Tales from the Overlook

In empty spaces

There was a sort of buzz in the air, or perhaps a hum. The sort of sound that empty buildings that were not intended to be empty created. It was disorienting, and Jack was sure that he was not the only one who was hearing it. Danny, he had seen a few times, would stop his play to tug at or cover his ears as if assaulted by something he could not quite hear. Wendy, too, could hear it even if she did play it off a little better than the other two, he was sure of it as he had seen her tilt her head to the side as if listening out for anything to explain what she was hearing. It was always there, even when the Overlook was at full capacity, buzzing like an angry hornets nest, but the sounds of life had managed to hide it so nobody was able to hear it even if they did try to listen out for it.

There was a strange scent to the air that Jack could not put a name to. It was not metallic in the way that blood smelt like, and there had been more than enough of that spilled in the halls of the hotel for the building to know what that that smells like. No, it was metallic in a way that smelled cold, bitter and like the winter itself had manifested a smell all of its own. Nobody mentioned it, not directly. Wendy had joked that she should have brought one or two of the scented candles one of her friends was so fond of. Jack had made a point of filling his office with as many different smells as he could to drown it out, be it tea, coffee, or even something that not just the scent was a little stronger - no no, there's not a drop to drink in the whole damned hotel - but even then it never worked. Danny had found a comfort in burying his face in one of the blankets they had brought from home, though this could have been as easily him trying to find a sense of normalcy as it was him trying to block any unpleasant smells. The winters up in the mountains were different from the rest of the world, it took up everything there was in the world and left nothing in its wake. 

There was something about the way the lights flickered that made the shadows seem alive. Not like something had passed the light source and cast a shadow but rather like the shadows themselves were growing and crawling and living. Danny had always been a little jumpy, but he had never jumped at shadows in the same way he did there, as if he was seeing something in the darkness, and he always did seem to be right about seeing things. Jack, much to his shame, had found himself chasing shadows around corners as if he thought there would be somebody waiting on the other side for him. Wendy found herself going out of the way to avoid those rooms with the long, stretching shadows that looked like clawing fingers, even when it did add an extra few moments of travel to her journeys through the hotel. All old buildings had strange shadows, or so the saying went, it just came with the age of the place, for all old buildings held tragedies that stain the darkness. 

There was something uncomfortably thick about the air in some of the rooms that it felt as if one was in the room for too long they would surely suffocate. It was not every room, and there was no real rhyme or reason to which rooms would suddenly feel wrong, which made trying to predict anything a guess at best. Wendy wondered once if she appeared more like a wraith wandering the halls as she tried not to be swallowed up by whatever it was that filled the air, fearing that if she was to be trapped in it for too long she would never be able to leave again. Danny managed to avoid the strangeness as if he knew just where it was at any given time, but that was just as impossible as rooms suddenly deciding to become hostile to its occupants. Jack tried his best to ignore it all, which would have been a whole lot easier if he had a crutch to smoothen things over a little. Sometimes places were simply not made for the living, it was no fault of the hotel itself that it was not right, and that it was hungry, that was simply a matter of fact and there was no use trying to find reason.

There was odd about the way everything tasted after it spent a little while within those walls. It was not that it was stale or anything so easily explained, but it would have been significantly easier it this was the case. Jack could have sworn there was forever a lingering taste after every sip of coffee, or even water that reminded him of the sting of whiskey, or perhaps gin, general rum or anything that he knew could never be so, and so it was teasing him in a way that was maddening. Wendy found a strange sweetness in the bitter and bitterness in the sweet, and try as she might she could not understand why that was not bothering anyone else but her, but she bit her tongue and pretended that all was well. Danny was at the age where pickiness was almost to be expected, but it seemed to reach a point of almost excessive specifics that had no real consistency, in a literal sense so it was not even a want of a certain type of food, but there was no helping it. The hotel was hungry, so it was almost fair that the occupants were to suffer the same sort of maddening starvation that their current world was shaped by.