Weep (Book 1): The Irish Epidemic Read online

  The taxi stopped outside the hotel, a long, four-storey building. The front doors were braced shut against the storm. Spray lashed up from waves that washed over the pier. The windshield wipers were on the highest setting, but they were woefully inefficient. Fin paid while the driver cursed about what the salt water was going to do to his car.

  “Will you be around in the morning? I’ll be leaving about seven.”

  “I’ll be up, give me a bell.” The taxi driver handed him a business card.

  “Well, best of luck with the patients at home.” Fin left him a tip and ran into the hotel.

  Christmas music played in the empty lobby. He knew the order of the next nine songs. It’s all he listened to at work for the last two months. The veteran staff members swore the festive album had not been updated in over a decade. In a few more hours, when the management had long gone home and the majority of guests still awake were too drunk to care, he would have an audiobook playing over the speakers.

  Cereal boxes wrapped in festive paper nestled beneath two real fir trees. Every night he clogged the hoover with their needles. The staff behind the reception desk looked miserable.

  “How’s it going, lads?” Fin asked.

  They visibly cheered up when he arrived because they could now go home.

  “Evening, Fin. I’ve been dying of thirst since I arrived this morning. I’ll raise a pint for you at the Christmas party tonight,” Rebecca said. She took off a pair of brown reindeer antlers and gave them to him. He dropped them in the recycling bin.

  He unplugged his fully charged work radio and clipped it to his belt. There was a relaxed atmosphere in the building as the last few business hours wound down. At the end of each shift, all incidents of note were written down for the nightporter. There were too few people in house for there to be any complaints or special requests. When he opened the log book, ‘Merry Christmas’ was written under tonight’s date. Beneath that he read that a bus tour of Americans, that were not due to leave until the following day, had already left. He would not have to spend an hour bringing their bags out to the bus in the morning, nor listen to their complaints that appliances were broken. Nine times out of ten, he went up and showed them exactly why they were wrong.

  “Most of the guests left during the day,” Rebecca said. “Worried the weather will get worse.”

  “Nobody wants to stick around and witness the full wrath of Peggy. How are you getting home later tonight? I’m pretty sure Achill Island will have washed away before morning,” Fin said.

  “I’m staying with Ciara. Oh, and the country music act in the bar is cancelled. The golden oldie group that booked it rescheduled for after the holiday.”

  “No scone zombies or country music, it really is starting to feel like Christmas.”

  “George and Ciara are on the late shift behind the bar. They must have asked about twenty times in the last hour if they can close up early, but Andrew has them on for the full shift.”

  “Easy money,” Fin said. “Plus they save by not buying a heap of drink at the staff party.” He did not add that he was glad they were forced to stay; he always welcomed the company on the long, lonely nights. Solene had not replied to any of his messages, he expected all the travel would mean she would not stay up late texting him.

  Bartenders were on the late shift to keep the residents’ bar open. Once they kicked out the stragglers, he would suggest Ciara and George stay on for a few pints, their own little staff party.

  Andrew stuck his head out from the back office. “Fin, you’re only in? Come here to me.”

  A bank of monitors showed the camera feeds from across the hotel; as many eyes were on staff as the guests. Everything that happened outside of the rooms and toilets was captured and stored here. It took Fin several months to discover all of the camera blindspots.

  “Where’s your tie?”

  “I overheard a guest saying he forgot his while he was on his way out into town, I gave him mine. Don’t worry, I’ll bill the hotel for it.”

  Andrew raised an eyebrow. Fin barely kept a straight face, Andrew broke first and smiled. “I’ll make sure to order you a few clip on ones after the break. I just need to run through a few last minute things before I can put this place behind me – for a few days at least.” Andrew brought him through to the bar to make himself an espresso. The waiting staff still on the floor tried to look busy in his presence. He knew the impact he had and often revelled in causing them discomfort, musing that it’s harder to look busy than actually be busy. Fin caught a grin at the corner of his mouth, the corner out of view of the other staff.

