Or a meal.
He was so thin as to be almost skeletal, the skin on his face stretched tight across his cheeks. I was worried that if I made him smile his face might split open like an over-ripe fruit.
“Are you Adams?” he said as he came in. He turned out to be younger than I’d first taken him for, somewhere in his fifties at a guess, but his mileage was much higher. “Jim at the Twa Dugs said you might be able to help me.”
I waved him in.
“It’s about time Jim started calling in some of the favours I owe him. Sit down Mr …?”
“Duncan. Ian Duncan.”
He sat, perched at the front of the chair, as if afraid to relax. His eyes flickered around the room, never staying long on anything, never looking straight at me.
“Smoke?” I asked, offering him the packet.
He shook his head.
“It might kill me,” he said.
I lit up anyway … a smell wafted from the man, a thick oily tang so strong that even the pungent Camels didn’t help much.
Time for business.
“So what can I do for you Mr. Duncan?”
“I’m going to die sometime this weekend. I need you to stop them.”
I stared back at him.
“Sounds like a job for the Polis to me,” I said.
He laughed, making it sound like a sob. He took a bundle of fifty pound notes from his pocket and slapped them on the table. I tried not to salivate.
“No. This is no job for the terminally narrow-minded,” he said. “I need somebody with a certain kind of experience. Your kind of experience.”
Somebody put a cold brick in my stomach, and I had a sudden urge to stick my fingers in my ears. I got the whisky out of the drawer. I offered him one. He shook his head, but his eyes didn’t stray from the bottle. I poured his measure into a glass alongside my own and sent them chasing after each other before speaking.
“And exactly what kind of experience do I need to help you?”
A good storyteller practices his tale. At first, when he tells the story, he sounds like your dad ruining his favourite dinner table joke for the hundredth time.
Oh wait … did I tell you the horse had a pig with him?
But gradually he begins to understand the rhythm of the story, and how it depends on knowing all the little details, even the ones that no one ever sees or hears. He knows what colour of trousers he was wearing the day the story took place, he knows that the Police dog had a bad leg, he knows that the toilet block smelled of piss and shit. He has the sense of place so firmly in his mind that even he almost believes he's been there. Once he’s done all that, he tells the killer story, complete with unexpected punch line.
Then there’s the Ian Duncan method … scatter information about like confetti and hope that somebody can put enough of it together to figure out what had happened to who.
I raised an eyebrow, and that was enough to at least get him started.
“It was four years ago we bought the hotel in Largs,” he started.
“Well there’s your first mistake,” I replied, but he didn’t acknowledge me. Now that he’d started the story, he meant to finish it. The tale he told would have been outlandish to anyone else’s ears, but like he’d said, I knew better, from bitter experience.
I let him finish – sick customers, ancient curse and all, before asking the important question.
“And how do you think I can help?”
Just telling me the story had taken it out of him. I forced a glass of whisky on him – it was either that or watch him die in the chair. He almost choked on it, but managed to keep it all down before replying.
“Come down for the weekend. There’s a room I need you to see. Maybe you’ll be able to make sense of it where I can’t.”
I wanted to say no, but he’d put his money on the table, and that got my attention. Besides, his story had me intrigued, and I hadn’t been doon the watter to Largs since I was a lad.
What better time than a holiday weekend?
Largs is where old people go to die – a Victorian seaside resort that is itself dying slowly of neglect. The Vikings tried to sack it eight hundred years ago. Maybe it would have been better all round if they’d succeeded.
I’d spent many long weekend trips here as a lad. My parents couldn’t afford to go any further afield, and to a young boy one beach was as good as another, even if the weather was rarely good enough to take advantage on the long patch of golden sand to the south of the town. As I got off the train I could already see that the place hadn’t changed much. It was raining, that steady drizzle peculiar to the west of Scotland, the kind that you just know is going to last all week.
Luckily I didn’t have to go far. Duncan had given me instructions before leaving me in the office, but I could have found it with my eyes shut as it was on the sea front, two hotels down from the Barrfields Theatre and next to the putting green where my dad used to swear for Scotland.
The Seaview Hotel lived on past glories from the days when the middle class of Glasgow filled it every weekend of the summer. Back in the twenties it had been the height of fashion, but now it exuded the faint whiff of decay. It was a rambling, Edwardian building, with thirty rooms and nearly as many corridors. The décor was all mock-Scottish; dark furniture, stuffed stag heads and heavy on the tartan for wallpaper and carpets; a hideous red and yellow that clashed with everything else in the hotel.
Duncan met me in the hallway and led me through to the dining room. There were six patrons sitting at a table by the bay window, and not one of them looked like they were going to last out the day, being as thin and wasted as Duncan.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
Duncan led me to the far side of the room.
“I told you,” he said. “The curse …”
I waved him away and lit up a smoke. It improved the smell, but not by much.
