The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) by Lindsey Goddard Page A

black hair glistened like an oil slick. “All is fine,” he
bluntly assured me.
     
    I tried to peer over his shoulder into the
room, but he deliberately filled every inch of the opening and
cleared his throat as if to say, Get on with it. What is this
about?
     
    “A guest reported hearing a scream through
the walls. I was worried Mrs. Ahmed may have… taken a fall or
twisted her ankle.”
     
    ”All is fine,” he repeated, glaring at me
with dark eyes. He began to close the door.
     
    “May I see her?” I asked. “You know… just to
follow up… to close the report.”
     
    He stopped and flashed me an insulted
expression. “She is not veiled. No visitors. You can close the
report.” He shut the door in my face.
     
    The next evening, I waited for the woman with
the gorgeous amber eyes to fetch her husband some ice. Hours ticked
by and she never showed. I sat alone at the desk, reading a novel
and trying not to notice the absence of a certain shrouded
lady.
     
    I rubbed my arms, warming them against a
chill that had lingered in the lobby all night. No matter how I
adjusted the thermostat, a cold draft remained, coaxing my body
hair on end like a snake charmer. I thought maybe I was coming down
with a virus because I started getting really cold, to the point
where I started to shiver.
     
    For a moment, I thought the woman in the
niqab must have slipped past me as I was reading my book because
the ice machine grumbled to life. I looked up, but nobody was
there. The lone machine hurled ice cubes with a steady clink,
clink, clink. It seemed louder than it ever had before and worked
aggressively, shaking back and forth as it spewed chunks of frozen
water into an overflowing tray.
     
    I raised an eyebrow as I watched this
mechanical wonder, an appliance that turned on by itself and
whipped itself into a frenzy. “Some repairman,” I mumbled. I pulled
a bookmark from the drawer, set it in place and closed the book. I
could hardly concentrate with all the racket. Besides, I needed to
unplug the blasted thing before the carpet got riddled with
puddles.
     
    When I returned my attention to the lobby,
Mrs. Ahmed was standing there. The silhouette of her robe-like
dress and loose veil stuck out from behind the machine. The
shapeless black figure stood stock-still, mostly hidden by the
possessed ice machine as it churned out cube after cube.
     
    “Ma’am?” I rounded the desk and approached
her. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with this machine. I
thought we had fixed it, but it’s not, and—” I stopped in my tracks
and began to back away.
     
    In the harsh fluorescent lighting—which
Eleanor despises for the way it illuminates every speck of dirt—I
tried to make out a woman’s form beneath the garment. It hung loose
down to the ankle-length hemline, but eventually my eyes found the
shape of a human figure inside. Yet the fact remained that it was
floating, not standing—suspended, somehow, mid-air. Where usually
she wore dark sandals and socks, there were no feet, and that long
black dress looked menacing as it hovered against the off-white
walls, inches above the carpet, facing me.
     
    The air grew colder as I looked up, searching
for an explanation in her amber eyes. What I saw snatched the
breath from my lungs in one fell swoop of terror. Her veil was in
place, tucked inside her head garb like it always was, the same
narrow slits for the eyes. Only… she had none. No eyes at
all...nothing but darkness where they used to be.
     
    The ice machine rumbled and roared,
propelling my hysteria to new heights as she reached a gloved hand
to her face. She wrapped her fingers around the veil and peeled it
away. The face of nothingness stared back at me. An empty void
inside the niqab.
     
    The lights clicked off without any theatrics.
No exploding bulbs or popping circuits. They didn’t so much as
flicker. Just instant blackness.
     
    My jaw chattered as the chill increased
triple-fold. When I