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A few years earlier and nothing about this place would spook Eames. It was just a hotel with a bad history. Bad things happened. People hurt one another. Any place that found itself shut down for several months out of the year with people basically trapped in the snow likely showed the same history, right?
Even before Rose Red, Eames was finding out just how wrong that kind of dismissive thinking was. More than that, he was quick to realize that what was happening there at the Overlook was not merely a bad place and bad people. There was too much on paper for anyone looking over it to believe that.
Sitting in a narrow chair in a small sitting arrangement by the window, Eames had papers laid out before him on the table, some on the loveseat kitty corner to where he was sitting, and a couple were on the floor. Research was not entirely foreign to him but definitely not one of his favorite things. Not even in the top ten. It wasn’t like he got hard for a long night of research like he’s pretty certain Arthur does.
Not that thought of what got Arthur hard were likely to get Eames through this. Even if the research into the Overlook was a lot more interesting than some of the otherwise dry reading the point man has required of him over the years. This was captivating, and held his interest for a lot longer than he might have imagined.
He’d read about families that died there. Of starlets that never left their rooms. Of incident after incident of people with something that would come to be referred to in the documents as The Shining were drawn to the hotel, and then possibly killed for it.
Maybe they didn’t die for it, but that it needed them to die for themselves.
The words seem whispered in Eames’ ear, and he realized he must have read them somewhere in the papers. Picking up one stack after another, he read over accounts he had already studied, finding many who talked about the Shining, about how they saw things in the hotel that couldn’t exist, and heard voices whispered to them.
Except these words couldn’t be that. He hadn’t heard them, just known them, so they had to have been read somewhere. Digging through the stacks, he found notes of the family that had suffered from this place most recently. The Torrances. Two alive. One dead. A woman that wouldn’t talk to them, and a son that had changed his name so many times Arthur was having troubles untangling the truth.From the way things looked, Danny was almost better at what Arthur did than Arthur was.
Which led to Eames learning forward, making a note on the edges of a page about the kid who would be grown up now.
Who militarized the Torrance boy’s mind against the shining?
Eames saw something move before him as he was writing. Slowly he raised his gaze, expecting to see a well tailored suit and a handsome face staring down at the mess he’s made. Instead he finds himself frozen.
Time and again accounts of the hotel spoke of a pair of girls in smocked dresses. Reported as twins, though the truth of the matter was they were sisters, about a year apart, and they had died in the hotel as Jack Torrance had. As many others throughout the years had.
And now they were standing across the lobby by the registration desk, staring at Eames.
It was almost like watching a movie, seeing something that you knew wasn’t there, and yet accepting it at the same time. Except, as Eames well knew, they were both real and not at the same time.
So wrapped up in staring at the pair, he didn’t notice someone coming up to stand behind him. Staying there for several long moments before speaking.
“Well well, Eames doing his homework, I’m…”
Whatever other smarmy comment he was about to make in fun was cut off by what was certainly a shriek, slapping the folder he was holding down onto the table with a loud smack.
“Could you not do that?” Smirking, Arthur circled the chair to pick up some of the papers, perching himself on the edge of the couch. Close to Eames, he didn’t want to speak loudly with the few guests that were around as the hotel wound down for the season. “Well, never known you to be so skittish.”
Sitting back in his chair, Eames realized the twins were gone, disappeared as if they had never been there. He shook his head, looking back to Arthur.
“I’ll go with blaming this place,” he said, knowing he would have to tell Arthur eventually but not reading to do that. Not yet. Not without a drink or three.
“Hard to blame a place that doesn’t exist,’ he said, clasping his hands together, elbows on his knees as he leaned forward to stare at Eames intently.
“Okay, you’re not funny. It exists. We’re sitting in it. We’re…” He stopped then, slowly looking around. “What do you mean it doesn’t exist?”
“The official story is that Torrance didn’t take care of things like he was supposed, too caught up on the side of the hotel that was trying to drain those with the Shining of what they were. In the process he didn’t see to the broiler and it exploded.”
Eames blinked at that, brow furrowing and utterly confused. “And they went and rebuilt this place identical to the first? I’ve seen the pictures,” he pointed out, tapping the file. “Why the hell would you do that?”
“They didn’t.”
Eames skin went icy, feeling cold and pained as Arthur’s words sunk in.
Slowly he lifted his head, looking feral and panicked even as anger twisted his features.
“We’re in Rose Red again?” Even saying the words was painful, his throat too tight for them from the tension that caused his whole body to tense. “Arthur?”
The point man stayed quiet, watching Eames for a long moment.
“I… I don’t think so. I think… Remember when we were researching Rose Red and we hit on some other houses like it? Ones that kept appearing and where people talked about finding themselves in? I think this is that. It’s not Rose Red, but it’s the same thing. Maybe this one doesn’t want us, but it wasn’t something.”
“And now we have to figure out what it wants,” Eames said. “The twins think we can.”
Arthur’s face lost color, looking around slowly but he knows. He knows he’s not going to see anything.
“Where are they?”
“By the desk,” he said. “And they’re gesturing for me to come over, Arthur.”
He looked that way but Eames could tell that he couldn’t see anything but the staff and the…
“Wait, who are these people then?”
“I don’t know, Eames. They may be real, drawn here like we were. Or they might be…”
“We’re in a house full of ghosts, aren’t we?”
“No,” Arthur said, shaking his head. “A hotel full of them.”