Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

   “The Hollow Men”

T.S. Eliot

Chapter One

Max killed the big Kawasaki Ninja.

A hot wind whistled, blowing sand and dust cross-wise. A tumbleweed the size of a large dog scratched its way across the road and into the desert.

He stepped up onto the old fashioned boardwalk, his boots clomping on the weathered wood, and made his way into Riker’s Bar.

Inside, the room was dim and smoky, despite laws to the contrary.

A few scattered cowpoke-looking men sat at tables with varying amounts of empty beer bottles in front of them, three men at the bar.

No one looked.

Max strode to the bar and threw a leg over a stool.

“Bushmill’s. Beer back,” he said.

The bartender gave him a long look, nodded, and turned to serve up the drinks.

Max put his elbows on the bar and used the mirror to scope out the room.

Just as he thought.

He’d counted eight men at the assorted tables on his way in.

Now there were nine. And a woman in a red dress.

“A goddamn red dress,” Max said. “Shit.”

What the hell is it with dead women and red? Do women attracted to danger and bad men like red? Did their men dress them before they killed them?

“Excuse me?” said the bartender.

Max looked away from the mirror.

“Nothing,” he said. “Thinking out loud.”

The bartender gave him another look.

“I seen you before?” he asked.

“Doubt it,” Max said. “Never been here.”

“Huh,” said the bartender, “I would’ve sworn....”

“I get that a lot,” Max said. “Common type: Bald guy, goatee.”

“Huh,” said the bartender again.

Max looked around the bar: booths against the wall, tables scattered at the periphery of a dance floor, some pool tables and actual pinball machines in the back. Standard. He didn’t imagine there was much need for anything to draw in customers: those who drank would come.

“Bar’s been here a while?” Max said.

The bartender leaned back and crossed his arms.

“Yup. Big times here in the old days.”

“It goes back that far? Oil boom days?”

“Yup. Black Callahan’s place, originally.”

Max frowned.

“Black Callahan. He the one that got himself hanged?”

Max scrutinized the man next to the woman in the red dress in the mirror.

Big fellow. Old-fashioned fancy, shirt with a string tie, black leather vest, cowboy hat. Jet black hair, beady eyes, five o-clock shadow like sandpaper on his face.

The man’s gaze stayed fixed, riveted. Unnatural. He didn’t move. Didn’t blink.

Neither did the woman beside him.

She was a beauty. The red dress complimented her red hair. Fair skin, with a dusting of freckles. Bright eyes that never moved or blinked. 

The couple looked as if they’d been captured in amber, a static holographic image.

The bartender stepped forward.

“You know the history?”

Max nodded.

“Heard of it.”

The men in the room worked their drinks, their talk low.

The couple at the table shifted.

The big man’s face colored and contorted, a mixture of rage and pain rippling across his features, bending them into the mask of a devil.

The woman’s bright eyes bulged, and the top of her head dented in, blood and brain matter running down her pretty face.

“Killed her right here in this bar,” the bartender said.

“Figured,” said Max.

“Bashed her head in, that table over there.” The bartender gestured at an empty table in the back. “With a hammer.”

“Hmm,” said Max. “Looks more like the butt of a pistol, to me.”

“What?” said the bartender.

Max shook his head, looked away.

“Heard different. That’s all.”

Max picked up the shot of Bushmill’s.

“Bottoms up.”

He threw the shot back in a fluid motion, grimaced, picked up the short glass of beer and tossed that down on top of the whisky.

“Better,” he said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

“You sure I ain’t see ya before?” the bartender asked.

Max shook his head.

“I told you. I’m a common type, that’s all.”

The bartender’s eyes didn’t waver, “Nope. Something tells me there ain’t nothing common about you at all. Not a thing.”

Max’s smile never touched his eyes.

“So I’ve been told,” he said. “What do I owe you?”  

He reached back to pull the wallet from his pocket, and the bartender jumped a little.

“Easy,” said Max. “Just getting my wallet.”

“Sorry,” the bartender said. “Just feeling a little spooked, I guess. Been feeling that way since you come in.”

Max met the bartender’s gaze until the bartender turned to polish the glass in his hand.

“Yup,” Max said. “Get that a lot.”

He slipped a ten dollar bill out of his wallet and laid it on the bar.

“Keep the change,” he said.

The bartender offered him a nervous smile in return. “Thanks,” he said.

Max nodded, took a last look at the tableau in the mirror—the demonically twisted face on the big guy, the bulged eyes and brain matter on the face of the redhead—then turned to go.

Just eight men in the room.

“Right,” Max said.

