The Medusa Effect Chapter Two

THE VEIW

The long green roof looked like a ramp leading to the last motel room on the end. From the empty breakfast room on the second floor he could see any movement below him. He was sure he would spot her. Every day for a week he drove to the Inn, booking a room, leaving promptly at five-thirty to get home in time for dinner.

It was early. He walked across the street along the trail finding his way down the rocky bank and skipping stones across the almost frozen shore. In his head he felt the routine was making it as if he had actually spent more time with her. The ore docks loomed in the fog. He could see from the bank the brick structure, a black slick smear far in the distance. Across the wide expanse the monstrosity stood like a shrine. He kicked at the snow encrusted gravel and turned to go back to the Inn.

His boss told him to take all the time he needed developing the latest contingency for the jeopardy group. He would have been allowed to work from anywhere. When Ethan submitted his receipts for reimbursement for the hotel, his boss understood that the home office thing didn’t always work. Since it was imperative that it be completed within a week his employer slid the invoice through and gave him the reimbursement check without question. Bobbie never noticed a thing in the account, he always handled the checkbook. His stomach boiled every time he even held the register in his hand, but he was sure he had gotten by with it.

Ethan surprised himself, he found he was doing his best work, finding clarity in the numbers and figures, unlike the dull progress he had been making before all of this happened. He was soaring through documents and tables. He consoled himself with the fact that his boss was happy. He finished two days early. He kept coming to the small establishment anyway. It may have been dishonest to stay there on the company dime, but it made life tolerable for him. The wrenched feeling in his stomach seemed to lessen day by day. He thought about traversing out into the night to visit the swollen structure at the pier. He could allow himself to go there and wallow in the dreamlike memory of that night. Until now he held himself back from doing anything reckless by placating his curiosity with his amateur spying. He worked in the vacant dining area perched above the hotel lobby.

It was hot in the streaming light from the tall windows, Ethan liked that. The flies left skeletonized in the sills from the late fall were left unmolested by the cleaning staff. He brushed them to the carpet with his napkin laying his paper plate of sausage and the round flat serving of scrambled eggs on the small table. It tore a hole through him when he looked down and saw scrawled on the white Formica tabletop, two words… “Save Me”.