Crystal View Hotel

Crystal View Hotel

Dreams, both in the literal sense and the figurative sense of the word, can be beautiful, wondrous things, but they can also be dangerous. In the figurative sense, Martin Luther King had a beautiful dream of equality for everyone, but a dickhead named Hitler had a dream about society that was not so equal. From the literal standpoint, they can be portals to worlds full of magic and wonder not unlike the world of Harry Potter, but nightmares can be windows to other more dangerous places. That was a lesson that came at great cost for Aaron Sweetapple.

He and his family had just moved from San Jose in California to Crystal Creek Falls in Pennsylvania, and the bad dreams had started almost immediately. Perhaps it was the fact that he didn’t want to move away from his friends or the thought of living in some little hick town in western Pennsylvania that started the bad dreams, but the truth was that he would never know. It’s not as if he had had any say in the matter because he was only twelve. There had been a few fights, at first, but afterwards he was a good little soldier about the move, well mostly anyway. The first dream came not five minutes after his body, exhausted from the cross-country car ride in which his dad pointed out things like The World’s Largest Ball of Yarn and the baseball field from Field of Dreams, hit the bed and drifted off into a deep sleep.

He was riding his bike around his new neighborhood. He knew it was his new neighborhood the same way that he knew it was he who was riding his bike, the way you always did in dreams. He was riding down a cobblestone street, the handlebars vibrating as he did, and he stopped in front of an old hotel. At least the cracked and faded wooden sign in front said it was a hotel. The Crystal View Hotel, but to Aaron it looked more like a condemned mental hospital from an old scary movie. The lush vines were attempting to reclaim the large brick building as they scaled up the sides along a façade of mostly intact windows that he thought may have been looking at him. Like a spider with dozens of eyes. There was a short flight of worn and cracked concrete steps in front of the hotel that those vines had all but completely reclaimed which led to the humongous wooden double doors that served as the entrance. Oddly, the vines had not touched the door. The dark wooden beams and sharp designs in the woodwork completed the terrifying illusion of the hotel being a sinister creature looking to swallow him.

I don’t belong here, he thought.

That was when he woke up from that first dream drenched in his own cold sweat with his heart galloping in his chest. It took several minutes for him to calm down, and in that time, he couldn’t think of anything else but the hotel. That creepy hotel with the dozens of eyes that seemed to be looking at him scared him to death, but at the same time, it fascinated him. He was determined to learn everything that he could about that hotel.

Being the chubby new kid at school had its advantages at times, most people, bullies excluded of course, would leave you alone. That left him plenty of time to check out the library at school for anything he could find about the Crystal View Hotel, but there wasn’t much. He found a few articles in travel books about the hotel that named it a quaint, elegant hotel or the Waldorf of Western Pennsylvania. The one article in the school library that interested him was about the closing of the hotel in 1926, under what the article called unusual circumstances. This intrigued him even more.

During the first few days when he was limiting his search to just the school library, the dreams remained largely the same. Always him riding the bike down the cobblestone street and always ending up in front of the hotel with the same feeling that the hotel was looking at him. It did feel as though he was stopping a little closer to the front door with each dream, and even though it filled him with terror, part of him wanted to. It was almost as if the hotel was calling out to him, and he even thought he heard something, a voice, coming from it.

Aaron expanded his search to the public library, and he rode his bike there every day after school the following week. There wasn’t much there either though, just the usual nonsense with claims that the hotel has been haunted after closing under “unusual circumstances.” Accounts of people hearing ghostly wailing or rattling chains weren’t uncommon in the articles that were nothing more than your typical Halloween season human interest pieces.

The most interesting thing that he found at the public library was the story that the librarian had told him. She was a nice old woman that would have been standard fare in any library in the fifties. She had told him that the hotel was haunted by a demon that eats the children of heathen democrats. He had gotten a good laugh when she told him that story because it was just the sort of thing that his father would have said those “bible thumping Republicans” would have come up with.

