room where his wife had spent the last hours of her life.

As the door came open, Joshua was disappointed to find that it was just another bland hotel room. Two beds, a dresser, an old tv that looked ready for the dump, a flimsy-looking chair, a nightstand that doubtlessly held a bible, and walls, their color pallet sitting somewhere between warm brown sugar and runny crap. Had this really been Susan's final destination? Had these uninteresting walls been the last thing she saw before leaving this room for the last time? Joshua sat his suitcase down and took a seat on the bed, suddenly hoping not. Let her have seen the sights, taken a meal, and taken her final breath anywhere but here.

The sun set outside the window as he sat on the bed, casting shadows across the room. As the darkness came to fill the empty space, Joshua became aware of strange patterns on the wall. The smears seemed to move as the shadows became gantries, and some looked eerily like faces. Suddenly, the room was far too crowded, the multitudes watching him from the walls of the room, their judgment palpable. Joshua could hear the nightlife waking up, the people rumbling from the street below as the cabs and music created a strange cacophony.

Joshua opened the suitcase and pulled out the gun, deciding that this would be a fine time to do it. Every minute he put it off was another chance for something to go wrong. It also gave his courage a chance to slip. If Kara got the letter and he couldn't follow through, he'd be spending the foreseeable future in a mental facility. Having to sit in the sterile room in a paper gown, orderlies medicating him to the point of catatonia would be worse than death. As he set the cold barrel against his head, he whispered a final apology to Susan as his finger hovered over the trigger.

"STOP!"

It took every ounce of trigger control not to blow the top of his head off by accident.

Joshua turned, his eyes growing wide as he recognized the voice that had yelled at him. He wasn't sure what he expected, a ghost or a manifestation or maybe just a final mental break that would prove less supernatural and more existential, but he never expected to see one of the slightly expressive wall faces staring at him with panic. It reminded him of a mannequin's face, featureless and barely expressive, but as he watched it, it spoke again, and he heard the voice of his dead wife coming from the bland wallpaper.

"Please, I can't watch you kill yourself."

Joshua crawled across the bed, his shocked face locked onto the unremarkable one looking at him from the wall.

"Susan?"

The eyeless face stared at him as he got closer, and despite being devoid of anything remotely close to features, Joshua began to see his dead wife's face beneath it. The scar on her cheek she'd gotten in high school. The small nose he loved to kiss the tip of. The eyes that were slightly too close together. Her lips that looked just as full and sensuous as they had before she'd left.

The closer he looked, the more he saw, and the more he saw, the closer he came.

"Is it you?"

"It is," she said, the corners of her mouth pulling up as she studied him, "It's good to see you."

"But how?" he said, stuttering as he leaned off the bed, closer and closer to that wall of perpetual faces.

"I don't know," she whispered, her lips forming the words delicately, "I woke up to see a face in the wall looking out at me, and as we stared at each other, it began to speak."

Joshua leaned in closer, slipping off the bed as his knees brought him closer to the spot on the wall where Susan's face lay.

"He asked what I was doing in his room, and after I explained that I had rented it in this hotel, he told me how he had been staying here on a business trip when he had seen the faces as well. They all live here, Josh. Once I became a part of them, I got to know them and heard their stories. They were all once people who stayed in this very room. People on vacation, people on business, people with families, people estranged, all seeking purpose in something and finding it here."

He crawled on his knees like a penitent before an idol, but his mind demanded caution. The other faces were looking at him, pushing against the wall like someone behind a thick plastic sheet as they tried to break free. Joshua could see their multitudes in the dim light from the window as they pressed and receded like the tide.

"Come closer, my dear," she whispered, "it's hard to talk through this veil."

Joshua obliged, now halfway between the bed and the wall. He wanted to turn on the lights and take a better look at her face, but he was afraid that the light might ruin it. Hadn't he failed to see it until dark? Hadn’t he been sitting in this room for hours, waiting for the right time to join her? Now here she was, coming to him in his time of need.

"Wait for me. I'll join you. I don't want to live without you, Susan. My life is meaningless without you. Can you take me where you are? Is there some way?"

