Hotels and hospitals have a great deal in common. Long repeating corridors, an obsession with cleanliness. Hard work behind closed doors. Strangers passing, each rapt in the illusion that theirs is the only story to tell.   Ignoring the others and the rattling hum of the machine in action. The scores of people working to keep the magic alive, to deliver at scale what their patrons most need: medicine, food, comfort, and to preserve the sense, in the moment of delivery, that the recipient is the only one who matters.  

 

The thing about this place is that noone need ever see your face. They can wear masks or hoods as they enter. The foyer keeps up appearances: brown marble, polished to a slick shine in the golden brown lamplight. I’ve picked up the knack, over the years, of working out which of them is coming in this time, from the sound of their steps below. It’s always easy to pick out the nervous skitter of first timers. Return visitors keep to a more measured tread, cautious but no longer wary. They know now that they won’t be found out: in this hotel discretion is assured. Or so they think, at least.  

 

You’d be forgiven for not noticing us, while you move through your particular story tonight. Your average Joe doesn’t realise how many of us there are, here. In deep cover, burrowed down  between the coiled springs and the feathers. Between us, we’ve got every room of this place well and truly bugged. 

 

We were talking about it only today, as we lay snout to snout, cosy and snug. Bill and Brenda, Bradley, Madge and Sue and the rest. It’s not a bad gig, this place. The mattress under the red velvet bedspread is soft, the rent cheap, and we get all the flakes of skin we can eat, salty sweat to taste, and the rest (you can imagine what well enough: I’m not going to spell it out in company.) All I have to do is listen, and be ready to squeal when the boss comes knocking. It’s a steady gig, and I like it well enough. 

 

JimBug McRea may have been known for his flea circus in the old days, but the life was tough. The long afternoons drumming up a crowd. The tiny tents always flying away in the wind. And the performers: let me tell you, as one who knows, those little guys may have looked cute but boy! were they divas. If they say jump, well you’d better jump, if you want the show to go on. And all for what? Peanuts. Dimes. The scrapings at the bottom of the barrel. A mug’s game, or so old JimBug tells me. He was sick of it. Sick to the stomach, and not getting any younger, either. So he used his noggin, a scrap of the old initiative, and set up this racket. A network of informants, spread invisible beneath the very pillows which rest the heads of Bear Creek’s brightest and best. All the Boss has to do is set us listening, get the juice and reap the rewards. 

 

I’m one of JimBug’s top performers. Can hear a crumb fall from the next room if I’m minded, he says. So of course I’ve got the juiciest plum of them all: a spot burrowed down snug in the deluxe king size mattress of the premier suite, tucked away on its very own floor at the very top of the hotel. The concierge has a special key, secreted in an inside pocket lined with purple silk, to access the button in the lift. Their privacy (at least so they think) could not be more secure. So the thick cream wallpaper may be a little stained, blossoming in faint brown marks that may be water and may be something else. The deep burgundy carpet may be a little worn in places. But the silence. The silence is deep and green and dry as a stack of fifty dollar bills. 

 

There’s quite the company up here: Bill and Bradley, Bella, and Madge and Sue and the rest. They were here before, generations deep in the soft down around the creaking springs. There are so many of us in fact that it would look uncomfortable to you, used as you are to more spacious accommodations. That’s how we like it, though. Room for everyone. I used to worry that the others might resent me, with the job and all, but they don’t seem to mind. They like to eavesdrop as much as I do, and they’re more than happy to take a share of the extra crumbs JimBug sprinkles for us at the end of a particularly successful day. We talk about work a lot. I like to think my professional generosity has brought them a great deal of benefit. 

 

We’ve heard some things alright. Bill and Brenda, Bradley Madge and Sue and the rest. Things you wouldn’t believe. Or maybe you would, if you know anything about what lies under the covers of the world. 

 

We were listening, the time a gang of mimics hired the room, disguised themselves as chaise lounges and stools, and threw a party. Nobody else heard their groans of pleasure above the din and the chatter and the clink of martini glasses, as the beautiful people unwittingly used them as places to sit or rest their legs. Filthy bastards the lot of them, you might say. But who am I to judge?

 

We were listening when the angels left the general store and paid Gerald “Baxter” Baxter, the kingpin of the local occult protection racket, a visit. I listened as they bottled his screams and took just enough blood to keep him alive, before the whole party,  Baxter included, disappeared in a flash of light hot enough to set the counterpane on fire. The angels move in mysterious ways, beyond what a bug like me can fathom. But I’m guessing what they had in mind for him wasn’t pretty. 

