Grimm

by Mike Nicholson

  As he immersed himself in the archive, Rory found that articles about Hotel Grimm, from as far back as the late 1940s, had a particular flavour to them, leaving no doubt that the paper was no supporter of the establishment.

  The most chilling article Rory came across was one which summarized a list of those who had recently met their end at the hotel over the years. Cheerily entitled “Too Many Dead Guests” it provided a short profile on how six unfortunate people had become ex-guests:

  Martin Piggory. Found dead in his pyjamas next to a giant statue of a wolf in the hotel’s hallway. It appeared that the elderly, and rather nervous gentleman had been scared to death while on a search for a midnight glass of milk.

  Wilma Yeomans. An over-curious antique collector who, it was thought, had stepped over guard rails to investigate an inscription on a suit of armour. The movement had caused its axe-wielding arm to descend, thus rapidly ending her research.

  Sir Ivan Clinton. The pre-pack salad tycoon drowned in Sir Gregory Grimm’s famously giant bath in the hotel’s deluxe suite when his big toe had become stuck in one of the taps, rendering him unable to lean forward to turn the other tap off.

  Davina Aitken. Poisoned while on the premises. The hotel had vigorously denied any connection between their kitchens and the death. Investigations revealed that Aitken was a fungi collector who had wrongly identified, and then eaten, a handful of Aberfintry’s notorious and deadly pink skullcap toadstools.

  Peter Pendreich. A sporting enthusiast died when it seemed that a playful attempt to lasso his bedroom’s chandelier with his dressing-gown cord had ended in a bizarre combination of strangulation and electrocution.

  Donald Burnside. Accidentally shot himself. The phone beside his bed had rung with the alarm call from hotel reception that he had requested. Unfortunately, in his sleepy state, instead of the receiver, he picked up the pistol he always kept on his bedside table.

  The hotel had denied any wrongdoing in any of these incidents, describing each as an unfortunate accident, and claiming that it had since taken appropriate action: removing the wolf statue, replacing the bath taps, putting signs up about the dangers of lassos and local fungi, and asking guests to leave firearms in the hotel safe. It remained adamant that these were a series of accidents.

  The catalogue of catastrophes was never-ending. Flicking through the archive Rory spotted headlines about a rock fall that had nearly flattened a school picnic, a six-foot long python kept as a pet in the hotel, which had ended up under a guest’s pillow, and a fire that had resulted in the dramatic rescue of an American guest by a member of staff. As far as he could see, there was not a single positive story about the hotel.

  As he worked his way through the album, Rory also found The Chronicle’s efforts to counter the negative stories of Hotel Grimm. He came across a picture of the library itself in the article about the unveiling of the statue of Lachlan Stagg. The public event ended months of campaigning to raise funds to pay for the creation of a feature that, the paper said, “would commemorate someone that the town could be proud of in contrast to the unwanted residents of Scrab Hill.”

  The fact that Hotel Grimm was considered not just a dangerous but also a downright sinister place increased after the experience of Aberfintry resident, Bella Valentine. She had been employed as a cleaner at the hotel two years previously, and had lasted all of two weeks. Even that short experience had been enough to establish her new career as the official voice on what life was like inside the hotel. Looking through the archive, Rory couldn’t help wondering why Bella would have taken the job in the first place, given the fear and loathing surrounding the hotel. But the more he read, the more he saw that it had been a good career move: she seemed to get a feature in every couple of weeks – The Chronicle kept coming up with new angles on her “horrifying experience.” It seemed as though Bella Valentine had had her own rebranding. Every time a photo of her appeared it was accompanied by the caption of “Hotel Grimm Survivor.”

  Bella was thorough in her analysis that everything about the hotel was at best bad, and at worst downright evil. It went from the cable car — “The man that runs it is a funny one and I swear that cable car is going to just fall off those wires some day” — moved on to the hotel itself — “I hardly want to think about what hideous things lurk within its walls” — and got personal about Granville Grimm — “the man looms around like some giant brooding ogre.”

