Haunted House Tales

by Riley Amitrani

  “Voila!” Chloe said out loud as she tossed her keys on the top of the dresser and hung her coat.

  Sure, the smell of chlorine was not ideal, but she knew that all it would take to rid herself of that would be to flush the sink and shower with some hot water for a few minutes. She headed into the bathroom, flushed the toilet a few times and then turned on the hot water to clear out the bleach. While this was going on, Chloe changed for bed and flipped through the TV channels to see if she could find a nice, relaxing Christmas movie to distract her from all the talk of room 33 that seemed to be all over Blackpool. As she slipped her favorite T-shirt over her head, she found “It’s a Wonderful Life” playing. The classic she assumed was most likely on a repeating loop as it was most Christmas Eves since she had been a little girl. Sappy, but a classic…just what she needed.

  As George Bailey was discovering that he could not serve in the military due to the ear injury he has sustained as a kid, and was to have to do his bit right there in Bedford Falls, Chloe went to the bathroom. She sniffed deeply. All clear. She turned off the water and snuggled down under the thick comforter to watch the movie. Even though Chloe had seen the film maybe a hundred times, she was soon sucked right back into it, wishing evil thoughts on the black-hearted Henry Potter. However, after just a few minutes, Chloe heard this odd humming sound coming from the bathroom. It seemed to be part hum, part vibration, but she could just not figure it out.

  She threw off the covers when a commercial break came on to put an end to the annoying buzz. Once there, she saw that the overhead fan was running, assuming she had simply forgotten to turn it off when she was “de-funking” the bathroom. She flipped off the switch. However, as soon as she deactivated the fan, she noticed that the smell of sulfur was back. It was not as intense as before, but there was no mistaking that it had returned. Frustrated, but grateful in the back of her mind that she even had a room for the night, she dumped the second bottle of bleach down all the drains again.

  Chloe padded back and jumped into the bed just in time to see that George was beginning to get a taste of what Bedford Falls might have been like if he had never been born. She had no more than taken a good deep breath and settled down again when she heard water running from the bath. In what was becoming a seemingly unending set of annoyances, Chloe angrily threw back the comforter and flipped on the bathroom light to see that the shower was now running. She did not remember putting it on, but there was no other explanation. Chloe cranked off the water to the shower, turning each knob as far off as she could manage. Tired from the travel and stress of her grandmother’s situation and all the weirdness of room 33, Chloe slammed the bathroom door and went back to bed deciding not to deal with any of it until morning.

  Room 33: What Was It That Everyone Was Saying About This Place Again?

  Chloe tried to get back to enjoying the wrap up of “It’s a Wonderful Life”, but she was so annoyed with the whole day that she found herself getting irritated even with the Frank Capra classic. How she could be getting pissed at this wonderful film was beyond her, so she went back once again to the words of wisdom from her grandmother. She closed her eyes, took some deep relaxing breaths, counted silently to ten and then exhaled slowly. Her Grandmother Emily was a wise woman, but for Chloe this time it was not working…a first time ever for her that it had failed.

  The harder she tried, the more aggravated she got. Chloe got up to get some water and the room spun slightly as her stomach pitched. She grasped the bed post to steady herself and closed her eyes once more until the sensation of dizziness passed. Her stomach was still unsettled as she sat on the edge of the mattress, but it was nothing serious. She felt her forehead to see if she might be feverish, praying she was not coming down with a bug of some ilk. Her skin was cool and dry to the touch. Maybe she had gotten food poisoning from the pub? It seemed unlikely, but there was always that chance.

  She supposed it could have been the beer as well, but a couple of pints of ale, with a full meal, was hardly something to even consider. Chloe knew her tolerance for alcohol, and this was not even in the ballpark. There was always everything else that was going on: a long trip from Southampton in which she had pushed herself with stops along the way only for petrol or bathroom breaks; the stress over her grandmother and what she might find when she arrived at the home; being far away from Jack during the holidays. And then the biggie on top of it all, the stress of nearly not securing a hotel room for the night, finally landing in the one room in all of Blackpool that everyone there saw as cursed since the day The Excelsior had opened in the 1920’s.

