If it were anything other than a major hotel, the Kleiner-Hussain Spaceport Hotel would not have existed long enough to be this haunted, and yet. The problem with space travel has always been that ghosts dislocated from their origins are worse than ghosts left where they belong, and the problem with spaceport hotels has always been that dislocated ghosts meeting such an array of other dislocated ghosts compounds the issue. A murdered mediaeval lady-in-waiting, say, will be unhappy and confused enough upon finding herself in a glorified metal tube shooting between stars after centuries walking the same bit of dirt near some long-forgotten castle in a county with a long-forgotten name; shove her into a spaceport hotel corridor where a Mars-born battlefighter who died dishonourably a thousand years later can, for the first time she’s encountered in those thousand years, not only hear and speak to her but also wrap four fingers and a thumb around her wrist in a soldier-poor attempt at a come-on, and she will freak.
Add that to the fact that things (and ghosts, after all, are things) are so often left behind in hotels, and you will arrive at the point where, only fifteen years after its opening, it’s quicker to list which of the Kleiner-Hussain Spaceport Hotel’s 527 rooms are not haunted than to list those which are.
The hotel manager has tried priests. She has tried psychics. She has tried historians. She has tried ghost hunters, or rather, it would be more accurate to say that the ghost hunters turned up, and she said, ‘Sure, have at it.’ Charlatans all.
Seasoned travellers are resigned to the hauntings; all spaceport hotels are like this. The hotel manager has tried to become resigned to it too, really she has, but the sight of Headless Ermintrude appearing through one wall—cradling her head in her arms as though it were a baby—and running through the reception desk to disappear through the opposite wall never fails to startle, much less the sight of Mark the Knife dawdling after her, seemingly unbothered by the disconnect between head and body.
And then there is the creeping feeling that she, the hotel manager, has brought a ghost along herself. This is a new feeling. She can date it precisely: the feeling arrived two weeks ago on Tuesday at 25:07 when she’d gone to relieve the very-late-night bartender for his first break. Three auld boys were propping up the bar, drinking ersatz whisky and talking nonsense, as auld boys do. She kept half an ear on them, mostly listening out for words like ‘refill’ or ‘another’ or ‘lass’. What she heard instead was one auld boy saying, ‘I felt the ghost pull himself loose, that little tug behind the navel finally gone, you knaw?’ She’d turned to see the other two auld boys nod, like yes, they knew. Like this was not a tall story, but a basic fact. And she knew it too, the little tug at her navel. She’d felt it the moment the ship had lifted off, her first time leaving her home station, to take this gig. She’d felt it come loose in her first week here, had put it down to a quirk of travel sickness.
So now she’s sat in her office sorting through staff notes on her rooms instead of sorting payroll, looking for anything (anyone) familiar. She can safely discard any description that sounds like its ghost was from more than 100 years ago; Bristelle, her birth-station (her everything-station, until this gig) is only 80 years old. The hotel manager’s grandma was a pioneer, part of the first crew, riveting the insides of the station together with her own hands; the hotel manager’s mother was one of the first born generation. The hotel manager’s grandma died peacefully, so the ghost can’t be her, and anyway, surely the hotel manager would spot her own grandmother rootling around the hotel.
She’s been at this search for days, an hour here and there. Sometimes in the middle of the night, she wakes up and thinks of another keyword to filter and discard by. Recurring terms have built up behind her eyes: blood, wound, crying, stomach, appears, disappears, wet, water, eyes, scream, footprint, footstep. The language of the remnants of the unsettled dead.
All this filtering and still, 309 descriptions she can’t rule out. She’s out of keywords to strip. She pushes back from her desk and goes to walk the hotel instead. Not the big, public areas—if she were going to see her ghost in either of the hotel’s bars or its dining room or its ballroom, she’d have seen them already, surely. She lets her feet unspool the first of miles of corridor. Her lovely carpet, gold and green but still not familiar enough—at the Bristelle Inn, her old gig, you could put her in a sack and spin her around and dump her on any floor of the building, and she’d know exactly where she was just from looking at the carpet, but not here at Kleiner-Hussain, not yet.
