Hotel Midnight

by Simon Clark

  ‘John!’

  ‘I know. Just hold on, OK?’

  I dropped to my knees, then reached below the rail to grip Colette by the wrists. God, this was brutal but there was no other way. All I could do was pull as hard as I could. Even though she kept her lips pressed hard together I heard the pained grunt in her throat. The side of her face slid upward across the abrasive surface of the stone blocks. I didn’t stop pulling until I’d dragged her back through the guardrail onto the walkway.

  ‘Take it easy for a minute,’ I said. ‘Just sit there.’

  ‘Forget that. The bastard pushed me over the fence!’

  ‘He was still here?’

  She nodded as I helped her to her feet. Sucking in a huge lungful of air to steady her nerves, she panted, ‘He stood here … where we are now … he was watching the woman … then he noticed I’d come out from the staircase. He picked me up … threw me over. I grabbed the rail. Then dropped down to hold onto the spike when … when he starting hitting my hands. Fuck … bastard … he really would have killed me, wouldn’t he?’

  I looked round. There was no man to be seen.

  Still gasping for air, she shook her head. ‘He just went … don’t know where.’

  Back the other way, the path dog-legged round the tower. Anyone moving along the wall in that direction would vanish from sight within a dozen paces. I started to move toward the Calder Bar tower in case he was lurking just the other side.

  ‘Forget that now, John. The woman’s more important.’

  Once more I found myself following Colette as she forced her exhausted body to run to where the man’s victim lay sprawled face down. Even as I ran I glanced across at Colette’s house. Still the silhouette of Lauren stood in the window. She was watching us. I was sure of it. Only there was something chillingly statue-like about her. What was wrong with the woman? What had happened to her to make Colette send that seemingly insane e-mail telling me that my ex-fiancé was dead?

  ‘Oh, Jesus … it doesn’t look good.’

  I stopped beside Colette as she uttered the stark words while gazing down at the fallen woman. I crouched beside her. My first-aid training from university orienteering days came back to me. Quickly, I moved the victim into the recovery position. I rolled her over until she was on her side, then tilted her head back to make sure she didn’t choke on her own tongue. If she was still alive, that is.

  ‘It’s like Lauren,’ Colette told me. ‘The man embraced Lauren like we saw him hold this woman. There’ll be no pulse or heartbeat.’

  ‘Wait a second … let me check.’

  ‘Trust me, John, she’s dead.’

  ‘It’s not that easy to tell. Her vital signs might be depressed, but she might still be breathing.’

  The diffuse lights of the city cast a muted glow, that’s all. Even so, I could see the woman was in her twenties. She was oriental in appearance with short black hair. She wore a pink leather jacket that suggested she’d been enjoying a night out. What then? Had she met a man who suggested a night-time stroll on the city walls?

  I examined her as carefully as I could, touching her neck where I should find a pulse. Nothing. Without a mirror to hold under her nostrils to check for signs of respiration I licked my fingertip to heighten sensation of touch, then held it under her nose. There was no cooling sensation of air on my wet skin.

  ‘No pulse. No sign of respiration.’

  Colette spoke in grim, flattened tones. ‘She’s dead.’

  ‘I’m not going to call it.’

  ‘It’s just how I found Lauren. I knew she was dead.’

  ‘Then who’s watching us from her bedroom window now?’

  Both of us glanced toward the house. Lauren’s silhouette stood framed by the oblong of the window.

  When Colette spoke again it was darkly ominous. ‘OK, John, just you wait and see.’

  I didn’t have time for debate. Colette tells me her best friend is dead. Yet I see her across there in the house watching us. Weird, yes, of course it’s bloody weird, but all the whys and wherefores are going to have to wait.

  ‘You’ve got your mobile phone?’ I asked.

  ‘I knew I should have picked it up.’ Her lapse embarrassed her. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  ‘Nor me. Mine’s in my coat back at the house. If we could signal to Lauren, she might—’

  ‘Lauren will do nothing, John.’