  Then dealing with Anne Cartwright who was running a hotel where if you wanted something taken care of, it seemed it was up to you. All the tales that were attached to her room would have been easy enough to shrug off if she had not had that conversation with Linda at The Albert and the Lion. She could understand, even if he did not buy into it, older people in Blackpool hanging onto such superstitions, but Linda was about her age. And she was so grounded and rational in everything else that they had talked about. That had really thrown her off. Then again, maybe it was just all the noxious fumes she had probably sucked up since she had checked in: first the rotten egg stench and then the chlorine from the bleach.

  As Chloe considered all of this, she decided that it would have be remarkable if she was not coming down with some illness if you looked at all that had gone on for her in the last day or so. It was just cumulative stress from it all, she said to herself. She took a couple aspirin to alleviate the headache that had suddenly arisen and decided that the best remedy to head off anything more serious would be to turn in early and get a good night’s sleep. The last thing she needed now was to come down with an illness that would ruin the main purpose of her trip, that of being with her Grandmother Emily.

  As she swallowed the aspirin, Chloe felt more centered. Her head was still pounding, but her brief bout of vertigo had passed and the nausea was beginning to fade as well. The movie, now long over, had progressed to some despicable infomercial that was making Chloe spiritually nauseous.

  “Really?” she said as she looked at the screen with disdain, “on Christmas Eve of all times?”

  She clicked off the set and went back to bed. She sniffed deeply as she turned out the light by her bed, but all she smelled was the clean air associated with the shore…with maybe just a faint trace of bleach. It seemed after all, that whatever the source of the sulfur odor, it was confined to the bathroom. Just old plumbing, Chloe thought to herself as she closed her eyes and relaxed. The gentle sound of the waves against the beach filled her ears, and before she knew it she was fast asleep. Chloe was not sure how long she had been asleep, but when she awoke it was still dark outside. She had failed to pack her travel clock and her watch was across the room on the dresser with her keys.

  She was feeling OK, just tired, but was confused at why she had even woken up in the first place. The temperature of the room was fine…it was quiet in the hotel as far as she could tell…she did not need to use the bathroom…even her headache and nausea were gone. So, what was it? Then, just as she was sinking back into the covers, she knew what it was. The sound was not loud nor readily identifiable, but as she cocked her ear it was impossible to miss. In her semi-conscious state, Chloe initially thought it was her imagination or perhaps a dream remnant, but when the noise kept up, she knew she was wide awake and was not imagining it.

  From the other side of the closed bathroom door, a subtle but regular scratching sound was audible. Chloe sat up, still somewhere between groggy and fully awake as she listened more closely. In just a few seconds, the noise repeated itself. It was hard to say exactly what the scritching sound was. Chloe had been around enough animals as a child that she was accustomed to the well-known sound of pets’ nails on a door to be let in and what she was hearing was not lining up with that. On the other hand, though she had no experience with what it might sound like for a set of human cuticles to be scraping away, this did not seem
exactly right either.

  The longer she sat and focused on the disturbance coming from behind the bathroom door, the more her imagination raced and soon her pulse was pounding in her ears and her respirations were coning more rapidly, bordering on gasping as her ragged breaths were getting out of control. Chloe tried to make herself calm down, but it was no use. The harder she tried, the more regular and insistent the scratching sounds seemed to grow. There was not a vocalization associated with the clawing, neither human nor animal, and Chloe was hard pressed to decide if that was helping.

