teaganmitchell (teaganmitchell) wrote in horror_story, @ 2012-10-02 17:30:00 |
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After calling 9-1-1, and subsequently the help desk, Teagan had a very difficult time getting to sleep. It had been clear from both of the women she’d spoken to that the cops weren’t going to be sent out. The front desk had promised to send security, and that security would check on room 115 and handle the yelling man... which she supposed was plausible. Maybe the Eclipse issued guns to their security guards, who were highly trained to take out crazed lunatics. Who knew what kind of specialized training was common in Indiana, really?
She sat on her bed, hugging her knees, running the scenario over and over in her mind for a very long time, telling herself that it would have been stupid to run out, herself. She definitely didn’t have any specialized training. Every noise seemed ominous. Lack of noise was somehow worse, so the fact that the commotion outside her room was quickly stopped didn’t exactly serve to comfort her.. Ultimately, she opted to turn on the television to at least provide some kind of filter. When she was alone, scared, and feeling sick to her stomach with guilt and powerlessness, Teagan turned to cartoons. It was a silly impulse, given that she was in her mid-twenties, but they were comforting. Cartoons were silly, and rarely showed young redheads being beaten to death by crazed psychos in the middle of the night.
At any other time, she would have tried to find something with a body count. A late-night showing of some old monster movie would have been idea, but the sounds in the room next door... the thumping noises and the yelling... had left her in the mood for bright colors and enthusiastic voice-acting. A glimpse into some world where problems amounted to hilarious verbal misunderstandings and wacky adventures that did not result in corpses. When she did finally manage to doze off, it was to a Spongebob marathon.
It was around 6:30 in the morning. Normally, O'Brien wouldn't go around knocking on people's doors at this ridiculous hour, but they were dealing with a potential crime scene. People had called 9-1-1. O'Brien didn't know how other cops might handle the situation, but he and Archer were going to take things serious. Dead serious.
After his Captain had growled at him for trying to fix Dr. Bryant's A/C unit, and then sent him on his way, O'Brien started back down to the first floor to see if he could get a little more information from the young woman in room 113. Archer had jotted the information down in that page from his notebook for him.
Giving one last precautionary glance to the room number, O'Brien brought up a hand to give a gentle knock on the door. A moment was then taken to step back a bit, and pocket the small sheet of paper that Archer had handed him.
"Miss Mitchell? Cantonville PD. Are you awake? I'd like to ask you a few questions," After securing the paper in his pocket, O'Brien fished his badge out of the inside pocket of his coat to have ready for anyone-- if they answered the door.
Even on a night when Teagan had managed to get the requisite amount of sleep, she rarely saw the single digit AM hours, so 6:30 AM felt awfully obscene. However, she'd been scared, and hadn't exactly been in a particularly deep sleep, so the soft knock - followed by the voice - was enough to rouse her. She squinted at the tv, but it was still very much cartoons and not cop dramas on the screen. The serious voice did not belong to any of the brightly-colored characters there, which meant that it was actually coming from the other side of her hotel room door. That thought jerked her awake entirely.
"Shit." Teagan scrambled to extract herself from the covers. She raised her voice so that it would carry to the man outside. "Just a second!"
Had she been dreaming, or had he actually said something PD? That meant police, and not just hotel security. What if something had happened? What if there'd been an actual murder? Where the hell were her pants? Oh, God, what if that tiny, nervous, adorable girl had been slaughtered by some raving lunatic right on the other side of the wall? Teagan didn't think she could handle that. The guilt would be crushing. Did the importance of the situation warrant answering a door to a stranger without wearing pants, though? It wasn't as though she were showing more skin than she would in a bathing suit. In fact, the 10-year-old t-shirt she'd worn to bed was a lot more prudish than most bathing suits, and it's not like Teagan owned particularly slutty underwear. It just seemed... rude, somehow, to not have pants.
She compromised by yanking the tangled sheet from the mess she'd made of the bedding and wrapping it around herself like a makeshift robe. It wasn't fashionable, or practical, but at least she wasn't indecent. Her hair was a mess, and she was wearing panties, a faded cat's face t-shirt, and a bedsheet. So not indecent, just ridiculous. There wasn't time to fix it, though. Teagan didn't think people could get arrested just for making a cop wait too long, but it wasn't like she knew for sure.
