Hotel Midnight (2 page)

Simon Clark
Doncaster
August, 2004

Consider the ground beneath your feet. We cut ore from it. Mine it. We pump oil and gas from its depths. For centuries, during wars or when law and order collapsed, leaving people fearful and vulnerable, they entrusted their treasures to its safe-keeping.

Imagine the earth beneath your feet. You can’t see what lies there just an inch below the surface. Not normally, that is, unless you’ve a mind to start peeling back the turf and getting right down to where the dirt begins.

So, just what is down there? What’s hidden ten inches, ten feet, or ten miles beneath the foundations of your house, in that black crush of earth? It makes you think, doesn’t it? After all, didn’t we once believe it was the lair of demons? That Underground was the postal address for Hell?

Now the time has come to tell it as it was. No embellishments. No detours. No crap. Last summer this happened to me. I can put my finger on when it all started. I don’t mean that figuratively: I mean it literally. I can put my finger on a crack in the wall that runs like a jagged pencil line from the kitchen sink as far as the windowsill, where Kathy’s potted ivy still weeps tendrils of green.

Sure. It’s nothing to write home about, is it? That hairline crack. But it was the first indication that trouble was coming. OK. So it started quietly. Quietly as the ticking of a bomb before it goes
boom
.

Just like every other afternoon I was getting ready to go to work at mail-sort. I’m on ‘lates’ so I start at 5.30 and work through ’till 9.30. There I get together with my big blue friend the conveyor belt.

After it comes off the trucks, post is dumped from sacks onto one end of the belt. Before my very eyes flows that river of mail: tiny envelopes, bog-standard envelopes, tan-coloured social
security
envelopes, bulging with those hard to fill in forms, round parcels, square parcels, handgun shaped parcels. And, for some reason, a fun-loving member of Joe Public might drop hamburger wrappers into the box, or a sticky wad of consummate masticated gum. Or a hypodermic or two. Believe me, friends; it happens.

Well. I sort flats (the A4 envelopes, that is) from the meterpost and the parcels. Those parcels are thrown not too gently into handcarts with bellow-like containers the size of bathtubs that expand as the weight piles up inside. With the purr of the conveyor electric motor is the purr of ever-present guilt. The next package I throw, all clad in bubble-wrap, might be some old lady’s family heirloom; a crystal bowl maybe, presented to her father for services to humanity. Believe me, I try and throw as gently as I can. And I do wince if I hear the tinkle of broken glass.

That’s my evening job. Ensuring that a letter posted by Mr Sender reaches Miss Recipient, or whatever, in one piece, and on time. I like the work. It’s satisfying. It pays some of those bills that my colleagues in mail delivery insist on bringing to my door.

By day, that’s a different kettle of fish. As anyone in the media will tell you, the big money is in television. So, between sunrise and sunset you’ll find me at the computer hewing out scripts. Hell, so many scripts. How many? God knows. Most rest in the catacombs of my filing system. But three (yes, a mighty three) have made it to screen. A couple have been fifteen-minute
lo-budget
wonders for ‘new talent showcases’. These are invariably shown late after the dullest current affairs programmes –
guaranteed
, believe me, to knock a hole in your oh-so carefully scripted drama: a hole right below the water-line so it sinks silently and without trace. And then, there’s my pride and joy, a ‘guest’ script for a long-running medic drama. Now that did take care of the bills – a good six months’ worth anyway, and did mean we could trade in Paula and Jake’s half-dead bikes that were
causing
me a degree or two of shame for a pair of bright, shiny new ones.

So: at the tail end of one sun-splashed afternoon in August, in the twilight zone between my day career and my evening job, that’s when it began. That was the time normality chose to jump just a little to the left of reality. That’s when what usually lies ‘downstairs’ beneath your feet started to make good its escape.

‘Dad.’ Jake’s voice came from the living room. ‘Dad?’

‘What?’

‘What’ve you dropped?’

‘I haven’t dropped anything. I’m cutting tomatoes for the
sandwiches
.’

‘Mum’ll go mad if you break any more of her plates.’

‘I haven’t dropped any plates. I’ve told you, I’m slicing
tomatoes
.’

‘Didn’t sound like it. Sounds like something expensive broke.’

‘Yeah, only my heart.’

