A grizzly tale. I wrote this in July 2021, after finishing an abysmal final year at university – just bearly. ~ GDH
Allison
Out of breath from the stairs, shopping cutting off circulation in fingers. Faff around with the keys for approximately twenty minutes and stagger through the door. Alright love? Alright. Good day? Yeah, alright. Put the kettle on would you. Cuppa tea is it? Abso-fucking-lutely.
Bathroom, dying for a piss. Can’t wait. Fed can put the shopping away while the kettle’s boiling. Door sticks and I hit my head. Fucking shit it all.
Shit! What’s wrong? Hit my fucking head on the door didn’t I. I’ll just be a minute. Aw please hurry mate I’m actually dying. You can save my life right now. Leave it out, I just got in here. I’ll be five minutes. Fuck’s sake!!!
Sofa, cup of tea, biggest sigh of relief you can imagine. Another day, another dollar, bro. Slurrp. How’s your shift? Yeah, it was alright. Not too fucking busy. Anything interesting happen? Actually, yeah. I’ve got a pretty juicy one for ya. Oi! Yeah, strap yourself in. Haha. It was the weirdest thing… Today right, I was talking to this girl Laura on my cig break. She’s an agency girl too, I actually done a couple shifts with her before at Civ’s but I never properly spoke to her before. I hadn’t seen her for ages, that must have been like three months ago or something and I didn’t see her again till today. We’d just capped off the incoming and Terri let me go for a cig. Practically made me beg her even though fuck all ever happens on the floor between incoming and interval… hang on I’m gonna have a cig now actually. Can I have a filter? Ain’t got any, Fed might. I’ll go ask him. Speak of the devil. Oi Fed can I have a filter? Cheers. Yo Fed, sit down, Al’s got a work story for us. One of your famous stories is it? Aye matey, gather round and I will tell ye a tale.
Aah, much better. So where was I? Right so I’m at the theatre, it was just after the first half had started. Lights up, audience safely ushered, so our customary hour and a half of bullshitting about with the bar team and pretending to clean glasses could finally commence. As you’d expect I was dying for a cig about this time so I went and begged Terri, and eventually twisted her arm. I head outside, soak up that lovely bin smell. (Bit of scene-setting for ya there.) So I head outside and see this girl Laura standing there. I’d worked with her a couple times before, she’s an agency girl too, but not for months. Never really spoke to her. To tell you the truth I’d not even noticed she was there this morning at the debrief. I mean obviously I was late, but I didn’t notice her during the incoming at all either… she always just kind of blends in. She’s pretty quiet and like, a bit boring seeming? I dunno. She’s quite fit though, ginger, bit delicate looking. So she’s out there in the smoking area knocking back a massive rollie, kind of staring off into space like she’s seen a ghost. And I’m pretty surprised to see her, especially cus Terri had been giving me grief about the cig break, and since I ain’t seen her in months and that. So I’m like, oh, alright mate. Laura isn’t it? Long time no see. And she goes like, mm, yeah. I’m like, remember my name? And she goes Allison, and that’s a nice surprise so I’m like ah yeah, glad to see I left an impression, call me Al though everyone does. And she just sort of smiles.
Now this is obviously set up to be a properly awkward cig break, so, master debater that I am, I start trying to ease her in with some work chat. Bit of a rush job today wasn’t it, the incoming and that? Cloakroom was getting a bit out of control, yadda-yadda-yadda. And she’s kind of loosening up a bit but still seems a bit like, uneasy. And I don’t think it’s just my shit personality that’s doing it. And let me tell you, she’d packed her rollie with enough baccy to feed a small family. Genuinely, it was massive. So she’s obviously trying to work off some kind of traumatic shit. I know how fucking Hugo can be with agency girls, so I fear the worst and I ask her like, don’t take this the wrong way mate, but are you alright? And she’s all smiles and she’s like yeah I’m fine, I’m fine. Just needed some fresh air – meanwhile, this massive cigarette! And I ask her how come. And she’s like, nothing, no really, it’s alright. But thank you for asking. I say no worries, us grunts gotta look out for each other innit. Not like anyone else is gonna.
