height of someone on a sunlounger. Now, imagine, you’re reading a book, maybe having a little drink, and this is what you can see.” He pointed his torch beam at the wall, showing the carved indentations of Manning’s design; the waves, line etchings of what might have been fish, plants or undersea grottoes.
“Now,” said Parry, “watch the shadows.” He began to move his torch slowly around in an arc, travelling over the carvings. The shadows caught in the etched lines and then spilled over, stretched, blossoming into black patches like moss on the wall. Mandeville did not see anything unusual and was about to say so when Yeoman said, “Holy shit!”
“No, holy vagina, technically,” said Parry and Mandeville was about to ask why when he saw it too. The lengthening shadows reached a point where they combined with the lines of carving and the image changed, danced into something new, a stylised picture of a woman’s legs, curved and invitingly open. As Parry kept moving the torch, the image wavered and then vanished, collapsing back in on itself and reforming into waves and sea creatures.
“There,” he said triumphantly. “Even out here, this place is about being surrounded by femininity, by procreation. By sex. By
“We have got to recommend that they re-etch these,” said Yeoman, laughing.
“Absolutely,” said Parry without pause, “and don’t tell them why,” and Mandeville could only nod in amused agreement.
Already, a plan was forming for the report, where he would recommend that restoration of the hotel back to its original state, and the use of modern artists to fill in the gaps. He was thinking about how to word and present his proposals as they walked back down to the restaurant, his head filled with the possibilities of this place, and it was only later he remembered about the children.
The thought actually pulled him back to consciousness as he was drifting off to sleep, lying wrapped in his sleeping bag on his travel cot. In all the excitement of Yeoman’s fingers, and then eating and catching up, he had completely forgotten the intruders. Now he remembered them, though, the thought that they hadn’t checked the hotel for obvious entry points wouldn’t leave him alone.
The Grand had survived its locked-up years surprisingly well, with little damage apparently done by vandalism. There was definitely evidence that people had broken in, he had seen it: a pile of old food cartons in the kitchens, a blackened circle in one of the bedrooms that might have meant a small fire had burned there, but there was no real damage. Most of what had broken or collapsed had done so as a result simply of time and the coastal atmosphere, of dampness and neglect and air closed in on itself, trapped and rotting. But still, he should check. Kids, once they found an entrance could be persistent and destructive.
Sighing, he clambered out of his sleeping bag and slipped on his boots and a thick jumper; he was sleeping in his jeans and shirt anyway, to ward of the chill air. His breath misted in front of his face as his tied his laces, and he wondered about waking Yeoman and Parry up to help him, but both were snoring and he decided against it.
Yeoman had been weary by the time he fell asleep, and his fingers clearly causing him pain. Parry, he knew from uncomfortable experience, was terribly grumpy if woken before he thought he ought to be. He would scout around himself and if he found anything, they could call the security service tomorrow and get them to deal with it.
In the almost complete darkness, Priest’s flooring seemed to shift and swirl under him in shades of luminal grey as he walked from the makeshift camp to the entrance to the foyer, tracking him. His footsteps were gritty, fractured things, his breathing loud, and there was someone standing in the sun corridor.
They were only a shape in the darkness, pressed against the glass with their arms stretched out as though supplicant to the grey swathe of beach and sea beyond. Surprised, Mandeville stopped. The figure did not move. After a moment, he began to approach it cautiously, listening; they were singing, low and wordless, crooning something that might have been a lament or a lullaby, and they were scratching their fingers against the glass. The sound of it was carrying descant to the song, setting Mandeville’s teeth on edge.
The figure was female, he thought, certainly long-haired and curvaceous around the buttocks and thighs, and wearing some kind of long dress or coat that swayed as she moved.
Standing in the entrance to the sun corridor, perhaps fifteen feet from the intruder, Mandeville stopped again and watched her. She was pressed up against the glass, flattened against it, her hair hanging down the sides of her face so that he couldn’t make out her features, just a veil of thick tangles that seemed to be catching distant lights from outside and glittering a myriad colours.
Her outstretched arms were fully extended, reaching above her, and her hands were splayed out, hooking against the pane, and she was still singing.
Close to, he could almost hear words in the song, muffled and lost. Her lips and nose had to be pressed hard against the glass as well, he realised. Perhaps that was why her voice was so muffled, seemed to be coming from so far away. This didn’t seem like normal vandal behaviour, he thought. Perhaps she was ill? If so, she might need help. “Hello,” he said quietly.
The girl fled, spinning away from Mandeville and running down the sun corridor at high speed. Startled, it took him a moment to follow, wondering fleetingly as he did how she had managed to leave an image of herself printed on the glass and why it was so smeared and shot through with wide sweeps of colour.
The girl darted down the sun corridor and Mandeville went after her.
When she reached the far end, she ran through a second doorway into, if Mandeville remembered rightly, a games room off the lower corridor. By the time Mandeville reached it, the girl was nowhere to be seen, but he instinctively ran through the room and out into the corridor, turning back towards the reception area.
Something skittered through the shadows ahead of him, telling him that he had guessed correctly, and then he was into the reception, its floor crossed by the weak light falling through the iron lattice of the glass roof far above him. He expected to find the girl here, but there was no sign of her.
Mandeville slowed, confused. The nearest staircase started at the far side of the reception area, and even if she’d made it there, the girl should have still been visible on the stairs. There was nowhere for her to hide except behind the reception desk, but a quick check told him that she wasn’t there. The main door was still shut and locked; he checked it with a shake. Turning, he peered up the stairs and saw movement in the murky depths of the bar.
Whatever it was he had seen, it wasn’t there now. The bar was deserted, the floor space empty of chairs and tables as it had been for years. As he cast his torch beam around, the only movement was the warped wooden panel that hung loose from the wall, rocking slightly as though moved by a breeze.
Mandeville peered behind the bar, but the mirrored walls reflected only dust and empty shelves. The wooden panel swayed again, leaning drunkenly out from the wall, held by two of its fittings, the other two dangling loose, the screw-threads clenching torn shreds of wood and plaster.
It was the panel that Yeoman had caught his fingers on, Mandeville saw, that he had said had bitten him. Parry had ribbed him mercilessly about it after binding his fingers, particularly when they found a torn string of skin caught in the lion’s mouth on the front of the panel. Dried blood was still crusted around its wooden teeth, dribbling down its chin and the rest of the panel in long, clotted strings.
Mandeville went back across the bar, flicking the torch around him as he went. Nothing. The girl had either gone further down the corridor, which he doubted as all the doors along it were locked except the very furthest, an exit to the fire stairs which squealed violently as it opened, or she had gone higher, to the second or third floor.
This was becoming annoying and complicated, and he would have to wake the other members of the Crew to help look for her.
As he reached the doorway, a noise came from behind him, a throaty, hoarse growl that stretched for seconds, and as he turned a dark shape came across the floor at him with a rapid, ferocious clatter.
Yeoman woke to find himself staring a warped wooden lion, blood flaking from its mouth in dark red drifts.
“It fell off the wall last night,” said Mandeville by way of explanation, “and nearly fucking gave me a heart attack. Maybe it’s got it in for us, what do you think? By the way, we’ve got an intruder, or at least, we did last night. Somewhere there’s a place to get in that we don’t know about, and first job today is to find it.”
It was colder that morning, and even dressed and with coffee and breakfast (cooked on the tiny camping
