Grey skies hung over it like a thick blanket, though its austere appearance was no less menacing. It squatted within the clearing like a massive ancient tomb. It wasn’t as overgrown as she had expected, and that was a relief, but inside the building the repairs were significant. To bring it back to its pure glory would take a lot more than money, it would take a miracle.
Lucky for her, some investors still believed in them.
It didn’t matter that the place was in the middle of nowhere, or that its imposing, Dracula’s castle atmosphere was as inviting as a soggy wet grave. The pipes had burst ages ago and ruined the beautiful cherry oak flooring in the main foyer. The hotel’s near drowning and the replacement of the flooring was her biggest expense.
It didn’t matter. The investors came through. The check cleared.
Amy was in ecstasy as she spiked that huge SOLD sign into the soft, damp earth at the front entrance leading up the massive driveway. The front of the hotel was clearly visible from the road, but that didn’t make it look any more appealing. The whole place was a squatting gargoyle. She shook her hands as she freed them from the sign, throwing all negative thoughts away. None of that mattered. Yes, the place gave her the creeps. Not important. She had to focus only on the positive, and the list was impressive:
1: This sale was going to give her a huge commission. Damn she needed that money.
2: Legend status. Her picture on the ‘top salesman’ board for decades to come.
3:First order of business with her new status would be a private office instead of a simple metal desk and a tightly shared space with Ted and Rajish.
No more staring at the backs of their heads and their sweaty, meaty necks and thinning hair and white shirts yellowing at their throats. No more worrying if they’d looked over her shoulder at the house she was selling, poised to snatch it from her, putting their names on the mortgage papers and stealing her commissions.
That happened more than once. Real Estate is hands down a predator’s game and Amy is a soft bellied turtle.
But this time she finally took a big bite.
“Bit bigger than you can chew, isn’t it?”
Ted, at the water cooler, Rajish beside him at his desk, smirking.
The hotel had been vacant for close to two decades and when she took the project on her colleagues made bets on her potential losses. Ted, the water cooler asshole who routinely had six figure commissions throughout the summer months, had the gall to ask her if she was okay. If maybe the divorce wasn’t playing havoc with her common sense.
“Taking on a job that big is crazy.”
Fuck Ted.
It didn’t matter that she sold her house, her car and emptied out her bank account to get the hotel properly staged and ready for sale. Abandonment to the elements for twenty years had taken its toll, after all, but she was good for it and she knew a win when she saw one. Or, well, she knew a good possibility if the place sold in time to cover all her bills.
It was a gamble.
A big one.
She wondered if this is what it felt like for Lotto winners, a heady rush of excitement and joy that was quickly followed by worry and self doubt. Surely she didn’t need to feel imposter syndrome *now* when she’d just proven she could turn a profit as well as any of the ‘boys’ in the office, and she didn’t have to show cavernous cleavage or wear impossible heels to do it. She could just be her dumpy, forty something self who always mysteriously had a small coffee stain on her sleeve and too much paperwork in her car.
“I know a good therapist,” Ted said at the water cooler, smug smile on his stupid, doughy face. “Sold him a deluxe condo in the city last week, nice guy. He specializes in divorce cases, emotional trauma stuff, you know, stuff you are probably going through.” He coughed into his fist, hiding his grin. “I could get you a heavy discount.”
She fumed thinking about that conversation, always one sided and dismissive of her abilities. She could be a good salesperson given the chance, but it was always wrenched out from under her by her especially pushy colleagues. Rajish had even gone so far to fraudulently put his name on a bid offer and stole her commission right out from under her. She’d worked for weeks to get that sale.
“Hey Amy, when are you going to make more of those cookies?” Rajish, always hungry and always rail thin, like the nibbling rat he was.
“Been a little busy,” she replied.
Her boss stared at her from his glassed office, tiny beady eyes on a sweaty, round face. She hadn’t had a sale in months and it was starting to look like she’d be out of work if this didn’t go through. He’d been completely useless when she insisted Rajish had stolen her last sale, calling it ‘The name of the game’.
“Just be more careful next time.”
In other words, it’s not his problem his office is full of snakes.
She couldn’t understand why they had to be so ruthless, it wasn’t like there was a housing desert, if anything everyone was strapped in to ridiculously huge mortgages that turned them all unhealthy profits. She’d spent hour after hour showing houses, getting her small commissions, abandoning her family (well, her cat and her now ex-husband)for sales events and clients until finally her husband of nine years ran off with the check out girl at the grocery store where he worked the deli. The new squeeze might be eighteen. Hard to say, girls always look older in heavy makeup.
“Do you know why that hotel hasn’t sold in twenty years?” Ted goaded her. “Because it’s too remote for even bears to hang out in!”
“Ted, that’s not even funny.”
