by Amy Cross
“You've mentioned a boy a couple of times now,” I point out. “I haven't seen a boy since I got here.”
“One,” she says after a moment, as if she didn't hear me at all. “Ready? Two. Three. Lift!”
We both lift, and we just about manage to get him out of the bath. At the last moment, my left hand slips and I almost drop him ass-first straight on top of the unconscious girl, but I manage to keep hold at the last moment. Trying not to let it seem too obvious that I'm struggling, I carefully help carry the man over to the door, while making sure that I don't slip again in the pale red water that's still splashed all over the floor.
“The coast's clear!” Jude gasps, after peering out at the landing, and then we stumble out with the body swinging between us.
A moment later, however, I spot the timid woman creeping down the stairs. As usual, she stops as soon as she sees that she has company, and then she starts making her way back up, while keeping her eyes fixed on us until she disappears into the gloom.
“Who's that woman?” I gasp, struggling with the man's weight.
“Oh, ignore Betty,” Jude replies. “She keeps herself to herself. She's barely even here, really.”
“Barely here?”
“Make sure you don't drop Herb,” she continues. “That's the important thing. He wouldn't like to be dropped.”
It only takes half a minute to get him to room three, and finally we lower him onto the bed, where his body immediately leaves several red marks on the crisp, blindingly-white sheets.
My arms are aching as I take a step back, and I feel more than a little out of breath.
Jude sits on the side of the bed and pulls towels from over Herb's face, and then she reaches down and gently strokes his cheek. For a moment, she seems utterly lost in thought, and I watch as tears start trickling down her face. She looks utterly heartbroken, and it's clear that she's struggling to keep from bursting into a full sobbing mess. Finally she spits on one of the towels and then uses it to gently wipe some of the blood from his flesh.
“You must think this is so bizarre,” she whimpers finally, as her bottom lip starts trembling.
I open my mouth to reply, but I'm not sure what to say.
I mean, she's right.
“Herb and I had so much fun,” she continues, wiping some of the tears away. “Ours wasn't the kind of marriage that slowly fades into routine. We stayed so alive and so alert, even after we became parents. Even when Herb's health problems began, we never let things get us down. He hid the effects for as long as possible, but slowly he began to deteriorate more and more, until the shaking and the confusion started to show on a daily basis. Guests began to notice while he was checking them in. I took on more responsibilities around the place, but that only made him feel bad. He started talking about wanting me to be free. About wanting to set the boy and me free.”
She falls silent, still stroking his face as more red water stains the sheets.
“Maybe I should leave you guys alone,” I say after a moment, slowly backing toward the door.
“I knew his condition was becoming terminal,” she adds. “We both did, but we thought he had a little longer. I think maybe he started hiding the doctor's words from me. When he said he had years left, it was probably only months. And when he said it was months...” She pauses, still staring at him as tears drip from her cheeks and land on his bare face, where they continue to trickle down to his chin. “Everything he did was because he was worried about our little family. He was trying to do the right thing, even if he got it all a little wrong. I just wish he could have been more open with me at the end. If I'd known what he was thinking, I could have saved us all so much pain.”
I stare at her.
“I don't understand,” I tell her finally.
She turns to me.
“I don't get it,” I continue. “I just -”
Before I can finish, I realize I can hear someone sobbing nearby. I turn and look back toward the doorway, but there's no sign of anyone. Still, I can definitely hear what sounds like a child quietly weeping, so I step over to the door and look out at the landing.
The sobbing stops.
I wait, listening to the silence of the building, and then I turn back to see that Jude is stroking her husband's face.
“I don't understand,” I tell her again, feeling the hairs starting to rise on the back of my neck. “This doesn't make sense.”
She sniffs back some more tears.
“Well,” she says finally, “lucky you, that's all I can say. Lucky, lucky you. Because if it did make sense, that'd mean you were... Well, it'd mean you were like me and Herb, and I don't think I'd wish that on anybody. You should thank your lucky stars that you can't get your head around this. Trust me, I take no comfort from the fact that it makes sense to me. I wish I could be shocked, or that I didn't believe it, but I do. I've lived through it. But I had no choice, because I wanted to be with my dear, sweet Herb. I just wish that, as parents, we'd both done a better job. So much of this is our fault.”
She leans down and kisses the side of his face.
“We should have stayed around for the boy,” she whispers.
I wait for her to continue.
“What boy?” I ask, feeling a shiver pass through my chest.
“The poor boy,” she sobs, placing her face against Herb's shoulder. “One of us should have stayed for him, at least. I suppose it should have been me. Without us, he was almost wild.”
“What boy?” I ask again. “You keep...”
My voice trails off. This whole situation still feels way too bizarre for me to even begin to understand, but at the same time it's at least not quite as crazy as what's going on in the bathroom with the girl who looks like me. My heart is thudding in my chest and I feel like I've just stepped into an even weirder side-world that makes absolutely no sense at all. At the same time, I can't deny that Jude seems genuinely horrified by her husband's death, and I can't deny that she appears to have enjoyed the kind of love that I've never felt in all my life.
