Hotel Midnight

  ‘And now research shows that parrots and octopus have highly developed thought processes.’

  ‘And that includes microscopic organisms?’

  ‘Darwin said … what were his words? Ah … it is consistent with the doctrine of continuity that in all living things there is something psychic. By psychic he means psychological … a mental structure that constitutes a mind. Bingo!’

  ‘But intelligent bugs?’

  ‘Is there a natural law that precludes intelligent bacteria? Just think, John, we’re just a collection of single-cell creatures that find it convenient to all live under the one roof.’ She patted the top of her head. ‘So the cells are integrated and interdependent, but you compare a cell from heart tissue under a microscope with a cell from that cat parasite and they’re basically the same. They have the same physical structure with a mass of protoplasm contained in a membrane. Both self-replicate.’

  ‘And the reason why he – this man who smells of spices – is spreading the infection through the city?’ She began to answer but my words kept on coming as the truth hit me with a force that made my flesh crawl. ‘Survival of the fittest. Like we breed to populate the planet, the man is infecting as many women as he can in order for the parasite he carries to become the dominant species.’

  ‘Women? Why not men?’

  ‘Not just women, but young women. They’re likely to have children. Perhaps the infection can travel down the placenta.’

  ‘So that way he can spread the infection on a huge scale for generations to come … oh my God.’

  I took a mouthful of coffee but it had all the allure of canal water right now. With a grimace I put the cup down on the table. ‘You said that in Britain there were nine million cats. You’re the statistics expert. How long do you think it took for them to be infected with this toxoplasma bug?’

  ‘Without more research it’s impossible to tell.’

  ‘Shoot from the hip – go on, I dare you.’

  ‘Once an influenza epidemic strikes a country it can infect the populations of its major cities within days. The cat parasite occurred originally in rats. It might have taken ten years to spread through the cat population, but then once it had got a grip on them it probably took only months to infect their owners.’

  I rubbed my jaw as the implication sank in. ‘So, whatever the nature of the plague this man is spreading, it could infect everyone in this country inside a year.’

  ‘If they’re not naturally immune. Which I appear to be. Also, it might not be so easily contracted. Possibly, he might be the only one who can infect people.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Half past one. I think the time is ripe for you to see Lauren.’

  See Lauren? There were compelling reasons not to. A voice in the back of my head begged me to leave the house, don’t look back, go to the station, wait for the first morning train back to Edinburgh. And yet … and yet … I nodded. Cold waves washed through my blood as we climbed the stairs. When we passed a window Colette didn’t pause but I looked out. A crescent moon hung like a curving steel blade in the sky. It reminded me of the executioner’s axe that had sent so many heads to be impaled on spikes above this city’s gates in ancient times. My eyes were drawn to that long and lonely section of wall, just part of the citadel’s fortification. There, a hundred yards away from me, high on the wall, stood a lone figure. It didn’t move. I could see nothing but a silhouette.

  It was him. I didn’t doubt it for a moment. The him who stalked the walls at the dead of night. What’s more, I didn’t doubt that he stared at me as I looked out of the window. Is he waiting for me? Does he want to speak to me? Perhaps he has someway of divining what Colette and I have been discussing. Now, does he want to share his own thoughts with me? Or does he merely want to fill my veins with his disgusting, squirming parasite?

  ‘John.’ Colette’s soft voice came down the stairs to me. ‘Are you ready to see Lauren now?’

  ‘John! It’s lovely to see you again!’

  So I went and asked myself: What did you expect, John? A zombie creature? Someone with a grey face and eyes that stared like a dead fish? Or something vampiric? Pointed teeth, blood-red lips and a big, black cape?

  Lauren was profoundly normal. No, better than normal. She moved lightly across the floor toward me. She was dressed in black trousers that were complimented by a crisp orange top. Her eyes sparkled. Her short auburn hair had been neatly brushed. Lauren always wore an expression of someone about to burst into a delighted smile. This was the expression she wore now. What more can I add? Here was a healthy young woman in smart clothes that didn’t have so much as a crease; she didn’t have a hair out of place. The only off-key note was that she could have been a professional woman just about to head off to the office while, in reality, the time was nudging its way toward two in the morning.

