In the mud that led to the woods, she could see people rolling around, some fighting, others just rolling in the filth. Still more were running riot, chasing people, dragging them down, stamping them into the ground before running into the forest.
It rose up like many groping fists, its dead black branches scuttling in the whipping winds, lashing them with the stinging rain. Dakota could only imagine what it was like out there in the woods, a thousand places for crazed lunatics to hide and torment, the screeching wind trapped under the branches, sick laughter carried on the air. She shuddered.
As lightning crackled across her vision, she dropped the curtain and turned back to the room in its decaying splendour. The walls looked tea-stained and the pathetic wallpaper was peeling. The dingy high corners of the room kept their secrets but Dakota imagined that they were full of spiders and dust. Occasionally she noticed a string of cobweb trailing down the wall.
She sighed woefully at the decay around her and threw herself down on the bed. As she moved, a crackling noise came up from under the bed sheets. Dakota paused a moment, then pulled the moth-eaten sheets back to reveal a piece of paper lying slightly crinkled, bearing neat writing in capital letters.
She froze, her mind racing, then moving into a better position she began to read.
Like an angel of wild eye,
I shall return to where you lie
And towards you, noiseless, glide
With the shades of eventide.
I shall give you, dusky one,
Kisses icy as the moon,
Embraces that a snake would give
As it crawled around a grave.
When the sombre morning comes
You will find your lover gone,
My place cold till night draws near.
As others reign through tenderness,
Over your life and youthfulness,
I want, myself, to reign through fear.
Dakota was shaking slightly. Fear burnt a hole in her stomach as her mind raced. The poem had not been there earlier, as she had slept beneath the covers and would have noticed it – which meant that since she had left the room a few hours earlier, someone had broken into her room and put this in her bed. Nausea lurched in her. She had not considered the fact that someone could get into her room; she’d thought it was the only safe place in the hotel. But it seemed that breaking and entering went on here, too. Could anyone get in while she was in here? Surely not with all the bolts and chains on the door.
Dakota needed to speak to someone, and she was aware that going downstairs to Danny would be risky, so it would have to be Betty. Tears burned in her eyes as fear grew in her. Was the rapist still out there, waiting for her to come out?
Deciding that she would rather not wait in the hall while Betty decided whether to let her in, she knocked on the wall that joined Betty’s room and waited.
A knock returned through the wall.
“Betty, can you hear me?” she half whispered, afraid that if he was outside her door he would hear.
“Yes darling, walls like paper here, what’s wrong?”
“Can I come in? I need to see you. Get the door ready cos I think he’s out in the hall and I don’t want him to catch me.”
“OK love, I’ll wait by the door,” came the disembodied voice.
Within moments, Dakota was in Betty’s room, still listening against the door for the sound of Woods moving in the corridor.
“Must have gone outside,” she suggested as Betty opened her bottle of vodka. When Dakota saw it, she wanted to tell her what Danny had said about alcohol and how it would keep you here longer, but changed her mind as Betty showed a look of immense happiness at swallowing the clear liquid.
“God, I love this stuff. Bit harsher than the stuff I used to drink but the quality of the booze here ain’t all that anyway.” Betty laughed, and motioned to the chair by her bed on which she was sitting up against the wall. “Sit down and tell me what’s up.”
Dakota handed her the piece of paper and waited quietly while she read it through.
“Nice poem. Bit creepy though. Did you write it?”
“No. But it was in my room, in my bed. It wasn’t there earlier, which means someone came up and put it in there,” Dakota surmised.
“I never heard anyone go in after I heard you leave a couple of hours ago. Are you sure it wasn’t there before?”
“Positive. I slept under the covers after you left; I would have felt it. Are you sure you didn’t hear anything? They would have had to pick the lock to get in; you would have heard them, surely? I thought our rooms were safe. I don’t feel safe anywhere now.” Dakota’s voice rose with panic, her hands beginning to shake as she fumbled with a cigarette.
