Lissette screamed, “My water’s quick!” and the lake roared in and filled the passage from floor to ceiling. Rose lost her grip on Grace, choking as her lungs filled with water; the world went silent as she slipped into oblivion.
~
Mr. Jordan looked up from the table where he had photos spread out around his plate. Kelly was coming down for breakfast, her eyes red, face swollen. She hadn’t left her room since they had arrived home, two days earlier. She had refused to leave Lake Manor Hotel after that night — the night they had lost Rose, and her cousin Grace, and their grandmother.
“Hey, honey,” he said, tentatively. “Could you give me a hand, here?”
Kelly looked at what he was doing and shook her head, then clamped her hands over her mouth and ran for the bathroom. He winced at the sounds, and picked up a photo of his mother as a young woman, with an elusively familiar young man at her side. He wondered idly who that was, and marveled at how Elizabeth at the hotel had resembled the Elizabeth in the old photo — her hair, in that pixie cut, was exactly the same, though he had never seen it that way before.
After the police were done with what seemed a cursory investigation at best — he would be writing some letters to the local and state governments, oh, yes — the family had packed up to go home and get started planning funerals for their lost loved ones. Chloe was practically catatonic with grief; Kelly, clearly wracked with guilt, had kept wandering around the hotel talking to her sister, and her little cousin, and her grandmother, so that they had had to tranquilize her and carry her to the car in order to get her home. Once home, she had refused to talk to anyone.
Mr. Jordan’s phone rang, and he picked it up and answered it.
“Hello?”
“Mr. Jordan? This is Sheriff Turner. Do you have some time to talk?”
“Of course, Sheriff. What is it? Do you have some more information?” He fingered the photo, as his mind strayed to treacherous thoughts, wrong no matter which way he thought them, of how could his mother have saved herself from that hellhole and left the girls to die. But she hadn’t, had she — saved herself? After Kelly had led them down the passage to where they found the girls’ bodies, they had searched till midmorning without finding anyone else, but then, puzzlingly, Gran’s body had been discovered by the maid, lying in her own bed.
“Well, you see, sir,” said the sheriff, “that’s just the thing. It appears — and the coroner backs this up — she never left her room. At all, apparently. She, umm, apparently checked in to the hotel, took her suitcase up to her room, laid down to take a nap, and err… passed away. According to the autopsy, your mother umm… passed away on Thursday. Time of death, of course, is impossible to determine after this many days, but she never unpacked anything, and nothing was disturbed in her room. Nothing at all.” The sheriff cleared his throat.
“That’s impossible! I’m sure everyone at the hotel can confirm that my mother was alive and well for the three days we were there, before… before, you know. We all saw her, every day. Ask that bellhop — the one who knows her. And the staff in the dining room; they ate in there every day. And that lady at the front desk, she saw her. We talked to her, the girls played with her, we have pictures, for God’s sake!” Mr. Jordan’s voice cracked as he tried to make sense of this bizarre story.
Kelly had come back in, but at this last about pictures, her eyes welled up and she ran out of the room again. Mr. Jordan shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair in distraction as he listened to the sheriff.
“Well, sir, about that. Hank isn’t speaking to anyone, and spends all his time in his room. He seems to have taken it quite hard, though how… well, I mean to say, if she passed away the day she arrived, and she took her own bag up, I don’t know why her death would… err… that is, well, it’s not like we don’t have deaths here from time to time. Ahem. Perhaps he just has a touch of the flu or something.”
“And the front desk woman?” Mr. Jordan asked impatiently.
“Lissette reports that your mother checked in on Thursday, and she never saw her again.”
“What? That’s impossible. She’s lying. Why wouldn’t she have said something, if she didn’t see a guest for three days?”
“I’ve never known Lissette to be forthcoming on anything,” said the sheriff, sounding vexed. “Nevertheless, sir, I don’t see that there’s anything more I can do with this investigation. You can contact my office to make… arrangements. You have my condolences, sir.”
Mr. Jordan set his phone down as the call ended, staring at it with incredulity.
~
At Lake Manor Hotel, the bellhop’s room had suddenly become too small. The space that had always been enough for the lone man now held not only that man, but also the love of his life, and two of her granddaughters.
Elizabeth looked around critically, taking in the man standing before her, the single bed on which she sat, and the chair that held two huddled, confused-looking girls. She went over to the chair and knelt in front of Rose and Grace. “My dears, you were so brave. We’re going to take care of you. You have a home here for as long as you like.” She kissed them each on the forehead, in turn, and smiled fondly. Then she turned her attention to Hank. “Henry, we may be ghosts, but if we’re going to live here forever, we’re going to have to do some remodeling.”
Coming Fall 2016 from Woodbridge Press
Featuring:
Stephen Moss * Richard Fox * Ralph Kern *
Jo Zebedee * PJ Strebor * Stephen Palmer
Jacob Cooper * Charlie Pulsipher
And More!
The Haunting of Lake Manor Hotel Page 19