The ghosts move more freely than the guests do. She nods to everyone, ghost and guest and employee. Searches faces. Recognises nothing of home. Should she be looking in rooms, at least the empty ones? She pulls up the hotel’s manifest, and the hotel spirals open in the palm of her hand. Seashell. Honeycomb. How do you search for a single figure in a labyrinth, when that figure is not confined by the same walls that you are?
Her radio sings at her. She’s needed at the front desk. She goes.
###
Room 106: Nickname—The Half-Drunk Child. 2-3 years old (?) Clothing approx 1960s-90s. Often seen swigging from a vodka bottle. Crying sometimes heard from the wardrobe if a guest stays in the shower for more than 20 minutes without speaking.
###
‘Ma?’
‘Who is it?’ the hotel manager’s mother says down the line, as though anybody else might be calling her at the same time on a Thursday that her daughter calls her every week.
‘Ma, it’s me.’
‘Aw, hello, little hen of mine. How’s my bright starlight?’
The hotel manager is perched by her bedroom window in her civvies, looking down at the ships sliding in and out of the docks. One of her socks has a hole in it, which she greets with the satisfaction of a person who will not put any formal clothing back on for an entire 52 hours. ‘I’m alright. How are you?’
‘You know, you know. Quicker to count what doesn’t hurt.’
‘Are you taking your supplements?’ Little square ships, little round ships, big square ships, big round ships.
‘Don’t fuss, starlight. When they make a supplement that cures decrepitude, I’ll be the first to neck it, I swear on your life.’
‘Not on your own life?’ The hotel manager can hear the smile in her own voice.
‘Yours is more precious to me. Are you treating it well, your life?’
‘Now who’s fussing?’
‘That’ll be a no then. It’s my best creation, your life, my most valuable gift to the galaxy. I do wish you’d show it to some of that galaxy instead of cooping it up in yon hotel.’
The hotel manager snorts. ‘Says someone who’s never left Bristelle.’
‘See? I’m already one up on my own ma, just by getting you out of here!’ That’s enough to crack both of them open, giggling down the line at each other, the laughter thick and then softening, fading. How many of the ant-people coming off the ships are coming to her hotel? How many of them are bringing ghosts?
‘Ma,’ the hotel manager says, ’are you missing a ghost?’
For the first time, her mother sounds serious. ‘Whit, me personally?’
‘Maybe?’
‘Not that I’ve noticed, and I think I would. We’re hardly thick on them here, are we?’
‘You heard anyone else mention anything?’
‘You know me, little hen, two ears and one mouth.’
‘It’s important.’
A pause while her mother thinks. ‘You reckon you’ve took one with you?’
‘Might be.’
‘Ah. I’ll listen out.’
###
Room 377: If any objects are placed in the upper left-hand bedside drawer, it will fill with water. Wild laughter as it happens. Note—replacing drawers made no difference. Note—have locked that drawer permanently.
###
‘And so what if you brought a ghost with you?’ says the Mars-born silversmith, who the hotel manager seems to be teetering back towards the on part of an off-and-on relationship with. ‘You wouldn’t be the first.’
They’re in a quiet queer bar, far enough away from the docks (and from the Kleiner-Hussain Spaceport Hotel) that out-of-towners won’t bother them. The silversmith has taken possession of the hotel manager’s right hand and is currently sliding one of her own rings on and off each of the hotel manager’s fingers, cataloguing and re-cataloguing the point on each finger where the ring settles. The hotel manager used to be used to this, surrendering some part of her body for use as a fidget, but it has been a while, and so the motion, the silversmith’s calluses, the gentle manipulation of every articulation of every one of the hotel manager’s knuckles, is not aiding her concentration.
‘They’ll be far from home,’ she manages. ‘They might be scared.’
The silversmith flips the ring and uses the gem’s casing to trace each of the lines on the hotel manager’s knuckles. ‘They’d have been scared on Bristelle too, else they wouldn’t be a ghost. What’s the real reason?’
