He turned to Mrs Delacourt. ‘What have you done to her?’
The older woman shrugged.
He went across to Jenny and crouched down next to her, brushing her chestnut hair away from her face. Despite the heat of the room her skin was cold to the touch.
Behind him Mrs Delacourt pulled out a chair from the table and sat. She closed her eyes.
From behind the curtained off area came a rustling sound. And then a voice said, ‘Pull back the drapes, Michael.’ Jenny’s voice.
He stared hard at her, but she hadn’t moved. Her eyes were still closed, her head still bowed.
‘I said, pull back the drapes!’
Jenny’s voice again, but coming from behind the curtains.
Sweat trickled down his back as he gripped the drapes in both hands and pulled them aside. Then he cried out.
‘Welcome,’ said Isabella Senice.
She moved across the floor towards him, a misshapen creature, dressed entirely in black, moving in a fashion that suggested a slug or a snail, rather than a human being; and Michael noticed with revulsion that, like a slug, she was leaving a silvery trail of slime in her wake. The face was impossibly old, yet bloated, folds of dirty grey skin, from which two black gimlet eyes, stared out at him. The mouth opened and closed and a purplish tongue slid over the distended lips.
As she approached, Michael backed away, glancing back at the door.
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Isabella Senice said, her voice now that of Mrs Delacourt. As she spoke the door slammed shut and the key turned itself in the lock. ‘You came here looking for answers, like that fool March. Well, now you’ve found them, Michael. I hope you’re not disappointed.’
Michael reached into his jacket pocket and took out the wood chisel he had used to break in to the house. With a hoarse cry he lunged at the approaching monstrosity, burying the six-inch blade deep into the centre of the grey dough-like face.
The head of Isabella Senice deflated like a punctured balloon. From the gash made by the chisel poured a viscous black liquid, dripping onto the floor where it hissed and bubbled on the varnished boards.
Michael ran to the door and turned the key, but the lock refused to engage, the key turning uselessly, over and over.
Something thudded into the doorframe, an inch away from his hand. The chisel, its blade still coated in the black sticky liquid.
He looked back into the room. There was a bed; a small dressing table, with an equally small, upholstered chair, floral print curtains at the window, but of Isabella Senice, of Mrs Delacourt and of Jenny Boswell there was no sign at all.
On shaking legs he crossed to the dressing table and sat down on the padded chair. He stared hard at his reflection in the mirror. Stared at the wrinkles lining his skin, at the grey, nearly white, sparse hair that barely covered his scalp, at the watery blue eyes that wept tears of hopelessness.
‘Welcome to the Nice House, Michael,’ a voice whispered at his ear.
SNOW BEETLES
The taxi from the airport to the centre of Kitzbühel was an extravagance, but one Raymond Towner knew he could afford. Since the death of his wife three months ago, his finances had never looked so healthy. Twenty years of Caroline’s chronic illness was a drain on his bank balance. Private nursing and prescription charges took a large bite out of his monthly salary cheque, leaving him in a position of having to forego any kind of luxuries in his own life. Now, with her gone, he’d been able to get his finances back on track, helped greatly by the hefty payout from the insurance policy on his wife’s life.
He stepped out of the taxi onto the bustling, busy pavement. The snow had long since cleared from the streets, but the tops of the mountains that surrounded the town, still kept their white helmets, reminding residents and tourists alike of a harsh winter recently departed. He waited patiently for the driver to unload his suitcase from the boot of the rusting Audi, paid him – giving him a five-Euro tip – and climbed the steps to the foyer of the Hotel Alpenblum.
The receptionist at the desk spoke impeccable English. With a finely manicured hand she slid a white card across the mahogany towards him. ‘If you could just fill that in, Mr. Towner, I’ll have Peter take your bag up to your room.’ She inclined her head towards a young boy dressed in a green and gold livery, who stood attentively by the lift. At the gesture he left his post and came across to the desk. In a fluid movement he lifted Towner’s bag, spun on his heel and carried it up the sweeping horseshoe staircase – the lift obviously for the use of guests only.
Towner completed the card, checked it for errors and handed it back to the receptionist. She studied it briefly, put it to one side, looked up and smiled warmly. She was really quite beautiful, Towner thought. Elegant, well groomed, about his age, which made her mid-forties. Her golden hair hung in a sleek bob, the heavy fringe accenting the glacial blue of her eyes. He glanced down at her hand and noted with disappointment the ruby and diamond ring on her wedding finger. At least it’s not a wedding ring, he thought, allowing his spirits, and interest, to climb again.
‘Your room is on the first floor at the end of the corridor,’ she said. ‘Dinner is served in the restaurant from seven. If you require breakfast in your room, or an English newspaper, could you please order it here before ten thirty.’
He took the key from her with a smile of thanks.
She smiled back. ‘It’s good to have you with us again, Mr. Towner.’