She held the information she knew about the place close to her chest, facts like how old it was (built in 1880), how it was once owned by a very old, very aristocratic family, how there were rumours of witchcraft rituals (1920s), how that morphed into Satanism (1969), then a hospital (it closed in 1997 amid a terrible scandal concerning patients left to die as it was abandoned). The property remained derelict in the middle of the woods. Broken Hill had its own pile of legends, not the least of which was that a witch had been burned and then drowned and then stabbed at the base of the lake not far from the hotel, and that no one had managed to secure any land rights to the surrounding area. Her own enquiries brought nothing but silence from government offices. A purposeful wasteland.
Well, ‘protected land’ more like, but without the official imprint, which was very strange.
When Ted found out her husband divorced her he’d made sure to make note of it with a sad donut he’d taken a bite out of. He told her she had to get used to any future boyfriends understanding she’s ‘used goods’.
Ted has the shittiest sense of humour.
When she took on the Broken Hill Hotel project she knew it was life defining. Getting people out there to work on it was her first hurdle, along with assessments of water damage and making sure the electrical and plumbing were still running properly. She was pleasantly surprised to be told that the issues with the place were all cosmetic and even the electrician was left scratching his head as to how it was still so functional after being abandoned for so long.
“Places die without someone living in them,” he had explained to her. “This hotel should be an utter ruin by now, being left alone to the elements this long. There’s not so much as a broken window. It doesn’t make any sense. Are you sure there’s no one maintaining the place?”
Damn sure. The books had it listed as land only, all twenty acres of it, ripe for expansion and development should the future owners want to invest. When she’d visited the place for the first time, she felt welcomed into it, like a hug, and when she set to work doing some of the renovations herself, peeling wallpaper and painting the rooms, it was as if the hotel was helping her along. Sometimes, she’d walk into a room she was sure she hadn’t started yet and the decorations and colours she’d picked would already be there, the room as new as a blade of grass in spring.
It was unsettling, that speedy progress, but she didn’t dare complain. The sooner it was ready for sale, the better. All the holes in the walls were fixed, the tired wallpaper peeled and discarded and slate matte grey professional oil paints put in its place. The inside of the hotel now had more of a Scandinavian spa feel, which she knew translated as an enticing blank slate for new owners. They could leave it as is, or put their own touches on it without breaking the bank.
She put a lot of her heart and soul into its reincarnation. When the bank started calling her, she’d discreetly turn off her phone. She ignored other clients and let Rajish steal them one after the other, putting his name on every sale she’d made. Ted kept putting half eaten donuts on her desk, doing what he could to rattle her and get more intel on her ‘big project’.
“We can paint a wall or two,” he said, winking at Rajish.
The thing about old places like this are all the weird conveniences that don’t translate into modern times. Like the big well in the centre of the basement, located on the far left side of the building and so subterranean it was like a cave grotto. Back in the good old days it was probably a source of fresh water for the horses and the kitchen, transported daily by hefty scullery maids who no doubt rejoiced when plumbing came along and the well was boarded up. But you can’t easily get rid of a thing like that, and it can stay there for eternity, sitting in stasis, waiting for the day it becomes useful again.
When Ted and Rajish took a drive to check out the hotel, she was surprised at first, and then she felt that familiar angst because dammit, this was hers, she’d let them steal enough, why were they here looking to pluck from her last reserve, her best commission?
They couldn’t let her have one win?
Broken Hill Hotel sighed. The halls were annoyed, the windows darkened, but the vintage asbestos tiles in the front foyer told her not to worry. Ted and Rajish were like a hidden ant problem. Annoying, but easy to erase.
The curtains in the Red Room licked their lips.
The first thing she did was express surprise and excitement, ignoring the donut Ted shoved in his mouth as he walked through the grand entrance of art nouveau glass and oak. With an eagerness that was infectious she insisted they see the best feature of the hotel first, the thing that cemented why she’d invested in the sale in the first place.
She brought them straight to the basement.
Ted and Rajish stood around the rim of the well, looking at each other with raised brows, each silently telling the other ‘Yeah, the old broad has finally lost it.’ They were so distracted by the strangeness of it they didn’t flinch when Amy ran up full tilt to both of them and, with the help of a hefty iron crowbar, knocked both of them into it.
She heard some splashing, some yelling, and yes, that iron lid was damn heavy, but she’d gotten a good workout this last month cleaning the hotel up and she wasn’t so much overweight these days as muscular.
The iron lid closed on the well like ink on a sale.
The SOLD sign creaked in the breeze as she got into her car and drove off, her radio spewing an old Talking Heads song. It was a beautiful summer evening. She had the urge to stop at Tim Horton’s and get one of those new iced Mochas they were advertising to quell her sweet tooth and keep her awake for the long drive home.
She threw Ted’s box of donuts in a trash bag she kept in the back seat.
She was watching her carbs.
Note: BROKEN HILL HOTEL is a new web serial that will update periodically. Each story will feature a new guest, along with a few core characters. If you would like to make a reservation, be sure to update your bookmarks. I write in a variety of genres, but heavily in horror and mystery with a LGBQT leaning. You can find my most recent ebooks on my ko-fi: http://ko-fi/writermjones
I’m enjoying your story. Thanks for posting.