IT WAS LIKE A STEPHEN KING NOVEL
I BOARDED THE FERRY at Newcastle docks and climbed up from the car deck to my cabin. My confidence dropped the moment I opened the door. It smelled like a dirty hamster’s cage on the other side. Snoring on my bunk was a Hell’s Angel in leather underpants. Below him was an AWOL Latvian marine. On the third bed, in his own words, was a “German orthopedic shoemaker master.” He was carrying a ferret.
“They just increased the ferret quotas between Britain and the Netherlands,” he informed me.
I nodded. Why passengers would be taking ferrets to Amsterdam for the weekend, I didn’t want to think about. I made a swift exit for the bar. There I hoped to scoop up a hitchhiker.
We hadn’t left port and already a force of eight hundred was gathered in the pub lounge, skulling jugs of Stella. I felt my way through a cloud of cheap European cigarette smoke and sat alone at the back. My fellow passengers comprised earringed, beery British darts players, hens in matching rabbits’ ears, and Dutch schoolkids in tracksuits and fanny packs. Their fake tans glowed strangely in the light. “Man-U-Man-U-Man-United!” everyone sang in unison.
The introduction of bingo settled the crowd. “Two little ducks, twenty-two. Quack, quack,” said the host Dutchman on his microphone.
I made a cross on my sheet. I hate bingo, I thought. What was I doing?
At the conclusion of the sixth round, I tore up my sheet and tossed it in an ashtray.
Soon after, the host began singing the first of five “Happy Birthday”s. The crowd countered each time with “Hey-hey, baby! Ooh! Ah! I wanna know-o-o-o if you’ll be my girl!” and waved their arms.
“Stay around, folks,” said the host. “We’ve got the electric ballet coming up.”
This signaled an invasion of the dance floor. Every passenger bopped as though they’d coordinated their dance actions on Newcastle docks. To my horror, I was dragged into the conga, and I snaked around the room before splitting the dance floor.
I’d regained my seat by the start of the electric ballet. It was a moving performance, beginning with Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.” The lead dancer leapt around the stage in a hairy rubber Halloween mask. When “Beauty and the Beast” followed, Jacko’s werewolf costume was again used for the Beast. The spectacle ended with a Europop cancan, at which point I skulled the dregs of my watery Stella and decided I’d take my chances in my stinky cell.
IN THE MORNING I drove off the ferry ramp in IJmuiden, west of Amsterdam, and set out across a flat landscape. The Škoda was quickly unleashed on the German autobahn, reaching eighty-five miles an hour on the rare downhill stretches. Mostly I kept to the inside lane as BMWs rocketed past, shaking the Škoda. I sang along to pirated MiniDiscs and practiced Czech cover drives in my head.
It would take two days to cross Germany and reach Prague. To break up the monotony of the wind farms, I decided to stop for a night in the Harz Mountains. Google, instrumental as ever in this trip, had provided me with the address of a pension in the Harz National Park.
After eight hours of motoring, I slipped off the autobahn and wound through misty, wooded mountain villages. The houses looked as though they were made of gingerbread. I parked outside my peaceful pension and walked to the door. A thin man in a greasy shirt greeted me, cigarette in hand.
“You’re the only person ’ere!” he said, knocking me back with a Lancastrian accent. “Ah was gonna lock up and go. You’re lucky. Better coom inside now.”
I sat in silence in the nicotine-stained lounge, my backpacks leaning against the wall. My host handed me a cup of coffee, then stood a few yards off, looking into space, nervously puffing away. I recognized the signs of cabin fever. My coffee drained, I cleared my throat of tar and broke the ice. “So, does anything unusual ever happen here?”
The proprietor thought about it for a minute, then answered, “No. Noothing unusual ever happens here. In fact, noothing ever happens at all.” I was saddened. I made a note to scrub the Harz Mountains from the book.
After the eighth cigarette, the Lancastrian said, “D’ya fancy going for a cheap Korean?”
WE WERE AT the pub after our Korean dinner, which comprised burnt tofu masked by the taste of mein host’s cigarettes. Around us now in the antique pub were five others, each with a trucker’s shirt and a mullet. No one said a word. I ordered a beer and the barman gave me two. Mein host sat quietly opposite.
Once he’d got a few Cokes under his belt, mein host began opening up about life in the village. It surprised me to learn that, out of a population of three hundred, 50 percent were having multiple affairs. “They’re always in-house,” said mein host mysteriously. “No one ever marries an”—he glanced from side to side—“an ‘outsider.’”
I took a long draw from my glass and asked mein host what his part in all this was.
“Me proper girlfriend, she’s in Southeast Asia. At the moment, ah’m on me third girl from round ’ere … Ah swear, the first time ah didn’t know this girl were married. Ah knew ’er husband as well. ’E were in the guesthouse regularly, like. But this girl ah’m seeing now, she’s pissing me off.” He stubbed out his cigarette and reached for another.
“Oh?”
“She’s messing around with a coople of oother blokes. That’s why ah’m not there tonight.”
And I had thought it was the exhilarating nature of my company.
“So this girl, what’s she like?”
