He got out of bed and turned every light on. Blinked, and then blinked some more.
3:00 a.m. on the screen of his phone.
Seb held his face for a while, pulling his eyelids down as far as they would go before pain became an issue. He touched a wall with a shaking hand. Belched, sat back down on the bed, his head sunk between his knees, and he told himself that he’d only been dreaming of those places and voices. He could not accept that a dream in the dark had the ability to replace the world with another place – a teeming space, and one peopled so quickly.
With what? Memories, bits of things he’d read, or had they been suggested to him? They hinder.
He didn’t want to be inside the room. He tugged jeans on. Staggered through the vestibule beside the bathroom to the door of the room, using his hands against the walls.
Unsteady on his feet, his balance shot, he didn’t know where he was going, but he wanted some other place that hadn’t been filled with voices. He really had to get out, just out and into . . .
The corridor outside his room, on the third floor of the hotel. Pale blue carpet, cream walls, ceiling lights.
Aiming for the landing before the lifts, he was surprised to see that the two fire doors down there were closed. The glass fitted into the top half of each door was reinforced internally by wire mesh. Fire doors, they were usually held back, but at night they must close. But someone was visible through the single pane of glass. Seb stopped moving. A night owl, night porter, someone with an early start. Sun will be up soon.
Whoever was wearing the dark coat moved away, and swiftly, across the floor of the landing on the other side of the glass. They turned and vanished into a lift or onto the staircase. There is no staircase on that side, just the two lift doors.
A faint bump behind his back brought him about quickly. He lost his balance and lurched sideways, but caught sight of the origin of the sound. He’d seen whoever had just withdrawn their face from the panel of glass in one of the doors that sealed the opposite end of the corridor. That passage, beyond those fire doors, contained the staircase. Yes, he remembered now. But didn’t want to go down there because someone had been watching him. As they had moved backwards quickly, the smudge of a pale face had closed its mouth. An aperture disconcertingly dark and wide as if it had been in the act of calling out but soundlessly.
Seb moved his head from side to side on his shoulders. He tried to see through the reinforced glass panels and into the spaces beyond to identify who was on the other side of the fire doors.
And it was then he saw something move again through one glass panel. What appeared to be the back of a dark coat retreating, while seeming to shrink in size. It was as if he was watching a figure moving at speed, and across a distance much longer than the one that existed beyond the closed doors.
Maybe what he’d thought was movement behind the glass panel of the fire door was his own reflection as he’d turned around.
Please let it be.
Perhaps the face had been a part of his mirrored flesh too, and the open mouth some dark feature of the corridor beyond, superimposed through the refraction of light. Maybe he’d even mistaken a fire extinguisher for something else?
Under closer inspection, the panels in the fire doors now revealed no movement, or any other sign of a presence beyond the glass.
Above his head the lights buzzed at the end of his hearing. He could smell the fragrance of carpet cleaner. It reminded him of an airport lounge, or a boardroom. A sense of stillness and emptiness within these communal corridors made a mundane entry into his awareness.
At the same time, he became aware of how cold he was while standing shirtless in a hotel corridor.
20
A Tight Glove Pulled from my Finger
‘Bad night?’ Mark Fry came into Seb’s room, smiling. He probably believed a hangover responsible for Seb’s downcast face and crumpled appearance.
Mark taught sociology and film studies classes at a local college of further education and his classes had finished in mid-afternoon. For this Seb was grateful because he didn’t want to be on his own.
He looked at Mark with a dour and humourless expression that encouraged Mark to straighten his face. Being unable to explain to Mark why he was a wreck was frustrating but the least of his troubles.
Seb nodded at the recordings. They were stacked on the table beside the tape player and Hazzard’s books. ‘All yours, Mark. And thank you again.’
‘My pleasure. I pulled some favours with the admin staff and they copied the SPR stuff for me this morning.’ He parked the wheeled case that he’d brought with him beside the table.
With his foot, Seb tapped the large treasury box he’d left under the table. ‘I’ll leave Ewan’s notes with you for the time being. See if you can make out more than I managed.’
‘I’m an expert at reading poor handwriting. Years of practice. Everything is typed now, though the quality of the content hasn’t been improved by Microsoft Word.’