"Sorry!" There was a click as the door was unlocked and opened a crack, out from which saucer-wide eyes peered for a moment, taking in the badge. Then the door widened to reveal the girl in all of her 6:30 AM glory. Smeared makeup, goofy cat's face t-shirt, and all. "Hi, um, officer? Is something... er." She'd been about to ask if something was wrong, but she already knew that something was wrong. Shit had been downright freaky. So instead she corrected herself, asking, "Did something bad happen? I mean... worse?"
When the door opened, brows were lifted in a bit of surprise that someone actually answered the door, and he held up his badge for the young woman to see. "Detective O'Brien, Cantonville PD. Sorry to bother you ma'am... I was just--" Dear Lord, that t-shirt that Teagan had on. It's like it had a personality of it's own. Like it was fucking watching him. staring. Freaking cat motherfucker.
When she opened the door further, he was pretty certain the t-shirt only offended his eyes even more. He probably shouldn't stare. He didn't want the young woman getting any wrong ideas about him.
Lifting blue eyes back up to find the young woman's, O'Brien stuffed his badge back into his pocket, "Are you Miss Mitchell? Teagan?" Taking a moment to get his notepad and pen, O'Brien gave a bit of a look past the woman, and back into her dark room. He briefly wondered if her A/C unit was working fine.
He gave a shake of his head, "and no ma'am. Nothing worse happened, as far as we know. I was just checking up on you to make sure you were alright, and maybe see if it wouldn't be too much trouble to ask you a few questions--" He hesitated, considering the woman's attire, and then let his eyes fall back on her, "do you mind if I come in?"
It really didn’t help that the cat’s large eyes on the t-shirt were right about breast-level. There was a reason it had been relegated to night-clothes-only, but it was soft and had been a gift so Teagan really hadn’t had the heart to throw it out. She nodded when he asked about her name. “Teagan Mitchell, yes.”
There was momentary hesitation before she stepped aside to let him in. Even when she was fully dressed, Teagan didn’t care to open her doors to strange men. This one had a badge, however, and she had made the emergency call. It was surprising, really, that he was there, since she’d been sure the dispatcher had just blown her off, but this man was calling her ma’am and checking up on her. That meant they were taking her call seriously, and that was worth the risk. Besides, what was the risk, really? That a crazy Indiana rapist or murderer had a convincing fake badge and an accomplice at 9-1-1 dispatch? Okay, yes, that was basically the risk, and phrased like that it would make one hell of a true crime book, but Teagan somehow doubted it. Having never actually met a crazy rapist murderer from Indiana or any other state, she wasn’t exactly sure how they acted, but this guy wasn’t exactly screaming monster to her, even if he was taller than she would have liked. Weren’t there any short, unintimidating lady detectives?
“Sure. Come in.” She stepped back, holding the door open for him. The room was dark, and a bit messy. The comforter from the queen-sized bed was still in a pile on the floor from where Teagan had forced the sheet - and herself - from its grasp. There was an open travel bag on the floor, having been rifled through the night before for night clothes, a guitar case propped up in the sitting chair as though it might be inclined to have a conversation, and some of yesterday’s clothes discarded on the far side of the nightstand. Minus the shoes and pants, which were somewhere else. Teagan was suspecting they’d managed to find their way under the bed, but hadn’t checked yet.
At least the temperature was normal. Pleasant, in fact. The television was still on, manifesting an oddly blue, flickering light over the dark room. She turned her back on O’Brien in order to turn on the lights, and then shuffled over to the nightstand to get the remote and turn off the tv. If there was a protocol for talking to police in hotel rooms, it probably didn’t involve cartoons.
After that, she sat down on the edge of her mattress, pulling the sheet a bit more closed around her (which, thankfully, obscured the cat illustration’s dead-eyed stare), and looked up at O’Brien expectantly. “Thanks for coming, detective. I didn’t think anyone would... well, you know. Take it seriously. The gal on the phone didn’t seem to believe me. She was kinda rude about it. I mean, I guess I didn’t really see an emergency, so I get it, but... I just got the impression nobody was gonna show up. So I’m glad you’re here. This guy scared the shit out of me. Um.” Could someone get in trouble for swearing at cops? Despite all t-shirt evidence to the contrary, Teagan wasn’t a child anymore. Still, it felt wrong, somehow. Like cursing at a teacher. “Sorry... pardon my language.”