“Don’t panic. That won’t help. Look, it’s probably someone winding you up. There’s not a lot else for people here to do.”
Dakota fell quiet for a moment and listened to the rain whipping the window. “It just seems a bit sinister. Plus I don’t like that someone can get into my room.”
“They can’t get in when yer in there if you have all the bolts on. Besides, not like there’s anything in your room worth stealing, is it?” Betty chuckled and glanced around her own carbon copy room, with its stained walls and cobwebs.
Suddenly there was loud movement in the corridor outside, making Dakota jump.
“Shhh… stay still. I hope you haven’t been up to anything naughty while you have been here.” whispered Betty, visibly afraid and taking an extra-large swig of vodka.
“What? What is it?” But Betty put a finger over her lips and sat very still.
Beyond the peeling door something or someone was rummaging about in the corridor. Dakota had a feeling that there were others, further up the corridor. She could hear shuffling and sniffing noises.
Dakota froze as a shadow crept under the door along with a foul odour as the sniffing noise lingered on the other side of the wood. Something hideous was out there, something worse than Woods and his cackling. There was a change in the air, like electricity, as if pure hate and anger had been made palpable and was moving around looking for someone to blame, someone to take its rage out on.
The moments it paused there stretched unbearably, and tension made Betty’s grip on Dakota’s arm a little tighter.
The sniffing stopped.
And the rage moved on, away up the corridor.
Moments later, a few rooms away, a door was kicked in, and amongst the thrashing and screaming, she sensed that a huge creature made of infinite malice and vengeance, dragged a soul away down into the bowels of the hotel. The screams didn’t stop, but faded into the distance.
Dakota found she was shaking, and spilt vodka down her chin and chest as she gulped the offered bottle down till she gagged.
“Have you ever seen them?” Dakota asked, trying to hold the shake in her voice.
“No, I think you only see them if they are coming for you. I’ve heard them loads of times, but never seen them.”
“Christ, I hope I never have to see them!”
“It’s OK, you know you have been behaving. They won’t touch you,” reassured Betty, passing a lit cigarette to her companion’s lips.
“Why do they send them? What are they?” she asked.
“They live in the basement. Some say they were the most disturbed psychopaths when they were alive. Others say they were never people, that they are manifestations of all the hate and anger in the world. Whatever they are, they have been recruited by Them to mete out punishments for misdeeds even in the afterlife. I’ve heard it said that they take them off to… well… somewhere worse than this.”
“I guess there must be some discipline here then. Silly to think God would stick all the bad guys in one place and say: ‘well, do what you like!’”
“Exactly. We are all here to do our time which means we can’t go around being as evil as we were on earth.”
“What kind of things do you get punished for?” asked Dakota, feeling the vodka
was helping slightly even though it had made her feel sick.
“Well, violence for one, you get a lot of bullies here, and they think they can beat up anyone anytime. But the main thing people get punished for is misbehaving on earth. Scaring people, poltergeist activity and stuff. Not that the Punishers actually make everyone start behaving. Some people just don’t care what happens to them. That’s when people have really got no hope of getting out of here. When they just do what they like and take the consequences. Makes me wonder if they enjoy whatever the Punishers do to them.” She shrivelled up her nose and shook her shoulders.
Dakota decided she wanted to not think about anything like that.
“How can you stand just staying in here all the time? Don’t you ever want to just go and look around?”
“No thanks, I don’t want to run into my dear departed husbands, and anyway, they let me have books to read now, so I just sleep and read and drink.” She motioned to the pile of books by her bed.
“Wow that’s good, wish I could have some books, I’d be quite happy to sit in my room and read.”
“Heh yeah, but the only draw back is… well, take a look at them,” Betty said, and handed Dakota a book, open at the last page. Dakota looked closer and, flipping the page over, realised that the final page of the book was missing. When she examined another, she found the same.
“They let you read them but don’t give you the last pages?” asked Dakota incredulously.