  ‘Christ.’ I looked down at the woman at our feet. No bones about it. Every indication declaimed that she was dead. Her skin had gone waxy. Her lips were blue. There were no signs of respiration. Not that I’ve seen many dead people before, but she looked as lifeless as you can get.

  And still Lauren stared from her window.

  My lips were dry when I licked them. ‘OK, this is what we’ll do. There’s a public phone at the bottom of the steps. Call an ambulance. I’ll wait here with her.’

  Colette nodded. Only I saw the way she shot glances back along the walkway to where it made a sharp right turn to run out of sight round the tower. What if the stranger’s waiting for me there? It didn’t take a psychic to divine what she was thinking.

  ‘I’ll walk back with you to the top of the steps,’ I told her. ‘I can see both of you from there.’

  ‘OK.’ She took a deep breath to regain her grip on what was normally an iron resolve. ‘I’ll be fine. Once I’ve called the ambulance I’ll come back up here to you.’

  I shook my head. ‘Best wait at the bottom of the steps. You’ll need to tell them where to come.’

  She assented with a nod.

  It didn’t feel right to leave the woman lying there on the cold stone. Yet the last thing I wanted was for Colette to walk back into the stranger’s arms – the man who’d tried to throw her from the wall. He might be long gone, I agree. Then again he might be hiding just around the corner. Meanwhile, Colette must have noticed that the steps below formed a well of shadows that was sinister enough in its own right. But she didn’t hesitate; she moved down them at a run. Her footsteps clattered back up to me. As I watched a smell of spices hit me. It was as intense as walking into one of those little shops that specialize in cooking exotica. As nose-tingling as inhaling over a jar of mixed herbs, peppercorns and the like. Oddly, I found myself remembering a Christmas card I’d received years ago from the Holy Land that had been impregnated with frankincense. I told myself it was important to keep listening to the rapid footsteps of Colette descending the open staircase to street level, but that smell … I had to turn round.

  A figure stood in the shadows of the tower, just where the path dog-legged round the bulky structure that bore yet more iron spikes, which had skewered human heads all those years ago. He was watching me. What struck me was his stillness. A sense of not needing to move. Not for hours; not even for days. While all the time that pungent, sickly sweet odour of spices flowed into my face.

  Catch him. The words hitting my brain were enough to get me moving. With the stranger up here Colette would be safe as she hurried down to ground level. For the moment I could do nothing to help the man’s victim. But if I could grab her attacker, then hold on to him until help arrived….

  My pace morphed from walk to run. He was merely paces away. With it being so dark I could see little of him apart from a dark shape against the pale stone, although I thought I made out the glimmer of his eyes as he watched me. For some reason that can’t be entirely logical I linked him with the pungent aroma of spices. When I switched to a full-blooded run he slipped back round the base of the tower. It appeared unhurried. Yet in two steps he was out of sight.

  Have you thought this through, John? I asked myself. You might run round the corner to find him waiting there with a knife. Or maybe he stunned the woman with a Tazer? You can buy those high-voltage stun guns off the internet these days. Zap! I’m out cold….

  This was enough to inject a little caution into my pursuit. When I reached the right-angled turn in the path I slowed down. Wary, I darted a glanc
e around the corner of the tower. He wasn’t there. The path ran another ten paces then dog-legged back to the left where it would hug the tower wall before sharply turning right to follow the line of the tower. It meant losing my sightlines of not only the stranger, but the woman lying on the stone slabs back there. Damn. I took a couple of paces back so I could glance where she lay either unconscious or dead.

  Now this did take me by surprise. The woman sat on the slabs. In fact a perky bolt-upright kind of posture as if taking part in a yoga lesson.

  Chase the man? Return to the woman? Call down to Colette? Take your pick, John. What now?

  A decision was suddenly easy. If anything, it was the man’s victim who needed attention first. To wake on top of a medieval wall close on midnight would be a hell of shock. If she was disorientated she might even try to climb over the guardrail. There was a nasty drop waiting for anyone who tried that. So, I did the sensible thing. In seconds I’d run back to the woman. She still sat bolt upright with her legs straight out in front of her. Slowly, she allowed her eyes to scan left and then right, as if the cityscape burning with thousands of lights was all new to her. Her gaze settled on the floodlit towers of York Minster.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  She looked at my face, though not into my eyes. For a moment it seemed to me that there was no instinct within her to make eye contact. Her gaze settled on my mouth as I spoke. Maybe she can’t hear me and she’s lip reading?

