Between a Rockstar and a Hard Place (3 page)

‘He
was quite taken with my friend Misty,’ goth girl tells me. ‘They went off
together.’

Another
girl, Dylan is on top form this evening. If Misty is anything like her friend,
she certainly isn’t Dylan’s usual type – then again, as long as they’re female
Dylan doesn’t usually discriminate.

‘Do
you know where they went?’

‘They
shared a taxi to The Williamson Hotel, she’s staying there too. She was hot for
his city boy look so they were going to have a drink together,’ goth girl
informs me. This doesn’t surprise me at all.

‘You
sure you don’t want a tattoo while you’re here?’ skinhead asks. ‘On us.’

I
am clearly in with these people because of my nonconformist short-shorts. I
take a courteous glance around the room, looking briefly at the designs on the
wall.

‘I’ll
pass. Thank you, though,’ I say as I hurriedly make my way towards the door.
I’m still not convinced I won’t catch something by just standing in the same
room as that yucky looking needle.

Another
taxi journey and I’m back at the hotel. The crowd of fans have been moved on
from outside the hotel now that it’s getting late, so I’m unlikely to ever see
my dress again. Dylan will quite literally pay for this.

Dylan
and Misty were going to have a drink, so the bar is my first stop. The place is
packed with beautiful people – mainly famous faces – because everyone involved
in the gig today is staying here tonight.

I
push my way through the beautiful people, and accuse me of stereotyping if you
like, but I’m going to hazard a guess that Misty is as odd looking as her goth
gal pal, so I’m looking for someone who looks like they’ve been attacked with
felt-tip pens and a stapler.

I’ve
scoured the whole room, but all I am seeing are the usual, “beautiful” showbiz
types and their entourages.

‘Excuse
me,’ I hear a male voice say as someone taps me on the shoulder.

I
spin around to see Troy Reeves, and if I didn’t recognise him from his
successful solo career or his time on one of those terrible reality TV talent
shows, then I would still remember him because I interviewed him earlier today.

‘Hello,’
I squeak, unable to hide my surprise. He’s talking to me.

‘You
interviewed me earlier, right?’

‘I
did,’ I confess, suddenly worried I might have offended him.

Troy
is your typical pretty boy. He’s tall, skinny and has dark curly hair that he
is constantly sweeping out of his eyes. I imagine he’s about the same age as
me, maybe a little older – mid twenties I’d guess. He has a huge female fan
base, although he’s a little more mainstream than Dylan so his fans are all
much younger. Don’t get me wrong, Dylan is a handsome man, but in a Robbie
Williams sort of way. He’s got that rough and ready, bad boy look and as far as
his figure goes, he couldn’t care less.  He’s not skinny, but he isn’t fat and
I don’t think he’ll ever care either way. It’s his don’t-give-a-damn attitude
that attracts the women and as long as the women are willing (or easily talked
round with a signed CD), he won’t be visiting the gym any time soon.

‘Yeah,
I remember your pretty face,’ Troy tells me, much to my surprise. ‘Although you
were wearing a hot dress earlier – not that I’m not enjoying all the leg you’re
flashing now.’

I
can tell he’s joking, but with everything that’s happened in the past few hours
and the pressure to find Dylan mounting, I temporarily forget to keep my cool
in front of a famous person and even though I smile at his teasing, a single
tear escapes from my right eye. I quickly wipe it away, but the damage has been
done.

‘Oh
fuck, I’m sorry. I’ve got four sisters, you’d think I’d know better than to
make a joke about a girl’s outfit,’ he says, placing a hand on my shoulder, but
still keeping me at arm’s length in case I attack him or worse, cry on his
outfit.

‘Don’t
apologise,’ I insist. ‘I’m just having a bad day.’

‘Do
you want to talk about it?’

Troy
actually seems sincere, but I know that he has better things to do than listen
to my silly problems about lost musicians and dresses. Against my better
judgement, I share my situation with him – instantly regretting it.

