Motel 666

Delilah looked up at Vincent, before he noticed her staring she had already made note of his facial expression and his white knuckles as he gripped the phone. When his eyes shifted towards her she tightened the muscles in her face self-consciously in an effort to hide the fear she was sure was showing there. In answer to every question she had no intention of asking, he slipped the phone back into his pocket and said, “We’re gonna’ be fine.” Then, suddenly, rethinking this long-ago memorized task, he tore the phone back out of his pocket and held down the power button until the screen went black. “Fine.” He repeated, taking a deep breath and putting it back in his pocket once more.

Delilah abandoned the thought of this action and what it might mean as they turned to walk away from the tree. She followed him as she had been following him every place they had been so far: as if she knew where they were going. 

They walked the opposite of the direction they had come from, farther from home.

The next four hours passed in brooding silence as Vincent and Delilah walked the twenty miles to Clement, the next town over. Vincent was heavy with guilt and the depth of the darkness was intensified by the persistent silence. As they neared the end of their journey, a car passed every now and then, headlights splashing over trees and roadsigns as they went by. 

“This is the farthest I’ve ever been from Saint John’s.” Delilah broke the silence as they passed a sign indicating the county border. 

Vincent looked up, a little dazed. “I lived in Clement for a few months, but I really prefer the country.” He pushed his hair back, “We’ll get a motel room and. . . Lay low for a couple days.”

That almost sounded relaxing. Almost. When they reached Clement the clock on the back wall of the motel lobby said it was three forty-eight in the morning. The Persian man behind the desk didn’t blink when he saw the mismatched pair in their rumpled clothes approach him. He took Vincent’s money and gave them a key. Vincent led Delilah up the narrow staircase, through a carpeted hall, lit by flickering lights, to their tiny room. Lucy sat on the bed and slipped the big, ugly boots off for the first time in a day and a half. The bottoms of her feet were black. Vincent went into the bathroom and washed his face, then he took the key off the dresser and headed for the door. 

“Where are you going?”

He stopped and turned, “I need a new ID. Stay here, don’t open the door for anyone. I’ll be back in two hours.”

The door shut hard and Delilah heard him lock it behind him. She took a shower, pushing down the nausea brought on by the grimy plastic shower curtain and the stained porcelain. Afterwards she sat in the quiet darkness of their motel room for a moment. Her first instinct had been to turn on the lamp, but even artificial light made her skin sting a little, and she could see fine without it. She went to the window, but, looking out, it presented only a view of the gas station next door behind its thin, yellowing curtains. The room itself was too small for its furnishings, most of the floor was taken up by the bed and the TV stand. The wallpaper was peeling and the only decoration to be found was a frameless mirror, which hung on the wall, miraculously unbroken. Delilah avoided it, better not to see herself in her borrowed clothes and be forced to think about her situation.

She turned on the television, but every channel was a vicious mess of static so she shut it off. She checked the drawer to see if there really was a Bible. There was, it was the only thing in the room that looked like it had never been touched. She read one passage, then another, then another, until the hours were taken up and Vincent returned and unlocked  the door.

He came in carrying a plastic bag, he reached into it as the door swung shut behind him and produced a pair of cheep, red sunglasses, which he threw to Delilah, “I brought you a present.”

She picked them up and looked at him questioningly. 

“To cover your eyes the next time we leave. From now on, I’m Sam, by the way.”

“Sam?”

He held up his new counterfeit driver’s license to show her, grinning, “Now we match. It’s a good picture, right?” The license read Samson Jay Shoemaker.

Delilah went to the mirror on the wall and looked at herself in her new sunglasses. Red was her favorite color, but they were a little big for her. She laughed, tugging the hair on either side of her face. 

“It’s a little uneven, huh?” Sam watched her, “Sorry about that, we’ll get it fixed as soon as we can.” 

“The sunglasses are cool, though.” She smiled at him turning away from the mirror, red eyes glinting above the plastic frames. 

He laughed and shook his head, “You’re a weird kid. Get your shoes, we need to get into my rainy day fund.” 

They walked to the twenty-four hour car rental place by the airport where Samson presented his ID and signed some papers and they were given the keys to a silver Saturn. They drove back to Benham where they parked in the empty grocery store lot and walked to Sam’s house. 

He stood in the neighbor’s yard for a moment and examined his house. The driveway was empty and the door was in tact so he proceeded and Delilah followed. They walked deep into the woods behind the house. Sam stopped in the shadow of a thick, twisty tree. He walked six paces out from its base and began to dig with the shovel he had purchased, along with Delilah’s sunglasses, at the gas station. After a while the plastic tip scraped something below the surface. He bent down and dug it out with his fingers. What he unearthed appeared to Delilah to be a metal box, like a toolbox with a handle on the top and latches on the sides. Samson did not pause to scrape off the layer of dirt that covered the object, but if he had she would have seen that it was in fact a rusty, repurposed ammo can. He kicked the dirt back into the hole, grabbed the shovel and led Delilah back to the car. He gave her the can and tossed the shovel into the trunk. 

“I’ll be right back.”

He returned moments later with a bag he kept under his kitchen sink and a tiny cooler, both of which he put in the back seat. 

Delilah watched the scenery fly by on the drive back. When they got back to the motel it was nearly dawn. Sam gave her the cooler and carried the box and the bag himself. He set them down on top of the dresser once they got upstairs. Delilah sat down on the end of the bed and felt exhaustion settle deep in her bones. Outside the sun was rising, glowing dimly at the edges of the curtains. He sat on the opposite corner of the bed and took off his shoes. 

“Toss me one of those pillows, will you?” He said, taking off his jacket. 

Delilah leaned across the bed, grabbed a pillow and threw it to him. He took it and laid down on the floor between the bed and the wall. She sat in silence for a while, then took off the borrowed boots and crawled under the covers and drifted off.

Author's Note

I am terrible at making up city names. All of the places our heroes visit are based on towns around here, however, I hesitate to place the book here because there is no orphanage. So, I know the made up names are awful, think of them as placeholders.