Serenity

3. Serenity

The click of the bartender's key in the door lock signals action.

Clay Samuels passes quickly up the stairs and down the landing to the last of the three rooms on the right.

A whisper of a breeze chases after him. He slams his bedroom door shut, blocking the air from entering.

Black smoke curls around upon itself in front of his bedroom door and floats back along the narrow corridor towards the top of the stairs.

Here's where the fun begins.

This is the spot where Molly would wait. Little seven-year-old Molly Stockholme. Sweet and pretty as a picture, dark tresses in bunches, all gathered in red ribbons over each shoulder. Her mamma still busy entertaining some gold rusher or other in the first bedroom, whilst little Molly played 'curtsey to the Queen' on the top of the staircase.

Everytime she would stamp down her smart, heeled boots for a curtsey, the resounding clip of leather upon wood had snapped along the narrow hallway.

Scuffed and faded rose-print wallpaper peels at the corners of the tall walls where it meets the yellow ceiling. Tarred a gone-off cream from decades of tobacco smoke rising up from the saloon bar below.

Then the whistling begins. Quiet at first, barely distinguishable from the whispers of night air that sneak through the gaps in the windows along the left side of the hallway.

And although the sound goes unnoticed, the sensation does not.

The young Chinese girl in the second bedroom is a new addition to the household. Her room held two sisters before, both lacking in human attachment. Childhood memories of abuse from their uncle had left them vacant of emotional connection. They had turned tricks and made enough money to buy their way out of the prostitution world.

She is different. She knows when the presence is close.

Back in the hallway, heaviness in the air dampens the whistles. The tune of the old song is lost to the darkness.

Rustling from behind the door of the first bedroom craves attention.

The swirling mist reaches the door and sweeps upwards from the well-trodden floorboards to stroke its way along the pinewood. The once pristine paintwork is dulled to a pale brown. Flaky patches of paint around the base of the door show the impatience of some of the clientele.

Light, from the thin gap between the bottom of the door and the floor moodily glares through. It's broken into patches of shadows as the lady's skirts brush past the entrance.

Molly Stockholme is listening at the door. She's waiting for the moment to pass. The pressure to fade and the fear to move on.

She will have to wait longer tonight. She knows why.

The atmosphere thickens and the narrow hallway takes on a personality of its own. Soft echoes of long ago played piano pieces wind their way up the stairs and dance down to the washroom door at the end of the corridor. The gaslight wall sconces tremble, quaking as the air in the hallway becomes dense.

Molly's footsteps come to a halt. Her muslin skirts gently cease their swaying. Her ankle boots create two blocks of black on the hallway floor. The wood panels are grateful to be hidden from the glare of the wall lights.

The whole building wants to hide.

An invisible force rattles the doorknob of the washroom door. The pretty ceramic knob is white and decorated with a handpainted posy of wildflowers. A gold-coloured ring surrounds the stem of the knob where it meets the woodwork of the solid door.

It's cold to the touch.

No matter how warm things get behind that door, the ceramic sphere is always cold.

Seeping in under the gap of the door, a grey mist folds through and rises up into the room. It remains close to the back of the door.

The full moonlight shines into the gloomy washroom from the large, square-paned window opposite the door. Its silver rays fall short of the doorway, leaving the mist spinning in the shadows.

A huge bathtub with curled edges graces the centre of the room. A couple of chipped enamel jugs rest against the panels of the wooden wall to the right of the door. The remote piano music trickles its way along the swollen floorboards.

Molly loved to bathe here. She would lay her neck upon the curve of the cool cast-iron tub. Her pink varnished toes hooked up over the opposite end. She always scooped her long thick hair over the side of the bath so that it dangled freely within inches of the floor.

She doesn't bathe here anymore. She takes her cleaning rituals down at the river now. Molly doesn't trust this place.

The new girl is a blessing. Only seventeen years of age with the sharpest survival skills ever seen here in the Spirit of the West Saloon. She needs to be handled with care.

Maybe it's her Eastern culture that sets her apart from the dull senses of the people from Serenity. Whatever the reason, beautiful little Bao is better circumvented. Nothing good will come of interactions with her.

A creak in a floorboard gives away Molly's impatience with the presence. Her footsteps clunk away from the door and the light fades from under her doorway. She has no quarrel tonight and only sleep on her mind.

Little precious Bao on the other hand, can be heard whispering passage after passage from the Lutheran bible. Who would have thought that a rare flower from an ancient land could embrace such an ideal?

She seems to find comfort in the scriptures. Her breathing deepens and her voice takes on a calm, rational tone. Maybe her true calling is religion. The body of mist has no reason to contradict that belief.

Why should it?

Bao is the way out of here. She, along with another young woman, yet to arrive but soon to be motivated to come.

The mist softly begins to pale and lose its potency. A spear of light from the new day's sunrise is pricking at the dusty horizon of wasteland that surrounds the town of Serenity. Stuck with her roots embedded into the hard, bloodstained earth, entrapped by a circle of mountain peaks and hills.

Serenity takes a deep breath and prepares herself for the coming day.