Night Auditor

Meredith (12)

Ron Petrie was at the end of his lecture about how much better coffee at Red Roof Inn was compared to the diluted crap we called coffee, when Abby Soupley, the woman drenched in rain I had checked in earlier, came almost running towards the front desk. She was wrapped in a purple kimono, her eyes watery red, her golden blonde hair a messy curtain around her round face.

The coffee enthusiast that was Ron Petrie gave her a once-over, muttered under his breath that he would settle for tea as that was one thing I couldn't possibly mess up, and stomped his way to the coffee counter.

A cold breeze circulated on the ground floor, through the expanse of the lobby, the darkest corners of the dining hall, and within the isolated kitchen, bringing in the forbidding chill of the havoc outdoors.

Anguish occupied Abby's face, anguish I found familiar as soon as I laid eyes on her.

"I'm sorry to bother you," she said. Her voice trembled between words, the skin between her eyebrows wrinkled in agony. Her mouth gaped open as she struggled to find the right words to say. Then for a moment she hesitated, paused, then said, "Well, now I don't know. I might be losing my mind."

"Are you alright Miss Soupley?" I asked, trying my best not to sound too nosy.

The temples of her head glinted under the light, her sweat like diamonds sparkling in plain sight.

"I wanted to ask you something but... I don't know. It seems absurd now that I am trying to say it out loud."

Often she would glance around her and behind me, her eyes on a mission as if she was desperately looking for something. Still the hesitation overpowered whatever was bothering her.

"Has the weather outside been interrupting your sleep?" I asked in hopes of getting a real answer from her.

She shook her head, turned around once again before looking my way when she was satisfied.

A man I didn't recognize, probably checked in by Richard earlier, found a comfortable spot on one of the loveseats by the front desk. It was only an hour past midnight yet half of the hotel's occupancy seemed to be awake with Hurricane XX.

"Would you like some water, Miss Soupley?" I tried again.

"Listen, I'm just going to try again and say this." she finally said. "But... you have to believe me. Promise me you'll believe me."

She didn't need to plead for me to believe her. I could see right through her, the genuine fear which could only be glimpsed through the windows of her blue eyes.

"I promise," I said. So much for a quiet first shift.

Abby Soupley proceeded to tell me the events of the past two hours since they checked in. From the stabbing pain in her stomach that awakened her, to the man she supposedly saw standing by her daughter's bed in the middle of the night, until she woke up again as if everything was a dream. She was convinced it wasn't. If I didn't know better, if the ghost of my husband didn't follow me everywhere I went to to remind me he once existed, I would have thought the woman merely had a hyper-realistic dream with a very fine line between reality and nightmare. I imagined I would look just as crazy if I went around telling people I saw my dead husband often, much more if they knew of my true intentions of moving here.

Working a few months at the daycare back in Clovis instilled a somewhat parental instinct in me. The type of instinct that allowed me to observe the nosy man on the loveseat as Abby laid out her fears, and to know that he wasn't just sitting to chill.

Abby told the story in much detail, up to her dilemma in the staircase, debating with herself whether it was a story she wanted to share with me or not. Before I let her say anything more, I said, "I need to fold the towels and check the laundry. Would you mind walking with me?" It was indeed a strange request especially to a guest. But the last thing I needed for this woman was to have an unwelcome observer, innocent or not.

Before Abby and I could step away from the desk, the front entrance suddenly opened, allowing a gush of wind to knock over the fiddle leaf tree next to the desk, and sweeping away the acrylic stands that displayed breakfast hours and check out time. A pregnant woman struggled to walk in, followed by a man I could only assume as my last check in of the night.