  “Whatcha reading, Zizz man?” said a voice, interrupting Rory from Bella Valentine’s account. He looked up to find Max Fletcher, one of Gordon Goodman’s cronies, standing by his table. Rory couldn’t help but lean over the book he was looking at to try and shield its contents from Fletcher. “Er … nothing much … just doing … just doing a local history project.”

  “Looks like you want it to be top secret,” said Fletcher, sidling closer to Rory and twisting his head to see more clearly. His eyes narrowed as they flickered around the archive’s pages. As it dawned on him what he was looking at, Fletcher pulled back sharply.

  “Local history?” he hissed, lowering his voice and glancing left and right as if checking if anyone was watching them. “They say that fizzy drinks are bad for your health, Zizz Boy…. but it’s your choice of reading material you should be careful about.”

  Fletcher turned away and Rory tried to concentrate again on the job in hand. He felt even more self-conscious now and glancing up he saw Max Fletcher and Marnie di Angelo heading out of the door together a few minutes later, looking over at him as they did. Relaxing a little he turned back with a sigh to The Chronicle archive.

  The only thing Bella Valentine was remotely complimentary about was the kitchen. “I will give you one thing — it is so clean, it is a work of art, although even there I could swear I once caught a glimpse of a rat.”

  Her account finished with these chilling words:

  There are strange and dangerous creatures within the walls; a poltergeist or some such meddlesome creature. That is the only way to explain the way that books move around in the library from one hour to the next. Worst of all, and the reason why I shall never set foot in the place again, is that something lives and lurks in one of the corridors. It tried to attack me. It got so close that its breath echoed in my ears and its spittle rained on my head. There was a clanking sound from it that was like the devil rattling the gates of heaven trying to get in. Fortunately, I was just too fast for it, otherwise I might never have walked Aberfintry’s streets again.

  The photo of Bella that The Chronicle used, made you wonder why the mysterious beast hadn’t stopped in its tracks and run in the opposite direction. Bella’s fiercesome scowl and the fact that she probably took up most of any corridor would have made her an alarming sight for even the most discerning monster, Rory reckoned.

  The Chronicle had often looked for a comment from PC Malky Mackay whenever something awful had happened, but all they seemed to have got from the policeman was that the incidents were being looked into, or that there appeared to be no evidence of any wrongdoing. There certainly never seemed to be any police backing for the paper’s dislike of the place.

  Having grown up with an understanding that Hotel Grimm’s sinister reputation made it a place to avoid, Rory now saw a pattern emerging that he had been unaware of before. The Chronicle seemed to suggest that there was a starting point for the hotel’s notoriety, which was linked to particular events.

  “Since the events of 1948, the Hotel has been a place to avoid …”

  “The tragedy of 1948 was the catalyst for things beginning to go wrong.”

  “That awful night in 1948 set the tone for years to come …”

  Rory began to flick through pages to establish just what had happened all those years ago.

  “We’re closing.” The voice cut into the weird world that he was reading about. Mrs Trinder-Kerr was standing behind him, arms crossed and nose scrunched as though a bad smell had lodged there.

  As he stepped outside, he felt that h
e had more questions than answers. He sat at the base of the Lachlan Stagg statue that he had read about a few minutes before. Rory had walked past it countless times but never paid much attention, so it was with a fresh pair of eyes that he looked more closely at the figure. Cast in bronze, it was of a life-size, older man clad in a tweed suit with plus fours. There was an intense look in his eyes and wild hair going in every direction. The statue was detailed enough that the top of its left ear even had a deep notch missing. With one hand raised and a pointing finger, the figure appeared poised for action, as though it had just had an idea and was about to leap down and carry on where the real Lachlan Stagg had left off. Rory noticed for the first time that there was an inscription carved into the concrete base.

  LACHLAN STAGG

  Aberfintry’s very own record holder

  An example to us all of how to make your mark

  Below this, a small plaque stated:

  The statue of Lachlan Stagg and the Aberfintry

  Mural were made possible with the support of

  The Chronicle and the people of Aberfintry, as an

  expression of the positive features of this town.

