G H O S T    S T O R I E S T H E    I N N    A T    S H I L L I N G F O R D by John Connolly There had long been an inn at Shillingford. The village lay at a crossroads; secondary roads now, but once the main arteries from north to south and east to west in this part of the country. The coming of the big A roads rendered the town less important than once it was, but it was the motorways, blindly scything through the countryside, blighting and polluting, that finally sounded the death knell for Shillingford and its sole source of bed and board. The inn sat forgotten at the top of a small hill some half a mile beyond the eastern edge of the village, a relic of another age. Only a wooden sign, half-devoured by damp and rot, indicated to the passing traveller that this was once a place to eat and rest briefly upon life's journey. But had that traveller taken the time to follow the overgrown road up the hill, he might have noticed something strange about the old stone building: the faint smell of burning that still hung around it; the blackening of its walls; the scorched hole in its slate roof. Perhaps, after all, it was not the motorways that brought an end to the hospitality offered by the inn. Perhaps also, if one were to listen to local gossip, one might learn that the fire that destroyed the inn at Shillingford was not accidental, but was set deliberately, although even the most tenacious of investigators would find it difficult to obtain sufficient evidence to ascribe blame for the incident. In truth, a great many people had been present on the night that the inn burned, so that the responsibility for what occurred might justifiably be termed collective. Note the use of that word: 'responsibility'. Not guilt. No one ever felt guilt for destroying the inn at Shillingford, and no regret showed upon their faces as the building, and its innkeeper, succumbed to the flames. The police looked into the matter, of course, aided by the local constable who helped in every way to ensure that the verdict reached in the demise of the innkeeper, Joseph Long, was one of accidental death. And why did he have to die? That, sadly, is another story, and one that need not concern us here. Suffice it to say that a number of young women disappeared in the locality and suspicions about their disappearance centred on the innkeeper. There was never sufficient proof to charge him with anything, and no bodies were ever found. It was said, though, that many a hungry traveller had complimented Mr. Long on his meat pies, remarking to him that they had a distinctive, although not unpleasant, taste. Mr. Long, with a bashful smile, would claim credit for them, explaining that he cooked them himself in the kitchen. Vegetarians, it must be said, found the cuisine at the inn somewhat limited (although, as someone once blackly remarked, while there might not have been vegetables in the pies, it was quite possible that they might have contained vegetarians.) The inn at Shillingford was, in effect, a one-man operation. Joseph Long made the beds in its six modest rooms, and farmed out the used linen to a woman in the village who would deliver them back, crisp and clean, three times every week. Long had once been married, although he claimed that he and his wife did not get along and that she subsequently left him and went to live in France. Once again, local gossip suggested that she was known to offer her favours to guests at the inn and had been punished by her husband for her infidelity, her remains disposed of in a bathtub (for a guest at the inn was once heard to say that the bath in room three was scarred by what he felt certain were acid burns.) And so the inn was consumed, and Joseph Long died along with it. Curiously, the village itself began to die not long after, as its young people left and its old people stayed, moving from house to shop, shop to church and, finally, church to cemetery, where they made their final homes. Few lights burned in Shillingford, and those travellers who were unfortunate enough to be forced to negotiate its single cracked main street often found themselves shivering slightly at the bleakness of the place. Then, in the final years of the last century, Shillingford became the recipient of some much-needed good fortune. An amusement park was established outside Morningdale, a town five miles to the west, with vertiginous rollercoasters and nausea-inducing rides. The road between Morningdale and the motorway was upgraded, and as Shillingford was the only village on the route it also benefited from the improvements. In addition to the road, new houses came to be built, and small stores opened in the hope of gaining both local and passing trade. And a man named Vincent Penney bought and restored the inn at Shillingford, and celebrated its grand reopening with an invitation to the villagers to come and enjoy a complimentary drink and some cocktail sausages. The villagers of Shillingford, never ones to turn down something for nothing, duly made the trek up to the inn, enjoyed Mr. Penney's largesse for as long as it took them to finish the sausages, then promptly left and never