“Aye. The curse,” I said. “Some time in the Twenties you said?”
He kept his voice low.
“Jim McLeod was an old Navy man. He retired to Largs with his wife and had this place built. It was to be their dream home, but she died before it could be finished. After that McLeod became a collector,” he said. “And he wasn’t fussy about where he bought his pieces. Many of them were stolen to order from other collectors or museums. The story goes that someone took umbrage and laid a curse on the whole hotel.”
I nodded.
“But here’s what I don’t get. Why now?”
Duncan didn’t reply, but I saw a look in his eyes I recognised. He was hiding something. And he was afraid to the point of abject terror. I took pity on him.
“Let’s cut to the chase. Show me this room you told me about, and we’ll see if we can get to the bottom of this.”
The room at the highest point of the hotel was packed wall to wall with antiques. Even to my unpractised eye I knew that there was a small fortune just lying there in the accumulated dust. From the look of things McLeod’s passion had been African tribal masks, and a variety of them leered down from the walls interspersed with weapons and beaded necklaces. But the thing that Duncan had brought me here to see was spread out under a pane of glass in a long display case.
At first glance it looked like a crude map, tracing a journey across Africa, ending at the mouth of the Zambezi River.
“McLeod thought it belonged to David Livingstone,” Duncan said. “But I can’t see it myself. Livingstone was a devout man of God. He wouldn’t have anything to do with this depravity.”
I saw what he meant as I leaned for a closer look. What I had taken for paper was in fact skin, so thin as to be almost translucent. I didn’t have to ask the question.
A map made on human skin, drawn in blood.
I had a good look at it, but it seemed I had already got as much information as I was going to get. Duncan was looking at me expectantly.
“Well, what do you think?” he asked.
I was still unsure exactly what he w
anted from me. Sure, the curse seemed to be working … residents in the hotel were certainly wasting away beyond even what you’d expect in a pensioner’s graveyard like Largs.
But how could I find out why?
I only knew one man who might help, and I was loath to involve him. I’d damaged my good friend Doug enough in too many cases. He was at his happiest right where he now spent most of his time, deep in the stacks of the Hunterian Museum storerooms.
I sent him a couple of pictures by email from my mobile phone, knowing even as I hit Send that it might be some time before he got back to his desk to receive them. In the meantime, I needed to maintain the illusion that I knew what I was doing.
“Let’s have a chat with your guests,” I said to Duncan.
He looked shocked at the suggestion.
“That might not be such a good idea,” he said, but he allowed me to lead the way back downstairs.
My plan to interview the guests came to nothing, mainly because two of them were dead face down in their soup, and the other four were too far-gone to notice.
Duncan showed little concern, and only became agitated on my mention of calling the Police.
“There’s no need for that Mr. Adams,” he said. Once he’d written me a cheque for an extra five grand I came to agree with him. I helped him drag the bodies out of the dining room. It took little effort – the old folks weighed no more than a small child at most.
Duncan had me take them out the back of the hotel and left me alone for a minute – long enough for me to wonder if the five grand was enough.
To either side the adjoining hotels had bowling-green flat lawns, lush and verdant. The Seaview on the other hand looked like someone had ploughed the lawn over, leaving lumps and bumps across the whole surface. It was only when Duncan came back with two shovels that I realised why.
Duncan held out a shovel but I ignored him.
“Just how long have you been burying guests out here?”
He wouldn’t meet my gaze, and mumbled, but I caught the vital word.
Years.
“Please,” he said, holding the shovel out to me, his eyes pleading. “No one need ever know.”
But I will.
I left him to it and went in search of a drink.
One advantage to an almost empty hotel is that the bar is quiet, and a man can smoke with impunity. I helped myself to a large scotch and lit up a Camel. By the time I got on to the second scotch I was starting to feel more myself, and the large cheque in my pocket had me feeling much more sanguine about the situation. I thought matters had improved when my phone beeped and I got a text message from Doug.
“No real idea beyond burning it,” it said,
Burning it. There’s a thought.
I took a third Scotch upstairs with me. I checked out the window when I got to the top room. Duncan was still out on the lawn, knee-deep in a growing hole. I was about to burn his property, but then again, he’d brought me here to stop the curse, and that’s what I intended to do.
I had to take a spear from the wall to prise the glass case open, having to slice and chip at glue that had gone rock hard. I’d finished the third whisky by the time I was done, but finally I was able to lift the lid.
The thing felt slimy to the touch, almost warm. It got warmer still as I flicked the Zippo and applied the flame to a corner. It took fast – so fast that it went up with a whoosh and I had to drop it to avoid getting singed. I stood back as it blazed itself down to a charred black mass on a now equally charred carpet.
I was feeling pleased with myself … right up until the screams rose up from out in the back garden. As I moved to the window my phone rang. I answered it on the way, just in time to read the full transcript of Doug’s text that had been split into two messages.
