Garnett Elliott

Sheltered Souls

Garnett Elliott

Snow falling so thick outside the Honda's windows it goes from sheets to white glare. Beth's eyes keep glancing down at the gas gauge.The needle’s dipping below an eighth of a tank. In these conditions it might as well be their air-supply. Once the gas goes, so does the heater, and on the back roads of rural Minnesota that means slow hypothermia as the white stuff turns their car into a burial mound.

"Wouldn't have this problem," Jaidee says, taking a hand off the wheel to tap at the gauge, "if you'd gone ahead and bought a Prius, like we talked."

"A Prius wouldn't grip the road for shit," Beth says.

Not that it matters much now. They're crawling along at fifteen miles an hour.

Jaidee sneers. "Wouldn't even be here, you hadn't wanted to check out that last barn."

"I thought it might have a—"

"And where's here? I can barely see the road."

Beth rustles the map across her knees. Purely for show, because with no signs visible outside, it's just a piece of paper with lines on it. "Twenty miles out of Ottertail? I can't tell."

"We should go back."

"We have enough gas?"

Jaidee shrugs, and that's when Beth sees it: a soft halo on the upper-right corner of the windshield. A lit sign. She reads the letters “BUDGET HOTE.” The final “L” is hidden by a sheet of ice.

"Turn in here," she says.

They park close to the front door. Outside is roaring chaos, the snow falling sideways as the wind picks up. No way to tell if there are other cars in the lot. They race for the door, teeth already chattering. Beth slaps her hands against the warm glass to push it open.

A chime sounds in the frame above their heads.

She catches the burnt-dust smell of an old furnace. There's wood paneling and thin beige carpet. A geyser of cigarette smoke streams from an ashtray balanced on the front desk.

"Anyone here?" Jaidee calls out. "Paying customers."

Her voice echoes down a hallway behind the desk.

"Guess it's an off day," Beth says. She rubs the cold from her hands and settles down into a chair next to an imitation wood-grain table. The wall opposite has a calendar with pictures of antique tractors. "Rustic."

"Yeah." Jaidee reaches for the cigarette jutting from the tray. Examines it like maybe she wants to start smoking again.

"Put that down. The owner's going to be out here any second."

Jaidee leans her long frame over the desk, puttering with stuff Beth can't see. "Found the phone." She wedges a receiver between shoulder and ear. Frowns. "All I’m getting is a fast busy."

They tried to call 911 on their cell after the gas dropped below a quarter-tank, but couldn’t get a signal. "Maybe the lines blew down."

"They use cables now, okay? They bury them."

"Sorry."

Jaidee messes with the phone some more, gives up, and sulks over to where Beth's sitting. "I want to talk to the owner."

"He's probably in the back somewhere, taking a dump." Beth folds her hands over her lap. "Just wait a bit."

Eighteen minutes later Jaidee throws down the 2002 Hunting Knife Catalog she's been flipping through. "You getting hungry?"

"Nope."

They'd eaten at a truck stop a couple hours out of Duluth. Redneck kind of place, and the two of them had drawn stares until Beth bent her head to say grace, which sort of mollified things. Beth had scarfed down bratwurst with cups of emaciated coffee. Jaidee, a Vegan, had had to make do with orange slices.

"Don't get all smug about it, you not being hungry."

"I'm not."

"You act superior, sometimes."

Beth rises with a sigh. "Let's find the owner, okay?" She walks over to the hallway. Cheap fluorescent light flickers down its length, revealing rows of metal doors with numbered decals. "Hellooo.”

"Hellooo," Jaidee says.

Silence.

"If no one's here, why was the front door open and a lit cigarette in the ash tray?" Jaidee says.

"Someone's here."

"Then where are they?"

"Maybe in the basement. Maybe stepped out to—"

"Stepped out in a blizzard?"

"Okay. Maybe the basement, then."

Jaidee shucks off her puffy vest and tosses it onto the desk. "There’s a rack of keys, behind here."

"So?"

"So I’m getting us a room." She’s striding down the hallway before Beth can stop her, key in hand.

The door to Room Four is ajar. "Wait." Beth peeks inside to semi-darkness. Lines of white seep along the curtains, showing the outline of a bed. She reaches inside to snap the lights on. Someone's turned down the linens, and there's the sound of water coming from behind the closed bathroom door.

"People at last." Jaidee pushes past her into the room. Sits down on the bed’s edge.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"Waiting for whoever’s in there to finish their shower."

"You ever hear of privacy? Let’s wait out in the hall."

Jaidee ignores her. The room sports several pieces of mongrel furniture, including a dresser with a TV bolted to the top. Jaidee walks over and turns it on. Snow. She clicks channels, but it’s more of the same. "Cheap-ass place. No cable."

"Are you even listening to me?"

"I’ve spent three hours trapped in a fucking snowstorm. I need to talk to another human being. Someone besides you."

The shower noise cuts off.

"Come out into the hallway," Beth says.

The bathroom door opens a crack. Steam escapes around the edges.

Jaidee just stands there, arms folded. A minute goes by and the door doesn’t open any further. There’s no sounds coming from the bathroom. Total silence.