No. That didn't help at all. Though a cop, O'Brien was still a guy.. and a human. He liked breasts just as much as anyone else. So he had to be careful not to stare. "Thank you," O'Brien nodded a thanks to the younger woman as he moved to step into her room, slipping past her and eventually turning to watch her flip on the lights and cross to the bed to sit down.
Damn, that light was bright. Brighter than he'd expected! As soon as his sight had adjusted, brows still furrowed, O’Brien focused on the younger woman, “No problem. Just doing my job, ma’am.” He gave another look around the room, “who’d you speak to? Did she sound older?” His eyes eventually fell back to Teagan; The Cantonville PD was small enough that O’Brien actually knew most of the dispatchers. He hardly liked any of them. They were all kind of mean and rude sounding.
“And not to worry. If you call Cantonville PD, we’ll send someone. No matter what. It’s our duty.” O’Brien smirked when Teagan cursed at him, and he brought up a hand to wave away her apology, “It’s fine. I’ve been known to say worse,” he assured her.
“Alright... Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to ask you to start from the very beginning: where you were and what you were doing before you called the police. And careful not to leave any details out. The details are important. Right down to the things that you heard, and even smells, if there were any. Does that make sense?”
Taking his pen from his pocket, he flipped to a clean page in his notebook, and gave a look up toward Teagan and gave the pen a click, so that he could scribble down some notes, if he needed to. “and I’m ready whenever you are, Miss Mitchell. Take your time if you need it. I can wait.”
“Yeah, I think she did sound older. Not real old... but... I also think she was chewing gum,” Teagan supplied, about the dispatcher.
Brows furrowed, "gum-chewer, huh?" O'Brien nodded, "pretty certain I know which one you're referring to. I'll mention it to the Cap," he motioned back over his shoulder with his pen in hand-- paused-- and then corrected himself, "My captain. I'll mention it to him. See if he can't straighten her out." Because Heaven knew that if it was the dispatcher O'Brien was thinking about, she sure as hell needed to be put in her place. At least in O'Brien's opinion anyway.
It wasn’t terribly Christian of Teagan to hope that dispatcher got a talking to for being rude, but she wasn’t really a Christian, so whatever. She felt she was justified in any pettiness. After all, she’d been scared, and hadn’t exactly been reassured by either the dispatcher or the hotel staff. However, that wasn’t all that pertinent. There was an officer in front of her who was taking her seriously. Her shoulders relaxed a bit when he didn’t get offended by her language, and nodded when he asked if he was making sense. Perfect sense! He was treating her like a fellow adult, and not some skittish kid. Hell, he was even going to have the rude dispatcher spoken to, by a captain, no less. Teagan valued all of that, and she sat up a bit straighter on the bed, hoping to come across as someone who absolutely did not make up stories for attention, or call the cops for no good reason. Then she took a breath to steady herself, and began:
“Okay. From the beginning.” The beginning of what? Of her getting to the Eclipse? That might be too far back. Hrm. Wide blue eyes shifted off to the side a bit, unfocused while she gathered her thoughts, and Teagan bit her lower lip. “Well, okay. Last night, I met a girl. I know that doesn’t sound relevant, but I promise it is. We’re all -- most of us are stuck here, because of the storm? Anyway, this girl... she’s real... nervous, I guess? She’s sweet, but she’s young and she’s small, and she definitely isn’t the kind of girl who’d hang out with aggro guys--”
"Ah," He nodded again when Teagan straightened up, and announced that she was going to start from the beginning. "I'm listening," he thought he'd mention it since his eyes dropped to his notepad, and he got ready to jot some things down as she spoke. Worrying his own bottom lip with his teeth as he focused on the details that Teagan was providing him, he made sure to take down the comment about the nervous girl. "Aggro?" Yes, he interrupted, eyes lifting back up to the younger woman.
“Yeah. Really aggressive. If that makes sense. I mean, I don’t really know her, but...” Teagan blushed, slightly, knowing quite well that I talked to this chick once and she didn’t seem like she head psycho friends wasn’t exactly hard evidence. “Sometimes you can tell something about a person, you know? I swear, I honestly thought she had a girlfriend, if you get what I mean.”