  Rory glanced beyond the statue to the mural on the adjacent wall. Running for fully ten metres, it formed a giant map of Aberfintry, picking out some of the main features of the town; the High Street, the library, the school, the river, the park and the gallery with people sitting outside its café and the statue itself. It was full of life and colour with little matchstick figures in the streets and bright front doors on the houses. Rory remembered that The Chronicle had made a very public event of the mural’s creation, trying to unite everyone in a celebration of the town. They had even involved most of the classes in the primary and secondary schools in painting bits of it, but they had been very clear about one aspect. On either side of Scrab Hill the sky was bathed in blue, but the hilltop itself was covered with cloud obliterating any sign of Hotel Grimm. The Chronicle had been explicit that the hotel was not to be included. Rory couldn’t help but wonder what it was in 1948 that had led to the need for Hotel Grimm to be hidden in the clouds.

  A door shutting behind him broke his train of thought. Rory looked around to find Bonnie O’Donnell emerging from the library just ahead of Mrs Trinder-Kerr, who locked the door as she left. Out of the corner of his eye, Rory thought he saw Bonnie pause as if considering whether to come over and speak to him. Sensing this and not wanting his interest in Hotel Grimm to spark off any further problems, Rory looked away.

  Back in the comfort of his bedroom, pulling the tab on a can of Zizz to cheer himself up Rory remembered that even though it hadn’t given him all the answers, he had now followed through the first stage of his plan by going to the library. Step two would involve a trip to Boglehole Road.

  There was a young man called Tim

  Who most thought incredibly dim

  He proved it one day

  By losing his way

  And asking directions at Grimm

  Limerick

  7. Boglehole Road

  Rory put his key in the lock and his shoulder to the door of 47, Boglehole Road, thumping it open as he always did.

  “It’s me,” he shouted as he pushed it closed again.

  Hearing no response, he put his head round the first door on the left. The room was now a combination of living room, bedroom and kitchen since his Grandad had begun to struggle with the steep stairs of the house.

  Today, as on most days, Grandad was in his favourite seat, his legs invisible beneath a tartan blanket and the pages of the newspaper scattered around. He was sound asleep.

  Rory quite liked the idea of having everything in one room: comfy seat, TV, toaster, kettle, bed, snacks on hand and no need to ever move too far to do anything. He knew though that his Grandad hated the fact that he could no longer get to parts of his own house.

  The room displayed much of Grandad’s life through a patchwork of framed photos: holiday pictures of Rory’s Gran who had died many years before; some of his Mum throughout her childhood; and one of Grandad at work in Aberfintry’s park, his bald head nut brown from days of summer gardening. The sleeping figure in the armchair now had the pasty look of someone who had not crossed the doorstep for some time.

  By the window was the stand with his Grandad’s telescope, which the old man could no longer use because of his failing eyesight. Rory often spent time looking through it, but today the view towards Scrab Hill was only an unwelcome reminder of his imminent appointment.

  Rory flopped on to the settee, frustrated that he would have to wait for any helpful conversation with Grandad. Boglehole Road had become a great place to come to if he had something on his mind, particularly as his mum and dad were so busy with their own activities.

  “I might not have the legs to run a race any more but I’ve got two great lugs for listening,” Grandad would often say. In previous years, much of their time was spent in the workshop at the bottom of the path, where there was an old armchair in which Rory would sit as Grandad pottered away on cuttings or seeds for the garden. The armchair was pushed against a door, which Rory had only ever seen padlocked, and he had given up asking what was in there. “My wee hidey hole,” was as much explanation as his Grandad had ever given.

  It was a good two or three years since Rory had been down to the workshop because Grandad was now inside the house and their activities had changed as a result.

  “Right it’s whist this week. A great wee card game, but you’ll need to concentrate,” he’d say shuffling the pack with still-nimble fingers.

  Recently, Rory’s efforts to teach his Grandad how to text had exasperated the old man.

