#my sister was like what is goth boy’s house of darkness. like as an establishment. and i was like well…it’s the tortured poet’s dept

[roanofarc]

the REAL tortured poets department: goth boy’s house of darkness

[cameronlsummers]

1. From the Files of Spook House – #055:  The Elevator Game

Hand to God, I really wish he hadn't done it, but Manny knew someone who worked in the hotel.  I wish we hadn't decided to rent a room there or use that fucking glass elevator.  I mean, we only knew about the Game because of that youtube video of that poor girl about what happened at the Cecil Hotel in L.A.  We should have known.

We'd all been through our fair share of weird shit.  I figured that we would be fine.

Let me back up.

We were – are – the Spook House Group.  Or, when Ronnie and our Fearless Leader are fighting and she moves out for a week or two, Tom insists on calling us the “Spook House Boys.”  I don't say anything about it.  It feels needlessly exclusionary.  I mean, just because Tom fucking Knight is having blue balls, all non-male candidates are excluded?

It's the 21st century.  Get over it.

But we are the Spook House Group.  And this was the Elevator Game Test.

The Hotel at 43rd and Broadway was the site.  It's built around a huge central atrium that puts vaporwave music in mind.  A lot of big leafy plants and some fountains, and down on the bottom there are tables and a carpeted area that look like the world's most upscale food court, tiles done in dark rich browns and deep red accents.  There's a tiered fountain in the middle that looked like it was made in imitation of Spanish Mission architecture.  Its spacial vocabulary was a postmodern imitation of the Country Club Plaza – world's best high-rent strip mall, – which was a corporate bastardization of Seville, itself an imitation of Roman architecture done with the Arabic and Gothic alphabets on baroque stationary.

Copy of a copy of a copy.  The mannequin in Jean Baudrillard's grave was spinning.

In the middle of this atrium is a bank of three glass elevators. You need an elevator with at least ten stories for the Elevator Game. That's the first requirement.

The second is a Participant or Player.  I insisted on the term “Operator” for our internal terminology, because whoever yells the loudest about such things tends to get their way and I preferred it's sound.  So the second requirement was the Operator, me:  Jules Ng Miller.

No non-player was allowed on the elevator, so we were doing it at 4 AM, an hour after the last bar in Westport closed and all the out-of-town visitors had holed up in their rooms.

To play the game you start at the first floor and ride the elevator to the following floors in the following order without exiting it until the end.

Fourth.  Second.  Sixth.  Second.  Tenth.  Fifth.

At the fifth floor (according to “the lore,” by which I mean “the internet,” and more specifically, I mean “the Korean-language page we got this information from and plugged into Google Translate”) a “beautiful young woman” will get on the elevator.  You're not supposed to look at her or speak to her, or else she might “keep you forever.”

I know.  I cringed, too.

At this point, you press “1” and one of two things happen.  If the elevator descends, you get off at the first floor and walk away. If, instead, it ascends, you get out and walk around: at this point, you're supposedly in another world.  To get back, you return to the exact same elevator and punch in the order in reverse.  You've got to leave so that the woman isn't there when you return.

I'm the subject.  The Operator. With me here are Tom Knight (Fearless Leader; Camera 1, 5th floor,) Veronica “Ronnie” Wagner (Second-in-Command; Camera 2, 1st and 2nd floor,) Manuel “Manny” Rojas (Off-duty paramedic; Camera 3, 4th and 6th Floor,) and Franklin “Frankie” Fallon (resident skeptic; Camera 4, 10th floor.)  Veronica and Manny move between the different floors as I move up and down using the stairs.  The idea is that someone can see me every time I stop and I give a sign that everything is okay.  We record it so that there's a record of the whole thing.

It's just some dumb internet shit, but it's tied up with that whole thing that happened in L.A. a couple years back.  I'm kind of haunted by it, but I don't really show it to the others.  Tom would make fun of me, and the other two would feel awkward.  That girl could have been my cousin.  Maybe not a sister.  I never knew my family, so I guess I've just got this phantom limb thing when it comes to people who vaguely resemble me.

She was supposedly doing this thing before she disappeared, only to be found a month later in the water tower on top of the Cecil Hotel.

I began to wonder if this was a race thing as we were about to start.