With the periodicals route pretty much a dead end, he decided that he would simply ask around at school about the hotel and see what stories they had heard. The search didn’t turn up anything more concrete about the hotel’s history, but it was infinitely more interesting. There were wild stories from the kids about witches that eat the souls of small children, werewolves that use the house to transform and eat their kills, and vampires that drink the blood of any poor sap that stumbles into the hotel. He didn’t believe any of the stories, but they were entertaining, nonetheless. The problem remained the same though, he wanted to know why he was dreaming about this hotel.

The dreams had progressed further now too. Now he was opening the door and going into the hotel. There was a wide open hall with curving staircases on either side that led to the upper floor. There was a large gothic stone fountain that stood in between the staircases at the center of the lobby, and it was spewing blood. The once beautiful carpet with the intricate designs woven directly into the tapestry that adorned the hotel looked torn and tattered at his feet. There was a muffled sound coming from upstairs. It sounded like a voice, but he couldn’t make out what it was saying. Maybe, help me.

That was when it happened.

In the dream, a smoky haze whirled around him, and he could feel himself being propelled somewhere…or somewhen. The lobby looked brand new now with shiny brass sconces along the wall and the pristine carpet under his feet. The fountain was spewing crystal clear water now. He knew that he was still him in the dream, but it was different. Like he wasn’t really there somehow. Like it was a movie, and he was watching. The lobby filled with a dozen men, and they were all carrying torches. They ran up the stairs and suddenly Aaron was in one of the rooms upstairs, watching the men. Two of the men grabbed the woman that was lying on the bed with her eyes closed and held her arms. She was beautiful with long, silky black hair against alabaster skin. She looked like a porcelain doll. The two men held her while she screamed, her green eyes pleading, for them to stop and one of the men threw some sort of liquid into her face and she wailed in agony. The liquid seemed to be burning her skin. Some kind of acid, he thought. Then the men threw her into what appeared to be a wooden box with some kind of medallion on the top, but he couldn’t see what it was.

That was when he awoke from the dream for the final time.

He was still covered in a cold sweat, and his heart was still galloping just like before, but by the time his eyes had opened, he had decided that he was going to go inside that hotel. He had to know what these dreams were all about. He threw on some jeans and an Oakland A’s hoodie and ran out the door, not forgetting to kiss his mom goodbye of course, as fast as he could. He pedaled as fast as his chunky little legs would go, and his handlebars vibrated so much on the cobblestones that his hands were nearly numb by the time he was standing in front of the Crystal View Hotel.

The cobblestones had been the same as in the dream, and just like the dream, the front of the hotel appeared to be staring at him. He steeled himself and slowly walked up the dilapidated concrete steps to the huge wooden door. He had no idea why he thought that this would work, but he pushed on the door, tentatively at first, but then with more force after admonishing himself for being such a chicken shit, and it opened. The door creaked on rusty hinges as it slid open several inches, but the sunlight did nothing to illuminate the inside. It was almost as if even the light didn’t want to go in there. He again got that feeling that he shouldn’t be there, but he forced it down and went inside.

The light was indeed entering the hotel, or his eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but either way, the lobby was nearly as it had been in his dreams. The two curving staircases bordering the gothic stone fountain at the center of the lobby, but the fountain wasn’t spewing anything at the moment. In fact, it appeared as though that fountain had not spewed anything in a very long time. The tattered carpet, still showing glimpses of its former majesty, spread beneath his sneakers. The lobby was different somehow though and it took him a moment to realize it, but he saw that there were crosses all over the walls. Crosses of all sizes. Crosses of all materials. They had been nailed to the walls all over the walls both upstairs and down. He wondered why he didn’t see this in the dream, but he decided it wasn’t important when he heard it.