Suddenly I see that there are thick, knotted wounds on Herb's wrists, just like the wounds I saw on Jude before.
“What happened to him?” I whisper. “Did he...”
My voice trails off for a moment.
“I have to go and do something,” I stammer finally, turning and hurrying out of the room.
Once I've pulled the door shut, I pause for a moment and look toward the bathroom. My heart is pounding, but I'm starting to think that no matter how crazy I might be right now, there's no way my mind is responsible for all the madness around me. A moment later, I'm surprised to realize that I can hear someone bumping around in the bathroom, and suddenly I see Mrs. Denham shuffling out.
“There's a girl in there,” the old lady tells me, clearly not very impressed. “She's on the floor, right next to the bath. It's not right. The standards around here are quite awful. I was hoping to use the facilities before I went down to play cards with my husband in the breakfast room.”
Stepping over to the bathroom door, I look through and see that the girl is still right where I left her.
“I tried to clean up the mess,” Mrs. Denham continues, “but there was so much of it. Somebody had spilled everywhere. I know you can't completely control what your guests get up to, but I do wish you could have a word with some of them. Doesn't that girl have a perfectly good bed waiting for her?”
“She does,” I whisper, staring at the girl for a moment longer before turning to Mrs. Denham and seeing that she's shuffling slowly toward the top of the stairs. Reaching up, I adjust the bandages so that I can see better.
Mrs. Denham grips the railing, but I swear she looks far too frail to make it down unaided.
“Wait!” I call out, hurrying over and taking hold of her arm. “Let me help you!”
“My husband went down a little early,” she explains as we start slowly making our way downstairs. “He wanted to see if he could get that infernal coffee machine war
med up before we start our game. I don't mean to complain so much, but would it not be possible to acquire a simple kettle for the breakfast room? I honestly can't understand why the people who run this place feel the need to have such a complicated machine when a kettle would suffice without nearly so much fuss.”
“That's a good point,” I tell her, guiding her around the turn halfway down the stairs. “Someone should look into it.”
“Of course, he'd been an ambulance driver for quite some time, and I don't think he entirely enjoyed his work.”
I open my mouth to reply, before realizing that I have no idea what she's talking about.
“What did you say?” I ask cautiously.
“So when he saw that awful woman again,” she continues, “I think something just snapped in him. But he still wouldn't have done what he did, not if she hadn't been so shrill and insistent. Apparently she told him to keep working on the poor man's body, even long after it was clear he was dead. She threatened to sue him, and to get him fired, if he didn't perform more and more chest compressions. The upshot of that was that he ended up crushing her father's chest and forcing pipes down his throat, all by the side of the road and with her shrieking at him. Such an awful, awful girl. She was demanding that he torture the poor man in his final moments.”
“Um, okay,” I reply, still trying to figure out what she means. I think maybe she's not quite right in the head, and she's telling me the middle of some random story. Without the beginning, the middle doesn't make much sense at all.
“In some ways, I don't blame him for what he did next,” she adds. “He must have been at breaking point and he just snapped. He told her there was only one thing left to try, and that she had to be the one who did it. He told her it was the last chance to save her father's life. And since she was in such a terrible state, and since she didn't recognize a lowly ambulance driver... Well, she did it! I shouldn't laugh, really I shouldn't. I just can't help it!”
“Um...”
“And that plant is horrid!” she says. “It's the ugliest, most foul thing I've seen in my life!”
“Absolutely,” I reply, although she's leaning heavily against me and – in the process – she just so happens to be steering me directly into the plant. “Just go a little that way,” I tell her, struggling to keep myself clear. “Can you -”
I let out a gasp as my hand brushes against one of the fronds, and of course there's a flash of pain a moment later.
Fortunately, I quickly lead Mrs. Denham to the second set of steps, and we start making our way down. My hand is becoming more painful by the second, but I figure I don't have time right now to go and apply more lotion. Instead, I lead the elderly lady to the next flight of stairs, and I can already hear voices drifting up from down in the breakfast room.
“There she is!” Lloyd exclaims a few minutes later, once we get to the breakfast room's door. “Major Denham, your dear wife has finally made it down, ably assisted by our delightful host! Now the games can begin!”
He turns to Matilda, who of course is sitting in the far corner with her nose in her copy of The Wind in the Willows. Next to her on the table, there's a white bowl containing sachets of ketchup and mayonnaise.
“Now we just need to find a fourth player,” Lloyd continues, “and we're all set for our evening's entertainment!”
“I'm not playing!” Matilda says dourly, turning to the next page.
As the elderly lady goes to join her husband, I take a step back. Bumping against the trolley, I turn and see some white porcelain mugs. My throat is dry, so I grab one of the mugs and fill it with water from a nearby jug.
“I don't mean to complain,” Lloyd says, lowering his voice as he turns to me, “but the coffee machine -”
“Isn't working properly?” I ask, remembering all the fuss from earlier. “Sure. I get it.”
I take a sip of water.
“Has anyone seen a suitcase?” I mutter after a moment, turning to them. “I really need to find my suitcase.”
“I think it might be the water pressure,” Major Denham continues. “If you just check the boiler room, you'll most likely find that the dial has been turned the wrong way.”