“Heh, yeah and I thought I’d done something good to be given such a treat as having books to pass the time. Nope, nothing here is a reward, nothing is as good as it seems; there is always a catch.” She looked slightly less jovial now, as the thoughts in her head began to move around.
“Bastards! How horrible! I bet the CDs they’ve given me to listen to are all blank or of bands I hated!” Dakota spat with a grimace on her face. That particular gift seemed like a booby prize now, and she had been so looking forward to hearing music again. “I really fucking hate this place.”
“Well you’re supposed to, I guess.” Betty shrugged and gulped some more vodka.
“I need to find out what I did wrong, otherwise I’ll never get out of here. How can I find out? Can I have hypnosis or something? Are there people like that here? Surely there must be a way I can find out?” Dakota was up on her feet, pacing up and down the small space of the room, her arms flailing dramatically.
“The Library of Remembrance will help you,” said a voice that was not Betty’s. Dakota spun round to stare at Betty who was staring at the wall beside her. Without speaking she motioned to Dakota that the voice had come from the other side of her wall.
“Hello? Who is that?” asked Betty loudly.
“Just want to help. The library is where you need to go,” answered the croaky voice. Dakota was unsure if it was a man or a woman.
“Where is it?”
“You need to take the corridor by the Bar – you’ll find it down there. Not many people know about it. Don’t let anyone see you go there,” warned the disembodied voice.
“Thanks... what’s your name?” Dakota asked brightly.
Silence. And though the question was repeated several times, the person in the next room did not speak again. The wind howled outside and Dakota turned to Betty to ask whether she had ever heard of the library, but Betty had passed out with an empty bottle of vodka in her lap. Dakota sighed and made her way back to her own room, slightly nervous that someone might be waiting for her in the shadowed room.
To her relief she found it empty. The draught that was creeping in through the sash windows stirred the curtains slightly, and even though she knew it was just a breeze, she had to check that no one was hiding behind the faded velvet curtains.
Folding the poem in half, she stowed it in a drawer in her bedside cabinet. Before closing the drawer, she discovered an old alarm clock; she was surprised to find it there as there seemed to be no clocks anywhere else in the hotel. Except by the door that led back to the land of the living. Her brain clicked into gear as she saw the time: 12.21am. If this was the time in England, then only a minute or two had passed the whole time she had been in the hotel. This also meant that if she went back now, she would be at the scene of her death.
Dakota’s mind raced. It was a long shot, but if she hurried maybe she would get back in time to understand more about what had happened to her. Without a thought for Woods or any of the other crazies roaming the hotel, she bolted out the door and headed for the lobby. Maybe seeing her own death might help her remember more of her life. Perhaps it would be all she needed to trigger her memory back into working order. As she entered the brightness of the elevator she saw, out of the corner of her eye, the figure of a man standing further down the corridor.
NINE: Death
The lobby was emptier than Dakota expected, but she could hear the sounds of people hiding in the shadowed corners of the huge room. She knew if she didn’t do it quickly she wouldn’t do it at all. So, with one brief glance up at the clock labelled England, she pulled the door open and left the lobby before the revellers returned to the warmth of the hotel.
She found herself in the rain again. She could hear it thundering down through the trees above her but could not feel a drop of it on her skin. It was night and she was in a forest so dense that she could see only an inch or two of starless sky beyond the whispering leaves overhead. It sounded like a million voices speaking at once, whispering dark secrets, cackling.
When she looked down, she jumped back screaming and landed in the mud. At her feet lay her own dead body, drops of rain dribbling down her lifeless cheeks. It was hard to see in the dark, and she did not want to get closer to her body, but she knew she had to see it for herself. Getting up on her feet again, she moved around the body to inspect it.
