Or maybe we should be talking something else. There’s this dictionary definition that comes to mind: “nonesuch: a unique, unparalleled or extraordinary thing”. And if we break that down into its component parts:
“Unique”. But doesn’t that describe a one-off? So how many nonesuches are there supposed to be? I mean is a nonesuch, like a lightning strike, only supposed to occur once? Well not in my case, brother! No, not at all in my case. But as for “unparalleled” and “extraordinary thing(s)”: Those at least are parts of the definition that I can go along with. But definitely.
Putting it simply, there are some weird things in this old world, and then there are some really weird things – nonesuches of a different colour, as it were – and it seems to me that indeed I am destined to attract or collide with them. Not so much a lightning conductor as a magnet, maybe? Or perhaps the weirdness itself is the magnet and I’m simply an iron filing, unable to escape its attraction.
High-flown, fanciful analogies? Well, perhaps . . .
Anyway and whichever, the nightmarish fate of Barmy Bill of Barrows Hill at the hands of the Thin People was one such occurrence – my first collision with a nonesuch or nonesuches, so to speak – which seems almost to have been instrumental in jarring the rest of these things into monstrous motion . . .
I used to keep a diary, but no longer . . . because it’s not easy to forget things once you write them down. And there are things I would much prefer to forget.
So why am I writing this? Well, maybe I’m hoping it will be cathartic, that I’ll purge myself of some of the after-effects, the lingering emotional baggage and psychoses – especially the nightmares and constant panic attacks – the fear, even in broad daylight, that something terrifying knows who I am, and where I live, and might be waiting for me just around the next corner.
You see, no sooner had I got – or thought I had got – Barmy Bill’s weird fate out of my mind, my system, than up popped the next nonesuch: the Clown on Stilts. I had been drinking again – “under the influence of my peers”, as we frequently tend to excuse ourselves – and so, once again, I can’t be one hundred per cent sure of what I saw, imagined, nightmared, or whatever.
But I had moved out of London (had to move away from Barrows Hill and memories of Barmy Bill) to Newcastle in the north-east. There was a fairground, which I’m sure was real enough, a scruffy little girl with a yappy little dog, a troupe of really strange people from the Freak House marquee, and finally – as if emerging from nowhere, or from the darkness beyond the fairground’s perimeter – there was the Clown on Stilts.
But that’s enough, I won’t go into it except to say that it ended quite horribly, with that little girl out in the midnight fields, running like a wild thing, and calling . . . calling—
—Calling in a panic for her suddenly vanished dog: “Woofy! Woofy!”
And I’m sure I remember thinking through my alcoholic haze, You won’t find Woofy, you snotty little girl. I don’t think you’re ever going to find Woofy!
Later there was evidence of sorts – evidence of a monstrous incursion and a dreadful abduction – but no, I won’t go there. As in the case of my first nonesuch, I have said enough . . .
As for this latest thing, lightning strike Number Three, as I’m inclined to call it, this time I’ll try to tell it all; catharsis and what have you. But I have to admit that I was once more under the influence, this time for the last time – definitely. Oh yes, for I’ve been stone cold sober ever since, which is how I intend to stay despite that I feel justified in saying I have been sorely tempted. But for all that I was intoxicated at the time, still it’s barely possible I might have been dreaming . . . no, let’s make that nightmaring.
I should start at the beginning.
Just as lightning strike Number One had prompted me to move out of London, so after my experience at the fairground in Newcastle I once again felt the need to change my address: in fact, to depart urgently from the north-east in its entirety. I would head south again – but not the south-east or anywhere close to the capital.
I had been doing fairly well as a reporter with a newspaper in Newcastle and still fancied myself a journalist. Fortunately there was an opening with a small regional newspaper in Exeter. I applied for the job, got it, and moved into cheap, reasonably comfortable lodgings. All went well; inside twelve months I was settled in; I accepted the more or less menial or general work that at first I was required to perform around the office, and despite my newcomer status my co-workers accepted and appeared to like me.
