Author’s Note
This was an idea for a story I started after taking a work trip that really did result in a total of six rebookings and cancellations, hence the opening. I wrote the first chapter, shelved the idea to work on other things, and never came back to it. If people find the opener interesting, though, feel free to tell me - maybe I’ll go back and continue it if people are interested.
It was a dark and stormy night…
…or so the airline was claiming, since they were delaying our flight three hours. Looked pretty damn balmy outside to me, though. The first delay was fine. Stuff happens. The second delay was frustrating, but…sure, mechanical failures happen too. Better safe than sorry when you’re six miles above sea level. But this was delay number six. SIX! How does that even happen?
“Wonder whether you can sue for gross incompetence after number seven, “ I muttered sarcastically to no one in particular. We still had a connecting flight to catch after this, and the odds of running across the terminals in time were looking irritatingly slim indeed.
“I think if you try, they’ll just refer you to their terms and conditions online until you die of boredom.” Randi quipped, her eyes not even leaving the page of her book. A book, mind you, that she had not started until after our first delay, which she was now almost three-quarters through. Even for a fifteen-year-old, she could read through books insanely fast.
As if reading my mind: “If I finish this book before we fly out, can I go pick out another from the airport bookstore?” I cringed internally at the absurd markup I’d be paying if I said yes, but considering how tempting the thought of just disappearing into some fantasy world where airlines didn’t exist was at the moment, I couldn’t bring myself to say no either. “We’ll see,” was all I mustered. Resigned to a long wait, I slouched down into the uncomfortable chair, pulled the baseball cap down over my face, and closed my eyes to rest.
Not three minutes had passed before I heard the one thing I very, very much did not want to hear. “Oh no.” Randi said. I didn’t have the guts to open my eyes nor the mental capacity for vocalizing full sentences after the day I’d had, so I just groaned in a generically inquiring tone. Randi got the point. dutifully relaying the news with all the solemnity of a pallbearer. “Flight’s delayed again…until ten o’clock tomorrow.”
“You’re kidding,” I said, ripping the hat off my face with a scowl. “That’s not a delay, that’s a cancellation!” In my mind, I was already calculating the probability of collecting enough disgruntled passengers to mutiny the aircraft, but sullenly dismissed the idea. Getting arrested in another state would just mean being stuck here even longer.
“At least the airline has to provide hotel vouchers now,” Randi chimed in. “I’m all for another night’s stay in cushy beds.” Against my wishes, I smiled. Randi could somehow manage to find the positive side of just about anything so long as someone else wasn’t actively ruining the moment. That person was usually me, unfortunately. Being a parent seems to often involve saying a lot of things that are mood-killers, and stress certainly wasn’t helping me come up with cheerful responses. “Yeah. If we don’t fall asleep in the line, that is.” I was really hoping this was adequately non-mood-killing.
Randi’s smile dropped. Apparently the mood was very much deceased. Instead of saying anything further, though, I just put a half-smile, half-grimace on my face, hugged her to my side, and said, “It’s fine, don’t worry. Go watch our luggage and keep reading your book. I’ll be back when I have vouchers.”
—-
Ninety minutes in line, one shuttle ride and one flustered (but otherwise friendly) check-in clerk conversation later, Randi and I finally shoved our luggage through the hotel room door in front of us. Fumbling for a light switch, I finally managed to see…a single bed. When I was very clear – abundantly clear, in fact, when speaking with the airline attendant, so clear that polished diamond couldn’t be more transparent – that there would, in fact, be two people needing to sleep in this room. And they assured me there would be a double-bed room available.
Randi, of course, did not miss the obvious lack of a second bed (or the fact that I was staring indignantly at the bed while standing completely motionless, that might have been a clue as well). “Hey, look, there’s a little side compartment in the wall; maybe it’s an old servant’s quarters that I can sleep in!”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll sleep on the floor.” At this point, I was pretty certain I could sleep hanging upside-down off the Empire State Building. My eyes were burning some serious calories just to force themselves open enough for me to wander into the bathroom and close the door.
I had just barely sat down to do my business before I heard muffled thumping coming from the main room. “Randi, that panel is probably just for air conditioning work.” I wanted to tell her to leave it alone, but it was obvious from the sounds that it was far too late for that to matter now. After a few moments, the sounds stopped, so I figured she must have realized I was right and it was boring and decided to flop into bed. I nearly nodded off right there on the porcelain throne, but finally I managed to drag myself over to the sink to wash my hands.
Drying my hands on the towel – geez, these are nice towels, I wonder if I’d get in trouble for taking one back home? – I stepped back out into the room to see my girl curled up on the floor, reading a book. “Hey, take a look at what I found,” she said, gesturing to the cubbyhole in the wall which now lay uncovered.
