Page 47 of The White Octopus Hotel
“Oh, that.”
The tortoise had escaped or something. That’s what the letter from his mother had said. God knew why she’d thought to share this news with him in the first place. Max swore that John fretted more over that tortoise than some of the other men did about their sweethearts and children.
“Can you organise something?” Thomas prompted.
“I’ll get William onto it,” Max replied.
“Good man. Here, take this.”
Thomas held out the ragtime record. Max went to take it, but when he raised his hand, there was suddenly a pistol in it, aiming right at Thomas’s head. Before he could stop himself, he’d pulled the trigger. There was theBANGand the echo and the slimy warmth of blood splattering over his skin in a dark, sticky rain.
He jerked upright in bed, an anguished sound escaping from his lips. For long moments, he was completely unable to work out where he was or what was happening. He was still there, lost in the trenches, but then he felt Eve’s hand holding tightly on to his and it all came back—the White Octopus Hotel and his fellow occupants on the ward, who were trying to pretend they hadn’t been woken up by another one of his episodes. And even though the dream was over, and he was now awake, he couldn’t stop trembling as he heard one of his dead captains over in the corner of the room, discussing with another officer whether or not they ought to set up some neurological wards to deal with the effects of shell shock.
“Bad idea,” the captain said at once. “You realise they’d be magnets. Attracting all those officers with insufficient stoutness of heart. As surely as flies are drawn to shit.”
Fear was icy cold, but shame was a thing that burned so hot it was a miracle it didn’t incinerate him on the spot.
Chapter 30
Max couldn’t sleep. His chest was on fire, and he couldn’t lie still, and he couldn’t battle his memories, and he couldn’t stand it. His thoughts kept trying to return to plans of escape in the spring, but there was nothing to escape backtoanymore. Finally, he struggled out of bed and slipped into the corridor, limping up and down the maze of hallways until he found himself out on the rooftop terrace. The servicemen came up here when the sun was shining sometimes, to rest on the loungers, or read books, or paint. The hotel staff had provided them with art materials, and some of the men had dabbled with paintbrushes to while away the time. Max had never been up here at night before, though.
It was clear and moonbright and he supposed it must be extraordinarily cold, yet he couldn’t feel it. The outline of mountains rose in the distance, their pitiless peaks piercing the very top of the world. The moon had tumbled down from the sky and drowned in the lake, the orb shining from beneath the black water. Snow lay all over the roof, glowing almost pale pink in the night. He knew something must have broken inside his head because he didn’t feel real. He wasn’t a person. He was a flock of black birds that were all flying in different directions, scattering towards the snowy peaks inthe distance. He was here and not here. Already gone. Finished, at last.
As Max walked barefoot over the roof, he didn’t feel the cold of the snow underfoot. When he reached the balcony, he climbed up onto the low stone wall, sparkling and slippery with ice, and stared down at the long, long drop to the flagstones below. He must have been six or seven floors up. It’d probably be a quick death. One step; that’s all it would take. There was an icy breeze, but it didn’t touch him because he was already a ghost, just like the others.
A man climbed up onto the wall to his right; Max could see his coat out of the corner of his eye and guessed it was Thomas, come to be with him at the end. They stood side by side for a while, regarding the drop below, but then a woman’s voice said, “Bit cold for a walk, isn’t it?”
Max looked around and it wasn’t Thomas beside him at all, but Eve. For a moment, he thought he must be imagining her. But she didn’t melt away as he stared at her, just calmly held his gaze with her different-coloured eyes.
“What are you doing?” he croaked.
“What areyoudoing?” she countered.
“I’m…” His gaze slid to the drop again. His foot crept a tiny bit closer to the edge. “Well, I’m…I just don’t see any point, that’s all. To any of this. I feel so damned strange, and I can’t find my way back to how I was before. I’ve…I’ve only got half a soul left.”
Eve was silent for a moment. Then she carefully reached for his hand, brushing his fingertips with hers. “Thomas knew you,” she said quietly. “The real you. What would he say?”
“What?”
“Thomas. If he was here with us now, what would he say to you?”
“He would…well, he’d say…”
“Get down from there, you blasted fool!”
Max heard the words clearly and realised that Thomaswasthere after all, leaning against the balcony beside Eve, the tip of his cigarette glowing red in the dark as he looked right at Max and shook his head with an expression of utter contempt. Max stared, but Thomas quickly vanished, leaving just a twist of smoke to mark where he had been. But his presence had shaken Max out of his own head and made him feel a tiny bit more like himself—or, at least, the man he used to be.
“Climb down,” he said to Eve beside him, horrified to see how close to the edge she was. One wrong move, one slip upon the ice, and they would both go over.
To his relief, she stepped down at once, offering her hand to help Max too. He took it, but then his heel slid on the icy stone and he felt himself fall towards the abyss that had seemed so welcoming a moment ago but now seemed wrong, all wrong. And worse, he was pulling Eve with him. He tried to let go, but she tightened her grip, and she was stronger than she looked, grinding the bones of his hand together, and then there were tentacles, eight of them, bursting from her chest to curl around him, twisting into his clothes, wrapping around his limbs.
Eve and the octopus dragged him bodily from the wall. He landed in a crumpled heap beside her andnowhe could feel the cold at last. The snow was soaking through his pyjamas and the air was freezing, sharp as bayonets in the dark. The tentacles were gone but he saw that Eve was bleeding, scarlet drops splattering onto the snow. And there was ink, too—on the snow, and on his pyjamas, and glistening upon the stone balustrades.
“What are you?” he gasped.
“A monster, I suppose.”
He wanted to deny it, but the words faltered in his throat. Ordinary women didn’t have tentacles. His head throbbed so badly that even his eyes ached.
