It certainly wasn't like any hotel he had seen before. It was more like a Gothic manor, or an old castle. It didn't even look like it had been renovated over the years. The windows were weathered, and the walls were covered in moss and ivy. It wasn't any surprise that this place didn't get many guests. If Ireland was a place of a hundred thousand welcomes, this wasn't one of them.
The driver brought his suitcase in and ushered him up the steps to the foyer, with its old, marble floor leading up to an immense stairway, which led upstairs on both sides. An older gentleman, who introduced himself as Ebed, was there to greet him. He was dressed in rather old-fashioned white tie attire, as if he was serving royalty. His speech and mannerisms suggested he was more of a butler than a desk clerk.
“This way,” he said. He didn't take James' suitcase, and the driver seemed to vanish. James hauled it up the stairs after Ebed, thinking there were a bit too many flights to climb. They didn't have lifts a few hundred years ago.
Ebed led him through a series of winding corridors, a bit of a labyrinth, before introducing him to the darkness of his room.
“Where's the light?” James asked, feeling around for the switch.
“The light, sir?”
“Eh, yeah. Like, a bulb or something.”
“Why, I think you have rather gotten the wrong impression,” Ebed drawled. “This is, one might say, a themed hotel. People come here for an experience of a different time. A better time, even. Many find it relaxing, a way to get away from the toils and troubles of life. So, no, there are no bulbs here. You'll find a candle in the corner.”
James tried to hide his sigh. He couldn't really complain now, what with everything he'd been through. At this stage, a room was a room, whether it had any light in it or not. But Ebed wasn't wrong about this place having a theme: that theme was darkness.
“So, how do I settle up?” James asked, taking out his wallet. He had to use the light of the oil lamps in the corridor to see the notes. He hadn't quite got used to Euros yet, and it almost seemed like Ebed hadn't got used to them either.
The butler held his hand up. “It's been taken care of.”
“Taken care of?”
“A courtesy of one Caoimh.”
“Who the hell is that?”
“You mean you don't know your driver?”
“No, not really. He paid for my room?”
“It's been taken care of,” Ebed repeated. That wasn't quite an answer, and the phrase unsettled James. It brought to mind the Mafia definition.
“A tip then,” James said, offering the butler some money.
Ebed seemed offended. “Not at all, Mr. Halmorris. I don't do this for the money.”
He ushered James into the room and started to close the door.
“I trust you have all you need,” he added, a little curtly, with a lot less pleasantness than James expected for someone working in the hospitality business. He wondered if he was starting to feel entitled, if his life in the U.S. Had given him too many preconceptions, if maybe this was really what it was like in Ireland. Maybe there were still a hundred thousand welcomes, but the welcomes weren't warm.
The door sealed behind him, leaving him in almost perfect darkness, except for a sliver of light that crawled beneath the door. The room was dank and dark, less like the modern hotel he expected (and he might have had if fate had not consigned him here) and more like an old castle room. Indeed, it even had an ancient fireplace, as tall as he was, with a large enough chimney to cast an icy draught into the room. It was not lit, as James expected any good hotelier would do, and he wondered if this was to kill off the warmth or the light. He summoned the shadows now with a few logs from the nearby log-holder, casting a match into the sacrificial bonfire. He found it odd that he thought of it in those terms. This country was changing him, and he hadn't even been here a day.
Even the windows seemed to offer no aid against the dark. James was not sure if it was the weather or the age, but it appeared as though the panes were coated in some thick residue that hindered the light. The thick curtains were many-layered with what looked like blackout material, a further funeral pall for the vanquished radiance.
He tried not to dwell on the condition of his room, and was too tired to do much about it. He got into bed and tried to forget the troubles of the day, but no matter how exhausted he was, he found it difficult to sleep. The combination of cold, oppressing darkness, and disturbing creaking noises prevented him from drifting off for long. When he did nod off, it was fitful, and his dreams were unpleasant. He dreamt of the smothering night, and when he awoke in a sweat, he found the waking darkness waiting to smother him too.
Then there was a glimmer of light from the hallway outside his door, which crawled under the gap of the door, stretching out the shadows. It was a yellow light, like a candle, and it flickered momentarily.
Then something lunged at the door, and James sat up in fright, clutching the bedsheets as if somehow they would save him. He looked to reason, which told him that maybe some drunken guest had stumbled in the hallway, but reason was no help when whatever was out there, blocking some of the light, started to bash against the door, and then to scrape and scratch, and pant and heave, and breathe the kind of breaths no human could ever make.
James was so overcome by fear that he did not know how to respond, bar to shake and shiver, and sweat profusely, and breathe his own heavy, human breaths.
Then the sound stopped, in answer, it seemed, to someone or something else approaching. The light grew brighter outside, and whatever stood at the door fled from it with a ghoulish growl. Something else stood there now, and James was just as frightened. If this new fiend could scare away the other creature, what could it do to him?