returned again. Their brief visit simply confirmed them in their view that there was something wrong with the inn at Shillingford, and no amount of fancy carpeting and wood panelling would ever make it right again. Thus it was that while Shillingford slowly prospered, Mr. Penney's investment appeared destined to go unrewarded. During the summer months he made a small profit, and during the winter months he made a large loss. The five rooms above the bar were never fully occupied, and those guests who chose to spend the night complained of bad smells and problems with the plugholes, which spat filthy water when the hot taps were turned on. Two years after the grand opening, Vincent Penney decided to sell up and cut his losses, assuming he could find anyone to take the place off his hands. When no such buyer could be found, Mr. Penney closed the inn and departed for Spain. He left the matter in the hands of his solicitors, who quickly relegated its sale to the lower regions of their list of priorities, from which it was unlikely ever to rise. * * * It was shortly after eleven on a cold November night when Mr. Adam Teal found himself on Shillingford's once very depressing main street, now transformed into a vaguely depressing main street. Beside him on the passenger seat of his car lay a very old, and very outdated, guide to this part of the countryside, left to him by his retired predecessor, Mr. Ormond. Teal was that rarest of rare birds: an insurance salesman with a conscience, which meant that he was more popular with his clients than he was with his employers, a situation that had led to his transfer from London to the countryside so that he might sell less potentially ruinous insurance to the kind of people who kept their money in biscuit tins amid stale crumbs and mouse droppings. But, as is the case with men who pride themselves on a particular virtue, Teal had a particular vice with which to balance it. He was, in that quaint phrase, a 'ladies' man', and found that his job occasionally offered him the opportunity to indulge his tastes for relatively anonymous liaisons. Teal was not married and so viewed these flirtations as mostly harmless, the scrupulous manner in which he approached his work further enabling him to convince himself that they were not the symptoms of some greater moral decay. Nevertheless, today had been another unprofitable day in a string of unprofitable days, which hung heavily about Teal's neck like a noose. Now he was tired and hungry, and his guidebook informed him that the only lodging within thirty miles, apart from deserted amusement park hotels, was located in the small hamlet of Shillingford. Teal followed the directions in the book, and it was not long before he came to a winding road marked by a decaying sign. It curved through thick forest until it came at last to the little inn, lights burning in its downstairs windows but not, it seemed, in any of the upstairs rooms. Teal parked his car, removed his overnight bag from the back seat, and knocked loudly on the door. After a short time, he heard the sound of a key turning in the lock, and the door opened wide to reveal the remains of a fire smouldering in small hearth, a trio of armchairs surrounding it, and a reception desk to the right with five alcoves behind it, four of which contained a numbered key. The key to the third room was absent. A man peered from behind the door. He was taller than Teal by about a foot, and his face was mostly obscured by a thick beard and unruly hair. He wore an overcoat over his nightshirt, and his feet were bare and encrusted with dirt. "Come in, come in," he said. "You're most welcome, most welcome indeed." Teal entered, and the innkeeper closed the door behind him. "You're in number two," he said, and handed Teal a key with that number carved upon its head. "Don't you want me to register?" asked Teal. "No need," said the innkeeper. "You're the only guest, and it's late. Best that you get to your room now, and worry about such things in the morning." The salesman did not protest. He followed the innkeeper to the second floor of the inn, where he was shown into a huge but only adequately furnished room, with a double bed, a battered armchair, and a wardrobe sufficient to accomodate the assorted costumes of a moderately sized theatrical troupe. An open door led into a bathroom which contained a shower stall and bath, a toilet and an enormous washbasin. To the right of the basin was a connecting door leading to the room next door. Curious, thought Teal. He checked the door, but it was securely locked. There was no key in the keyhole. "Sleep well, Mr. Teal," said the innkeeper from his post at the bedroom door, and so grateful was the guest for a room and a warm bed that he did not even think to ask how the innkeeper had discovered his name. Instead, he requested some food, and was promised a plate of bread and assorted cheeses, and a large pot of tea. "We're out of pies," explained the innkeeper. "Can't get the ingredients." With that, he left to assemble his guest's modest repast. Teal prepared himself for bed, and was already half-asleep on his feet