  “The most important thing is this: the hotel is closed. Don’t let a soul in through the main door, no maintenance or deliveries.” He swayed where he stood. Small beads of sweat bubbled up on his forehead. He wiped his face with a napkin. “Typical, my body waits until I’m off before getting sick.”

  “Seems to be a lot of it going around,” Fin said. “Don’t bother with beer when you’re out tonight. Hot whiskeys will do the trick. Kill it before it kills you.”

  “That’s not a bad idea actually. Right, I’ll just run over the alarms with you, you know the rest. You’re here for the sake of insurance, if something happens, we need a body on site. Think of this as a paid holiday.”

  “Oh I am, don’t worry about that.”

  Darren, the restaurant manager, leaned out over the pass, switching off the heating lamps. “Make us a coffee if you’re having one, boss.”

  Andrew stuck a mug under the spout and steaming coffee poured out. The kitchen was still full of activity. Usually when Fin started his shift, they were all at home. Porters scrubbed the cookers and fridges, while the hostesses used their phone cameras to apply makeup.

  “I won’t see you at the party,” Darren said. “I’m heading off straight after this. Enjoy the holidays. Fin, what wine do you drink?”

  “Red,” he said, resisting the urge to say ‘any.’

  “Merlot?”

  He nodded.

  “I’ll leave a few bottles of it out for you. Don’t burn the place down.”

  “There’s less of a chance of that happening if you don’t give him the wine,” Andrew said. “If it does happen, try and make it look like an accident.” Andrew passed him the coffee. His hand was shaking.

  “You don’t look well, Andy.”

  “Are you offering to stay on finish my shift for me?”

  In response Darren pulled the metal shutters down with a bang. The last couple in the restaurant looked towards them and awkwardly gathered their things to head to the bar. Before they made it to the counter, two waiters rushed in and cleared the table, then made for the kitchen and freedom.

  Darren came out with three bottles of red and left them under the till. “Have a good one buddy.” He went to deal with the last bits of clean-up.

  “Help yourself to a few pints from the bar, but make sure to record them as waste,” Andrew said in the face of Darren’s generosity.

  Once Fin signed off on everything, Andrew took off his tie and almost became a different person. “I’ve been craving a pint all week. You’re not a Mayo man yourself, what has you staying down here instead of heading home to your family?” he asked Fin.

  “Money. There’s no way Santa was going to be able to compete with triple pay over the holidays. Looking to do a bit of travel next year with my girlfriend. This will be her Christmas surprise.”

  “Well you’re saving me from doing it. Though my kids will miss having the pool to themselves.” He shook Fin’s hand and left.

  When he heard the car engine start up, Fin drenched his hand in antibacterial sanitiser; whatever Andrew was coming down with, he could do without. He followed him out to the car park at the back of the hotel and locked the gates. No more arrivals for the rest of the year. He started his nightly routine, beginning with a walkabout, checking every lock and closing over the fire doors.

  The staff did not stay long after Andrew left. Apart fro
m the bar, the rest of the hotel was empty before midnight. He blew out all the candles on the tables in the lobby, reorganised the chairs and got the hoovering out of the way. He roughly estimated that if he lined up the amount of carpet he had hoovered during his employment, it would reach the moon and back.

  The door from the bar opened, interrupting his audiobook. “Fin, call a hospital and let them know there’s one coming in immediately,” Ciara said. Her hand was wrapped in a dish cloth. When she opened it, he saw that her finger was covered in blood, flowing from a shallow cut. Glass shards glistened in the dim lobby light.

  “Hospital’s all the way in Castlebar, it’ll be the morgue you’ll need by the time an ambulance gets here.”

  “It would be livelier than the bar is tonight anyway. Would you mind bandaging me up? I’m already feeling a bit queasy. I can’t stand the sight of blood.”

  “Of course.” He brought her into the back office and took out the first aid kit. Ciara sat down and laid her hand flat on the table, pointedly looking in the opposite direction.

