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Dreadful weather, it seems to have been following me ever since that damn farmer noticed me hiding in the back of his truck. I can feel the wet mud seep into my socks as the last of the stone road ends. Bloody rain, it’s getting heavier, I need to find shelter, but it’s hard to see anything in this fog.
Hiding around me is the rocky clay road which will swallow me whole if I don’t find shelter soon. A cave, a shack, a farmhouse a Treehouse for god’s sake! Anything to get me out of this horrid, horrid weather.
I walk carefully and slowly to make sure I don’t lose a shoe or the road ahead of me and accidentally stumble deep into the forest. I can presume by now, by belongings are all being taken away one by one by those repo-men. After all, it is the 1st of August and my bill payments were due on the 12th of March. Nothing left in books anymore, not now at least, the Great Depression has taken its toll on me and well, here I am, wandering aimlessly in the rain with my arms crossed and trying to stay as warm as possible; but who can blame me for being a bit grumpy?
I used to be a great writer once, until those pretentious bastards at Wilson Co. Publishing sacked me, and just as I had finished the riveting conclusion to the “Murder in Hamilton Village”.
I step back onto the stone road, this is good, this is better, yes, much better. Unless in a mass of confusion I’ve turned around and now find myself walking all those miles back to London, but I have a good feeling. Out of the fog I begin to see the outline of a great house, and the sound of wild seas too. As I walk closer I begin to see more and more detail in the large house.
There is a sign hanging from a pole out the front, it reads “Barney House – All Travellers Welcome”. Out the front at the bottom of a small stone path is an iron gate, while there isn’t a fence and I could quite easily just walk around it, I almost automatically reach out, open the gate and walk up the path.
I try to look inside but I can’t see a thing, except for a faint flickering light. Well I guess, even if it’s abandoned it beats staying out in the cold. I turn the brass door handle and walk into a small entrance room, old totem heads are hung on the walls, reminds me of those my father kept from Africa.
The door creaks as I open it, the sound of a bell rings as I let go of the door and it swings shut. Wow, this is eerie, for a moment I thought I had walked into a ghost house.
‘Another guest? Brilliant!’ said a voice from beyond the other door.
‘Oh thank-god’ I whisper with a sigh of relief. I know it seems foolish, but for a moment I believed in ghosts.
I step through the second door and see a larger, foreign man standing behind a bar with a flickering lamp sitting next to him on the bench. He’s rested on his arm and the flickering light brings out his rugged details. The sound of a guitar being plucked is behind me as I walk towards the bar; I look back and see a man sitting in the shadows with a big red wood guitar.
‘A bit wild out there ey?’ said the foreign man from behind the counter.
‘Very much so. A miracle I came across your little establishment here’ I replied
‘Aye, well then, sign yourself –‘ he opened a large book on the table and rolled a pen onto it. ‘-in here, I’ll organise you a room.’
I walked up to the bar and signed my name “Jimmy E”, stands for James Earl, what can I say, if I didn’t go into writing, I’d be a Vaudevillian Song and Dance Man. The man in the corner didn’t seem to notice my arrival, he just kept plucking away at his guitar. I look at the list in the book, “Black Jack”, that’s his name?
As I walk over to Black Jack I listen to him gently strum the strings.
‘Black Jack?’ I say.
‘Yessir?’ he replies, not looking at me, just continuing to pluck at his guitar.
‘An odd stage name...’ I say. ‘Oh, sorry, that was too presumptuous of me. Is Black Jack your stage name?’
‘Why yessir, and I haven’t exactly chosen it yet. But when you had a name like Howard Baldric and you aren’t a scholar, but instead a song and dance man, you really want to change it.’ Black Jack explained.
‘Shall I call you Howard or Black Jack then?’ I asked, trying to be polite.
‘Howard will do just fine; I don’t think I really like Black Jack anyway.’ Howard replied.
He didn’t look at me once or at least for very long. I just left him in the corner, playing his guitar. I decided to retreat into a world of my own and I sat down at a table. In the dim light I took out by book and began to write.
The sound of the door-bell rang in my ear as the front door creaked shut. I watched the second door to see who would come walking through and as the second door opened a man in a drenched suit and a closed umbrella walked up to the bar. He signed his name as “Mitchell Farlowe”.
‘Jam on you did it?’ asked the foreign man behind the bar pointing at Mitch’s umbrella.
‘Yeah, and I only bought it this weekend!’ replied Mitch expressing slight frustration.
The foreign man preached out with an open hand. ‘The name’s Barney.’ Mitch shook his hand with a firm grip. ‘Now if we’re going to have any more of you types from the storm, I don’t want you all ruining the place with the gallons of water you are bringing in. There are wash rooms in each of the hotel rooms upstairs.’ said Barney pointing to the stairs.
Mitch went up first, I followed, the hall-upstairs was adorned with more exotic totems from the natives of Africa and South America. Barney must have travelled quite a bit in his time. I walked into my room and found the washroom and dried myself off. My room was, basic and bland. With one big creepy totem hanging above the door, which gave me a bit of a fright when I walked in, but yet again, it was just my imagination getting the better of me.
A bed, a chair, a small table, a coat rack and a set of drawers, not much but all that was needed, after all I don’t want to stay here for long. I looked inside the set of drawers, as I opened the top one I found a little red and tattered bible, I left it be, while I’ve never publically admitted it, but I’m not religious. As I opened the second drawer I could hear something roll, like a marble, but it was so much more; a small little pearl. I picked it up and put it in my jacket pocket.