Then I ask her how she likes it at the theatre. How’s it compare to her other agency work? Asking questions about her life and that. Eventually she’s proper perked up and we’re trading horror stories from all our other jobs. I’m telling her all about that slimy dickhead from Tony Macaroni’s and she’s proper cracking up. Turns out she’s had plenty of similar run-ins, surprise surprise. So I’m saying that’s it, I win, that must have been the worst shift in agency history. But then she goes a bit dark again, a bit like, severe. She sort of comes in close and whispers to me if I’ve ever heard of The Arcturus Hotel. I go, no. She says that whatever nightmare shift I’ve had, what happened to her last year at the Arcturus is bound to top it. Sounds a bit grim and suddenly I’m not really sure how much I want to know what happened to her at the Arcturus, you get me? She’s being a bit coy now, but her eyes have kind of lit up, she’s come alive a bit. She wants to tell me, I can tell. I think maybe she’s not told anyone this before. And I have to admit, I’m pretty intrigued at this point myself. So I roll up another ciggie and I listen.
Laura
I had worked there once before on a catering job when I first got here – a wedding – and I thought it was just… magnificent. It was the fanciest place I’d ever been. I mean, it still is. I always loved big, old buildings, the kind you get loads in central London, and I had just got to the UK then. Starry eyes, you know? The staff were all really nice, and the customers were like, that level of rich where they are actually quite nice to you, probably just because they’re so unbothered by everything. Like how they just float wherever they go, oh hello darling, thank you, yes, wonderful being so bloody loaded all the time, isn’t it?
So when I saw another agency job there, I snapped it up. Better than pouring drinks for old golf wankers who stare at your ass every time you run off for their balls so they can stare at your tits when you bring them back. This actually seemed like a decent job. It was just three shifts over the week working in the restaurant, but I wondered if any of the staff might remember me. People tend to remember the hair, I’m not trying to brag. I thought maybe I’d be able to get some more work out of it – maybe even a full-time job. I thought I’d pour drinks for anyone if I could work in such a beautiful place every day.
But when I got there Monday, it was all different inside. Like, the restaurant hall used to have this amazing ceiling, all covered with flowers, sculpted roses like you find in Victorian houses, only hundreds of them, and ivy and vines coming down the walls, which were all panelled, all white, all hand-made. It had felt like working inside a big wedding cake, or something… But they’d changed it all. Now it was this really ugly modern design; there were black and white tiles all over the floor – like a toilet! – and the walls were all red. It gave me a headache just looking at it. And now, right in the middle of the hall, there was this big statue of this… this giant bear.
At first, I actually thought I was in the wrong building. The whole vibe of the place was different – it even smelled different. The uniforms had all changed, and now we all had to wear these little red bow ties. So I guessed the place must be under new management, and it turned out I was right. But they were weird, too. They were super friendly all the time, always smiling, really trying to sell it like we were all best friends, you know? Lying through their teeth. I was one of, like, three agency people; everyone else seemed to be somebody’s nephew, or second cousin or something, like they were all one big family.
Normally on a job I pretty much keep to myself – like, I’m just trying to see the day through most of the time, and then it’s off somewhere else tomorrow. But this place… the atmosphere, it was just so isolating. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there; like an intruder. One, big family business, and I was just passing through. And the redecorating, and that horrible statue. That hall was oppressive. Literally.
So I bonded a bit with the other agency staff. The other girl, her name was Clara, she told me the only reason we were even there was that some of the regulars had all been injured at the same time in some car accident. They were all in hospital and it was pretty bad. She said one of the chefs had told her. You… you don’t know any Clara, do you? Short girl, blonde, glasses? No. No, I didn’t think so. Never mind.
So, yeah, it was weird from the start. A little more depressing than the average gig. But you know, still, I’m thinking it’s just three days and then I won’t ever have to come back. And I can just remember the building the way it used to be. Go back to working fucking football games and golf clubs. And I liked Clara.
