It was wet and miserable the night I arrived in town. Fog drifted in from the Pacific and misted the windows of my rental. Streetlights glowed forlornly across the wet and barren streets. And though the few crowded diners and cafés I passed were warmly lit with life, the whole town looked abandoned, as if lost in time.
I drove for several minutes, letting GPS guide me through the lonely, deserted streets until I arrived at last at the Cliffside Inn. I turned off the motor of the car and stared up at it. Though I had only seen pictures of it in the online booking agency where I had made the reservation, I was immediately drawn to it, as if somehow it was calling me from a distance in time. A pink lady once so popular in California––a two-storied, gingerbread cupcake with pink trimmings––it stood out against the darkness in an embrace of light that illuminated its wraparound porch, its turret rising gloriously toward the cloudy sky. Gingham-covered windows gazed out at me from across the street, wide-eyed, anticipatory, waiting. A strange feeling moved through me, though I could not explain why.
I was tired. That might have been it. For two weeks I had been on the road, traveling up the coastline, stopping here and there, staying in roadside motels and inns, taking in the local flavor, and photographing and writing about my experiences, no matter how mundane, in my newsletter. But after driving non-stop for several hours towards Eureka, I was tired and hungry.
Tearing my eyes away from the inn long enough to retrieve my bags from the back seat, I drew in a deep breath and carried my luggage up the steep steps leading to the front porch. The door was unlocked. I let myself in.
The foyer was all gleaming oak woodwork, print wallpaper, and thick carpets. The registration desk was near the front door. Beyond that, a long hallway led to another door, dark and forbidding despite the bright light of a brass chandelier. Nearby a staircase with an ornate banister and red carpet wound to the second floor. In the next room, I could hear a television set playing loudly over bright, cheerful chatter. I felt strangely and immediately at home.
I approached the desk and rang the bell. Within seconds, a woman in a brightly colored caftan entered the hallway. She was small and had calm brown eyes and a soft smile. She wore a scarf over her head and wooden earrings. When she saw me, her face broadened into a wider smile, as though she were greeting an old friend. She reminded me of my grandmother, and that comforted me greatly.
"Can I help?" she said in a soft-spoken voice.
"Yes, I have a reservation."
She smiled and repeated good-naturedly, "Well, of course, you do." She laughed as she went behind the desk and pushed a clipboard with a registration sheet clamped to it. I noticed there were no computers. "There’s always a room at the Cliff Side Inn."
I filled out the registration sheet and then pulled out my credit card. She swiped the credit card through one of those old-fashioned card swipers, running it through three times, more delighted it seemed by this simple gesture than any problems that might have arisen from the card itself, though that didn't stop me from worrying. I asked if there was a problem and she giggled and said no and returned my card without asking me to sign anything. When I asked if she needed me to sign something, she simply smiled and said that wouldn't be necessary. She retrieved the keys to my room from a compartment holder on the wall and slid them toward me, smiling still in that gentle manner.
"And my bags," I said, nodding with a jerk toward my luggage. "I'm declaring them."
"Oh, yes." She leaned over the registration desk and nodded. "Yes."
Weird. Only a few minutes ago she seemed like such an ordinary person, if a bit Mother Earth-ish. I was drawn to her, but now I was struggling to understand how and why. I asked if they had wi-fi and she stared at me as if I had spoken in a foreign language.
"Never mind," I said. "I'll try that café I saw down the street."
"Oh, well then," she said. "I just set out dinner. You’re more than welcome — "
"Thank you, but do you think I can have something brought up to my room? I’ve been on the road for hours and right now I just want to take a bath, eat, and hit the sheets."
"Oh," she said, looking slightly disappointed. “Well, I suppose I can make a sandwich."
“That would be fantastic,” I said, relieved. “Thank you.”
“I’ll show you to your room.” She nodded to my bags to indicate whether I wanted help with them. I lifted them myself and followed her up the stairs.
“This is quite a place. How long have you owned it?”
“Own it?” She looked at me over her shoulder. “Oh, I don’t own it. I just work here.”
“How long have you worked here, then?”
“Oh,” she said again with a sigh, “longer than I can remember. Sometimes, I can hardly remember at all.” She stopped at the top of the stairs, her voice trailing off in a sort of dreamy manner.
Her expression turned blank before I cleared my throat and she snapped out of it. She apologized and pointed to her head, but said nothing more. She led me down the hall toward my room.
My room, which was on the front side of the house, was small and quaintly decorated with lace and quilt. She told me the bathroom was down the hall and guests were welcome to take as much time and use as much water as they wanted.
