Chapter Text
Whiteout. Not entirely true; we can still see the edge of the road just outside our windows, and there are some vague shapes made by the mountains and the sun. But really, taking a road trip through the Rockies this time of year was a terrible mistake.
It was Sunmi’s idea, and the three of us accepted without reservation. Normally when we’re in America, we stay in the cities. We’d never really understood the sheer scale of these pillars of the Earth; most mountains in Korea have trees growing all the way to the top. But driving between, and under, these massive things? I feel like we’re heading to Moria.
“Keep your eyes peeled for any road signs,” says Sunmi. She’s really tense, and I’m glad I’m not the one charged with keeping us from plunging over the sides. “We need to pull over, whatever the next stop is.”
I look at Yeji, sitting to my left. She’s as worried as any of us, her eyes peeled for any sign of civilization out her window. I try to catch Lia, riding shotgun, in the rearview mirror, but she’s spotted our salvation.
“There’s a sign,” she says, “Evergreen Pines Resort and Spa.”
Soon I see it, too. There’s an arrow pointing off to the left, and Sunmi slowly takes us up a long, winding driveway. We’re near the top when we’re stopped by a gate with a padlock. A blank shadow ahead of us signifies the mysterious hotel. We assess our situation.
“Do you think anybody’s home?” asks Yeji.
“No, it’s gotta be closed,” says Lia. “Just like this road should’ve been.”
“I don’t want to leave the car parked on this slope,” says Sunmi. We look at each other.
“Then, we’ve got to climb over the fence and find a key,” I say.
Sunmi turns to look at me over her shoulder. She smiles, which is pretty but also slightly creepy, what it does to her eyes.
“Are you volunteering?”
Oh. “I guess I am.” I unbuckle my seatbelt, and am about to open the car door when Yeji speaks up.
“Is it really safe for her to go all by herself?”
“Probably not,” says Sunmi, but Yeji is reluctant to step out into the blizzard. Instead Lia answers the call.
“I’ll go. I need to move around, anyway.”
We both immediately regret our decision in the cold. We have to get up on the hood of the rental car in order to climb over the gate. The snowdrift on the other side doesn’t do much to cushion our landing.
“I think we go that way.” I point it out to her, and she grunts affirmatively through the wind.
The vague gray shape of the hotel resolves itself as we approach. It’s three stories tall, then I realize it has a fourth composed of loft suites tucked into the high angles of the roof. Windows break up the smooth plane it would otherwise form, like sharp jagged teeth in the open, slack jaw of a dead dragon. I can’t tell if we’re still walking on the driveway, a parking lot, or a fucking flowerbed.
“We’re almost there, Ryujin,” says Lia. The hotel has a long, straight porch with a veranda. It only half-protects us, but that’s so much better than being in the open.
The front door is locked by a padlocked chain, too.
“We’ll have to break a window,” shouts Lia.
“What if we set off an alarm?”
“Good, the cops’ll rescue us.” If they can even make it out here.
We work out how to shimmy open a window without smashing it. There are planters up and down the porch, and one of them has a flat piece of metal in the dirt. Lia is able to pry open the shutters, then stick it in the track between the window and the sill. Using both of our strength, we pop it off the track, breaking the interior latch in the process. Now the window can’t slide up and down easily, and it won’t seal properly until it’s repaired, but we’ve got enough of a gap to slip in under.
Inside it’s dark. Like, midnight dark. All the windows in the entire building must be shuttered, and they’re heavily curtained, too. It takes a confusing second for us to untangle ourselves from this set. When we do, we turn on our phone lights and look around. We don’t bother checking for a signal; we’ve been far from a working cell tower for a while.
“I guess this is the lobby,” says Lia. Sofas, chairs, and coffee tables, all under white sheets, abound. There is a staircase directly across from the front doors, whose windows are the only ones any light is pouring through. We pull their curtains apart to increase the illumination (and maybe calm us down), but it hardly betters anything. I can’t help but feel something is odd. This place is uncanny, and it’s almost like we’re graverobbers or something, but I can’t put my finger on what is setting me off about it.
Next to the stairs is the front desk, and there’s no barrier to keep us from searching for keys. But there aren’t any.
“They must use electronic locks…”
“Then we’re in the wrong area,” says Lia, and she takes off to go into the office next door. I linger out here, wondering what’s so out of place, and it’s when I stand right in front of the stairs that I finally feel it.
The heat’s on down in the basement.
“Lia,” I whisper shrilly, “I don’t think we’re alone!”
She steps out with a key chain in hand. “Well, if we’re not, they can invite us all for dinner. C’mon.”
We have to shimmy back out the way we came, because of the padlock. Lia gets it off with only a few tries, and we leave the front door open a crack. Heading back towards the car, I am struck by how everything in that direction looks like it’s in a huge white cloud.
The sunlight catches the snowdrifts in just the right way, making them sparkle, too. So it’s not all bad to see.
