Purgatory Hotel Read online

  Purgatory Hotel

  Anne-Marie Ormsby

  Copyright © 2017 by Anne-Marie Ormsby

  Cover Photography: Adobe Stock © chainat

  Design: soqoqo

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or Crooked Cat Books except for brief quotations used for promotion or in reviews. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  Nick Cave lyrics reproduced with kind permission

  of Mute Records Ltd.

  The Ghost by

  Charles Baudelaire

  She Weeps on Rahoon by

  James Joyce

  Printed in the United Kingdom

  First Black Line Edition, Crooked Cat Books. 2017

  Discover us online:

  www.crookedcatbooks.com

  Join us on facebook:

  www.facebook.com/crookedcatbooks

  To Ray Bradbury

  for writing the books.

  To my parents

  for buying them

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to Nick Cave and Mute Records for permission to use the lyrics to Loverman, it wouldn’t have been the same without those words. Thanks to Carlo Rossi at Code 72 for all the work on my wonderful website. To Jamie Scott Beal for the amazing promotional images.

  To Crooked Cat Books for their hard work and for seeing something worthwhile in my story.

  And to my husband Neil and daughter Juno for always making sure I am not too serious for too long.

  About the Author

  Anne-Marie grew up in the company of her movie loving, crime fiction obsessed family consequently developing a passion for books and cemeteries. She has been writing poetry and fiction for her own pleasure since she was nine and has recently been working on screenplays with a production company, one of which was made into a short horror movie.

  Finally turning her attention to allowing other people access to her brain, she has published her first novel Purgatory Hotel, and frequently writes vintage style articles for In Retrospect Magazine. She lives in South London with her husband and their tiny human.

  Purgatory Hotel

  ONE: Awake

  Her body had no register for the sort of pain she was in. Something struck her head and she slipped away, and pain had no part in it – only numbness and fear. She was about to die and she knew it, as though there was always an awareness that this was how the end felt. In that moment fear left her, and it was like when a gust of wind came and went, the stillness that followed.

  Before everything stopped, her life passed before her in a random barrage of images that arrived like photographs slipping past her eyes:

  Her mother kneading the scone mix, the crucifix she wore around her neck glinting in sunlight; her father polishing his motorcycle, and stopping to smile at her; her sister styling her hair and laughing in front of a mirror; the photo in the hallway of the barren landscape of the Dakota Badlands; the blue dress her mother was wearing the night she died; her father looking smart in his suit as he closed the car door forever; the second she laid eyes on him and knew for the first time what love was; the hug he gave her as she wept at the hospital – “a murder of crows,” he had said – and the words of a Baudelaire poem he only ever said in French; steady autumn rain falling on the garden and the first fall of apples; rain on the churchyard; the face of a missing young girl on the front of a newspaper; the burning in her heart that made her feel she had been in love, the kind of love she had read about in books, the kind of love that tore you to pieces, the kind of love that did more harm than good; the warm smell of his skin as they made love; the feeling that the only place that ever felt like home was in his arms; tears on her sister’s face; the words he wrote for her blurred by her own tears; the crisp cold blue of his eyes, his eyes.

  And she was gone.

  In the moment before she woke she remembered rain and trees, the dark green, dripping night of the forest. It was more a sense of the place than actual sight; she knew how it looked yet it was just darkness and the sound of the rain. But in her head it was clear, the branches overhead framing the stars, the wet leaves dripping rain onto her face as she looked up. There was movement nearby, perhaps a fox, its eyes glinting in the gloom. Nothing was there and yet, from the sounds, she could see every detail.

  In the seconds when her eyes began to flicker open, and the dark woods were being replaced by dim lights, she knew something bad had happened, something really bad.

  The calmness of the woods was being replaced by a sense of urgency, of the irrational fear that rises when you don’t yet know what it is you are scared of.

