Becoming The Part - Chapter Four

The Millers’ car pulls into the driveway of house number 24, Riding Road, London. They all get out and lock the car as they begin to walk up to the house. Robyn feels her heart thumping fast as she watches everything, seemingly in slow motion; her father takes the key out of his pocket and puts it into the lock, twisting it to the left as his hand reaches for the door handle and suddenly, Robyn is on the floor in hysterics.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I can’t do it.” She cries as Connor approaches her, his hands outstretched to her.

Connor holds Robyn’s hands, trying to stand her up. “He’s gone. The murderer is gone.”

And instantly from behind them, Robyn hears a deep voice. His voice. “Are you sure?”

The murderer takes a knife out and plunges it into Connor’s neck as Robyn stands up and screams, watching the life drain out of Connor’s eyes. She turns to face the murderer, who is already holding the knife above Robyn, and she takes his mask off to reveal herself staring back at her.

“You are your own enemy.” She says.

Robyn frowns, completely confused and terrified all at once. And then the murderer brings the knife down into Robyn’s chest and she screams out in pain.

Robyn wakes herself up with a blood-curdling scream, only to find that she is still in the car on the way home. She feels the car swerve and then her dad pulls over on the side of a country road.

“What the hell?” Her father turns around to face her once they are safe. “What happened?”

“I’m sorry.” Robyn begins to cry. “I just had a nightmare.”

She looks at Connor who seems to know exactly what she’s talking about as he pulls her into a hug.

“We can’t go home.” She says. “We just can’t. I can’t go back there.”

Her mother tilts her head in sympathy. “We’ve talked about this. You have to live your life.”

“How can I live my life when I’m going to flinch every time I turn a corner or look over my shoulder?” Robyn argues. “That’s not me living my life, that’s just me simply existing.”

“He was arrested.” Her father states.

“But he might have escaped!”

A deafening silence fills the air. Connor looks at his older sister, the same glint of fear filling his eyes.

“Please, Mum.” Robyn says. “I can’t go back. We can’t go back. Not now.”

Her mother sighs. “Robyn, we have nowhere else to go. We’re already half way home. I understand how you two are feeling. I can’t even comprehend going through something like that.”

“So don’t make us go home.” Connor interferes.

“Alright, why don’t we stay at a hotel tonight and see how you feel then?” Their father suggests.

Robyn and Connor glance at each other, as if to have a business agreement about the circumstances. They nod. And they don’t have to say anything else as their father starts the car and drives them all to the nearest hotel.

The family run into the hotel as the pitter-patter of the rain hits the windows furiously. The receptionist looks up as they approach. She is young and beautiful, a contagious smile spread across her face. Her black hair is slick back in a ponytail and she is dressed in the navy blue uniform with red lipstick covering her full lips.

“Are you here for check in?” She questions.

“Er no.” Mr Miller replies. “We haven’t booked a room. Do you have any free for us to stay in for the night?”

“Let me just check.” She starts typing on the keyboard and looks up at the screen, a small crease forming between her eyebrows as she concentrates. And then it disappears as her smile consumes it. “We have room fifty-two free for you. Here’s your key.” She passes Mr Miller a key.

“Thank you.” He nods as they walk away from the desk, towards the corridor where many doors are lined up further than the eye can see.

They walk down the corridor, looking at the large brass numbers on each door until they finally reach number fifty-two. Mr Miller takes the key and unlocks the door, the four of them entering to find a large room with a double bed and two single beds. “Welcome to our home for tonight.”

It’s not a bad room but it’s also not exactly modern or first class. In the right corner towards the back of the room, there is a leak, slowly dripping down to the floor and surely seeping through to the room underneath. The television is dusty and at least ten years old, hardly ever used by guests. It’s as if the whole room hasn’t been used for a decade or so. The beds seem alright though, somewhat fully functioning. It’s alright for one night.

Robyn flops down on to one of the single beds closest to the window and reaches over to pull the curtains closed as the moonlight seeps through the finger-printed glass. Connor goes straight on to his phone and then sighs as he sinks down into the end of Robyn’s bed.

“What’s wrong?” She asks.