I mean, we had drawn straws, but they had just conveniently chosen the guy who looked most like the person in the video.  The random element didn't really help me get away from that.

“You okay?” Veronica asked, pointing the camera at me.

I looked at her, at the projecting lens of the camera, then back at her.  She was watching me through the range-finder, and the whole thing was honestly a bit alienating.  She wasn't paying attention to me but to an image of me, an electronic simulacrum created out of bits and pixels.

Ronnie worked in a call center, and could turn on the charm when she had to.  She never did when she didn't have to, though.  I could understand that:  she had to dress up in slacks and a blouse for work, she had to raise the pitch of her voice, she had to smile. When she was with us she dressed in jeans and a tank top under a flannel shirt, she spoke in a husky voice, and she never smiled. Manny and Tom worked in health care, but if I had to pick one of us for surgeon material, it would be Veronica Elma Wagner.

“Just nerves,” I said.

She paused.

“Makes sense.  You think anything is going to happen?”

I shook my head as the door opened.

“No.  Just feels like bad luck,” I said as I stepped in.

“What do you mean?” she asked, adjusting the focus.

No way to back out of it, now, though.  I hit “4.”

“Like I'm making fun of a dead person.”

Part of me was gratified that she looked up at me as the door slid shut.

I took out my phone and hit record on it before sticking it in my breast pocket, lens exposed.  I turned to look out the window, mugging the camera Manny was holding like I was on “The Office.” After a second, I gave a tired “thumbs up,” signaling “all clear.”

Manny didn't live in the house anymore.  His room had become my room, and he had washed his hands of things for almost six months, but he still worked with Tom and was eventually dragged back in.  I liked him.  We weren't friends, or anything, but he was just magnetic: handsome, reliable, charming.  Good to have around.  I felt bad that he was spending a late night with a bunch of assholes like the Spook House Group.

Once the doors opened, I waited a second and then hit “2.”

Veronica had just gotten into position, having run up from the first floor.  The door dinged open, and I gave her the “all clear.”

When the door closed, I hit “6.”

Third…

Fourth...

As I passed Tom on the fifth floor, I flipped him the double bird. I could see the son of a bitch just laughing.

He was getting a kick out of this.  He was such a juvenile piece of shit.  I don't get why Owen kept putting him in charge of these tests.  Probably just the shouting.  Tom could argue for hours over minutiae and there was no getting him to shut up about it.  Force of personality, my ass.  He'd known the other three since high school, and I got the feeling that he'd just eroded them, worn them down until they didn't have the will to put a stop to it.

It must have to do with his height, I figured.  Even Veronica had an inch or two on him, and he was the type who would never really pack on that much muscle or fat, so he had the personality of a bantam rooster on speed.  All twitchy and looking to establish dominance.

That's unfair.  It's also true.

Unlike the rest of us, Tom hadn't been scarred by the weird shit.  He'd been empowered by it.  He'd become convinced of his own importance, deriving meaning from it.  Then it had slipped from his life, retreating from it like some woodland creature running away from the light of a forest clearing.  He wanted it back, and didn't understand how traumatized the rest of us were.

Our worst moment mapped on to his best, and he couldn't put himself in our shoes.  He was all about this.  That's why he was leader, I imagine.  He wanted it.  He wanted it, bad.

I lowered my hands and looked at Manny just getting in to position as the door dinged and opened to the sixth floor.  I raised my hand and gave a shaky thumbs up.

The silence was getting to me.  Elevators were stressful places.  It was a machine whose sole purpose was to get you from one place to another, and I spent all day, every day, driving.

The door closed.  I hit “2.”

Wave to Ronnie there.

Up to “10.”

This was the longest period of largely unobserved travel.  I shouldn't have been nervous about it.  The eyes of my housemates – well, housemates and Manny – were bothersome when present, but I just felt anxious when they weren't watching.  There was no winning, really.  There was no way to get comfortable.

Maybe I could get off.  Maybe I could trade with somebody.

No...no...we had drawn straws.  That was the protocol.

I gave Frankie a thumbs up at “10.”