  “All joking aside, it’s pretty bad,” he found the tweezers and steadied himself before rooting at her injury.

  He used a wet wipe to dab off the smaller fragments of glass that had not broken the skin. “How did you manage this?”

  “That gobshite George keeps putting the glass washer on the highest setting. Temperature’s hot enough to reshape them. One exploded in my hand when I was putting it away.”

  “And you said your night was boring.”

  “Yes, I often use cutting myself to feel something as a gauge of how an average day of work is going.”

  He cleaned the wound, wiped antiseptic cream on her hand and put a colourful child’s plaster on her finger for good measure. “I think you’ll live to work another day.”

  “Doctor, your bedside manner is atrocious. Is that how you give bad news to all your patients?”

  “Here, no role play until after hours.”

  She swatted his shoulder with her good hand. “No end to the excitement of a nightporter, eh?”

  “Yeah, you could write a book about my adventures here after hours.”

  “Oh I am, it's erotica – fictional.”

  “Feck off. Are there many left in the bar?”

  “A few. Not enough to stay open. If each of them orders two more drinks, it might just cover the cost of keeping us here this long. Can’t leave though, Andrew said he’d be watching the cameras from his phone.”

  “Next time he starts on about that, just mention something about privacy laws and watch how quickly he turns red.”

  Ciara thanked him and went back to the bar. Fin watched the security camera screens. There was no sound, but he only had to look at George to see that he was sorry. Ciara was laying it on hard. Fin laughed.

  A young couple having a hushed argument drove the other guests out of the bar to bed. Fin wished them a good night and crossed his fingers that none of them would ask him for anything. After the lift doors closed, he snuck into the bar. George and Ciara cleaned while pretending that they did not hear the bickering. Fin turned the music down so it was barely audible, the universal bartender code for ‘Go away.’ If they refused the hint, he would start putting chairs on tables around them and turn the lights up full, that always seemed to do the trick.

  While he made a pot of tea, the woman stormed off. The man nursed his pint, looked at his reflection in the mirror behind the bar and shook his head. His eyes were bloodshot and he was sweating. “Can I get the same again, please?” he said.

  “Are you sure you’re okay for another?” George asked. “You look a bit worse for wear.”

  “This is only my third one of the day.” He took a closer look at himself in the mirror and used his sleeve to mop his brow. “Actually, forget the pint. Will you make me a hot toddy with plenty of lemon and cloves? I’ll take it up to my room.”

  Fin could not detect slurring in his voice. He did not envy the bar staff having to stand a few feet in front of customers that constantly coughed, spluttered and sneezed in their direction.

  “Do you mind if I bring up a jug of ice water with me too? Seem to be coming down with a cold.”

  George made up the drink, while Ciara stirred the tea, using her crippled hand as an excuse for getting out of cleaning. “How are you feeling about staying here by yourself over the holidays?” she asked Fin.

  “It’s no different than any other night during the year, except I’ve no silly complaints to worry about. I’ll do a walk around after the tea and then, when yous clock out I’ll pour us a few pints.”

  Ciara put the pot down. “Get on with your walk then. I’ll pour this out. A waste, making tea when pints are an option.”

  The hallways were so quiet that he scuffed his feet on the thick carpet and cleared his throat, just to see how far the sound travelled. Usually, if he listened closely, he could hear the snores of sleeping guests, little squabbles and trysts. Fin turned all the lights off behind him and imagined the settling silence was like that inside a tomb. The building was warm and lifeless. It reeked of bleach in the back halls, where no guests ever saw the old peeling paint and threadbare carpets.

  The ice machine hummed and knocked as it refilled. During his first few weeks on the job, that sound always made him hurry back to the safety of the front desk. Now he walked the corridors in the dark by memory. Systematically, he locked all the doors that would not open again until the new year. The hotel entered a brief slumber. For a little under two weeks it would be home to just one person.

  The radio on his hip squawked into life, startling him. He didn’t mind the guys prank calling him while he was on his rounds. Any company to make the shadows shrink away was welcome.