  What now? I remember asking myself. All I can do is talk to her, study how she acts and then take it from there.

  Lauren still advanced on me. Her face broke into that beautiful smile that I remembered from when we were planning to marry. She raised her arms out, happy to hug her old flame. Something went zing in my heart. I found myself smiling as she lifted her face to kiss me on the lips.

  ‘No.’ Colette moved in to put her arm up between us. ‘That’s not a good idea.’

  Lauren laughed in disbelief. ‘It’s only a kiss?’

  ‘No. Not until we know what’s going on here.’

  Lauren scrunched her shoulders up in amusement. All the time she was smiling. ‘John? Isn’t Colette a fuss-pot?’ She still reached out to touch my arm. ‘She’ll be wanting to know if we’ve washed our hands every time we take a pee.’

  ‘Lauren, this is serious.’ Certainly Colette wasn’t smiling. ‘Would you sit down please?’

  Lauren laughed, then saluted. ‘Ay, ay, sir.’ Obedient, she sat on the bed, her spine straight, her hands clasping her knees as if sitting to attention.

  ‘OK, John, what do you make of her?’

  This was a bold question. Like a surgeon asking a doctor’s opinion of a patient. Normally it would be a rude question, but then these weren’t normal times.

  ‘Lauren is …’ I cleared my throat. This felt awkward. ‘Lauren’s a picture of health. She’s in good spirits.’

  ‘Absolutely!’ Lauren beamed.

  I looked from Lauren to Colette. ‘Maybe too euphoric.’

  ‘So, I’m on a high,’ Lauren laughed.

  ‘Too high,’ Colette corrected.

  ‘Oh, sweet Fanny Adams, Colette.’ Lauren hugged her knees in delight. ‘Is it a crime to be happy these days?’

  ‘Not a crime, but cause for concern if a person is euphoric for no obvious reason at an inappropriate time.’

  Lauren snorted, even so she still grinned. ‘Inappropriate time. When did you turn into Miss Killjoy? I’m happy because John is here. I haven’t seen him in months, Miss Killjoy Grumpy-boots!’

  ‘We didn’t part amicably,’ I reminded her.

  ‘Pooh! Water under the bridge.’

  ‘Christ, Lauren. I went through hell when you dumped me for Kevin.’

  ‘John, why do you make everything into such a big melodrama?’ Still she smiled as if chatting to old friends about some harmlessly amusing incident from the past.

  Not this. I clenched my fists. My heart pounded in my chest. I knew she was making me angry with this relentlessly happy-go-lucky mood. ‘Colette told me what happened, Lauren. She saw you being attacked by a man on the city wall. You collapsed. When she reached you, you were unconscious. In fact, Colette convinced herself you were dead.’

  ‘She was dead,’ Colette insisted.

  ‘Yeah, look how dead I am now. See an optician … if you can, Colette.’ This struck her as being exceptionally funny. Lauren held one hand over her mouth as she laughed.

  ‘Lauren—’

  ‘Look, John, to be honest, I think Colette is suffering from clinical Spinster-syndrome. She’s envious about me marrying Kevin next week. So
she runs to you with tales of calamity, just so she can make a mess of all my arrangements.’

  I pulled a chair from the dressing-table and sat in front of her. ‘OK. Tell me what happened to you on the wall.’

  ‘I was strolling along, just happened to start talking to a man. Then I took ill … probably all the stress of planning the wedding. I blacked out. The poor man was probably helping me back to my feet when Colette, here, comes hurtling along the walkway like the Charge of the flipping Light Brigade and scares my good Samaritan half to death. He legs it leaving me to be nursed … or should that be jailed, Colette? … for the last God knows how many days.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Colette.’ I felt my jaw drop. ‘You locked her in here?’

  Colette shrugged with anguish. ‘What else was I supposed to do? After she stopped being ill she acted so weird. Either staring into space like she was in a trance or elated like you see her now.’

  I stood up, then walked to the window. ‘So, Lauren, you don’t know who the stranger was?’

  Lauren beamed as she sat there on the end of the bed. ‘Never saw him before in my life.’ Again the honey-sweet smile. ‘Satisfied?’