The hotel manager extracts her hand, with a squeeze to the silversmith’s wrist on the way to stop the motion, seeming like a rebuke. ‘Bristelle isn’t like Mars. It’s like Ma said—we don’t have many ghosts. We’re not old enough. So if I’ve brought a ghost with me and nobody’s missing them—‘
She doesn’t know how to end the sentence.
The silversmith studies the ring. ‘If nobody’s missing them, then nobody knows their death was unsettled?’
‘Right. Or, only one person knows.’
‘Which would be much worse.’
The hotel manager nods.
They turn the conversation to happier things and then turn the night to happier things. When the hotel manager wakes in the smallest of the small hours in the silversmith’s bed in the silversmith’s studio she knows she will not get to sleep again, not with another body in her personal space and her personal space only being theoretically hers, really being the silversmith’s, smelling of the silversmith’s night cream, cedar and neroli, covered in the silversmith’s long hair that fans through the air with each of the hotel manager’s breaths.
She gets up instead to sit and marvel at the scattering of the silversmith’s worktop: the wax and the dremels and the picks and the pliers, sheets and wires and ring blanks made of all kinds of metals. The silversmith’s worktop is the closest place the hotel manager can imagine coming to the junction between the practical and the ornamental; sometimes the door between the staff-only and public areas of the Kleiner-Hussain Spaceport Hotel comes near, particularly during the more lavish of its wedding bookings, but still nothing takes the hotel manager quite so close as these tools and materials, so plain looking, all for moulding and melting and twisting and carving a tiny portion of the dug-up heart of a long-ago star into a bangle or an anklet.
She doesn’t realise she’s disturbed the silversmith until the silversmith’s arms slide around her from behind.
She leans back. Cedar and neroli. She is reasonably sure that cedar used to be some kind of tree, but what even is neroli?
‘Is this about the ghost?’ the silversmith says.
‘Yes,’ the hotel manager lies.
‘You could ask for help, you know.’
###
Room 239: Small, blonde young woman, often hides behind the curtain. Defensive wounds to hands. Not really any trouble.
###
The hotel manager types out a bulletin:
###
FAO all staff
Forgive the unusual note—I’m after a particular ghost. 50 credit bonus to whoever identifies them for me.
- Arrived shortly after I did
- From Bristelle Station
- That’s really all I know
- I know that’s not much to go on, sorry, but I’ll be grateful to anyone who can help
###
Looking at it, she’s not hopeful. She sends it anyway.
###
Room 184: Nickname—Mark the Knife. Martian fighter pilot. Shrapnel wounds to torso and stomach. Amorous, but only towards other ghosts.
###
‘Ma?’
‘Who is it?’
‘Ma, it’s me.’
‘Aw, hello, starlight. How’s you, little hen of mine?’
The hotel manager is making this call from her sitting room because the silversmith is half asleep on her front in the hotel manager’s bed. Tuckered out. The hotel manager feels a bright stab of satisfaction, of proficiency. ‘I’m good, thanks, Ma. How are you?’
‘I’ve had better days.’
‘Maybe if you took the supplements—’
‘Don’t fuss, little hen. Listen, I’ve been thinking on what you asked last week.’
The hotel manager’s sitting room window faces away from the docks. From here, she can see the market, thick with traders from all over. You can buy nearly anything on Kleiner-Hussain, a new serving spoon, or a serving of any illicit substance you’ve heard of (or haven’t), or a spoonful of a spice that hasn’t grown in the ground for a century and therefore costs nearly the earth.
‘You’ve heard something?’ she says
‘It’s more what I’ve not heard. I wouldn’t have thought anything if you hadn’t asked, so it might be nothing. Might be we’ve lost a ghost and might be we haven’t, but sometimes ghosts leave of their own accord, hitching a lift like, and might be that’s for the best. Might be that’s the closest they can get to what they wanted, anyway. So why fuss?’
Beyond the market is the theatre district, where the gaudy young things paint their faces up and wear their hair down. The closest thing Bristelle had to that was the community pantomime each year, same costumes each time, so that the play had to be chosen to fit the costumes rather than the other way around, or film nights once a month at the community centre, releases from nine months ago on the crappy old screen.
‘You think I should leave it alone?’ the hotel manager says.
