Beyond the Veil

Robert was at the hotel door of Room 613– the honeymoon suite he was supposed to share with Mayra that night-- the night they were supposed to  consummate their marriage. He stretched his hand out to reach for the handle, and hesitated. The air felt thick with a sense of evil and dread that emanated from the other side of the door, as if the door itself was telling him that it should not be opened. “Please,” it seemed to plead with Robert, “don’t make me show you what’s within.”

Sensing the quiet warning, Robert closed his outstretched hand into a fist. Instead of forcing the door open, he would knock– a simple request– a proposal for the door: show me what you fear, and I will hold the horror inside forever.

He knocked once, twice, a third time. The sound resounded within the chamber, echoing into a hollowed roar that felt like dark eternity. It grew and grew, a tumult that pierced the very marrow in Robert’s bones and disoriented him. His hands flew to his ears to cover them, his mouth opened as if to make some noise, a word to pray to some god he did not believe in for all of this to cease– for this entire strange episode to be some sort of horrible prank. But the singing marrow in his bones knew– the hair standing on end on the back of his neck knew. There was evil within that room, something ancient and wicked behind that door, which he had believed only this morning would open to his bright and brilliant future with his would-be wife. Robert sunk to his knees.

And then, all at once, the echoing stopped. The handle turned from the otherside, and the door inched open with a horrible creak that sounded more like claws dragging on metal.

Although it had been a bright and brilliant day outside as Robert had stood on the steps of the church, waiting for Mayra to arrive in her wedding dress for their first look, inside the room, it was somehow night. The curtains were undrawn and revealed a never ending darkness behind the windows they dressed. In the center of the room stood a shadow, just as Mayra had said, with a horrible, jagged smile that conveyed a depth of despair and control that Robert had never experienced before. He knew there was nothing he could do. It was over. The choice had been made.

The creature clutched the ring– the beautiful ring he had found at that estate sale on a drive upstate two falls ago. The ring he thought would be a perfect symbol of the love he shared with Mayra– a love he would have endured eternal darkness for, if only he could have been the one to choose.

  Mayra was suspended in mid air in front of the shadow, clad in her wedding dress. She was laid out as if sleeping, her dark hair snaked into a beautiful bridal braid, wilted chamomile woven in as adornment. Robert couldn’t help but think she looked beautiful. He wanted to go to her, to try to save her from this evil, but he seemed to be fixed to the floor just outside of the threshold of the room he thought would contain his dreams– their dreams– and instead contained this horrible nightmare.

The creature’s smile grew wider as he held the diamond out between one clawed finger and his thumb. A flash of brilliant blinding light– of warmth in this endless darkness– caused Robert to avert his eyes for just a second… and when he looked back, Mayra was gone.

There the Hatman stood, alone in the room, holding the ring to the empty space where a heart might have been. His deep, sunken eyes closed for just a moment, and the thin, horrid line that had only smiled that horrible smile relaxed into an expression of relief. He seemed to relish in the moment of warmth and light that had come from the ring. Robert swore that for a moment, his skin seemed to shed some of the shadow and ash it was shrouded in, and a longing for a different life– a different time, perhaps a time where he was able to believe he could dream in this endless night– seemed to pass across his almost-human face. He looked like a man Robert might’ve known. A man Robert might’ve become, if a different choice had been made. 

  Then, as if remembering himself, the Hatman’s eyes opened. The shadow and ash swallowed his humanity whole, and those eyes, those blood red eyes, were fixed on Robert once more. In a cloud of smoke, he shifted from the middle of the room and appeared at the threshold of the door, crouching down, but never crossing, until his eyes were level with Robert’s.

“It is over,” the Hatman croaked in a voice that hissed like a dying fire, and the door slammed in Robert’s face, passing through the Hatman as if he had never been there at all.

Desperately, Robert opened the door to the suite, only to find the curtains undrawn, and daylight flooding the room. All of Mayra’s belongings were untouched– the wedding dress, her night cream, the stuffed monkey she had slept with every night since she was two years old all sat in their familiar places. Her cellphone sat charging on the bedside table. But Mayra and the ring she had worn on her finger every day since he had picked her those chamomile flowers were nowhere to be found.

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