The White Octopus Hotel, page 22
The water wasn’t just cold but icy—a welcome relief after the sweltering chambers. Eve ducked her entire head beneath the surface and when she came back up, she could suddenly hear the distinctive clip-clop of a horse’s hooves. For a moment, she thought perhaps it was the water ringing in her ears, but no, the horse was there; the horse was real. She wiped the water from her eyes in time to see it trot through the archway. A grey horse, streaked with dirt and mud, just like the one she’d glimpsed that night outside the windows of the Fountain Room, peering inside with deep, dark eyes.
The eyes and the music.
The music and the eyes.
And the hand holding hers in the dark…
The horse carried a couple of saddlebags, along with some loose items tied on with straps. Eve saw wire cutters, a gas mask, a bayonet sheath, and a trench periscope. Then the horse tossed its head and trotted briskly down the length of the pool, quickly disappearing through the archway at the opposite end.
She swam to the edge of the pool and climbed out. The horse had been filthy, yet there were no muddy hoofprints to mark its passage. She snatched up her robe and went out into the corridor, but there was no sign of the horse. When she walked through the doorway into the room with the warm mineral pool, she found it was much larger than the cold one, with its own marble fountain at the far end. It looked very much like the fountain in the lobby, except that this octopus’s tentacles trailed all the way into the pool itself. There were several guests here, swimming or relaxing on the loungers placed around the perimeter.
Max was swimming when she arrived but came out of the pool when he saw her. He grabbed up a towel and wrapped it around his shoulders before walking over. “Finished?” he asked.
“I just saw a horse by the plunge pool,” she said.
“Ah. The horse.”
“Did you see it too?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen it. The others used to speak of it, though. Back in 1918. There were twelve of us and everyone said they saw the horse in the steam baths at one point or another. Except me.”
“It looked like a war horse,” Eve said. “It had wire cutters, and a gas mask, and other things tied to its saddle.”
“Yes,” Max replied. “That’s the one. Eleven men don’t all imagine the same thing at different times, so I suppose it’s a ghost.”
“Why would a war horse haunt the steam baths?”
He shrugged. “Why would an eavesdropper haunt the Palm Bar, or an octopus haunt the sixth floor? The White Octopus is not like other hotels.”
They began to retrace their steps through the heated chambers until they were back in the vast frigidarium. As before, there were several guests enjoying the Wellness Area, reclining on the benches, or reading newspapers. A sense of calm tranquillity filled the space. Until the sound of hooves echoed upon the tiles.
Chapter 38
Max—The White Octopus Hotel, 1935
The frigidarium filled with gasps and whispered exclamations. Eve turned to look at the horse, but Max remained staring straight ahead at the door leading to the changing rooms, his ears ringing with the clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop. Horses had been ever present at the Western Front. There had been supply horses, and ammunition horses, ambulance drivers and cavalry chargers. And then there had been the officers’ mounts. Max had had several because—one way or another—horses didn’t last long in a war.
But he knew somehow, before he even turned around, which horse this was. He couldn’t have said how he knew. There was nothing especially distinctive about the sound of one horse’s hoofbeats over another’s. But, still, he knew.
People were exclaiming and muttering as the horse stopped, right behind Max. He felt the huff of its warm breath in his hair, the affectionate nudge of his shoulder.
He closed his eyes briefly. “Hello, Stranger.”
He turned, bracing himself in case the horse looked the way it had when he’d last seen it. But, no, the grey stallion was dirty yet unharmed. Stranger’s coat was the exact colour of storm clouds, and his dark eyes were gentle and noble. The most impossibly majestic creature. Max had believed that there was a horse—a horse that, for some reason, chose never to appear to him even when it showed itself to all the others—but he had never dreamt that it would be his horse. So much more than a mount. A friend. A comrade.
He trembled as he raised a hand to place gently upon the horse’s muzzle. It had been too long since he had touched a horse, and he felt a deep rush of gladness, remembering anew how the presence of a horse at the front helped raise the morale of all who came into contact with it. They were magical beasts, and for a moment, the frigidarium and all the people inside it ceased to exist. It was only Max and the horse, staring at each other, and Thomas’s voice echoing down through the years.
That’s how many times I’ve been over the top. Four times already. This’ll be the last, I think….
Max had the exact same sense of clarity now. He looked at his horse and he knew, deep in his bones, that he wasn’t going to check out of the White Octopus Hotel. Not this time. Anna was right. It was a cold feeling, but somehow not as terrifying as he’d expected it to be. Stranger leaned into his touch, huffing out his breath again, before brushing past him towards the door.
Wait, Max wanted to call. Don’t go.
But the horse had not been a part of the world for a very long time now. It headed swiftly for the exit and as it passed beneath the archway, an object fell from one of its saddlebags. Max walked over to pick it up. It was a trench watch—something between a pocket watch and a wristwatch—of the kind that had been worn by many officers during the war. It was broken, the hands on its face were all still, but when he slid the watch from the wide leather strap and turned it over, he saw a familiar inscription engraved upon the back.