“That’s very liberal. And this the only bathroom? What about the other guests?”
“Guests? You’re our only guest right now.”
I tilted my head out of curiosity. “But I heard people talking in the room downstairs.”
She continued to smile, seemingly unfazed by my confusion. She shook her head and started to close the door. “You must’ve misheard. There ain't no other guests at the inn right now. I’ll bring a tray up for you shortly, M’am.”
And with that, she firmly and securely shut the door.
After taking a bath, I returned to my room swathed in the complimentary bathrobe and started unpacking a few things from my bags. I took out my digital camera and my laptop and laid them on top of the bed. The inn was quiet, but I didn’t mind. It gave me the chance to concentrate on my writing. I laid down on the bed, rebooted my laptop, and opened a file. I began writing my experiences, but as soon as my fingertips formed the QWERTY position, my mind drew a blank. Suddenly, all the sights and colors I had saved in my head had vanished. I checked my notes, but nothing there inspired me. I sighed and rolled onto my back. My newsletter was a year and a half old and had over 22,500 subscribers. It received nearly half a million hits a week, which was remarkable in the newsletter business. But considering I had built up a sizable reading audience from my nearly fifteen-year career as a travel writer, it was well-earned. Not once have I ever suffered from writer’s block, but now I was struggling with something interesting to say.
I gazed around the room. It was the typical decor of small-town inns — lots of chintz and hook rugs and quilts and antique furnishing. The room seemed ordinary. And yet earlier, when I approached the inn, I felt a warm sensation flow through me. It wasn’t the feeling of having found a place of belonging or home, but something different, something inexplicable. It was odd. Now that I had booked in, the feeling had all but vanished and I was seeing the place through my usual experienced eyes. What drew me here in the first place? I wondered. I flipped back on my stomach and returned to my laptop, determined to write about the strange emotions this inn evoked in me.
I was in the throes of writing when the caretaker returned with the food. I told her to set the tray on the table by the window and went back to my writing.
“I made you a sandwich from the pot roast tonight,” she said as she set the tray down.
“Thank you,” I said absently, concentrating on my next sentence.
The caretaker started to turn back toward the door and announced that she’ll be downstairs if I needed anything else. She stopped and stared at the camera on my bed. She stood there staring for such a long time that she was beginning to distract me. When I looked up at her, she giggled like a child.
“Is that a camera?”
I glanced at the camera and nodded. Such an odd question. Such an odd woman.
“I always wanted to be a photographer. When I was a girl, I mean. I loved taking pictures. I had a brownie camera and everything. But my grandmama — well, she could be pretty strict." She lowered her voice when she aadded: "She didn't like it when I had my head in the clouds, you know?”
I frowned. “That’s an odd thing to be strict about.”
“Oh, well, I understood. I mean, I had butterfingers back then. Always breaking and losing things. She had her reasons.”
“Ah,” I said, humoring her. “I see.” I glanced back at my file. My post was waiting for me.
“So, are you a photographer?” the woman said as she sat in a chair against the wall. I sighed to myself and lowered the lid of my laptop. My stomach was grumbling. I took that as an opportunity to grab something to eat and perhaps have a conversation with this strange woman. It would give me enough material for my newsletter. A title was already forming in my head — "The Beautiful and the Strange in Eureka, California." Or something like that.
“No,” I said, answering her question as I went over to the table. “I’m a writer.” The spread she brought included slices of beef, bread, and tomatoes, and a single, wilted leaf of romaine lettuce. Packets of condiments were stacked on one end of the tray and a glass of milk was set on the other. I sat at the table and began compiling my sandwich.
“A writer,” the woman said rather dreamily. “I always wanted to be a writer.”
I glanced over my shoulder. “I thought you said you wanted to be a photographer.”
“It must be nice, being a writer, telling stories.”
I pulled a face. “Well, I’m not a fiction writer. I write about travel.”
“You travel?”
I turned in my chair to face her, my fully assembled sandwich in one hand. “I have a newsletter.”
“Where you been?” she said, eyes wide and excited.
I told her the places where I’d traveled — Beijing, Amsterdam, Argentina, Dar es Salaam. Her eyes widened and the same beatific smile, which now seemed more like the smile of a small child. It occurred to me that the caretaker was perhaps slow or mildly disabled.
“I wish I could travel.”
“Nothing’s stopping you.” I bit into my sandwich. The meat was tough and bland.
“Oh, I don’t know. I wouldn’t know what to do.”