"Ahh," He tapped his pen on his notepad and smirked, looking back to his notes. O'Brien was assuming this nervous girl that Miss Mitchell had met was more like Ellen, rather than Portia. "So this girl-- what was she wearing?" He interrupted, keeping his eyes on his notepad. These were things he needed to know.
“Wearing? Um.” Her eyes flicked back to focus on O’Brien’s face. “I... I didn’t really notice that well. Dark, camo shorts... and there was a black sweatshirt or maybe a jacket with a hood, I think. She looked... um... comfortable?” Teagan felt bad suddenly for not really making any note of what Tatum had been wearing. The girl had been so nervous, and Teagan had largely focused on her face. “She had red hair and freckles. I met her just the once; on the haunted tour last night. The hotel’s supposed to be full of ghosts. People have died here, and the man who built it was insane; there’s a graveyard or something on the grounds where all his family members and servants are buried...” She winced. “Sorry, that’s... that part’s off-topic, probably.”
O’Brien made another face when Teagan went on about the hotel being haunted, and then he hesitantly glanced back up at her, carefully studying her as she continued. "I'm sorry," he cut in again, "Haunted? The hotel?" He reached up to scratch at his brow with his pen, "Who um.. Who gave this haunted tour, Miss Mitchell? Who mentioned that the hotel was haunted...?"
He had to remember what Archer said about not letting himself get all caught up in the hotel's history of being 'haunted'. It might freak him out.
“Oh, everyone’s mentioned it, just about,” Teagan said, rather enthusiastically for the subject matter. “The tour was given by the hotel manager. I didn’t catch his name, but it might be in the brochure thing. They even have merchandise in the giftshop for the ghost tour. There are supposed to be three ghosts at least, maybe more... and some of the people have heard noises in their rooms, and some people say the ghosts can mess with you. Like move things, screw with the lights, even crawl into bed with you...” The young woman flushed red after she mentioned that. Why was she telling him that? That was just a silly rumor, and she was supposed to be talking about what had actually happened. “Um. I didn’t... notice anything like that. It was just... mentioned on the tour. By the manager. He was probably just kidding.”
She swallowed, pressing onward. “Anyway, this girl I met said she was staying in 115 - right next to me, on the other side of that wall.” Teagan pointed at the wall, although that probably wasn’t needed. “She was going to meet me and this other guy... a really tall, older guy. He was... like... a professor or...” No, he wasn’t a professor. He just talked like one. The man she’d spoken to at the tour had been a lot more interesting than that. Her eyes brightened. “Mortician! That’s what he was. We were all going to check out the cemetery, so I remembered her room number, to meet up in the morning. Um... I guess this morning, now. At the end of the tour, when I left, she was standing with the girl I thought was her girlfriend. Um, Lucy, was the girlfriend’s name. And the girl in 115 also has a ‘T’ name. Like mine, but it was... Tannem? It ended with an ‘um’ sound. I don’t remember it exactly...”
She was rambling, and she knew it. Teagan made a concerted effort to bring it all back home to the point. To why she’d called 9-1-1. “So, the tour ended and I came back here. Brushed my teeth, got ready for bed, and then all of a sudden I hear this... crashing? Thumping noises? From next door. From behind that wall. It sounded... it sounded like someone was getting thrown around over there, and I knew that girl was in that room... and I, I got scared for her...”
Calm down. Take a breath. Jesus, this was harder than she’d expected it would be. Admitting to a stranger that she’d been scared was one thing, but having to confess to her own inactivity was so much worse. Her shoulders lifted again as she folded into herself, looking down at her hands, worried he was going to ask her why she hadn’t gone over to check on the situation herself. “It went on for a while... the sounds... like someone getting slammed into the walls... and I almost went over there, I did. But then it stopped and there was all this yelling in the halls, some guy screaming at the top of his goddamn lungs about being watched, or something. All I could think of was that little girl... what he might have done to her... and I just... I.... I froze. You know?”
Teagan wasn’t crying when she looked back up at the detective, but she was dangerously close to it. There was definitely a telltale, watery sheen over the blue, and she was trying to blink back the tears so that he wouldn’t just write her off as some kind of emotional wreck. “I mean, I’m not exactly... it’s not like I know martial arts or anything. If that guy was a psycho, what the hell could I do to him? So I called. 9-1-1, and they... the lady there asked if I’d told hotel security, yet.”