For Max. Love, Mother.
“Is it yours?” Eve asked quietly at his side.
He nodded. “I lost it. Back in the trenches.”
A couple of guests were coming over, eager to see what had fallen from the horse’s bag.
“It’s nothing,” he said in response to the questions. “Only a timepiece that no longer works.”
The guests wandered off, disappointed, but right at that moment, the watch suddenly started ticking again in his hand, the thin second hand moving rapidly around the face once more.
“Huh.” Max stared down at it. “Maybe it wasn’t broken at all. Perhaps it just couldn’t operate in the trenches.” He glanced at Eve. “We always used to say that time didn’t work in the same way there. Some nights it seemed to stop working altogether. You almost couldn’t call it time, it was…it was something else.”
“Why would a horse bring this back to you now?” Eve asked, narrowing her eyes at it. “What does it mean?”
He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, but he knew well enough what it meant. His time was finally up.
* * *
—
The rest of the day passed quickly with octopus-hunting. They were up to thirty-four of the sea creatures now and ten clocks, leaving only two octopuses and two clocks to go.
“Still no sign of the Sugar Room,” Eve said later that afternoon. “I don’t understand where it could be. Do you?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never seen or heard of such a place here.”
Eventually, they retired to the Reading Room, where Eve opened up a sketchbook and began doodling out a map of the ground floor. Max welcomed the opportunity to sit quietly with his thoughts for a moment, replaying the encounter with his horse over and over again. His skin still tingled with the thrill of it, the deep joy of being reunited with an old friend. At the same time, the shock felt a bit like a blow to the head; he could hear the echoes of it ringing inside his ears. The same thought flew through his mind.
This is the end of the road.
I will never see 1936.
I will never check out….
Did that mean he was going to die? Or simply vanish? Perhaps get lost within the hotel’s walls, like the octopus on the sixth floor? He recalled what Eve had said about how he’d visited her in 2016 as an old man. Could that be possible? It didn’t make sense, but then nothing much in this place seemed logical. The thought of old age was suddenly exhausting and unwelcome. He took a deep breath and looked out the window. Now, as in 1918, there was something about looking at the lake and the mountains outside that was deeply soothing. They were so old, so still, so unmoved by all of mankind’s trials and troubles. They’d been here long before Max arrived, and they’d still stand many years after he was gone. The thought was comforting. He was glad to have his trench watch back, although it was strange to see it ticking out the seconds normally. It was the last thing his mother had sent him before she died. A precious part of life before. Holding the watch in his hand made him feel closer to her than he had in many years.
Eventually, Max put the watch back in his pocket, beside the fumsup, and went over to look at Eve’s map. It was functionally accurate, showing the correct position and proportions of the various rooms. But the map was more than a map. It was beautiful too. She had decorated it with sketches of the golden palm trees in the Palm Bar, the fan mirror in the Smoking Room, the grandfather clock in the lobby, and a shower of musical notes made from water in the Fountain Room. In a separate building she’d drawn the steam baths, with their various chambers. There was a perfect charcoal sketch of Stranger in the frigidarium—a dirty war horse, stark against the splendour of Italian mosaics and Moorish arches.
“That is remarkably lovely,” Max said. He had to resist the urge to ask if he might have it, this perfect sketch of his most loved horse.
Eve glanced up. “I was hoping it might reveal the location of the Sugar Room, but I’ve mapped out the entire ground floor and there isn’t space for it anywhere. It must be a secret room, like the corridor I found. Mrs. Roth told me it appears at different times, for different reasons. It could be anywhere—on the roof, or in the nonexistent basement, or in the steam baths.”
At the mention of the steam baths, Max felt the sudden urge to apologise again for something that had happened seventeen years ago for him but hadn’t yet happened for her at all. Something he had believed at the time that they both wanted but later realised she hadn’t wished for at all. Even now, the regret was like a small piece of shell fragment that he couldn’t dig out of his skin.
“Perhaps it’s back there,” Eve suddenly said.
“What? Where?”
“The Sugar Room. Maybe it’s back there in 1918.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I saw a painting in the walls, of the three time-travelling keys.”
“There are three of them?”
“Mmm. Mine and two others. Perhaps one of them goes back to 1918.”
“Perhaps, but what has that got to do with the Sugar Room?”
“The keys all turned into sugar,” Eve replied. “While I was looking at them. And there was a guest in the Palm Bar last night. I heard her say that one of the octopuses is hidden in the past.”
“I don’t know,” Max replied. “I already told you that I didn’t see the Sugar Room, and I never heard anyone else mention it either. Let’s eat. They’ll be serving dinner by now.”
“All right. Shall we meet back downstairs in twenty minutes?”
