by Simon Clark
Hotel Midnight
A collection of short stories
SIMON CLARK
For Alex Clark
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
1 On Wings That So Darkly Beat….
2 The Burning Doorway
3 The House That Fell Backwards
4 Demon Me
5 The Whitby Experience
6 Goblin City Lights
7 Two Dead Detectives
8 The Hand of Glory
9 The Electra Suite
(i) Vampyrrhic Outcast
(ii) Wall Eye
(iii) Jack of Bones
By the Same Author
Copyright
INTRODUCTION
Where do they all go?
That’s a question I often voice. Just ask my wife, Janet, when I can’t find car keys, insurance documents, spare batteries for the remote control – especially when there’s that onscreen message ‘Urgent! Please replace your TV remote batteries in the next ten minutes!’ You name it, I lose it. This is because I’m so often mulling storylines. When my imagination has me in its grip it doesn’t readily let me go. Once I’d forgotten I’d driven the car to the supermarket and walked home without it.
Then some people ask the more philosophical question: ‘Where do they all go?’ And they mean the years of their lives. For me, childhood days seem a long time ago. Fortunately, I haven’t yet mislaid all my memories from when I was a boy, and as memories are often the only souvenirs we have of that journey through the world of our early youth they’re worth hanging on to. Even more so if you’re a writer: they help pay the mortgage. When I’m writing a story or a novel it’s not all imagination and invention; I weave plenty of real incidents that happened to me into the fabric of fiction. For example, The Whitby Experience, which appears in this volume, was partly inspired by a last minute dash to the East Coast resort of Whitby for the weekend. Janet and I were more than ready to relax after months of intensive work, so I rented a flat at random. When we arrived we found by sheer chance that we’d be sleeping in the same bedroom occupied by Bram Stoker more than a century before when he conceived Dracula. This was even more of a coincidence considering I’d just completed the manuscript of Vampyrrhic, my first novel containing vampire-like creatures.
Anyway, I’m digressing here, but I think we can allow ourselves that, can’t we? My guess, is if you’re reading this introduction to Hotel Midnight then we’ve been this route before together; that you’re familiar with my other books such as Nailed By The Heart, Darkness Demands, The Night Of The Triffids, and so on. And that we’re now relaxed in each other’s company as writer and reader. Of course, if this is your first Simon Clark book, welcome aboard.
On my website there are chapters of an imaginary autobiography called Over At Simon’s, where I keep repeating that the only rule governing that particular autobiography is that There Are No Rules. If anything, it is a hymn to digression. It revels in jumping here and there to various times in my life. In fact, I’ve been talking here about keeping a grip on childhood memories, but as I’ve been writing this I’ve just remembered one important memory that slipped my mind. When I was ten I sat with a group of friends round a camp-fire beside a stream. We’d found an old paint tin into which we’d crammed every ingredient we could find in nearby hedge bottoms and fields. To a fine array of ingredients, which included grass, berries, insects, slugs, snails, leaves, and (I have to be candid) dog poop – well, come on, we were ten – we added stream water, then proceeded to boil vigorously for twenty minutes. While waiting for the soup to heat, we got all philosophical about chocolate, nuclear war, Doctor Who and Batman, and the prospect of becoming adults.
One boy seriously declared, ‘When I’m grown up I’m going to keep wearing short trousers.’
‘You’ve got to be kidding! As soon as you’re a teenager all boys wear long trousers. You’ll look daft if you don’t.’
‘I’m going to keep wearing short trousers because it’s good for your health. You’ve got to get the sun on your legs.’ Then he leaned forward to share some valuable information with us. ‘Once there was a boy who never wore shorts. He always wore long trousers. In the end …’ – grim-faced, he looked at each of us in turn – ‘it killed him.’
For a moment we stared at the steaming paint pot as it sat on the camp-fire. This fatal long-trouser syndrome had the ring of truth to it. Could the secret of immortality really be down to the length of one’s trousers? Most of us had been kneeling or squatting on the grass around the fire. Quickly, we changed our positions so the life-preserving sun would fall nicely on our mud-caked bare knees.
‘It’s going to be weird growing up,’ said another of my friends as he took his turn to use a long stick to stir the dog poop in the boiling water. ‘You can walk along the street smoking and no one can stop you.’
‘And drink beer.’
‘And drive a car.’
‘And get married.’
We all pulled a face at that one. Not one ten year old there around that fire had any intention of marrying.
‘Of course,’ one of them added after a while, ‘we won’t know what each of us’ll be doing then.’
‘How come?’ I asked. Something about this troubled me. Surely we’d all stay in touch with one another?
But a wiser boy put me straight. ‘After we’ve left school we’ll get jobs in offices and stuff, then we’ll go our separate ways.’
Impossible. We were best mates. But, just in case it turned out to be true, I had an idea to soften the blow. ‘I know,’ I told them in all seriousness. ‘We’ll all meet up when we’re forty. Then we can tell each other what we’ve done.’
‘When we’re forty? When’s that then?’
Thirty years hence took some calculating. Eventually, however, we arrived at a year that we all decided was the right one: 2001.
‘Wow, that’s in the future! People will have flying cars and be living in space by then.’