‘Dylan
was here not that long ago,’ Troy tells me. ‘Me and the boys from Beau were
laughing at him because he came in with some witchy looking girl.’

I
try not to give too much thought to the fact that Beau are here. They’re one of
the hottest boybands around at the moment (and from the same TV talent show as
Troy) and I’m in actual love with all five of them.

‘You’ve
seen Dylan? Where did he go?’

‘He
went with that… girl. Looked like they were heading up to her room, she waved
her keycard in his face and he followed her like a puppy – or like he was under
a spell.’

‘I
don’t suppose you noticed her room number, did you?’ I ask, not that I’m
expecting things to be that easy for me.

‘I
did actually, she dropped her card and I, gentlemen that I am, picked it up and
handed it to her. Room 666.’

I
laugh manically and roll my eyes.

‘Troy,
don’t fuck with me. She is not staying in room 666.’

‘I’m
not – what’s your name again?’

‘Nicole.’

‘Nicole,
I swear to you, I am not making this up.’

Does
he really expect me to believe that the girl he referred to as a witch and made
spell puns about is staying in room 666?

‘Ok
then, Troy Reeves. Why don’t you come with me?’

‘Fine,
let’s go.’

Fine.
Hotels can be boring, I get that. You’ve got to make your own fun, and if this
is the game he wants to play, we’ll go up to room 666 and see, won’t we?

‘After
you,’ I say, gesturing towards the doors as we approach the lift. We both step
inside and Troy checks the chart on the wall to see what floor we need to be
on.

‘Top
floor,’ he says as he pushes the button, but nothing happens.  He tries again,
and then again, and then I try, just in case he wasn’t pushing it right.

‘Feel
better now you’ve pressed it too?’ Troy asks with a laugh. My God, he may be
hot but he’s so annoying. Damned if I’ll be the one to back down from his
ridiculous room 666 claim, I march over to the reception desk.

‘Excuse
me,’ I say to the man behind the desk. ‘I’m trying to get to the top floor, but
the lift won’t go up there.’

‘That’s
because we’ve disabled public access to the top floor via the lift, we’re
having some…’ the man behind the desk pauses as he searches for the appropriate
word. ‘…issues up there. That floor is currently out of bounds.’

‘What
sort of issues?’ I ask, suddenly curious.

The
man behind the desk glances around to make sure no one is listening.

‘Ghostly
goings on,’ he tells us in a hushed voice.

‘Define
ghostly goings on,’ I insist, unable to hide the disbelieving grin that has
spread across my face.

‘This
is no laughing matter, miss. Things were happening up there. Channels were
being changed, bed clothes being ripped off people in the night – the power
eventually just stopped working on the whole floor, we’ve got emergency
lighting until someone can come and fix it. No one wants to stay…’ he pauses
again, and has yet another glance around to make sure no one is listening. ‘…up
there.’

There
is a sinister sounding tone to his voice, and as he utters the words “up there”
he glances towards the ceiling.

‘Why
are you whispering?’ I ask, also in a whisper, still unable to hide my
amusement at his “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” campfire shit. ‘Are you worried
Derek Acorah might hear about it, pay you a visit and annoy it back to the
other side?’

‘Whispering
is pointless,’ Troy informs us. ‘I went ghost hunting with Derek Acorah for a
TV show, he knows all.’

I
can’t tell if Troy is joking, but he does have a reputation for doing any
crappy reality show going.

‘Can
we leave Derek out of this please?’ the man begs, overwhelmed with emotion.

‘Anyway,’
Troy says, stifling a smile, but alerting me to the fact that he was joking
about Derek. ‘I saw a girl earlier with a keycard for that floor, so you must
be letting some people up there.’

The
man behind the desk shivers.

