THE CONTENTS AND THE CONTAINER
Holden Johnson stuck the old-fashioned brass key into the door labeled “1711”. All the other rooms, of course, had been refitted with electronic keycards, but not this one. The lock was sticky; Holden jiggled the key, muttered an obscenity, and was about to apply his boot when the pins finally slipped and the doorknob turned. He gave a weak smile to the maid lingering nearby in the hallway. The hotel staff had been quite curious when he’d presented his papers, but everything was in order, and all they could do was hand him the key.
A stale, dark odor wafted over him as the door swung open, assaulting the lining of his nostrils. He choked back a hint of bile and flipped the light switch.
It was worse than he’d been led to believe—far worse. But Holden was a professional, and he was being well compensated. He exhaled heavily, then closed the door behind him and got to work.
The men who hired him had told him little. He knew that the old crone had kept this room for forty years, never allowing access to anyone. Skittish bastards, Holden thought, kicking at a pile of soiled sheets. Afraid of an old woman. But now she was dead, and they needed the room taken care of.
Holden worked quickly, sweeping cold cream jars and perfume bottles from the dresser top into a thick plastic garbage bag, along with wadded-up kleenexes, matchbooks, and stained coffee cups that littered every corner of the room. He set each bag by the door, shaking out another one and filling it in minutes. Soon, the surfaces were clear enough.
Now he could tackle the suitcases.
There were dozens of them, some under the window, several on the bed, a cluster of them in front of the closet door. Even one in the bathtub. He pulled them all out to the space he’d cleared at the foot of the bed, and then stood back, hands on hips.
The smell of the room still burned his throat. He patted his pockets for his cigarettes, then lit up. He knew without even looking that there would be no smoke alarm here. As well as no internet, no cable television, no upgraded linens—no maid service in forty years. The old crone would have seen to that.
Holden finished his cigarette and stubbed it out on the side of the bathroom sink. “All right,” he said aloud. Then he pulled on his catchment gloves, fitted the sulfur mask over his nose and mouth, opened his wormwood jar, and unlocked the first suitcase.
He gave a short bark of laughter as he pulled the mask off, then shed the gloves. The battered Samsonite was filled to the gills, but not with what he’d expected to find. Instead, it looked as though she’d come back from a vacation abroad, set the suitcase down, and never touched it again.
He opened the second suitcase. It, too, was crammed with resort wear long out of style, toiletries, postcards filled out and never mailed, souvenir restaurant menus, soiled women’s undergarments. “Witch,” he muttered, kicking the bloomers over to the pile of sheets.
The fools had hired him, when a janitor would do? Holden mentally adjusted his fee upward, then tacked on another 25 percent for his troubles.
Nevertheless, he worked dutifully, unpacking each suitcase, organizing and categorizing its contents: clothes in one pile, souvenirs in another, outdated foreign currency in yet another. And so on. The men had told Holden that the old crone had traveled far and wide in her day, and that she always returned here. She had always maintained that what she left in this room was dangerous, top secret, and not to be touched by anyone. They had impressed this fact on him, repeating it several times.
Holden opened the seventh suitcase, reached in, and was bitten by a demon.
“Fuck!” he yelled, shaking his hand. The tiny creature flew off, smacked into the mirror, and slid down onto the dresser, stunned. “Bastard!” His index finger stung, and he began to tremble. He stuck the finger in his mouth and sucked the venom out as he opened the wormwood jar with his other hand, shoved the monster in, and sealed it tight. Then he ran and spat the poison into the bathroom sink, sucked and spat again, and came back to look more closely at the suitcase. Still shivering, he wrapped the wound tightly in a sterile bandage from his kit, then rolled the gloves back on and snapped the mask into place.
But the rest of the suitcase’s contents were as mundane as the others had been. The demon hadn’t been protecting anything larger, just roaming loose in there. Holden returned to his awkward unpacking, sorting, and cursing this shitty job.