I told her she should read my newsletter. "Most of my subscribers are paid, but I offer free subscriptions as well." I offered plenty of traveling advice, what to expect, how to handle oneself traveling alone, and the best places to stay. I had been traveling since I was in college when a dorm mate of mine invited me to join her on a cross-country trip through Europe, staying in hostels along the way. I was born and raised in West Oakland and traveling made as much sense to me as another hole in the head. And yet I quickly caught the traveling bug. I encouraged my subscribers that the world was full of possibilities and they should never limit themselves to it. I told the caretaker the same thing, but she only smiled in that odd way. I doubted she understood.
“My grandmama wouldn’t let me go outside of ten feet of our house. She was always so worried about me.”
“I see,” I said, taking another bite of the sandwich.
“When the baby come, she watched over me like a hawk.”
“Baby?” I lifted an eyebrow.
The caretaker continued to smile as she began rubbing her stomach in a circle. “I was fourteen when the baby come,” she said dreamily.
I lowered my sandwich and stared at her. She looked at me with that same weird smile. How could she smile this way? "I'm sorry to hear that. That must have been tough for you."
She continued to rub her belly. I asked what happened to the baby. “Oh,” she said with a sigh. “They took it away. Never did get to hold it. Doctor Lyon fixed it so I never could.” She looked at me and the smile vanished from her face like a candle that had been snuffed out. “Oh,” she said again in an eerily calm voice. “But I took care of him.” I started to ask what she meant or who this Dr. Lyon was, but then she said, “One day, somebody’s gonna tell my story. I had my reasons.”
I frowned again, now completely confused, but before I could ask, she got to her feet and said she’d be available downstairs if I needed anything else. She smiled. "By the way, my name's Lorene." And with that, she closed the door.
Silence folded around me once again. I frowned at the door with an eerie feeling settling inside me.
I had fallen asleep. It wasn’t easy. During my travels, I had slept in some of the filthiest, most flea-bitten places, but I had never had trouble falling asleep in them. But the Cliffside Inn was different. It was silent. Not even the sounds of traffic outside reached these walls. It could have been raining but I wouldn’t have known it. And yet strangely, I didn’t feel alone. I felt as though I was being watched. As if the whole night was filled with millions of eyes.
While I slept, I had a dream. It would be redundant to say it was a strange dream, but this dream boggled my imagination. I was on an operating table in a strange room and two people––a man and a woman––were hovering over me. They were dressed in scrubs and peering at me above surgical masks. I was in a state of distress, crying and flinging my arms out for my baby.
"Don't take him away. He's mine, you ain't got no right."
The woman glanced at the man. "She's in a state of shock, Doctor Lyons."
"Yes," said the doctor, "most unfortunate."
The doctor leaned close over me and spoke as if I was a child. "Don't worry, Beverly. We'll put you under a deep anesthetic that will make you go to sleep. When you wake up, it will all be over."
"No," I screamed. "No, don't do this to me. Don't take away my babies."
"Nurse, put her under."
The nurse placed an oxygen mask over my face. I started to struggle, but then I realized I was bound to the table. I couldn't move my arms or legs. I screamed.
"Don't fight it, Beverly," I heard the doctor say. "This is for your own good."
I screamed again, and then I was awake.
I sat up in bed. The night closed in around me. I was breathing heavily. My heart raced. A strange, doomed feeling sunk over me, as if my very worst fears had been realized. I ran my and over my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose. And then I heard it––the music. There was music coming from downstairs. I strained my ears to listen closely. It sounded old, tinny. Not very modern at all. I listened again closely, and heard voices. Or one particular voice, deep, rough, masculine.
Lorene had lied. There were other guests, just as I thought.
I climbed out of bed and grabbed my robe. Something very odd and horrible was going on here, yet I had no idea what. A horrifying thought settled in my brain, bubbling just beneath the surface. I went to the door and threw it open.
As I stepped into the hallway, the sound of the music grew louder and more distinct. It sounded like classical music, a piano concerto. I ran down the steps and went into the front room.
The front room was heavily furnished and antique-looking as if it hadn't been remodeled in over a hundred years. A Victorian loveseat, hooked rugs, and ornate bureaus decorated the space. The music wafted through the room like an odd breeze, rising and falling in pitch and volume. It seemed to come from the dining room, which was off to the right of the parlor through a large archway. The sounds of shuffling and throat-clearing emanated from there as well.
I marched into the dining room and gasped. I wasn't alone. Three people sat at a long table. At the head was an old man with snowy hair and a beard. At the opposite end sat an older woman with severe features and gray hair she wore in a bun. And in between sat a younger woman whose features were just as thin and severe, but her blonde hair flowed down her shoulders in tight curls. Standing on one side of the table was Lorene, holding a big pot in her over-mittened hands and smiling strangely back at me.
