“The Pale Woman”

I have not yet met the woman in №. 212. I don’t even know her name.

She never patronizes the hotel restaurant, and she doesn’t use the lobby. On the three occasions when we passed each other, we didn’t speak, although we nodded in a semi-cordial, noncommittal way. I should like very much to make her acquaintance. It is lonesome in this dreary place. With the exception of the aged man down the corridor, the only guests are the woman in №. 212 and myself. However, I shouldn’t complain. The quiet is precisely what the doctor ordered.

I wonder if the woman in №. 212, too, has come here for a rest. She is so very pale, but her paleness is not sickly. It’s rather wholesome in its ivory clarity. She appears tall, walking erectly with a brisk stride.

She must have arrived in a car, for she certainly was not a passenger on the train that brought me, though she arrived very soon after myself. I had briefly rested in my room and was walking down the stairs when I encountered her ascending with her bag. I found it odd that the bell-boy did not show her to her room.

It is odd, too, that, with so many vacant rooms in the hotel, she should have chosen №. 212 at the extreme rear. The building is long and narrow, three stories high. The guest rooms inhabit the East side, while the West contains an abandoned business building. The corridor is long and drab, and its stiff, cracking paper exudes a musty, unpleasant odor. The feeble electric bulbs that light it shine dimly as from a tomb.

Revolted by this corridor, I insisted vigorously upon being given №. 201, which is at the front and blessed with southern exposure. The room clerk, a disagreeable fellow with a hideous mustache, was very reluctant to let me have it, as it is normally reserved for more important guests. I fear my stubborn insistence has made him an enemy.

If only I had been as self-assertive thirty years ago! I should now be a full-fledged professor instead of a broken-down assistant. Oh, well. The summer’s rest will probably do me considerable good.

It is pleasant to be away from the university. There is something positively gratifying about the absence of greasy student faces. If only it were not so lonely. I must devise a way of meeting the pale woman in №. 212. Perhaps the clerk could assist.

I have been here exactly a week, and if there is a friendly soul in this miserable little town, they have escaped my notice. The workers at the hotel and restaurant would accept my money with flattering eagerness, but studiously avoid even the most casual conversation.

Perhaps I could cultivate the society if I could somehow arrange to have my ancestors recognized as local residents for the last hundred and fifty years.

Despite the coolness of my reception, I have been frequently venturing about. In the back of my mind, I have kept hopes of encountering the woman in №. 211. Incidentally, I wonder why she has moved from №. 212. I could think of no advantage in coming only one room nearer to the front.

I noticed the change yesterday when I saw her coming out of her new room. We nodded again, and this time I thought I detected a smile in her somber, black eyes. She must know that I am eager to make her acquaintance, yet her manner forbids it.

I am not the sort to run after anybody.

I wonder where the woman takes her meals. I’ve stopped visiting the hotel restaurant and began patronizing the restaurants outside. At each, I asked strangers about the pale woman in №. 210. No one at any restaurant remembered her having been there.

The pale woman must be difficult to please, for she has again changed rooms. I am baffled by her conduct. If she is so consumed by convenience, why not move to №. 202, the nearest open room to the front?

“I see we are closer neighbors now,” I could casually say when I see her again. But that is too mundane. I must await a better opportunity.

She has done it again. She is now occupying №209. I am desperately intrigued by her little game. I waste hours trying to fathom its point. What possible motive could she have? I should think she would get on the hotel people’s nerves. I wonder what our combination bellhop-chambermaid thinks of having to prepare four rooms for a single guest.

I am tremendously interested in the pale woman’s next move. She’ll have to either skip a room or remain where she is. The permanent guest, a very old man, stays in №208. He hasn’t budged from his room since I’ve been here.

I wonder what the woman will do. I await her decision with the nervous excitement of a fan at a sporting event. To be fair, I have so little diversion.

The old man in №. 208 simplified matters by conveniently dying. No one knows the cause of death, though we can assume old age. He was buried this morning. I was among the curious few in attendance at his funeral. When I returned home from the service, I saw the pale woman leaving his room. She had already moved in!

She smiled at me, and I can’t help but believe that she meant it to have some significance. Like there is a secret between us that I failed to appreciate. But, perhaps it was meaningless after all.

The woman of mystery has moved again, and I am not the least surprised. I’d have been astonished if she didn’t move on schedule. I do not know a single thing more about her than I knew the day we arrived. I have almost given up trying to understand her behavior.

I wonder from where she came. There is something indefinably foreign about her. I’d love to hear her voice. I imagine she speaks with the exotic tongue of a far-away country. If only I could find a way to make conversation!

This morning, I awoke to find myself sprawled across the floor. I was fully clothed. I must have fallen there exhausted after returning to my room last night. Perhaps my condition is more serious than suspected. Maybe my peers at the college never expected to see me alive again.

I can say in all sincerity that the prospect of death does not frighten me. Speculation about life beyond the grave has always bored me. Whatever it is, or is not, I’ll try to get along. Of course, I am not that unwell.

Nevertheless, I must be more careful.

I called a local doctor, whom I suspect to be a quack. He looked me over with indifference and told me not to leave my room. For some reason, he doesn’t want me climbing the stairs. With that, he left. I’d rather a pickpocket take the bills directly from my purse.

I have been so preoccupied about the sudden turn of my own affairs that I have neglected to make note of a most extraordinary incident. The pale woman has done an astounding thing — she has skipped three rooms! We are now very close neighbors, and my chances for making her acquaintance are much greater.

The woman is up to her old tricks. Last night, when I stepped into the hall, the door of №. 202 was ajar. Without thinking, I looked inside. The pale woman sat in a rocking-chair, smoking a cigarette. She looked up into my eyes and smiled that peculiar, ambiguous smile that has so deeply puzzled me. I moved on down the corridor, not so much mystified as annoyed. The whole mystery of the woman’s conduct is beginning to irk me. It is all so utterly lacking in motive.

In that moment, I decided that though we may never meet, I would learn her identity. I summoned the clerk to my room.

“Please tell me,” I asked abruptly, “Who is the woman in the room next door?”

The clerk stared wearily and uncomprehendingly.

“You must be mistaken,” he said, “That room is unoccupied.”

“Oh, but it is,” I snapped in irritation. “Room 202.”

“I assure you there is no one in that room,” he insisted, regarding me dubiously — as if I were simply trying to impose upon him!

“I’ve seen her myself. She is tall, with dark eyes and hair. She is unusually pale. She checked in the day I arrived, shortly after.”

“But I assure you there is no such person. As for his checking in when you did, you were the only guest we registered that day.

“What? Why, I’ve seen her twenty times! First she had №. 212 at the end of the corridor. Then she kept moving toward the front. Now she’s next door in №. 202.”

The room clerk threw up his hands.

“You’re crazy!”

He meant what he said. I shut up at once and dismissed him. After he had gone, I heard him rattling the knob of the pale woman’s door. There is no doubt that he believes the room to be empty.

Now I understand the events of the past few weeks. I now comprehend the significance of the death in №. 208. I even feel partly responsible for the old man’s passing. After all, I brought the pale woman with me, though I didn’t set her path. Why she went room after room, crossing the threshold of the man in №. 208, I can’t explain.

I suppose I should have guessed her identity when she skipped the three rooms the night I fell unconscious upon the floor. In a single night of triumph, she was almost to my door.

And she will be here soon to inhabit this room. And when she does, I will finally return her smile of grim recognition. In the meantime, I wait behind my bolted door…

The Pale Woman is an adaptation of Julius Long’s The Pale Man, published for the first time in Weird Tales.

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