The hotel's lights ahead sparkled through Greg's rain-dappled windshield as he drove up the driveway. He was finally close enough to the dot on his phone's map that the navigation had nothing more to say. He couldn't be sure if this was what he was hoping for or what he was dreading, but it was just as stunning and unexpected as before.
He parked in the gravel lot out front and got out of the car, looking at the structure from the outside. He still wasn't sure about going back in there, after what happened before. Maybe coming back here was a mistake, but he needed to get away, and he needed answers, and he thought maybe he'd be able to get them here. Maybe if he came alone, he wouldn't be susceptible to whatever collective delusion they'd been under before.
But going out to find the dragon is one thing. Climbing into its mouth is another.
Greg was not so oblivious as the rest of them seemed to think. He remembered what he saw, when they all woke up in the abandoned hotel together: his wife Amy lying naked, straddling her brother's crotch. A trail of semen when she got up off him, his cock slipping free.
He also knew Amy had come back here with Zach, spent another weekend alone here with him, and came home reeking of sex. All while she and Greg were trying to conceive. Now she was pregnant, and it could have been Greg's. She sought him out soon after that weekend away, but Greg wasn't fooled. If the baby was Zach's, that would be obvious in time.
He wasn't sure where that left him. He wasn't sure what kind of future he and Amy could have together. But that was also only the beginning.
Greg thought that what happened to the whole group of them at this abandoned hotel was something they had tacitly agreed never to talk about again. Other than Zach and Amy, who were their own thing by now. But then when Greg was over at Mike's house, he noticed photos on Mike's desk, showing the crumbling facade. It was Zach's photography for sure.
Greg asked if Mike had been back here since, and Mike denied it, but he was a bad liar. When he had a moment alone with Mike's computer, he found a dropbox password on the desktop. Greg expected to find more of Zach's photos. Instead, he found video taken inside the abandoned hotel. A video starring Mike and his sister Jenna.
Now, standing outside the place, Greg found himself scared to go in there. Scared of what it would put him through. There was clearly some trickery happening here. He knew when he was being manipulated.
Losing his nerve, Greg got back in the car. He still wasn't sure what he would say to Amy when he got home. This resolved nothing, but maybe he shouldn't have expected it to. He put the key in the ignition and turned. Something made a whirring, grinding sound under the hood, but there was no roar of the engine. He tried again. And again. And then he sighed, and sat there, defeated.
Greg would have to call a tow-truck, but only towing company nearby was already closed for the night. Maybe he'd call Mike or Zach. Or his mom or dad or Maia. But not right now.
It would be so easy to walk into the illusion of the hotel. Too easy. He closed his eyes, hoping to get some sleep in the driver's seat, and sort out the rest in the morning. But sleep wouldn't come.
He gave in, and went inside. He recognized the woman at the front desk. He probably wouldn't have remembered her name if Mike hadn't been repeating it, calling Jenna by that name, in that messed up video that Greg got ahold of.
"Hey Rosie," he said. "Can I get a room for the night?"
"Sure thing," she said, reaching for a room key for him. "You're Mike's friend, right?"
He nodded.
She waved away his credit card. "Pay when you check out. Can I show you to your room?"
"Yeah, thanks," Greg said. He knew he didn't have the best sense of direction.
Then he followed the desk attendant down corridors, around turns, up and down stairs. Eventually, halfway down an anonymous hallway of identical doors, she opened one of the rooms for him.
He went to close the room door and have a moment to himself again, when another woman walked down the hall, passing in front of the doorway. It was that young woman Zach was fawning over last time they were all here. Only now her belly was round. To Greg, the sight of it was a shock and a wound, reminding him of the turmoil he'd temporarily escaped at home.
Fucking Zach. Fucking Zach and his fucking around. Greg's brother-in-law had already knocked up a woman during college, and he had the gall to complain about child support to anyone who'd listen.
When he closed his eyes, Greg saw himself in his parent's house, when he was home after college graduation to get his things, before moving in with Amy. He was coming back upstairs to get another box when he walked past Maia's room.
As twins, they always knew when they were looking at each other, and it stopped him in his tracks. She was staring daggers into him.
"What'd I do this time?" He really wasn't sure.
"You're leaving me," she said.
"What do you want me to do? Stay here forever?"
"Yes," she said, like it was obvious. "Anything she can do, I can do better."
Greg shook his head, trying to will away the vision. No. That wasn't how it happened. Maybe his wife Amy and her brother Zach had some sick thing going on. Maybe Mike and Jenna were messed up the same way. But not him.