The hotel manager’s mother pauses, really thinking about it. ‘Might be. But you’ll do what you think best anyway, my little hen, I know.’
The silversmith appears in the doorway, glorious. She opens her hand.
‘Ma, there’s someone wants to say hi.’
The hotel manager taps her palm to the silversmith’s to transfer the call and watches the silversmith wander back to the bedroom in search of socks, ‘Miss-Ma, hi, it’s me! It’s been ages, I know. We’re trying to take it slowly this time. Yes, she’s eating properly. Yes, so am I, I promise…’
###
Room 314: Strange smell which guests describe as candyfloss gone off, plus a strong sense that something is hiding under the bed (nothing visible). Wet footprints appear under the window approx once a month, always facing outwards. Size 9 shoe.
###
‘So what kind of person wants to leave?’ asks the silversmith, over a late breakfast of fried fish and porridge at the hotel manager’s favourite caff, just off the side of the market.
The hotel manager circles her spoon in the air. ‘Everyone? No, that’s not fair. Everyone with decent grades? No, that’s not fair either. But plenty of people. Bristelle’s—how do I put this—it’s a series of gambles that all fell through, but it chugs along just about, somehow. People stay because where else could they own their own homes? But that’s not the same as not wanting to leave.’
At the table behind the silversmith, a child lets out a wail, only assuaged by its parent popping a morsel of fish in its mouth.
‘So who has left?’ the silversmith asks. ‘That’s what Miss-Ma was getting at, right? Someone who left in theory and wasn’t heard from.’
The hotel manager shrugs. ‘Lots of people left. Might be a third of my class at school, and the same for the class above and the one below. Beyond that, I couldn’t say.’
The child scoops up a handful of rice substitute for inspection, suspicious, curious, pressing the nearly-grain between its fingers. The hotel manager wonders if, on some level, some part of the child’s ancestral memory can tell that what its fingers are feeling is not what rice is meant to be.
‘Who would Miss-Ma not want to make trouble for?’ the silversmith says. ‘The list can’t be that long, can it?’
The hotel manager does not know how to explain to a city-born person what a small station is like, the way anybody’s trouble interlocks and interweaves with everyone else’s. Send the courier to prison, and you can’t restock. Send the teacher to prison, and your children can’t get qualifications. Send any of the agri-techs to prison, and you don’t eat.
‘There’s no slack in the system,’ she says, in the end. ‘All the slack bleeds away elsewhere.’
‘Like you.’
‘Like me.’
‘Who would be able to hide a ghost?’
‘Ha. If I knew that, I’d have hired them six months ago.’
‘I’m being serious.’
The child smashes the mush it has made of the rice substitute into its mouth. It overshoots, hits itself harder than intended in the face, starts to cry.
‘I’ll think about it,’ the hotel manager says.
###
Room 514: Man in Jupiter-style refuse worker uniform, gunshot wound to the back. Washes his hands over and over in the bathroom sink. Will move to the side or leave the bathroom entirely if asked, but only for as long as the amenities are in use. Will sometimes leave the cold tap on.
###
The very-late-night bartender pops his head around the hotel manager’s office door on his way to his shift.
He nods at her. ‘Boss.’ He nods at the Half-Drunk Child sitting cross-legged on the office floor playing with its vodka bottle. ‘Kiddo.’
The hotel manager looks up. The ghost does not. ‘Hi, love. Whit can I do you for?’
‘It’s about your ghost.’
The hotel manager’s spine straightens. ‘You have a tip for me? I meant it about the fifty credits.’
‘Didn’t doubt it, boss. Not a tip exactly, more an offer. Your missus had a drink in the bar last night while she was waiting for you, and we got to chatting, and then I got to thinking.’ He pauses to duck out of the way of the Half-Drunk Child as it toddles past him; nobody enjoys a ghost going through them. ‘I’ve got a friend who works in bookings for TransStar, and that’s the only service to Bristelle Station, isn’t it. So it might be, if it is what you’re thinking, that what you’re looking for is someone who booked a ticket and never showed. I can have a word, if you’d be up for fronting those credits to her, and maybe something a bit extra for me, although I can’t guarantee we’ll find anything.’