Summer came around and apart from the city itself I hadn’t yet found time to explore the region. In fact, in all my twenty-nine years on this planet I had never before visited the south-west; Devon and Cornwall were completely unknown territories to me. But now, settled in my new job, and having purchased a five-year-old set of wheels with the proceeds of a small win on the national lottery – a win which seemed to confirm the fact that my luck was finally changing – I decided to have a look around the local countryside, in particular the dramatic Cornish coastline, and took a week out of my annual fortnight’s allowance. I would try for the other week later in the year, probably around Christmas or possibly New Year.
The weather was disappointing; Land’s End was drab, and the moors more so. Unseasonably cold and blustery winds blew in off the sea, and even a locale as legendary as Tintagel, perched on its storm-weathered cliffs, looked uninviting, with much of its antique mystery lost to a dank, swirling mist.
Feeling let down, a little depressed, I drove south across country towards Torbay, and the closer I got to the south coast the more the weather seemed to be improving. So much so that by the time I found myself on the approach road to . . . well, maybe the name of the town doesn’t matter. And for a fact, I wouldn’t want anyone of an enquiring mind to go exploring there, perhaps seeking the location of lightning strike Number Three. No, that might not be entirely advisable.
And so we get to it . . . and so I got to it.
To the small hotel on a hill looking down on the promenade; where, beyond a sturdy, red stone sea wall, the English Channel glinted azure blue in the warm summer sunlight. The tide was on its way in, sending slow-rolling wavelets that were little more than ripples to break gently on the sandy shore. Blankets, windbreaks and parasols were plentiful above the tidemark; below it some dozens of children braved the shallow water, and a handful of adults with trousers rolled up, or skirts held high, paddled at the very rim of the sea, occasionally stooping to gather seashells.
The scene was peaceful, idyllic, irresistible: I could look at it for hours! And, since several of this small hotel’s rooms had canopied balconies facing the sea, I could probably do just that. A simple sign inside the lobby’s glass doors said VACANCIES: ROOMS AVAILABLE, which helped me make up my mind. It was high season; many of the hotels were full to brimming; I considered myself fortunate to have discovered this quaint old Victorian place.
Leaving the road and following a sign to the parking lot, I drove carefully down a steep driveway to the rear of this once-handsome, now slightly careworn four-storey building, and there found a small, walled rock garden and swimming pool. Below this vantage point, the tiled roofs of a handful of other establishments – hotels and cafeterias – flanked the road down the hillside to the seafront. Parking my car, I stood admiring the view for a few moments more, then used the hotel’s rear entrance and climbed two flights of stairs to the reception area.
There were two people at the desk: the receptionist, a pleasant German woman in her late twenties, who I later discovered to be the hotel’s general dogsbody; and a pale middle-aged woman, the proprietress, who seemed somewhat nervous and quietly preoccupied. I can’t better describe this first, lasting impression she made on me – with her periods of fitful, apparently involuntary blinking, and the way her hands were wont to flutter like caged birds – except to say she appeared more than a little neurotic. I didn’t notice this immediately, however, for at first i
t was the German girl who saw to my requirements.
I asked about a room, if possible one with a balcony facing the sea. She checked in a ledger, ran her finger down the page, paused at a certain blank space and frowned. Then with a brief, obligatory smile for me, she turned a curious, enquiring glance on the pale owner of the place. And:
“Room number, er, seven?” she said. But with the inflection or emphasis that she placed on “seven”, it was almost as if she had said “thirteen”.
And it was then that I noticed the other woman’s agitation. Ah! That’s the word I was looking for, missing from my previous brief description: her “agitation”, yes! A sort of physical and (however suppressed) mental disquiet. She opened her mouth, and her throat bobbed as if she swallowed, but no word was uttered, just a small dry cough.
I turned back to the German girl. “Room seven? Does it look out across the Channel? Does it have a balcony? I’ll be needing it for four or five days.”
