Twisted Skin

WELCOME TO MOONBLIGHT

It had taken nearly four hours and just as many stops at service stations to check maps, ask directions, and refill both stomach and tank, but at last she glimpsed the rusted sign that bid her, "WELCOME TO MOONBLIGHT. PLEASE ENJOY YOUR STAY!"

"But you don't want to go there." Each time she had asked which way to go, that was the statement with which all answers had been punctuated.

"It's a bad place for a nice girl like you," one gentleman had mentioned. She recalled how his head and shoulders had filled her car's window, eyes so dark under bushy brow that they appeared missing in the night's shadow. Frost's glimmer caught enough to show her horrors miles deep.

"I won't be long," she'd told him. "I'm meeting someone there. It'll be a quick in and out visit if anything. I don't plan on staying long." With how her chest still clenched tight as a fist even an hour later, Mary Elena had a feeling it wasn't really him she had been trying to reassure.

She recalled his last words, muttered low from red lips into a beard bristled grey. "Nobody ever does. But none ain't come back yet."

"Don't think about it," she thought, and squinted through the growing fog to follow the winking cat's eyes that corkscrewed round and down, round and down, hugging craggy cliff edge. Tried not to notice the broken barriers, the tyre marks that swerved from the road and into the abyss. "Dad's here somewhere." Kept reminding herself so she didn't turn the car around. "All I've gotta do is find him and we can get out of there. That's all. Then we can go home. Then we can put this all behind us for good."

The rain drove so hard that eventually she had no choice but to pull over. The windscreen wipers were overworked, and seemed only to be spreading the puddles around rather than clearing them any. If she was to go any further from here, it would have to be on foot.

"Well," she thought, and glimpsed the light of a lamp up ahead. With it were the blocky outlines of buildings looming through the gloom. "I suppose I could call that a stroke of luck. At least I'm not stranded out in the middle of nowhere." Though the edge of town wasn't ideal, it would do well enough.

Mary Elena let the engine sleep, clambered out into the dark, and opened the back door to reach her chest of supplies. A stake, a crucifix, her handgun with its silver bullets, and a bottle of holy water would see her through the night, she thought. Saw no sense in lugging that big box through the rain. Better to find somewhere to stay until the skies cleared, until the night was through, and then come back to the car for her things.

"Just don't you dare get stolen," she thought, and locked the car once she had grabbed what she wanted. "That's the last thing she need." Her first steps down the road were reluctant ones, taken with dragging heels and many a look back over her shoulder. It was not long until mist and shadow swallowed the way back, and her car with it. Then the only way that remained was forwards. She took a deep breath and pressed on.

There was something about Moonblight that she didn't like right from the off; something in the way it sat, in the way it smelled. It squatted amid trees, cold and clammy as a dark, dirty toad fresh from scummy pond water, and Mary Elena felt its eyes on her back the moment she set foot upon its soil. Must have been its, for there was nobody else to watch her. Must have been its, for all windows were covered and front doors shut up tight. The only welcome offered to her was that which came from the hotel's lit-up signs, but she was aware as well of something curiously breathing down her neck.

Put it out of her mind and followed dim streetlamps across cobble to the white stone stairs of her home for the night:

A sign above the tall oak doors boasted, "THE HOTEL LUNA," in cursive font upon a yellowed backdrop. Mary Elena winced. Her gut insisted, "Turn back! Find somewhere else! Knock on a door if you have to, or even go back to the car! Just don't go in!" She shivered. Rain battered her body hard as thrown stones. She hugged herself to stop her shivers, but the downpour froze her bones, made lead of her joints, and swaddled her in a second, slimy skin that made clothing claustrophobic with how it clung. It was too late to look elsewhere. Whether she liked it or not, this place would have to do.