The Nonesuch and Others Read online

  And now I know what you’re thinking: that I must be a complete and utter idiot, and looking back on it I can’t help thinking that perhaps you’re right…

  Back at the Seaview while I found the bar open, only a handful of the less dedicated fishermen were enjoying a drink. Most of the others were out on a boat in the bay, while a few more had invested in a show at the theatre on the promenade: the “Reanimated Rat Pack Review!” And according to some of the hoardings I had seen during my short walk: “You’ll Actually Believe It’s Them, Direct From 1960s Las Vegas, Alive and Kicking!”

  Well “reanimated” or not—dead or alive—I hoped the audience enjoyed the show. But with all the absentees, it did make for a very quiet hotel and bar. And suddenly, out of nowhere, I felt rather alone.

  Shortly after settling myself at the same corner table that McCann and I had shared previously, however, who but that self-same Scottish gentleman should appear and proceed direct to the bar. Intent on buying a drink, McCann hadn’t as yet noticed me; but as I caught the bar girl’s eye and signalled her to put his drink on my tab, he turned and saw me. A moment later he joined me, thanked me warmly for his “wee dram,” and without any prompting picked up more or less where our initial conversation had left off:

  “So then,” he began, “ye’re lodged in number seven, are ye? And can I take it all’s well with ye? No problems with that wee room? I would have asked ye when last we chanced tae speak, but the dear lady o’ the house sort o’ interrupted our conversation and I didnae wish tae disturb her by havin’ her hear mention o’ that room. Aye, and it seems we have similar sensibilities, you and me, for which I’m glad.”

  “Room seven, yes,” I told him. “Which is a very nice room, really! The receptionist, Hannah, appears to think so; but she didn’t tell me much about it, didn’t go into details. So Kevin Anderson got drunk and died in a fall from my balcony, did he?” I shook my head wonderingly, and continued: “I suppose there’s no accounting for the way a tragedy like that—the loss of a loved one—will affect someone. And ever since his accident, Kevin’s widow has shunned that room, eh?”

  “Hmmm!” McCann pondered, frowning by way of reply. “Shunned it, aye. Well, that’s true as far as it goes. Mahsel’, I rather fancy she’s affeard o’ it! It’s possible she dwells too much on what happened tae Kevin in that room: the part it played in his…well, while I’m sorry tae be sayin’ this, in his frequently drunken deliriums…”

  I stared hard at McCann’s dour face with its grey, serious eyes. “You were party to the way the room seemed to affect him? As if it had some sort of bad or even evil influence on him?”

  “But did I no just say so?” McCann replied sharply, raising an eyebrow. And he sipped thoughtfully at his drink before continuing. “Aye, I was privy tae all such. Oh, I worked for them, it’s true, but at the same time I’d become a verra close friend tae both o’ them. And I’m still close tae Janet…”

  At which point he paused—possibly to consider his loyalty to the Andersons—and I sensed his sudden reticence. I waited, but after several long moments, while I didn’t want to seem too eager for knowledge, still I felt obliged to press him; even to bribe him:

  “Gavin, let me get you another drink—” I signalled the bar girl, indicating our requirements, “—to wet your whistle while you tell me the rest of it.”

  “The rest o’ it?” he replied. “Well yes, there is a rest o’ it—for what it’s worth and for all that it’s strange—but I must have ye’re word on it that it’s strictly between the two o’ us! We must have respect…not only for the dead but also for the livin’, meanin’ Janet. Kevin Anderson wasnae a madman, just an addict, a slave tae Demon Drink…” With which he tossed his own drink back, and without so much as a grimace.

  Kevin Anderson: a madman? Well it was the first I had heard of that possibility. But:

  I nodded and repeated McCann, saying, “As you wish, between the two of us; you have my word on it.” But at that very moment our drinks arrived—and both of them were the real thing: two small glasses, full to the brim with amber whisky!

  As the girl turned to leave I caught her elbow, explaining, “I didn’t want whisky. Whisky for the chef, yes, but I’m drinking Coke—with a slice of lemon!”