‘We might be living in space.’
I didn’t let something like cosmic distance put me off. ‘What we’ll do,’ I declared grandly, ‘is all meet up at three o’clock in the afternoon on the first of August, in the year 2001.’
‘But where?’
‘At the sweet shop in Badsworth.’ A place we all knew intimately. ‘OK,’ I added, ‘shake on it. Then everyone promise we’ll be there in 2001.’
We all shook hands as we faithfully promised to make the rendezvous.
Only, I have to make the shameful confession now, that until I started writing this introduction I’d forgotten all about our promise. Damn. I feel bad about it. I mean, my imagination can supply the reunion scene. My friends thirty years on are shaking hands outside Badsworth Village Store (which is no more). They’re smiling happily. They’ve started to develop lines around their eyes, some might have a grey hair or two. All, that is, except the boy who declared he’d continue to wear health-giving short trousers come what may. In my imagination he stands there with tanned, bare legs and an uncannily youthful face. Of course, they’re all asking, ‘Where’s Simon? What happened to him?’
One will reply, ‘Oh, I heard he became a writer.’
‘Yeah, he’s probably living in Hollywood or New York now.’
No. I’m not. In fact I live a ten-minute drive from the rendezvous point. Only I went and forgot, didn’t I? Ooops, sorry Keith, sorry Victor, apologies to the rest, too. These days, I’m early for appointments; back then, however, my grasp on timekeeping was always slippery at best.
And what happened, exactly, to that toxic pot of soup we were cooking up all those years ago? We did discuss very carefully how we should use this unique concoction. Tip it over
someone’s front doorstep that we didn’t like? Invite other friends to smell it? Trick someone into tasting it? In the end we decided to put the lid back on our impromptu cooking vessel and leave it to mature for a while. I suggested burying it near the stream so it might add a certain je ne sais quoi to our creation. Then we’d dig it up in a few weeks and decide all over again how we’d use this precious batch of elixir. Uhm, guess what? I forgot where I buried it. Sorry, mates.
There, I’ve spectacularly digressed in this introduction, too. Some writers would ‘Harrumph!’ and demand more discipline, but I’d reply that writing fiction is a form of digression; some of it controlled, some not. Together with that digression would be the accumulation of other details, many culled from memory – memories just like the one of the discussion round the camp-fire long ago. As a writer I like to be as surprised as the reader by what comes next in one of my stories. It’s a technique I’ve worked hard at to perfect. Jazz and Blues musicians must get the same kind of buzz out of improvization, rather than slavishly remaining glued tight to a score. Anyway … anyway … The question I posed at the beginning of this introduction was: Where do they all go? This time the ‘they’ is short stories. Or more specifically, my short stories. Originally, I planned to write a little about the creation of the individual tales, but I can’t see that would add anything to their enjoyment. I wrote them so they’d stand alone – or, heaven forbid, fall alone – without explanations of content, style and context. Most have been published before; however, there’s a good chance you won’t have come across them. Many appeared in limited edition collectors’ volumes or obscure magazines. When I started compiling this collection I knew I had sufficient published material to fill a book, but it struck me that it’s only fair to offer a serving of brand new fiction, too. I intended, therefore, to write two brand new short stories for Hotel Midnight. But The House That Fell Backwards and Jack Of Bones both acquired lives of their own and refused to come in under 5,000 words apiece. Between them, they account for around a third of this volume. As I say, it wasn’t planned, but I’m pleased and proud to offer two brand new novellas along with these stories, the stories that prompted that question, ‘Where do they all go?’
The answer is, generally, that my stories have appeared in magazines, in anthologies, on websites, as bonus booklets in DVD packages, and have been broadcast on the radio. Scientists explain that FM broadcasts aren’t bounced back to Earth by the radio reflecting layers of atmosphere; that, instead, they continue to journey out into space forever at the speed of light. This means my early radio stories are now, at the time of writing this introduction, more than twenty-five light years from the Earth and are reaching the planetary systems of alien stars. Every so often, I wonder what shaped ears (on what shaped heads) are listening to my work now. OK, I guess it’s unlikely, though I can see the seeds of a new story here.
Those tales were scattered far and wide, not just globally but on a cosmic scale, so I thought it was time to round up a batch of stories and bring them together under the one roof of this volume. Then I can invite you to come and stay for a while.
After all, there will always be room for you here at Hotel Midnight, where every room has a view to die for….
Simon Clark
Doncaster
August, 2004
ON WINGS THAT SO DARKLY BEAT….
Consider the ground beneath your feet. We cut ore from it. Mine it. We pump oil and gas from its depths. For centuries, during wars or when law and order collapsed, leaving people fearful and vulnerable, they entrusted their treasures to its safe-keeping.
Imagine the earth beneath your feet. You can’t see what lies there just an inch below the surface. Not normally, that is, unless you’ve a mind to start peeling back the turf and getting right down to where the dirt begins.
So, just what is down there? What’s hidden ten inches, ten feet, or ten miles beneath the foundations of your house, in that black crush of earth? It makes you think, doesn’t it? After all, didn’t we once believe it was the lair of demons? That Underground was the postal address for Hell?
