Haunted House Tales

by Riley Amitrani

  Jack, like Chloe, had been crushed when he realized they would be apart for their first Christmas together as a couple, but this just seemed to be how it was to work out this year. Chloe had assured him it would be depressing enough on some level just for her. There was no need to drag him down into the situation as well. They could celebrate when she got back. Maybe combine Christmas with New Year’s, she suggested. Jack thought back to that conversation as he stared out his window at the frigid landscape of the neighborhood where he lived. The streets and bare trees were crisp with frost, but so far, no snow had fallen in Southampton, making this a very, very brown Christmas.

  He was feeling bad enough, but looking at the bleak scene outside was sure not helping any. Jack brewed himself a strong cup of coffee from the special blend of beans that he and Chloe had discovered during a recent trip to London. He walked to the sofa and sat heavily as the aroma from the fresh coffee filled his nostrils. His first sip of the brew helped, but Jack was undecidedly feeling sorry for himself as his cat, Mortimer, joined him on the couch and curled into a ball at his side.

  “Nothing personal, Mort, old man, but this sucks….” Jack said to his roommate.

  The cat looked up at him sleepily as he licked his belly. Ah, the life of a cat, Jack mused as he smiled wanly and sipped his coffee. The day was not looking as if the sun was going to make a major appearance and the clouds, while pervasive and solid, did not give off any indication of snow. As Jack finished his coffee, Mortimer moved off to the end of the sofa to snuggle into his favorite blanket. He set the mug aside and glanced over to his laptop that was sitting on the table near the kitchen where Jack had set up a very informal office for himself so he could bring work home if necessary. He was keen to make an impression at the new place and wanted to be prepared to do what he could to make his mark there.

  Jack thought back to his conversation with Chloe from last night, and for no reason that he could see at the moment, he went to the desk to see what he could find out about Blackpool and the historic old hotel, The Excelsior. He supposed the wild and bizarre story that Chloe had told him about the old place and the “cursed” room 33 might have spurned it. Besides, he thought, what else am I going to do but sit here and make myself more miserable until Chloe gets back. When Jack was just a kid, he remembered reading something about all the various attractions in Blackpool as a beach retreat, but until Chloe had mentioned The Excelsior, he had never heard of it.

  He opened up his browser and began to do a search on the old hotel. There was no shortage of articles on The Excelsior, referencing its origins from the 1920’s. Jack was amazed that Chloe had landed a room in such an elaborate and fancy hotel, until he began to come across all the writers who had done all manner of exposes on the old place making it clear that the former showcase hotel for the wealthy was a mere shadow of itself today. The one thing that kept showing up in all the pieces, though, that really caught Jack’s attention was the repeated reference to room 33 and its somewhat less than pleasant history.

  As Jack read over the articles, he thought back to the stories that Chloe had told him during their call the night before. Like her, Jack was finding himself highly amused at the tales of some sort of “curse” that all the writers had attached to the room. All the accounts, with slight variation, however, aligned very closely with what Chloe had said. Certainly, the locals in Blackpool all seemed to be accepting the superstitions and tall tales without question or doubt, but Jack found the whole thing to be utterly absurd. Perhaps, he mused as he read along, this was another of those tactics used for creating interest and tourist traffic to Blackpool. Jack knew as well as anyone how this strategy had been utilized ad nauseum in Britain as a travel marketing ploy.

  The extensive history in England, and elsewhere in Europe, he supposed, was more than adequate to provide such fables and folkloric scenarios to which the gullible traveler might fall prey. The most famous incident that came to his mind at the moment was how the Stanley Hotel in America had gained a similar notoriety following the publication of Stephen King’s “The Shining”. That was not to say, Jack thought, that there could possibly be some validity to what might or might not be going on in the historic hotel that sat high in the mountains in Colorado. That was not the point. What might be a commonality, though, between that and room 33 at The Excelsior, was the use of such superstition to take advantage of a gullible public.