“In the morning, kiddo.” I really didn’t need to see another dusty old HVAC unit that would probably have me questioning whether the layers of dust were going to combust in the night right before trying to get some sleep.
“No seriously, you should look at this. I think we found a way home.”
I squinted in confusion. “What, did you find an ultralite plane in there or something? Inflatable dirigible? Free train tickets?” All I got from Randi was an excited hand gesture – or rather, excited book gesture, since she was still holding a book in her hand – and her ducking into the crawlspace.
“Whatever,” I thought to myself. If it sates her, then we can just go to sleep after. Ducking my head down, I realized the crawlspace entrance was rather high for…well, a crawlspace. It was almost 5 feet high and only required me to duck under rather than actually crawl on hands and knees. Once inside, I realized we were basically in a hallway adjacent to the actual hallway. Looking down the corridor, I realized that each room had a similar entrance that led directly into this secret tunnel, which immediately creeped me out. Who the hell puts tunnels into everyone’s rooms like this in a hotel? That’s stalker-ish at best and a violation of some legal code at worst.
Worst of all, Randi didn’t seem to think of any of this. “Come on! I found something while you were in the bathroom!”
“You explored the creepy murder hallway while I was pooping? Seriously?” I loud-whispered. “Are you crazy?” My daughter would apparently be the first to die in a horror movie. Never would have guessed it until this moment.
“Just come oooon! It gets better.” Randi began jogging down the corridor back towards where I estimated the elevators should be. Pulling out my cell phone and switching on the flashlight, I followed, though there strangely seemed to be enough light to see by without it.
Eventually, Randi led us to a large room. The floor here was no longer wood, but smooth scoria stone, as were the floors and ceiling. In fact, the whole room was one hollow sphere with cutouts for one large indentation along the back wall, wide enough for several people to stand in at once, and the two entrances, which were on either side of a large obelisk.
An obelisk with a dial. Which my daughter was now playing with.
“Randi what are you doing? You don’t know what this thing is! I don’t know what this thing is! Just leave it alone.” Again, best-case scenario the hotel is going to be very mad over someone toying with some weird tool they have in their walls. Worst-case scenario, H.H. Holmes is gonna come stab us and use this strange murder-cult-idol to exsanguinate us while we’re still awake.
“I know what I’m doing. It has a manual.” Randi held up the book in her hand, and for the first time I realized it wasn’t the book she was reading before. It was some small, dusty tome that looked more like a small magazine than a proper book. “I’m going to get us home.”
“You can’t be serious, Randi.”
“I totally can. See? The dial has a home setting.”
In retrospect, that sounded wrong even at the time. But I was very tired, and apparently Randi didn’t notice how that sounded either, so I think we both must have written it off. I was also rather flustered that, at least for the moment, the two of us were suspending our belief in the basic fundamentals of reality to assume that this stone dial thing had any idea where home was for us or how to get us there. That seemed the more pressing matter at the time, frankly.
Randi, however, didn’t think so. She dialed up the symbol for ‘home’ – which, frankly, was a bit of a letdown; it just looked like a crude drawing of a house – and pressed the center button on the dial. Nothing seemed to happen until Randi happened to glance back at the indentation at the back of the room. The empty space was now shimmering purple, as though a colorful heat wave were passing through that spot and that spot only.
“Randi. No.”
“Randi YES, are you kidding me? We found a magic portal machine, do you have any idea how cool this is?”
…I was honestly having a very difficult time arguing that one. That did rather look like exactly what we’d found.
“We don’t know what that is, we don’t know if its a portal, and even if it is we don’t know where it leads…”
“It’s a portal, and it leads home, because I clicked the home button and it’s magic so why wouldn’t that work?”
“Because this isn’t real! It can’t be real!”
“Well, if you wanna stay and shoot for flight number seven, go for it, but I’m taking my chances with the magic portal machine!” I have never seen such raw glee on Randi’s face, before or since. I so desperately wanted her to be right, just so she could hold onto that giddiness a while longer. But alas, being an adult means making reasonable decisions.
“No. We are turning this thing off and going back to the hotel room and sleeping and then going back to the airport so we can get home. Tomorrow. The normal, human way, not the crazy magic-machine-in-the-hotel-backrooms way.”
In retrospect, I probably could have found a nicer way to put that, considering Randi was so invested in this idea. That giddiness soured into a stubborn pout so very quickly that I didn’t even recognize what she was planning to do until she did it.
She ran straight for the purple shimmer. And then she disappeared.
In my defense, I didn’t scream or cry or do any sort of stereotypical drama-film action. I just stood there staring for a second, swore, and then walked calmly back to the hotel room.
…where I proceeded to gather up both our luggage, shove it all into the crawlspace (not an easy feat), and throw it all into the portal ahead of myself before following shortly behind.
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