Hotel Midnight (24 page)

A couple of hours later Clayton sighed, ‘All good things come to an end.’ We’d just loaded the last bucketful of money into the trunk of a red BMW that had caught our eye. Maybe it was time. You couldn’t leave those people asleep outside all night, could you?

But when they did wake we’d be long gone. They couldn’t pin anything on us. It didn’t take long for Clayton to return to the TV mast, shin up the ladder, blow out the candle and stick the hand wrist first into his pocket with those Spock fingers pointing out. Then we drove south with the trunk filled to the lid with cash. Lovely liquid untraceable cash. I cranked the CD player until the car shook. Then we drove with the windows down hollering out into the night air. It felt so good. We were the undisputed Lords of MISRULE. The Agents of CHAOS.

Then we found the truck that’d rolled into a ditch. The driver wasn’t dead but I couldn’t wake him. We passed more cars. Some had come to a stop with their engines still running, the dozing drivers slumped in their seats. At dawn we reached the city. That was sleeping too. And we knew it was never going to wake.

Six months have gone. When it’s cold we burn banknotes in the hearth. We’ve as much food and drink as we need – for now anyway. Clayton’s messed with those pills too long though. One side of his face is paralyzed. Not that it matters. He’s been going insane for weeks now. Not long ago he started screaming, and I figure it’s one of those screams that’s never going to stop. Me? I’m sitting here writing down what happened to us. There’s that mummy hand squatting on the table. Its ugly fingers twitch every now and again; the index finger rises slowly to point –
j’accuse
. I’ve got the loaded revolver here. As soon as I’ve reached the end of this, my last living testament, I’m going to suck the barrel until the bullet comes. You follow?

Naturally enough, we speculated after that night in Whitby. We decided that the mast didn’t only boost TV transmissions down into the valley, but carried signals back the
other
way, spreading the power of that shrivelled man-paw along transmitter chains, relay stations and satellite transponders across the world. Leaving us the only ones to be immune. And there’s one more thing we figured out: although we knew how to activate the hand we didn’t know a damn thing about switching it off.

Now I see the results for myself. Men and women sleep out in the streets. They still breathe; but their clothes rot, their hair grows into tangles, while vines snake across their bodies, and moss covers their faces in a soft green rash. For all the world they look like the fallen statues of a dead as bones civilization.

Maybe they will wake up in a thousand years? Maybe they’ll never wake. Just like me when I slide the gun muzzle into my mouth, put my thumb on the trigger and begin that final squeeze….

From
Hotel Midnight

Electra’s back in the chair tonight, my friends. Thank you for all your e-mails. I hereby make a global apology … or should that be a universal apology? … that I cannot reply to all of them in person. For example, Jolanda, from Holland asks oft-repeated questions, to whit: ‘Who is Electra? What, exactly, is the Hotel Midnight website?’

I’d direct you to the FAQ icon for more detailed answers, but to muster all my womanly patience I’ll repeat my earlier replies: My name is Electra. Much more than that you don’t need to know. Moreover, you might find additional information a dangerous thing, my friends. This, the Hotel Midnight website, is our confessional, our treasure house of recondite and uncanny stories, and experiences that one feels should be recorded in some way, but can never find the right venue. After all, what kind of expression do you see on your loved one’s face when you begin with the words
, ‘My dear, I have something to tell you. Last night I saw a ghost …’
Hmm … doesn’t always
go well, does it? Mocking laughter isn’t conducive to
continuing
a heartfelt confession of a disturbing encounter with the unknown.

So, here we are.
Hotel Midnight.
Welcome, my friend I am Electra. You, the reader, are an active participant, a willing colluder in this adventure beyond the boundaries of the normal. Believe me, when I assure you, there is always room for you and the experience you wish to share at
Hotel Midnight.
You never will be turned away. Your story will always be heard with a non judgemental ear. Because I know in this life inexplicable things happen to people. They can turn lives inside out. If you are robbed, you tell the police. If you have tonsillitis, you consult a doctor. But, well you know, there are incidents from your own life that you will never relate to another human being for fear of becoming a target of their mockery. How many of us have seen a figure on the stairs when we’re alone in the house? Or seen a
relative
who is no longer alive walking through the garden gate? Or even seen things in our dreams that have disturbed us so much we’re desperate to tell our friends. But we don’t; we keep our mouths shut, because we know the sound of disbelieving laughter would be too painful to bear.

So, my friends … send me your eyewitness accounts, your urban myths, your dream diaries, your confessions about whatever befell you. Ours is not to differentiate between what might be truth or fantasy or illusion. Jung and Freud believed there is more truth enshrined in a dream than contained in a legally sworn
testament
. Pilate asked,
‘What is truth?’
Dare we suppose that ‘truth’ is everything we see, hear, read and imagine? Only that we so often find ourselves viewing ‘truth’ as if we see it reflected in those distorting mirrors you find at funfairs. The substance reflected is real enough, only sometimes its shape is transfigured, its ‘truth’ distorted.

Here, then, are three more testaments that have found their way to me. Remember, dear friends,
Hotel Midnight
does not judge.

You, however, might choose otherwise
….

By the light of a midnight moon the town of Leppington lay sleeping. Twenty hours of heavy July rain filled the streets with pools of water that glittered silver. Each one duplicated the image of the moon. A hard disk as white as bone that oh-so faintly revealed dead lunar seas.

The girl walked barefoot down the deserted street, her toes sinking into puddles, annihilating those shimmering copies of a faraway world.

I’m late,
she told herself.
I’m too late; they’ll have left without me.

Those urgent thoughts pulsed through her mind. She moved faster: a lonesome figure gliding through this remote Yorkshire town that is a desolate and eerie place at this time of night. Above still glistening rooftops that burned with silver dashes of
moonlight
, she glimpsed the range of dark, forbidding hills that formed an unbroken wall as if to keep Leppington town an eternal
prisoner
.