“It is—” the girl began to answer, at which the pale woman found her suddenly urgent voice:
“Seven is a corner room. It only looks halfway out to sea. That is, the view isn’t direct. We usually leave it . . . we keep number seven empty, as a storeroom.” And nodding – blinking and fluttering her hands – she repeated herself: “Yes, we use it as a storeroom . . . Well, usually.”
Now disappointed and perhaps a little annoyed, I said, “The sign at the main entrance says you have vacancies. That’s why I stopped here. So are you now telling me I’m wasting my time? Or rather that you are wasting it, by causing me to stop for nothing?”
“Mister, er . . . ?” She managed to control her blinking.
“Smith,” I told her. “George Smith.” (Actually, that isn’t the name I gave her; George might be correct, but Smith definitely isn’t. I think I’ll keep my real name to myself if only for fear of ridicule. And anyway, what’s in a name?)
“Well, I’m Mrs Anderson – Janet Anderson – and this is my hotel,” she replied. “And I must apologize, but we’ve been very busy and I’m really not sure that room seven is ready for occupancy. It may well be full of linens and . . . and blankets?” She seemed almost to expect me to answer some unspoken question, or perhaps to accept what she’d told me.
“It may be?” Frowning, looking from one to the other of the pair, I shook my head. “So what’s the problem? I mean, can’t we simply send someone to check it out?”
By now Mrs Anderson’s hands (and incidentally, that wasn’t her name) looked ready to fly off her wrists! “A problem?” she repeated me, and then: “Send someone to . . . to check it out?”
“Ah . . . !” the German girl’s sigh was perfectly audible, and probably deliberately so. “Das ist mein fehler! Ich bin schuldig!” she muttered. And then, reverting to English as she turned to the older woman: “No, no, Madame! I am sorry, but this is my fault. I did not think it was important to tell you that I have tidied and made clean number seven. The room has been empty for quite some time, yes, but is now ready for a guest . . . er, with your permission?”
Gripping the edge of the desk – in order to steady herself, I supposed – Mrs Anderson said, “Do you think so? Ready for a guest?” She sounded anxious. “Is it all right? Is it really?”
“I am sure of it.” The German girl nodded. “Shall I let Mr, er, Smith see the room for himself? Perhaps he will not want it after all.”
She turned and reached for a key in an open cabinet on the wall behind the desk, at which the older woman at once appeared galvanized and quickly moved to block her access. For a moment the scene was frozen, the two women staring hard at each other, until finally Mrs Anderson gave way and, however reluctantly, stepped aside. Then, blinking her eyes ever more rapidly, in a veritable torrent of words, she said, “Yes of course . . . by all means . . . do show him the room . . . there’s no problem . . . none at all! Be so good as to attend to it, will you, Hannah?”
With which she hurried out from behind the desk, offered me an almost apologetic, twitching half-smile, and without further pause went off into the hotel’s cool interior.
More than a little bemused, I could only shake my head as I watched her pass out of sight. It had been a very odd five minutes . . .
It was as Hannah had said: room number seven was very clean and tidy. Small but spacious enough for me, with its single bed and white-tiled bathroom, it was most privately situated on a split-level landing three steps up from the main floor at that end of the hotel farthest from reception. And I could see why it might be used occasionally as a storeroom: set apart from the rest of the guest-rooms, it could well be that it was originally intended as such, only to be converted at a later date.
Following Hannah through the hotel, which seemed paradoxically empty, I had attempted to orient myself as best possible, only to find it a rambling, irregular sort of place whose design overall was higgledy-piggledy and very confusing. One thing I had noticed for sure: close to the bottom of the three steps that rose to my landing, there was one door that opened into a small bar-room – a little too close for my liking, by reason of my once-liking, and I could smell the beer – and another leading to the large dining-room with its panoramic window looking across the bay. To one side there was also a flight of dog-leg stairs marked PRIVATE: STAFF ONLY, that climbed to a landing before angling out of sight toward the front of the hotel. According to Hannah the rooms up there were occupied by a pair of female, casual workers from the Czech Republic – “common room-maids,” as she described them, sniffing and tilting her nose – also by Mrs Anderson, by Hannah herself, and by “the chef”.
