The Red Hotel (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (3 page)

‘I look down. I’ve seen it night after night and it’s always the same, but it still gives me the fremeers, every time, without fail. All of our intestines are tangled up together, Everett’s and mine, so that I can’t tell where his begin and mine end. They’re like spaghetti, and they’re so twisted and knotted that I know that we could never untangle ourselves. The only way to separate us would be for somebody to cut us apart, slice right through our intestines, and I know that would kill us.’

‘Does anybody try?’

‘No, that’s pretty much the end of the nightmare. I hear a clock striking and that’s when I always wake up. Well – almost.’

‘Almost?’

‘Yes . . . before I do, I see the door open. Only three or four inches, but enough to see that there’s a boy standing outside – a boy with red curly hair and a very white face.’

‘Does he
say
anything, this red-haired boy? Does he move? Does he come into the room?’

T-Yon shook her head. ‘He doesn’t speak and he doesn’t move at all.’

‘Do you recognize him from anywhere?’

‘No. He just stands there staring at us, me and Everett, lying on the bed with our intestines all mixed up together. I can’t be sure, but sometimes I think he’s smiling at us. He really frightens me. My grandma would have called him a
possedé
, that’s Cajun for a really bad child. Like, you know,
possessed
.’

‘But
then
you wake up?’

‘Yes,’ said T-Yon. ‘Always shaking and sweating and always feeling so nauseous. I mean I actually feel as if my insides have been dragged right out of me and all jumbled up and then crammed right back inside of me, for real. It’s like I’ve been quickly sewn back up again only a second before I open my eyes.’

‘Well,’ said Sissy. ‘That’s one hell of a nightmare.’

T-Yon sat right on the edge of the couch with an imploring look in her eyes, her hands clasped tightly together, as if her nightmares were a sin and she was praying for Sissy to absolve her. Sissy took another two or three thoughtful sips of wine before she said anything. She needed time to think what these nightmares could possibly mean, because they were crowded with so many signs and innuendoes.

Sissy had learned from years of fortune-telling that recurring nightmares were almost always a warning, but in T-Yon’s case it was difficult to say exactly what she was being warned about. Her waking relationship with her brother Everett was obviously healthy and non-sexual, and yet her nightmare about him was grossly incestuous. It not only suggested a carnal relationship, but something much more – a visceral entanglement. Their destinies were so closely twisted together that they were like conjoined twins, who shared even their intestines.

Yet there were so many more questions to be answered. Why was she wearing stockings and a garter belt, which she never wore in real life? Why was Everett wearing a Mardi Gras mask? What was the significance of the black-and-white comedy on TV, if any? Why did T-Yon feel that having sex with Everett would be ‘worth her while’, and what exactly did that mean? Who was the red-haired
possedé
, peering in through the door?

Sissy was still trying to answer all of these questions when they heard Billy honking his horn outside, immediately followed by Mr Boots barking.

‘Listen,’ she asked T-Yon, ‘do you have time to stay for the rest of the afternoon? You can even stay the night if you don’t want to drive back to Hyde Park today. Sherlock Holmes used to talk about a “three-pipe problem” which would take him at least the length of time to smoke three pipes to sort out. I think this nightmare of yours might be a three-reading problem.’

‘But what’s your first impression about it?’ asked T-Yon. ‘Do you think I need to be seriously worried about it, or do you think I’m just being dumb and letting my imagination run away with me? Maybe if I change my diet? Or give up drinking – not that I drink a whole lot? Or stop stressing out so much?’

Sissy shrugged one shoulder and tried to give her a reassuring smile. ‘Maybe, yes, sure, it could be something like that. It could be that you’re allergic to some food additive, or that you’re pushing yourself too hard at college. But let me read your cards for you, T-Yon. Then we’ll soon see what we’re up against.’

T-Yon said, ‘Thanks, Ms Sawyer. I so much appreciate it.’ She glanced toward the kitchen to make sure that Billy wasn’t listening, and then she added, almost mouthing it, ‘I can’t tell you how desperate I’ve been.’

‘Call me Sissy, for God’s sake,’ Sissy told her.