when he heard the sound of a tray being placed on the floor outside his door, accompanied by a soft knocking. When he reached the door the innkeeper was gone, but there was food waiting, and a steaming metal pot of strong tea. He ate a little of the bread and cheese, and permitted himself a single cup of milky tea, before retiring for the night. * * * Less than an hour after closing his eyes, Teal awoke to noises coming from the room to his left. It sounded like furniture was being moved around, and Teal was most aggrieved to have his sleep disturbed by such inconsiderate behaviour from a fellow guest. He supposed that someone had arrived shortly after him, seeking shelter for the night, but he could not imagine why the individual in question felt compelled to rearrange his room upon arrival. Wearing only pyjamas, he raised himself from his bed, opened his door, and entered the corridor. He strode to room three and rapped sharply on the door. The noises from within instantly ceased, and Teal thought he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door at the other side. The steps sounded soft, and slightly wet, as though the individual in question had recently been bathing. The door did not open, yet Teal was aware that the other guest was listening at the other side of the wood. "I say," said Teal. "I do wish you'd keep the noise down in there. I'm trying to sleep." There was no reply. Teal, with no further outlet for his frustrations, sighed loudly and prepared to return to his room. As he did so, his feet slid upon the wooden floor and he almost lost his balance. Supporting himself against the wall, he looked down and saw that a clear, sticky substance had adhered to the soles of his feet. It resembled wallpaper paste in its consistency, but smelled infinitely worse. Teal attempted to trace its source, and found that it appeared to be seeping from under the door of room three. Carefully, he backed away, rubbing his feet against a hall rug to clean them of the fluid. Then, puzzled and uneasy, he returned to his bedroom and locked the door. He cleaned the remainder of the substance from his feet using the shower head, then went to bed. No further sounds came from the room next door and, after a time, Teal prepared to drift off to sleep once again. His eyes snapped open. It took him a moment or two to register the sound: it was softer than before, as though the person making it were anxious to avoid detection. He heard a clicking, then tumblers turning. Finally, there came a soft creaking. Teal looked first to his bedroom door, but it appeared firmly closed. He turned his attention instead to the bathroom. Its door, too, was closed, but from behind it Teal could clearly hear something moving across the tiled floor. A smell began troubling his nostrils, and he recognized it as the same odour that had come from the substance seeping from beneath the room next door. Teal leaped from his bed and, finding no more suitable weapon to hand, armed himself with a brass bedside lamp, having first yanked the plug from its socket. His throat was dry, and his hands were trembling, as he approached the closed bathroom door. "You in there," he said, and he was pleased to note that his voice was not shaking quite as much as his hands. "I'm armed. I suggest that you return to your own room instantly, or I shall have no choice but to summon the innkeeper or, worse, to take matters into my own hands and force you back there myself." Something warm and sticky touched Teal's bare feet, and he stepped back hurriedly to avoid the stream of viscous fluid that now poured slowly from the bathroom. The unseen presence struck the door, causing it to shudder, and then, as he watched, frozen despite himself, the knob slowly began to turn. Casting aside his lamp, Mr Teal gripped the doorknob and pulled back with all his might. More clear liquid oozed from the bathrooom keyhole, making his hands slippery. He felt a cry emerge from his lips, and began to shout. "Help me," he cried. "Please, help me. Someone is trying to enter my room!" There was no reply. The presence on the other side of the door yanked hard at the handle, almost wrenching it from Teal's fingers. He gripped again, as tightly as he could, and lowered himself slowly down. Carefully, so as not to get any of the sticky paste on his face, he placed his right eye as close as he could to the keyhole. At first he could see nothing except a vague whiteness, and he thought the substance had somehow clogged the aperture entirely. Then the whiteness shifted, and Teal caught a glimpse of scorched flesh, damp with the sticky mucus, and gray-green legs, mottled with decay, and a distended stomach, swollen with gas. There was something about the shape of the body, the way that it moved . . . It was a woman, Teal realised, or something like a woman. And suddenly the being on the other side of the door ceased its attempts to gain entry to Mr Teal's bedroom. There was silence for a moment, and then a blur of white as the thing moved and, for a second, Teal saw through the keyhole a single black eye, ringed with red like a fresh coal on a hot fire. The