The light suddenly vanished, and he was not sure if the person or beast retreated. For a time, he thought he felt the presence there. For another time, he thought he felt it in his room, though he heard no door open, and could see nothing in the blinding dark. For an awful time, he lay there in silence, praying for daylight, and knowing that even when it broke, it would barely penetrate into his room, and would do little to shine upon the dark horrors in his heart.
The next morning, James was almost afraid to leave his room—and just as afraid to stay in it. He heard muffled shouting in the room next door, where an old couple were staying. It seemed like they were the only other guests at the hotel. The woman was in hysterics, while the man was trying to calm her down. The sounds moved out into the hallway, where James could hear them more clearly.
“But we paid for the week,” he told her.
“Harold, I'm not sticking this out for another night!”
“We'll lose our money.”
“You can stay. I'm not. No. That's it for me!”
She stormed off, and James peeked through his door to see Harold standing in the corridor, flustered. He spotted James and shrugged, as if to say, “Women, huh?” James shrugged back, which he thought might have said, “Yeah, I guess.”
“We booked the week,” Harold said, seeming to need to explain himself.
“Yeah.”
“We'll lose our money.”
“Yeah.”
Harold turned around, waving his hand dismissively. It seemed he had resigned himself to stay. There was no convincing his wife. For James, he couldn't blame her. If he had anywhere else to go, he would have went, but then money was tight for him too. He'd already paid for two hotels. He couldn't afford a third. And the way his luck was going, it could turn out worse.
The presence of the other guests made him a little more confident, so once he was dressed he headed downstairs, pausing for a moment at reception.
“Was there,” he said, pausing, “some kind of animal in here last night?” He felt foolish even to ask it, and wondered if he had dreamed it.
Ebed smiled. “That'd be Midnight.”
“Midnight?”
The butler reached down behind the desk and picked up a Yorkshire terrier, plopping him on t
he counter. He was a tiny, adorable thing, and certainly not what James had pictured in the horrors of the night.
“And he … eh … scratches at doors?”
“Oh, yes. He's a naughty little one, always upsetting the guests.” Ebed wagged an admonitory finger at the poor pup, who baulked at the digit.
Guess I must be imagining things, James thought. He always considered himself to be somewhat lacking in imagination, ruling out any potential career as an artist or writer, or any of the fabled professions of Ireland's finest. He wondered if that was why he got on so well with Lilly, that whole “opposites attract” concept which she was so fond of.
“We'll keep him locked up tonight,” Ebed said as he walked away. “Or you, whichever makes you feel safest.” He smiled a kind of mocking smile.
James already felt a little like a prisoner there. Safe wasn't a word he'd use at all.
5
What's In A Name?
James spent that morning at the National Library of Ireland on Kildare Street. It took a while to find it, and he was embarrassed to ask for directions (which would reveal his Californian accent). Initially he stumbled into the main building, where they had an exhibition on the poet W.B. Yeats, replete with the magical artefacts he employed in the mysterious Order of the Golden Dawn (something Lilly had mentioned to him before).
Eventually he was directed to the Manuscripts Department, which he found tucked away at the other end of the street. He almost passed it by, only for a rather odd-looking woman standing at the glass door. On spotting him, she immediately retreated inside. When he followed, she was nowhere to be seen.
Inside, he saw another exhibition, considerably smaller, on the Easter Rising and Ireland's battle for Independence. James wondered if it was fortuitous that he arrived in the country almost exactly one hundred years after that momentous occasion. He thought it odd that he even considered such a notion as fortune. Lilly really was rubbing off on him.
He was greeted by a guard at the desk in the corner. A normal guard, not a police officer. He was finding himself starting to confuse the two.
“I'm looking for the Manuscripts Department,” James said.
“Upstairs. Do you have a Reader's Ticket?”
“Oh. Yes.” James fumbled in his pocket for the ID card he had applied for many weeks before.
“Second floor. Take the lift.”
The guard smiled, and James smiled back.
Upstairs, he found himself in a large reader's room, with many desks dotted throughout, and walls full of volumes and newspapers.
“Can I help you?” the lady at the desk asked.
“Yes. I'm supposed to look through some documents on the Halmorris name.”
The lady bit her lip. “Halmorris?”
“Yes. I'm looking into my family name.”
The bite was fiercer. “Take a seat. It's not quite quarter to. They'll be up in a sec.”
James obliged, taking one of the few remaining seats close to the desk, beside an old woman with a dusty tome on Yeats. As soon as he sat down, she glanced at him and stood up, keeping her thumb between the book. She found another seat further away.
Jesus, James thought. I'm not making friends around here.
Just as paranoia was kicking in, the lady at the desk plopped a pile of papers before him. He hadn't even noticed them bringing them in on the cart, or the grey-haired and thick-bearded man who now stood behind the desk like a granite statue, staring at him over his gold-rimmed glasses.
“There's more,” the lady said. “There's a lot more.”
“Yeah,” James replied. “I guess this will be a start.”