  Jack was just about to close out his google search engine, when he glanced over at an article, that while it had similar accounts, was focused on a different angle. Oddly enough, the piece had been written just a year earlier. The lone story on the hotel after a long hiatus of interest in the place. The name of the author poked at some recess of Jack’s brain, but he could not place it until he began to read through the article more closely. David Woser...of course, now he remembered! Woser had done this lecture when Jack had still been a university student that he had attended with a former girlfriend. The girl had been deep into paranormal research and Jack had tagged along out of sheer curiosity and to humor her. Then, as now, Jack found the whole field laughable, but at the time, as he recalled, his mere agreement to go along had gotten him into the girl’s bed that night. Not his proudest moment for sure, but a memorable night nevertheless.

  Jack came away from the lecture still as skeptical and dismissive of paranormal activity as he had been before, but what he did remember was that Woser had offered the most scientific and authentic-appearing presentation on the subject he had ever heard. And now, here was Woser again with an investigation into room 33 at The Excelsior. Well…at least he had tried. The article went on in some detail summarizing what all the other half-baked writers had put forth, but in this case, Woser had dug deeper. From interviews and his long history of similar incidents, Woser was suggesting, quite emphatically, that room 33 was the home to a very sinister and demonic presence.

  Despite his reputation and respect, at least among the populace that actually bought into this stuff, Woser had been denied access to the room for a thorough investigation. In the article, Woser told of repeated attempts to set up a study in room 33, but the current owner, an Anne Cartwright, was firm in her resolve to keep the room isolated from anyone not associated with the hotel. Much as Chloe had said, Cartwright had sealed off the room from the general public long ago…it had remained locked and unseen by anyone for over twenty years, Woser wrote. So why, Jack asked himself, did Cartwright finally agree to offer the room to Chloe?

  Woser’s article pointed out that the hotel, having fallen on hard times in recent years, was struggling financially, especially during the off-season when people did not think of coming to the shore in Blackpool. However, despite that hardship, Cartwright was adamant about not making room 33 available. Jack knew how persuasive and persistent Chloe could be when she needed to be…when it was necessary to fulfill her wants. She must have finally worn down the poor owner with her sad tale of her grandmother and no one else having a vacancy, Jack figured. He had seen her in action on many occasions in Southampton when this part of Chloe’s personality came out…Anne Cartwright had never stood a chance, Jack thought, as he chuckled to himself.

  As he read on into the last few paragraphs, Jack saw a photo that Woser had closed the piece with, which told of Harold Grant, the man who had been the first alleged victim of room 33 back in 1925, shortly after The Excelsior opened its doors to the upper crust of Britain. Little was known of Grant, then or now, Woser sighted. All he really emphasized was that the few hours Grant had spent in room 33 set a historical precedent for all future residents of the room. He winced when he thought of it, but what came to Jack was that old commercial for the roach poison that had made its way to England from The States:

  “The roach motel. Roaches check in, but they don’t check out!”

  The photo was an unremarkable shot of Harold Grant from better times, long before he had made the unfortunate decision to stay at The Excelsior. He was looking serious in the shot, an
d all that Jack could think of was how average and ordinary the man looked. The kind of man, that if you passed him on the street, you would have hardly even remembered anything about him. Grant was forgettable, Jack supposed, but in the background of the photo he spied something quite the opposite. The article had been reproduced from its original source, obviously, but as Jack looked with great focus, what he saw was not due to the reproduction of the copy. Just off Grant’s left shoulder and forming a cloud-like mist behind him, was a disturbing black shadow. Despite the warmth of his little flat, Jack found himself racked with a chill that had settled tightly onto the base of his neck.

  How Did You Miss This, Woser, You Hack?