Max nodded. “See you then.”
Chapter 39
Eve—The White Octopus Hotel, 1935
Before changing for dinner, Eve wanted to check Rooms 17 and 7 again, to see if they were still unoccupied. As before, there was no answer to her knock on either door and no sign of occupancy. On her way down the corridor, she realised that she had left her map of the hotel downstairs in the Reading Room and made a mental note to go back for it after dinner.
In Room 27, she dressed quickly in a pale green lace gown edged with pearls. It had thin straps and fell low at the back, and her octopus wouldn’t keep still. It drifted up her arm, across her collarbone, over her right shoulder, down between her shoulder blades. And although Eve looked in the wardrobe for a shawl or cape or jacket, or perhaps another fur, there was nothing to cover her shoulders. Well, so be it. People would just have to see the octopus.
As she went downstairs, she was aware of some of the guests pointing it out to one another and exclaiming in surprise, but no one seemed particularly bothered. There were far stranger things, after all, in this hotel. When she joined Max in the restaurant, he couldn’t fail to notice the tattoo, now on her shoulder, and, to her surprise, he blushed.
“Why are you blushing?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“I’m not blushing,” he returned, picking up his napkin and laying it across his lap. “I’ve never blushed in my life. And certainly not at an octopus.”
She shrugged. There was something liberating about having the tattoo on display like this, instead of being wrapped up in her usual black turtleneck. The green lace was so soft against her skin that it practically felt as if she wasn’t wearing anything at all. It would be difficult, at home, to go back to hiding. But, of course, when she checked out, she would forget she’d ever done anything different. And if she succeeded in winning the writing paper, then she would have a different life and no tattoo at all.
After dinner, Eve and Max searched the hotel for several more hours but found no further octopuses. It was approaching midnight by the time they returned to the Smoking Room. The thin guest from before was there, sprawled half-asleep in one of the armchairs, but most people had already retired for the night.
Eve lowered her voice and said, “What about the basement? Didn’t that guest say there were forbidden objects in there?”
“There isn’t a basement,” Max replied.
“How do you know?”
“We’ve been over every inch of this place, and I haven’t seen any stairways going underground, have you? There’s no button on the lift either.”
Eve glanced back at the guest as he got up from his chair and stared into the mirror.
“He was right about the octopus in the wall,” she pointed out.
“Well, even a broken clock—” Max began.
Before he could go on, the other guest let out a cry as his reflection suddenly lunged right out of the mirror and clamped both hands around his throat. The guest immediately jerked back, stumbling out of the reflection’s grip. In the mirror, the reflection smiled—a cold and oddly vacant expression—before merging back into mimicking the guest, who had whirled around to grab a nearby humidor. He hurled it straight at the mirror, shattering the glass, which fell to the ground in dagger-sharp pieces.
“That’s seven years bad luck, Mr. Morton,” said a voice from the doorway.
Anna stood there holding her rabbit in her arms, cradled against the scarlet silk of her gown.
“I was about to be killed,” the guest replied, his voice a screech. “He was going to kill me!”
“I doubt it,” Anna said. “The mirror has never murdered anyone, to my knowledge.”
“It’s happened to you before anyway, hasn’t it?” Max said, his eyes fixed upon the guest. “You told us your reflection tried to strangle you just the other day.”
The guest goggled at him. “That’s—Of course it’s never happened before, you fool! I only said that because she told me to.”
“Who?”
“Her!” He pointed with a trembling finger at Anna. “Annabella Roth!”
Eve’s breath stuck in her throat. Annabella? Her mind flew back to the napkin, lavender grey, with an octopus motif and a list of names. She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. It didn’t. Her mother had crossed out “Annabella.”
“I think you have become a little overwhelmed, Mr. Morton,” Anna said. “Perhaps a shot of whiskey or some smelling salts might—”
“You’re deranged if you think I’m staying here!” the guest snarled. “I’m leaving and don’t any of you try to stop me! I won’t remain another second!”
“No one is keeping you here, sir,” Anna said pleasantly. “The lake has frozen, but I will gladly summon a sleigh to escort you to the other side.”
Without another word, she turned and left the room. The guest hurried after her, glancing fearfully into shadows as he went, as though he expected clutching hands to reach out of the walls for him.
“We could follow him,” Max said quietly. “We could leave this place too.”
“You should,” Eve said.
“But you won’t?”
She shook her head. “I can’t. I can’t check out to a time that’s not my own. Why did he call her Annabella?”
“That’s her full name, I believe,” Max replied. “Why, what does it matter?”
“My sister,” Eve replied. “Her name was Bella….”
But was it, really? For the first time, it occurred to Eve that her sister’s given name might actually have been something else, even if they had all called her Bella. Perhaps her mother had reconsidered that crossed-out name on the napkin. It wasn’t as if Eve had ever seen Bella’s birth certificate or any formal documents.