  Her head was thumping. She was face down on the floor, her cheek squashed against a sticky carpet, and as her eyes blinked, her vision cleared slowly. An unpleasant smell was permeating her nostrils; something long ground into the carpet didn’t smell good, and as she peeled her cheek off the floor she felt some of whatever was in the fibres still clung to her face.

  As she sat up she noticed the blood, huge clots of it covering her hands and arms, her grey sweater losing its colour to the dark, rapidly spreading stain. Panic rose up her throat like bile. Her hands shook as she reached up and touched the source, a pulp of bone and brain matter at the side of her head.

  That was when she knew she was already dead.

  TWO: Checking In

  Dakota was on the floor of a gloomy, Victorian-looking hotel lobby. The blood that had been pouring from a wound in her head was now gone, as was the wound. The dark gloves of blood that had covered her hands had now disappeared and she was left confused by the illusion for a moment. Her confusion soon spread to her location. She had no idea how she came to be in a hotel lobby, or indeed where the hotel was.

  The walls bore a deep red colour velveteen wallpaper and the ceiling was a dirty gold as were the doorframes and window ledges. Curtains fell long and velvet from the tops of the high windows where rain was crashing against the black glass. It was like a museum of rotting grandeur; once rich, vivid colours were now dull, worn and faded. Wherever she was it was night now; she could not see anything through the windows, only the occasional flash of lightning showed the rain streaking across the glass.

  The lobby would have been completely dark had it not been for the dim oil lamps that sat on tables and hung from the red walls. They cast a soft but unusual glow through tiny threads of cobwebs and dust, down onto worn and faded leather sofas and armchairs that lay around the large gloomy room. As she listened to the rain thrash the windows, she felt drawn to the fire that crackled beneath the mantelpiece where more dust collected. Her clothes were dry, but she felt cold and damp right down to her bones, as if she had just crawled out of her own grave.

  To her left was a huge door that shuddered slightly in its frame and appeared to lead outside into the storm. To her right there was another door, surrounded by a multitude of clocks, which appeared to give the times all over the world. In England it was twenty minutes past midnight.

  “Can you come over here and check in please, miss?” said a voice that snapped her awake again. Just along from the clock door was Reception, and behind the desk stood a tall, willowy-looking woman in a white suit. She stood out sharply in the otherwise dull room. It was only then that Dakota noticed other people sitting in the lobby, standing against walls, all in clothes so drab they almost blended into the furniture.

  “Hello?” called the woman, beckoning Dakota across the room to her. The other people in the room seemed to acknowledge her, then deliberately ignore her. As
Dakota moved warily across the dim lobby, eyes glinted behind drab fabrics, and from behind furniture, low whispers came to her ears like dry leaves tittering across concrete.

  She was focusing so intently on not looking at anyone, she walked straight into someone who shoved her back so hard she fell over. A low murmur of amusement edged around the room as she looked up at an angry-looking woman whose eyes were so red she looked as though she had not slept in years. Bones protruded from her shoulders, and her cheekbones were so prominent she had the appearance of a skeleton with the thinnest layer of skin pulled over its features.

  “Look where you’re going, bitch,” the woman said in a cold and featureless voice. For a moment Dakota thought she was going to cry but bit back the tears knowing full well that her bursting into tears would only makes things worse. She picked herself up and moved carefully around the woman making sure not to look up even though she could feel the bitter red gaze on her.

  By the time she reached the reception desk, she felt like she was about to burst into huge body-shaking sobs, but the lady who looked across at her from beyond the desk put her suddenly at ease.

  “Hello, Dakota” she said, her long finger pointing at a huge book that lay on the counter between them.

  “Uh... I – I don’t know I... can’t remember... I don’t know where I am...” she offered weakly. As she looked down at the book, she noticed that names were appearing on the half-full page, names and room numbers written in flowing script by an unseen hand, as the white-suited woman ran her finger down the long list.

