Deaths Excellent Vacation

Shadows , and (with Tim Lebbon) The Map of Moments . He has also written books for teens and young adults, including Poison Ink , Soulless , and the thriller series Body of Evidence. He cowrote the lavishly illustrated novel Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire with Mike Mignola. Golden was born and raised in Massachusetts, where he still lives with his family. His original novels have been published in more than fourteen languages in countries around the world. Please visit him at www.christophergolden.com .

    TIM Graham woke slowly, the sounds of raucous sex drawing him up into the waking world. He frowned sleepily and looked around in the darkness of his hotel room, as though he expected to find the perpetrators of the disturbance screwing acrobatically on one of the floral-patterned chairs near the balcony slider. He liked to keep a room as dark as possible for sleeping—something he’d picked up from Jenny—so the heavy curtains were drawn and the only light came from the ghostly glow of numbers on the alarm clock. If someone had been screwing in his room, he would barely have been able to see them.
    But the sounds, he quickly realized, came from the room next door. The bed in there must have been head to head with his own, for he heard the lovers far too well, their grunts and moans and exhortations, the slap of flesh on flesh, the rhythmic tap of the headboard against the wall. Most hotel chains had long since learned to attach the headboards to the wall so they wouldn’t knock against it when guests got busy, but apparently that bit of logic had been overlooked here.
    At first, Tim smiled. Half asleep, he felt a mixture of envy and arousal.
    “Yes, like that!” the woman sighed, repeating it several times, making it her mantra. Then she started to plead, almost whining, urging him on.
    After several minutes of this, Tim’s erection brought him fully awake. He closed his eyes and put a pillow over his head, trying to force himself back to sleep, but he could not drown out the sounds. His pulse quickened. He wondered how long they could go on. Unless the guy was young—or old and using Viagra to regain his youth—it shouldn’t take that long.
    He had heard people having sex in hotel rooms before. More than once, he and Jenny had been the people making too much noise. One time an angry old woman had banged on the wall and shouted at them to keep it down, and they had laughed and made love even more vocally. Tim had never banged on the wall himself. He didn’t like the idea of interrupting, and he had always felt a little thrill at overhearing.
    So he listened, his erection painfully in need of attention. Jenny had been gone for just over a year. He was tempted to masturbate, but the image of a sad little pervert jerking off on the other side of the wall disturbed him, so instead he got up and went to the bathroom. With the light on, the bathroom fan drowned out most of the noise from next door. He splashed water on his face and looked in the mirror at the dark circles under his eyes. He had to wait for his erection to subside before he could aim for the toilet, but at last he managed to piss, then washed his hands and returned to bed.
    The fucking continued.
    “Christ,” he muttered.
    He wanted sleep more than cheap thrills. The voyeur inside him seemed to have given up and gone to sleep, because though his cock stirred and rose once more, it only achieved half mast, apparently tempered by his growing irritation.
    He laid his head back on the pillow and stared up at the darkness of the ceiling. Had they heard him go to the bathroom? The sound of the fan and the flush of the toilet? If so, it had not troubled them at all. If anything, the lovers had gotten louder. The man started to call her filthy names, making her his slut, his whore, his bitch, and she rose to what she seemed to consider a challenge, agreeing with him at every turn. If he’d ever tried that with Jenny, he would never have had sex again, but for these two it seemed a huge turn-on.
    Long minutes passed. Tim’s throat was dry, his breath coming a little quicker as his erection returned, more painful than ever. He could not help but start to imagine the scene taking place next door, picturing positions and stiletto heels. In his mind the guy was a blur, but the woman had a body sculpted by desire, with round, heavy, real breasts and hip bones perfect for gripping.
    He rolled his eyes and shook his head, not