On the Wednesday, I was walking down the stairs — to get from the floor to the kitchen you needed to take this spiral staircase that went all the way up the building, up to all the hotel floors. You only ever really saw staff using them, cus the guests would just take the lifts. But even then, a lot of the time they were totally empty. Grand, white, marble stairs; they were just like I remembered from before, really wide, with a curve so sharp it makes you dizzy. What I forgot was how creepy it could be going up and down over and over on your own, hearing every footstep echo, never seeing fully around the corner. That day I was working the line in the kitchen, and that was a total pain in the ass because for some reason the supplies, the freezer, the pantry and everything was all spread over three separate floors, so like, you were almost always at least one floor away from where you needed to be. I spent nearly the whole day alone, getting the chefs whatever they needed, just taking those fucking stairs, over and over, all day, just up and down, up and down, up and down. Then, like the hundredth time that day, going from the kitchen down to the basement I ran into Clara. I mean she literally ran into me – and she was crying, like, fully sobbing. I think she’d been looking for me.
She told me a customer had said something horrible to her, but she wouldn’t tell me what, or who. She was scared, you know? I told her she should point him out to me so I could tell the manager, or at least spit in his crème brûlée or something, but she wouldn’t. She just told me to leave it. We sat there, and I just held her for a little while; there was a little alcove to the side of the staircase where we could tuck ourselves away. Before long the floor manager came up and found us, this little prick with the biggest red bowtie of all, and he’s all, hey girls, enjoying a tender moment are we, well I hate to interrupt but there are hungry customers out there and it’s their time you’re taking up and do you think this is really appropriate and blah blah blah.
Clara wouldn’t budge on telling me who’d made her cry, but I had a pretty good idea when I next went out on the floor. I hadn’t noticed him till then, but I don’t know how I’d ever missed him because he was… I mean, he was horrible. I don’t know how to describe it. He had a face like a baby; fat cheeks, big, round eyes that bulged out; thin, flat, little hair. And he barely had any teeth. He was sitting at the bar for ages, not saying much, nursing the same drink for hours. And he stared, even more than most men. He was almost permanently staring. I would’ve thought he was drunk if his face hadn’t looked so… I don’t know. Intense; focused. Ugh, it’s like I can still see him. And by the time we were finishing up, he was still there, even as we were closing up the bar. A couple of times, I saw someone go over to talk to him – the floor manager and him spoke the longest – but every person who went would just end up laughing and smiling and walking off, and he’d still be sitting there, like he was a piece of the fucking furniture, with that big bear statue just looming in the background behind him. I just thought he must have been someone’s friend or something, one of the managers or owners.
This whole time, Clara seemed uncomfortable. I remember she finished a bit before me, and she asked me if I’d walk her to the station, but I was closing. So went on her own. Almost everyone else had left by this point, but the creep was still there – he kept staring at me – I was doing the last dishwasher, and I was remembering Clara’s face on the staircase, her voice, and then I dropped a glass. The guy laughed at me – I heard him. I cleaned up the glass, but the next time I looked up, he was gone.
My last shift was on Friday, and obviously, I was pretty relieved it was over. This time when I went in, Clara wasn’t there. None of the other agency staff were. I wasn’t sure about the other guy, but Clara was meant to work that day – I’m sure she said she was meant to. I asked the managers; nothing. I asked the other staff; nothing – Clara, hrrmm, Claaarraaa, nope, sorry, not ringing any bells, come on sweetheart, I can hardly be expected to remember the names of all you agency folks, you all come and go so quickly; come on now, the customers are hungry.
So. These things happen, I thought. I mean, they do happen. It’s not like we were close or anything, me and this girl, but I liked her. And it all just felt so off.
Friday was the busiest day by far. I must have done ten o’clock to close with no breaks, me on my feet the entire time. And we were understaffed! So most of the shift I didn’t really think about any of it, and I didn’t mind it. I didn’t want to think about the weird feeling I had about Clara, the creepy guy on the shift before, the whole fucking thing, I just wanted to focus on the clock and count the minutes until I never had to go back to that place for as long as I lived.
