Chapter 9
The next morning, Eve was up early, impatient for the boat trip she’d been promised.
She found Aurel’s wife, Friede, in the breakfast room and there was something about her warm friendliness that reminded her of Suzy and immediately helped take the edge off the strange feeling of nervousness that had been with her since she woke up.
She couldn’t stop fiddling with the fumsup in her pocket.
“We’re not exactly swamped for the breakfast service, as you can see, so I’ll take you across the lake once you’ve eaten,” Friede told her.
“I’m not hungry,” Eve replied. “Could we go now?”
“I’m ready when you are,” Friede replied with an easygoing shrug. “Best wrap up warm.”
Eve piled on as many layers as she could before meeting Friede at the pier. She wobbled as she climbed into the boat, slipping on the frozen boards, and the fumsup fell from her pocket, landing in the water with a splash. She let out a cry of dismay and Friede shook her head.
“Water’s quite deep here, I’m afraid. I hope it wasn’t valuable, whatever fell in.”
It wasn’t the value that Eve minded, it was the fact that the fumsup had been her companion through a great many dark moments.
She was already painfully aware of its absence in her pocket, but there was nothing that could be done now.
She gritted her teeth as she sat down in the boat.
The motor sputtered into life and there was the tang of petrol mixed with the crystal scents of cold water and frosted chains.
“Ghost hunter or photographer?” Friede asked conversationally as the boat pulled away.
“Neither,” Eve replied. “Just interested, that’s all. I came here on holiday as a kid.”
Friede nodded and Eve was glad when she didn’t ask any more questions but was content to let the boat trip pass quietly.
As the hotel got closer, it was like seeing a photograph slowly developing—the details appearing, a spark of an idea made real.
But more than that, it was like coming home.
Eve felt a strange tingling sensation wash over her as she stared at the hotel.
It knew she was here. She was suddenly certain of it.
It had been waiting for her. It had been waiting for years.
Once again, she felt that stir of memory that must have come from the trip with her mother—except it wasn’t the abandoned building she remembered, but a living, breathing, bustling hotel.
The details appeared one after another, as sudden and bright as the flash of a camera—piano music and lace gloves and the splash of a fountain.
It was disorienting and Eve shook her head.
“Are you all right?” Friede asked.
“Fine,” she replied, a little tersely. She wished she’d kept a tighter hold of that fumsup.
The journey took about twenty minutes and then the boat glided past the pier, which was falling to pieces.
Several boards had come away entirely and what was left was clearly unstable.
There were signs around the pier and staked into the lawn, warning people in English, French, and German that the building was dangerous.
“Probably best to pull up on the beach,” Friede said, nodding at the small crescent of sand at the edge of the water.
When Eve scrambled out, she was annoyed to hear Friede say that she’d wait in the boat. She desperately wanted to be by herself here.
“I was thinking I’d spend the day,” she said. “Could you come back for me this afternoon? I’ll pay extra.”
Friede looked surprised. “There isn’t much here,” she said. “No buildings or villages for miles. And you won’t be able to access much of the hotel either. The place is falling down. I wouldn’t go any further than the lobby.”
“I’d planned to go for a hike afterwards. My guidebook says there are deer and ibex around.”
Friede eyed her dubiously. “That’s true enough, but you don’t seem as if you’ve brought much in the way of hiking supplies.”
Eve tried to quell her irritation. What did it matter to Friede anyway?
“I wasn’t planning to go far. Really, I just want to soak up the hotel atmosphere.
I’m an artist,” she added on a whim. It felt an odd thing to say.
She wondered if she’d ever spoken those words before. “I have my sketchbook with me.”
This seemed to reassure Friede. “All right. I can come back around three p.m.?”
“Thank you.”
Friede nodded at the prow of the boat and said, “Would you give me a shove?”
Eve leaned forwards to push the boat as hard as she could back into the lake.
“See you later,” Friede called over her shoulder.
Eve raised her hand in a wave as the boat glided away, then turned back to look up at the hotel.
There was still something achingly beautiful about it, despite the fact that the paint was peeling from its walls and most of the windows were boarded up or broken.
The once-manicured front lawns were completely overgrown with weeds and nettles, as was the dilapidated garden terrace.
Eve clambered up the beach and picked her way across the lawn, past the frames of old loungers lying on their sides and broken umbrellas with their parasols long rotted away.
To her right, the breeze from the lake whistled through an old pavilion, and to her left, pine cones and a random assortment of rubbish had collected at the bottom of a long-dry swimming pool.
The place was completely and utterly silent.
It occurred to Eve that she had never experienced a silence quite like it.
No traffic, no talking, no phones ringing and beeping.
It was peaceful, yet at the same time it seemed a strange, sad thing for a hotel to be in such a condition.
Eve could feel the ghosts of the bellhops who’d walked the halls in years gone by and see the doormen adjusting their cuffs as they hurried down to the pier to greet guests arriving by boat.
There would have been the hum of conversation and the bright ring of laughter.
The chink of teacups placed upon saucers over on the veranda where a few tables still stood.
Eve reached the staircase leading up to the front doors and placed her hand on the marble balustrade, which was icy cold to the touch.
Her footsteps seemed too loud in this silent place, too intrusive, as she climbed to the front doors, which were hanging open.
She cast one last glance back towards the sparkling glass surface of the lake, then turned and stepped over the threshold into the lobby.