  I repeated the question, ‘Are you all right?’ When she didn’t reply I added, ‘Don’t be frightened. We’re going to bring help.’

  ‘Why?’ Her voice held no real accent I could discern.

  ‘I think someone might have attacked you. You were unconscious when we found you.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Me and a friend. She’s gone to telephone for an ambulance.’

  ‘No.’ Without any hesitation, nor any sign of dizziness, or even distress, she stood up. ‘I don’t need an ambulance.’

  ‘I think you should get checked over. You were unconscious for at least ten minutes. Then the police would need—’

  ‘No.’ She began to walk away.

  What now? Grab hold of her arm? Stop her? Great, that makes me the person assaulting her now. All I could do, I reasoned, was follow. She walked with a crisp no-nonsense step that made me think of schoolteachers striding down corridors to impose silence on rowdy classes.

  Even so, I tried again. ‘Please. You might have been hurt. You could be in shock.’

  She didn’t reply. For some reason I felt compelled to check Colette’s house. Lauren still stood framed by the window; a watchful shadow. An eerie spectator. Instantly, a colossal shiver ran down my spine.

  ‘Won’t you report this to the police?’ I asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What if the man attacks another woman?’

  She didn’t reply. As she reached the top of the steps at Calder Bar Colette made it to the walkway. Colette’s expression of surprise must have matched my own when I’d seen the victim sitting up on the stone slabs. The victim, now alive and seemingly well, breezed past Colette without even glancing at her. Colette turned from the woman to me; she held out her hands at either side of her as if to ask: What the hell’s happening?

  Words seemed inadequate so I replied with an expressive shrug: Search me. For a moment we stood on the wall to ease our own conscience that the woman wasn’t attacked again, or didn’t slump unconscious on the pavement. As if bursting with vitality the woman that I’d believed was a corpse marched briskly along the street to become lost amongst people ambling home after a night out at the pub.

  ‘Well …’ The word was inadequate to express what I was feeling. ‘I guess that concludes the excitement for tonight.’

  Colette seemed troubled. ‘Did she just wake up then say she was perfectly OK?’

  ‘I didn’t see her come to. I was near the tower then noticed she’d sat up. She didn’t look groggy or even—’

  ‘Just like Lauren,’ Colette interrupted. ‘She was attacked in the same place. I came up here to find Lauren dead. One minute later she stood up, declared there was nothing wrong with her, then she marched back to the house.’

  ‘Maybe they were both stunned by a Tazer?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A Tazer … it’s a high-voltage stun gun that—’

  ‘I know what a Tazer is, John. It doesn’t kill people stone dead then resurrect them five minutes later.’

  ‘Well, what’s your explanation then?’

  She grimaced. ‘You best come back to the house. I’ve more to tell you … and it’s no good checking your watch. Your last train left ten minutes ago.’

  ‘Last train?’ My turn to grimace. ‘You know, Colette, you make the last train part sound ominous?’

  ‘Yeah … what I’m going to tell you is ominous, too.’

  I did look at my watch. She was right. My train was long gone. It was thundering northwards back home to Scotland without me.

  A thought occurred. ‘We’ll have to stay here until the ambulance arrives. I’ll explain that their casualty scarpered.’

  She scowled. ‘I haven’t called one. The payphone was vandalized.’ Then she added, ‘We might as well go back home.’

  Despite my sense of foreboding I walked alongside her as we descended into the pit of shadows that was the staircase.

  Colette locked the front door of the house behind us. I noticed she had the edgy manner of someone who’s afraid they are being followed. Then she’d nearly been thrown from the city walls tonight. Who wouldn’t keep looking back over their shoulder?

  She switched on the lights. More lights than were necessary. Another sign of her edginess? The city’s many churches struck midnight. Twelve shimmering tolls of the bell that haunted the night before dying away to foreboding silence.

