It’s 7:30pm and it’s midnight in
Wales.
It’s midnight and dark forest and
perhaps witches? Or ghosts? Or strange troll-type creatures with a malevolent
glint in their eye? Anyway it’s very dark and we should have stopped sooner to
book our lodging for the night…but we didn’t.
The dark is different in a land
without big cities throwing light pollution into the sky. The night is
different. What’s that they say on Game of Thrones? The night is dark and full
of terrors. I mean, at least in Wales it might be. We left Tintagel around 4pm,
and drove north. Thinking we’d stop around 6pm to get our bearings and look
along our route to book a place to stay for the night. But then there wasn’t a good
place to stop, and we just kept driving. And it just got darker. And there were
no cities, or towns, or streetlamps…just a road, and the dark. And what you
imagine to be in the dark. I suppose this is why medieval cities had walls.
A sign ahead has a bed symbol with
an arrow pointing right. This means lodging, we think? We turn off the "A" road we’ve been
on, onto the deeper dark of the exit road. Into the woods. Deeper. We were
probably in the woods before we turned…but now we’re really in them. We drive a mile. Another
mile. Nothing but the night around us. Then, at last, a building, some lights ahead.
We drive so slowly up to it,
getting a look. No one stirring. A few lights on. I turn into the empty parking
lot. There’s an odd greenish-blueish light set up on the side
of the lot, casting a sickly glow on the looming trees. I do not have a good
feeling about this place. Nor does my Mom—but neither of us says anything. This
place may be the only place, and the only place would be better than none. Even
if it’s run by trolls and highwaymen.
“I’m going to get on my phone and
see if there’s anyplace else near,” I say. I have just enough slow internet
service to get online and search. One pops up. 12.5 miles away. 24-hour front
desk. Free wifi. Perfect. I book a room. It takes forever, but finally goes
through. We pull out of the creepy lot, by its creepy lodge, and drive towards
our new stop for the night.
“I didn’t like the look of that
place,” says my Mom.
“Me neither,” say I.
It’s a hairy drive on dark lanes
and then through a quaint little town before we get to our spot, but we get there. The
Cwrt Bleddyn Hotel and Spa, which is apparently also a Ramada, which seems
strange but we’re not asking questions at this point. They don’t have a room
with two beds, the lovely concierge Charlotte says “but I can upgrade you,
no charge, to our largest heritage room.” We’re grateful. There’s a beautiful
willow tree out front and a fountain, and lots of cars which means lots of folks,
and hopefully not trolls. Charlotte says, “Breakfast is in the restaurant from
half six to 10. The spa and pool are just outside and you can use them all day
tomorrow if you like.” She gives us the keys. “Room 35. Past the bar, down the
steps, through the door, up to the top.”
We get lost. I go back to the desk.
Charlotte walks us through to the correct staircase. It’s spiral. We go up.
Three flights up with our bags. Two
doors. I open the one on the left with our key card.
It’s big, but…eh, I don’t know.
Odd. A small-ish bed. Strange yellow lighting. A bathroom with slanted roof and
no windows. It smells a bit damp. We’re on the third floor and there are exposed
rafter beams. This is an old, old building.
We are both making the best of
this. Then my Mom says, is this room 34?
No it’s 35, I say, holding up the
key envelope, on which Charlotte wrote “35.”
“I think it’s 34,” says my Mom. I’m
so tired. How could we be in 34 if the keys to 35 opened the door? I open the
door to look at how it’s numbered on the outside…and it IS 34.
“I guess…I’ll try the keycard on
the other door.”
The other door doesn’t have a
number. On it is written “The Catherine Parr Room.” It opens with our key card. 'I guess our keys open all the doors?" I say. "Maybe we should try all the rooms."
Room 35 is giant. The whole rest of the
top floor. Beautiful old wood and leather furnishings, not damp at all. Giant
bed that we’ll be quite comfortable sharing. Fabulous. I took a picture:
Giant bathroom too. Bathtub seven
feet long, I make a note to avail myself of it later. The john is actually a
John. As in, made by Edward Johns. I look it up later—it’s a vintage blue
dolphin loo with cistern and pull chain. People lose their minds over them in
the antique markets. This one is there just for…using. Perhaps by Queens?