  There was a gap in the curtains. I’d looked out as she’d replied to my question. Now I pulled aside the curtain. ‘He means nothing to you, then?’ I nodded at the window. ‘The man on the wall?’

  Colette stiffened as she stared out of the window at the tall, shadow-figure standing on the medieval wall. The stranger appeared to be staring at Lauren’s bedroom window. In the gloom there was no face I could make out, only a dark mass above the torso.

  Lauren smiled. Only there was a sense of it being artificial now. ‘No one that I know,’ she remarked.

  With the light burning in the bedroom there was no doubt he could see us clearly enough. For a moment nobody moved. We watched each other. Three people in a room. One man on a wall. The silver blade of a moon hung in the dark sky above him. Hardly any traffic moved on the streets at this time of night. A white mist had begun to creep in from the river. It flowed slowly in pale streams along the pavement. Soon it began to pool in yards and alleyways as if York was gradually drowning beneath a ghost lake.

  Then, smoothly, the figure on the wall began to move. It reached the steps we’d climbed earlier to find the prone woman. Moments later it glided down through the mist to the road. Partially submerged beneath that white vapour, there was something predatory about the stranger. I thought about the lone killer shark swimming in from the depths of the ocean to coastal shallows where it would search for easy prey. The man moved swiftly. There was a confidence there. A man with a destination in mind….

  ‘He’s coming,’ I said.

  I glanced at Lauren. She was on her feet now. Her eyes burned with an eerie light as she watched the man approach.

  ‘Wait here.’ Colette hurried to the door.

  ‘You’re not going to let him in?’ The thought of him in the house appalled me.

  ‘No way. I’m going to check the door’s locked.’

  ‘You locked it. I remember you did it when we came in tonight.’

  ‘Not the front door. The back door!’ By this time she was racing down the stairs.

  I took a step nearer to the window. The stranger crossed the road in front of the house. He moved with an eerie gliding motion toward the house. There was no front garden so the moment he crossed over he’d be at the door. I recalled the scent of spices he carried. For a moment I thought I detected a wraith-like trace of it riding the back of the night air through the gap in the window into the room.

  ‘Colette’s not here,’ Lauren whispered. ‘So she can’t do anything to stop us.’

  I’d been so preoccupied with the arrival of the stranger I didn’t anticipate what she’d do next. I’d been trying to make out the man’s face. Still too dark to see. Although, I had the impression he wore a long black coat that reached down below his knees. Then I instinctively turned as Lauren used that gently inviting tone that she’d used so many times before when we shared her bed in this very room. ‘John….’

  The second I turned to her she leaned forward. Her lips pressed against mine. A warm, affectionate kiss. That’s all. For a second I froze. In one sense it was completely natural. She’d kissed me like this ten thousand times before. Then the alarm bell rang somewhere inside.

  She’s kissed me.

  Ten minutes ago I was talking to Colette about epidemics. About contagion and infection. I stared at Lauren who gave a little shrug; the smile never left her mouth.

  ‘There. Didn’t hurt one bit, did it, John?’

  I found myself hissing, ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’

  She shrugged. ‘I kissed you. So? I can’t unkiss you, can I?’

  The pulse in my neck thudded loud in my ears. The kiss hadn’t been a passionate one. Even so, I felt a little of Lauren’s saliva forming a cool patch on my lips. Straightaway I dragged the back of my hand across my mouth. That same area of cooling moisture was transferred to my knuckles. It chilled the skin as if I’d brushed the area with a chunk of ice. My eyes went from my hand to Laura and then back again. Somehow I expected to see my hand glow in some vivid hue; an iridescent turquoise or electric purple perhaps; I was so convinced I’d see a dazzling splash of colour there that proved the saliva swarmed with potent bacteria. A germ that had the power to change the way I think. Instead I saw the glaze of moisture from my lips, which in turn had originated from the mouth of my ex-girlfriend. Even so, that glimmer of saliva didn’t so much evaporate as soak into my skin with nothing short of predatory eagerness.

  ‘See?’ Lauren said with an impish smile. ‘Lot of fuss over nothing.’