eye narrowed. Teal heard a frustrated exhalation of breath, and then the eye was gone. There came a wet sound, and then the connecting door closed and all was quiet. Teal's breath emerged in a single sob. His hands continued to grip the doorknob, his knuckles white beneath the skin. Slowly, he loosened his hold upon it and checked through the keyhole once again. When he was certain that the bathroom was empty, he quietly opened the door, slipped the key from within, and locked it from his side. He moved away from the door, feeling the carpet squelch beneath his feet, damp with the woman's secretions. His bedroom door was now slightly open. Teal could not recall if he had locked it when he returned from his trip to the other room. It could have been the case that he had simply closed it, and the latch had not caught. It had certainly been closed when the woman in the bathroom caused him to leave his bed, but perhaps his exertions had rattled the floorboards and the walls, thereby causing it to open. He went toward it, closed it properly now, and locked it securely. Here, too, the carpet was damp, although whether from Teal's earlier visit to room three or through some other agency he was unable to say. Teal felt panic rising, and fought against it. He fumbled for a light switch, but the sole illumination in the room came courtesy of the two bedside lamps, one of which now lay by the bathroom door while the other stood unlit on the other nightstand. Still, Teal could see that his room appeared empty. There was only the bed, the armchair, the two nightstands - And the great wardrobe that now lay at his back. Teal sprang away from it, retreating slowly to his bed. He reached for the lamp and pressed the switch, instantly filling the room with a soft orange glow. The illumination cast the wardrobe partly in shadow, but Teal could see that one of its three doors was ajar. No sounds came from within, but Teal was now close to the limits of his endurance, fearful now that he had managed not to lock the woman out of his room, but had somehow contrived to secure her inside with him. Teal's legs struck the edge of his bed. Unable to take his eyes from the wardrobe, it was almost a quarter of a minute before he registered the sensation of wetness against the back of his thighs, and heard the sound of fluid dripping from the sheets onto the floor. Behind him, something moved damply upon the mattress. Slowly, Teal turned his head, and saw the shape of a woman beneath the sheets. Her sparse gray hair was slick and thin against a yellowed skull, A patina of thick liquid lay across her body, and Teal had a sudden image of fat melting in a pan. Slowly, the woman pushed back the sheet, inviting him to join her. Her back was to him, and he saw the open, bloodless wounds upon it, and patches of scarred, burned tissue. Her hands were less damaged, but her nails were long and curled like corkscrews. The woman began to turn her head, and Teal saw that whatever her hands had been spared was made up for by the damage to her face. He glimpsed bone, and tendons, and bare teeth exposed by the scorching of her lips. The teeth parted, and the remains of a tongue licked provocatively at them. Teal screamed. He ran for the bedroom door and fumbled with the key in the lock. There came the sound of sheets being thrown from the bed, and damp feet falling softly upon the carpet. Teal's fingers fumbled with the key, so badly were they trembling, but at last it turned in the lock. He wrenched the door open and fled into the corridor, abandoning his case and his clothes, descending the stairs and racing past the fireplace and into the night. He thought that he heard the sound of something sliding down the stairs at his back, moving on its belly like some great white leech, but he did not look back. His car was still in the yard, but the keys were in the bedroom. Teal kept running, and lost himself in the welcome embrace of the darkness. * * * A farmer found him early the next morning. Teal was lying in a ditch, sobbing. The police were called, and at last his story was dragged from him. His car was traced, parked where he had left it beside the burned out remains of the inn. His overnight bag was on the front seat, and his keys were in the ignition. The conclusion was largely obvious: Mr Teal had followed the road to the inn, found that it was no longer open for business, and had decided to sleep in the back seat of his car. That he had chosen to change first into his pyjamas was seen as a token of eccentricity, and little more. Mr Teal left the insurance business shortly afterward. He offered his employers two pieces of advice before he left. The first was that they should regard the town of Shillingford as largely devoid of insurance potential, and the second was that they should update the guidebooks given to their sales representatives. He also announced that he would never again sell an insurance policy, and subsequently embraced the monastic life, where he remained happily celibate for the rest of his days. The inn at Shillingford remains closed. Or open, depending upon one's misfortune. © John Connolly