 

We’ve heard Peter Graves, the head of the Parish Council, often enough too, with one or other of his lovers, Mark or Morgan or Carl. It’s almost touching sometimes, hearing those moments of release. The things he shouts would make your hair turn green, and I often find that I’m in for a treat, seeping sweet and sticky through the mattress. But what he whispers afterwards, into his lover’s ear, his breath on skin or fur or feathers, well those are some of the tenderest words I’ve ever heard a body say to another. The pain, as he tells them what he’s seen, the things he’s had to do. Sometimes his body shakes under the weight of his confession, hard enough for me to feel through the mattress. The hope, that maybe things will be different this time. Maybe he can be a better man, less weak, lead the town into the light. In those moments, I think what he wants to hear is that he can. They almost always oblige, those who lie beside him. And sometimes they even mean it. After all the years I’ve had in this business, it becomes easy enough to tell.

 

Sometimes it goes well enough. Perhaps Peter will come back, and there will be more shaking, more secrets, more scraps. But eventually, though I always hope it won’t, there will come a time when the heavy door will open and he’ll step in, alone. And I can tell you, my little heart sinks into my legs when I hear his tread, without a companion. I know it can only mean one thing, you see. 

 

We’ll hear the muffled scrape of the chair from the polished chestnut writing desk on the other side of the room, the rasp of the cord as he ties it around the light fitting. And worst of all, I’ll hear the snap, as he brings another go around to an end. I know I shouldn’t let it get me. He’s a nasty piece of work all told, and I know sure as the egg that hatched me that he’ll always come back. But I’ve grown fond of the old bastard, and old friends, like old habits, die hard. 

 

Do I wish I could do something, sometimes, when I hear these things, the things I’ve told you and the rest, as bad or worse, that I haven’t? Do I wish I could leap out, legs waving, and stop it? Sure I do. But a fella’s got to know when he’s  outmatched and outclassed. And anyway, I’m not here for heroics. I’m here to give the boss the goods, and keep the wheel turning. Keep the hush money coming in and the good times rolling. Don’t shoot the messenger, you know?

 

I guess it all had to come to an end sometime, and I think that maybe tonight may just be the night. I’ll let you be the judge. 

 

 JimBug had briefed me, as he always does. Who was coming, and what to listen out for. This time it’s Scrofulous Mike. We don’t have much advance intel on him. There’s a faintly unsavoury air that hangs around him, a sense that something, somewhere isn’t quite right. But it’s not something anyone has ever been able to pin down. JimBug has high hopes. Scrofulous Mike has hung around the foyer many a blue-tinged evening. Sometimes he’s even slipped wetly through to the bar, for a shot or two of something sticky and sweet. But he’s never made it up here before. This time, he may give us something more. 

 

We listen, tonight, with a little more than the usual excitement for the creak of the opening door. Bill and Bradley, Bella and Madge and Sue and the rest chitter softly in anticipation. As I’d hoped, Scrofulous Mike’s damply muffled step is not the only sound I can hear. Another set of footsteps follow, and with them the promise of a good night’s takings. And behind them a third! I can’t help wriggle for the glorious foretaste of what that might mean. 

 

It doesn’t take long to realise something isn’t right. That second step of footsteps. The weight, rhythm and the rustle of his expensive suit, the baritone murmur of his voice can mean only one thing: Peter Graves. And the third? Someone I didn’t recognise. The light and diffident, uncertain tread of someone very young. They move towards the bed. Scrofulous Mike wheezes directions:  Place the stones here on the bed. The candles on the nightstand, this distance apart. Move that footstool to here. Arrange the  just here, the  just so. Now you, lie down. Graves’ words are slurred, as he mutters his agreement. The third person remains silent. We feel the movement of the mattress at they comply with Mike’s instructions. 

 

Bill and Brenda, Bradley and Bella, Madge and Sue and the rest whisper uneasily. This isn’t like anything we’ve heard before. 

 

Scrofulous Mike is whispering now. Words rhythmic and sillibant, and not in any language that we recognise. (And we have quite a few between us. The circus passed through many countries, and we have an ear for speech of all varieties). Bearing down on top of the bed, a great pressure and a shaking. And we can hear something start to shift. Under the words, a low vibration. A  whisper-rustle on the edges of the room. Scrambling up to the top of a pillow I see the where it comes from. 

