by Amy Sparling
The people below are calling out for me, squealing in delight and snapping photos. My back stays turned toward them as I let my fingers graze across the wall in front of me. It's made up of sloppy mortar and rough bricks. It's as if someone made a brick wall here long after the stairs were built. Perhaps after the woman went missing and the mysterious man who lived here disappeared shortly after. Maybe he just let himself die up there, alone with his sins that only he knew.
A familiar voice calls to me now. "Are you going to come down? Don't make me go up there."
Unwilling to leave the brick wall just yet, and knowing that even if I told them nothing was up here, they wouldn't believe me, I walk down and take Raine's hand. The moment my foot hits the safe sidewalk again, everyone erupts in applause. "We like her, Raine!" one of the regulars says. He smiles. "I like her too."
My eyes search the crowd for the cradle robber with the wad of cash. He finds me before I find him. "Well earned," he says, placing the money in my outstretched hand. "You're braver than this fifty year old vet."
"Thanks." I pocket the money. Mom doesn't need to know about this extra cash, so I think about how I'll spend it. Raine continues his tour, this time we stop at the oldest cemetery on the island. I get lost in Raine's storytelling again, and almost forget my surroundings. Then the stench of liquor fills my lungs. Someone's hand grasps my ass, and squeezes hard.
"What the hell?" I say, whipping around. The drunken man from earlier brushes hair out of my face. "What are you gonna do with all that money?" he asks, his voice almost sober now. "Maybe you should buy me a drink."
I take a step away, wondering why everyone has suddenly disappeared into the cemetery, leaving me at the wrought iron gates all alone with this creep. "I'm not old enough to buy drinks."
His hand grabs my hip and starts to feel for my front pocket. "Well, then I could always—" I punch him as hard as I can in the gut. He stumbles backward, then catches himself on a nearby tree. "What was that for?"
"Get away from me." I run past him, skipping over tree roots and broken tombstones, trying to put as much distance between us as I can. Where the hell is Raine?
"What happened?" a girl asks me. Her mother is taking photos of every single tombstone as she walks past them. "Nothing," I say, gasping for breath.
"Did you see a ghost?" she asks.
"No." I pat the top of her head. "I saw something much worse than a stupid ghost."
Chapter 25
We're almost back to the starting place of the tour when Raine makes an unexpected left turn. I jog through to the front of the crowd. "Where are we going?" I ask, but it sounds more like "Where…are….we…go…ing?" with how badly I'm out of breath from jogging. "The manager of the Gomez Hotel asked me to stop by and investigate the fifth floor," he whispers.
"What are ya'll talking about?" one of his regulars, an old woman in a big hat, says. One thing I've noticed about the regulars, is that they hate feeling left out of anything. Raine projects his voice for the crowd. "The manager of the Gomez Hotel has asked me to investigate the fifth floor, so I thought we'd all go check it out. However, if anyone wishes to end their tour now, because I can't promise that anything will or will not happen, you are welcome to go, of course."
Everyone looks at whoever they came here with. Every single person agrees to keep going. Even I'm excited to visit the Gomez, because of its reputation as a five star hotel with frequent celebrity visits. Maybe Gerard Butler or Ryan Reynolds will be staying here, taking a dip in the pool, being all shirtless and sexy.
The lobby is empty except for one overly excited concierge who rushes up and hugs Raine, despite being about twenty years older than he is. I help Raine escort groups of our tourists into the elevators, it takes three rides on each elevator for everyone to get up. Raine tells everyone to stay exactly at the entrance of the elevators until he gets there. We ride up together alone.
"Are you having fun?" he asks, peering at me over the top of his sunglasses.
"Yes. Am I doing a good job as an assistant? Half the time I don't know what I should be doing."
"When my mom was an assistant, all she did was tell stories and scare teenage boys, so I'd say you're doing a pretty good job. And kudos on walking up those stairs, by the way."