At once, she recalled her mother’s comment about abandoned hotels being like sunken ships.
The sudden darkness, the stillness, the smothering sense of the past pressing in from every corner.
The place smelled of damp, and dust, and moss.
All around there were details that she hadn’t been able to make out from her mum’s photograph, such as the wrought iron banisters of the sweeping staircase at the end of the room, or how the crystals of the chandelier resembled the beaded fringe of a flapper dress, or the golden service bell that still sat on the dusty reception desk to the left, waiting for someone to ring it.
There was a fantastically ornate birdcage lift over in one corner, long out of service.
The tiles beneath Eve’s feet had probably once been a pearly white to match the pillars but were now covered in a coating of grime and grit, fallen plaster, and collections of animal droppings.
She winced at the sight of the garish graffiti on the walls and pillars, as well as the Coke cans, chocolate wrappers, and cigarette butts scattered over the floor.
It seemed such a sacrilege to leave rubbish in a place that had once been so grand and lovely.
The sight of modern life jarred as well, and Eve felt the pointless urge to start tidying up.
She turned away from the graffiti to examine the baby grand piano to the right of the double staircase.
It was entirely mirrored but so dirty and dusty that it didn’t reflect much of anything back.
It sprawled at a painful angle on the ground, one of its legs snapped in two.
The instrument’s keys were coated in dirt and many of them had sunk or snapped off altogether to lie in a sorry jumble on the floor.
When Eve glanced back the way she’d come, she saw that a tall grandfather clock loomed beside the door, the time forever frozen.
In the White Octopus Hotel, it had been a few minutes before twelve for decades.
The jewel of the lobby was the fountain.
It drew the eye even now and Eve felt that same tug towards it that she’d felt all those years ago as a child.
It was bigger than she’d realised from the photo, even taller than she was.
The three basins were scalloped shells, now dirty and chipped, but there was something still striking and spectacular about the marble octopus sprawled in the largest one at the bottom, its tentacles coiling up and around the other shells.
It reminded Eve of those old-world paintings of a ship going down in a kraken attack—all gigantic eyes, icy sprays of salt, and flailing lethal limbs.
When she peered into the basins, she saw they were littered with a few empty crisp packets, but also with coins—small change from dozens of different countries.
Small wishes for something brighter and better.
There were tiny musical notes painted on the inside of the basins too, as if the fountain had scooped up music as well as wishes.
Eve stepped back and glanced about the room again.
She couldn’t escape the notion that there were eyes watching her.
People in the corners, behind the pillars, manning the desk, waiting to take her luggage, confirm her dinner reservation, and show her to her room.
Echoes of the lobby’s past were everywhere—in the wall of empty key cubbyholes, in the abandoned brass luggage trolley, in the golden bell gleaming on the concierge desk—so tantalising, so tempting.
Eve’s fingertips tingled as she crossed the floor, her shoes crunching over pine cones and plaster, and stopped beside the desk.
Up close she saw that the bell had been nailed down, which explained why it was still there.
It was an elaborate object, designed to resemble the navigational wheel of a ship.
She raised her hand and tapped the button lightly with her palm.
The peal of the bell rang out louder than she’d expected.
A camera went off inside her head again with a bright flash and she gasped and stumbled back from the desk.
There was a magnetic magician’s smile.
The splash of a coin landing in the fountain.
The scent of peppermint.
Kind brown eyes…
Eve felt her breath catch and the sudden threat of those tears that come from someone being unexpectedly kind when you’re feeling unbearably sad. Which was odd, because Eve never cried….
Then the images faded away and she was staring into the mirror on the opposite wall.
Its ornate golden frame was fashioned with seaweed and shells, and the glass was so tarnished that it was like looking at herself through fog.
It was clearly extremely old, and the idea that guests and staff from the thirties—or perhaps even Nikolas Roth himself—had walked past it, their reflections appearing in the glass just as Eve’s was doing now, was enough to make her shiver.
What had happened here? Why did the hotel close down so suddenly?
Why did all of Nikolas Roth’s paintings vanish without a trace?
And why did she feel so strongly that she’d been to the hotel once before, not as it was now, but as it was then?
The past pressed so close against her in this building, this moss palace for ghosts.
The shadows shifted and flickered, and the barrier between past and present felt thin and fragile and almost not there at all.
Still, Eve would far rather have had ghosts for company than rabbits.
She glanced at the bell on the desk again.
It wasn’t dusty or dirty like everything else.
In fact, it gleamed a brilliant gold, as if it had been polished.
Eve supposed one of the hotel’s recent visitors must have done it—perhaps a photographer hoping to capture a more striking image.
It certainly was striking, and a little jarring, to see the bell shining so vibrant and bright, like a single pop of colour in an otherwise black-and-white photograph.
Perhaps the key her mother had described finding here was placed on the desk for the same reason.
But there were no keys there today. The only other object was a large book, stamped with the crest of an octopus—a white one, with a single black tip on one tentacle.
Eve stared down at it. It was her octopus.
Her mind flew back to her flat and all the dozens and dozens of sketchbooks she owned that were full of tentacles.
She put her hand on the cover, but before she could open it, a white tentacle burst out of the book and wrapped itself all the way up her arm.
It was slightly sticky with ink and thick with muscle, squeezing just a little too hard.
But still, Eve smiled. “Hello, old friend.”