T-Yon stood up and went through to the kitchen to help Billy with the groceries. Sissy stayed where she was, with a furrow in her forehead. She didn’t like the sound of this nightmare at all – especially not the way in which it kept repeating itself, night after night. That didn’t sound like a food-allergy nightmare or a nightmare related to worry or overwork. Sissy’s years of experience with the DeVane cards had given her a psychic sensitivity which very few other fortune-tellers could match, and T-Yon’s nightmare had made her feel deeply uneasy.

It reminded her of one particular DeVane card,
La Cuisine De Nuit
, the Night Kitchen, which was a card that cautioned against futile self-sacrifice. She very much hoped that this card wouldn’t turn up when she read T-Yon’s future.

One other disturbing detail was the clock that T-Yon could hear striking. That meant that whatever catastrophe these nightmares foretold, it was imminent. It was going to arrive in days, rather than weeks.

B
efore she started her first reading, Sissy took Billy and T-Yon out on to the verandah so that she could smoke a cigarette and drink another glass of wine. She filled a yellow ceramic bowl with her home-made Parmesan cheese straws, sprinkled with sesame seeds, and brought out a jug of celery sticks, too, which they could dip in her extra-hot home-made salsa.

Billy popped open a can of Schlitz and sat with his feet up on the railing. ‘So did T-Yon tell you all about her nightmares?’

‘She did, yes,’ Sissy nodded. The sky had cleared now, and the sun was shining, so that everything sparkled. Mr Boots was lying at her feet, panting.

‘She won’t tell
me
about them,’ said Billy. ‘If I’ve asked her once I’ve asked her a million times, but she flat out refuses.’

‘That’s because you would take them all the wrong way,’ said T-Yon.

‘How do you know I would, unless you tell me?’

‘Because I just do.’

‘I think you misunderestimate me, as George W. Bush used to say.’

‘No, I don’t. It’s just that I know how touchy you can be. Look at that time Daniel was showing me how to make that Béarnaise sauce. You totally lost it.’

‘He didn’t need to cup his hand around your boob. There’s nothing about
that
in the recipe for Béarnaise sauce.’

‘He didn’t cup his hand around my boob. He was showing me how to stir, that’s all.’

‘Oh, that’s what you call it. It sure looked like
he
was pretty stirred, I can tell you.’

‘You see? That’s exactly why I wouldn’t tell you about my nightmares.’

When Sissy had crushed out a second cigarette, she said to T-Yon, ‘Come on, sweetheart. Come back inside and I’ll give you a reading.’

‘Can I sit in?’ asked Billy.

‘No, you can’t, Billy-bob. Not this time, anyhow. You can peel some potatoes for me. I think I’ll make us one of my potato and mushroom bakes for supper.’

‘Slave-driver.’

Sissy and T-Yon went back into the living room. T-Yon sat down on the couch and said, ‘I don’t know why I’m feeling so nervous.’

‘
Relax
,’ Sissy told her. ‘The more you open your mind, the clearer your reading will be. The DeVane cards pick up on your thoughts and your emotions, and they tell you in pictures what your thoughts and emotions mean, and where your life will be taking you next. But it makes it harder for them to give you a full and accurate prediction if you deliberately hide anything that you’re embarrassed about, or ashamed of. So – please. Do try to let yourself go. I’m not going to judge you. The cards are not going to judge you. We’re just going to show you what your future has in store for you, that’s all.’

She picked up the deck and sorted through them until she found a card called
La Sorcière Blanche
. She passed it across to T-Yon and said, ‘This is your Predictor card. In other words, this is the card that represents
you
. Lay it down on the coffee table and place the palm of your hand on top of it.’

T-Yon held the card up and frowned at it. ‘This is me?’

‘The White Witch,’ Sissy translated for her. ‘I could have chosen the Pastry Maker for you, or the Cook, but I think this suits you better.’

The card showed a disturbingly beautiful young woman standing in a cave, stirring a three-legged witch’s cauldron with a long-handled ladle. She was wearing a tall, white conical hat with her blonde hair braided on either side of her head into two buns, like Princess Leia; but apart from that she was naked. In place of pubic hair, however, she had a purple flowering hydrangea.

Peeping out of the broth that was bubbling in the cauldron were several grotesque fish, and a spiny lobster; and also a very tiny girl, or maybe she was only a doll.