Greg wound up in the bar, because this wasn't the kind of night he could handle sober, even if the booze wasn't real. He nursed an old fashioned, because even if the strangers around him were all just window-dressing, his sense of propriety wasn't so easy to silence. He wanted to get drunk, but he could take his time getting there. He had all night, after all.
He felt that familiar sense of pressure, like when he was being watched. He turned on the bar stool, and caught her eye. It was Maia. His twin sister. With her head of frizzy curls, her chocolate skin just like his. This had to be an illusion, though he couldn't imagine how whatever entity inhabited this place would even know about her.
"You have a twin sister?" Amy had asked incredulously. She didn't find out until she and Greg were engaged. "Why haven't you ever mentioned her?"
"Because sometimes when you've spent more than eighteen years with someone, you decide that's plenty," he'd said. Though it wasn't that simple. He was the one who decided that, not Maia. And for reasons he could never explain to her.
But now here she was, in this cursed hotel, as if brought to life from his memories. Except she was older than last time he saw her. She was wearing a leather jacket and sipping a margarita, and he realized he was staring. Though she started it.
"Hey," he said to her, from a couple barstools away.
"Hey," she replied likewise. But not quite the familiar way his sister would have.
"Do you know me?" he asked.
"Should I?" She smiled a bit. "Are you like...a big deal or something?"
He paused for a second, and then decided to slide over and sit next to her. He couldn't not. She didn't flinch, but she didn't lean in, either. Like he was a stranger, but maybe not a stranger she was disinterested in.
"No. Well, maybe to a few people, you know?" he said. "What brings you here?"
"I'm touring the country on my motorcycle, and stopped here to get out of the rain," she said. "What about you?"
This was different. His Maia drove a hatchback and wore thick sweaters. It was like the hotel was taking on her appearance, but giving her another role to play.
"It's a long story," he said. He wondered how much to confide in her, whoever or whatever she really was. How much it mattered if he spilled a secret here, but also how much he wanted to even say aloud. "I don't really want to talk about it. Let's just say, sometimes you have to get away from home for a little while."
He knew it was wrong for her to be here, even if it was all fake, but it was also a comfort to him. They sat at the bar talking, and over the course of the evening, he got to know this Maia, who had a different job, a different life. She never mentioned a twin brother, and he never mentioned a twin sister.
He knew it was getting late, and she was leaning closer now, with a tender, inviting smile. Not the kind you give your brother. Greg knew he had to go, before she got the wrong idea about his interest in her.
"Good night. It's been a pleasure talking with you," he said, and got up off the bar stool, feeling woozier than he expected.
"Same to you," she said, looking a little let down. "Are you good?"
"Yeah," he said. "I've got this, thanks."
He started back down the hallway, probably the one he came down to find the bar. The floor wasn't all that steady under his feet. He passed a doorway with the door ajar, offering a glimpse inside. That young, thin, pregnant girl Violet was on all fours on the bed, her swollen belly hanging down beneath her. Zach was behind her, grabbing her hips as he thrust into her. Their gasps were in unison with their rhythm.
Greg closed his eyes, trying to unsee that, and lost his balance. He braced against the wall until his vision stopped swimming. Now he couldn't tell for sure which way he'd been headed before he got distracted.
After wandering the halls to the point of desperation, he found his room, or so he thought. The door was already unlocked, and it opened when he turned the handle. Inside, the front desk clerk was spread out on the bed naked, her legs out wide, with Mike crouched between them, lapping at her cleft.
"Sorry, I'll go," Greg muttered softly, pulling the door closed again before they could notice the intrusion. Despite himself, these tableaus were having an effect on his inebriated body.
He kept wandering the hallways, but he was just so tired by now. Eventually he sat down on the carpet. Misjudging the distance, his head lightly hit the wall with a resounding thud.
Closing his eyes for a second, he was taken back to the night before he went away to college. Maia had been sullen and avoiding him, and he wasn't having it, not when they were about to be apart.
"Hey, come sit with me for a second," he told her, and she joined him on the sofa. "What's the matter?"
"Aren't you supposed to be able to read my mind or something? You know what the matter is," she said. "Isn't it going to bother you?"
"Of course it is. We've never been apart for long. I know I'm going to miss you. That's why I don't want to leave with you in a funk," he said. But it had to happen eventually, he knew that. Or else it never would.
"I'm going to miss you too," she said.
He turned towards her, trying to see in her eyes how she was taking it. But her eyes were softly lidded as she leaned towards him. In that split second, he could feel her intent, and he could feel himself mirroring it, even if his conscious mind didn't have time to catch up with where it was heading.