‘Done,’ the hotel manager says, no hesitation. ‘Fifty each do you?’
The very-late-night bartender bobs his head. ‘Do me nicely.’
Three days later, he pings her a list. Nineteen names.
Should be easy enough to winnow down; the hotel manager has seen six of them alive since she got here for starters, fluttering their eyelashes and asking to use her friends and family discount.
She makes some calls.
###
Room 519: Typhoid Mary. Yes, the real one. No, we don’t know how she got here. No, she hasn’t given anyone typhoid fever as yet.
###
‘Down to three names,’ the silversmith says. They’re both in their thickest coats, up at the top of the observation tower. ‘That’s not bad going. Do you have a gut feeling?’
‘No,’ the hotel manager says.
The silversmith twines her fingers around and around and around a strand of the hotel manager’s hair, staring up and out at the stars. ‘You’re a bad liar,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ the hotel manager says. Kleiner-Hussain stretches out underneath them in the dark, and the only other couple up there with them heads back to the lift, and the silversmith’s hand is in the hotel manager’s hair, and the hotel manager is suddenly and viciously glad to be here and and now, able to afford without hesitation the cups of hot cider she’ll be buying them both on the way down, the curd dumplings they’ll eat after that, the theatre district only round the corner from her flat and the market right below it, such, such, such a long way from Bristelle Bloody Station. Can she blame a ghost for wanting the same thing?
‘If I’m right,’ she says, ‘and I did anything about it, it would mean the end of the station.’
‘Someone your Ma wouldn’t want trouble for.’
’Right. If no him, no Bristelle—I mean it. She’s the chief engineer’s daughter, if I’m right. He’s—I could believe he’d refuse to let his daughter walk out on him. She was meant for his successor.’
‘There aren’t other engineers who can replace him?’
The hotel manager shakes her head, slowly, suddenly very aware of the weight of it on her neck, the strand the silversmith has a grip on tugging at her scalp. ‘None that he’d accept. And half of the design of everything is just in his brain. He never writes anything down, he’s notorious for it.’
‘Who will you tell?’
‘I was thinking, if it is her, then I’d ask her what she wants.’
###
Room 482: Nickname—Flickerer. Man in Victorian dress with no eyes appears and disappears rapidly in the wardrobe between 3-4 am on Wednesdays. Note—have ordered auto-closing wardrobe door, but the parts are coming all the way from Jupiter.
###
FAO all staff:
Please forgive the second unusual message, but I’m still after that ghost, and I’ve narrowed down the possibilities. 50 credit bonus to anyone who can tell what room I can find a ghost matching any of the attached 3 photos.
###
Room 612: Girl of approx 8-10 years, soaking wet pyjamas, sits in the corner and writes in her diary. Disappears if you try to talk to her.
###
239 is a twin room that overlooks the bike park. The hotel manager lets herself in. She has to work hard to turn off the part of her brain that immediately starts to critique the job housekeeping has done; the job has been done well enough, and it’s not what she’s here for.
She perches on one of the beds.
‘Hi, Cariad,’ she says. ‘You there?’
She’d have missed it if it weren’t for the note on the hotel booking system, only sees it right out the corner of her eye: the curtain is shimmering.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m so, so sorry, Cariad. And I won’t make you do anything you don’t want to do—I understand why you might have hitched a lift instead of showing yourself to anyone. It’s a lot of homes at risk. I just wanted to tell you that I know you’re here, and I can guess what happened—I know what your daddy’s like. So if you want me to tell anyone official that you’re here, I just want you to know I’ll do that. And if I’m going anywhere else, I’ll swing by the room to let you know, in case you want to tag along. See some different sights.’
The curtain doesn’t reply.
‘You just let me know,’ the hotel manager says. ‘You know where my office is, I take it?’
The curtain twitches once.
‘Alright, then. Alright.’
Once the hotel manager shuts the door, she stands with eyes closed and her back against it for a long, long time.
###
Room 167: Loud screaming annually on 6 July only. Note—it really is very loud. Note: bookings are blocked on 6 July only, along with rooms 165, 168, and 169.