So much for the interior layout . . .
As for number seven, the somewhat isolated room I was being offered: “I’ll take it,” I told her, after opening curtains and double-glazed, floor-to-ceiling sliding doors, and stepping out onto the canopied balcony, from which the view of the promenade and beach was sidelong, less than perfect, but acceptable.
“As you wish,” Hannah answered, handing me the key. “When you return to reception you may want to check in. Mrs Anderson insists on payment in advance – by cash or card, whichever you choose, but no cheques – and, if you intend to eat in the hotel this evening, you may wish to order your meal in advance. Now, if there is nothing else, I—”
“Hannah, if you’ll permit such familiarity,” I cut her off, “may I ask you a rather awkward question?”
“An awkward ques—?” she began to repeat me, then paused to raise a knowing eyebrow before continuing: “Ah! About Mrs Anderson, I think. Her, er, mannerisms?”
I nodded. “You’re very astute.”
“No, not really.” She shrugged. “Anyone could see that Mrs Anderson is of a nervous nature. Well, she always has been, but recently . . .” And there she paused.
“Recently?” I prompted her.
But Hannah shook her head. “No, it is not my place to speak of such things. Not behind her back, and not to a stranger.”
“Of course not,” I agreed. “It’s just that I feel concerned about her. Perhaps I’ve upset her in some way – something I may have said or done? She didn’t seem to want me here!”
Hannah bit her lip, thought it over for a moment, and said, “No, it is not you. It is this place, this area which she finds disturbing . . .” And looking around the room, and out through the balcony doors, she waved a vague, all-inclusive hand at nothing in particular. “Even this room – perhaps especially this room – or some of the things that have happened here.”
“Things have happened? In this room?”
She shrugged, stepped closer to the open balcony doors, and looked out. “Out there, and . . . and up there.”
I followed her gaze – out across the ribbon of the road and up a hillside clad in ivy and old man’s beard – craning my neck to take in the gaunt aspect of another, rather dilapidated-looking hotel perched up there on that higher level.
“Yes,” she said, nodding. “Up there,”
“But you also men
tioned this room,” I pressed her.
“Yes,” Hannah said, moving towards the door. “Mrs Anderson does not like this room. This is the first time she has let it in the eleven months I have worked here. But we had a very poor winter, with only a few guests, and while things are now improving, I know she still needs the money. That is why . . .” But here she paused.
“Why you argued on my behalf? At the desk, I mean?”
Now she smiled and said, “Aha! But you too are very astute! Also persistent! Myself, I am not a superstitious person. There is nothing wrong with this room, Mr Smith, and I hope you enjoy your stay here.”
“But—”
“Now I have work,” she said. “You will excuse me?”
While I would like to have known more, what else could I do but let her go?
As she left, Hannah closed the door quietly behind her . . .
Moving my luggage, a single small suitcase, from my car to room number seven, I stopped at the desk to order dinner and pay for four nights in advance. Hannah was obviously busy elsewhere for when I rang the bell it was Mrs Anderson who came from a small office at the end of the desk to attend to me. She looked a lot more settled than the last time I had seen her, and while dealing with the business in hand she was able to talk to me.
“You’re from London, Mr Smith?”
“Ah, my accent!” I said, nodding. “No mistaking London, eh? Well yes, I’m London born and bred, but not just recently. Newcastle, but I wasn’t there long enough to pick up the accent – thank goodness!”
She smiled. “I hear lots of accents. I’ve become expert in recognizing them.”
“And how about you?” I answered. “I’m no expert myself but I’d guess you’re local – or West-Country at least? – or then again, maybe not. It’s like I said: I’m no expert!”
“From Cornwall originally,” she said. “We owned a hotel in Polperro, that is, my husband and I. But business was very bad three years in a row, so we sold up, moved here six years ago, fell in love with this place and . . . and bought it.”
The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror Page 43