The Haunts & Horrors Megapack: 31 Modern & Classic Stories

by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro

  “He is a bit of a puzzle,” said the housekeeper. “He was a prudent businessman, beyond question, and he laid the foundations for the entire chain, in spite of set-backs, but his private life was…” She cleared her throat and went on more carefully, “There were many rumors at the time he owned the chain, some quite…unsavory, as I infer you have discovered. But Percival was not a well-liked man, and some of what was said about him might be nothing more than a reflection of that dislike, which one should bear in mind when reviewing the reports. At the time nothing could be proven, but the accusations made…I was shocked to read a few letters from the 30s and 40s. If half of what they hinted was true, I can only pity his poor wife, having to live with such a man.”

  “And daughter,” Bright suggested.

  “Certainly she had a great deal to handle—assuming the worst of the rumors were true, which they may not have been.” This last was accentuated by a turn-down of her mouth, as if in realization that she had said too much about Percival Faversham. “Miss Faversham took over the chain—then seven hotels—in 1947, the year after her father’s…death.”

  “The final decision was suicide, wasn’t it?” Bright asked, making note of the housekeeper’s wince at the suggestion.

  “That was the ruling; there wasn’t sufficient evidence for the coroner to find it was murder. Given the taint of scandal, and the politics of the time, it was the most justifiable conclusion that could be reached, or so Miss Faversham decided.” She coughed delicately, lifting her handkerchief to her mouth. “No one thought a girl of twenty-four could possibly manage such a huge business, but she not only managed, she enlarged and improved the chain to what we see today.” The housekeeper shook her head, signaling the end of her forthcoming remarks; she returned to her prepared spiel. “The hotels were her whole life. You probably know that she died in the Istanbul hotel?”

  “The Ottoman House, in 1994.”

  “August 9th,” the housekeeper supplied, and turned away.

  “I understand she wanted to be preserved cryogenically, or cremated and her remains put into the foundation of her hotels,” Bright almost made it a question—one to which he was yet to have an answer.

  The housekeeper pretended not to hear this last. “The bellboy will bring your bags up directly. You are familiar with the arrangements of this suite. Your computer can be connected any number of ways; there is a book describing the various links and lines we offer. The room-service menu will be brought up to you. We don’t keep one in Miss Faversham’s room; she never needed one.” She put down the room key-card on a splendid little occasional table standing not far from the door, and started to leave, not quickly enough to seem rude. “I’m not available from 7 until 10 am, and 5 until 9:40 pm, but otherwise, you need only call my office and have my assistant page me for you.”

  “Thanks,” said Bright, nodding as he looked around the room again. “The place is pretty impressive. It wears its age well, doesn’t it?”

  “You could put it that way,” said the housekeeper.

  “I seem to remember there was a major renovation not long ago—is that right?”

  “In 1998,” she said, preparing to depart. “Everything was modernized and made energy-efficient. The whole chain will be energy-efficient in four more years.”

  “Well, it looks great,” said Bright, taking care to put his duffle on the floor instead of on the butler’s table next to the elegant sofa.

  “Thank you. Enjoy your stay,” said the housekeeper as she let herself out of the room.

  Bright nodded to the empty room. “Thanks,” he said, and shoved his hand into his pocket to find the five-dollar bill he had put there. He also touched his cell-phone and wondered idly if he should use it to let his boss know he had arrived. “Not yet,” he said aloud as he continued to take stock of the room; he often talked to himself when there was no one else to hear him. He coughed as a suggestion of a smoky odor went through on an unexpected breeze; a window must be ajar—he would have to find the source and close it. “Then something to take the edge off,” he said aloud, stretching to relieve his muscles from the hours of travel he had endured yesterday and today, truncated though they were. Strolling around the suite, he had to guard against the sense of deja vu that took hold of him—too many nights in eerily similar rooms. If it weren’t for the different styles of furnishings, this suite might have been in any number of Faversham hotels, and he could be in any one of fifteen cities. He began to look for the opened window and discovered that the side-door in the bathroom leading to the hall to the swimming pool was open a crack. He closed it, wondering why it wasn’t locked. He returned to the sitting room and tried to make up his mind whether he should get out his laptop or continue to use his Thumbnail.