  I stared at her. My blood rushed from the blood vessels in my hand, up through the veins in my arm, then roared toward my heart where that fist-sized pump of pure muscle thrust my blood up the carotid artery to my brain. Tiny capillaries in my lips busy with the same task. Blood jetted along the venous highways to the body’s grand central station, the heart – from there it would be punched out to every part of the body.

  A tingle started in my lower back. My tongue felt as if it had formed a coat in seconds.

  ‘I feel odd,’ I said. The walls of the room appeared to roll back leaving my sense of space skewed. The floor was too far away. The window appeared as big as a warehouse door. The moon didn’t seem so much as a light reflecting body hanging in the sky but a rip in the blackstuff of space. There a light shone through. Behind that an eye … I’m sure it was an eye. Staring at me. Only me….

  ‘I think …’ I didn’t complete the sentence.

  ‘Think what, John?’

  ‘I think something might be happening to me. My head hurts….’

  ‘It’s just a bug,’ she said airily. ‘I’ll bring you some painkillers. Then you best go to bed.’

  ‘Don’t leave me, Lauren. I ache. It feels like cramp … I can’t move my legs.’

  ‘I’ll be right back. Don’t worry.’

  ‘Lauren?’

  But she’d gone. I couldn’t move my head but I could roll my eyes downward, even though they felt like hot stones in their sockets. I managed to see my hand. It was flushed, red looking. The joints had swollen. The skin around the nails had puffed so the nails resembled peculiar white flakes of candle wax stuck to the flesh. My heart no longer thudded in my chest so much as squelched; as if it pumped a liquid that was far thicker than blood. I imagined some substance closer to a ruddy paste being laboriously forced through the arteries.

  Then a thudding … it was slow … monotonous … gradually increasing in volume.

  He’s coming up the stairs….

  I tried to move my arms but the muscles had locked tight. My fingers trembled. That was as much movement as I could manage.

  John! He’s coming up the stairs!

  Dear God, I know he is. But what can I do? I stood there in the window. Outside, the mist flowed up to the houses. I fancied I saw dark shapes swim through the fog. Pre
datory, shark creatures … but of course my eyes weren’t functioning properly. What I’d always considered to be small now seemed very large. While the big had dwindled to tiny. The double bed receded to matchbox size proportions. The battery in a radio was bigger than the appliance that contained it. That doesn’t make sense, but the reality at the moment screamed otherwise. While the wall that ran around the city had assumed the dimensions of a cliff face of blazingly white stone. In olden times the heads of the executed were impaled on spikes there. Now I saw bloated heads of impossible size fruit from the walls on their bizarre vines of iron. Heads bulged in profusion, like a cluster of hideous grapes. Eyes bulged from the chuckling faces as they stared at me.

  Then they began to call, ‘John. John. John….’

  I tried to blink the nightmare away. Only my eyelids refused to close. Those eyes dripped blood. Rats scampered among the matted hair of the dead-alive heads that bayed mocking laughter at me.

  Of course. You know what’s happened, don’t you? The question I asked myself I answered in a croak: ‘She’s done it to you … Lauren’s infected you.’

  And all the time I heard the clump, clump, clump as the stranger climbed the stairs to the bedroom. Without being able to turn my head as I stood there, a living statue, I saw the tall shape from the edge of my eye. It entered. Paused then walked toward the bed.

  I could smell freshly crushed peppercorns blended with frankincense, nutmeg and cinnamon. Still I couldn’t see the man clearly. I had the impression of height, of a thin build. A movement of his arm revealed the mottled skin of a grey hand. Black patches extended into the fingernails. Then it was gone. Following it was a blurred shape that bounced onto the bed.

  Colette lay on her back on the bed. She was staring at me. Though she was no longer seeing.

  ‘What do you want me to do now?’ Lauren’s voice.

  Then came a sound that started as a wet crackle; a noise suggestive of advanced lung disease. But through the crackle came a hissing voice. ‘Telephone the police. Tell them that your ex-boyfriend killed Colette when she tried to prevent him entering the house.’ The figure stooped so it could pat Colette’s stricken face. ‘Make sure they understand that she died a hero’s death saving you … from this monster.’