The expression on the White Witch’s face was riveting, as if she were daring whoever looked at this card to turn away.

Behind her, clearly visible through the mouth of the cave, three poles were standing in a sloping field, arranged like the crosses on Calvary. On one of them was impaled the severed head of a donkey. On the other two, the severed heads of a reindeer, complete with antlers, and a Chinese-looking woman.

Beyond the field rose dark pine forests, and distant mountains. High up in the sky, among thundery clouds, a kite was flying with its tail on fire.

‘This is
seriously
weird,’ said T-Yon. ‘What about these heads, stuck on these sticks? What do they mean? And what about this tiny little girl, inside of this cooking pot?’

‘It depends what the other cards come up with,’ Sissy told her. ‘Everything that you can see on this card has a meaning, but the meaning always varies from one person to the next. That burning kite could mean that you’re prepared to take risks to be a high-flyer in your catering career. But it could also mean that your time is running out – that the kite itself is going to start burning soon, and drop to the ground. It’s like that little girl. She may be a doll but she may be a real child. We’ll have to see.’

She shuffled the remainder of the cards and then she laid them out like a Cross of Lorraine, almost the same as most fortune-tellers would lay them out for a Tarot reading. Then she arranged three more cards above them, face down, in a fan pattern.

T-Yon placed her Predictor card on the coffee table and pressed the flat of her hand on top of it.

‘OK,’ said Sissy. ‘Now I want you to ask the cards a question. Don’t tell me what it is. Think hard about it, and they’ll answer it for you.’

T-Yon closed her eyes and frowned in concentration. Then she opened them again and said, ‘Right. I’ve done it. I’ve asked them.’

‘You’re ready for this?’ Sissy asked her.

T-Yon nodded. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’

Sissy turned over the first card. It was called
La Châtelaine
, and it showed a cross-section of a four-story town-house, like a dolls’ house with the front open. In each of its nine rooms stood a thin, narrow-shouldered woman in a pale gray gown – the same woman in every room, unless she was nontuplets. Her black hair was pinned up tight, and her face was pinched, as if in disapproval. She wore a white floor-length apron over her gown, and around her waist hung a chain with nine keys dangling from it.

‘The Mistress of the House,’ said Sissy.

T-Yon peered at the card with a frown. ‘She doesn’t look too happy, does she?’

‘I’m not surprised. Take a closer look at each of those rooms.’

In the living room, a man was sitting cross-legged in a high-backed armchair, holding up a newspaper. He had a high wing collar, but no head. In the parlor next door, a maid in a mob cap was kneeling in front of the fire, prodding it with a poker. The scene looked normal enough at first glance, until T-Yon saw that a young woman’s head was hanging upside down out of the chimney, her hair in flames and her face blackened with soot.

The scene in the kitchen was even more disturbing. A bald, stocky cook in a bloodstained apron was chopping up meat with a cleaver. On the chopping block in front of him was a grisly mixture of rabbits’ heads and pigs’ trotters, as well as human hands and knee joints.

Behind him, a red-haired kitchen maid was setting out a row of pies to cool on the window sill. Out of the crusts of each of the pies, human fingers were protruding. A fat man with a walrus moustache was standing right outside the window, holding up a pocket watch.

In every room, something gruesome and strange was happening. Even the portraits that hung on either side of the staircase depicted people with empty eye sockets, or people with their backs turned, or people whose faces were distorted in expressions of alarm.

In the smaller bedrooms, three of the beds looked at first as if they were covered with coarsely woven gray blankets, but then T-Yon saw that they were actually swarming with heaps of gray rats. On one bed, from underneath a tangle of rodents, a woman’s hand was dangling down; and on another bed, a child’s bare foot was protruding, but these were the only visible signs of what the rats were feasting on.

To begin with, T-Yon could see nothing horrific in the master bedroom, until she noticed the congealing blood that was sliding out from underneath the wardrobe doors, and the bloody red handprint on the white chamber-pot below the bed.

‘This is just
horrible
,’ she said, handing the card back to Sissy. ‘Like, what does it all mean? How can this have anything to do with me and my nightmares?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Sissy admitted. ‘But
La Châtelaine
is the very first card and this means that it’s an indicator of everything that’s going to happen to you next in your life.’