  “You are Dakota Crow.” The woman smiled as she looked up at Dakota’s worried expression. “Forgotten it all, have you? It’s all right, it will come back to you when it needs to. You will be in room twenty, if you take that elevator over there. When the door shuts, say your room number out loud and it will take you right there, OK?”

  “Uh – yeah um I’m um… I need to... um...” She paused. “I’m dead, aren’t I?”

  “If you go through the door opposite the elevator, you will find the Bar. Perhaps it would help you to have a stiff drink?” The smiling woman completely ignored Dakota’s question. She reached under the counter and pulled out a golden key with a large silver tag bearing the number twenty. “If you need to ask any questions, I will be right here. My name is Ariel. Don’t be afraid; I am always here.”

  Dakota smiled weakly at the beautiful pale woman, and began to wonder whether it would be wrong to ask her if she was an angel. Just as she was about to open her mouth a huge gust of rain-filled wind blasted through the still room. Dakota jumped and turned to see a ragged old man coming through the main entrance. Lightning flashed at the windows as he slammed the door shut behind him.

  The handful of men and women in the room, lit up briefly by the storm, all looked sullen, weary and tired. Their clothes were drab and dirty looking, nothing brighter than shades of grey against the worn leather sofas. They all had different styles of clothing, modern and old-fashioned, but all grey. It was as though the place itself had leeched all the colour out of everyone.

  One man looked as though he might only be around thirty, but his eyes were those of a much older man. They were tired and red, full of pain. To his left, far across the lobby, sat a woman with a mass of unkempt hair. Her dress was ripped and tattered, and her eyes were rimmed with red as though she had been crying for days. Closer to the main entrance sat a young man of no more than eighteen. He looked more afraid than the others – about as afraid as Dakota felt. His eyes darted around the room as though they were attached to two flies, buzzing around the room. Then they landed on her. For a moment they just stared at each other and she smiled softly at him, but this only made him more jittery. His leg began to bounce up and down as he scratched at his forearms with dirty fingernails. Dakota felt suddenly aware that nobody here would be friendly, nobody here would make her feel any better or any safer. When she breathed in, she felt she was inviting pure despair into her body.

  The man who had just walked in was soaked with rain, his long thin hair sticking to his deeply-lined face. As he moved across the lobby people shrank away from him, sliding off the sofas, pinning themselves back against the walls and vanishing into the long shadows. It seemed that even the lights were dimming, juddering on the edges of his presence, allowing darkness to take over his face. Then he saw her.

  She felt a temperature change in the room as his eyes fixed on her like sharp points of silver glinting out of the gloom of his silhouette.

  Dakota suddenly felt terrified and began backing up until she smacked into the reception desk again and turned to find Ariel gone. When she looked back, the lobby had emptied save for low murmurs around the edges, and he was moving towards her. She felt frozen by his gaze, unable to move any further as he drew closer and closer to her.

  A whisper that accompanied his movement sounded like beetles scattering across a cold floor. Dakota felt her skin crawl as though cockroaches were scurrying up her trouser legs.

  A huge flash of lightning illuminated the edges of his shoulders and head one last time before he was beside her, his nose touching the side of her face, and a cold icy hand gripped her wrist.

  “Nice to see you again… Dakota,” he whispered.

  A sudden urgency overtook her and she broke from his grip running straight to the Bar, not looking back but still hearing a low cackle coming from where she had left him.

  The Bar was littered with people muttering to each other in the dim light of table lamps. The rain could still be heard pounding the glass, but thick curtains kept out the flashes of lightning. The high corners and edges of the room faded into darkness, leaving her with the feeling that they concealed secrets. The darkness was so pervasive, she realised she had no idea how large the room was; it just faded away, taking with it the secret of how many other eyes were on her. It was as though the dark was alive with things she could not see, but she knew they were there from the low murmur that reached her ears. She looked straight through the rows and rows of tables at the brightly lit bar area, where a few customers were collapsed, or sitting with their heads in their hands, mumbling to themselves. The music that was playing sounded familiar to her, but it took a few moments for her to remember that it was Elvis. She laughed slightly to herself as she recalled that she had liked Elvis before. At last she knew something about herself. However, The Wonder of You had a creepy sound to it as it worked its way around the dark, foreboding room. For a moment she wondered whether he was actually there in the Bar – had he become a seedy pub singer in the after-life? – until she caught sight of a stereo.