I stare at him. Is he serious? Does he really think I'm going to go poking about in some boiler room, trying to find a way to fix the goddamn coffee machine?
“I need to find my suitcase,” I tell him. “So I can get out of here.”
“It's right behind you,” he continues, rather plaintively.
Turning, I see that sure enough there's a door with the named BOILER ROOM in small letters. I noticed the room earlier, of course, although I didn't give it much thought. Still, the idea of going in there is ludicrous, even if it somehow fits with the rest of the insanity that seems to pervade this entire building.
“I know you usually only use the room to store your stocks of lotion,” Lloyd adds, “but still, the coffee machine has been out of action since... I actually can't remember it ever working properly, and tonight is such a cold and snowy evening. Don't you think you could bring yourself to take a quick look?”
I turn to him. “Where's my suitcase?”
He furrows his brow.
“It was in the office,” I continue, “but now I can't find it.”
“Well...” He pauses. “I suppose it might be in the lost property box.”
“Where's that?”
“Well, it's in the boiler room.”
Sighing, I realize that one way or another, I seem destined to go into that infernal boiler room. Turning and heading across the corridor, I push the door open and step into a very dark and very warm room, with the only light coming from a slit-shaped window at the very top of the far wall. I take a step forward, while fumbling for a light-switch, but a moment later the door swings shut and I'm left alone in darkness.
There's a table nearby, barely visible as my eyes adjust to the darkness, so I set the coffee mug down before stumbling forward. I hold my hands out, to make sure I don't hit anything, and after a moment I feel the splinter-covered wood of a supporting post. Making my way around the post, I continue to head across the room, only to bump against another post. Stopping, I take a deep breath of cold air, while trying to figure out exactly which way I should go next. So far, there's no sign of anything that remotely resembles a lost property box, and I certainly can't see my suitcase.
“Come on,” I mutter, hoping that my eyes will adjust a little better to the darkness. “Where are you? I want to get out of this place.”
I take a couple more steps forward, while muttering a few choice curses under my breath, but suddenly I bump against something on the floor and I fall forward, letting out a pained gasp as I slam down onto the concrete floor. At the last moment, I hit my head on the side of a metal railing.
And I'm knocked clean out again.
Seven
“Damn it!” I hiss suddenly, rolling onto my side. My head is throbbing and I feel a little dizzy, but the worst of the pain quickly passes. “What the -”
I feel decidedly groggy, but I have no idea how long I spent unconscious. Seconds maybe. Minutes. Hours.
Hauling myself up, I stagger forward until I spot a patch of moonlight falling across a set of metal steps, and I take a moment to sit down. All around me, the air is sweltering, and there's a large boiler lurking in the shadows. This room might be all the way down in the basement, but there's a small window at the top of one of the walls, and after a moment I see that these steps lead up to another door. There's a glass panel on the door, and snow is falling outside, so I guess the door somehow leads out into the yard that backs onto the alley.
“Great,” I mutter, before spotting a large crate nearby.
Peering inside, hoping that I might have found the lost property collection and that my suitcase might be nearby, I see nothing more than a pile of newspapers. I grab the top paper and see that the front page is filled with a story about the so-called Snowman killer.
“Deadly Snowman strik
es again,” I whisper, reading out loud as I unfold the yellowed page. “Police in Canterbury confirmed last night that 23-year-old Elizabeth Waddington was indeed killed by the mysterious killer known only as the Snowman, ending days of speculation. Ever since Miss Waddington was found brutally murdered in the snow, near the city's Castle Crown B&B...”
My voice trails off for a moment.
“Huh,” I mutter, before continuing to read. “Rumors have been swirling that the Snowman might have struck again. Now that those rumors have been proved true, police are facing questions about why they still haven't caught the killer. Elizabeth is his fifth victim in a little under a decade, with all the murders having taken place in snowy weather. Representatives for the city's night-watch patrol team, a voluntary organization, say they can only do so much.”
I set the paper aside and take another from the crate, only to find that it's even older, dating from the late 1990's. Water seems to have leaked into the crate, smudging a lot of the words, so it takes a moment before I can find a section I'm able to read.
“Is the pattern real,” I read, “or is it just a coincidence that the killer only strikes when snow is on the ground? Does a madman, snarling and lusting for blood, really stalk our quaint streets, searching for his next victim? If so, where does he lurk between murders?”
I put the paper down and take yet another from the crate. This time, I see a map that apparently shows the locations of all the victims, and I can't help noticing that they're all within a few blocks of this very B&B. Beneath the map, there's a panel that explains a murder has taken place on every snowy night in the city for almost thirty years. There's also a section where a psychiatrist has been asked to give his opinion, but most of the text has been torn away and water damage has destroyed the rest.
Looking down at the crate again, I can't help wondering why someone would want to keep so many cuttings about such a grizzly set of incidents.
Getting to my feet, I start hunting once more for my suitcase. I guess somebody cleared it away, thinking it had been abandoned, but in the back of my mind I'm starting to worry that maybe it's been stolen. There's more than £26,000 cash in that suitcase, and I need to find it so I can...