Connor holds his phone up, as if to show her. “No Wi-Fi.”

Robyn chuckles slightly. “They haven’t replaced their decade-old TV and you really expected there to be Wi-Fi?”

“Well one can dream.” He looks up as if to look to the stars, hoping they’d grant his wish.

As night morphs into the early hours of the morning, Robyn finds it impossible to sleep and finds that staying awake is now inevitable. She looks at her family to find them all sleeping peacefully and sighs. Not only is she bored but she’s also still anxious and she knows the only way to cure both of these is by talking to someone. She feels her legs start to tremble as she replays the unfortunate events in her head. The murderous smile, the cold knife, the puddles of blood. She shakes her head, as if attempting to knock the memories out of her brain, and sits up. She picks up her phone to go on it but finds the battery dead and her boredom and anxiety deepening in her stomach. Before she can even make the decision herself, her feet swing over the side of the bed, onto the floor and she stands up, finding herself walking through the room to the door. And before she knows it, she’s back in the reception area.

Robyn finds the reception desk empty and the room almost in pitch-black if it wasn’t for the soft moonlight filtering through the glass doors. She walks to the windows and looks out at the peaceful sky, the stars glowing bright and the moon only being a crescent. She likes the way the night looks. How it seems to protect everything like a huge blanket.

“Can I help you?”

Robyn jumps back and spins on her heel quickly, turning to the reception desk. She finds the receptionist sat behind it, her contagious smile no longer spread across her face, which now looks harsh and slim under the moonlight.

“Sorry, no. I just couldn’t get to sleep.” Robyn replies.

The receptionist doesn’t reply, she just purses her lips and stares deeply at Robyn. Something about the way she looks at Robyn sends a shiver down her spine and she begins to back away, back down the corridor towards her room.

Robyn doesn’t sleep at all that night. The morning soon arrives and her family all wake up individually. Robyn stares out of the window all the while, thinking hard.

“Are you okay?” Her mother soon asks when she realises something isn’t quite right.

“I want to go home.” Robyn finally turns to look at her family. “We’re just as safe there as we are anywhere.”

Her father smiles. She can’t tell if it’s sympathy or pride. “Okay, get your things together and we’ll go check out.”

Checkout is nothing like they could have imagined. In that moment that Robyn is finally ready to go home, it turns out they are trapped in the hotel anyway. They walk into the reception area only to find it barricaded off by police tape and many police officers surrounding as they usher people back and take notes of the scene.

“What happened?” Connor asks.

Robyn has no clue. She hasn’t had a good look at the scene yet. But when she finally does, it shocks her to the core. Her spine tingles and the hairs on the back of her neck rise as her throat fills up and it’s all too much that she just feels like she is going to throw up.

A grey, cold, lifeless hand is sprawled out on the floor with blood dripping from the fingertips. But the face. Oh god, the face is the worst of it all. The receptionist lies there, her head tilted to the side with her eyes wide open and her lips parted so much it looks like she was screaming in her final moments. The red lipstick that once highlighted her contagious smile is now smudged across her left cheek where bruising appears to be evident, showing that there was some sort of struggle.

The Millers are sent back to their hotel room, as are all of the guests, so that the police can come to every door for questioning. Nobody is leaving until the murderer is found. But what if… what if he gets to someone else in that time? Robyn lets her mind run wild until eventually she can’t take it anymore and she is knocked out into a long-needed deep sleep.

After about an hour, there is a knock on their door and Mr Miller answers. The rest of them sit on the double bed, facing a middle-aged, stern police officer who is leant back against the desk.

“Where were you all in the early hours of this morning?” He questions.

“We were all in this room, asleep.” Mr Miller answers for the whole family.

The police officer looks over to Robyn and she looks down at the ground. He knows. He knows she was in the reception area. He must have read her mind or something. They’re coming for her.

“Miss?” He asks. “Please can you answer the question?”

Robyn looks up to find all four pairs of eyes staring at her, waiting for an answer. “I couldn’t sleep so I went down to the reception area briefly.”

“And what did you do whilst you were there?” The policeman begins taking notes.

