Perido Ghost Hotel Free-Write

I used to have my students do free-writes from anonymous photographs. The Perido photos(www.bryanperido.com), specifically the Ghost Hotel series and #5 from Portfolio 1, provided great fodder and a chance to work with a semi- series. So much fun! It is an extra challenge, though, if you know someone in the photos. Jared, thanks for the great images and inspiration. All are fictionalized liberally and meant fondly. Enjoy!

The barn coat carried that olfactory fingerprint singular to every person. His was a combination of sawdust perfume from maple and cherry, hickory and pine, chewing tobacco, and the faint lingering essence of sweat from hundreds of cattle, a few good horses and one perfect dog, all brushed sweet and clean by tall grass, prairie wind, and summer rain. Its ochre color brought out the gold flecks in his eyes, softening them, although, just like we are unaware of our own scent, he was unaware of this particular effect.

It was a strange juxtaposition between the faded cotton duck and the fine wool of the black topcoat and the crisp linen shirt and cravat that he wore beneath it. But it is also a strange day when you contemplate your own mortality in a very real sense. His decision was whether or not he would walk through the door of the Perido Hotel. Fate would decide the rest.

He knew the stories. Some people come to a point in their lives when they stand at a crossroad, which is exactly where the boarding house stood, on the crossroads of a little non-town far out in the South Dakota grasslands. In its day it met passengers from the great coal and steam locomotives, providing them simple fare and a clean bed for the night between destinations. Now it stood between the end of time and decisions, the end of confusion, and a new take. But the choice wasn't up to you once you walked through that door.

He had dressed for the occasion, a fitting combination of in between. He chose clothes that he might be laid out in, the fine coat and shirt, in case that was to come to pass, but combined with soft jeans that hung well and sturdy broken in boots suited for a long walk or ride, a serviceable hat, and his coat, in case his journey on might continue.

The drive out to the Perido has been a silent and solitary one, eight hours in the old Buick with no radio, its red paint, scoured completely clean of clear coat, fading even closer to brick brown under the dry heat of the open road. He had taken his time on the drive, but knew he wanted to be standing on the dilapidated veranda before the sun settled beyond the horizon. No one had been able to tell him exact directions to the place, so he drove on instinct until the crumbling shell came into view.

He edged the car off the road and sat, letting the engine idle and gripping the thin wooden wheel in his slightly shaking hands. This was it. What was he hoping to find here? Where was he hoping to go? He had lived the past year in a morass of cheap hotels and cheaper women made tolerable by many, many of the cheapest beers. His stomach clenched when he thought of the number of mornings he had woken only to realize nothing had changed except the color of her hair or the number of empties lying on the floor next to the bed. He would dress slowly enough to ease his throbbing mind, but with enough haste to get away clean before her scent permeated his skin. Every daylight brought him back to the morning when he should have worn his fine shirt and coat, had a great tawny cat not taken his heart and hope and torn it to shreds. Since then he moved like a man haunted and hollow, because he was both, and wanted neither any longer.

He had heard it told that if you went in and the hotel decided that you had nothing more in you, nothing left to give, then that is where you stayed. You joined the ranks of the heartbroken, the mind broken, the ethereal glue holding the weathered stick framed building together. If you woke whole, you left new. At this point he was willing to take that chance.

He swung open the door of his car, thinking briefly of what would happen to it if he didn’t come back out. It had proven solid transportation and not infrequent lodging for some time. But now wasn’t the time to wax sentimental. Unfurling his long legs from the cab, he planted both feet on the rusty ground, closed his eyes briefly, then set off up the walk.

The building gave off the ancient smell of granite foundation stones crumbling to dust alongside rodent scat and bones, mildew, and neglect. The front door hung off one crumpled hinge, but before grabbing the porcelain knob he glanced through the parlor window. It looked as though someone had ransacked the room eons ago, and no one had bothered to put things to right. The drawers and doors of the desk and sideboard stood open, their contents of bottles and paper, nails and fabric, scattered across the tops and floor. Dust gathered inches thick on everything, clouding the contents of the glass from view. He knew chaos, items thrown about in haste and anger and left. But now he just wanted to find a room at the end of a long hallway where he could empty the contents of his mind and be done with them like so many emptied bottles.

The knob felt cool in his hand, despite the heat of the day. He could feel the sun beating through his many layers, making the hair that grazed his collar cling to his neck. He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair, deciding in that instant to enter the foyer like a gentleman, hat to his chest. As soon as he thought it, the door fell open and he was across the threshold, inside the inexplicably cool entry, door closed behind him. No sound, no movement, simply done.

