Free Grimm by Mike Nicholson

surprised to find your old Grandad a step or two ahead of you,” said old man giving little away.
    “Someone must have tipped you off that I was going … but I don’t understand; no one knew.” Rory paused casting his mind around people in the town that he had spoken to in the last few days and then remembered. “Did Malky Mackay come to see you?”
    “PC Mackay to you, son. Aye, he did. He said he wasn’t too concerned but he thought it best to keep an eye on things. He came here for a bit and watched you get up to the ledge and then you disappeared out of sight. According to him, you were back about two hours later without the spring in your step that there normally is.”
    At that, it all spilled out as Rory explained everything that had happened from the delivery of the letter right up to his trip to the library and his wrong turning into the graveyard.
    “So that’s it, Grandad,” said Rory at the end of it all. “Rebranding Hotel Grimm. What am I supposed to do?”
    “Aye well, it certainly sounds like an interesting piece of work,” said Grandad.
    “Interesting?” said Rory. “Interesting? Grandad, there are about a thousand better words to describe it … most of them related to doom and disaster.”
    “Well, all you can do, is the best you can do, son,” said Grandad.
    “It’s all very well to say things like that, but what if that isn’t good enough for Hotel Grimm? Look at what happened to other people asked to do jobs there, like Willie Docherty and Scott MacAndrew.”
    “Ach don’t fuss yourself about that pair of jokers. That’s just a bit of typical
Chronicle
nonsense. Anything for a story. You don’t believe that, do you? Just because Scott MacAndrew can’t pack his van properly he blames Hotel Grimm, and I wouldn’t get Willie Docherty to wire a plug for me. The guy’s about as useful as a chocolate teapot.”
    Rory went quiet. He wanted to believe his Grandad but wasn’t totally convinced at his attempts to play the situation down.
    “Anyway,” said Grandad. “I want to hear all about the place. It’s been so long since I worked up there. I’m keen to hear what it’s like these days.”
    Grandad said it so casually that his comment almost slipped past Rory before he’d spotted it.
    “Worked there?” spluttered Rory, spilling tea down his front as he sat up too quickly.
    “Aye son, I worked there for eighteen months. It was years ago mind,” said Grandad in a matter of fact tone.
    Rory was momentarily stunned. “When? Where? Doing what?” he stammered.
    “I was a young apprentice helping out on some building work there,” said Grandad shifting in his seat and wincing again as he did so.
    “I thought you were a gardener,” said Rory. “You worked in the park all your life, didn’t you?”
    “Aye, I did after that,” said Grandad. “At that time, I wasn’t long out of school and the owner was ploughing money into the place. He was wanting all sorts of bits and pieces up there so he needed a whole team of builders, joiners and stonemasons. Loads of thelads from school went straight into working up there. The guy had more money than sense really. Statues, gargoyles, stone carvings … complicated pieces of work all over the hotel.”
    “What did you do?”
    “Och, all sorts of stuff. I started off just fetching and carrying, but then I did some stone carving. Did you see the head above the front door? I did some of the work on that.”
    “Oh, thanks for that,” said Rory, remembering the stone face that had greeted him. “That was a lovely welcome, having that thing smirking down at me.”
    “It was a good piece of work, you cheeky wee thing,” said Grandad.
    “You must know about other stuff too then,” said Rory. “That big stone wolf, for example. And what’s the Curse of the Stonemason?”
    “Ach, that Curse business. You don’t want to trouble yourself with that,” said Grandad with a dismissive tone. “That big wolf was made to stand in the