Thoughts darted fiercely, prompting her to break into a run.
I’m going to leave here. You can’t keep me forever. Once I find them they’ll take me with them. I need never return to this
godforsaken
graveyard of a place ever again
.

She turned a corner in the street, and then paused. Standing there, dwarfing the surrounding buildings, looking for all the world like a huge tombstone thrusting up out of damp earth was the Station Hotel. No lights showed through windows in its Gothic face. It was unlikely that there would be any hotel guests … after all, who would willingly stay in such a grim building with its morbid adornment of gargoyles and its
glowering
faces carved into lintels? If by slim chance there were any guests they’d probably chosen to escape their surroundings in sleep.

A figure appeared in the shadows of an alleyway to her right. She could see palely gleaming arms. They were bare, she noted. Their skin showed as an icy blue colour patterned with thick, black veins. There was no face – at least none she could see as it was so deeply swathed in gloom.

Whoever the stranger was they watched her. Cold waves of fear washed through her body. She backed away from the figure as it took a step forward.

The hotel was only a hundred paces away.
I could run for it. Perhaps he wouldn’t have chance to catch me
….

As she tensed, ready to flee for the hotel she heard the man speak. The voice had a diseased quality to it, as if the vocal chords had been rotted by some necrotic infection. ‘Go back to where you came from. You don’t belong here. Go back … Go back….’

The moment she turned, ready to run, she stumbled, falling to her hands and knees in a pool of water that covered half the road. For a moment she froze there, shocked by both the fall and the appearance of the loathsome stranger. Dazed, she looked down into the water. The hard, gleaming disk of the moon was reflected there. And, as she watched, another pale object appeared to float alongside it. She saw a face – a terrible face that made her gasp. Its skin had the appearance of candle wax; there were blue tints dappling its strangely broad forehead. While the eyes—

That stare made her blood creep, as if turning it to ice in her veins. Breaking free of that hypnotic gaze, she leapt to her feet and ran toward the Station Hotel. The abrasive road surface would be ripping the bare soles of her feet but she couldn’t stop now.

He’s following me,
she thought.
I know he is. I mustn’t look back
. An access led down the side of the looming Gothic structure to the rear yard. She took it, her feet either splashing puddles or slapping down on nineteenth-century cobblestones.
Please be there. Don’t leave without me
. Only when she was round the corner of the hotel did she glance back. The courtyard was empty. Here, moonlight glinted on the cobbles. It insinuated images into her mind of walking across the scaly back of some primeval monster. Even as she crossed the ground to a lighted window at the rear of the hotel it seemed to twitch beneath her feet, as if her imagined monster slept only fitfully and would soon wake to roar out its fury at her for disturbing it.

It will only be a moment before the man from the alley finds me here. Oh God, those eyes
… Her stomach muscles writhed as if a fistful of worms slid through her intestine. Those evil-looking eyes. There had been no colour to them – only a glistening white like the boiled flesh of an egg. Worse, in the centre of each eye a tiny black pupil glared with such ferocity her legs had nearly folded under her. She knew if she looked into those eyes again she’d never break free of their hold.

She glanced about the gloom-drenched courtyard; still no sign of the figure that had frightened her so much. Yet shadows seeped along the ground, as if spreading stains of blood crept toward her. Irrationally she thought:
I can’t let those shadows touch me. They are poison … No …
She swayed, dizzy.
No, that doesn’t make sense. That’s a mad thought. Only
— She turned her back on the areas of darkness flowing across the cobbled surface, devouring the bright licks of reflected moonlight. Even to look at those shadows made her uneasy. What was important was to get inside the hotel. Now, that is a beautiful image. Of her standing in the brightly lit hotel kitchen, the door locked solidly behind her, seeing familiar faces. Of
not
being alone. Alone she couldn’t handle anymore. Alone is a cancer of the spirit. Alone is
debilitating
… loneliness has the relentless, erosive power to grind away at confidence, at physical strength. Just for a moment
recollection
of the loneliness that she had endured roared over her in a great black tide. Its grim currents carried a diffuse but
permanent
cloud of terror. Every time she awoke she dreaded being engulfed by this awful feeling that soon something terrible would happen to her. Only she’d be powerless to seek help … or even find anyone who could offer comfort and companionship if
disaster
struck.

Maybe this is what I’ve been dreading? Perhaps the sense of foreboding was a premonition of the stranger waiting for me in the alley? That I’ve always known that one day
– one night! –
I’d find myself alone here, and come face to face with the man
who will take my life.

A sudden scraping sound made her flinch. She glanced back. Saw nothing but shadow and the gloom-filled void of the archway in the wall that led out onto the river-bank. Now she could hear the hissing roar of the river itself. All this rain had swollen it, engorging the body of water into flood. Only now the sound of the river was like a voice calling her to it.

No. No!
She pressed the palms of her hands against her ears.
It’s this weird little town. It has that effect on you. The longer you stay the more it insinuates strange ideas into your head
. For some reason when she closed her eyes she imagined that a labyrinth of tunnels ran beneath the houses. And in these tunnels swarmed pallid, maggot-like men and women that lusted for human blood – and the warmth of a human body; one they could wind their vein knotted arms around. Blood and body heat – beneath the skin the pair are brother and sister. The tangible embodiment of this
intangible
thing we call Life … Now her eyes were closed and she tottered forward until she leaned against the hotel wall with her face pressing cold brick that possessed the damp, clammy touch of a dead hand. Images flew through her mind of pallid, naked forms that swim through deep waters. The River Lepping roared beyond the yard wall. And she imagined a hundred faces floating up through the swirling flood to cry out to her. Angry voices that demand she leave this place while she still can.