Jaidee calls out, "Hey in there. We need to talk to you."

No reply.

"Screw this." Jaidee shoulders the door, Beth right behind her. They step into a wet white mist. Beth can see the shower curtain drawn across the narrow stall. It's fogged, but not so much she can't tell there's nobody standing there.

Jaidee snatches the curtain back anyways. She checks the whole of the cramped bathroom, like someone could be hiding behind the toilet.

"This can't—" she says, her breath coming fast, "this can't—"

Beth watches the condensation on the mirror above the sink. It disappears as the cold air rushes in. Soon, the glass is clear and reflecting only the two of them.

Beth drowses in Room Six, but she's too disturbed to sleep. From the hallway comes the tinkle of keys and the tromp of Jaidee's Ugg boots as she opens doors to search the other rooms.

They shouldn't even be here.

It was Jaidee's idea to make the road trip, ostensibly to get more antiques for their shop. Search out abandoned farmhouses and old cabins, scrounging pieces that would fit in the Honda's trunk. But Beth knew the real reason. Their relationship was in trouble.

The blizzard had ambushed them driving into Ottertail county. One moment it was bright November skies, the next a wall of advancing black. Sleet gave way to snow.

"Beth?" Jaidee stands in the doorway. "I checked the rooms. There's n-no one else here."

"We're safe, okay?"

"This place is haunted or something."

"It's just—I don't know. Weird."

"It feels like there's something about to happen, but never does. Like it's not really empty. Do you get that feeling?"

"No," Beth lies.

"There's one more room." Jaidee holds up a large key. "The basement. Remember, how you said the owner might be in the basement?"

"Yeah."

"Will you check with me?"

Beth gets up and takes the key from her hand.

There's a fire exit at the end of the hall and a steel door marked STAFF ONLY. Beth fits the key. The door groans inward and light from the hallway spears down a stairwell. Their footfalls echo off cinderblock as they descend.

The basement's black as a cave. A single red light glows at the far end. Beth gropes along the wall until she finds a switch.

An old furnace takes up a third of the space. All pipes and grates, with a black box at the center. The pilot light flickers inside. As Beth stares the machine comes to life with a whoomp of natural gas, the pilot turning blue-white, pipes expanding in a series of creaks.

Then, above them: footsteps.

The sound's so undeniably solid it echoes over the furnace noise. Tromp, tromp. Someone walking up there.

Beth races for the stairwell. As she clears the top she catches a whiff of fresh cigarette smoke. The fire door exit makes a click sound, like someone's just passed through and closed it.

Triumph. Answers at last. She jams her hip against the release bar and swings the door open.

Resistance. Howling cold and white light.

A head-high wall of snow pours through the exit, only a quarter of the way open because it won't move any farther. Beth gets a face-full of stinging wet. She jumps back. The little avalanche follows her into the hallway, stops inches from her boots.

Impossible. "We haven't been in here that long," she says. "No way the drifts could get that high."

"Close the door," Jaidee says.

It's imperative, all of a sudden, to block out that wind. Beth manages to pull the door shut after some digging, her hands wrinkling from the snow's contact.

"Where'd the guy go?" Jaidee says. "If he didn't go out that door, where'd he go?"

Beth thrusts freezing hands in her pockets. She stalks down the hallway. No one's at the front desk, but there's still the lobby. The door to room four is open and she glances inside as she passes, on the chance their phantom owner’s hiding in there. He's not. The curtains are drawn back. Snow has piled up outside the window. So much it's blocked nearly all the light. Maybe an inch or two left near the top.

"We were in here an hour ago," Jaidee says. "It wasn't like that."

"Someone's screwing with us. Got to be." Beth heads for the lobby like it's her last hope. The owner—she pictures him as a guy—must be some kind of sicko. Playing games with them. Well, she isn't helpless. She'll kick his redneck ass.

But the lobby's empty. Just the tractor calendar and the shabby chairs. Nobody standing there. Beth's anger drains and she sees the snow stacked outside the front windows and door, just like in room four.

Jaidee starts to cry.

Beth wants to comfort her, but hell, none of this makes sense. She reaches out and touches the glass door. Feels the coldness on the other side.

And then she knows. "We're still out there," she says.

"What?"

"We're still outside, in the car somewhere."

"We're in a crappy hotel."

Beth shakes her head. "It's a hallucination. I don't know how we're both doing it at the same time, but we are. Hypothermia. Hypothermia's doing it."

Jaidee stops crying to frown. "Bullshit. I'm not cold at all. It's warm—"

"That's how you freeze to death. In the end, you don't feel the cold." She remembers reading that somewhere. "It's supposed to be peaceful."

"I don't feel peaceful."

Beth turns to look at her partner. Any moment, she expects the illusion to lift. She'll see things the way they really are: Jaidee sprawled back in the Honda's seat, eyelids fluttering. Each breath a wisp of white in the absolute cold. Her lips turning blue.

Beth squeezes her eyes shut.

The room darkens as snow veils the last half-inch of light above the window.