999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [130]
There wasn’t a welcome in sight. A sign in front of the largest and whitest hotel said NO, apparently having lost the patience to light up its second word. He turned along the first of the narrow streets of boardinghouses, in an unidentifiable one of which he’d stayed with his parents most of fifty years ago, but the placards in the windows were just as uninviting. Some of the streets he remembered having been composed of small hotels had fewer buildings now, all of them care homes for the elderly. He had to lower his window to read the signs across the roads, and before he’d finished his right side was soaked. He needed a room for the night—he hadn’t the energy to drive back to London. Half an hour would take him to the motorway, near which he was bound to find a hotel. But he had only reached the edge of town, and was braking at a junction, when he saw hands adjusting a notice in the window of a broad three-story house.
He squinted in the mirror to confirm he wasn’t in anyone’s way, then inched his window down. The notice had either fallen or been removed, but the parking area at the end of the short drive was unoccupied, and above the high thick streaming wall a signboard that frantic bushes were doing their best to obscure appeared to say most of HOTEL. He veered between the gateposts and came close to touching the right breast of the house.
He couldn’t distinguish much through the bay window. At least one layer of net curtains was keeping the room to itself. Beyond heavy purple curtains trapping moisture against the glass, a light was suddenly extinguished. He grabbed his overnight bag from the rear seat and dashed for the open porch.
The rain kept him company as he poked the round brass bellpush next to the tall front door. There was no longer a button, only a socket harboring a large bedraggled spider that recoiled almost as violently as his finger did. He hadn’t laid hold of the rusty knocker above the neutral grimace of the letter-slot when a woman called a warning or a salutation as she hauled the door open. “Here’s someone now.”
She was in her seventies but wore a dress that failed to cover her mottled toadstools of knees. She stooped as though the weight of her loose throat was bringing her face, which was almost as white as her hair, to meet his. “Are you the entertainment?” she said.
Behind her a hall more than twice his height and darkly papered with a pattern of embossed vines not unlike arteries led to a central staircase that vanished under the next floor up. Beside her a long-legged table was strewn with crumbled brochures for local attractions; above it a pay telephone with no number in the middle of its dial clung to the wall. Shone was trying to decide if this was indeed a hotel when the question caught up with him. “Am I …”
“Don’t worry, there’s a room waiting.” She scowled past him and shook her head like a wet dog. “And there’d be dinner and a breakfast for anyone who settles them down.”
He assumed this referred to the argument that had started or recommenced in the room where the light he’d seen switched off had been relit. Having lost count of the number of arguments he’d dealt with in the Hackney kindergarten where he worked, he didn’t see why this should be any different. “I’ll have a stab,” he said, and marched into the room.
Despite its size, it was full of just two women—of the breaths of one at least as wide as her bright pink dress, who was struggling to lever herself up from an armchair with a knuckly stick and collapsing red-faced,