  “Oh!” Her hand went to her mouth. “I make mistake! I thinking you want same for both! No problem, I take it back.” But:

  “No need for that!” said the canny Scot, reaching for both glasses. Much to my shame, however, I beat him to it! And:

  “What?” he said, seeing me take up one of the glasses. “But ye cannae be serious! Not with ye’re problem as ye told it tae me. I’ll no be party tae it. Man, with what happened tae Kevin, with what goes on with any alcoholic, I’d have tae hold mahsel’ at least partly tae blame!”

  “One drink,” I told him as the girl moved off. “One and one only. And anyway, surely you can recall my mentioning how I was never a full-blown alcoholic in the first place?”

  He nodded. “So ye did, aye. Ah well then, cheers!” And once again he threw back his drink in a single gulp, licked his lips and settled back in his chair. “But no more interruptions, now. Let me get done with it while I’m still in the mood.” And after a moment’s reflection:

  “After we moved in here Kevin’s drinkin’ really took off. I think maybe he felt even more insecure. That first year, business was only middlin’; they took in enough tae keep their heads above water, but that’s all. He was hittin’ the stock; she told him tae stop; he began drinkin’ in the town. He’d run a message for the hotel—frequently for me, stuff for mah kitchen—and come back two hours later under the influence. It was verra bad o’ him, or perhaps not. I mean, it was the booze! He was like a man possessed, and what could he do about it? Oh, it had such a grip on him! And yet if ye didnae know him, ye wouldnae ken the state he was in. He kept it hid, drank vodka which is difficult tae smell on a man’s breath, managed tae control his speech and balance both; that is, while yet he retained at least a measure o’ control…

  “Aye, but then he took tae sneakin’ in, goin’ tae room number seven—which at the time was a stock room—and sleepin’ it off in there. Janet asked me tae keep an eye on him, tae try and wean him off the drink. Hah! Poor woman: she neither understood the insidious power o’ the booze, nor the strength o’ her husband’s addiction.

  “Well, I tried: I’d have a drink with him in town, try tae get him out o’ there when I thought he’d had enough, then shake mah head and leave him tae get on with it when he’d shrug me off and order, ‘just one last drink, Gavin my friend.’ For that was the problem: it never was the last one. And that’s how it went for three years and more, until a time two summer seasons ago.

  “That was when Kevin began tae ramble: his ‘hallucinations’ and what have ye—which probably had their origin not only in the booze but also in the problems at the old hotel up there on the hill. Aye, that’s when the worst o’ it began, with all the trouble up there: the weird deaths and what all.

  “And it all came taegether as spring turned tae summer…

  “First off, a young fellow—fit, full o’ life—was found dead in bed in his balcony room, one o’ them rooms lookin’ down on your room number seven. An autopsy said he’d been smothered, but how when the door was locked from the inside? Accidentally? That didn’t seem right at all! His balcony doors were open, but those balconies up there are too far apart for someone tae jump across from one tae the next. So in the end they had tae settle for a respiratory disorder or some such—maybe a heart attack? Asthma? Hay bleddy fever? None o’ which quite fitted the bill—and they left it at that. The only other thing: he’d had quite a few drinks, and maybe too many, on the night he died. Accordin’ tae the autopsy, however, that hadnae contributed tae what was considered ‘death from natural causes.’

  “But a mystery? Damn right! And such a mystery that as I’ve said, I think it may have added tae Kevin’s problem, his drunken hallucinations and delirious raving, for
after that he got a lot worse. He was forever in that room; he no longer slept with wee Janet at all but we always knew where tae find him: in room number seven, aye. And if he wasnae sleepin’ he’d be sittin’ on the balcony gazin’ out and up at that place on the hill. As for what he saw up there—what attracted him, other than the mystery o’ that young man’s inexplicable death—well, who can say? But sometimes we’d hear him chunterin’ away tae himsel’, ravin’ on about…well of all things, about a nun!”

  A nun? That rang a bell, but one that tolled faintly as yet in the back of my mind. An alarm bell, perhaps? But while I was still trying to locate the source of a suddenly sharpened sensation of unease, McCann was continuing with his story:

  “Well, the time came when Janet asked him tae see a psychiatrist: a ‘trick cyclist’, as Kevin would have it. He must have seen it as a real threat, though, for it did in fact straighten him up…well, for a wee while. But the booze and room number seven—and I think that ghostly place up there—they all had him in their thrall, so that in a matter o’ weeks his addiction had the upper hand again and he’d reverted tae his auld habits.

