With Love, From Home

“The Cherry Hotel. Walk down the pavement, turn right, and it’s the first building on your side of the street.”

There was wind on the other end of the line, distorting Mom’s voice. She was uncharacteristically precise with her instructions, but of course, I wasn’t exactly complaining - if it took longer than twenty minutes to find the mystery relative I was to bring home with me, there would be no bus to ride on for either of us.

The early winter wind bit into my bare hands as my hurried footsteps sounded across the empty cement. Every building seemed abandoned, windows dark and dusty, every brick wall graffitied with obscenities and symbols I hadn’t seen before. The sky was a blank sheet of paper overhead, white light uncomfortably sharp on every long-forgotten doorway and rooftop when a grand four-story building appeared from nowhere, lit with color and candles. A sign hung daintily nearby.

“The Cherry Hotel,” I mumbled, my bewildered eyes drawn to the golden cherries that swirled around the text. A whiff of perfume blew through the cold, a light, sunny smell of childhood that didn’t belong here - not in this winter, not in this year, not with me standing here alone - but it faded as quickly as it had come. I assumed, as anyone would, that I had imagined the smell, another passing illusion I would pretend didn’t exist.

A bell tinkled prettily as I pushed open the polished wooden gates. Inside was a grand, dark room hung with wine-red velvet curtains along balconies from the higher floors that overlooked the richly carpeted floors below. The room had no windows and no source of light except for the majestic chandelier which seemed to command the room, hung all the way from the fourth floor between the balconies, with its last elaborate layer of candles reaching the bottom of the lowest balcony. A mug of coffee was placed on the empty reception ahead - still hot. 

I looked around, remembering that I was supposed to meet someone, suddenly glad I had picked my fine cream overcoat to wear for the ride home. Whoever I was meeting would probably expect a chic outfit from the girl who “works in the city”, the pride of her mother and source of the monthly cheques that paid for the jade bracelets women of that age seemed to love collecting. Of course, the village gossips would not hear of the years I spent dirt-poor in a ratty apartment before my think piece caught the eye of a respectable newspaper manager on a stroke of luck. I’d only just quit my various other jobs after establishing relative financial stability on my weekly articles—some things were better left unsaid.

I heard a muffled noise in the far corner of the room, where the carpet extended past the chandelier’s light and into complete darkness under the layers of balconies. I hadn’t even noticed how big the room was, but now that I saw the darkness that surrounded me, my hands clenched into fists. Another whiff of that perfume drifted by, and for a moment I really thought you were there - lurking in the shadows, watching me, about to step out to greet me or murder me dead. Both were easy to imagine.

I realized with a sudden clarity that I was no longer nine years old and that it had, as a matter of fact, been eighteen years since the last time I saw you or smelled that sunny perfume. I had grown up now. I had grown up. 

“Hello,” and I steadied my voice, “I’ve come to pick you up. The bus is leaving in half an hour and it’s still a ten-minute walk there, so we better get going.”

There was no answer from the darkness. I squinted, the hairs on my neck standing up as I tried to act nonchalant. 

“Do you need help taking your luggage? If it’s up in your room, I can help you bring it down.”

Silence. I sighed in a way that I hoped sounded frustrated, and turned on the flashlight of my phone. I was a grown up, not afraid of the dark or of indeed anything at all, and now I was going to help a tricky relative which I was to bring home to our village. There was absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

I watched the white ring of light from my phone as I walked confidently into the darkness, intent on keeping my eyes from darting around. The room never seemed to end - I was walking, and walking, and walking, but there were no walls nor relatives in sight. When I finally caved into the intense desire to look back, the little isle of light from the chandelier was small and far away. Curiously, it almost seemed natural to me, and the fear I had felt a moment before wasn’t directed at anything in particular - I was gripped with the sensation that I was dreaming, that the next moment I would wake up to the sound of my shrill alarm. It was the sort of sensation you got when you listened to ghost stories under your covers, giggling and shrieking into the late-night darkness. I couldn’t shake it off no matter how hard I tried to. It enveloped me with the darkness, a good-night lullaby. 

It was then that I saw the leaf. I forgot which direction I was walking in, staring dumbly at the little mug of coffee on the little wooden reception desk, before I looked down on impulse and there was a leaf on the floor. It was the kind of leaf you saw back at home in the bushes behind your house - large and perfect for writing on. I picked it up in a daze, remembering the way you would leave me notes on these exact leaves, as my darting eyes read and reread the writing on the leaf: 301. A room number. 

I decided then and there that I would catch that bus on my own and head back to where things actually made sense. I walked feverishly across the dark expanse toward the wooden doors, vaguely lit with chandelier light. This was a dream, a mistake, a hallucination, a stupid fantasy that some dark part of my mind brought forward, and I would forget about the moment I stepped onto that bus. I could still make it if I hurried. I reached for the handle of the door, giving it a hard, angry shove.

It didn’t budge. The lock gave a dull clunk but didn’t move. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. The door would not give.

Locked me inside. You locked me inside with you to pay for what I’d done. You’d locked me inside, and I’d never walk out of that door now. 

Listen to yourself. Pull yourself together, find that relative and they can help you figure it out. The door is simply stuck, or locked automatically, but once you have them to talk to you’ll be able to put something rational together and call it an idea. I took a deep breath and turned my back to the door, squaring my shoulders. 301 - that must’ve been where the relative was staying. I didn’t look at the leaf in my hand.

