"Amsterdam leans on swamp piles, orange liqueur, and Europe's longest bunk bed"
Trisha Carter is twenty-two, from Fort Wayne, Indiana, and on her first trip anywhere alone. She works the phones in a cubicle four rows from her mother's, she reads every word of small print because her mother raised her to, and she has written a Brave List for her seven nights in Amsterdam. Number three: talk to a stranger first. Number six: say no to something. Number nine, the one that scares her most: sleep on a top bunk.
The Tulip Den is two canal houses on the Geldersekade that lean over the water like drunks reading their own reflections, and the Wi-Fi password is SleepWithUs420. Sjoerd, the very tall philosophy student on reception, calls the little white Partner Hub behind him the Stroopwafel, because with a stroopwafel you know what is inside. Trisha's top bunk sits above Gordo, a Yorkshire roadie who sleeps eighteen hours a day, in a dorm shared with Chadwoo, who decides everything by poll, and Bea, a Swedish data librarian with a label maker and a risk index for furniture. Upstairs in the attic, Logan and the dark-tourism blogger Harriet sleep on Europe's longest bunk bed. Imani Clarke, passing through on her way home from Hong Kong, warns Trisha that at half past three in the morning she watched the whole attic line of bunks move by itself. The next morning Trisha's pine bunk snaps and drops onto Gordo, and the caretaker Ruud, who says the house has opinions, finds a gadget screwed to the broken post. Moved to a fold-down bed in Room Zero, Trisha wakes at 3:33 to find it folding her into the wall.
None of it slows King's Night. Two hundred and forty-seven people in orange pack the attic for the #BunkStack record attempt, an event the app itself is hosting. A storm flickers in the loading doors. Logan, in a crown and cape, wants a hundred people on one bunk bed and has saved Trisha a place on the top of bunk 12, next to him. Best view in Europe.
Age: 22
Type: First-time solo traveller from Fort Wayne
Fatal Flaw: Reads the terms and conditions of a tram ticket
Role: Protagonist
Age: 25
Type: Gold Coast bricklayer and record chaser
Fatal Flaw: Has tried to get into the Guinness Book eleven times
Role: Record chaser
Age: 31
Type: Swedish data librarian with a label maker
Fatal Flaw: Has a risk index for furniture, and refuses to conclude
Role: Ally
Age: 58
Type: Retired roadie, always leaving next week
Fatal Flaw: Sleeps eighteen hours a day, through anything
Role: Bunkmate
Age: About 30
Type: Dark-tourism blogger from Wellington
Fatal Flaw: Films first, helps second
Role: Chronicler
Age: ???
Type: Mysterious presence
Fatal Flaw: None documented
Role: Observer
From the Prologue, "Load Test"
The attic ran away from her into the dark, so long she couldn't see the end of it. The ceiling was a steep upside-down V of ancient black beams, pegged together with wooden dowels the size of her wrist, and under the peak, down the centre of the floor, stood the bunks. The steel whale. Twelve triple-deckers in a single line, forty metres of frame and curtain and railing, and at the head of each tower a small glowing number, 1, 2, 3, marching away into the gloom in pale blue light like runway markers.
Most of the curtains were open. Most of the beds were empty, mattresses bare, waiting for the weekend. Here and there a curtain was drawn, and behind it a shape, and the sound of someone breathing.
And the whole thing was moving.
Not much. She would not have seen it if she hadn't been standing at the end, looking straight down the line. But the bunks were swaying. All of them, very gently, together, the way a train sways at rest on a siding, with a long slow rhythm, left and back and left and back, so that the little blue numbers wobbled in the dark like reflections on water.
Above bunk 1, right beside her head, screwed to a black beam, was another white puck. Smaller than the one downstairs. Its ring was not blue.
It was amber. A slow, thick, honey-coloured pulse.
Tick.
Twelve. The sound came from the far end of the room, from the last tower, the one standing against the gable wall under a pair of tall wooden loading doors. As it sounded, the whole line of bunks shifted, all together, perhaps a centimetre, toward those doors. Toward the canal. It was the smallest movement in the world. A settle. A lean.
Every mattress in the attic sighed as it moved.
And then everything was still. The amber ring above her head faded, slowly, back to blue.
"Oi."
Imani nearly left her body.
A head had appeared over the rail of the top bunk of tower 12, silhouetted against the loading doors. Tousled, sun-bleached hair. A grin she could see even in the dark, because the teeth were extremely white.
"You lost?" said the head, in the broadest Australian accent she had ever heard outside a nature documentary. "Bathroom's on the floor below, love. Don't use the one on this floor, the flush sounds like a jet engine and Harriet's sleeping next to it."
"Did you hear that?" Imani whispered. "The ticking?"
"What, the bunks?" The head yawned hugely. "Yeah, they do that. Old house, innit. It leans. Whole building's on stilts in a swamp. Everything in Amsterdam leans. My mate Sjoerd says the Dutch just built everything slightly pissed." He propped his chin on the rail. "Name's Logan. I'm up the top here. Crow's Nest. Best bed in Europe. You should see the view. You can see the whole canal out those doors."
Fictional reviews of the fictional Tulip Den, quoted from the book.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ "great vibe!! bunks a bit wobbly lol" — FreeToWander guest
⭐⭐⭐ "Woke up six inches closer to the window than I went to sleep." — FreeToWander guest
☠ "load test complete. 36 beds. 1 variable. koningsnacht is fully booked. risk accepted. ☠" — @HostelReaper