But sometime later, in the afternoon I think, I saw that he was back again – the fucking creep, and this time he had a couple of friends with him. A man and a woman; they seemed like a couple, maybe. They’d sat them at the best table in the house, and the floor manager wouldn’t stop schmoozing them, and he told me they were to receive my special attention. It was obvious now that he was someone’s friend, the creep, or maybe someone’s son or something, the way everyone was fussing around that table. I told myself to just ignore it all and focus on that train ride home – but of course, I still had to keep serving them. And just like before, they wouldn’t fucking leave. They stayed there all through the afternoon and into the dinner service. The guy was all quiet, like before – but his mates wouldn’t stop screaming and laughing and trying to be funny with me, ordering more shit, calling me over all the time for little reasons. And every time I left the table, the prick would take a sniff – have you ever noticed men doing that? I don’t even think they know they’re doing it. Sometimes it’s a little one, sometimes it’s a big one, but they do it – they’re smelling you, and with the creep it was like clockwork. Every single time I left, he would close his eyes, give a little nod, a that will be all thank you nod, and then, he’d sniff. Just for me. Honestly, I don’t know how I didn’t turn around and shove one of those champagne glass through his neck. I wish I did. Oh, and of course the floor manager sees me scowling, calls me over and says remember: all smiles yeah!
They were there all day, ordered half the menu, left a massive tip, but by eight o’clock or something it finally started to look like they were leaving – but they were just heading over to the bar. By closing, they’d finished off about a bottle and a half of the house red each. The couple, the guy and the girl were totally gone. They wouldn’t stop fucking whooping and giggling like idiots – it was almost funny – but the creep seemed… well, not drunk exactly. But calmer somehow. He had a stillness, like that intensity had gone. His eyes were softer. He looked almost normal.
Oh, I forgot to say. There was this completely moronic girl who worked there. I don’t even remember what her name was, but she was meant to split the tips, all day long I’d been saying, you gonna do that final stock count yeah? You gonna do it or shall I do it? I don’t mind doing it! and it was always, no worries, I’m on it, no worries, I’m on it. Fucking eleven o’clock comes and I’m looking for her everywhere and then I check the sign-off sheet – and she’s fucking signed off and gone home, leaving me alone, at the bar. I mean I just – it was just the cherry on top of the whole cake of shit, you know? So, close comes, and I’m looking around and even the floor manager’s going home – he’s got his stupid man-bag slung over his shoulder and he’s at the end of the bar laughing with the creep and his stupid fucked friends, schmoozing them even now, telling them goodbye, and then he looks over at me – and he just turns and walks out the front door.
I’m not an angry person, not normally. But you know how it is, right? It was something about that moment, his face, him looking up at me with this dumb fucking grin, that red bowtie hanging half undone around his neck as if that was gonna make him look like any less of a fucking hideous ventriloquist dummy-looking shithead asshole, looking right, right fucking through me…
I just walked straight across the floor, past the front door, down that big dark spiral staircase to the stockroom, and when I got there I smashed as many bottles of wine as I could, for as long as I could, for however long it took me to realise what I was doing and stop myself. I remember the only thing that snapped me out of it was when I noticed my feet were damp. I’d completely soaked myself, through to my socks. I felt like a fucking idiot. I just shut the door and did my walk of shame back up the stairs, my feet squelching, slippery, leaving a wet trail of footprints. Have you ever tried to wipe your feet on marble? I had to hold onto the bannister just so I wouldn’t break my neck. Those stupid black pumps they made us wear; no grip at all!
When I got back to the restaurant floor I thought, shit, I must have taken longer than I thought, cus I could see the main lights were off through the window in the door, but I could still hear voices. I knew it was the fucking creep and his friends, still sat at the bar, still talking and giggling, I didn’t even need to look, but I checked through the window anyway. The whole hall was empty. Everyone else had left. The only lights on were the bar – this faint orange glow. It made the whole building look different. As far as I knew, that front door was my only way out, and I wasn’t about to take that stupid staircase up through the whole hotel looking for another exit. I knew I just had to go into the hall and get my shit and clock off already. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk into the room. Something was stopping me. Something just felt so wrong. I can’t explain it.