"Why just teenage boys?"
"You saw my mom," he says. "She was totally a babe before I was born. She loved messing with guys of all ages."
"Ah, well I don't have that advantage, but I did scare a drunken guy by punching him in the gut."
He shakes his head and stands to his full height. I can't see his eyes anymore through the blackness of his sunglasses, but I think his smirk reaches them. "You could have that advantage, if you wanted to."
The elevator jolts to a stop and the door opens with a ding. As promised, Raine's adoring crowd waits for us in front of the elevators. They break apart so Raine and I can move to the front of the crowd. The hall splits to the left and right, both hallways overflowing with luxurious wallpaper, decorations and leather arm chairs. So this is what a five star hotel is like.
Raine flips through his little notebook. "Room five oh five!" he says, his finger pointed at something on the page. We walk to the right, following a sign that says rooms five hundred thru five fifteen are this way. "Guys, this is my first time in the hotel, so I can't promise that anything extraordinary will happen."
Something is wrong with room five oh five the moment I see the door. Where the big lock should be, the one that opens with a key card, is just holes in the door and a regular door knob. "What's up with that?" I ask.
Raine shuffles the crowd into two manageable groups of twenty five people, who line up against the hallway. "Since the suite can only comfortably hold half of us at a time, I'd like for this group—" he points to the left group, "to stay in the hall and watch for anything paranormal, and the other group can come inside first."
I stay next to the door, figuring that if Raine is escorting the first group into the suite, then I'll stay outside with the rest. "As you'll notice when you come in," Raine says, "There is no key lock on this door. Apparently, they can't get one to work. Every time they try programming a new key card, it will malfunction. Which is fine because no one should stay in a room where a woman hung herself anyway."
People murmur to each other, and gasp and get all excited when Raine says the word hung. Which doesn't make any sense because every single one of them was too scared to walk up a few measly stairs a while ago. Now they're wanting to visit a room where someone committed suicide?
"What happened?" a girl asks. A mysterious smile spreads across Raine's lips. "I'll tell you once we're inside," he says, ushering in the last person in the first group, the door clicking closed behind him.
"Do you know what happened?" someone asks me. I shrug. "I know as much as you do. He didn't tell me we were taking this detour tonight."
"How long have you been his assistant?" a woman with a camera around her neck asks. She's the lady who was taking pictures of headstones. "Your name isn't in the brochure or on the website."
"This is my first night, actually," I say, trying to sound professional and not like some hack. "Raine values my boldness to go where no one else wants to."
"Are you two dating or something?" a girl—a really pretty one—asks. I can feel everyone staring at me. "We're just friends," I say, much to her approval. She grabs her equally hot friend by the elbow and says something in her ear. They both smile. It shouldn't bother me, but it does. It's not like Raine and I are anything more than friends. He just likes having me around because I go on scary adventures with him.
Brendan liked having me around because we were real friends. Friends who talked about personal matters and laughed and had inside jokes. Raine and I don't do any of that, we just hang out in supposedly haunted places and talk about—well, what do we talk about? I lose myself in memories of the few times we've shared together until the door to suite five oh five opens.
"Oh my God!" One
of Raine's regulars is the first person out of the room. "I have to get out of this hotel, it has the worst spirits in it!" She pushes past me and others, and scampers down toward the elevators.
"What happened to her?" I ask what everyone around me is thinking. Raine looks truly pleased with himself as he escorts everyone out of the room. "The flashlight test worked."
"The wha?"
"Group two," he says, ignoring my question. "There is definitely activity in this room, so I'm assuming everyone still wants to come in. If you feel you may get too scared or that it's a little too much for you, then let this be your warning."
Everyone rushes inside, even the girl who asked if ghosts were real at the beginning of the tour. With a sigh, I walk inside too and close the door behind me.