‘Her,’
he says, terror in his eyes. ‘She wanted a room. I told her we were full last
night, but she read my mind about the top floor being closed and asked for a
room up there. We are allowed to check people in up there, it’s just no one
wants to be up there with the emergency lighting and the spooky goings on.’

I
glance at the sign on the wall behind him stating that rooms on the top floor
are currently having power issues. I look at Troy, who has also noticed it.

‘Right.
So you checked her in up there?’

‘She
made me,’ he insists.

‘I’m
sure she did. So how do we get up there to see her?’

Still
in his hushed voice, the man behind the desk instructs us. ‘Take the lift to
the sixth floor. When you get out, enter the stairwell by the door on your
right and it’s one floor up. You’re on your own from there.’

Troy
and I look at each other and share a giggle, this man is clearly batshit crazy.

‘So
that was weird,’ I say to break the silence once we’re in the lift.

‘Tell
me about it, these town folk are clearly bored out of their minds and making
stuff up – unlike me, who told you she was in room 666,’ he says smugly.

I
don’t know about bored, but now that I think about it this place is pretty
creepy. From the outside the Williamson Hotel looks a bit like an old block of
flats. It’s tall, run down and definitely spooky looking. Inside things are by
no means modern, but it is the only hotel in this equally creepy town and it’s
big enough to accommodate everyone from the gig – oh, and obviously because it
has a bar no one is complaining.

After
getting out of the lift and climbing the stairs to the top floor, I can’t help
but feel a little spooked as we leave the art deco lampshades of the previous
floors behind us and walk along the dimly lit top floor, with its emergency
lighting flickering intermittently. The lights, which run along the floor
giving us both creepy looking shadows up our faces, are buzzing loudly, and as
we approach room 666 the nearest light to us shuts off, leaving us in the dark.

I
struggle to hide the fact I am spooked, but Troy is ever the manly-man and he
knocks on the door. We wait in total silence for a few minutes but there is no
answer. He looks at me for instructions, but I feel like I’m glued to the spot.
We may have been mocking the man behind the desk before, but now that we’re up
here I am terrified.

Troy
knocks again, only much louder this time. We wait, but still no one opens the
door to room 666.

‘Let’s
go,’ I beg, hooking my arm around Troy’s. ‘She’s not here.’

‘Yes
I am,’ a creepy female voice whispers quietly behind us.

Troy
and I both jump out of our skin.

‘Fucking
hell,’ Troy yells, and I realise we are holding each other Shaggy and Scooby
Doo style.

Standing
before us is a gothic-looking girl who makes the first goth we met look like a
Barbie doll.

‘Misty?’
I ask, my voice shaking a little.

‘Yes,’
she replies.

‘Oh,
thank God it’s you,’ I say with a huge sigh of relief. ‘We’ve been looking for
you.’

‘I
was only in my room,’ she says, looking at our weird embrace with a puzzled
look on her face.

‘How
did you get out without opening the door?’ a pale looking Troy asks – at least
I think he’s gone pale, it’s hard to tell in this light.

‘Through
the door, Einstein. How do you think?’

We
both glance at room 666. How could she get through the door and stand behind us
if we were standing in the doorway this whole time?

‘Not
that one,’ she says noticing us staring at room 666. ‘That one. Room 668.’

I
give Troy a playful punch on the arm.

‘You
tool,’ I tease him, suddenly feeling a lot less scared.

‘What?’
He giggles awkwardly. ‘It looked like a six, not an eight.’

As
we tease each other and bicker like an old married couple, Misty interrupts us
with a question.

‘Why
exactly are you looking for me?’

‘Well,
I’m actually looking for Dylan King,’ I explain. ‘A friend of yours told me he
came back here with you, and Troy saw you both come up here.’

‘Yeah,
he came up here. We screwed and then he said he had to go see a man about a
dog.’

‘Ok,
thanks for your time,’ I tell her, and she disappears back into room 668.

Once
were back in the safety of the lift, Troy and I laugh at each other.