He eased the door closed behind him on the way out, pulled it shut.

Boots on the boardwalk and back to his motorcycle.

“Shit,” he said. “Cannot get a break.”

He threw a leg over the bike, kicked it off its stand and started it up.

“Seriously.”

The bartender picked up Max’s shot and beer glasses, carried them to the sink as the rumble of Max’s motorcycle faded.

He spun quickly, shot a look at the room, relaxed a little, and turned back to the sink.

Chapter Two

Max read the sign as he flashed by.

Aston: Food. Gas. Rest.

Looked to be a town of a couple of hundred at best. Just another farm town slowly dying in the 21st century.

The sun was low against the rolling green hills, and Max figured this was his best bet for the night. He kicked the bike down into fifth, the 998cc engine howling, slowing the bike, fourth, third, then eased the bike off the main road into the town.

Simple but surprisingly wide Main Street for such a small town.

One with an active city council: lots of potted plants and floral arrangements hanging from hooks with well-kept wooden signs welcoming one to town.

In the dusk, the flowers looked black, the words on the sign a ghostly white glow.

Just off Main Street, a motel. Classic sixties model: two story, doors painted different colors, white with blue trim.

Max wheeled his bike into the spot in front of the office, dismounted, stuck his helmet on the mirror and clomped in.

An old farmer type was sitting in a chair behind the desk watching some reality show, hands clasped on his big belly. He raised an eyebrow at Max.

“Room?” said Max.

The old guy laughed.

“You got your pick,” he said. “Got a trucker in 207, back corner there. That’s it.”

Max nodded.

“How about the other top corner, then?”

“That’d put you right on Main Street,” the old guy said.

Max looked out the window at the empty street.

“Wouldn’t say traffic was a problem,” Max said.

The old guy laughed again.

“Well, I suppose you got that right,” he said. “Name’s Slim.”

Max’s lips turned up a bit.

The old guy laughed.

“One of those opposite things. Never was. Slim, that is.”

“How much for the room?”

“Thirty bucks a night’ll do.”

Max took another look around.

“You have a busy season around here?”

“No, not hardly,” said Slim. “Got the Onion Fest in April. Fourth of July. Labor Day. Occasionally a group of farm workers come into town for a big night. Like that.”

Max pulled out $30 in cash and laid it on the counter.

The old guy groaned and hoisted himself out of his chair to shuffle down the counter and grab a form.

“Fill this out,” he said.

“That room got any history?”

“History?”

“History. As in suicide, murder, any kind of unpleasant death. Like that.”

Slim gave Max a long look.

“No, I don’t believe it does. That matter to you?”

Max nodded.

“It does. I’m…sensitive that way.”

Slim’s face lit up.

“You like, one of them whatchamacall’ems? Mediums?”

Max did not smile.

“Just sensitive. Key?”

Slim sighed and reached under the counter and came up with a key with a room tag labeled 201.

“Not much of a talker, are ya?” Slim asked.

Max shook his head.

“Don’t generally have a lot to say. Thanks for the room.”

Max palmed the key and slid out of the office.

Slim watched Max fire up his motorcycle and move it to the space under his room. He was a little pissed the guy didn’t want to talk. A medium, or whatever. That was interesting. Come morning, he’d bet the traveler would have something to say.

Max climbed the stairs, stuck his key in the door, and disappeared inside.

Chapter Three

The room smelled like mold. Musty, unused. Queen-sized bed, little TV mounted in the corner across from the bed. Tiny bathroom.

A sense of the surreal settled on Max, the objects and walls of the room taking on a dull shine. His olfactory sense clicked up a few notches, something ephemeral and unreal awakening atavistic survival mechanisms.

Max sniffed.

Dirt. Freshly turned earth. The smell blossomed and turned putrid. Like a rendering truck passing by on a broiling summer day.

Ah, God, Max thought. I asked him, too.

Max looked in the mirror over the bureau and sure enough—there she was in the bed. Wasn’t a lot to look at in life, Max figured, and death hadn’t improved anything.

Bruises discolored her cheek bones. She had one split eyebrow, a broken nose, a fat lip, and her jaw hung loose. And that was what Max could see without trying.

Her neck was canted at an unnatural angle. Cause of death, Max decided.

“God damn it.”

Back in the office, Slim protested.

“I"m telling ya, mister. Never heard of anything like that.”

There was a glint of malice and delight in his eye that Max didn’t like at all.

“Give me a ground floor room. Right in the middle.” Max surveyed the motel, opening himself a tiny bit.