The big, blonde ex-goth waved back at 10.  He was how I knew the rest of these people:  we had worked at the same pizzeria for a long period, and I had moved in just after I left in the most spectacular fashion.  He had jumped ship shortly after in solidarity, switching over to manning the grill over at the Westport Flea Market, where he was stoked about the fact that he worked in the same building as the former site of Bob's Bizarre Bazaar, a shop operated by Kansas City's most famous serial killer, Bob Berdella.  I wonder if the serial killer fascination was what had led to him being a goth kid, if it has been nascent in the good Catholic school boy he had once been.  Had he been watching Silence of the Lambs in the wilds of the Southwestern Suburbs, thinking about Ed Gein while biking around the cul-de-sac?  Or had it been an outgrowth of that subculture?  A perverse fascination that he had developed after the torn ACL moved him from football to theater?

I guess I'll never know.

He waved back.

Absentmindedly, I hit “5.”

The elevator descended.

When the door opened, I turned sharply away, looking out the window at Tom, who was narrating something into his camera.  Someone else had gotten on the elevator.  Tom grinned and gave me the thumbs up.

The beautiful young woman from the internet had stepped on.

Ꚛ

Tom spoke low, directly into the microphone:  “Young, Asian woman getting on the elevator...”

He squinted.  “I think? I can't tell her age…Wait!  Shit, that's because she's far away, not because she's – ”

He trailed off.

“She looks pretty well-dressed?  Like put-together?  The sort of clothes you would wear to a job interview.  Like...one of those dresses that's worn over a shirt, leaving only the collar and sleeves out.  She's got a white shirt on.”

The walkie-talkie he had in his breast pocket crackled, and Manny spoke.

“Shirt or blouse?”

“What's the difference?”

“How loose is it?” Manny asked.

“I don't know!  It's pretty far away.”

“Let's just call it a blouse.”

“Okay, fine,” Tom said.  “Blouse, then.  She also looks like she's got some panty-hose on.”

“Also, the dress you're talking about is a jumper,” Manny said.

“How do you know so much about women's clothing?” Tom asked.

“Hey, I've got hobbies you don't know about.  I don't hang out with you guys all the time.”

“I think he means that he just pays attention,” Veronica said.

“Yeah, Manny's pretty observant,” Frankie added.

“Shut up!  This isn't important,” Tom said, and waved, gesturing to Jules for continue.

Slowly, Jules swallowed and shook his head.

“He's refusing to continue.  I can't believe it,” Tom said.

“Hey, we've got confirmation.  Lady just appeared out of nowhere, right?” Frankie said.  “Can't we just call this one?”

“I...I think? She might have?”

“Were you not paying attention?” Veronica asked, barely hiding her exasperation.

“I'm going to call him,” Tom said.

He ignored the walkie-talkie for a moment and pulled out his phone, hit the contact information for Jules, and raised it to his ear.

Jules pulled out his phone, looked at it, and sighed.  It was a visible, dramatic sigh.  He looked over at Tom, made direct eye contact, and touched something on the screen.  It went to voicemail.

“Son of a bitch didn't accept my call!” Tom complained.

He almost missed the woman say something.  Almost missed Jules go rigid and fight the urge to look at her.

Jules reached over and hit “1.”

The elevator didn't move.  Its lights flickered.  Tom wrinkled his nose as an unpleasant smell assaulted his senses.  An electric buzz seemed to emanate from it.

There was a pained screeching noise as the elevator shot up to the tenth floor far faster than it should have.  Jules fell down, but the woman remained standing.

“Fuck!” someone shouted.

“What –?” someone else began

After a moment, Frankie spoke: “Uh...guys, the elevator is full of smoke.”

The elevator began to slowly slide down toward the first floor. There was an uncomfortable ratcheting noise that accompanied it down.

“I'm only seeing one silhouette,” Manny said at the sixth.

“First floor,” Tom said.

“How do you know it's…?” Frankie asked.

“First floor,” Veronica said, backing Tom up.

“Right,” Manny said.

Tom broke down the tripod, pulling the camera free after a second and began to head for the first floor, taking the stairs down. Veronica was already ahead of him, but he figured he would be second to reach –

Manny passed him, carrying his camera by the tripod, and Tom cursed under his waning breath.

In the lobby, Veronica was filming the woman from behind a planter, peeking the lens of the camera out around the planter.  Manny was crouched next to her behind the same planter, completely hidden from the woman's view.