  “Fin, will you come down for a minute, please?” George said. To his credit he actually sounded worried. If something happened with the freezers or kegs, then that was his quiet night over with.

  “There’s a man in the basement, he’s near the drinks store. Can’t understand a word out of him.”

  “Are you trying to say he got into the drinks store or he’s a foreign chap?”

  “I don’t think he’s currently on this planet, he must have taken something. I asked him politely to piss off a few times, but he didn’t pay any heed to me. I didn’t want to go near him by myself.”

  “Hang on, I’ll be down to you now.”

  Ciara and George waited for him in the lobby, they watched the door to the staircase, the spine of the hotel that led workers to the basement and guests to their rooms.

  “What are the both of you doing out here? Is the bar empty?” Fin asked.

  “That chap left soon after you did,” George said. “We flew through the cleaning and were about to stock the bar. I thought we were the only ones left, until I went down to the drinks store and found him down there,” George laughed. “They’ll have a good chuckle when they check the cameras, I jumped a foot in the air when I stumbled over him.”

  “I could hear him crying from up here a few minutes ago,” Ciara said. “I’m not going down there without you. You’re trained to deal with people like that.”

  “Essentially you’re saying you’ll watch.”

  “Enthusiastically.”

  The stairs leading up were well-lit. Innocuous hotel art, the visual representation of elevator music, covered the walls. A ‘Staff Only’ sign hung on a fire door downstairs that led into the labyrinth of hallways buried beneath the hotel. The clock-in machine, florist’s fridge, and laundry room were all behind that door, along with enough stock to keep drink flowing through January. The maintenance room was buried far in the back. Fin went in first. The place was empty.

  “I swear he was here…” A noise from the far end of the corridor stopped George.

  Fin found the switches and turned the lights on. The weak fluorescent bulbs in the tunnel flickered, but were not bright enough for them to see much.

  Ciara took out her phone and shined the camera torch into t
he darkness. Two legs lay motionless, sticking out between housekeeping carts. From his position, the owner of the legs was of no immediate danger to them. They leaned in to get a better look. Ciara’s phone beeped, she was recording.

  “Come on, put that away, You wouldn’t like somebody watching you through a camera instead of helping you,” Fin said. He broke the phone’s line of sight with his hand. Sensing he sounded a bit harsh, he added. “Don’t be giving George ideas, he’ll have his phone charged, ready for when you get langered later. Plus, if this chap remembers you taking a video, one conversation with management will cause you a lot of trouble.”

  “Sorry, I meant nothing by it. Only had it on just in case he attacked you, I’d have proof.” The man wore a crumpled, mud stained suit. His trousers soiled and torn. He smelled exactly as they expected he would by the sight of him.

  “Are you okay, mate?” Fin asked.

  Ciara shined her light in his face, his eyes were dilated and did not shrink. “Shouldn’t they look like pin-pricks in bright light? He barely notices it. That can’t be good. It’s drugs. Has to be.”

  “Well at least he’s breathing.” Fin was trained to handle rowdy drunks, but it was never a skill he looked forward to using, though he was glad to have it.

  “Somebody that far gone could probably do with a hospital bed,” Ciara said.

  “Are you a guest here?” Fin nudged the man’s leg with his boot. His head lolled onto his chest and he started to weep. The three of them took a step back; the sobs were so unsettling, it rose every small hair across Fin’s body. “I swear I barely touched him. Did either of you serve him drink in this state?”

  “If somebody comes into the bar and can’t say their own name, I wouldn’t give them anything stronger than sparkling water,” George said.

  Ciara kept the light on him, and slowly his pupils reacted. His hands shook violently. He moved like a man too cold to feel the outline of himself. Fingers dug into his temples, palms covered his eyes. He curled into himself like a dying spider.

  “Here, calm down there.” Ciara lowered the phone. “He’s definitely on something. What did you take buddy? I’ve been in since six and I haven't seen him in the bar.”