“Well …” He seemed stuck momentarily. “She’s the ex-wife of the ex-owner of me guesthouse. ’E, by the way, now lives next door with his new girlfriend. The both of them cause me a lot of trooble.”
“Like what?”
“The ex-owner, ’e stares through the window of room number five each day for two hours with ’is face pressed to the glass. ’E threw a brick through it a few weeks ago, and then ’e came round and poonched me.”
“Shit!”
“’E’s been caught on camera throwing eggs at the houses in the night and supergluing people’s doors shut. Ah ’ad to get an ex-French Legionnaire from the village to go threaten ’im.”
I nodded. A tingling realization was creeping into my thoughts. There was something very, very wrong with this village, and I might have to flee tonight and sleep in the car. But I looked down and saw that I’d already drunk too much. My only option was to increase the dosage and hope I’d sleep through any troubles. I sensed even darker secrets lay beneath the surface.
“Why is there a straw witch hanging in the corner?” I asked.
Mein host looked up. “Every year the village celebrates witch-burning,” he said. “This year, for the first time, we didn’t have a witch. Everyone were talking about it. Joost after the flames were lit, they all came round to me guesthouse asking that me girlfriend coom out. They reckoned she were a witch, you see. She’s a bit weird, ah suppose. A bit gothic, y’know?”
I was now extremely worried. How would they have treated my Estonian witch friend?
“And right up to the witch-burning this year,” he continued, “we had a haunting in the guesthouse.”
The color in my face drained as quickly as the froth in my glass.
“There were a lot of screaming coomin’ from room five—the one the ex-owner stares into every day, if you remember.”
“Which … which room am I in?”
“Ah can put you in four, if you like.”
“I’d like that, please.”
“A lot of guests in five ’ave told me they’ve ’ad this dream about an old woman coomin’ in the night and lookin’ under their bed. Ah ’ave this reoccurring dream about a blonde woman hanging …”
My fingernails dug into my palms.
Mein host continued. “Recently we ’ad taps left on every day. We ’eard footsteps, and doors were opening by themselves. A few weeks ago ah came downstairs in the mornin’ and the dryer had steamed up the window to the garden. There were a drawing on there.”
He took my notepad and made a sketch. It showed a crying face, a bush, and a tree with a hand coming out from beneath it. He drew a bird on a branch.
“It had a little worm coomin’ out its mouth. Every day since then, ah’ve seen that little bird from the drawing in the garden in real life, with a little worm coomin’ out its mouth.”
“Who did the drawing?”
“Ah’ve no idea. No one were staying there. Ah clean the windows every week. Ah scrubbed the glass with alcohol that mornin’, and when ah came down next day the drawing were back again.”
I needed something stronger. I ordered a double Scotch. “D’you think it was someone playing a trick?”
“No!” yelled mein host. “The guesthouse’s ruining people’s lives! A woman broke her ribs! A man were hospitalized for six weeks staying there!”
“D’you think it was the blonde woman hanging who made the drawing?”
“Maybe,” said mein host pensively, lighting up again. “You know, ah’ve started digging under the tree … for a body.”
Oh, fuck. This was The Tommyknockers meets The Shining.
“Ah’ve gotta go deeper. Ah’ll show you tomorrow, if you like.”
I considered excusing myself and evacuating via the pub’s toilet window, but just as I was about to get up, a head with a hand attached to its throat landed on our table. The locals in the bar, who up to this point had said nothing, were now engaged in a violent brawl. The barman, alert to the situation, tottered over to the door and locked it.
“Shit almighty!” I whispered.
A human tug-of-war whipped around the room, men with mullets on each end and girlfriends sandwiched between. I cowered in a corner with mein host, Scotch in hand, laughing.
“Probably another affair,” said mein host coolly. I fiddled in my pockets for my camera, but as I pulled it out, mein host put his hand over it.
“No, no! They might kill us!”
The fight rolled around the room as though we were in a wrestling ring, and the barstools quickly became weapons.
After ten minutes the screaming died, and we were allowed to return to our seats. The guilty participants shuffled around, apologizing to everyone individually.
“Keine Probleme,” I said, shaking their hands.
Then round two was unleashed.
At the conclusion of round three, the barman evicted one baseball-capped fighter. He continued to loiter on the doorstep, peering through the glass, baiting his partner. The partner fought to be let out. None of us were going anywhere.
I was still laughing when Starsky und Hutch arrived in leather jackets to note everyone’s names in the Bad Boys’ book. Mein host, after a brief statement, downed his Coke and suggested we return to the safety of his haunted guesthouse.
Noothing unusual ever happens here. In fact noothing ever happens at all, I recalled as I crept to bed.
I SLEPT THAT night with the door to room four double-locked and a pillow over my face. In the morning, mein host hadn’t forgotten about the previous evening’s offer.
“Fancy coomin’ to the garden when yer finished yer breakfast?” he said. “Ah’ll show you that hole ah’ve been digging.”
I followed him outside.
As promised, a large hole had been dug under the tree, beside the bush. “I agree. You ought to go deeper,” I said.
“Ah’ll maybe get round to it this week.” He lit a cigarette.
As I set off once again in my Škoda for Prague, I was confident he’d find his corpse.