"Changed your mind about joining us for dinner," she said.
My mouth fell open. I stared hard at her, then at the three guests seated at the table. They did not look at me or acknowledge me in any way.
"You told me I was the only guest here," I said, finally finding my voice.
Lorene nodded, still grinning. "You are the only guest."
I gestured at the three people sitting at the table. "Then who are they?"
"Oh, they're the owners. This is their house."
"The owners?" It didn't occur to me that the owners were the people I heard earlier, and yet as I stared at them I realized this trio didn't seem the type to make a peep. Haunted and forlorn looks shadowed their features, and their lips, chapped and parted slightly, moved silently as they stared distantly into middle space. "These are the owners?"
"They took me in when I didn't have nobody and I went to work for them," Lorene said. "They took me in, and I paid them back."
"I see," I said. "I think maybe I should go."
"Oh, don't leave now," Lorene said. "I haven't introduced you yet. See this here is Dr. William Lyon." She pointed to the older man sitting at the head of the table.
I frowned. "The Dr. Lyon you mentioned before?"
"He's the one who made sure I wouldn't have no more babies, didn't you, Dr. Lyon?"
I stared at her, too astonished to speak.
She pointed to the woman sitting at the opposite end and said, "And this is his wife Gloria. The other lady here is their daughter, Betty. And this is their house. I lived here for three years, three years gaining their trust. Three years."
"I'm sorry," I said and started to retreat, "I shouldn't have come here."
"But you can't leave now," she pleaded. "You got to understand why I did it. Who's gonna tell?'
My mouth dropped. I was almost too afraid to ask. "Why'd you do what?"
"Why I killed them."
My heart started to race and my mouth turned dry. My brain screamed at me to run, but I was frozen in my spot, paralyzed by the fear that coursed through my veins. "What the hell's going on here? Is this some kind of a joke, because if it is it ain't funny."
For the first time, Lorene's smile vanished and something else took its place. Something indescribable. "This ain't a joke." Then she smiled again, but there was something hard about it this time, something worldly, and grim.
She set the pot down on the table and began spooning its contents into the family's bowls. They did not respond at all to her, but simply stared into space.
"Please, Lorene, tell me what's going on."
Lorene hummed to herself while she worked, then, when she was finished serving the family, she stepped away from the table and folded her arms. "Dr. Lyon took my babies away," she began. "So I had to fix it he couldn't take nobody's babies again."
"What do you mean?" I whimpered, recalling the dream I had that night. "Took them away."
"I found out where he and his family lived and I want to work for them as their cook."
The family stirred. In unison, they picked up the spoons beside their bowls and began slurping their soup.
"I couldn't just let him get away with it." Lorene placed her hands over her mouth and giggled like a child.
They had to pay for their sins.
"What did you do, Lorene?" I asked.
She giggled again. "An eye for an eye," she said. "A hand for a hand. A baby for a baby."
The young woman with the tight blond hair began gagging. She reached her hands to her throat as she spat up the soup.
I stared wild-eyed at her, then back at Lorene. "What did you put in that soup, Lorene?"
"Oh, nothing at all. It's my grandmama's old recipe." She giggled again.
The young woman began to convulse violently as she fell from her chair. Her mother and father continued sipping the soup, oblivious to the fact that their daughter was dying. Soon, the mother began coughing and gagging and convulsing. Dr. Lyons put down his spoon and watched her with dead eyes. When she fell head forward into the bowl of soup, he reached over to touch her cold wrist, then let out a bellow that shattered the glass in the mirror hanging on the wall.
I jumped backwards, but I was too frightened to move. I stood there in the living room at the two bodies––one lying on the floor, the other slumped on the table. Dr. Lyon bellowed once more, then clutching his chest, he cried out in pain, his expression twisted. He fell back into his chair, his eyes broken and wide open.
I gasped and flew my hands to my face. This all had to be a dream. A dreadful dream.
"I had to do it," said Lorene innocently. "You understand, don't you?"
"You murdered them."
She frowned. I glanced back at the dead bodies. They had turned to skeletons before my eyes. I screamed and clamped my hands to her mouth as if to muffle the terror.
The dining room plunged into darkness. Cobwebs now draped the chandelier above the table, the corners of the room, and the dark glass panes of the windows. The music echoed faintly as if in the distance. As if it were a ghostly refrain haunting that now abandoned old house.
I screamed again and backed out of the dining room. The parlor was covered in cobwebs and shadows. It was empty. The entire house was now empty.