***
Sunmi parks the car on what is probably still asphalt, and we unload our stuff. Our food is mostly snacks and picnic sandwich-type fare, and it won’t last long. Neither will our water bottles.
We get inside, and Sunmi decides we should split up and look around. She takes Lia with her back into the office, so I’m stuck with Yeji. The lobby is quite large, but there’s seemingly nothing in it but furniture and shadows, so I convince her to solve the puzzle of the heat with me.
“It’s warmer downstairs,” I tell her, pointing down to what must be the basement.
“That makes sense, it’s where they’d put the furnace.”
We descend, side by side, and down at the bottom there’s a sort of janitor’s office. Through an archway beyond, we find some utility rooms with glowing light switches. We flip them, and midnight becomes day.
“Wow,” says Yeji, "what do you think this is?”
I look at the machine; it’s not what I would think a furnace or boiler should be. But it’s unmistakable: it radiates heat.
“I think…I think it must be geothermal.” I notice pipes leading straight into the ground, then find some sort of guide document posted to the wall.
“It says here, something about solar panels,” says Yeji. She’s looking at an electrical box. I open it and flip some switches, and the lights in here with us flicker slightly.
“Let’s head back up, see if we’ve changed anything,” I say. Yeji nods her agreement and holds my hand.
We find some lights to try, and sure enough, they work. Sunmi and Lia are pleasantly surprised when we show them in the office. But it doesn’t last long.
“You probably triggered a fault-state, like a brownout,” says Lia. “Maybe when it stops snowing, more light can reach the panels.”
Yeji and I go back and turn the lights off downstairs, and reactivate the breakers. Then we return to find Sunmi and Lia sitting in chairs near the windows. There’s a radiator nearby, and when we open its valve, heat pours out, healing us.
It also makes a godawful clanking sound.
“I don’t know how we’re going to sleep with that racket,” said Sunmi.
I shrug. “It’s not like we have any choice, do we?”
“What did you find?” asks Yeji.
“Some floor plans, among other things. This joint is closed until spring. The phone lines are out, and we didn’t find a radio. So we may be stuck here for a while.”
I scrunch my shoulders uncomfortably, and Yeji squeezes my hand. Lia frowns, but Sunmi doesn’t seem that bothered, so maybe we’re worrying too much. And isn’t this what we set out for? An adventure?
“What should we do next? Like, what’s the plan?” I ask Sunmi. She’s our 선배, after all. We should really defer to her.
“Okay, we’re gonna pick two rooms near the stairs, get them up and running, and then see what kind of food is leftover.”
It’s not as much work as it sounds. The heating and water pipes are labeled clearly, and by choosing specific breakers, there’s less of a vampiric drain on our limited electricity. We can’t run the televisions and mini-fridges, but we don’t need to. Sunmi points out that if we want anything chilled, we can just leave it out on the porch.
I’m really glad she’s with us.
There’s a propane tank somewhere on the property. Until we see it ourselves, there’s no way to be sure how much gas is left, but we need it for cooking, and heating up water. The geothermal system just isn’t fast enough for a shower, or four.
Because we’re so deep in the mountains, the sun sets early. The lobby windows are already darkening when we settle in for the night. We pick two rooms with a connecting doorway, at the top of the first flight of steps. That way, we don’t have to go out in the freezing hallway if we need to speak to each other. Though it hardly matters anyway.
Lia and I are grabbing bedsheets and the like from the nearest linen closet when the hall lights start to fail. We step out with our phone lights, and our prizes, when we’re both shook by how dark everything is. Pitch black, with the long hallway disappearing into the void of space in either direction. I remember from the diagram she and Sunmi found, there’s an entire east and west wing in this hotel, and right now we can’t even see them down the way. And our bedroom windows are shuttered from the outside, so we won’t be able to tell if it’s daylight out without going downstairs.
“This is so fucking creepy,” says Lia, and as I nod my agreement, the wind howls across the rooftops above us, and there’s a groan from the pipes in the floor and walls, and then the lights flicker and we jump at the sound of a backup generator coming on from somewhere else on the property.
“Why didn’t that engage before?” asks Lia.
“Um, wrong breaker combination, maybe?”
Without another word, we bring back our prizes to our rooms, though given how chilly they still are, it’s no surprise that we decide to share beds this first night. Somehow, Yeji ends up with Sunmi, and she looks at us apologetically as Sunmi snuggles close.
I can feel Lia radiating jealousy next to me, as we finish our supper of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. We’ll check for food downstairs in the morning, the light outside just faded so quickly. And being out of the car and off that sadistic road has caused our adrenaline to crash. We set our plates aside, change as quick as we can into pajamas, then crawl into the other bed and turn off the light. It’s still so cold, we are immediately in each other’s arms.
I’m still lying there awake when I hear that lonely generator cut off. Now only the wind and the haunting moans of the pipes remain to accompany my companions’ pleasant breathing.