‘Huh, they haven’t sent back the big script, have they?’

‘They have, Son. They have.’

‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down, Dad.’

‘Thanks, Jake. But watch the language. Your mother’ll be back any minute.’

‘Need any help sweeping up the wreckage?’

‘I told you. I haven’t broken anything.’

‘Sounded like it.’

‘Count the plates if you don’t believe me. Right, can you get some cans from the fridge?’

‘Beer?’

‘I’m working, Jake.’

‘No, I meant for me.’

I shook my head, smiling despite a generally crap day.

‘You’ll get me shot by your mother.’

‘Aw, Dad, it’s Friday.’

‘Just one, then. And not a can of beer, get one of the small bottles.’

‘Meanie,’ he called, good-naturedly, from the room.

‘You can feed the goldfish while you’re at it as well … Paula?’

But it was Jake’s voice I heard, not Paula’s. ‘She’s still at Kay’s.’

‘Well, I can’t wait. I’ve got to be away by five.’

‘Stick hers in the fridge, Dad.’

There comes a time when your kids start giving you the orders. At thirteen Jake was no exception. I didn’t see any let up in the situation. In forty years it would be ‘Take your pills, Dad. You shouldn’t be driving the car at this time of night, Dad. Time for bed, Dad.’

As I topped off the sandwiches with mayonnaise I sang out, ‘OK. Come and get it.’

Jake appeared at the kitchen door. The bristling razored scalp made me itch to try striking a match on it. As always, his eyes were boyishly bright, while his lips were full, almost
swollen-looking
: I’m told the bee-stung effect is typical when all those hormones begin cascading through teenage veins.

Glancing across, I said, ‘I thought we’d eat al fresco.’

‘I thought we were having sandwiches?’

‘Oh, very funny. We are.’

‘But I thought you said we were eating al—’

‘Al fresco is French for eating outside.’

‘Oh….’

He collected the drinks. I put the sandwiches on the plates, added kitchen roll in lieu of serviettes and headed for the back door.

Jake opened it for me and grinned. ‘Oh, by the way, Dad. Al fresco is Italian for “in the open air”. Not French.’ Kids get to that age too: when they think they’re smarter than their parents. Trouble is, they generally are.

That was the shape of the afternoon. In fact, the shape of most afternoons. I made sandwiches for the family before Kathy got home from work. While I did that I traded a fair deal of
good-natured
banter with Jake. Paula was a little more distant these days. She was seeing a boy in a ‘significant’ way, and when she wasn’t somewhere canoodling under a tree she was working
part-time
to finance driving lessons, or chewing the fat with hip friends.

As I headed for the door with the sandwiches Jake said, ‘Want me to tape anything while you’re at work?’

Before I had chance to reply there came a sound like rubble being dumped into metal skips far away. A deep thundering sound felt deep in the bone as much as heard by the ear.

‘Hey.’ Jake grinned. ‘That was the sound I heard before.’

‘At least I’m in the clear about the plates.’

‘Looks as though Mum won’t have your nuts for pudding after all.’

‘Jake.’ I automatically delivered the fatherly reproach for slightly off-colour language.

Meanwhile, however, something had caught Jake’s attention. I looked back in the direction he was frowning. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘I hadn’t noticed that before.’

‘Noticed what?’

‘That crack by the sink.’

I looked. People talk about crack-ups. Or cracks appearing in society. In its way this crack was going to be as profound. The effects as far reaching. Yet this crack was in the wall. It was new. No doubt about that. I’d not noticed it a moment ago as I stood rinsing tomatoes in the sink. Thin as a pencil line, it ran a jagged path from sink to window. A powdery deposit of white paint lay dustily on the aluminum surface of the sink as if freshly fallen from the wall.

‘Remind me to buy some Polyfilla tomorrow,’ I told Jake. Then I smiled while giving a parental (not to say stoic) shake of the head. ‘Didn’t I say to get a bottle of beer, not a can?’

Three-quarters of an hour later I was at one with my conveyor belt. The machine hummed. The mail flowed as fast as a
mountain
stream beneath my eyes. The sorting office was in full swing. For my contracted four hours I threw parcels into the
concertinaed
holds. If Nirvana is the attainment of bliss through the annihilation of self then I was very blissful indeed. Concentrating on sorting the fast-flowing mail excluded any other thoughts from my head, whether it was the new crack in the wall – or that bounced script – or the beer I’d drink that night. For those four hours I ceased to be aware of myself. I was merely an unthinking cog in the great British postal machine.