He regretted it instantly. Misery echoed through the courtyard, reached all the way into the office. A lot of unpleasantness had gone down in this motel.

Max considered getting his money back and heading up the road a piece, but figured it’d take him a couple more hours to come to a place with a decent motel, and he didn’t want to sleep out in the open. He wanted a bed. Untroubled sleep.

That seemed out of the question here, though. He might get some sleep, but it was certain to be troubled.

“Ah, the hell with it,” Max said. “That one.”

The room with the purple door, dead center on the ground floor, felt the least troubled.

Slim reached back under the counter, came up with a key.

The setting sun glinted off the key, and just for a flash—reflected red in Slim’s pupils.

Room 113 had a similar musty smell to 207. Max braced himself and waited, but nothing else came…just a musty room. With mold.

Max stood with his back to the door and took in the room in the reddening light of sunset. Same as 207. Through the darkening gloam, Max checked the mirror. It reflected the same view his eyes saw.

“OK, then,” Max said.

He stepped away from the door, turned and closed the curtains, then turned on the overhead light. 

So far, so good.

Bathroom. A surprising number of deaths occur in the bathroom.

The bathroom was pleasantly clean. A touch of mildew spoke through the smell of bleach, but nothing else. The mirror reflected the whole room, and both were empty of visions, ghosts, or views into the world of the dead.

Max reached over and slid the shower curtain back. Sparkling clean tub and fixtures. Looked over his shoulder at the mirror. All sparkle and clean.

“Thank God,” Max sighed.

He went back to the bedroom, and started unpacking his saddlebags.

Lying in bed, fingers interlaced behind his head, Max stared at the ceiling.

Thailand, he thought. That’s what kicked it all off. Fresh off the teams, there to train Muay Thai. The place was steeped in spirit lore, animism, dark practices, open debauchery, institutional corruption—absolutely chock a block with dark and dangerous entities.

And yet…there was a sweetness and docility to the people, a nobility and a grace that counter-balanced all the negative.

The Muay Thai camp he’d gone there for was superlative. Run by an old Thai boxer, Ong, who’d been a legend—one of the first to open his camp to foreigners—it taught the discipline with no frills, just a strict adherence to time-honored methods that produced some of the best fighters in the world.

It’d started so well…

Max shook his head at himself.

Nostalgia. Bullshit.

Yeah, the first year was solid, and the second started well. By then he was taking on fights against real Thai fighters and holding his own. Even had a girlfriend—a spectacular beauty with a mean left hook.

Max fingered the ropy scar tissue bristling through his eyebrows.

He’d been cut by elbows, pounded by kicks, dropped by flying knees, but he’d stood his ground and earned respect.

The gym owner, Ong, had taken him on. For real. Old school stuff—as serious about the spiritual aspect as the physical. Meditation and morning prayers at the temple.

And then….

The dark side had opened up.

Hookers a dime a dozen.

And…the night that cracked it all wide open.

Max blinked, remembering.

A door had opened in his head. A door there was no shutting, or at least, no shutting all the way.

Since then, Max was constantly leaning against that door, leaning hard, but it always stayed a crack open. He could step back and let it swing wide at any time, but that was never good.

Too much misery behind that door. Too much death.

The bed was surprisingly comfortable, and Max’s eyes grew heavy. He let sleep take him.

The slap of flesh on flesh startled Max awake.

The hell?

He sat upright, his whole body tense, listening with his nerve endings and his ears.

Slap. A thump of something hitting the wall.

The room next door. 

Max got up and padded to the window, cracked open the curtains, and peeked out into the parking lot.

Empty. Just the trucker’s rig off to the side, his motorcycle in front of his room and a lot of empty space.

The light in the manager’s office was on, but no one occupied the chair behind the desk.

Moaning. A scream cut off…

Max opened himself a tiny, tiny bit…

Red blossomed inside his head: blood on walls, blood on the bed, blood on the mirror, blood on the floor. Blood. The room next door drowning in it.

What the hell is this place?

Max slid to the door, opened it carefully, slipped through and over to the window of the room next door.

The curtains were open, the same bloody tableau he’d had splashed inside his head on view.

Max backed away from the window and let the door in his head open a notch—that shimmery sense of the unreal silvering his view.

He spun a quiet 360, arms out.

Waves of misery and pain radiated from every room of the hotel.

Women had died here. Lots of them. All of them nasty, brutal deaths. Images of brutish sex flooded Max’s mind. Men using their fists and their sex as weapons. An ugly, savage current of emotion swept through him, almost carried him away.

Max leaned back against the door in his head and held it as shut as he could.