I opened the door just a little, and stuck my head through it. They didn’t see me. The creep was talking so quietly I could barely make any of it out – but his mates were so drunk they were repeating almost everything he was saying at three times as loud. You’re not supposed to like us? the man was saying. What do you mean? You like us don’t you? Then the woman, shrieking and laughing. Complicates it? Complicates what? Seems simple to me! Oh please tell us! Please! Don’t be mean! I didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about.I couldn’t hear what the creep said next, but the other two loved it; they just kept howling with laughter. And I saw his face. The creep. It was like it had been the other day. Horrible. Ugly. I watched it all. He stood up off his barstool and the other two just looked at him, smiling, their jaws hanging open.
I saw it, with my own two eyes, okay? I saw it. I’m not joking. He turned into something. It was quick, really quick, and it was dark, but I fucking saw it. One minute it was him, and then the next minute, the next second, right where he’d been there was suddenly this big black, shape, it – I mean, I don’t know what it was. I still don’t know. I’ve gone over it in my head, and I don’t know, maybe it was just cus of the statue being behind him like that, standing there in the dark, it could have just been the silhouette of the statue I saw, but…
He turned into a bear. A big fucking bear, bigger than I ever thought bears could get, not that I’ve seen many fucking bears up close in the flesh. But it was sort of stumbling, lumbering like you see them do, standing up on their hind legs. It roared, and then it went after them, and I ducked my head back through the door to hide, and from then on it was all just… screaming and splashing and… and crunching. The light from the bar went from orange to red.
I ducked down, I couldn’t handle it any more. I don’t know when, but I’d started crying; I was just sat there under the window, really weeping, weeping into my sleeve, dry-heaving, listening to those sounds from the other side of the door. It didn’t take long at all before they stopped, and then I thought, what if it comes for me now? Whatever it was. I was chewing on my sleeve, almost ripping it up, grinding my teeth like a maniac.
Then there was another sound. The front door was opening, and I thought I could hear voices. I couldn’t tell who, but people were coming inside the building – I could tell there were a lot of people, and as they came in I recognised a few of them – one of them was definitely the floor manager. They were cheering, like they were celebrating, like they were proud. It was almost like a party. Then I almost laughed. How could I have been so stupid? It was a prank. Some kind of joke, or a hidden camera show or something – I’d wandered into some fucking idiot’s idea of a Friday night work do, and I wasn’t meant to be there. I thought, okay, okay – once I got my composure back all I would have to do is just stand up, walk through the door, suck up the awkwardness and the embarrassment and the patronising comments, pretend to find it all very funny, and head for the front door and finally finally get the fuck away from these people. There was no bear, no fucking murder scene, just your typical shitty shift with a particularly untypical shitty ending.
But I still couldn’t go in. I just kept thinking it had seemed so real. I mean, they don’t make special effects that good, not for a shitty prank show, I knew they didn’t. But then, how could I know? People on TV always seem to believe that shit. And what was the alternative? I didn’t know what to do. I just kept sitting there, chewing on my sleeve; I was shaking. I thought, I could go up the stairs and try to find someone else in the hotel, try to find someone who could help – but every time I looked at the staircase, twisting off and turning up into the darkness, I couldn’t move.
All I could do was listen. The lights in the main hall had come back on. I thought if I could stick my head through the door again and hear what they were saying, I might be able to figure out what the fuck was going on.
I should have run as soon as I saw the blood. The bodies. I don’t know why I didn’t. I guess I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The floor manager. The head chef. Others I recognised, some others I didn’t, mostly old, mostly men. They were shaking hands, slapping each other on the back, hugging and laughing. Wonderful, wonderful stuff! Seven in one week. Seven! Unbelievable. A new record! It really calls for congratulations, doesn’t it? Anyone for a bit of bubbly? There’s no sense being tight, considering. TGIF, eh? Oh, I’m sorry. Terribly sorry, just a figure of speech. No, no, think nothing of it.
Then they all raised their glasses.