His smile faltered. ‘I think you must have me confused with someone else. This is my first visit…’
Before she could respond the hotel door opened and three young people walked in, talking and laughing loudly. One of them called something in German to the receptionist, who answered in the same tongue, a laugh in her voice. She came out from around the desk and started conversing with the threesome, two boys and a girl, Towner seemingly forgotten. He glared at them angrily, then crossed to the lift and jabbed the call button with his index finger. He wasn’t really sure why he felt so annoyed by the interruption. He’d wanted to point out the woman’s mistake, but that in itself was not enough reason for the anger he felt seething inside him. Perhaps it was because the intruders were so young, and obviously in very high spirits. He’d met and married Caroline in his last year as college, and she’d fallen ill twelve months after that. As time passed and the constant demands of an invalid wife wore him down, he felt acutely that his best years were being stolen from him.
He still felt the pain of lost chances and missed opportunities, and it gnawed away at him, as perniciously debilitating as the disease that claimed his wife.
Once in his room he tipped the porter and laid full stretch on the bed, easing out the cramps in his joints and relaxing the muscles of his limbs, stiff and aching from the journey.
He was not a natural traveler, unlike his wife who, before they’d met, had trekked to India, backpacked through Australia, and visited most of the major capitals of Europe with her parents. What she found so frustrating and depressing about her illness wasn’t the constant pain - she learned to live with that with the help of drugs and a pain-management course - but being confined to the house, moreover, one room, she found intolerable.
He tried to brighten her moods by bringing her holiday brochures from the local travel agents. At first she accused him of being insensitive and deliberately hurtful, but eventually she sought solace in the glossy pages, craving more when she’d exhausted a particular batch.
Soon the brochures were not enough, and he was forced to scour video shops for anything travel related, and bookshops for maps and tour-guides. For Caroline it had become a full-blown obsession. If she could not travel physically, at least she could do it mentally.
In the last three years of her life, Austria became the focus of her obsession. Videos of Amadeus and the Sound of Music were rarely out of the DVD player in her room; books on Salzburg, Mozart, Austrian lakes and mountains were constantly thumbed and poured over. Now, in a way, Towner saw his coming
here - visiting the place she had such a regard for - a valediction to his wife and the life they’d endured together.
He shook away the memory and went across to the balcony doors, threw them open and stepped out. He breathed in the chill Tyrolean air and took in the view. Towering above the houses and chalets was the magnificent sweep of the Kitzbühlerhorn Mountain. A green and purple edifice, swathed in dense plantations of pine trees, its crown white with snow, shrouded in low lying cloud. Three quarters of the way up was a clearing, occupied by a modern, glass-fronted building. A restaurant, he guessed, or perhaps another hotel – Kitzbühel seemed to be full of them.
Overhead a watery sun broke through the cloud and from the balcony of the building on the mountainside something caught the rays and sent them spinning like glass shards into his eyes. He flinched, shielded his eyes with his hand and turned his attention to the cable-car station further along and higher up on the mountain.
The taut steel cables ran back to the town and, along their length, the gondola cars hung like multi-coloured pendants, some ascending, some on the downward trip. They looked fragile and vulnerable, as if at any moment a strong gust of wind might detach them from the cable and send them plummeting to the woodland floor below. He shivered at the thought, but knew he would have to experience the thrill and the fear of riding in one of those flimsy vehicles if he was to get up onto the mountain, and he certainly was not going to leave Austria without the experience of being on top of the world.
Perhaps tomorrow, he thought.
Before he went inside he looked back to the restaurant. Whatever was mirroring the sun had moved and there was no longer any need to protect his eyes. For some reason he got a mental picture of a telescope; one of those coin-operated ones that line the promenade of some coastal towns, to enable visitors to examine the bleak, grey nothingness of the sea. And he could imagine someone, standing on the balcony of the restaurant, dropping coins into the slot and surveying the town. It was something he would do himself when he went up there.
He was about to go inside when an idea blew into his mind and took root.
Someone was watching me; checking to see that I’d arrived.
The rational part of his brain dismissed the idea in an instant as preposterous, but the echo of the thought haunted him as he went inside and closed the doors behind him.
He lifted his suitcase onto the bed and was about to open it when a movement of the floor stopped him. A beetle, unlike any he had seen before, was crawling across the carpet, close to the armchair in the corner of the room. It was about half an inch in length with a shiny white carapace. He crouched down to take a closer look. Even its head and legs were white, as were the antennae waving the air in front of it. It looked as if it had come from some subterranean cavern to which sunlight was a stranger, and where the lack of it bleached everything of colour.
A feeling of intense revulsion swelled up inside him. He stood upright and crushed the beetle into the carpet, twisting the sole of his shoe to ensure the creature was truly dead. Not looking down at the carnage under his foot, he plucked a tissue from the box on the bedside table and bent to remove the squashed carcass.
He lifted his foot but there was no sign of the squashed creature, only a small damp stain on the burgundy carpet. He rubbed at the stain with his finger, stared at his fingertip, and sniffed it. Not blood; more like water. He checked the sole of his shoe. Like the carpet, the leather was damp, but there was no sign of shell fragments or any other disgusting matter.
He looked uneasily about the room, thinking the insect might have escaped but there was no sign of movement, no pale shapes scuttling away into the shadows. After a moment he shrugged, returning to the job of unpacking his suitcase and hanging his clothes in the wardrobe. Every so often he’d stop and turn sharply, hoping to catch the creature in the act of escape, but there was never anything there.