  ‘We both could use a coffee.’ She led the way through into the kitchen where she switched on every light. ‘You have milk and sugar, don’t you?’

  ‘Without for me. I’m cutting down.’

  ‘So you aim to live to a ripe old age?’

  There was something strained about the way she voiced it, but all I did was make a quip about preferring around a bucketful of brandy, bearing in mind the kind of night we had.

  ‘Apart from some old sherry kicking around the bottom of the fridge coffee’s the strongest thing we’ve got.’

  ‘Coffee’s fine by me, then.’ I leaned back against the worktop. My distorted reflections faced me in the copper pans hanging on the opposite wall. Outside a truck’s horn called through the darkness. The kind of sound you suspect lost souls make as they voice their eternal despair.

  Colette filled the kettle, then switched on. As she took two big brown mugs from the cupboard I noticed the marks on her face. ‘Let’s take a look at those.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You grazed your face when you fell.’

  ‘Pushed,’ she corrected. ‘The bastard.’

  ‘Looks as if you’ve brought some of the moss from the wall back with you as well.’

  I tore kitchen tissue from the roll, moistened it with warm water, then I shushed her as she started to protest. After she assented with a grudging shrug, she let me dab the grazes clean before wiping away streaks of green moss.

  ‘Could have been worse.’

  ‘It very nearly was.’

  I grimaced for her. ‘It’s a fair drop from the walkway to the road. The madman needs locking up.’

  ‘I’m not referring to being thrown from the wall.’ She flinched as I dabbed a bloody scrape on her jawline.

  I asked, ‘You mean what happened to Lauren and the woman we saw tonight?’

  ‘Yup.’

  ‘But both are alive and well now?’

  ‘Are they?’

  ‘As far as I can tell,’ I told her. ‘The woman walked away. Lauren’s acting weird, but if she can stand in the window to watch us running up and down the wall that means she’
s with us in the land of the living.’

  ‘Relatively speaking. You can pass me the coffee … please.’

  Her manner irritated me again. I stepped away from her, dropped the tissue with its moss stains, into the pedal bin, then passed her the jar of coffee with a snappish, ‘You said you were going to reveal something ominous, as you put it. Are you going to get to the point, or are you going to simply drop mysterious hints all bloody night?’

  ‘So, John Helvetes, your innate sensitivity hasn’t deserted you after all. Coffee.’

  She plonked the mug on the worktop beside me.

  ‘I’m sorry that bastard nearly threw you off the wall, but—’

  ‘Thank you for saving my life. Bad mannered of me not to have thanked you.’

  ‘Bollocks to that, Colette. You don’t have to thank me; in fact, I’d have ripped the sod’s head off if I’d got my hands on him.’

  She did a little double-take, as if my anger over the stranger’s attack surprised her, maybe even touched her, too.

  ‘Right.’ The anger motivated me. ‘We’ll telephone the police. If we can’t report the attack on the woman, we can report the attack on you. OK?’ Then came a whisper of doubt. ‘If they believe us, that is.’

  ‘Of course they will. I videotaped it all; remember the camera in the attic?’

  ‘You did as well!’ I clapped my hands together with a triumphant whoop. ‘Colette, you’re a genius.’ I playfully grabbed her shoulders before planting a smacking kiss on her forehead.

  ‘No. I wouldn’t do that.’ She backed away from me, her eyes down.

  ‘Sorry. I was always a clumsy lummox when it came to personal boundaries. I didn’t mean to …’ I felt awkward now.

  ‘No … I didn’t mind the kiss … not as such.’ She shrugged her shoulder, tried to make eye contact, flushed then looked down at her coffee. ‘In fact, it’s nice to have human contact again. It’s been a while … somehow I’ve ended up on the shelf … you know … work. It’s easy to get out of the habit of going out. You forget to look for, hmmm … romance I suppose you’d call it.’ She sighed hugely. For some reason this was uncomfortable for her. ‘God, yes, John. You’re right. I keep putting this off. It’s stupid of me but I couldn’t bring myself to tell you.’