He was solving a mystery.
The hotel wasempty at night. No patrons slamming doors, demanding new towels, or complaining of lost keys. Boris sat at the desk, alternating between naps and magazines. Jack roamed up and down the halls, watching for anything unusual. Anything that might shed light on his plight.
Though he was quite convinced that the hotel was not the problem, it seemed a logical place to start. At any rate, there was nowhere else for him to go tonight, so he might as well do a little investigating.
Jack wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Doubted it would be anything obvious, but he had to try.
After all, there was nothing else to do but while away thedays until the eighteenth. Until the clerk decided to accept his train ticket.Until, until, until…
Drifting up and down the hallways like a specter, Jack glimpsed the shadows in his peripheral vision, mistook them for darting cats, and felt a sharp pang. He’d never been apart from Rainy for so long. Did she know that he hadn’t been home? Was she stuck in this terrible loop, too?
For that was surely what this was. A time loop. The same day, over and over and over again.
And Jack had no idea how to escape.
He meandered through the halls, musing. Perhaps he could do something differently? But what? Without any idea what might’ve prompted the loop, he couldn’t possibly fathom how to end it.
Worse, it may not be under his control. If something external had triggered this, then there was nothing he could do.
No one else seemed to be aware of it. Not Dan, not Kathy, not his neighbor, and certainly not Boris, who would happily spend eternity flipping through magazines and drinking whisky out of a paper bag.He wouldn’t even mind, thought Jack bitterly. For all that Boris resented his job, he seemed content to sit behind the desk and wreak havoc.
Jack briefly considered that perhaps everyone else knew about the time loop, too, and were simply afraid to say anything. But that was impossible. Dan ought to have remembered that the factory reported the audit complete, even if the information was gone the next day. Kathy should have remembered talking to him on the phone.
No, even if they were deliberately misleading him, it would be too much trouble to keep the story straight. It would be far easier to fire him than to fuck with him like this. Getting so many other people involved—the train conductor, the clerk, Boris—would be next to impossible.
Even knowing this, the weight of paranoia settled upon his shoulders. Shadows shifted as he wandered the halls. He began to wonder if he was being watched.
Something pale and translucent drifted before him, gone in a blink. Jack bolted back to his room, the hair on the back of his neck prickling.
There wasno reason to do the audit today. No reason to go to the train station. After Boris confirmed that it was once again the seventeenth, Jack laid in bed a long while, watching shadows dance across the ceiling. Eventually, the room grew hot and stuffy, so he dressed and made his way downstairs.
This time, he brought only his satchel, stuffed to the brim with his address book, date book, notepads, and extra pens. Satisfied that this was what Buck and Nora would’ve packed (minus a gun and lock-picking kit), he drifted through the lobby to the coffee machine.
“Nice purse,” said Boris, snorting.
Jack shrugged and poured himself a cup of coffee. He downed it quickly and scurried out the door before Boris could offer any more opinions.
The day passed slowly. Jack spent the morning examining the shops on the main strip, scribbling down their names and wares. By tomorrow, the pages of his notebook would be clean once more, his blue chicken scratch erased. But the act of writing was supposed to improve memory, so he meticulously documented everything. Maybe something would come in handy.
Three shopkeepers asked him how long he was staying. Two expressed disappointment at his short stay, while a third suggested he’d best get on with it, then.
By afternoon, he’d popped into every single shop on the main strip. He bought nothing, but knew the names of seven people, the personal business of three, and became intimately acquainted with the unreasonably high prices of To Wick Upon a Star.
Stuffed to the brim with books about Sasquatches, UFOs, malignant faeries, cannibals, and conspiracy theories, thebookshop was nearly unnavigable. The store owner glowered at him as he browsed and turned her nose up at any attempts at small talk. Jack left quickly.
He drifted past the quay, between warehouses and along the muddy back roads. The ocean lapped against the docks. Gulls screeched and swarmed above him. In the distance, nestled between the warehouses along the edge of the forest, was a cement building, square as a sugar cube. Its walls were stained a deep, filthy grey, its solitary window boarded. The metal roof was rusting.
The urge to turn back overwhelmed him, almost like some kind of invisible force. He had to stop, breathe through it, force himself not to vomit.
With each step, his nausea worsened and his determination strengthened. This was important, he concluded. It felt like someone (or something) didn’t want him getting any closer, but that couldn’t be true, could it? Probably he was just sick. Regardless, he needed to know what was concealed within those cement walls.Even if it kills me, he thought, pausing to inhale slowly, guts roiling. He doubled over, gagging.
“What the fuck?” he groaned, clutching his stomach, gasping.
The pain passed and he staggered onward.
A loudbang!echoed across the waterfront. Jack froze and turned slowly, half-expecting to see that a truck had crashed into a building, or a shipping container had dropped from a crane and onto the pavement, but there was no one around. Even the ever-present gulls had vanished from the sky.
Strange. Jack could’ve sworn that there were employees outside mere minutes ago. Heard their laughter and shouts over the wind roaring in his ears. They must’ve gone on break. There was only person nearby now; a beefy man in coveralls surrounded by a cloud of cigar smoke.