"I wanted to apologize," she whispered, and Joshua came a little closer as her words were lost in the blare of a car horn.

"You have nothing to apologize for." he told her, the tears spilling thickly down his face, "you didn't ask to leave me. I came here to join you, to see if your spirit lingered here and I could find you once I passed on. Kara is grown, she doesn't need me, but I need you."

He was closer now, and if he had reached out, he could have almost touched that porcelain face.

That livewire in his head, that ancient alarm that warns of danger, just wouldn't stop going off, though, and his hands trembled as he tried to make them reach.

"Not for that. I want to apologize for what I did while I was here."

He felt his breath stick in his throat, his next words held in check as he waited for her to go on.

In spite of himself, he crawled a little closer.

"When the face woke me up, I wasn't in bed alone. I had gone out to see the nightlife, to see the city, and as I sat in one of the trendier bars, I met someone. He was charming, a real ladies' man, and one thing led to another, and I let him convince me to take him back to my room. I could blame it on the wine, but I know that wasn't all of it. I was bored, Joshua. I felt trapped by our life, smothered by what we had built, and that's why I agreed to the job in the first place. I wanted something new, something different, and though I didn't set out to find someone else, I ended up being untrue to you."

Joshua felt the ice slithering into his heart, his lungs seething as his body shook with the effort. He was drowning, he was suffocating, and his body refused to draw in breath. How could she do this to him? This couldn't be true. This was something messing with him. This couldn't be his wife, she would never do that, she would…she couldn't….

Even though he was left breathless by her secret, his knees still carried him closer to her.

"Please," she whispered, "please say something. Can you forgive me? It was a lapse in judgment, and I'm sorry."

"I don't care," he rasped, his breath returning with his affirmation, "I don't care what you've done. I forgive you, and I want to be with you again."

His hands slid around the edges of the mask, caressing her face as he leaned in close.

"Please don't leave me again. I can't live without you."

He leaned his head against her mask and felt her perfect lips turn up in a smile.

"Then let us never be apart again, my love."

He felt her lips twist into a smile too large for a human mouth to contain. The corners tore, her cheeks splitting as her mouth opened wide like a snake. He did not struggle as her mouth enveloped him, the face elongating as she pulled him into her mouth. He opened his eyes to see that her face had grown to take in the whole wall. Her features had warped into something akin to the face on one of the demonic statues you saw on churches sometimes, and it warped and tilted oddly on the flat plane.

"You aren't really my wife, are you?"

"No, but I can take you to her. You'll find many new friends inside the walls."

* * * * *

"I hate going into this room," Maria said, her cart making a strangely chuffy noise on the carpet as she and Loa came inside.

"Why? It's no different from the other rooms."

"I just always feel like something is watching me in here."

As she fixed the bed, Maria couldn't help but glance over her shoulder at the wall. Loa was wrong. This room was unlike anything else in the hotel. The paint here always looked like faces, and the faces were always staring right at her when she came to clean. As she looked at the wall, the paint looked thick in places, like a splash of blood left to dry. The faces leered at her from every corner, and she squinted a little as she noticed a new one. She cleaned this room once a day, the seventh floor was her assigned floor, after all, and she could have sworn that no face had been in that spot before.

As she watched, it almost seemed to turn to her, the featureless face somehow regarding her.

"Hello," it rasped, its voice thick and coarse but also inviting as it fell over her like a…

"Did you say something, Maria?" Loa asked, and the little maid shook herself as she turned away from the wall.

When she glanced back, the face was still there but had become flat and featureless again.

"Let's get out of here," she said suddenly, taking her cart and pushing it towards the door.

"But we haven't cleaned the room yet." Loa countered, looking aghast as Maria beat a hasty retreat.

Maria took the do not disturb sign from behind the door and hung it on the knob.

"We can clean it tomorrow. No one will bother the room with that sign on the door."

She was glad to see Loa coming behind her, but she glanced back at the face as it regarded her from the doorway.

She prayed she would have the strength to turn away tomorrow, but she knew that someday her own face might look down from that same wall.

Maybe it wouldn't seem like such a bad idea on that day.