“I just looked out into the night for a while until I turned around and the receptionist was behind the desk. So I came back up to the room.” Robyn replies.

“Couldn’t you have looked out the window in your room?” He questions.

Robyn opens her mouth and closes it again; words unable to escape her mouth. “I didn’t purposefully go to the reception to look out the window. I just went for a walk and looked out the window for a second.”

The policeman nods. “And where was the receptionist when you arrived in the reception area?”

“She wasn’t there.”

“And where was she when you left?” He asks.

“Behind the desk.” Robyn complies.

“At what time did this all occur?” The interview proceeds to carry on into a vicious cycle of anxiety and stuttering. Robyn begins to struggle remembering the events of the night. She can’t figure out what is a memory and what isn’t. Why is her mind playing up so much?

“About half past one.” Robyn replies.

The policeman takes a deep breath in and nods, staring at her for a second. Then he looks down at his notes and bites the tip of his pen. “Are you certain that was the time you saw the receptionist alive?”

“Yes.” Robyn nods. “She gave me a look I didn’t particularly like so I came back to the room straight away.”

“What do you mean by that? What was this look?” He persists to uncover every detail of the events that Robyn was a part of.

Robyn shrugs. “I don’t know. She just stared at me in an unfriendly way.”

“Could you say this look encouraged you to an act of violence?”

“An act of violence?” Mr Miller stands up. “My daughter wouldn’t hurt a soul.”

The policeman side-glances Robyn’s father and grits his teeth. “Sir, please can you sit back down?”

He does as he’s told, awkwardly sitting down next to Connor and looking down at his hands clasped in his lap.

The police officer turns back to Robyn and searches her eyes for some kind of lie that she doesn’t even know exists. “Did you physically hurt the receptionist?”

“No.” Robyn determines quickly. “Absolutely not. Why would I? I don’t even know her.”

“A lot victims don’t know their murderers.” He states simply. “I ask again, are you positive that the time you told me was the time you left the reception area?”

“Yes!” Robyn is starting to get distressed now.

The policeman frowns. “The time of death was around half past one. The time you supposedly left the receptionist completely alive.”

Mr Miller interjects once again. “Well maybe the murderer got to the receptionist a minute after my daughter left. You can’t prove that it was her. She is a good person. She wouldn’t harm anyone.”

“Sir, I will ask one more time for you to stop getting involved. This is an official police investigation and I will ask the questions I need to ask.”

Robyn can’t understand why he is so persistent on proving that she is guilty of a crime she doesn’t even have the stomach to commit. Unless… No. There’s no way. But Robyn can’t help it when her mind takes control and she tries to rethink the events of the night before. Could she have killed the receptionist? She can’t remember every detail but she blames it on the lack of sleep. Even if she had killed the receptionist, surely it was an accident. But what if… what if?

The afternoon seems to arrive unrushed, and the policeman arrives once again with it. He had left after asking Robyn the one final question, “Do you have any mental disorders that might affect your behaviour?” Robyn of course replied with “no” and her family vouched for her. She has never been diagnosed with or even has any symptoms for a mental disorder. At least, not to her knowledge.

The police officer returns to their room, where they all still sit on the double bed, awaiting some form of news. “You’re free to go.”

For some reason, Robyn is shocked by this. “What?”

“We’ve watched the CCTV tapes and you were right, you left whilst the receptionist was still alive.” He explains.

“So who was the murderer?” Connor asks.

The policeman sighs and rubs his forehead, clearly distressed. “We don’t know. They were wearing a mask. But whoever it was came from the opposite corridor.”

“Thank you.” Mr Miller nods as an indication that the conversation has come to an end. The police officer leaves and Robyn’s father stands up, facing his family. “Right, let’s get out of this nightmare and go home.”

The car ride home is completely silent. Robyn looks out the window with her earphones plugged into her ears, thinking hard about the hellish time she’s had. Was the murderer at the hotel the same murderer down her street? No. It can’t be. They’re too far away from home and besides, he was arrested. He was, right? She can’t seem to figure out if that’s the real memory. The one thing she is certain about is that she’s just as safe anywhere else as she is at home. If she can even call it home anymore.