  Jack massaged his neck and the icy mass broke up and trickled away. The overwhelming sensation of fear and alarm, however did not. Jack was not prone to being easily spooked, but he suddenly had the sick feeling that something about the tales of room 33 might actually have some validity after all. Without realizing it, Jack saw that he had tucked his hands under his armpits to warm his finger as they trembled. And it was not just his hands. Jack stood quickly to pace about as his whole body seemed to be shaking as he tried to figure out what it was in that photo he had spotted that had just freaked him big time. In the bigger picture, he knew it was that amorphous, cottony-looking shadow that seemed to hang over Harold Grant. But what the hell was the thing?

  Maybe he had just imagined it…it was an old photo, after all. Probably just some photocopy artifact Jack thought as he moved to the sofa near Mortimer. The cat moved to his lap, and Jack exhaled deeply to shake off the anxiety that was threatening to take over. When a teenager, Jack had suffered some mild anxiety attacks. They were attributed partly to normal adolescence and partly to his fear of abandonment as he began to truly face his adoptive status on a deeper emotional level. A therapist had eased him through those black days, and until today, Jack was sure they had vanished forever.

  The waves of dread and panic that were flowing through his body now, though, were making Jack yearn for the mild episodes he had had as an adolescent. As he stroked Mortimer, he stared back across the room at the open laptop. He could not actually see the photo that he had left visible on the screen, but there was a magnetic force of some ilk coupled with a voice only Jack could hear, calling him back. His rational mind was now in an all too real battle with his irrational subconscious as Jack looked for a cease fire between the two. He shuddered slightly as he labored to catch his breath and wait for his pulse to slow.

  He set Mortimer gently aside and rose to go back. His legs quavered just a hair as he moved with a combination of resolve and hesitation back to the desk. Using the desk and the back of the chair to steady his awkward gait, Jack eased into the chair and closed his eyes, praying with all his might that all the reading he had just done together with Chloe’s phone call had been responsible for some sort of visual hallucination. The problem was Jack was not much of a believer in God, nor did he think for even a second that what he had seen just minutes ago was a hallucination.

  He lay his sweaty palms face-down on the table on either side of the laptop and took a deep breath as he cautiously opened his eyes again to look at the photo. It was not overly shocking when the photo had not changed, but Jack still felt this hard ball of terror knot up in his stomach, threatening to dislodge his morning coffee. Right there it was. The mild-mannered Harold Grant, looking calmly and patiently into the camera, perhaps posing for some portrait or other purpose. And right behind him, a looming shadow. It had no real form or definition and if he had not known it firmly in his gut as being otherwise, Jack might have convinced himself it was a lighting effect from the photographer.

  But deep down he knew it was no lighting aberration. He looked again, now that the bulk of his shock was over. He turned the screen this way and that, but the apparition behind Harold Grant never wavered. How in the hell had Woser, or anyone else for that matter failed to see this? Jack was finding his unflappable denial of the paranormal cracking at its foundation. Based on everything, how could this not be the only possible explanation? What was it that Conan Doyle had made a signature quote in his Sherlock Holmes series…

  “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth…”

  Jack felt truly ill as the well-worn line from countless film remakes of the classic books echoed through his mind. But what absolutely terrified and was threatening to paralyze him into inaction was that he was sure that Chloe was in serious trouble in The Excelsior. He could not explain how he knew this, but he did nevertheless. Jack rose from his seat, not bothering to shut off his computer. He snatched up his cell phone and called Chloe, but the call would not go through. Several more attempts gave Jack the same result and he cursed the technology.

  He paged through his call log and found the number Chloe had given him for The Excelsior. However, when he dialed it up he just got a recording that the number had either been disconnected or was out of service. Jack got the number for the hotel from directory assistance and tried that, figuring Chloe had messed up with the one she had given him. The call went through, but all he got was this annoying recording. He realized it was Christmas Day and most likely the staff was just available only for emergencies until tomorrow.