The suite is twice the size of our apartment and a million times more luxurious. It has a four post bed that's probably bigger than a king, exquisite furniture and marble flooring throughout. I savor all of the details, knowing I'll never actually live somewhere like this. The room smells like papayas, not like death. The wallpaper has the sheen of cleanliness on it, not blood splatters or rips from nails tearing into it. It's quite a disappointment, in a way.
"Back in eighteen-thirty eight, a woman checked into this hotel while her husband was at sea. She specifically wanted this suite because it has a balcony that overlooks the ocean." Raine pulls open the draperies to reveal the ocean, glistening with moonlight and the neon lights of the bar next door. With a little struggle, he manages to pull open the antique door handle and slides open the doors to the balcony. Everyone watches but no one walks out onto the balcony. I don't, because the thing could collapse when I step on it.
"Let me guess," I say. "He never came home so now she still waits for him on the balcony with all her ghost-like glory?"
"You are wrong, my dear assistant." Raine lifts his head to the ceiling where a large crystal chandelier hangs. "She got word that her lover's ship was attacked and there were no survivors." He looks back at me. "She hung herself."
Flashes from people's cameras go off as they snap pictures of the chandelier and the balcony. I smirk. "It seems like I've heard a ton of stories like this. Surely a woman wouldn't kill herself over that."
"A woman would if she were truly in love," an older woman tells me. "Not me though, I was glad when my Henry finally kicked the bucket. He was a terrible man."
"What makes this woman's story worse," Raine says. "Three weeks after her death, the man's ship returned. They weren't attacked after all, and he was alive."
"Stupid woman," I mutter. A loud rustling noise fills the room and clashes so loud my ears ring. It was the balcony door. Someone screams. Everyone spins around just in time to see the old metal latch slide perfectly back into place, locking the door once again. My heart pounds in my chest, either from the unexpected noise or the fact that I just saw something happen and I can't explain it.
Everyone is frozen in place, especially me. Raine is the first to move. "She didn't mean that," he says aloud. Then he takes a step toward me and whispers in my ear. "Maybe you should apologize."
"Apologize for what?" I say, loud enough for everyone to hear. "I'm not the one who killed myself trying to be a drama queen. There are dozens of fish in the sea, and if my fish died, I would just find a new one." Brendan flashes in my mind. He wasn't my fish. But he was my best friend. Why does it feel like I'll never be able to replace him?
"She just doesn't believe," Raine says, again to no one in particular. "Would you like to make her into a believer?"
People say yes, but Raine silences them with his hand. "I was talking to the spirit who haunts this room. He takes his small flashlight out from the inside pocket in his jacket. "This flashlight is very easy to turn on, you just twist it like this—" he twists the end and a beam of light stretches across the room. He twists it again, and the light goes off. "I'm going to put this flashlight on the table over here, and if you could please do what you did for the other group…" Raine sets down the flashlight and backs away quickly. "Are you here?" he says. "Can you turn on my light?"
The light flickers on.
Everyone stands still; even the constant flashes of cameras have stopped. You could cut the silence in this suite with a knife- or, hang it from the chandelier. Why didn't Raine tell me about his fancy trick before the tour? He must have a remote in his pocket. That has to be the explanation. Because the other explanation…
"Can you turn off the light now?" Raine asks. The light disappears. A chill creeps from my toes to the back of my neck. I swallow the lump in my throat and tell myself to grow up. Be smart. There is a catch. This shit isn't real.
"Would Raine hold his hands in the air please?" I say, hands on my hips. Confused, Raine does as I say, holding up his arms like he's being arrested. Satisfied that he can't control the remote in his pocket, I say, "If there is someone in this room, will you turn on the light again?"
The light turns on.
"Now turn it off."
The light turns off.
I take a deep breath, my mind still reeling with possible scientific explanations. "Move the flashlight." For a moment, nothing happens. "What's wrong? You can turn it on but you can't move it?" My heartbeat returns to normal. It was a trick, after all. Of course it was. You can rig a flashlight to turn on and off but you can't rig it to roll off the table.
