Page 49 of The White Octopus Hotel
The corridor stretching before Eve seemed impossibly long, and there were paintings hung on either side, like a gallery. Down the walls, she saw monsters of every description, barbed wire and blackclouds, skeletons and sin. She ought to have screamed, perhaps, or run. Instead, she turned to look at the nearest painting. It portrayed a woman staring into a mirror, at a reflection that had no face. The painting drew Eve like a magnet; they all did. She gazed at the canvas and felt…better. Lighter. The paintings were all disturbing in some way, and yet she was comforted by them.
She began to walk down the corridor. There was a painting of a disembodied head, and another of a freshly dug grave, and one more of a fumsup charm, its glass eyes staring at her blankly. Many of the paintings portrayed keys—always three of them. Keys in crypts or coffins or clocks. Keys tangled up with tentacles and tree roots. Usually they were silhouettes, but one painting showed them in more detail and Eve recognised them as room keys from the hotel. There was her own key, to Room 27. Another key for Room 17. And one for Room 7.
She recalled what Mrs. Roth had told her about the time-travelling guests—the sevens—and that there were three rooms. She already knew her mother had had one of the other two keys when she’d visited. But who had the other one? Or had Mrs. Roth said something about it being lost? Eve went to touch the canvas, but then something happened to the keys. She thought they’d turned to ice at first, but when the grains began to pour through her hands, she realised they were sugar. Before long, the keys were gone and the frame was empty, only a sparkling pile of sugar remaining upon the floor.
She tried to brush the stickiness from her fingers as she continued down the corridor. But no matter how far she walked, she never seemed to reach the end of it. She started to wonder how long she’d been there and whether she would ever leave. There were worse places, she supposed. At least it was calm here and peaceful. And there was music too. She could hear it playing—softly to begin with, but getting louder and more distinct, until she came upon a painting of a gramophone. There was a record propped up besideit and the words on the front spelled “Frog Legs Rag.” The music spilled straight from the canvas. Eve stood and looked at it for some time before moving on, the music becoming fainter and fainter behind her.
She walked and walked, but still the end of the corridor never got any closer and perhaps there simply wasn’t an end at all. Time passed and Eve couldn’t tell whether it was minutes or hours, but eventually she found herself back at the place where she’d started, in front of the painting of the woman whose reflection had no face. There was no signature, she realised. In fact, there had been no signatures on any of the paintings she’d seen. Could they be Roth’s missing artworks? Yet, these paintings couldn’t possibly all have been produced by the same person; there were too many styles and mediums.
She reached out to take the painting down from its hook, thinking that if she removed the canvas from the frame, then perhaps there might be some clue as to its ownership written on the back. But when she removed it, she found another painting hidden on the wall behind it—a different painting of a glossy black bird. She removed this one as well, only to reveal another painting, and another, and another, until there were dozens of paintings spread across the floor by her feet. The newest painting revealed upon the wall showed a rooftop.
Eve took a step closer, feeling her skin burn as her octopus tattoo made its way to the back of her hand. It was a nighttime painting of the hotel’s rooftop, hundreds of stars glittering in the sky above the faint silhouette of mountain peaks. Two people stood on the low wall, perilously close to the edge. It was hard to tell much about them since they had their backs to the painter, but one was a woman in a fur coat and the other was a barefoot man in pyjamas. They were almost, but not quite, holding hands, and Eve had the strong sense that they meant to jump.
It would be death, from that height. Death and broken bonesand blood freezing on flagstones. The painted shadows around the two people seemed birdlike—an explosion of dark wings disappearing into some unknowable place. Eve shivered. But when she reached out to remove this painting from the wall, her octopus tattoo unfurled its tentacles too, right out of her skin and into the canvas, which dissolved into black feathers of ink, and then the tentacles were pulling her through the frame, and through the wall, and the air was suddenly freezing as she staggered out onto a daylight rooftop.
“Would you stop that?” Eve snapped. “I’m not a doll to be moved about a doll’s house!”
The tentacles flailed around her for a moment before withdrawing into her skin and lying still, and Eve picked herself up in a disgruntled fashion.
Unlike the dark nighttime roof she had just viewed, the sun was high in the sky. She could hear the chatter of guests floating up from the grounds, and the air was filled with the promise of snow. It was far too cold to be outside without a coat and she thought longingly of the glossy sable fur in the cloakroom downstairs. She looked down at herself with a grimace, seeing that she was covered in ink. It dripped from her hair, and stained her dress in splatters, and was sticky against her skin. Ink blots and smudges were the reason she always wore black at home, but she’d never been so thoroughly coated in ink as this. Someone coughed behind her, and she spun around to see that she wasn’t alone on the roof, after all. Max was there, staring as all the colour drained from his face.
“Ah.” Eve lifted her hands in what she hoped was an appeasing gesture. “Please don’t scream.”
Strangely, he didn’t seem afraid. There was a different emotion in his expression. He took a step closer, looking at Eve as if this was the first time he was actually seeing her. “Good God,” he said. “Itisyou.”
Chapter 33
Max was still staring at Eve like she was a ghost. “Here,” he whispered. “Take my coat.”
“I don’t want your—” she began, but he’d already removed it and thrown it towards her. She caught it instinctively, covering it in ink and making it pointless to pass it back.
“The stains probably won’t come out,” she warned, slipping it on, finding the woollen material still warm from his body.
“It doesn’t matter,” he replied. “I owe you a coat. How are you doing this? How are you moving about through time like this?”
“I already told you. I have a key. And anyway, you’re doing it too. You came to see me in 2016.”
“Twenty sixteen?” Max slowly shook his head, aghast.
“You don’t believe me?”
“No, I do. That’s the problem. You were there, back in 1918. You saved my life, right here on this very roof. Can you use this key to get back?” Max asked. “To your own time, I mean?”
“Yes, but only if I check out for good and sacrifice all my memories of the hotel.”
“Is there any possibility that I might persuade you to do so?”
“None at all,” Eve replied levelly. “Not until I’ve finished what I came here to do.”
Max scowled. “I don’t wish to offend you, but aren’t you a little old for scavenger hunts?”
Eve wiped away a trickle of ink that was running slowly down from her hairline, heading straight for her eye. “If you don’t wish to be offensive, then try not saying offensive things.”
“It isn’t safe,” Max replied. “You were here in 1918. I’ll swear it in front of the Eavesdropper if you wish. So why are the Roths denying all knowledge of you?”
“Perhaps they don’t remember,” she said. “Maybe they forgot me. The hotel works differently for time-travelling guests. They tell me we pay for our stay with our memories of our time here. The bellhop explained that when I check out, I’ll forget everything that happened at the hotel. Maybe it works both ways? Perhaps the staff will forget about me as well.”
“Convenient,” Max replied. “But if you won’t listen to me, then perhaps you might listen to yourself. You wrote to me, just last week. I can show you the postcard and your own words printed there. Why would you ask me to come and help if you weren’t in trouble?”
