The Haunted Hotel Room

A friend of mine told me this story of something that happened to

My friend, who wishes to remain anonymous

him, and I've been saving it up for today.
          We were chatting, and he said, "I never used to believe in ghosts, but..." He wasn't going to get away without giving up the story after that.

          He used to 'travel in computers and accessories' - that is, he used to travel round a circuit, trying to convince various shops and stories to buy and stock all sorts of things, from laptops and tablets to novelty USB sticks.

          "You get to know various other salesmen in the same line," he said, "because you're always staying in the same cheap chain hotels and B&Bs. So, this trip, I was in ---- and staying at a ----- "

          He told me the exact name and location of the hotel. But I'm not going to write it down here. I'm not looking to be sued.

          "Anyway," he said, "when I looked into the restaurant that evening, I met up with a couple of other reps. I knew them slightly. One was in electronics, like me - the other was in sports gear. So we ate together and had a pint or two - but the thing was, when they saw my room number, they gave each other funny looks.

          "'You're not in room 265?' says the one.
         "I said, 'Why? What's wrong with it? Gets a lot of noise, does it?'
          "They went through the funny looks routine again. Shock, horror, he's in room 265. Are you going to tell him, or shall I? That sort of business. 'Come on,' I said. 'Out with it.'

          "'That room's haunted,' the computer bloke said. 'Ask if you can change it.'

          "'I wouldn't sleep in that room for a year's pay,' says the bloke in sports.

          "'What?' I says. 'Have you slept in it?' No, 'course he hadn't - but he'd heard about people who had, and -

          "'Oh, FOAF,'" I said. They didn't get it. 'Friend of a friend,' y'know. These things always happen to a friend of a friend, don't they? Never to the person telling you about it. I told 'em only kids believe in ghosts.
          "In fact, I scoffed so much, they never got around to telling me what was supposed to happen in room 265 - we got off onto some other stupid subject. Aliens or Area 51 or something.

 

'Aliens or Area 51 or something...'

        "Anyway, I went up to my room about eleven, and turned in soon after. It was a completely standard hotel room - y'know, little bathroom, a bed, a desk, a tv. I've lost count of the number of nights I've spent in hotel-rooms exactly like it. I had a quick shower, watched a bit of tv, switched off the light and settled down. I'd forgotten everything they'd said about ghosts.

          I was just starting to drift off, when the bed moved - and I was sleeping alone! There was a jolt, like someone had sat on the edge of the bed.

          I sat up like a jack-in-the-box. It was so real. I had no doubt at all that somebody was in my room and had sat on the edge of the bed. I snapped on the light. Nothing, of course. Just the hotel room, and my things on the desk and chair, where I'd left 'em.

          I got up and looked around. I had some idea that one of the others had got into my room and was playing tricks - but unless some member of the hotel staff had let them in, they couldn't have done. I hadn't heard the door open - and like most of these doors, they're heavy and fire-proof. Hard to open quietly.

          In the end, I decided that my imagination was playing me up. I'd been drifting off - it could have been a sort of half-dream. And even though I'd forgotten the talk about the room being haunted, it could have planted the idea in my head.

          "So I got back into bed and settled down again.I was asleep, or near as damn it, when there was a cold draught at my back - and then a puff of cold air on my ear, and a voice, a woman's voice, said, 'I'm glad the door's locked.'
          "I was standing by the room's door, with the light on and my heart pounding like Desert Orchid's on the winning stretch. I don't remember getting there.
          "I was looking at the blandest of bland hotel rooms. Y'know: dark blue carpet, beige walls, white covers on the bed. Apart from my few things, it was neat and boring and clean - and like ten thousand other hotel rooms all over the world.
          "My heart rate started slowing down, and I felt a bit of a fool. Fancy letting those two idiots get to me. And that place was so blah that the ghost of a vanilla yoghurt would have turned it down as not sinister enough to haunt.
          "I had a drink from the fridge and watched a bit of late night telly. Listened to people tramping past in the corridor outside and slamming firedoors. After an hour, I went to bed again, feeling really shattered. This time, nothing was keeping me awake.
          "Now imagine this. Imagine you're all warm and toasty - and an ice-cube touches you. I want you to really imagine that freezing touch. The way the shock jolts you. The way the ice clings to your skin. The way the shudder goes right through you to the other side.
          "That's what woke me. Only it wasn't an ice-cube. It was a hand, a cold hand. On my chest. And an arm, reaching over me from behind. A woman was in bed with me, pressing against my back and reaching around to hug me - and she was icy, freezing. Like a randy snowman had climbed into bed with me.
          "An icy kiss pressed against my neck - and that was when I raced into reception, at three in the morning, in my underpants.
          "Don't remember anything else - except suddenly realising I was in reception, looking at the night-clerk, in nothing but my socks and Y-fronts. (Yes, I wear Y-fronts. Shut up.)
          "I wouldn't go back upstairs either. The night-staff had to let me hide behind their desk and find me a coat to wear, while they went up and moved my luggage from room 265 to another room on

another floor.
          "I didn't get any sleep that night. I kept thinking she might find out what room I'd moved to.

