The Visitor

This is an "in progress" story that I started writing a while back. Please read and review, if people like it I will finish it. Based on my time out west and the staff accommodation I lived in. Enjoy.

Opening Notes

 

            If you drive down the Highway 1 in the Bow Valley Corridor between Crenshaw and Canmore you will find it just down the off ramp marked Dead Mans Flats. Nestled in a sea of dark pine that grows beneath the Canadian Rockies, where most tourists begin uncapping the lenses of their cameras and craning their necks upwards to find the peaks of the giants before them, it mostly goes unnoticed; The Pigeon Mountain Motel. It had been built in 1968 and served as the first motel for travellers making their way from Calgary to whatever adventure they had laid out before them as they moved west towards Vancouver and the coastline. Now it sits, years later, as a staff accommodation for one of Canmore’s resort hotels. It is here, in the year 2014, that our story begins.

 

1.

 

          Ellie was the type of girl who never did anything brash. She had lived her life in Ottawa, Canada’s capital city, and had never even entertained the idea of pulling up stakes and moving somewhere else. The thought of a new city, filled with new people and new noises had scared her. For her entire life she had been the girl that was content with the same routines, the same doldrums of a life lead on repeat. In her mind she knew this was not something to be proud of, but in her heart she knew it was the safest of lives to have. When her best friend Mary had told her one evening over dinner and drinks that she would be moving out west, Ellie had found herself strangely compelled by the idea. For the first time in her life, she let herself open up to something that before would have been an immediate write off, and considered the possibility of going along with Mary. In the end she had let years of fear and apprehension fall away, and after two months of planning, she and Mary had pulled away from the city she had called home for 27 years and driven west towards Alberta. The trip, which Ellie had carefully planned, had taken 5 days, and towards the end, when the first peaks of the Rocky Mountains became visible in the horizon, Ellie felt the twinge of excitement she hadn’t realized she had longed for all those years.

          They had driven in to the town of Canmore, and in to the round a bout parking lot of The Grande Rockies Resort, where they had been hired on as housekeepers. Each girl said their customary hellos, shook hands with various people, and after an hour they were lead out by one of the staff to their new home. As they followed the beat up van in front of them, both girls noticed how far from town they were being lead. Finally, when it seemed likely that the employee was leading them back to Calgary, they pulled off at an exit marked Dead Mans Flats, and in to the parking lot of the Pigeon Mountain Motel. Mary turned the ignition key and the Mazda Protégé’s engine rumbled and then quieted. She and Ellie exchanged glances and stepped out of the car in unison, resting their eyes upon the run down building before them. “It’s not much,” a young man with a thick Australian accent who had introduced himself as Daniel earlier, said “but it’s better than a lot of the staff accom out there.” Ellie looked at him with slight disbelief and then dropped it, deciding that it wasn’t worth asking how anything could be much worse.

The motel had been there for some time, that much was immediately clear. The wood paneling along the exterior was faded and peeling, and in the little vestibule, which was visible through glass windows that ran along the centre of the building, there were piles of garbage and boxes of various paraphernalia. The motel had two floors, the second floor bordered by a balcony which ran the length of the building. Some of the wood slats which made up the walkway were missing. Ellie stared at this for a few moments, wondering how a place like this could be allowed to come to such ruin. Then again from what she had gathered, the residents were mostly young people and the upkeep of a temporary home most likely came second to beer and parties. Spaced roughly 5 feet apart from each other were doors, each one displaying a brass room number; 26, 27, 28. Ellie read each one from left to right, then she turned her gaze upwards to the second floor and counted right to left. In total, there were 15 rooms, some of which had doors which stood open, inviting in the warm summer breeze.

Mary turned to Ellie, and upon seeing the hesitance in her face, she said “let’s see what our room is like before we get to nervous.” She laughed as she finished speaking and after a moment Ellie allowed herself to join in. They began to unpack the car and as they did Ellie stared up at the mountains before her and decided it could be a good place to live after all.

 

2.