  “Would you not just be quicker talking to folk, Rory?” Rory thought it was funny that the man whose fingers could fly across the buttons and keys of an accordion and produce such fantastic music could fail to key in “Hi Rory it’s Gdad” to a mobile phone.

  “That’s because I’m making proper music,” said Grandad defensively, “not setting off some daft ring tone.”

  In recent times, Rory’s favourite thing to do at Boglehole Road was to look through the black metal box with the clasp and padlock, that Grandad called his “wee treasure chest.” No matter how often Rory looked in it, he always found something he hadn’t noticed before; a button from an army uniform, a rabbit’s foot, or a dog-eared sepia photo of Grandad in a suit on an ancient-looking bike.

  “What’s this?” Rory would ask and within minutes he was transported to another time and place by stories of the past.

  Today, however, was going to be one of the increasingly common days when Rory sat in silence and then slipped away unnoticed.

  Looking for something to distract him, Rory reached over for a recent copy of The Chronicle sitting on the coffee table. The headline read “Sheep left cold by Grimm’s Hill.” The front-page article described farmer Angus Robb’s anger that his sheep grazing on Scrab Hill were producing a low yield of wool. “You’d be lucky to get a balaclava out of each of them,” said the farmer. The paper concluded that “even the hill was now affected by the hotel’s presence.”

  Rory sighed. With every story he read about Hotel Grimm he seemed to hear the clunk of another nail being driven into his own coffin. Inside the paper he found a special “Memorial Edition” supplement entitled “Lachlan Stagg. Aberfintry’s own Record Breaker. The Legacy lives on.”

  Opening it up, Rory found a biography of the man, born and bred in Aberfintry, whose life had been dedicated to achieving as many world records as he could. By the time his record-breaking career was cut short, he had amassed a remarkable fifty-nine of them, one for every year of his life. “World records require imagination, creativity and discipline,” Stagg was quoted as saying. “It’s not just achieving them, it’s setting them at a level where you are likely to hold on to them.”

  As Rory read on, he discovered that Stagg had begun early, gaining his first record at the age of eleven with a twenty-six foot tall house
of cards. The picture of this was alongside others of Stagg in the act of claiming various records. There was one of Stagg emerging rather hot and considerably thinner about the face than usual, as the result of spending four consecutive, record-breaking weeks in a gas mask, and another with his arms aloft, bedecked with medals after winning the annual Scrab Hill Race for the sixth time in a row. This feat had never been equalled as the event was stopped for safety fears after a landslide narrowly missed competitors. The Chronicle claimed that the hotel’s subterranean work on a new wine cellar was to blame.

  Rory read on about Lachlan Stagg’s knack of turning misfortune into achievement, best illustrated by the River Fintry fly-fishing competition, when a wayward cast led the hook on his line to whizz past his head and gouge a chunk out of his left ear. Ten minutes later, the unplanned-for bait ended up landing the biggest fish ever caught in the River Fintry.

  Down one side of the page, were listed Stagg’s record-breaking collection of qualifications amassed throughout his life; lawyer, architect, pilot, plumber, chef, acupuncturist, judo master, Russian teacher, ski instructor and tiger tamer to name but a few.

  These skills often led to yet more records. For example, as a chef, when together with Ramsay Sandilands, a local cooking enthusiast, he created the largest pancake ever made. Stagg balanced an enormous pan on the roundabout in the local park and provided the whole town with breakfast.

  As time went on, and Stagg’s list of achievements grew, he spotted the one record that he was keenest to achieve. He wanted to become the world record holder for the person with the most world records. But it was not to be.

  Stagg even had a connection with Hotel Grimm, as the author of a book about the stonecarvings and gargoyles there, but it was this publication that was linked to his untimely demise. Following three nights of heavy rain, Stagg’s fishing gear was found by the side of the swollen River Fintry. His hat and one wader were discovered far downstream and, after much fruitless searching, the only conclusion was that Stagg had drowned in pursuit of one of his favourite pastimes. The fact that this tragic event had taken place on the day his book was launched was enough for people to believe that Hotel Grimm had robbed the town of its favourite son.