  “But ye ken, the locals can tell ye tales about that crumbling place up there; rumour has it that it’s always had a verra unfortunate, even a bad reputation. And as tae why I bring that up now: it’s because o’ another occurrence no more than a month or so after that young fellow pegged it in his room from no apparent cause other than a severe lack o’ breath. But actually it was far more than just another incident or ‘occurrence’: it was the death o’ another guest!

  “Aye, and would ye believe, it was also another tumble from a balcony!? Indeed the first such tumble, because it took place some weeks in advance o’ Kevin’s and from a higher balcony. And that’s one o’ the most irritatin’, aggravatin’ things about the whole tragedy—Kevin’s tragedy, that is: the muchness that the local press made o’ it. Ye see, some bleddy journalist ended up theorizin’ that Kevin’s fall was possibly—even probably—a copycat suicide, o’ all unlikely things! What’s more, this same so-called ‘reporter’ must have been doin’ some serious snoopin’, because he also mentioned Kevin’s ‘mania’, his ravin’ and such, which he could only have extracted from one o’ the staff here.

  “Well o’ course Janet sacked the entire gang without delay, except mahsel and Hannah. But too late for poor Kevin, who had already achieved the posthumous reputation o’ havin’ been a madman…

  “Goin’ back a wee bit tae the second death up there on the hill: once again this was a young man on his own, and there may have been drink involved. But tae my way o’ thinkin’: while the booze will put a body tae sleep, it’ll rarely find him staggerin’ about on a balcony in the wee small hours o’ the mornin’!

  “Anyway, the experts in the case had their own ideas. Their solution tae this second ‘death by misadventure’ was that gettin’ up tae relieve himsel’, this young man had turned the wrong way and, confused by alcohol and still half asleep, had crashed over the balcony wall.

  “Now I’m not sayin’ that’s at all unlikely, ye understand—but I really don’t recall too much credence bein’ given tae the couple in the room next door, who swore they’d heard him cryin’ out and bangin’ about before performin’ his high dive.

  “But anyway that was the end o’ that old place on the hill. What with its history, the rumours and all, and two deaths in a row, the place would have been done for even without the people from the Ministry. Oh aye, the Health and Safety men. They came tae check out the balconies—which oddly enough were found tae be perfectly safe!—but as for the rest o’ the place: a deathtrap, apparently. And a fire risk tae boot. The owners couldnae sell it so they left it and moved on…

  “And that’s about it; no more tae tell ye. Except maybe one last thing, which I’m a wee bit reluctant tae repeat because it just might tend tae reinforce that crazy-man theory. Anyway:

  “Almost the whole hotel, the Seaview in its entirety, would have heard Kevin’s ravin’ the night he died. And his last words—words that he shrieked, apparently in some kind o’ terror—were these: ‘The nun! The nun! Oh Janet—it’s the nun!’ before the sound o’ his skull breakin’ and that last long silence.

  “It woke me up in mah room all flooded in full golden moonlight, so that at first I thought he wasnae shoutin’ about some phantom nun at all. No, he could as easily have been howlin’ at the full moon. ‘The moon! The moon! Oh Janet—it’s the moon!’ Except as I’ve said, that might tend tae corroborate that silly lunatic theory. Or is it really so silly after all?

  “Huh! Who am I kiddin’ if not mahsel’? And havin’ hinted as much already, I might as well go whole hog and give ye one last tidbit. Aye, for the moon—that bleddy moon—was a full moon on all three o’ those fateful, indeed fatal occasions!

  “But there, all done and I’ll say no more, and ye must make what ye will o’ it…”

  With which, and without so much as a goodnight, McCann got up and left. And a little while later, so did I. But—

  —Just that single shot of whisky had done its dirty work on me, and utterly incapable of resistance I first went to the bar, bought a half-bottle of the filthy stuff, and without even trying to conceal it took it with me up to room number seven…

  I remember something of it. Such as sitting on my balcony thinking, drinking. And out there over the night dark sea, a shining silver disc—oh yes, a bright full moon—laying its shimmering pathway on the slumbering waters of the bay.