‘Had any interesting cases?’ said Barney in his heavy Eastern European accent. Could Farlowe be a detective? Or a travelling merchant with a specialisation in suitcases?
‘I’m sorry, that’s confidential, I have a strict customer confidentiality code.’ replied Farlowe. What could be so secret about a suitcase?
‘Aw, come on! We get a few travellers and the best stories they come up with are just others from other people they meet on the road, and trust me, when you have heard one, you have heard them all.’ pleaded Barney.
‘Alright, well, this was years ago, and I was new on the job. There was a man who had recently been divorced, he was struggling enough anyway, and he came to me saying he’d been robbed. I took a few weeks researching this man’s apartment searching for clues, but get this! Everything seemed to lead to his wife, but too bad for him that I got offered this man’s pocket watch by a bum living in the same building as the man’s ex-wife. Turns out he was trying to frame her in spite, what kind of heartless man does that?’ said Farlowe.
‘Aye, good story, maybe a murder next time. You know, a good Sherlock Holmes like story.’ said Barney.
So then, Farlowe is a private detective. Interesting occupation, good stories could come from a setting like that. Yes, heaps of stories.
I sat back down at the table and started taking notes of the people as they arrived. No one came in in sometime, so I just made notes on the people I already had:
Howard Baldric:
A travelling musician from Kent, Howard Baldric seems like a bit of an arrogant man but is desperately seeking a stage name. At first he called himself Black Jack, never told me why, I don’t think he really had a good reason.
Probably in his mid 30’s, he carries a guitar around everywhere, looks pretty old and the strings look like they’ll snap at any minute. I don’t even know if he’s ever been on the stage before, but that’s impossible to tell without knowing any of his past stage names.
Overall, probably not someone I’d want to talk to, possibly nice, but too constantly absorbed in his own world of tunes and strings.
Mitchell Farlowe:
Mitch is a retired private detective who is in around his mid 40’s I presume, seems like a moderately enjoyable person. But seems a bit like someone who could talk about politics and salad for hours on end.
He has obviously been on the job for many years; 15 – 20 years perhaps? Unlike Howard who seems a bit divorced from reality, Mitchell seems a bit too close to reality that at first glance he seems like he would be a very boring man.
Seems extremely obsessive about his work, and a bit ego-centric seeing as some of his stories he tells and his attitudes seem like he is only talking himself up about his “Sherlock Holmes-ique” detective skills.
Barney:
The proprietor of the hotel, he has a thick Eastern European accent but I can’t make out exactly where he comes from. He seems to be the most enjoyable of the three other people I’m sharing my time here with.
But (there is always a but) Barney seems to be a bit thick and not extremely intelligible, but I’d most definitely share a drink with him and learn more about him.
By the strange totems and masks that adorn the hotel I presume he has spent sometime in the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa, quite a travelled man. Seeing as I grew up in Africa, we might have a few things to talk about.
I lifted my head and looked around the room, seeing as I had written the profiles of the three other people I have encountered in the hotel. In the corner of my eye, I see another man, I glance over towards him, I haven’t seen him before. He is wearing a large top-hat, a long coat with strange patterns on it and an intriquately detailed cane.
I didn’t hear him enter, and by the looks on everyone elses’ faces, they didn’t hear the sound of the door bell or the creak of the front door either.
‘Ta-dah!’ said the eccentric looking man striking a dramatic pose. ‘Wow, tough crowd.’ He said lowering his cane to the ground and looking disappointed.
The man began to walk towards the bar where swinging his cane next to him.
‘You can call me “The Magnificent Alexander Mire”, travelling magician and master of illusions!’ explained the man.
He walked up to the bar and wrote down his name in purple ink along the page.
‘You can have room –‘ began Barney.
‘No. I don’t want a room, give me the cupboard upstairs. I don’t want to take a good bed from a well deserving man.
‘...okay. You can go upstairs and make yourself comfortable.’ said Barney obviously confused.
Alex began to whistle as he walked up stairs and disappeared. Things are beginning to get stranger, there is only one room left in the hotel, unless there is a secret annex somewhere. I wrote down my thoughts on the “Magnificent Alexander Mire”, his intentions are an absolute mystery, that is if he has any at all! He seemed odd enough to actually want to stay in a cupboard.
The doorbell ringed again and the door slowly creaked shut. The slow sound of a cane tapping the floor could be heard, first deduction, an old man. Finally the second door creaked open and a man who if you gave him two flintlock pistols and a scarecrow’s hat, he’d look exactly like the Reverend Doctor Syn.
I couldn’t see his face under his black hat, and his figure was left a mystery because of his long black leather jacket. His cane tapped in a constant beat as the old codger limped towards the bar, how the hell he managed to get here or why he abandoned the car which dropped him off here confuses me greatly.
He takes a shaking hand up to the bar and picks up the pen, almost instantaneously, the man’s hand stops to shake and he delicately writes his name on the guestbook. I would make the bet that with a steady hand like that, he could paint the Mona Lisa on the back of a bee.
That’s the last of the rooms then, the old codger struggles to get up the stairs, it’s almost tea time. I wonder what they cook here.
I walk up to the bar and read the guestbook, seems that old codger can’t write as well as I thought he could, or at least spell. Maybe he’s an artist; all he wrote in the book was a big black “X”.
I gave this a 16+ rating because, well, it'll get to that later. This isn't at all "for a mature audience" but it will be.