It was the voice. Barely above a whisper, but it was the voice. Yes. He was sure of it now. He still couldn’t make out what it was saying, but he was sure it was a voice. His heart was racing just like when he awoke from his dreams, and he started up the stairs. He kept getting flashes of what he saw in the dreams as he walked up the long staircase. The beautiful girl getting acid thrown into her face and locked in a box to die. Was that her voice? No that’s ridiculous, he thought.

When he finally lumbered up the final step, he could hear the voice clearly now and it was definitely saying, help me. He was slightly out of breath, and he put his hand on the newel post for support, but it broke off in his hand. Oops, he thought. Don’t mind me. He gently set the knob down on the carpet and looked down both hallways. It was unnecessary though because he already knew where he was going. He didn’t know how he knew, but he knew.

He was being guided, no pulled down the corridor and saw even more crosses nailed along the walls of the hallway. He wondered how he had missed these in his dreams as he walked slowly towards his destination. In a few moments, he stood in front of the door the led to the room in his dreams. The voice was a screaming whisper in his ears now. His palms were sweaty, his heart was pounding in his chest, his breathing was shallow and ragged, and his little balls had drawn up even further than they already were, but he gathered his remaining courage and opened the door.

Aaron had thought that he had seen a lot of crosses in the lobby and hallway, but the largest concentration of crosses, by far, was in this very room. There were crosses covering nearly every inch of the walls and ceiling. There were big ones, little ones, in between ones. There were fancy crosses made of gold and adorned with jewels and crosses that were little more than two sticks that had been glued or tied together. They all seemed to be pointing at the box in the center of the room.

The box was plain. There was a beautiful gold cross on the lid, but other than that, there was nothing spectacular about it. That was if you ignored the fact that unlike the rest of the hotel, this box didn’t appear to be weathered at all, and it didn’t have a speck of dust on it. Just a black wooden box. Probably made of ebony. He hadn’t noticed, but his feet had moved of their own accord and now he was standing directly in front of the box that reminded him of his aunt’s old trunk that she had filled with books and had his dad try and carry, nearly throwing out his back in the process. His hands were moving towards the box, like his feet, of their own accord, and he was both terrified at what he might find, but at the same time, trying to convince himself that this is just some kind of elaborate prank. Some old Crystal Creek Falls legend.

He reached his hand out and touched the box. He froze. Help me, the voice whispered again, this time sounding like it was coming from inside the box. “Oh God,” he whispered.

He didn’t know how long he had been out, but he realized that it must have been a long time when he looked around the room. He wasn’t standing in front of the box anymore. He was lying on the ground a few feet away from it. The shadows had completely swallowed the room, and he knew that it was dark now. His parents would be looking for him. There was something else about the room that seemed different, but he couldn’t place it. He was still slightly groggy from whatever it was that had happened.

He got up and started towards the door when he heard it again. The voice. Help me. He didn’t know why because he should have been going home, but he walked back over to the black box with the cross on the lid. He cautiously opened the lid and peered inside. It was the girl. The girl from his dreams. She was lying with her hands folded across her chest, nearly as beautiful as she was in his dreams, almost perfectly preserved.

He didn’t have time to think about the strangeness of that particular thought because it happened so fast. The girl’s eyes suddenly opened, and he didn’t see anything after that. He only felt her powerful hands grip his neck and give it a sharp snap to the right. He heard a deafening crunch that reminded him of when he used to eat ice cubes, and then he felt nothing until his head hit the floor with a loud thud. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t even breathe. He could only hear sounds as he looked around the room that had somehow turned on its side.

That was when he realized what it was that was different about the room. No crosses, there were no more crosses in the room. Perhaps that was what he was doing during the period he had blacked out. Not that it mattered. He had quickly come to realization that this night was going to be his end. That was when he heard the voice for the last time.

“Thank you, kid,” she said. Her voice was much higher in pitch but still barely above a whisper. Then he heard a loud crash and the floor under his head rumbled for a moment and then it was still. He closed his eyes and faded out, into the dreamless sleep.