“No real idea beyond burning it … would not be recommended.”
Bugger.
Things got even worse when I looked down from the window.
Duncan had backed away, holding a shovel like an axe, smacking it again and again on the head of one of the recently deceased.
Or maybe not so deceased.
The withered thing pushed herself upright, shakily at first, then more sure of herself as she started to stagger forwards. There was more life in her now than there had been before she died.
Duncan hit her again, screaming in fury.
“Die you old bitch, die,” he shouted. The old woman tripped, but didn’t fall. She opened her mouth and clacked her teeth together. The effect was spoiled when the false top set slipped out and fell wetly to the grass, but she didn’t slow. Duncan screamed one last time then fled for the back door of the hotel.
I should have gone to his aid, but I was dumbstruck by the view below me.
The whole lawn seethed and roiled, as if a great beast struggled to break through the blanket of grass. But this was no single beast. The first indication was a pale arm bursting with some force through the sod, grasping for a hold. More arms pushed through; some pale, some grey, some green and moist with decay, but all grasping.
I remembered Duncan’s answer when asked how long he’d been burying bodies.
Years.
Even as they dragged their re-born bodies up out of the lawn, screams rose up through the hotel from below. I grabbed the spear I’d used to open the display case and made for the stairs.
Duncan was once more the source of the screaming. I found him in the rear scullery, fighting to hold the back door closed against a press of bodies. They were packed tightly around the door, a crowd of what looked like over twenty, coming forward slowly. At first all that could be seen were silhouettes, dark shadows against the strong daylight beyond. But when they approached the glass door, it became all too clear what they were.
They had once been pensioners, but they’d been too long in Largs … far too long. Some of them were in better condition than others were, but all shared one common, open-mouthed expression, teeth and gums working in expectation of food.
The outside door of the bar crashed open and the press of bodies fought in a scrum trying to reach us.
"Bastards!" Duncan shouted, as the first of them pushed into the scullery itself.
It had once been a woman, dressed in an expensive tweed two piece suit and Gucci shoes. Now she missed one of her heels. She lurched from side to side like a drunken sailor.
I stepped forward and slammed the spear into her chest.
She staggered backwards, but only for a second. By the time she came forward again three more of her kind had pushed through into the scullery.
I felt something tug at my arm. It was Duncan.
“Mr. Adams,” the hotel owner said. “I really think we should be going.”
I shoved the old man ahead of me and headed for the door at the far end of the scullery. We barrelled through it at the same time. Duncan kept going down the corridor beyond, but I stopped, trying to lock the door behind us. The handle turned in position, all the way round three hundred and sixty degrees. There was no way to lock the door.
Well, this just keeps getting better and better.
I backed away down the corridor. The door swung open, slowly, revealing the scullery beyond. The undead already filled the room. Unblinking stares looked for fresh meat … and found me.
They shuffled forward. I stabbed with the spear, twice, thrusting deep into dry flesh. The attackers didn’t flinch. I thrust again, deep into the belly of a fat thing that had once been a formidable woman. She sucked it in, and the spear was torn from my hands. I turned and ran catching up with Duncan in the dining room. He was backing away from the table by the window where four more of the things shuffled from their seats. Alive or dead, I didn’t know, but it made no difference – they all looked at me with that same hunger I was coming to recognise.
“Outside or the stairs?” I heard Duncan say. “They’re at the front door already.”
“Take the stairs,” I said.
Once more we took the stairs almost together, all th
e way up to the collections room at the top of the building. I slammed the door behind me, but again there was no lock to secure it.
“Shit.”
We were trapped.
Outside, footsteps thudded as the undead came up the stairs.
I threw my weight against the door.
“Find something to wedge it. Quick.”
I locked out my legs and leaned into the door, trying to put my weight just over the handle. Something heavy hit the other side, hard enough for the door to open by two inches then slam shut again.
Behind me I heard clattering and smashing.
“If you're going to do something, now would be a good time,” I shouted.
The door slammed against my shoulder, opening almost three inches this time.
“Let it open further next time,” Duncan shouted.
“Open further? Are you mad?”
“Trust me. I have a plan.”
The next time the door slammed against me I let it open slightly wider.
Duncan stepped forward and threw something through the gap, something that smashed in the hallway beyond.
I put my shoulder to the door and slammed it shut. This time Duncan helped me.
“Okay,” the older man said. “Now I need your lighter.”
I managed to dig inside my jacket, came up with the Zippo and handed it to Duncan.
“If I say duck, don't ask 'Where?’” Duncan said.
The door slammed hard on my shoulder. My feet slid on the floor as the door opened, six inches, then nine. A long dry hand at the end of an arm clad in thick blue serge gripped the inside edge and pulled. A head followed, grey hair hanging lankly over a face further obscured by a full salt-and-pepper beard. The blue serge was a heavy jacket, done up with silver buttons
Holiday of the Dead Page 35