Tom walked right past them, and began to film the woman, walking around her slowly and steadily.  Her black jumper dress was worn over a cream-colored blouse, all of which fit well enough that someone more knowledgeable than Tom would assume that it had been tailored to fit her.  She was about as tall as Tom was, with most of her height in her legs.  The cold white smoke around her feet began to dissipate, revealing that she was wearing flats.  Tom wondered if Manny would want to explain the difference to him.

She noticed the movement, and turned to look at him.

“What was that about?” she asked.  “Do you know?”

She had a pronounced accent, but spoke confidently and clearly. English might not be her first language, but she had been speaking it long enough to have a firm command of the language, Tom assumed.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Tom said, training his camera on her.

She looked at him, down at the camera, then back up at him.

“You're filming me?” she asked, confused and dismayed.

“You bet your ass.  Our friend just disappeared and you stepped out of the elevator he was in.  So unless the Elevator Game is some elaborate gender-swap ritual and you're Jules – in which case, you look a lot better as a girl than as a guy, I mean, just saying – then – ”

Veronica, having set down her camera, stepped in and cut Tom off.

“Tom?  Shut up.  How many times do we have to tell you to be more careful?”

Tom turned to look at her, uncomprehenidng.

She stepped between Tom and the woman, almost blocking his view with the camera lens.  Tom tried to correct, Veronica grimaced at him, and then used one finger to push the camera away to not record the woman.

“I'm sorry about him,” she said.  “He was never the same after he stopped huffing glue, you know?”

“I never – !” Tom began to protest.

Manny took Tom by the shoulders and pulled him back a step.

The woman nodded slowly, and her posture relaxed.  Veronica took a step closer, but didn't invade her personal space.

“If you could return our friend,” Veronica said, “we would be very grateful.”

The woman cocked her head to the side.

“Your friend?  Oh!  The man from the elevator.  He slipped away, I won't be able to find him.”

Veronica slumped slightly.

“Oh.  Right.  Sorry to bother you.”

“It's okay,” the woman said.  “I'm just a bit turned around. I think I got into a liminality without realizing it.”

“Liminality?”

“Liminality.  Heterotopos.  Thin place.”

Veronica nodded slowly.

“A place that is part of two or more spaces.  A...crosshatch?”

“I think I understand.”

The woman looked at Veronica appraisingly.  Her large, dark eyes put Veronica in mind of a cenote, an unexpected yawning well in the surface of the earth.

“You seem like you might,” was all the woman said.

“Can I ask who you are?” Veronica asked.

“Forgive me,” the woman said.  “I don't really give out my real name lightly.  To explain myself simply, I'm a...hmm...a traveler, a seeker.”

She reached into a pocket sewn into the side of her dress, and pulled out something that looked like a cigarette case: aluminum-shiny, with an embossed bit of cursive text on it – “CABIN FILTERS” – and opened it up.  She pulled a business card out of it, on which was written:

Ms. 5

SEANCES * CARTOMANCY * PALMISTRY

KC-0057-665-93

“Is this a phone number?”

“What?  Of course it is.”

“What are you searching for?” Tom asked, cutting in.

“Something I don't think I can find here,” she said regretfully.

“You're being awful evasive,” Tom muttered.

“And you're prying,” the woman said, an oddly satisfied smile on her face.  “So in the Prisoner's Dilemma of politeness, let us both defect.”

Tom blinked.

“...What?”

“I must get back to my search.  This is a dead end.”

Franklin rounded his corner and raised his camera just as the woman climbed back aboard the elevator.  She bent down, studied the panel, and held down two buttons while pressing a series of others  in a particular sequence.

She looked back at the group.  Frankie zoomed in on her face.

“Be seeing you,” she said with a smile.

The door closed.  The lights flickered.  A strange, pungent smell wafted in cold waves from the elevator doors before the car rose with a pained shriek.

“What the hell is that?” Tom said, coughing.

“I don't know,” Veronica said, waving the air in front of her face.

“Kind of like...it smells like how it would smell if cinnamon could rot,” Manny said.

“Seriously, what the hell was that?” Tom asked.

Veronica sighed.

“The first confirmed incident in like...a decade?”

“Guys?” Franklin said, holding his nose.

“What?” Tom said.

“Where's Jules?”

A moment of silence followed.

“Fuck,” Tom said, quietly.