  The smell of sulfur was again leaking from around the crevices of the door that was firmly closed as the nails or claws or whatever it was became nonstop, now rattling the door back and forth in its frame. Chloe was sure this must be a dream. It was all that talk of the curse and then how she had let Linda’s pleas with her get inside her head. That was all. However, when Chloe performed the old wives’ tale of pinching herself to test for a dream, the pain was all too real. The noise went on and on and Chloe was feeling herself slipping deeper and deeper into a self-imposed terror that she was afraid would not release her. What if all that she had been told was not just a superstition after all? She had, she thought, maybe rolled her eyes one too many times at everyone in Blackpool who had tried their best to warn her off. Try as she might to let her rational mind take over and find a sensible and reasonable explanation for this, she could not.

  Room 33: Wonder if Linda and Her Husband’s Offer Still Stands?

  Chloe clapped her hands to her ears and worked hard, just through sheer will power and wishing, to make the impending assault just go away. Slowly, over the next few minutes, the sounds faded in volume and then just ceased. As if they had never happened at all. As silence fell over her, Chloe let her hands drop to her lap as she looked about the room frantically. She was trying not to, but also would not have been horribly shocked, if whatever had plagued this room for so long might be face-to-face with her at last. The room seemed to be carrying just a tinge of the stench, relative to before, but overall, all else was quiet and just the normal-looking room she had found when she had checked in.

  Chloe’s hair was plastered to her head with perspiration as large, fat droplets traced down her back and her sides from her arm pits, adding to the chill that has set in when the scratching noises had peaked. She shivered as she sat in her damp bedding, grateful that she was still alone. The slight smell that filled the air was a minor thing, Chloe thought, as she sat on the edge of the mattress and took deep breaths as her heart fell back into a normal rhythm.

  “Just a dream….” Chloe said out loud, more, she supposed to convince herself more than anything. “Just a wicked, bad nightmare.”

  She toweled off a bit and changed clothes, dumping her damp T-shirt and pajama bottoms on the floor, and then slipped on a fresh, dry pair of exercise sweats. What she needed, Chloe told herself, was just some fresh air. It would clear her head from the dream and maybe a quick walk would give her the rational explanation for where this had come from and why it had seemed so real. Chloe slipped on her winter boots and her coat from the hook on the wall and went to pick up her keys and a small flashlight from her purse.

  However, just as her hand touched the keys, the scratching at the bathroom door once again commenced, this time sounding as if whatever it was that was in there wanted out badly. Chloe whipped her head, in an automatic response, toward the door and realized she had never felt so utterly terrified in all her life. All thoughts of a rational explanation were long gone from her brain, and all she could think of was to take Linda’s advice and just get the hell out of this place. Chloe reached for the door that led from her room to the hallway, but the knob seemed frozen in place and the door itself stuck firmly in its frame.

  Chloe tugged wildly with all her might, but no matter how hard she pulled and tugged on it, it was no use. In fact, the more struggled with the door, the louder the scratching from the bathroom became. Simultaneously, the smell of sulfur flooded her nose, now at a level that made the earlier levels seem relatively undetectable. Chloe found herself in a near hysterical panic, as if she was on edge of losing her mind as she stumbled away from the door and groped for the telephone to call for help.

  All memories of how useless Anne and her staff had been earlier were no longer a concern as Chloe was desperate. As she lifted the receiver to her ear, though, it was dead. Not even a dial tone. In a combination of anger and fright, Chloe flung the receiver aside and raked her hands across the top of the dresser until her shaking hands found her cell phone. The smell was making her gag, and she was fighting off the nausea that was threatening to make her vomit as the scratching at the bathroom door was now more of pounding sound interspersed with what had to be non-human nails or claws. She activated her cell phone. Or at least tried to. When she looked down at the display, she saw that the battery was dead.

  In her hysteria, Chloe began to scream in frustration, knowing in the back of her mind that the phone had been fully charged when she had gone to bed. As the stink of the sulfur and the clatter at the bathroom door continued to get stronger, Chloe dumped her purse onto the floor and pawed desperately at the spilled contents until she found the charger for her phone. She plugged in the adapter and then connected her phone, but it was still as dead and useless as it had been before. Chloe threw the phone across the room as she sunk to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and sobbed uncontrollably. Her level of terror and fright was nearly overwhelming her now, and Chloe felt herself slipping metaphorically off a precipice and into madness as she felt utterly lost and at the whims of this God-forsaken room.