'There's nothing I want to know...'

          "The next morning, at breakfast, when my friends asked me how I'd slept - well, I opened my shirt and showed them the red-blue mark of a woman's hand on my chest. And the bruise on my neck.'"

          "Did you ever find out anything about the ghost?" I asked. "I mean, was someone murdered in that room, or what?"
          "The only thing I know about that ghost," he said, "is that she has great taste in men. Apart from that, there's nothing I want to know. And she won't be getting a second date."

And if you believe this is a true story, told to me by a friend, then I am your Granny's great-uncle Jim.

Copyright Susan Price.

Overheard in a Graveyard

This is an excellent collection - varied, emotive and well-judged. Highly recommended. - Amazon review.

 

                                  Nightcomers

'Every tale shows the quality of the imagination, and the accuracy of the telling. What most impresses is the authority of Susan Price's voice: exact, rich or spare when necessary, able to evoke the Past without falsity, and the present without effort.'
(The Guardian.)

 

 

  

Hauntings

'This collection… has a depth of emotion that is at times disturbing.' Magpie,

Biffo - The Missing Weeks...

I was browsing on-line, as I do when plot-wrangling threatens to

implode my brain, and I came across this, questioning whether putting up posters about your missing cat ever helps you regain the cat.
     It reminded me of my beloved ex-cat, Biffo, and the time he went missing.

     It wasn't long after he moved in with me. I followed the rules for a cat-move. I kept him strictly inside for the requisite two weeks, buttered his paws and gave him cream and tuna, and other treats, designed to convince him that he'd fallen on his paws, and there was nowhere he'd rather be.
     But I had to open the door and let him out eventually, because he'd always had freedom to come and go as he pleased before.
     His first ventures into my back-yard and street went well, and he returned to base for food. And then he went out and didn't return. Not that day, not that night, not the next morning. 

     I knocked on doors and asked neighbours to check their sheds. Still no Biffo.  I concluded that, sadly, Biffo had probably been killed by a car.

But Davy, who was Can-Opener No. 2 (I was No. 3) refused to accept this. He was very attached to Biffo. Davy persuaded me to print off some flyers and we posted them through doors for several streets around.
     The result, after a week, was one phone-call from a concerned man who asked if we'd found our cat yet. He and his wife, he said, would be distraight if they lost their cat, and they felt for us. But no, he'd seen no cat like the one we described.

     Davy still refused to give up. On his insistence - Davy is really the hero of this story - we toured the neighbourhood again, talking to people we met in their gardens, asking if they'd seen our flyer and if they had any news. It was a warm, sunny autumn Saturday, in late October or early November, because the annual barrage of nightly fireworks had been going on for, well, nights.
     We wandered onto a patch of overgrown waste ground that backed onto some gardens, because it was the kind of place that a lost cat might hide during the day, or hunt at dusk. We stood there for some while, talking. Davy seemed sure that Biffo was simply exploring his new area. I argued that he was more likely trying to find his way back to his previous home, and was disorientated in the strange streets.

     We stood there, talking, for some time and a woman came out of her house into her back yard, which we appeared to be staring into. Could she help us, she asked, in that special tone that means: 'What are you up to, you suspicious types?'

     I apologised, and explained that we were looking for our cat. Mollified, she said she'd seen a cat, one she hadn't seen before, sitting on the fence posts at the edge of the waste ground, staring into the scrub. In other words, a cat hunting.
     I asked what the cat had looked like. 'It was a big cat,' she said. Now, on seeing Biffo for the first time, people said either, 'Oh what a beautiful cat,' or 'Oh, what a big cat.' Sometimes, both. I asked for more detail and the description - grey, striped, big bushy tail - all fitted Biffo.
     We thanked the woman, and returned to the road. I was thinking hard. A lost and scared cat, forced to find its own food, would want, I thought, somewhere quiet and hidden to lie up and hide during the day; somewhere there were plenty of small mice and other little creatures (and Biffo did catch mice and rats) and somewhere that people put out food.
     Assuming that he was continuing on down the hill, was he going to find anywhere like that?
     Yes, he was. Near the bottom of that very hill was the house where a good friend of mine lived. It was a corner plot, raised up above street level. Most of its long garden consisted of a steep bank sloping down to the street, thickly grown with trees, bushes and briars. There were apple trees, and plum, hawthorn and wild roses: a miniature urban wood. My friend had never tried to do anything with it: had simply left it to itself.
     She's also keen on wild-life and birds, and puts out food and water, every single night. She makes up sandwiches for the foxes (I kid you not) and sets out cat-food for the hedgehogs. There are peanuts for the badgers. If Biffo was still alive, I reckoned he would have sniffed out my friend's place - and once he'd found it, he'd stay there.
     I knew my friend had guests that afternoon, so didn't interrupt her, but I phoned her as soon as I could and described Biffo. A very large cat, a tabby, mostly grey but with a sandy undercoat. He has the look of a wildcat, I said, with a very thick, bushy grey tail, ringed with black. Amber eyes. Very upright, pointed ears. A big fluffy snow-white 'shirt-front.' Big paws. Hind legs longer than his front legs.
     That was Saturday evening. The very next morning, early, the