To Mikhail! To Almighty Arcturus! To Dubhe! To The Great Bear! Cheers!
I was already running when they started on me. I’ve never moved so fast in my life; I didn’t know I could. I knew downstairs there was nothing but the basement, so I just went up. But the whole time I was thinking, shit, shit, shit, I don’t know where I’m going! I have no idea where I’m going! I could hear them coming up behind me, where did she go, this way, the guests, what about the guests, get her, grab her quick. Footsteps clattering all around me. It sounded like machine guns. I just ran and ran and I didn’t look back, but I could hear this snorting and grunting and the floor manager shouting get her, Mikhail! get her lord! and I felt the heat on the backs of my heels and his claws were scraping and sliding on the marble, getting closer and closer. The first door I saw, I threw open and went through. They chased me all the way through the hotel – but I never saw another soul. That still gets me. Where the fuck was everyone else? We went through a corridor and I could hear it, feel it slamming into the walls behind me, just missing me on the corners, making this noise like – like it was angry – and I don’t even know how but I ended up back on the staircase again.
I was almost flying. It’s a lot harder running down the stairs than up, a lot harder not to fall, and my fucking shoes were still wet, but I just kept thinking, at least if I break my neck it won’t get me; at least if I break my neck, it won’t get me till I’m already dead. Then I saw them. They were running up towards me, the floor manager with his red bowtie and the head chef and the concierge and the waiters, they were running up the stairs, all of them, right towards me, I was about to fall right into them, and all of them were smiling, their faces lit up when they saw me and they smiled and said aha, there she is, we’ve got you, we’ve – we’ve, fucking got you, you bitch, and it was still roaring, still coming right behind me and even in the dark I saw the red wine shoe prints on the marble, and I knew where I was, and I ducked into the alcove and I felt the thing scream out and roll straight past me, and I saw the floor manager’s face fall and they all screamed, too.
They kept screaming, all the way down, crashing and tumbling, and each noise echoed all the way down to the basement, and when they got there there was this incredible boom.
I ran straight through the door and out into the street and to the bus stop. I didn’t even pick up my bag. I just ran. And I sat there, and I cried, until someone came and asked me how much I needed for the hostel, and I had to tell them no, thank you, you’ve got the wrong idea, just leave me, leave me.
You get it, right? The thing tripped over itself. They were coming up, and it was going down. One second, just one second different, and it would have got me too. It wasn’t meant for tight corridors and big, twisty, slippery staircases, that thing. It was meant for great big halls, and drunk people, and girls whose names no one was gonna remember. Bastards.
When I made it home, I quit that fucking agency for good. Then I found this one. This one’s okay. Shifts have been alright. They pay a lot quicker which is good. And they don’t have any fucking bear-men chasing you through the fucking building, trying to rip your head off. Yeah. That’s been a big fucking plus.
Allison
So there you go. Total devil nightmare shift from hell’s kitchen innit? You can imagine my reaction to that fucking rollercoaster ride. Beats my fucking Tony Macaroni story by a country mile. I just like sat there, looking like a mug the entire time, like that, my jaw positioned squarely on the floor. My cig had pretty much burnt to a crisp and I’d only had a couple of puffs the entire time. I mean you don’t hear that shit every day do you? Nah, same thing happened to my mate’s cousin you know. Oh come off it mate just cus I had a sick story and you didn’t. Nah really. They have em a lot you know. Like you hear about it a lot. Bear werewolves. Bearwolves? Bro, you do not hear about that shit a lot. Stop lying. You’re such a dickhead. Nah, cus they ain’t wolves are they, they’re bears. Were-bears? Sounds like care bears. Oi, bare scary. Listen, I’m gonna care bear you in a minute. What you saying, Fed? We’re all dying to hear your take. I mean yeah, I mean fair enough it was a bad shift, but it was never as bad as when Mutya came to the Chiquito Park Royal. That was a properly bad shift. You remember Al? I mean, that was like the worst shift of all time. Like, cards on the table, I’m saying I think I’d rather have the bear.
I live with a bunch of twats, I swear down.