I ran out of the house and down the steps into the street. The cold air hit my lungs like wet cement and the dark gray sky opened up and let loose a torrent of rain. But I kept running like there was no end to it, my mind still flashing with the images I saw in that house, at the table, on the face of an innocent child.
I didn't know how long or how far I ran before I came to the café and barged through its entrance. The caféß was empty except for the waitress behind the counter. I sat down on the stool, wet and breathless, barefooted and dressed in a bathrobe.
The waitress looked at me with a mixture of horror and dread. "You look like hell. What happened to you?"
I looked at her dumbly. "I don't know. I don't know."
She quickly poured me a cup of coffee and handed it to me. "Here, drink this."
"I don't have any money on me. I left all my stuff back at the inn."
"It's on the house." She waited while I took a few furtive sips and drained the entire cup before offering seconds. My hands trembled violently, and I had to grip the mug tightly to keep from splashing coffee over the countertop. After a few minutes of silence, she started again: "You okay, girl?"
I looked up at her. The name tag on her uniform read Janelle. "I honestly don't know, Janelle. Something happened to me…"
"Obviously."
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes. Rain drumming against the roof filled in the silence, sweeping my thoughts back to those moments in the inn, staring at phantoms. I shook my head and opened my eyes. "I think I lost my mind."
"Why don't you tell me what happened?"
Taking another deep breath, I told the waitress everything, how I came to Eureka while touring the coastline, how I stopped in at the Cliffside Inn and booked a room there, and before I could get anything else out, Janelle frowned, and gave me a funny look.
"The Cliffside Inn?" I nodded. The puzzled look on her face was now making me doubt my own experiences. I asked what was wrong. "Never heard of no Cliffside Inn around here. Are you sure it was called the Cliffside Inn?"
I nodded. "Yeah. It's just down the street." She blinked incomprehensibly and slowly shook her head. I gave her the address, and her face lit up.
"That old place? I never heard of it being an inn."
"Well, whatever it is, that's where I was staying––."
She frowned again. "You sure about that?"
"Yes. I found it on Airbnb. You don't believe me?"
"No, I ain't saying that. It's just that––"
It's just what?" I said, my voice pitching into a screech.
"Well, that old place's been abandoned for years. I mean, forty-something years. Ain't nobody lived there since that old business with the Lyon family went down." My mouth fell open. I asked her what she meant by "that old business," and she explained that about forty years ago, 1979 to be exact, the entire Lyon family was poisoned to death by their live-in housekeeper, a woman by the name of Lorene Carter. The poisoning was a big deal in town and was all over the news. Nobody knew why she poisoned the family––"She never said so herself"––but Lorene pleaded guilty at the arraignment and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.
I pressed my hands over my mouth and shook my head. I couldn't believe what she was telling me, and yet everything she said now made sense.
"She said he couldn't get away with it," I said myself.
"Who said he couldn't get away with what?"
"Lorene. She said he took away her babies and he couldn't let him get away with it."
The waitress wrinkled her brow. "Well, it did come out a few years later about Dr. Lyon's history."
"His history?" I said.
She nodded and poured more coffee into my cup. "Dr. Lyon used to be a gynecologist. Up in Sacramento? He worked at a place for mentally disabled folks. They used to call him"the Butcher of California," 'cause he performed hysterectomies on the poor and mentally disabled women who were institutionalized there. They used to do that back in those days," she said. "Poor women, mentally disabled women, women prisoners, black women, you name it. It was all a part of some eugenics program they had going on for years in California. Dr. Lyon worked at the institute for more than twenty years before he retired. That's when he bought that house up the block." Janelle whistled and shook her head. "Scary, huh? Anyway, folks started suspecting that maybe Lorene was one of his victims and she got revenge."
I leaned back on the stool and stared straight ahead, my thoughts twisting and turning. It all suddenly made sense to me. I stopped shivering from the wet and cold and stared up at Janelle.
"I think I get it now."
She frowned. "Get what?"
"Why I was so drawn to that inn," I said dreamily. "She needed to leave a message."
"Who you talking about? Leave what message?"
I stared longingly toward the café's large plate glass windows, darkened and streaked with rain. I drained the cup, thanked Janelle, and headed back out of the diner. "Hey," she called out after me. "Want me to call a cab? You shouldn't…" Her voice broke off as soon as the café door shut. The rain had slowed to a drizzle, and a fine mist rose off the ground, obscuring the darkened buildings along the street. I walked back toward the Cliffside Inn, back toward that strange, dreamlike state where the past and the present intersected and cosmic justice was real.
