Isn't it lovely, though? Look! I'm glad it's not this foggy every day but when it is, I get delightful shivers up my spine. It's like I'm all alone here. Well. I am all alone. But when the world is like this – ah. It's magical to be alone.
I'm surprised you came in conditions like this. I'm surprised you came at all.
But alright, if you want my story?
Well, I can tell you about the hotel. Yes, it is a hotel. Or it was, I suppose. A hotel's not a hotel without its guests. It's a sorry sight now.
It was my grandfather's hotel. I remember not being here, vaguely, when I was very little. But when my mother died, my father came home from his business travels and moved us here. We needed to look after my aging grandfather anyway, he said, and he needed to look after me now.
Those were some of the worst years of my life, truth be told. I was distraught over having lost my mother. But we had a hotel to run and tears are not welcoming. My grandfather gave me treats to cheer me up sometimes, but mostly both my father and grandfather were strict disciplinarians. I studied from books father bought in town, I helped to cook and clean, and I went early to bed in a little bedroom on the ground floor. It's a store room now.
But the hotel was my palace. Afternoons when no one was watching me, I'd slip in and out of rooms – whether they were occupied or not – and pretended…. Well, pretended all sorts of things. I overheard everything as a child and knew when people would be in and when people would be out…. It was a fun game.
After a while, the business began to fall to pieces. My father knew very little about how to run a hotel successfully and had never listened to anything my grandfather told him. As my grandfather aged, so did the hotel. And my father didn't listen to my grandfather's advice. Only nostalgic guests had any interest in this place, and my father didn't know how to advertise any more than he knew how to keep it up. And then one day – I'm still not sure of the details; maybe you know – the water became contaminated. It was a great tragedy. And awful for business. No one wanted to come just to look. It used to be a bathing spot, you know. But then it wasn't.
Well, my father continued to swim in the water on Sunday mornings for a while after the news came that the water was contaminated from upstream. He didn't really believe it. And I remember him saying a hundred times over that even if it were true, it'd take days to get this far down river. He had the brain of an ass, gentlemen. Don't swim in contaminated water. That's one of the main reasons I get the newspaper when I'm in town. I need to keep informed about those kinds of things, don't I?
But anyway, he went to hospital and he died. I was about 16. Maybe 17. Nope! 16, I remember, because he wasn't around on my 17th birthday. And as I've said, my grandfather was failing. I kept telling him he should see a doctor. Maybe what was ailing him could have been fixed – I don't know. The coroner said he died of "natural causes" and he was laid in the ground to rest in the family plot in town. That wouldn't have made him happy. I fancy he rises from his grave every Halloween and haunts the town, wanting to be here but, of course, you can't wander too far from your grave, can you now?
Nonetheless, I keep a sharp eye open on Halloween. He'd liked to have been buried up here. His wife is buried up here, as you saw on your way up here. Didn't you? Look on your way down. She's there, not far off the road. She does haunt this place, and quite regularly too. All kinds of mischief goes on here.
You want to know what I do now? Well, what anyone does I suppose. I cook and clean for myself. I sleep in almost any room I feel like – which is a lot of linens to wash but not as often. I wash them down in the river. I bath in the river. I haul water up here from the river. It's not contaminated anymore! That was oh… almost thirty years ago?