 

The furniture in the room has been moved. A pale yellow candle, set in a heavy silver holder which I have never seen before, is lit on each bedside table, positioned now at opposite ends of the room. The dresser and the nightstand and the trouser press set at angles, cast  shadows in the candlelight that merge into shapes that I almost feel I should recognise, but sit just  outside the edge of my understanding.

 

The third person, a youth with bright pink hair and a deep blue leather jacket, is lying face down on the bed. Their breathing is shallow. Scrofulous Mike crouches over them, limbs spread. Mike’s body is trembling, and he is whispering. His greasy dressing gown, untied to reveal worn cord trousers and a faded shirt, is emitting a yellowish green glow. Makes Bill and Bradley feel a little sick to look at, they say.

 

The Mayor is rocking on the balls of his feet, his eyes rolled into the back of his head. His mouth is open, in a rictus ‘o’. The sound coming out of it, half groan, half whine, is not something that comes from a human, or from a bug either. Brenda and Madge says it gives them the willies, and I must admit I have to agree with them. 

 

The stains on the walls are moving. Dark circles slowly spinning in a widening vortex, as the damp and the rot thickens in the air. The wallpaper ripples and begins to crawl, worming out in ragged rust brown tendrils. The tendrils wave in the air as they move out and out towards the bed. They caress Scrofulous Mike as they pass. His face is soft with ecstacy. We wonder what they’ve promised him. Money, perhaps. Power. The feeling that, for once, he was at the centre of things. 

 

The kid face down on the bed starts to whimper, as the tendrils brush their skin and slowly start to wrap themselves around them. As the tendrils wrap tighter, whimpering turns to pleading. Scrofulous Mike doesn’t listen. He presses his hands and his knees more firmly into the mattress, to stop any chance of escape. The yellowish green glow is in his eyes, now. Whatever is driving the tendrils from the wallpaper has already swallowed him whole. 

 

 Bill and Brenda, Bradley and Bella, Madge and Sue and the rest, well they’ve just about had it. They’ve just about had it, and so have I. We feel it together. We start up a righteous chittering, barely audible up near the surface of the bed. It soon sinks down, down through the soft layers of down and the springs, right down to where the mattress touches the frame. It gets louder as more and more of us take up the call, until we know we can be heard as clearly as anything. If you were in the room right now, my friend, it would make the insides of your ears itch.

 

The noise shakes the Mayor out of whatever kind of trance he has been under. He starts to back away from the bed, a look of disgust on his face. Scrofulous Mike and the tendrils continue undisturbed. And so we decide to take action, Bill and Brenda, Bradley and Bella, Madge and Sue and the rest, even though we know it’ll mean trouble. As one we rise. We rise through the mattress, crawling over each other in our haste to get to them. We rise in a wave of honour and of vengeance. We cover Scrofulous Mike and we bite, bite, BITE. 

 

He doesn’t even have time to scream. Thousands of tiny jaws, stirred to action have done their terrible work. Scrofulous Mike is reduced to a pile of bones, gnawed clean. The yellow-green glow goes with him, and the tendrils whither and fade. Peter Graves lies prone, dead again. The kid with the bright pink hair and the bright blue coat stumbles out of the room, dazed, and we sink back, allowing ourselves to bask for a second in the glow of a job well done. What comes next won’t be good, we know that. But for once, I think we might just have done the right thing.

 

So now I have to wait. I’m nestled deep at the bottom of the mattress, waiting for the bones to be found. JimBug won’t be happy. We are meant to burrow information, not flesh. It’s the end of this gig for me. I could have scarpered of course, but it’s a matter of professional pride, to take some responsibility. To be able to walk with my mandibles held high. I reckon I’ll catch up with Bill and Brenda, Bradley Madge and Sue and the rest. They’ve hitched a ride on the Mayor, for they know that soon he’ll be up again  and stumbling out the room as he always does, blinking and shaking his head like he’s trying to shake something clean out of it. I think it may be time to go into business together. 

 

I’m well aware we may not go down too well at first. The shock of discovery may well kill him. Again. But it won’t be long until Peter Graves discovers what we can do, and I’ve no doubt we can make an arrangement in our new lodgings that is to everyone’s liking. Before you know it we’ll settle ourselves down into a steady gig with our new companion. It’s not like we don’t  know him well enough. Old habits, like old friends, die hard, after all.