The Royale will be closing in two days. Not just for the season, but for good. In the 90s the hotel would have stayed open into November, sometimes all-year-round, but like all of Saltmare it has long been in steep decline.
In this last week of October all of the guests have checked out. The weather is turning wetter, windier, the drafts finding their weasel way into the cracks and under the doors. The central heating creaks and bangs, but is powerless against the damp. The staff is down to a skeleton crew. Tonight there are only two employees on shift, and one is floating in the pool.
The seaside town of Saltmare is similarly deserted, the pier lights switched off weeks ago. The season has ended, and it has been a poor season, just like every one since 2008. The rain sluices the streets near the hotel and reflects countless neon signs: Ice Creams, Amusements, Bars and More! Open Til Late. Just Step Inside. Their red, green and purple lights glitter against grey puddles and black skies, but there is no one to read them. The establishments behind the words squat darkly, empty like rows of missing teeth.
If we were to take a walk through the Royale on one of these last, doomed nights of its life we would be perfectly safe. We might see more than we wish to, however. Would you still like to join me?
In the lobby we will find the reception desk, which is grey and saw its best days before the millennium. Both points are also true of the man sitting behind it. His name is Howard, and he will be leaving soon. He won't see us, and will sigh into the silence, flipping the pages of his newspaper with nicotine-stained fingers.
We will walk on. You may wish to examine the posters still hanging on the walls for events gone by; The Big New Years Bash in 2004, the 1997 summer gala, a Christmas party with date illegible. Dance music once pulsed down these corridors, shaking loose the paintwork and raising the dust. Now only the dust remains.
The carpet beneath us is a faded brown, but was then a garish orange. The guests of thirty years ago thought it was vibrant, stylish. Both the carpet and the people have dwindled in the years since, and become memory. (You might think you still hear their voices from time to time - excited shouts, and throaty laughter - but it would be an illusion. Nothing more.)
The grand stairs rise up on our right. They lead to the bedrooms; there are sixty, all decorated in 1992's latest designs. Most of them will never be entered again. Those on the top three floors have sea views, looking out towards the bay and its dead, grey water. Every room has a television. Perhaps you might find one of them switched on, blaring senseless fuzz, despite not being touched for months. (We will assume there is an electrical fault, and ignore the strangely familiar patterns moving in the static.)
We will keep going, past the dining room on our left (Please Wait to Be Seated). We will pause briefly to peer into the Games Room, with its penny slot machines and arcade-style shoot-em-ups with names like The Mummy's Revenge, and Star-Destroyer. The electronic beeps are quietened, now, and only the echoes linger. Too Bad,You Lose.
(Do not become distracted here. If a flash of movement reflected in glass and chrome catches your eye, remember: We are alone. You must be imagining things. And we have business elsewhere.)
We see Greta Mariani, who is drifting on her back in the Royale's pool. The pool is large, perfectly square, and tiled in warm amber. Greta's hair is profoundly red, and as it floats about her face it appears that there are cords of blood spiralling in the water. She kicks her feet, watching the ripples distort her legs like a funhouse mirror, and thinks about the nightmare.
She had dreamed she was home, in the Italian town she left behind when she moved to the UK for university. Greta spends the summers working at the hotel and this year she has stayed too long. The pay is not good, but she lives free of charge, and that is better. She tells her father that she must earn money and this is only half a lie. She does not wish to return home ever again.
The nightmare brings her back to why; to crystals of glass suspended in the air like snowflakes. That sublime moment of flying, the blood rushing to her head, and then the crash as the car returns to the ground. Greta had survived that night five years before with cuts and a concussion. Her boyfriend in the passenger seat did not. Both of them had been too young to drive, and he would grow no older.
No, she is never going back again.
A sound intrudes on her solitude and Greta's head jerks up. It came from the changing rooms, through an archway beyond the showers. (She cannot hear us, and so we cannot warn her of what we see.)
Greta pauses a moment, treading water, but there is nothing. She turns away, deciding that she is imagining again, and begins to swim idly on her front.
Behind her turned back, a shadow moves out from the archway and crawls across the tiled floor.
(We should look away, now.)
Howard is still in the lobby, locking the doors and turning off the lights. He will be leaving in a few minutes. Then the hotel will be quiet.
He will drive home along the sea front, passing by closed shops and boarded-over windows, all in the ever-glow of neon signs*.* He won't think about Greta, who is now all alone in the dying Royale. There are no other cars on the road tonight.
Saltmare lies still in the dark - and as it sleeps, it dreams.