Driving through the city streets, Beth was aware that none of it was familiar to her. She was so young when she left. It hadn’t occurred to her last time, when she visited Wendy Noakes.
But tonight, she could have been anywhere. It was as if she had never been there before. Her brain had blocked it out. The pain. The horror.
Her mind would wander now and then. She would think of Daisy. She hoped her daughter wasn’t afraid, unlikely as that was. Beth’s mood fluctuated between extreme anger, to desperate terror, and a plethora of emotions in between. She thought of Michael Noakes again and slammed her fist hard onto the steering wheel.
He had humiliated her, yes. That was one thing. In a funny way she could see his justification for that. But to take her family. Her children. That was a step too far.
Knowing that he had killed Zoe left no doubt in Beth’s mind that he would hurt them too. But she wouldn’t allow that to happen.
As she headed away from the city centre towards the outskirts, where the derelict hotel was situated, a sinking feeling consumed her.
The Marshall Hotel had burned down in the late seventies. Several guests had died in the fire, the Marshall family were billionaires and so had cut their losses, deciding not to reopen it. The back half, where the kitchens were located, was completely destroyed. This was where the blaze had started. Beth would never forget the first time Kieran Taylor had taken her to the hotel.
The day they killed the stray cat.
That was where the seed had been sown. When they had joked about killing her father. Of course, it had begun as a laugh. Beth had never imagined that they would actually do anything.
But Kieran Taylor was unhinged.
Childish banter had led to something far worse. Two sad, broken children, egging each other on. Beth wouldn’t let her thoughts go there. This was not the time for that.
She drove along what was little more than an overgrown grassy footpath. Her Range Rover bumped and toppled over uneven ground. And there it was, looming before her.
The imposing silhouette of the once opulent Marshall Hotel now reduced to a relic.
Suddenly it felt as if she had been there only yesterday. The two parts of Beth’s life came crashing together.
In the moonlight, the hotel had the same eerie quality she remembered. Even without Kieran’s ridiculous ghost stories she had found the place terrifying. Something about it; she could never put her finger on it, but it felt wrong.
Sheets of perished plastic, which used to cover windows and doorways, blew in the wind. Catching the moonlight sporadically, they looked like ghostly figures dancing in the breeze. Beth imagined they were the spirits of the dead guests, writhing in agony as they burned eternally.
She shivered.
Parking up, she surveyed the scene ahead of her. This was where it had all begun. The dark path her life would take. Beth shook her head, cursing. She had often wondered how differently things would have turned out if she had not visited the hotel with Kieran that first time. If she had only gone home to her mother, like she had wanted to.
But she didn’t. And nobody can change the past, as much as they might yearn to.
Beth had made her choices. All she could do was try to live the best life possible. And she had. But now it was all crumbling around her, like chalk from a weathered cliff. Much the same as the hotel she sat in front of, afraid to enter.
She slid the silver Stanley knife into her sock, the cold metal against her skin made her body tingle. Gripping the hammer tightly in her lap, she sat for a moment, looking at the derelict building. She scraped her hair back into a tight ponytail, securing it in place with an elastic band.
She was ready.
Climbing out of her car, she trudged through the waist-high grass towards the skeletal remains. Weeds tangled round her ankles, almost tripping her. Her foot sank into a bog-like patch of mud. She grimaced, shaking off the excess muck.
Reaching the perimeter, she raised her head, looking up at the roof. The place was in a far worse state than when she had last been here. Over thirty years had passed. But it still felt the same.
Beth was amazed at how the scene was opening up old wounds. Tearing scabs from long-healed scratches. Bringing back memories she had tried so hard to keep buried.
She eased herself around the wall with her free hand, edging around the wreck of the Marshall Hotel. Eventually she came to a way in. When she was a child, they had entered through an actual doorway where the chipboard covering had come loose. She blinked, remembering how Kieran had pushed the board and slipped through, out of sight. She had followed obligingly, as she always did. No comprehension of what danger may be lurking on the other side.
Now, an entire wall had collapsed, leaving a gaping space large enough for an adult to fit through easily.
With one final glance around her, Beth slipped through the gap, into the darkness.
57
The interior of the hotel was far from what Beth remembered; what she could see of it, at least. When she was last there, it had seemed much grander. Wooden panelling had still been visible. Traces of bookshelves, even some tattered old books. Now it was little more than a pile of rubble. Impossible to tell where each room had originally finished. Walls had tumbled. Ceilings had caved.
Over thirty years of the elements had taken their toll on the place.
A memory of Billy Noakes running away down a corridor ahead of her flashed into her mind’s eye. His pale-blond hair caught a beam of moonlight which shone through a large gap in the roof.