Driving home that night, my body tingling pleasantly after my paid workout on the conveyor belt, I switched on the car radio. Straight away a news report relieved me of my ignorance. A minor earthquake had struck the town that afternoon. So that explained the noise like rubble being dumped into steel
containers
, as well as the cause of the crack in the kitchen wall. The report, if anything, was light-hearted. The town certainly didn’t lie in an earthquake zone. England just doesn’t suffer from
earthquakes
full stop. Damage was slight to trivial. A few vases. Maybe the odd busted picture frame. Those would be the sole entries on the casualty list. Pretty small beer when all’s said and done.

I arrived home at 9.40. Parked the car, then laid the dust of the sorting office with a glass of cold water before pulling a beer from the fridge. Kathy appeared in the kitchen. Her eyes, as always, were tired; but she’d spent time on her hair and she looked nice. I kissed her. And the brown eyes did manage a twinkle.

‘Good day?’

‘Busy,’ she replied, with that slow-breaking smile of hers that was like the sun slowly peeking over the horizon. ‘How was yours?’

‘Cryer at DTV bounced the script. Just as I thought he would.’

‘Oh, I’m sorry, John.’ Then she scowled. ‘The little bastard; he was the one who asked you for it in the first place, wasn’t he?’

‘It was. That’s the curse of modern television. They’ll ask twenty writers to supply scripts on spec with no money up front; then they cherry pick the ones that suit their schedules. Beer?’

‘Please. But he as good as promised you a contract. He was already talking about budgets. Even who’d star in the thing.’

‘Well, he speaks perfect TV bullshit-ese. There you go. Where’s Paula?’

‘At Kirsten’s.’

‘Jake?’

‘Upstairs.’ Kathy didn’t want to be deflected from the great script fiasco. ‘So, what happens to it now?’

‘I’ll try it with another one of the independents. It’s still warm out. Do you fancy sitting in the garden?’ I tried to sound
light-hearted
. ‘Then I can serenade you under the stars.’

Kathy nodded. Her brown eyes said it all. She was disappointed for me. Three months of work were in danger of evaporating under our very noses. Even though a contract for the script had been a longish shot, we’d already let ourselves do the foolish thing of
ring-fencing
the fee for the future. A chunk would offer a worry free Christmas. Presents for all. Plenty of Christmas cheer in the pantry. Now it looked like extra shifts at the Royal Mail sorting office.

Kathy sighed. ‘Why can life be so bloody difficult, John?’

Hell. Is there an answer to that one? I put my arm around her and hugged her. Then, before I followed her out into the garden, I looked back. The doors had swung shut behind us. Something they’d never done before. And I wondered if the earthquake (that ever-so minor earthquake, the radio assured) had tipped the house a little off kilter. Outside was warm. As if maybe the door of some great furnace had been opened far away. A slight
scorching
smell tainted the air, too. The sun had not long since quit the sky; it had left behind a blood-red stain on the horizon. The first stars glinted. A bat, nothing more than a flicker of membranous wings, picked insects from the air.

As we sipped the iced beer we gazed over the wheat field that backs onto our garden and quietly pondered our own thoughts. It was Kathy who first noticed something wasn’t right. I had to have it pointed out to me.

‘Don’t you see it, John?’ She nodded. ‘Over there … toward the middle.’

I strained my eyes into the gloom. At dusk the wheat resembles a grey lake spreading out; generally, flat and motionless.

‘There, John. More to your left. See them?’

Perhaps it was the note in her voice. But despite the heat I felt a cold chill spread out from the marrow of my bones. And, with it, a shiver came like a goose over my grave.

‘Damn me,’ I said in a tone close to awe. ‘It must have been the earthquake.’

‘But they said on the news that it was a minor one.’

‘There can’t be anything minor about that.’

Daylight was dying fast. But I could still make out four circular depressions in the wheat field. Each one perhaps twenty feet across and a foot deep. The corn itself hadn’t been disturbed that much; it had simply dropped to a lower level. Kathy headed for the gap in the hedge.