  Dakota thought for a moment and managed to recall what being drunk felt like. She realised that was exactly what she needed and headed towards the bar through the layer of smoke that was hanging at about chest height in the room. Again, nobody seemed that interested in her, though a few of the women glanced up at her, looks of sorrow in their eyes. One woman swigged from a bottle whilst cradling a bundle of rags in her arms. For a moment Dakota thought there was a baby there, but it was exactly what it looked like – a bundle of rags that looked like a baby. She shared a brief second of eye contact with the woman before looking away, realising she did not want to know her story.

  “What can I get you?” asked the barman, a tired looking man of around sixty. Somehow he looked different from the other men here; his eyes seemed softer.

  “I can’t remember what I like, so give me something strong,” she said quietly, sitting down on a barstool, far away from the nearest customer who seemed to be asleep with his head in an ashtray. “Uh… cigarettes?”

  “We have plenty of those. Can’t do you much damage now, can they?” He half laughed. “Here’s yer drink and you’ll need matches, too, for them fags.” Dakota knew his accent but could not place it as she lit up a cigarette. The drink looked like extremely watery coke, but whatever it was tasted like paint stripper. She gasped and coughed slightly, taking a puff on her cigarette in an attempt to dull the fire in h
er throat.

  “Hehe, guess that wasn’t yer favourite back home. You look more like a vodka drinker. I’ll fix you one of those, too.” As he returned with another drink he said, “I’m Danny, by the way. Who are you?”

  “Well, according to Ariel my name is Dakota Crow, and I’m pretty sure I’m dead.” She laughed as a tear rolled down her face and necked the vodka he had brought her. The man seated along from her at the bar slid off his stool onto the floor with a thud. The noise distracted her from the pale look that had flitted across Danny’s face.

  “Head injuries, was it?” he asked, pouring her another drink.

  “I think so, yeah. How’d you know?” she replied, the hallucination of blood still fresh in her mind.

  “The ones who get here with no memory usually died of some kind of head injury – you’re not the first. It takes some people ages to remember. Others who come here with no memory have actually completely blocked it all out of their heads because it’s too much.”

  “Yeah, but it’s not just my death I can’t recall, it’s my whole life. I can’t remember anything. That’s,” when Dakota thought about how old she was, she seemed to know, “twenty-one years of memories, just gone. Oh, except the fact that I might have liked Elvis, and I remember a forest.”

  “A forest?”

  “Yeah, just before I woke up, it was like a dream, I was in a forest and I had been there before. It was night time and it was raining heavily. It seems like a dream but I know it was real somehow… I knew those woods.” Her thoughts distracted her for a moment.

  “Danny, am I having a psychotic episode or something?”

  “No love, yer just dead, as dead as everyone else here, as dead as me.” He smiled at her, a sort of pity in his face. Dakota glanced around the dark Bar and saw other people acting like normal people, arguing, looking depressed and confused, and it felt like life to her. This place, though a little odd, could have been somewhere on earth, a hotel somewhere, in need of decorating, perhaps in a washed-out seaside town. She felt as though she was alive, just a bit down, like she had been walking for miles or hadn’t slept well in days. The thoughts angered her. Why could she recall feelings and basic knowledge, yet she could not recall a single detail of her own life, of who she had been, of what she had done in her life. She felt so frustrated as she lit another cigarette. She didn’t even know if she had ever smoked before, but she seemed to enjoy it so maybe she had. She swallowed down another drink and waited for Danny to fill it up again.