  His cogitation was interrupted by a short rap on the door, and the call, “Bellhop.”

  Bright went to open the door, ready to hand over the bill in his pocket. “Just bring them in and set them down. I’ll sort them out later,” he said as the bellboy maneuvered the handsome brass trolley through the door and into the center of the sitting room.

  “If you like, sir,” said the bellboy, a lanky fellow about forty whose face showed almost no emotion. He lifted Bright’s large, wheeled duffle off the trolley, then hefted the large Gladstone bag and set it beside the duffle, and in a single motion, took the five dollar bill and slipped it into his tip-pouch. “Thank you very much, sir,” he murmured as he made for the door, pulling the empty trolley after him. “I’ve been told to bring you a room service menu. It’ll take me about ten minutes to do it, if you don’t mind the wait?” His accent was basic British but smoothed down to a regionless clip.

  “Fine,” said Bright. “But could you ask them to send up a cognac, at least twelve years old?”

  “Certainly; I’ll have the waiter bring you the menu.” He stopped. “Doesn’t this room have a private bar?” The question was out before he could stop it.

  “None of the others have had,” said Bright.

  “Oh,” said the bellboy. “I’ll tell room service, then.” He opened the door and swung the trolley out of the room. “Ten minutes, sir.”

  “I’ll be here,” said Bright, stretching again as he felt the knots in his shoulders start to loosen. He ambled around the room, taking in the beautiful lay-out, the fine appointments that punctuated the splendor of the setting. The room was quiet, but the activity in the hotel was obvious. In his travel from Faversham hotel to Faversham hotel, Bright had come to appreciate the strategic location, for the pulse of the hotel thrummed along the Grand Staircase. From this suite, Miss Faversham had been able to monitor the place without having to open her door. He shivered once as he pulled off his jacket and dropped it over the arm of the sofa.

  Room service arrived with a snifter of excellent cognac; Bright signed for it, accepted a room-service menu, tipped the waiter, and set out to enjoy his stay. He went from the sitting room into the bedroom, and found the 42-inch television in the larger of two armoires. Taking the remote, he plopped himself down on the bed, and turned the set on, allowing the disasters and riots to wash over him as he supposed Miss Melantha Faversham had done. It was hard to think of war and ruin in this beautiful room. Sipping his cognac, he got out his Thumbnail recorder and began to recite into it all the beautiful items he had noticed in this suite, starting with the bed and lighting fixtures, then going around the room. “Two Empire armoires,” he ended up. “One for television, one for clothing, I guess. They say Miss Faversham kept a complete and appropriate wardrobe in each of her rooms in her hotels, so she wouldn’t have to travel with more than a single suitcase.” He had looked in the wardrobes and closets of all the other rooms he had stayed in, and resolved to do the same here, but later, when it would feel less like snooping. “Fine quality antiques, as per usual, excellent state of preservation, and everything useful as well as elegant.” He paused, then said to the recorder, “Miss Faversham must have been quite a character. Bit of a dragon, but very ladylike. The
y say she never raised her voice. Women of that generation put a lot of emphasis on their femininity.” He stared up at the ceiling, noticing the decorative plasterwork consisting of an oblong medallion in the center of the room with ball-and-lozenge accents at the corners. “I hope that’s original. These days, it would cost a fortune to put in.”

  He turned off the Thumbnail and let his mind wander; he was a bit jet-lagged, although he didn’t want to admit it, and it was pleasant not to have to concentrate on his work. He blinked and glanced at the television where the screen was filled with milling crowds in Chinese clothing in front of two large buildings going up in flames; a skittish reporter stood at the edge of it all, trying to describe what was happening behind him.