The walls were quiet around him, although not the quiet of an empty house, but instead the silence of people saying nothing. Before his eyes and ears could fully adjust, he saw a woman off to his right. Her pale yellow dress glowed like gossamer. She gave no notice to him, but continued her task of counting the jars in the jelly cupboard.

Mother-woman, child dead. Couldn’t feed him. She goes from counting food to reading him fairy tales. Only he isn’t here. But she doesn’t know that.

The words had come through from everywhere and nowhere at once, filling in behind his eyes and making his head buzz. He passed the door of her room and went up the center staircase in the center of the hall. He didn’t want to hear anyone else’s story, didn’t want to see any more open doors. On his way down the hall, the way he knew he needed to go, however, more doors stood open and more stories ran out.

Killed a man, his brother. Accident. Couldn’t pull the trigger twice. Cleans his gun and waits until he has the courage. He watches out the window for him to come back.

Daughter gone, no note, no sign of a fight, just gone. Her cat paced frantically at the door for days. The two hoped they would find something here.

Finally he came to an empty room, his room. The door stood ajar and no story came out, so he knew he had to go in. He pushed it open and leaned against the frame, taking in the duality of the space. He could see it for what it was, thin lathe barely covered by decaying horsehair plaster, oilcloth rug haphazard on the floor, vacant and cold, but he also saw it for what he wanted it to be- her room. Robin’s egg and azure cheered the space against a winter’s pale sun. The fine finials on the thin wrought-iron bed gave a child’s room a lady’s touch. It stood empty, trunks against the wall, waiting to be moved to his house, their home. He wanted to bury his face in the pillows that weren’t there and take in her lilac smell. Slowly he eased himself onto the edge of the bed and closed his eyes, for there the decision would be made.

Running alongside a spaniel pup, sandy hair and round cheeks. Grass higher than his head. Indefinite possibility.
Moving cattle, spring and fall, on a sweet bay mare. Golden time.
Stolen kisses under enormous sky. Promises. Plans.
Labors of love. Details carved, not into stone, but wood. Every possibility.
Tackle and slice. Gone in an instant. Dip into oblivion.
Dark bars, garish lights, attached but alone.
Falling faster, spinning. Self destructing. Nothing.

And for an eternity or an instant his mind was still. His past had been weighed against the potential for his future. The bones of the house seemed to respirate and hum as beneath the weight of time he lay pinned to the bed, unaware of himself, but still existing in the now.

Images flicked past like numbers on a roulette wheel. Bright eyed children mashed against bar brawls against the smell of vanish against the tang of blood. Would he land on something of worth, something with a future? Or would he languish on the bed with the task of waiting for the future that wasn’t?
He felt himself begin to thrash as though being held under water. His arms and legs anchored him to the thin ticking, but his head whipped from side to side, his face finding soft fabric beneath his left cheek. He inhaled like a drowning man, frantic. Pulling in a ragged breath, his lungs filled with his own scent, his self, his reality. His past cascaded through his consciousness, hauling him through to a newfound present.

His eyes opened to blinding morning sun bleaching clean the walls of the little room. He could tell without looking that he was stripped to the waist, though how and when that had happened he didn’t know. His fine clothing lay in a pile on the floor, but his coat was balled at the head of the mattress beside him. His grounding. Gingerly he assessed his reality. The sun was not yet hot, but he could feel its warmth on his bare skin. A good sign. Reaching up, he covered his eyes then ran his hands down his face. He paused as he grazed his cheeks. He figured he had about a 60 grit stubble going on, indicating that it had been at least a couple of days since he had been in this world. But he was back. And he was whole. And for the first time since he wanted to remember, he was excited to get dressed, to create, to be.

He stood and let himself look down at the bed, wondering what he would see. But it was just a thin mattress in bare room in a decaying house, no longer a longed for nightmare. Quickly but with care he redressed himself, thinking that his next chapter might require this particular blend of clothes. He was ready for anything. He carried his hat in his hand as he pushed his way out the front door to his waiting car, covered in a thin layer of driveway dust. The door creaked open in its familiar way, and he settled inside the worn seat. Before fitting his hat back on his head, he looked back at the house and half smiled. Then he gave it a little tip, a nod to Lady Fate, before closing the door and driving away.