phone rang and it was my friend. She asked me to describe my missing cat again. Then she said, 'I got up last night to watch the foxes - ' Which she often does, because she's a life-long insomniac. 'And there was a cat just like the one you described eating from the hedgehog's bowl.'
     So I phoned Davy, and he grabbed his cat-basket and drove over immediately. As soon as his car pulled onto my friend's drive, Biffo emerged from the bushes, wailing. A very bright cat, he recognised individual car engines, and he knew rescue had arrived.
     There was no palaver, that day, about catching him and getting him into the cat-basket. Davy said he almost threw himself inside, purring with relief and gratitude. You know, freedom is one thing - the sky your roof, and your candle a star and all that. But a nice warm sofa and as much cat-food as you can eat is not something to give up lightly.
     After that adventure - he was on the loose for three weeks, with fireworks exploding every night - he stayed much closer to home, though he still spent most of every day outside.
     He's been gone for good since 2010.  I still miss him. In fact, as I lay in bed the other night, I heard him licking his paws beside me, as I did immediately after he died.
     So, did the flyers succeed in reuniting us with our missing cat? No. But Davy's determination to look for him, and asking questions around the neighbourhood - and my doing a bit of writerly imagining on, 'How would a cat think?' - led us to recovering him. And to eight further years of very happy cat life.

     He's welcome to come back in the night, and lick his paws and wipe his ears as often as he likes.

Scrabbling Through The Dictionary...

 

From Wikipedia, Creative Commons

This is 'a massive bovid of mountainous South Asia, with a shaggy coat, short legs, and horns that point back and up.' I thought myself fairly knowledgeable about the fauna and flora of the world, but this particular beastie had escaped my notice until I was scanning through the Scrabble dictionary. This 'antelope-goat' is a takin, and that's a useful word to know if you have a K (score, 5.)

     The Official Scrabble dictionary is a gem, and even more fun to flip through than the OED, since virtually every word in it is obscure, with strange definitions.

     I had letters to spell 'gane' and picked up the dictionary to check that this Scottish past-tense of 'gone' would be allowed. Instead I discovered that 'gane' is a variant of the word 'gangue.' which means 'the valueless material in ore.' I would have gone a whole lifetime without knowing that, if it hadn't been for Scrabble. I bet there are people who spent all day picking the valueless bits out of ore and chucking them away, who don't know that they are gangue-chuckers.

     And this, this is a quaich, a small drinking cup, traditional to the

An oaken quaich, wikipedia commons

Gaelic speaking Highlands. It uses (in the English game) a 'q' (10) and a 'c' (3) and an 'h' (4) and so would score you 20, even if you couldn't get it on a double or triple scoring square.
     Words that use 'q' are always of great interest to Scrabble players - and most of them know by heart all the words where 'Q' can be used without a 'u' - qi, qat, suq. Here are some with 'u'.

     Quonk - an unintentional noise while broadcasting.
     Quop - to pulsate.
     Quohog - an edible clam.
     Quich - to move. (Is this the origin of 'the quick and the dead?')
     Queach - a thicket.

My interest in the meaning of the words betrays me as a lesser player. The real enthusiasts have no interest in the meaning at all, something which passes all understanding as far as I'm concerned. How can you hear a strange new word and not want to know what it means?

Wikipedia Commons: Dutch tiles. Their letters score differently

     'J' is another letter that gets the Scrabblers' attention, because it scores 8. (In English. Its different for the Dutch.)

     I particuarly liked 'jarp' which means to break or smash - but more exactly, means to break or smash the shell of an egg - but more exactly still, means to break or smash the shell of an egg, especially at Easter. I do like a word with an exact definition, me. Savour it until Easter, and then jarp them eggs, jarp 'em.

     'Jirble' means to 'pour carelessly.' You can hear that booze jirbling...

     I liked 'fizgig' - two each for the 'g's, four for the 'f' and ten for the 'z.'  It means to 'inform to the police.'

     'Dow' is 'archaic' and means 'to be of worth.' Is this word behind 'dowry' and 'dowager'? It's in 'endow' too, surely.

     'Skelf' was known to Davy without any dictionary - he often had a skelf in his finger as a lad. It means 'splinter.' 'Skelp' means to beat.

     'Wanhope' reminded me of Jonathan Strange - it means 'disillusion.' There she goes, her necklace studded with broken promises and regrets, and her train of finest wanhope.

     As winter heaves into view, I'll remind you that 'pogonip' means an icy winter fog.

     A word Davy taught me, but which doesn't seem to be in the Scrabble dictionary, is 'teuchter' - pronounced something like 'ChooKter.' It means 'a big, healthy, strong but unsophisticated farm-boy.' The dictionary does offer 'quashie' - an unsophisticated Caribbean peasant.

     My scrabble game is improving, folks. I hounded Davy so close recently that he conceded the game before the end (though he said it was only because he was tired.) Next game, he beat me by only 32 points - and the game after that by only 16.

     I will skelp the teuchter yet.

Wikipedia Commons: Catalan Scrabble Tiles