Conveniently, I could make out the shape of a spiral staircase in the darkness, and headed there cursing myself for not noticing it earlier. The flashlight on my phone shone on the beautifully carved steps, made of a dark brown wood that complimented the color of the carpet. See, I thought to myself, this isn’t the kind of place she would be. We grew up in a remote village. If she was paying you the little otherworldly visitation you were thinking of, it wouldn’t be in some grand, rich hotel. I almost laughed to myself as I walked up to the second floor, but stopped when I realized this is where the staircase ended. Strange. I would have to look for a different staircase from the second floor.

I raised my phone to the floor I had just emerged onto. Suddenly, I broke out into a cold sweat, the flashlight trembling a little. We grew up in a remote village. The floor was covered in little dirt paths that would connect our houses, winding between leafy bushes that were perfect for hiding in or writing- writing notes on. Every leaf on every bush was scrawled with the numbers 301, over and over and over again. My breathing grew rapid and irregular as I watched the light from the chandelier dance on the leaves not lit by my phone’s flashlight - real fire. Every candle on that chandelier was lit with genuine flames, flickering, familiar - the smell of that sunny perfume replaced by smoke, as if the air itself was made of gravel, suffocating, coating my lungs with dust - shrieking and shrieking. Dots appear on my vision. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe!

I couldn’t hear anything but the blood pumping in my ears as I whirled around and the staircase was gone, as I bolted through the paths with smoke choking my nostrils and the sound of children shrieking in my ears. How we laughed. How we screamed. The bushes reached up, reached into my face and clawed at my clothes as I ran from everything, from nothing, like hands trying to pull me back into the fire. It was just the two of us, but there were so, so many hands, red hands of fire and grey hands of smoke and your tiny pair of dying hands. There was the staircase, there was the opening, there was the door, there was the place I ran through and there was the place you never made it out of. I bolted up the steps two at a time, three, four, tripping and clawing up and away from the crackling heat of the fire.

It was quiet and cold on the third floor. There was absolutely nothing but darkness, and my phone was gone now, dropped in my hurry. The chandelier’s light was almost forgotten. Nothing filled the room except my own ragged panting, until that also evened out into silence. I left you again. A second time, I had abandoned you, left you in the fire, left you in your grave as I took off into the city for college and spent the next eighteen years forgetting you’d ever existed. I didn’t even remember what the date was that day, or even what you really looked like, only the cheap, sunny perfume we’d bought on your birthday at the snack shop of all places. You were wearing it when the fire started, but all I had to wear for what seemed like the next few years was the stench of smoke in my hair, in the clothes I wore that day. I had nightmares about you, about the ghosts in your stories, about you under my bed and you in my closet and you in the kitchen stove and you and you and you. I would look in the mirror and watch myself grow up. There was the day I turned older than you, which you’d told me was impossible. There was every time I thought of ghost stories, every time I wanted to tell someone a secret, when I looked out for the bushes with the leaves we used to write on before realizing there was absolutely no one to write to but your ghost in my nightmares. 

These were the years I’d spent in the city. The lonely years trying to make a life for myself, trying to get away from you and the smoky memory of you. These were the quiet years, the dark years, the years with a thin wallet and a thin blanket at night, wondering what you’d think of me now, wondering where in the world you’d be if only I had turned back and looked for you in the mess of fire and smoke. Wondering if I could really grow up knowing that you couldn’t teach me how to. How we dreamed of the world we would make together - of course, you would be the leader, you were always the older, stronger one - how we would become rich and famous and wear perfume from fancy perfume shops whose walls were made completely from diamonds.

Those were the moments when I’d really missed you. When you weren’t a ghost lurking in the dark, but the older cousin who I wished were here to cheer me on, who I wished were here to hear me brag about my think piece and my new coat and my new house. You’d really loved me, loved me in all the ways your little heart could hold. Saved me your candy and told me ghost stories, carried me on your back when I got tired from walking - you made up the rules of the game so I would always win, and when we dressed up, you would always be the princess and I would always be the queen. You’d hug me close, stroke my hair when the nightmares hit me even then.

I was afraid in that fire. You didn’t even reach for me; you were unconscious when the smoke came. I was not an adult when you died; I was nine, and you were eleven, and I would’ve never been able to haul you out of that house. If I had turned back, I would’ve died with you. Your death had never been my fault.

I climbed up the last staircase, and the door labelled 301 was right there in front of me. I wasn’t afraid. I pushed open the door, emerged onto the grey pavement, and walked out into the dusty wind. 

*   *   *

My ringtone beckoned me from where I’d dropped my phone outside an abandoned shop, wooden doors locked tight. 

“Hello?” I said calmly into the speaker.

“Darling,” Mom’s voice heaved with relief. “I was so worried. Why didn’t you get on the bus?”

“I couldn’t find that relative you were talking about,” I said. “So I missed the bus.”

“What relative?”

“You know, the one you mentioned in our call.”

“Are you sure it was me? I never called you.”

“But it was your number.”

I remember the distorted sound of the voice, the lack of similarity to Mom. Oh. Oh. 

A pause, and I laughed a little, giddy with surprise and joy. 

“Never mind. What about the bus?”

“It crashed. It-“ Mom’s voice turned teary - “no one survived. The police declared everyone dead then and there. Oh, my baby, if you’d been on that bus-“

No one survived. If I hadn’t been delayed, if I hadn’t gone to the hotel…

“Oh, my baby,” Mom sayed again, but I was speechless.

I looked out at the street, at the row after row of graffitied walls and grey, abandoned shops, where a golden sign was nowhere in sight and not a single building was more than two stories high, where there was absolutely, unmistakably, no “Cherry Hotel”.

“Thank you,” I whispered into the breeze, and caught a whiff of sunny perfume.