She headed back to her desk, where she whispered to the grim gentleman, and he whispered back. Between their fervent whispers, they looked at James. He caught them looking, and even looked back, and yet neither of them blinked or budged, or looked away in embarrassment.
James tried to focus on the papers before him, and this was hard to do with the watchful hawks, but eventually he was overcome by the details in the manuscripts, the genealogies, the birth certificates. There was tons of material to wade through, going back generations, and though all of it provided useful information, it somehow felt like he was only scraping the surface. He didn't want to think it, but some of the papers even looked a little new, or falsely aged.
He jumped when he felt a hand upon his shoulder, and turned to see the grey-haired gentleman standing there, his bony claw digging into him. There was no one else in the room, and the light had gone. James hadn't quite realised how carried away with the research he had gotten.
“It's closing time.”
“Oh.”
“Past closing, actually.”
“I'm sorry. I must have lost track of time.”
“You must have.”
“I'll head off now. I can come back tomorrow.”
“Halmorris,” the man mused, keeping his grip.
“Yes.”
“James Halmorris.”
“Yes?”
“Maybe you should come back tonight.”
6
A Constant Companion
It must have been madness to go back there in the pitch of night, what with all the strange goings-on. James was feeling like maybe he really was going mad a little. Yet, if he didn't get to the root of all this, if he didn't find some answers, he thought he might go mad a lot.
The old gentleman told him to return at 10 p.m., what he quaintly called “the little witching hour,” a phrase that unsettled James a lot more than he expected. He wasn't sure if this was just how Irish people were—naturally mysterious. Or if some of them were toying with him. Or if maybe there was something else at work.
James arrived a little early and sat down on the steps outside. The streets were deserted. On a Monday, the city largely closed shop by 6 p.m., and most stragglers were gone by 7. What few people James did see were the homeless, and those who looked like their home might be a graveyard. There were a few of those sorts, gaunt and ghastly, with pallid faces and shrunken sockets for their colourless eyes. James had met Goths in the U.S., and had some rocker friends in his youth, but these ones seemed a lot more dedicated here.
Just as one of these pale folk hobbled down the road towards him, he heard the door open behind him, and out stepped the grey-haired gentleman. He exchanged a glance with the approaching figure, who halted, and then the gentleman beckoned James inside.
“You meet all types here,” James said.
“Umm,” the gentleman replied, locking the door and slipping the key into his waistcoat pocket. He stared at James for a moment. “All types.”
“So, what's this all about?”
“You'll see.”
“Are you always this mysterious?”
“Well,” the man said, taking his glasses off to give them a wipe, which James thought he did deliberately to add to the effect, “this is a mystery.”
He led James through the exhibition area, which looked eerie in the dark, and into the lift. He produced another key from his waistcoat, which seemed to have a lot of them, and turned it in a special lock inside the lift, which James had originally taken for decoration. It was a rather old lift, perhaps from the Victorian era, and it was more mechanics than electrics, shaking violently as it moved. It had a cage door which James had only seen in the movies, and it seemed to climb to higher floors than were even numbered on the buttons inside.
“You'll have to forgive me,” the gentleman said. “I'm always forgetting to introduce myself.” He held out his bony hand, which had a few large gem-encrusted rings. “Ernest Constant.”
James shook his hand. Mr. Constant had remarkable strength for his age. He must have been at least eighty. James even wondered if maybe he had been there to see the Easter Rising too.
“James Hal—”
“Well, we know who you are,” Mr. Constant said.
“Yeah, I'm kind of wondering about that.”
“Well, it is on your card.” He ges
tured to the Reader's Ticket which hung around his neck, with his photo and name, and the number 1888.
“Oh, y—”
“And you did send your details before.”
“Right.”
“And you did introduce yourself at the desk.”
“Yes, I guess—”
“But we have been expecting you for some time. I was starting to think you'd never arrive, that maybe I would shuffle off this mortal coil beforehand, so to speak. And yet … here you are.”
“Here I am.”
As the lift shuddered to a stop, and they exited into a vast candlelit library that looked as ancient as the old stone forts of the countryside, the question really was: where was here?
7
The Old Library
“This is what we call the Old Library,” Mr. Constant explained. “The untouched part of the building. We've renovated the rest, a few times even. But not here. No … not here.”
“It looks like it needs it.”
“Oh, you can't repair the work here with masons.”
“What about Freemasons?” James quipped.
Mr. Constant smiled and waved a finger. “Not even them.” He walked ahead, gesturing dramatically as he talked. “You see, this is one of the old bastions of a bygone era, home to knowledge occult and arcane. Few are permitted to know about it, and fewer to visit it.”
“So, what makes me the lucky soul?”
“Lucky?” Mr. Constant enquired. “I wouldn't say that.”
He continued on, taking up books as he passed shelves, placing them down on others, seeming to be habitually doing a little bit of librarian duty as he mused on the days of old. He seemed a bit of a fruitcake, if you asked James, someone who might have done well hosting the ghost bus tour that James had seen prowling the city, but he wasn't exactly someone James would trust.
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