Clark Hays
The case of the missing "guests"
I co-write (and co-live) with Kathleen McFall. Especially before COVID-19 wrecked things, we used to take a lot of road trips in the Pacific Northwest (we live in Portland). These trips took us to some amazing and remote parts of Oregon, like Plush, where sunstones — the state gem — are mined (it shows up in our Cowboy and Vampire series). On one trip to Lakeview, Oregon, we stayed at Hunter Hot Springs “resort.” It was a sanitarium in the olds days, where people would come to take the cure in the mineral waters. After a long day of driving and hiking, we checked in — the only car in the lot — and then went straight to the pool for a soak. The pool had seen better days, with green slime on the edges, a single old garden hose dribbling in hot water and torn sheets of plastic in old window frames, flapping in the wind and revealing endless acres of the empty sage desert beyond. Memorable. It was dark by the time we got to our room, but it seemed fine. We had cocktails and ramen — we’re good at road trips — and settled down for the night. Someone must have left the door open during the day because when the lights went out, we were instantly besieged by an invisible army of bloodsuckers. There were about 10 million mosquitoes inside with us. We spent the good part of an hour swearing and swatting them off the white walls with wet towels, leaving behind little black smears, and a few crimson swipes. After another cocktail to calm our nerves, back to bed only to be rudely awoken little later by people clomping around in the room above us. Talking and banging around and bumping into things. We pounded on the walls and yelled at them to be quiet, and it settled down, but the sequence repeated every half hour or so well into the wee hours. The next morning we awoke, cranky and ill rested and made extra noise ourselves as we packed. When we stepped out into the morning light and looked up to glare at our tormentors, imagine our surprise to see there was no second story above us.
I co-write (and co-live) with Kathleen McFall. Especially before COVID-19 wrecked things, we used to take a lot of road trips in the Pacific Northwest (we live in Portland). These trips took us to some amazing and remote parts of Oregon, like Plush, where sunstones — the state gem — are mined (it shows up in our Cowboy and Vampire series). On one trip to Lakeview, Oregon, we stayed at Hunter Hot Springs “resort.” It was a sanitarium in the olds days, where people would come to take the cure in the mineral waters. After a long day of driving and hiking, we checked in — the only car in the lot — and then went straight to the pool for a soak. The pool had seen better days, with green slime on the edges, a single old garden hose dribbling in hot water and torn sheets of plastic in old window frames, flapping in the wind and revealing endless acres of the empty sage desert beyond. Memorable. It was dark by the time we got to our room, but it seemed fine. We had cocktails and ramen — we’re good at road trips — and settled down for the night. Someone must have left the door open during the day because when the lights went out, we were instantly besieged by an invisible army of bloodsuckers. There were about 10 million mosquitoes inside with us. We spent the good part of an hour swearing and swatting them off the white walls with wet towels, leaving behind little black smears, and a few crimson swipes. After another cocktail to calm our nerves, back to bed only to be rudely awoken little later by people clomping around in the room above us. Talking and banging around and bumping into things. We pounded on the walls and yelled at them to be quiet, and it settled down, but the sequence repeated every half hour or so well into the wee hours. The next morning we awoke, cranky and ill rested and made extra noise ourselves as we packed. When we stepped out into the morning light and looked up to glare at our tormentors, imagine our surprise to see there was no second story above us.
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