Anyway here’s a blurry picture I took of it. It’s blurry because it feels funny
to take a photo of a toilet, and I was laughing at myself:
The toilet’s an antique and the
tile is a bit Alice in Wonderland via Tom Petty, but it’s all good. Except…Well,
the only thing that’s not quite right
about the bathroom, I guess I would say,
Is the gaping hole in the wall
leading to the totally creepy dark crawlspace.
I suppose a gaping hole in the wall
leading to a totally creepy dark and dusty crawlspace that maybe has paint cans
or construction equipment or maybe something more exotic, who knows because I’m
not going in there…anyway I guess you could call that, a bit unusual. I didn’t
take a picture.
There’s a plywood board and a large
standing mirror to one side. “Let’s just, cover it up,” suggests my Mom. She is
very wise. We do this. No problem. Head downstairs for a drink at the bar to
soothe our jangled nerves.
Mom has a stout that’s brewed 10
miles away. It’s fruity and delicious. I order a Jamesons. Neat? Ice? Water? Asks
the bartender. “Uhh..ice?” I say. I am not an accomplished drinker. But my Grandpa
John drank Jamesons. An Irish chap across the bar pipes up. “One cube!” he
says. “What’s that?” I say. “One cube! One cube of ice—Jamesons is a sipper” he
says. “One cube,” I say to the bartender. “Jamesons is a sipper.”
We’re sipping our beverages and the
stress of the night and the troll hotel and the dark wilderness roads is beginning to melt away. Charlotte finds us at
the bar. “I’ve printed out a bit of history of the hotel for you,” she says,
handing us a few pages of lore. Henry VIII used to come to this place when it
was a hunting lodge, they say. That’s why our room is named for Catherine Parr—the
wife who survived, more luck to her. They say Captain Morgan—of the rum, and
the piracy—did too, and the Oak Room on the first floor is paneled with wood
carving from one of his pirate ships. And most likely it is—I took a picture of it:
A debate about whiskey breaks out.
The Irishman opines further about Jamesons. A woman’s voice cuts in from a
table opposite the bar. “Scotch is bettar,” she says, drily. “What’s that?”
says the Irishman, jovially. “Scotch is Bettar,” she says in a fine loud
brogue. “Why would ya drink anythin else?”
I try to perform diplomacy. “I’m
both, I’m both: I’m Irish and Scottish,
it’s fine!—Jamesons tonight, I’ll have a scotch next time.”
It’s no peace accord, but the jokes
are good-natured and the ancestral rivalry quiets down as we finish our drinks
and head back upstairs. Up three flights of the spiral staircase, back to the
Catherine Parr room at the top.
I take a bubble bath. It’s quite
nice. My Mom is already asleep when I get into bed. Want to get a good night’s
sleep. Long day of driving tomorrow, if I'm up early enough I might take a dip in the pool
the next morning before we head out. Sleep mask on. Turn out the light. Settle
into the big comfy pillows.
But I don’t fall asleep.
Something…feels odd.
I would like to take a moment for a
brief aside here. I think it is pertinent to say that ghosts leave me alone. I
have never seen a ghost. A few times, maybe, I’ve had a sense of presence, once
or twice definitely beneficent, once maybe a bit unsettling—never malevolent or
downright scary. I don’t have ghost stories. My husband has seen ghosts. His
mother Carolyn, who has lived on Vinal Haven and North Haven, has some blood
curdling tales of her experiences in houses there. But so far, ghosts leave me
alone.
So for me to feel something…well,
that might mean something, no?
I’m lying there in the dark with my
sleep mask on and something feels not quite good. I shift in the bed. My Mom,
who does not talk in her sleep, shifts on her side of the bed and mumbles
something, an unintelligible phrase. A moment passes and she says something
else, indecipherable. A third time, a soft ripple of phrases that mean nothing
I can understand. I take my sleep mask off.
I look around me in the dark. There
is some bleed from the skylights—oh, right, our room has skylights. It’s very
posh, if it weren’t for the giant exposed rafters that you have to watch you
don’t bonk your head on…and of course, the feeling that something else is in
the room.