 

            Two months before their trip west, Ellie had met a man named Chris Andrews, whom she had immediately allowed herself to fall in love with. He was kind hearted although brash sometimes, but always good to her in a way she had needed someone to be for a long time. When he had found out that she would be leaving, he had decided that he would follow her out there when he could, and true to his word he had been. A little over a month after Ellie had stepped out of Mary’s car and in to her room at the Pigeon Mountain Motel, Chris had boarded a plane and joined her in Alberta. Now ten months later, they sat together on the balcony of the motel, each drinking a Pacific Pilsner and staring out at the Rockies. The door to their room, number 35, stood open as many others had on the day of her arrival.  Ellie, who was usually talkative once she had downed a couple beers, was strangely silent that day. Chris had noticed this but said nothing, there was no need.

In their year together he had learned many things about her, including the fact that she was an active sleeper. Most nights he would be awoken to the sound of Ellie’s voice mumbling and whispering incoherently in the dark. He often ignored it and went back to sleep, but some nights were worse. In the dead of night he had awoken, not to the sound of her sleeping voice but to silence. He didn’t know what had stirred him but something had pulled him from sleep and brought him back to the waking world. In the dark room there was little to see, heaps of shadows reduced parts of the small space in to absolute darkness. Sometimes when he awoke at night to pee, he thought that maybe there really was nothing in those patches of darkness, no physical matter, no anything. In his sleep soaked mind it seemed to him that there was a void in these areas where all things tangible had been sucked in, and when morning came they would be gone. When morning did come however everything would still be as it had been the day before and he would smile and think that his previous thoughts were ludicrous.

Still though, when he did wake during the night the thoughts always came back, and regardless of how many times he dismissed them during the day, in the black emptiness of night they scared him. This night when he had awoken, he saw a new shadow arching upwards from the bed, as if some phantom had crawled in and sat beside him as he had slept. For a moment his heart began to race, until he realized it was only Ellie sitting straight up in bed and staring across the room. He sat up and looked at her, her face partially hidden behind ribbons of long dark hair. In the obscurity of night she almost seemed scary, as if at any moment she might turn to him with a wicked grin on her face. She did not move however, only sat staring at the far corner of the room. Chris turned his head in the direction she seemed to be fixated on and tried to see whatever it was she saw. All he could see was darkness and shadow, nothing moved, nothing creaked. “Ellie, why are you sitting up?” he said “what’s wrong?” At the sound of his voice she finally moved, turning her head towards him with, to his relief, no evil grin on her lips. “Nothing” she responded, and lay down, falling immediately asleep. Had she ever truly been awake? He thought about this for a moment before deciding she probably had been asleep the whole time. The heavy sound of her breathing, almost a snore, began to emanate from beside him. He lay down as well and rested his head on the pillow, pulling the covers up to his neck. Every now and then he glanced back at the dark corner Ellie had been staring at. It was some time before he fell asleep again.

 

          Now sitting on the balcony, the warm spring sun shining down on them, the night before had seemed like a dream. He had asked her when she woke if she remembered what had happened but she hadn’t. All she had remembered was that she had been having a strange dream, although what it had been about she could not recall. After that it had seemed pointless to talk about it any further, it had after all been just another of Ellie’s nightly activities. “It’s a nice day out today, maybe we should go down to the river,” Ellie said. She seemed to have snapped out of her earlier funk and was smiling up at the blue sky, squinting her eyes against the sun. It was in moments like these, when he saw her with the sunlight hitting her soft skin, and the wind lightly blowing her hair that he felt his heart melt. She was the love of his life, and although years divided them, he being 7 years her senior, he still found they connected on a deep level. She turned to him then and her smile broadened, “Well?” she said. Chris returned the smile and nodded, the river sounded like a nice place to go today indeed. They packed a knapsack with water and snacks and headed out the door. Ellie strolled down the balcony towards the vestibule doors and the little set of stairs to the ground floor beyond them. As she did, Chris turned to close the door to their room and for a moment as the gap between was only inches apart he saw...something. It was crouched at the foot of their bed. It appeared to be a shadow, no bigger than a small child. Chris swung the door open again, sunlight spilling into the little room like water. Now there was nothing, had there even been anything? Beneath the bed were Ellie’s slippers, a pair of jeans, and hand bag. None of these things resembled the shape he had seen, but he dismissed it anyways. A simple trick of the mind, a lingering thought from last night’s events still hidden in his unconscious mind.  Chris shook the thoughts away and closed the door, locking it before he walked away. As he turned towards the vestibule doors he glanced back, expecting to see something right behind him. The walkway was empty. Nothing moved.

Author's Note

Not the best punctuation or grammar, I know. Consider it a rough draft.