And then it moves. No, it hurtles across the table, slamming into the glass doors of the balcony. The collective fear of everyone in the room consumes us. No one moves or talks or even breathes loud enough to make a sound.
Raine whispers into my ear, "Now do you believe?"
Chapter 26
"Are you sure we won't get in trouble for this?" I trace shapes into the condensation on the window on my side of Raine's car. He nods. He turns off the radio in his car, which means we must be here already. Raine always turns off the radio when we turn into driveways or parking lots. He says he can't concentrate on where to park with the music blasting. I sit up in the passenger seat, taking my feet off the dash so I can get a good look in front of us. It's not a full moon this time, so I still can't see anything but darkness around Graves Mansion.
"Raine?" I say just as he cuts his engine. He looks over at me, his razor sharp hair blocking his eyes. "How did you do those tricks at the hotel?"
"What tricks?"
"Don't be a jerk." I shove his arm. "Those flashlight tricks to make people think there was a ghost in there."
He shakes the hair out of his eyes. We're really close in the front seat of his tiny Civic, but he leans over toward me anyway. He takes his flashlight out of the cup holder and hands it to me. "It's just a regular flash light. Got it for five bucks at Wal-Mart."
I flip the flashlight over in my hand. "Then how did you do it?"
He blows a bubble with his gum and lets it pop right between our faces. "I didn't do anything." He takes the flashlight back and puts it in his jacket pocket.
"Ugh," I groan, throwing my head back against my seat. "I'm not getting out of this car until you tell me how you did it." He pops open his door and climbs out. "Fine, stay here."
The door slams shut and he walks into the darkness. There is no way in hell I'm going to stay here alone, so I scramble out of my seatbelt and run after him.
We had closed the front door when we left the mansion the first time, and as we approach the porch I can see that it's still closed. "Do you think anyone's been here since we were?" I ask. Raine shakes his head and pushes open the door. It slides open effortlessly, without even a creak in its century-old door hinges. "Man, they don't make doors like they used to," I say. Raine doesn't laugh. He's been abnormally serious lately.
"Let's check out more of the first floor," he says, bypassing the grand staircase. This time, I brought my own flashlight, so I could wander off alone. But after the hotel incident a week ago, I'm not sure I want to, so I stay close to Raine.
To our right is a large den with several arm chairs and
a grand piano. The thing looks rotten. The tapestries are all shredded and worn through on the wooden chairs so that all that's left are springs, nails and wood. The floors are mostly covered in dust, with little trails where mice have walked around, burrowing into old furniture and making holes in the walls.
"Do you notice something different in this room?" Raine asks.
"Yeah, it looks like shit." I kick at an end table and it collapses into pieces, breaking a glass jar that sat on top of it. "The bedroom was almost perfect compared to this."
"Weird."
We explore the rest of the downstairs; a kitchen that reeks like mold, a sunroom with what used to be furniture and was now dust. The library takes my breath away. The four walls are comprised of built in shelves that go from floor to ceiling. It even has one of those ladders that swing all the way around on a railing. I want to climb on it but Raine won't let me. A large wooden desk sits in the middle of the room, near a large bay window that overlooked the water. It would have been the most amazing reading nook back in its day.
Raine pulls open a desk drawer. "It's full of liquor," he says, moving his flashlight over the glass bottles. "I bet this stuff is incredibly strong now." He pushes the drawer shut and opens the top one. "Jackpot."
His eyes are on fire as he looks inside the top drawer. I leave the window and run over to see what it is. A silver dagger with an ivory handle. Black, crusty flakes remain on the blade. "It's the murder weapon," he says. "Holy shit."
"Did he kill himself with it too?" I ask.
"No, he shot himself. He was too much of a coward to put himself through the agonizing pain of bleeding to death like he did to his wife." Raine slams the drawer closed. "I think we've seen enough in here."