Or in the crawlspace?
I think of the open hole in the
bathroom wall, improvisationally covered with board and mirror. The bathroom
door is open. I think, I’m going to close that door.
I get up. I close the bathroom
door.
I mean almost. The whole place is
carpeted, bathroom too, and the carpet won’t let the door close all the way.
Almost, though. Maybe that’s good enough?
I get back in bed. Something is
still….around.
Lying on my back in bed, I feel
stronger measures are needed. I am making it up as I go, here in Wales where
there are perhaps unfriendly spirits in the Catherine Parr room, and truly
should we be surprised if a hunting lodge of the British aristocracy including
a dude who had several wives killed and a notoriously blood-thirsty pirate—would
it be a shocker if it turned out they did some bad deeds here, too?
I invoke our ancestors. I raise
both hands, palms out, to summon. I invoke my family spirits gone on before. In
my head—or was I speaking? I was speaking somehow. This is heightened stuff, in
the dark in Wales. It would be silly if there weren't SOMETHING IN THE ROOM.
I say their names. My father’s
name, my grandparents on both sides. My great grandparents that I knew. All my
people. I call them in. Watch over us tonight, I think-say. Protect us as we
sleep.
I am not making this up when I say
I could hear something else listening. Not my ancestors, I mean. Something
else.
But I also felt a bit safer. The
grandmothers were there. The grandfathers. The way-back kinfolk. Spirits of
good will and protection. There was a tent of energy around us. My Mom
was still asleep.
I pulled my sleep mask on and hoped
for the best.
*****
8am the next morning: pouring rain
making a tattoo on the skylights, grey light waking us up. Safe in our bed. “How
did you sleep?” I asked my Mom. “Pretty well,” she said. “I mean, okay.”
“Do you ever talk in your sleep?” I
asked her. I didn’t think she did, but what do I know. “Talk in my sleep?” she
replied. “No.” “You did last night,” I said. “Really?” she said. “What did I
say?” “I couldn’t understand it,” I said. “Weird!” she said. “Are you going to
try the spa?”
I did. I grabbed my suit and went
down to check it out. It was cool. Like, a little Roman bath in the middle of
the Welsh countryside. I took a picture of it:
I swam a lap, dipped into the hot
tub, tried the steam room, sat in the sauna for a minute. Lovely. Nipped back
upstairs to get our bags, we had a bit of breakfast (included in our booking
price, how nice), and headed to the front desk to check out.
There are two women there, neither
of them Charlotte. “And how was your stay?” asks one “Oh, lovely,” we reply,
basically at the same time. “Oh good,” say the women behind the desk.
There’s a pause. They’re printing
our receipt. I ask,
“Do you…have ghosts here?”
The women look up sharply. “No.”
says the older of the two, decisively.
Another pause. The younger asks, “Why?
…Did you see something?”
I am immediately certain that they
have ghosts. More certain than I was last night, when it could have been my
imagination. Immediately, 100%, unequivocally, quite, certain.
“Didn’t see anything,” I say. “I felt, a presence. Presences.”
“What room?”
“35.”
“Ah.”
We wait.
“Well, there’s only been a few
times, when someone said they saw something. But it’s always in Room 35.”
“Ohhhhh,” we say.
“Yeah, there was one time someone
saw a woman in the window, walking…And another time, there was a man in the
window below…”
“Uh-huh,” we say.
“But you didn’t see anything?”
“Nope.”
“Well, hope you enjoyed your stay!”
We leave. I snap a last photo as we
walk to our car:
When we stop for lunch, I google
the hotel. I type “Cwrt Bleddyn ha…” and my phone auto-finishes. Haunted. The
place is haunted as all get out. Glasses rising from the bar, staff touched by
unseen hands, someone playing a piano that doesn’t exist, ghosts all over the
joint. We drive towards Glasgow, and speak no more of it.
Happy Saint Davy’s Day. Wales has
ghosts.
AVALON will have its world premiere in August 2019, produced by Opera House Arts and staged in a site specific production at Nervous Nellie’s Jams and Jellies on Deer Isle. All text and photos ©2019 Melody Bates
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