After a shower he dressed in a casual shirt and jacket and prepared to go down to dinner. The creases in his slacks were knife-sharp thanks to twenty minutes in the trouser press in the corner and, as he surveyed himself in the wardrobe’s mirror, he smiled. Despite the casual wear, he was immaculately turned out, from the polished slip-on shoes to the ruler-straight parting in his sandy hair. The effect pleased him and bolstered his self-confidence. Should he find himself in the position of meeting an unattached lady, then at least his appearance would not let him down.
He took the rear stairs to the dining room, a sweeping spiral, lavishly carpeted and guarded by a highly polished wooden rail. At the junction of each floor was a small landing containing at least one piece of antique furniture and an original watercolour depicting Tyrolean scenes. The effect bordering on cliché. He could only partly appreciate Caroline’s love for the country; it was, after all, scenically very beautiful, but her obsession with Austria and all thing Austrian left him slightly bewildered. It was just another European country, albeit a very wealthy one, and he found the scenery in Switzerland just as, if not more, breathtaking. And Italy certainly had more to offer in the way of culture. Austria, he decided, was just a second-rate Germany with better views. It gave the world Mozart, but then cursed it with the Von Trapps, the inspiration for Rogers and Hammerstein’s awful musical.
A cliché then, he decided, as he walked into the dining room.
The headwaiter was at his side attentively, showing him to his table and laying a napkin delicately in his lap. He handed Towner the menu and asked in slightly accented English, ‘May I get you something to drink?’
‘A bottle of Hock, I think,’ Towner answered.
‘A good choice,’ the waiter said. ‘And may I say what a pleasure it is, having you back with us again, Mr. Towner.’
Towner started. ‘Now look here…’ But the waiter was heading with precision towards the kitchen. A short while later a waitress wearing Austrian national dress, brought a bottle of wine on a tray, poured a splash into his glass and waited patiently for him to sample it.
He was never sure if he should sip the taster or sniff it. He liked wine but was no expert, and sniffing would prove nothing, as he was not sure what he was meant to smell. He sipped it instead and it tasted fine. He nodded approval at the waitress. She smiled and filled his glass.
The headwaiter had re-assumed his position by the doorway and as a small group of dinner guests appeared, greeted them effusively.
‘…A pleasure having you back with us again…’ Towner heard him say, this time to a tall blond man who seemed to be leading the group.
It dawned on Towner then that this was probably hotel policy, to make the guests feel appreciated and valued, and to show that the hotel staff were attentive – knowing each guest by name, aware of their previous visits to the hotel. Given that thousands of people a year passed through the hotel, how could they be expected to remember every name, every face? They were obviously briefed beforehand by the management. Only in Towner’s case they’d plainly got it wrong, and confused him with another Towner, or perhaps even a Turner or Tanner.
Satisfied with his rationalisation of the puzzle, he smiled broadly at the pretty, dark-haired waitress when she returned and took his order for dinner.
The meal was beautifully cooked; veal with fresh vegetables and potatoes, followed by a rich chocolate cake with tangerine sauce. He finished with three cups of strong black coffee. Over the years he’d become comfortable eating alone, and found that if he immersed himself in the textures and aromas of the food, the solitude became a bonus and not a curse.
The only thing that marred the evening was the awareness that he was being watched throughout his meal.
The group that arrived in the room just after him had taken a table by the window a few yards away from him. Their conversation was loud and animated, punctuated by guffaws of laughter. Two women and three men; an odd group. He could not work out the pairings at first; not certain which of the men was unaccompanied, but gradually, as the meal progressed, it became evident that the tall, blo
nd man, who had elicited the effusive response from the head waiter, was the one without a partner. And it was he who seemed to be paying Towner an inordinate amount of attention. Towner was aware of the other man’s eyes upon him during the course of the evening. Occasionally he would look up from his food and glance across at the group and the blond man would be staring at him. He would still be eating and conversing with his colleagues, but his gaze rarely left Towner.
Well, you’ll know me when you see me again, Towner thought, and tried to ignore him.
Later, lying in bed and thinking about the evening, he realised that he could not bring to mind the faces of the other four people sharing the table with the blond man, but his face was etched clearly on his consciousness. Handsome Teutonic features; cold blue eyes, a square, jutting jaw, slim, slightly aquiline nose, ears that pressed close to the side of his head, and hair the colour of ripe corn.
Towner put his book down on the bed, took off his reading glasses and rubbed his eyes. The blond man’s apparent interest bothered him slightly. What bothered him more was the fact that the man was vaguely familiar. He was sure he’d seen him before, but could not bring to mind in what circumstances. The man’s face nudged at his memory, but it was like trying to remember someone encountered only in a dream.
He put his glasses on the bedside table and was about to turn off the light when a movement by the balcony doors attracted his attention.
Another beetle was crawling sluggishly across the floor towards the bed. As with the other one, it was pure white, the shiny carapace glinting in the weak light of the reading lamp. He swore and threw back the covers, swinging his legs from the bed. There was no way he could even think about sleep with that thing crawling about the room.
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