Her head had caved in completely on the left side. Black blood and brain matter were oozing gently from the gaping wound, dripping down into the mud. Dakota gagged and pulled back, remembering the odd illusion she had seen when she arrived at the hotel, the blood pouring out of her head and down her clothes. She knew now she had been remembering possibly her last moments. Hand over her mouth, she looked back at herself. Her hair stuck to her face like tiny black snakes creeping across her cheek, past her still open eyes, glassy and staring past her own ghost into the rain-heavy sky and the wild screaming trees. She wanted to cry, grab her own body and shake herself awake. It was all a dream, an awful frightening dream and she could wake up and walk home to bed, wherever that was. But Dakota’s hands only melted through the body on the forest floor, reminding her that it was all horribly true. She was dead. For a flash of a moment, as she stared into her own, dead gleaming eyes, she felt she had done this before. She felt that at some time, somewhere, she had stared into a pair of dead eyes, glassy and free of expression, looking forever into endless night. She shook the memory away, beginning to believe that being dead was driving her insane.
Dakota gathered her thoughts and began to look around for whoever had smashed her brains out, but she was too late. Her murderer was gone, and she had no idea who it was. Her trip back to her death scene had been a complete waste of time – she had no other memories, it had not triggered her forgotten thoughts to return, and she was none the wiser. Except she now knew that she had been murdered – she could not have smashed her own skull in, and there was nothing around that suggested she had been in an accident.
As she looked around she noticed a rock, about the size of her fist on the floor, roughly a metre away from her head. Bending down to look closer, she saw it was covered in blood. Black chunks of matter sat on its surface, slowly dissolving as drops of rain fell on it. Dakota felt suddenly afraid – of what, she did not know. After all, she was already dead; nothing could hurt her here. She had been murdered just after midnight in a lonely part of the woods where she couldn’t even see any wildlife. Her poor body lay lifeless in the mud, rain slapping her face, creating movement that gave the illusion she was still alive
. But she was dead and alone in the woods. No one would find her, perhaps not for days. Her body was lying in a grove of trees that was off the beaten track and only luck would allow her body to be found at all.
She stepped out of the grove and into a small clearing that lay beyond a huge tree that hid the entrance to the grove. Looking back, she was shocked to see that the huge tree seemed to have a face. It was clearly dead but looked oddly like a woman screaming with her arms and hair raised to the sky. The sight of it sent a murmur through Dakota’s mind, scaring her slightly, but she felt she had seen it before. Perhaps it was one of the last things she saw if she died out here. Her last image before death could well have been that screaming tree.
Dakota waited. She waited all night long in the rain and the dark, staring at her own lifeless body, waiting for someone to come along and close her empty eyes.
When the first bright fingers of morning began to creep through the trees, Dakota stood and watched the growing light with tears in her eyes. There would never be a sunrise in Purgatory, but here she could watch it and appreciate it in a way she never had in life. Each leaf that caught the early sun was worthy of a few moments’ pause, and all she could do was cry as though she had never seen it before and it was the most beautiful thing in the world. The sky was bright and she felt she should just keep looking at it to store up the brightness within her, as though she could carry that light back into Purgatory with her and make up for those sunless skies and endless night.
It was not until that evening that anyone took that particular path through the woods, and when the man walking his dog came into earshot, Dakota found herself shouting and screaming as though he could have done something to save her. The man did not hear Dakota, but the dog started barking in her general direction as she rushed out onto the path. It was useless, though. The man kept walking and pulled his dog away with him. From where she now stood out on the path, she looked back and realised she could not see the grove, or the small clearing that lay in front of it and the screaming tree. Her body was in a place nobody was going to pass by or chance upon. It was like a terrible story in a newspaper: Body of young woman found in remote part of a forest, decomposed and lying undiscovered for several months. She knew she must have read it a hundred times before, in books and in the papers, but it couldn’t ever happen to her. Dakota knew she could be waiting there for days or months for someone to find her, so she decided to go and leave her sad remains behind in the lonely woods, hoping that someone would chance upon her. Who would want to kill her and what had she done in her life that could not be paid for by her own brutal murder?
Purgatory Hotel Page 5
