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Ikabod Kee perched where he’d been for the past several decades, head in his palm, looking out at the revolving door. The wind still whipped through it, whirling it in circles, thunk-thunk-thunk against the frames. It held strong. His gaze flickered to the rain-streaked windows. It was pitch black outside. At least it was nicer inside, dry and warmly lit.
He tapped a clawed finger against the desk, flitting attention from the spinning door to the windows to the lights and back to the door. He dug a nail into an imperfection in the wood and scratched at it, deepening it.
Awfully quiet. And his dear guest had been mightily unimpressed with his last call. He heard a lot of terrified screaming and animalistic snarling and running. So, they were probably busy for the foreseeable future. He tapped his fingers to the desk, clicking against the old wood in quick rhythm.
He was alone. He shifted in place, tail curling and uncurling, just to move. The door continued to spin. Nobody had come in for… a long time, now. That strange little man had come after a very long stretch of nothing. And now, with that taste of human interaction taken away, he was left alone with his thoughts again. Ik tapped the desk faster. What was a lobby boy to do, with no guests to tend to?
He sighed, loudly, to fill the silence. But when he was done loudly, dramatically sighing, the quiet only felt more oppressive. The storm seemed to rumble louder, only to mock him. He looked away from the windows to the outside—what was the point? Nobody had come in for hours—days, maybe? Time slipped away in such an unchanging place. In averting his eyes he looked down at the papers scattered on the ground, all strewn about from sifting through guest files. Maybe…
It was something to do. He bent and picked one up, and pressed it to the desk for later sorting. Something to do, to distract himself with. When was the last time he swept? A few years, at least. But then he might disturb one of the cobwebs in the corners of his space and scare off one of the spiders that took up residence! He just couldn’t go evicting even his tiniest guests, couldn’t he? That was rude.
So he tidied up what he could, pointedly avoiding the windows and whirling door. In the end he accrued a tidy stack of papers, which he debated sorting out. By death date, and then alphabetically. It was rather surprising how often two or more souls died at the exact same time! Sometimes those souls in question didn’t find it as interesting as he did, but ah, maybe he’d grown used to the morbidity of it all. A constant influx of souls seeking companionship and community, just… dried up. The entrance was too grandiose for just one man. A few chairs were overturned from the traveler’s entrance, but he didn’t have the heart to tidy that. It made the place look lived-in—it was charming, even! It gave the place personality.
That being said, he really didn’t like looking out into the empty lobby. Grumbling, he turned away, gaze sweeping over his small world. He pushed his chair into the desk. He hadn’t used it in decades, but didn’t have the heart to get rid of the dusty, creaky thing. The computer on said desk, though, still survived decades of daily use. Or at least, it had. Like the lobby, it was left unused.
He could use it to look at the cameras, of course, to check on the traveler. But the deeper they went into the inn, the more the cameras fuzzed out. The power flickered, tenuous, with depth. He sighed, setting a hand over the computer’s top. It, too, with a withering purpose. He ran a finger across its edges, wiping dust off, like he was rubbing the back or shoulder of a friend, soothing.
“I’m sorry,” he said to… something. The computer? The inn itself? As if it could hear him.
He rested his palm over the computer’s mouse, running a claw over its shell, like he often did when actually using it. But for now, the device was off. In the screen, his dulled reflection greeted him, downturned eyes and glinting maw and all. He clicked his teeth open and shut and widened his default grin. Hello, him, that church grim thing only growing colder when void of purpose.
He drummed his fingers over the mouse, tap-tap-tapping over it without quite making the mouse properly click. Then, over the keyboard. Half the letter faces were smudged off with time, and a few of them stuck, needing to be pressed extra-hard to register. One side of the spacebar didn’t work half the time.
Soon after he’d died and settled into his position, he’d gotten used to typing. And then he got used to typing with six fingers instead of ten; things happened, that were maybe his fault, maybe not. Then his suit tailor messed up and he got used to three. Mr. Sob didn’t like working too deeply with more recent technology. The things he used seemed so stereotypically… supernatural. Wicked in its age, like time had tried to forget it, but he wouldn’t let it die. He didn’t let Ik see the vast majority of it, but what he did see was… something he hadn’t wanted to see. Let alone feel. Experience.