Now the time has come to tell it as it was. No embellishments. No detours. No crap. Last summer this happened to me. I can put my finger on when it all started. I don’t mean that figuratively: I mean it literally. I can put my finger on a crack in the wall that runs like a jagged pencil line from the kitchen sink as far as the windowsill, where Kathy’s potted ivy still weeps tendrils of green.
Sure. It’s nothing to write home about, is it? That hairline crack. But it was the first indication that trouble was coming. OK. So it started quietly. Quietly as the ticking of a bomb before it goes boom.
Just like every other afternoon I was getting ready to go to work at mail-sort. I’m on ‘lates’ so I start at 5.30 and work through ’till 9.30. There I get together with my big blue friend the conveyor belt.
After it comes off the trucks, post is dumped from sacks onto one end of the belt. Before my very eyes flows that river of mail: tiny envelopes, bog-standard envelopes, tan-coloured social security envelopes, bulging with those hard to fill in forms, round parcels, square parcels, handgun shaped parcels. And, for some reason, a fun-loving member of Joe Public might drop hamburger wrappers into the box, or a sticky wad of consummate masticated gum. Or a hypodermic or two. Believe me, friends; it happens.
Well. I sort flats (the A4 envelopes, that is) from the meterpost and the parcels. Those parcels are thrown not too gently into handcarts with bellow-like containers the size of bathtubs that expand as the weight piles up inside. With the purr of the conveyor electric motor is the purr of ever-present guilt. The next package I throw, all clad in bubble-wrap, might be some old lady’s family heirloom; a crystal bowl maybe, presented to her father for services to humanity. Believe me, I try and throw as gently as I can. And I do wince if I hear the tinkle of broken glass.
That’s my evening job. Ensuring that a letter posted by Mr Sender reaches Miss Recipient, or whatever, in one piece, and on time. I like the work. It’s satisfying. It pays some of those bills that my colleagues in mail delivery insist on bringing to my door.
By day, that’s a different kettle of fish. As anyone in the media will tell you, the big money is in television. So, between sunrise and sunset you’ll find me at the computer hewing out scripts. Hell, so many scripts. How many? God knows. Most rest in the catacombs of my filing system. But three (yes, a mighty three) have made it to screen. A couple have been fifteen-minute lo-budget wonders for ‘new talent showcases’. These are invariably shown late after the dullest current affairs programmes – guaranteed, believe me, to knock a hole in your oh-so carefully scripted drama: a hole right below the water-line so it sinks silently and without trace. And then, there’s my pride and joy, a ‘guest’ script for a long-running medic drama. Now that did take care of the bills – a good six months’ worth anyway, and did mean we could trade in Paula and Jake’s half-dead bikes that were causing me a degree or two of shame for a pair of bright, shiny new ones.
So: at the tail end of one sun-splashed afternoon in August, in the twilight zone between my day career and my evening job, that’s when it began. That was the time normality chose to jump just a little to the left of reality. That’s when what usually lies ‘downstairs’ beneath your feet started to make good its escape.
‘Dad.’ Jake’s voice came from the living room. ‘Dad?’
‘What?’
‘What’ve you dropped?’
‘I haven’t dropped anything. I’m cutting tomatoes for the sandwiches.’
‘Mum’ll go mad if you break any more of her plates.’
‘I haven’t dropped any plates. I’ve told you, I’m slicing tomatoes.’
‘Didn’t sound like it. Sounds like something expensive broke.’
‘Yeah, only my heart.’
‘Huh, they haven’t sent back the big script, have they?’
‘They have, Son. They have.’
‘Don’t let the bastards g
rind you down, Dad.’
‘Thanks, Jake. But watch the language. Your mother’ll be back any minute.’
‘Need any help sweeping up the wreckage?’
‘I told you. I haven’t broken anything.’
‘Sounded like it.’
‘Count the plates if you don’t believe me. Right, can you get some cans from the fridge?’
‘Beer?’
‘I’m working, Jake.’
‘No, I meant for me.’
I shook my head, smiling despite a generally crap day.
‘You’ll get me shot by your mother.’
‘Aw, Dad, it’s Friday.’
‘Just one, then. And not a can of beer, get one of the small bottles.’
‘Meanie,’ he called, good-naturedly, from the room.
‘You can feed the goldfish while you’re at it as well … Paula?’
But it was Jake’s voice I heard, not Paula’s. ‘She’s still at Kay’s.’
‘Well, I can’t wait. I’ve got to be away by five.’
‘Stick hers in the fridge, Dad.’
There comes a time when your kids start giving you the orders. At thirteen Jake was no exception. I didn’t see any let up in the situation. In forty years it would be ‘Take your pills, Dad. You shouldn’t be driving the car at this time of night, Dad. Time for bed, Dad.’
As I topped off the sandwiches with mayonnaise I sang out, ‘OK. Come and get it.’
Jake appeared at the kitchen door. The bristling razored scalp made me itch to try striking a match on it. As always, his eyes were boyishly bright, while his lips were full, almost swollen-looking: I’m told the bee-stung effect is typical when all those hormones begin cascading through teenage veins.