Closed season. It's the pits. I run a small hotel. I used to run it with my wife, but she left me because of her drinking. She did not go far. I see her in the local bar, sometimes sitting alone hunched over a bottle, sometimes with her arm around a stranger. It hurts seeing her like that, but there's nothing I can do. Believe me. I tried. Now all I can do is try and keep busy and not think. Busy is easy during the summer. This is a tourist town. We are surrounded by verdant forest, overlooked by awe-inspiring mountains. The stresses of the hustle and bustle of the city are eased away by the beauty and serenity that greets you in every direction you look. There are thousands of visitors here over the summer, and I'm always fully booked and run off my feet. Come autumn, though, and the flow of tourist slows to a trickle. The first bite of cold winds swirling through the streets encourages any left to pack up and leave. Soon after the snows come, and the road into town becomes impassable until next spring. Nature rules here, as she did once across whole continents. We cannot argue. Just make sure we're stocked up on essential supplies, our food and water, and beer and gasoline for the generators. I have a generator around the side of the hotel. It's relatively new, reliable. I finish thoroughly cleaning and checking it before I lock up the hotel for the winter. The summer of memory I try and make the most of the transformed town. On an early December day, I stand in the street outside my hotel just as it's going dark, and I listen to the near silence. There are twenty of us who see out the winter, and everyone else is indoors. There's no traffic on the road. The only sound I can hear is my generator purring efficiently, and the birds settling down to nest for the night. I try and savor the tranquility, while it lasts. I breathe deep and take in the crisp, clean air. It's in the air that there is a first inkling. There's a smell. Slight at first. So slight you might think you were imagining it, but then it hits you. The smell of meat gone bad. Then there's a murmuring. Voices approaching. My fellow residents will be aware of this as well. The lights in their homes click off one by one, leaving each in darkness behind drawn curtains. Only the street lights remain. The birds have fallen silent. My heart is beating faster now. It's cold outside, but colder deep within me. I'll never get used to the fear that comes with this moment. For the terror that will linger for the months to come. The first of them appear. There are holes in their clothes, through which you can see the holes in their skin, the bones below. There's an urgency to their shuffling gate, and soon they are congregating around the street lights. Their faces turn up to them, their hands reaching out. I step as silently as I can, back into the hotel, and extinguish the lights inside. I walk along now dark corridors, and swing open the doors to the largest room in the hotel. Go inside. And flick a switch. I did not close the front door of the hotel behind me, and within minutes I can smell them. Here they're murmuring. I make my way to the far end of the room, wait by the smaller door there, holding it open, ready to flee. They file in, begin to fill the room, until there are a hundred or more, all crammed in. They stand gazing upwards, hands raised, in a kind of reverie. Some sway, some jerk, and twitch. The object of their attention, the thing that has drawn them here, the disco ball in the center of the ballroom ceiling. It spins, casting out glittering light, bathing the room in speckles of red, green, blue, and silver. They are transfixed. I make my exit. Hurry up to the second floor, which I have once again converted for the winter months into a compound. I have supplies, chemical toilets, doors reinforced with steel and bolted firm. They come every winter, and they stay as long as the generator keeps going, and the disco ball keeps spinning. Why do we put up with it? Why do we stay? Nothing for myself, for my wife, for the hope that she will come back to me, and because in early March, a day will come, when I can see the snow melting, I will crack open my window and feel the fresh air on my face. I will hear the birds singing again. It's then I know it's safe to leave my second floor compound. I walk down through the hotel. There's usually a little damage, scrape marks on the walls. These can be painted over, cracked window panes, easy to replace. I head into the ballroom, look through the open doors. The disco ball is still. The generator has run out of fuel, and the room is empty. They've left us, until next winter. I go get my long broom, and begin to sweep the ballroom floor. I sweep it all up, and put it all in a hold-all. When in the next few weeks I drive down to the neighboring town, and after I have loaded up on fresh supplies for preparing for the first guest of the year, I will pay a visit to the pawn shop, and empty out my hold-all and cash in my findings. The dented coins, the rings, pendants, bracelets, gold, teeth, the things they left behind as an offering in return for a winter of sparkling light.