  Lying back in my deckchair and looking the other way, looking up at that great grim shape silhouetted against the glow of the hidden town, my rebellious or simply lying eyes were having more than a little trouble penetrating the darkness on the high hillside terraces. It was the booze, of course, but I persisted…at least until I forgot what I was looking for, only remembering when finally I found it.

  Previously it had stood watch up there along with a pair of damaged companion sentinels behind the derelict hotel’s balustraded patio wall; then it had reappeared at a location half-way down the terraces, perhaps placed there—or so I had conjectured—by some midnight romeo, to act as a roof over his bower or love nest. And now…

  …But, how had it made its way here? To this spot directly across the dark canyon of the road, behind the rim of the great retaining wall, where only its cowl and upper half were visible from my balcony? Perhaps a freakish gust of wind had carried it aloft, tumbling it down the terraces and landing it right-side-up, trapped against the hillside’s retaining wall.

  Well yes, perhaps. And perhaps not.

  But there it was, for all the world like the top half of an eerily human figure—indeed of a cowled nun!—looking down on me. And as a car crested the hill and its headlights shone however briefly on that oddly religious shape behind the high wall, so the darkness under the cowl flashed alive in a pair of triangular flares, which were at once extinguished as the beam swept on.

  These things I remember, and also laughing to myself in the stupid way that drunks do, as I stumbled in through the balcony doors to collapse upon my bed…

  I felt it coming. But don’t ask me how; I just knew. Perhaps it was this affinity of mine for weirdness, this magnetism working in my mind, my being. I had felt it, it had felt me. I had seen it, it had seen me. I definitely had not wanted to know it, and that could be why I had failed to recognize it: a natural reluctance to engage yet again with the Great and Terrible Unknown. And it very definitely did not want its existence revealed!

  Of necessity a secretive creature, it had become, unfortunately for me, practised in the erasure of any suspect knowledge of its being. And quite simply—as an adept of this indelicate art—it now intended to erase me!

  I felt it coming, its flexible mantle fully open, parachuting on the night air. But immobilized, my mind dulled by drink, I refused to believe; I denied it. It could not be…it was a nightmare…the Demon Drink had filled my mind with monsters. Ah! But what then of the thin people of old London to
wn? Or the clown on stilts as I believed I had once seen him or it? Or had they too been impure and not so simple fantasies of the flowing bowl, mere figments of fermentation, tremens of delirium?

  Yet now I could even smell it: a not-quite-taint, a waft of mushroomy fungus spores, a hybrid thing’s clammy innards, contracting to engulf and smother me…

  My God! I felt it on my face like a slither of wet leather! And knowing that it was real, I came awake screaming!

  It was there in room number seven with me, inside the wide-open balcony doors, leaning over my bed. Its membraneous canopy was closing over my head, shutting off my air, holding me down. I lashed out with both arms, groped beyond the perimeter of the thing’s web. My left hand found and grasped the bedside lamp; I automatically thumbed the switch and dragged the softly glowing lamp inside the living canopy with me.

  I was stone-cold sober in a moment, as this alien—what, intelligence?—was illumined from within. And seeing it like that, literally from within, I remembered comparing the structure of more orthodox, man-made parasols to the physical form of the octopus. Oh, yes! And now…well it wasn’t only the more orthodox ones!

  For there beneath its mantle—where, thank God, there was no huge parrot beak but, instead, surrounding a pulsating slit-like mouth, a ring of eight short, worm-like tongues, spatulate at their tips for the delivery of whatever food sustained it—I saw that indeed the thing had tentacular limbs, all eight of them connected by webbing and lined with grasping suckers.

  As for the mantle stretched between these limbs: while it was flexible and had the consistency of a bat’s wing, allowing my lamp to shine through it, still it had the strength of fine leather and was redolent of the thing’s alien essences: anaesthetic odours which were aiding it in my suffocation! Except I wasn’t about to die like that, or by allowing it to drag me to the balcony and hurling me over!