  He had to get through to Chloe and warn her if it was not already too late. With no other options that he could think of, Jack threw on his winter coat and grabbed his car keys. He called his boss and said he had come down with the flu overnight. He could tell, even over the phone line, that the man was not buying it, but Jack, at the moment could not have cared less about his job. He hoped he could talk his way back into his boss’s good graces later. But for now, he was frantic for Chloe’s safety. He dumped some dry food into a dish and set it next to a small bowl of cream for Mortimer as he rushed out of the flat having no idea what he might be walking into or how long he might be away. At this point, even the outlandish idea that he might never return slipped into Jack’s brain where it took root and festered.

  The day stayed cold and overcast as Jack pushed his little car to the limit as he raced north to Blackpool. Fortunately, all normal people were snugged safely away in their homes as they opened presents and gorged themselves on holiday feasts, so Jack had little if any traffic to slow him on his trip. As he neared Birmingham and approached Stoke-On-Trent, the overcast day began to shower Jack with flurries, and by the time he had reached the outskirts of Chorley, the flurries had morphed into a full-blown winter storm. Jack fought to keep his lightweight car on the road as strong winds buffeted him first one way and then the other as the snow blew horizontally, making visibility almost nil.

  The wind eased slightly as he arrived in Blackpool, but the snow continued to fall. Jack was totally unfamiliar with the streets in Blackpool, but it was a small place and his GPS led him to The Excelsior perfectly. The rear wheels of his car slid dangerously to one side as he drove too quickly over a patch of icy slush, but Jack regained control of the car just before he spun beyond recovery. He felt his heart leap at the near mishap and slowed as he drove down Lytham Road toward his destination. The hotel loomed ominously before Jack as he shut off the car and got out. He squinted hard against the blowing snow as he slammed the door and ran to the entrance. He had expected his next hurdle to be gaining access to the hotel on Christmas Day, when the staff was seemingly just on call.

  However, when Jack grasped the handle of the front door, he nearly fell backward as the door opened easily. He rushed through the opening into the warm interior and threw back the hood on his coat. The lobby was empty and the front desk was unoccupied as well. It seemed inconceivable to Jack that they had left the building open, and on top of that apparently unattended. Perhaps whoever was manning the reception desk was just checking on a guest or doing some other routine task. At this point, Jack hardly cared. Actually, it made his task much easier not having to explain his unfounded intuition that his girlfriend, who they had put up in the cursed room
33, might be in mortal danger from a demonic presence that had been around for almost a hundred years.

  Getting locked up for being insane was just not on Jack’s schedule for the day. He blasted past the check-in desk and entered the hallway just off to the side. He had no idea where room 33 was exactly, but there was just the single hallway and it seemed likely that the room was located on the ground floor. As Jack was about halfway down the corridor, the noxious odor of sulfur hit him like a wall. He felt his stomach heave, but he gritted his teeth and forced the rising gorge from his stomach back down as he covered his mouth and nose with his arm. The rooms ran in a predictable numerical order and Jack could see that the door to what had to be room 33 was ajar.

  The closer he got, the worse the stench got, but he managed to cry out for Chloe regardless. With no response, Jack had a sinking feeling of what he would find inside, and he nearly faltered, sure he was way too late to save her. From somewhere, though, Jack summoned his inner reserves and rushed into the room as the door banged open and bounced off the wall. Jack stopped as if he had run into an invisible barrier and just sank to his knees near the bed. On the mattress, splayed across its width was Chloe. The look on her face was like nothing Jack had ever seen before and he hoped never to have to see anywhere again.

  Her facial features were twisted into a horrible grimace of pain, panic, desperation, horror, and fear. The covers on the bed were balled into a knot, where her feet had become entangled as if she might have been trying to escape from whatever it was that had ended her life and caused her last moments on earth to be indescribably horrendous and dreadful. Jack shook his head back and forth, trying to deny what he was looking at before he leaned back and let out the most piercing and blood-curdling scream imaginable. He slid forward and put his hands on Chloe’s cold, clammy exposed leg as he cried harder than he could ever recall. His vision was blurry from his tears, but as Jack looked up above the bed, he saw the black shadow...the last thing Jack recalled before he passed out.