He bowed further, bumping his forehead against the top edge of the computer. “You weren’t meant for this,” he told it, told the inn. “I’m sorry for letting it get this bad.”
Thunder rumbled.
He dug his hand around the mouse, scraping against the ratty mouse-pad under it. “I tried to do good. You were supposed to be—I don’t know. Home?”
Life.
“It was really nice, at the start. And scary, you know, and that’s why I agreed to let Mr. Sob take charge of you. He was so… confident. And I didn’t know how to really manage so many people, but—he took care of that, I guess. But I learned anyway. Since the guests never died.”
The chucklers kept enough of their hivemind wits about them to call the desk, through all their cyclical, never-truly-ending lives and lapsing memory. The chompers sat beside each other, warbled in a broken approximation of language, though snapped at a hair-trigger. The slugs liked sounds and sights from the televisions (not his music, though).
“All of you deserved better. Now you’re just—just a trap, some sinkhole, or big, hungry thing, eating whatever I deliver to you. To Mr. Sob, I mean, but you…” Oh, what was he doing? Speaking to nothing? That meant nothing could judge him. Unless Mr. Sob had the place tapped. He wouldn’t put it past him. It wasn’t like the man cared for Ikabod’s inane ramblings (in his words) in the slightest, anyhow.
“I had a good run.” He did his best. Didn’t he? “...did we?” He looked at the papers and overstuffed drawers he still wanted to sort out, eventually. Eleven million. He didn’t think the human mind was equipped to truly comprehend any number greater than, like, one million, and even that pushed it.
“You, at least, take care of them in a way I failed to,” he told the inn, backing up until he hit the desk, looking at the quaint wall like it was something serene. And when he turned to the lobby, he was not alone, because the inn was there. “It never mattered if they barely got to enjoy their rooms or amenities, or if they never got there at all. It was all there. And when they… even after everything, you gave them what they deserved.” Even if it got a bit silly further down, like they both started running out of ideas. But if the chompers liked frolicking in the wild west, then frolick, they would.
“All I did was give them false hope,” he said bitterly, leaning against the wall. “What kind of innkeeper am I? Telling my guests their woes would be soothed. Building you with the expectation you would be something kind and—and you are, but this wasn’t meant to happen. It’s like I’ve betrayed you, in a sense.”
With a heavy sigh, he straightened up. He tidied his half-bow and ran a hand down his suit, smoothing it down. Even if his only guest couldn’t quite see all of him, he ought to look presentable! It was the principle of the matter! He squeezed his eyes shut and breathed and realigned his jaw. He was something incorrect, mangled, frightening to many guests. He’d gotten used to unwillingly making children cry, and some adults too who looked upon him like the devil, no matter how cheerful he tried to be for them. The inn was, despite it all, still a building. Warm and cozy and sprawling like a town, just like he’d envisioned. A community. He had to make an effort to match the pace.
“This place deserved better,” he said. The words simmered under the storm. Something crashed into the inn’s side. A tree? That forest outside was certainly receiving the battering of a lifetime. “I’m sorry. At least it’s just a false wall. Only me, up here.” A lure. A falsity.
He circled the small space behind the desk, just to move, before the stillness of his fate drove him to start clawing at the wood more. Even then, he worried the edge of his suit between his fingers, and despite his efforts, his claws still snagged. The inn held steadfast compared to his composure.
The inn didn’t deserve to be a prison.
“Thank you for keeping them happy,” he told the walls, the floor, the stone and wood and metal system that contained millions. “At least, I think they’re happy. I hope they are.” Comfortable, at least.
The lights flickered. The power grew shaky under the force of the storm. He stilled and settled back against the far wall, looking out into the lobby. The lights winked out. His breath caught as he was left alone, shivering, looking out into the unforgiving night. The inn looked awful, dead, in the dark, lit by some approximation of a moon far outside somewhere.
The power turned back on. He exhaled. He squeezed his eyes shut and rested his head back against the walls that, for now, guarded him from the elements. For now, he was safe and somewhat warm. He splayed his palm open over the wallpaper.
“I’m sorry.”