  When she was sure she could withstand no more, the rancor from the bathroom once again fell suddenly silent, much like a switch had been abruptly thrown. The smell, as well, seemed to be dissipating, and Chloe pushed herself into a sitting position, her back against the dresser. She tried to stand, but her legs would not cooperate. They did not seem to be physically impaired, they simply did not want to support her when she tried to get them under her. She kicked off her boots and crawled back to the bed, pulling herself back onto the mattress and flinging her rubbery legs behind her. With no more energy or strength left, Chloe sunk back under the covers, still clad in all her sweats, as she threw the comforter over her head and closed her eyes tightly.

  Despite being back in what seemed like a safe refuge, Chloe could not stop crying and pleading for someone to come help her. She no longer was looking to explain room 33. She just wished she had never checked in in the first place. Or had at least had the good sense to listen to Linda when she had been at The Albert and the Lion. Now, it seemed to Chloe, the four walls of the ordinary-looking hotel room at The Excelsior had become a prison from which she could not escape. Chloe curled into a ball and continued to sob quietly until she fell asleep, her body feeling as if she had just gone a few rounds with an unseen assailant.

  She was not sure how long she had been out, but Chloe assume it was just a few minutes as her face was still wet from her tears and sweat as she felt the comforter moving, as if of its own accord. It moved from her head and neck and slid slowly toward the end of the bed. After all that had happened in the last few hours, Chloe kept her eyes clamped tightly shut, petrified at what might now be happening. When she could no longer stand the tension, she opened her eyes just a slit and there at the foot of her bed was the vague outline of person, her comforter bunched in what she assumed were hands.

  It was hard for her to know exactly, as the gray light of the room afforded only a rough outline of the figure. It appeared to be a man and was just of average stature, and slightly hunched over as he stood unmoving at her feet. Chloe dared to open her eyes just a bit more, sure that whatever ominous and menacing presence that had been attempting valiantly to escape from the bathroom was now out and waiting for her. As she looked closer, what she saw next made her shake with utter terror and fright. The figure straightened and dropped the handfuls of comforter as the moon just o
utside her window illuminated his face. Or at least where his face should have been. From the top of the man’s head to his throat was just…well…nothing. There were no facial features whatsoever, just smooth, blank skin.

  Chloe tried to scream or at least call out as her body shook with uncontrollable tremors. She opened her mouth and tried, but nothing came out. The man never moved from his spot at the foot rest of the bed, but just held his ground and opened his arms as if he was waiting for an embrace from an unseen partner. Convinced that she had completely lost her mind as well as any tentative grasp on whatever bit of reality that was still available to her, Chloe fell back, her mouth opening and closing, almost robotically, as she struggled to cry out, her eyes wide in horror and revulsion.

  Meanwhile in Southampton: Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, Jack

  Jack Sutter arose on Christmas morning, his lone day off from his new job, bored and lonely, missing Chloe more than he had imagined he would. He had known Chloe for a few years, but it was only in the last few months that they had progressed beyond the point of being more than just friends. Jack had never ever imagined that the beautiful Chloe Riddell would ever see him as more than just one of their group of friends that got together regularly for drinks, the occasional film or a concert. He was still amazed when she had confessed that she had felt the same about him. They had laughed long into the night when they both reveled this to one another when Jack had finally worked up his courage to ask her out. They had been virtually inseparable ever since.

  He had done his best to support her when the bad news came through about her grandmother. Jack had been adopted and as far as he knew his biological parents as well as any other relatives were no longer around. He had little experience with the bond that Chloe had with Emily, but he did what seemed to him like the right thing as she prepared for her trip to Blackpool. He had even offered to find some way to get some time off from his new job to come along, but in the end, it was impossible. Jack had been out of work for a long time, and after finally securing the job of a lifetime, Chloe would not even consider having him jeopardize it.