Tall. Older. Male. Got it. Spoke intelligently-- 'like a professor'. "A Mortician? So let me get this straight so far, Miss Mitchell. You met a girl, who may or may not have been the type to have a girlfriend, at this haunted tour. She was nervous, or the nervous type, and she was going to meet up with a tall, distinguished gentleman that happens to be a mortician?" He had his tongue in his cheek a moment, before nodding and dropping his focus back to his notes.
She nodded, fairly certain that mortician was correct. He’d definitely worked with the dead, she remembered that much. “That’s right. And me. I mentioned wanting to see the cemetery, and she got interested in that, so asked if she could go, and invited him, too... He was interested because he works with dead bodies and burials and stuff, I guess.”
"How old would you say this nervous girl was? approximately." O'Brien waited until she had replied - “Maybe 19, 20? She seemed awfully young. I hate saying that because people always think I’m a lot younger than I am, too, but... I’d say 19 or 20.” - before he went on, "and the older Mortician?" He paused, "Lucy?" The name of the 'girlfriend'. But there was a question mark hanging there at the end of Teagan's words, "Are you certain about that name?" And a name that ended in 'um'-- got it. He was writing all of this down.
"And whose room was 115? The Nervous girl? Or Lucy? or the Mortician?"
Brows furrowed when Teagan got to the part about why she actually called 9-1-1. "Next door?" He moved to point to the wall with his pen, "this one?" He shook his head, "and no ma'am. You did right by not going over there yourself. Don't worry. When things like this happen, no matter how silly it may seem to you, it's best to not try and investigate on your own." Truth. At least in O'Brien's opinion.
"When you say 'a while', Miss Mitchell, how long would you say the sounds went on?" He nodded, "and Gum Chewer, right?" He rolled his eyes a bit and shook his head, "Did she sound like she was asking to make sure that you had told the hotel security in addition to, or just overall? Like a suggestion that we didn't handle the possible domestic sort of violence you're referring to."
“The mortician’s a lot older. Maybe in his 50’s? The room wasn’t his. I don’t know what room he’s in. It wasn’t him yelling like a psycho, either. He had an accent. British, I think? I’d’ve recognized his voice.” She closed her eyes briefly, possibly trying to picture what he was wearing for O’Brien, but instead something else entirely came to her. “Bryant! That was his name. Like ‘Brian’ but with a ‘t.’ Oh! And the girl! Her name’s Tatum, Tate-um.” Her eyes opened, and she smiled just a little, proud of herself for having remembered. “Bryant, Tatum and Lucy. I’m pretty sure it was Tatum’s room. I don’t know if Lucy was staying with her.”
She nodded again when he pointed at the wall, to verify that it was indeed the right one, and her hesitant smile grew to relieved grin when he told her that it was all right that she’d chickened out. He’d know. He was a police officer. A detective. Duly reassured, she forced her expression into a more somber one, reminding herself that this was all very serious.
“The thumping sounds didn’t go on for very long,” she admitted. “A couple of minutes, maybe. And the yelling only lasted a minute, but he yelled a lot. It was like he was going door-to-door, yelling about the walls watching us... and that we should keep an eye on the walls.” Teagan shivered, pulling the sheet more tightly around herself. In a hotel that was supposedly crawling with ghosts, the idea of sentient walls wasn’t all that farfetched to her. “Maybe he saw something... in the walls. Maybe the hotel got to him, and that’s why he was crazy. It sounded like he was insane, though. Like he really believed there were eyes in the walls or something. Not like someone who was just trying to scare people. The woman on the phone... she said it’d take a while for the police to get here in the storm, and that I should tell hotel security first, and then call 9-1-1 back if they couldn’t handle it. So I called the front desk, and that person said that she’d send a security guard to check on the girl in room 115, that they already had security looking for the yelling man, and that if anyone was hurt they’d call emergency. I believed her. I mean, the yelling had stopped by the time I got off the phone, so I thought they probably found the guy. Nobody came here to my room, though... Until you, now. I thought... maybe I’d just made a big deal out of nothing.”