  Bright got up and found the leather-bound room-service menu, turning to the central page for the most utilitarian listing of available food. As he had found in other Faversham hotels, this one had an eclectic offering for hungry travelers. He selected the spring rolls, the endive salad, the sturgeon in pastry, and the grilled eggplant accompanied by a half-carafe of five-year-old Cotes du Rhone. As soon as he called this in, he decided he had time for a quick bath—Miss Faversham had never had a shower installed in her bathroom, not in any of her hotels—and loosened his tie while he programmed his watch to buzz in twenty minutes, time enough to bathe and be out of the tub by the time his meal arrived.

  This bathroom was a wonderland of pink marble, tall mirrors, golden fixtures, and an elevated tub of lavish size. After turning the gold-plated spigots to fill the tub, Bright hung his garments on the silent butler, then opened the closet to remove one of the Turkish cotton robes he knew would be hanging in it. He set this on the seat of the silent butler, stepped out of his shoes, and bent to remove his socks, then stopped as he felt another draft slither through the room. He stood still for a moment, a sock in his hand, waiting for something to happen. Surely the door hadn’t opened again. When nothing more occurred, he removed his second sock and went to the bathtub, tested the water with his hand, and satisfied with the heat, climbed into the hot water, reaching for the nearest packet of soap as he did. He knew it would smell of lavender and violet—all soaps in Miss Faversham’s room had that aroma—but he did his best to ignore it. The bath was polished marble, five feet long with sloping sides that made it easy for the six-foot Bright to recline without sinking. He sighed and closed his eyes for a couple of minutes before reaching for the large, natural sponge set in the basket-shaped soap-dish at the side of the tub and set to lathering it up. Little as he wanted to admit it, his thirty-nine-year-old body was beginning to feel the wear and tear of a life spent traveling. He made a point of massaging the tightened muscles in the back s of his calves and his shoulders.

  Emerging from the bath just before his watch hummed, he toweled himself lightly, shivering a little in another unexpected breeze, then shrugged into the luxurious Turkish bathrobe, tied the belt, and wandered out into the sitting room to fetch his bags. He was just unzipping the large duffle when the rap on the door announced the arrival of his meal. He found six Euros tucked into the pages of a book he had been reading on the plane, then went to admit the waiter with his rolling tray.

  “Just put it in front of the sofa,” Bright requested, pointing. “Move the butler’s table if you have to.”

  The waiter complied without having to move the butler’s table, accepted his tip, and left the room in less than a minute.

  Bright wandered back and sat down, lifting the covers off the dishes, and inhaling deeply. He set aside the lid from the spring rolls—three of them, laid on a bed of shredded cabbage; a small serving of sweet-and-sour sauce, and another of hoi-sin sauce accompanied the appetizers, which he ate with his fingers, licking the sauce off his hands when he was through, feeling a bit gauche but enjoying himself. Then he picked up his salad fork and began on the endive leaf by leaf, each of the five leaves bearing a dollop of sour cream topped with caviar. “To think Miss Faversham dined like this every day of her adult life,” said Bright to the room as he finished the salad and gave his attention to the sturgeon, watching the pastry flake as his fork went through it.

  A sudden ringing of the phone jarred Bright so much that he almost dropped his fork. He frowned as he reached out to pick up the receiver, wondering who might be calling him. “Harold Bright.”

  “Harry,” boomed Jeremy Snow, the managing editor of World Traveler magazine. “How was the flight from Buenas Aires? How’s Brussels?”

  “Pleasant; it’s supposed to drizzle tonight, but just now it’s cloudy,” Bright answered, glancing toward the window where the light had turned a tarnished silver color as the day wound toward its close. “The flight was uneventful. But you’re not calling about the weather, or my traveling. What can I do for you?”

  Snow laughed aloud. “There you go—business first, last, and always.”

  “That’s what you pay me for,” said Bright, putting his fork down and reaching for his napkin.

  “Truth; truth,” said Snow. “Okay, here it is: we need you to stay on for an extra day. We’ll get your new plane tickets before nine tomorrow, but it’s important that you attend the semi-annual Faversham’s executives’ luncheon on Thursday. They’re supposed to be discussing two new hotels planned. I want to be the magazine to break the news where and what theme these new Faversham’s will have.”

  “Okay.” Bright looked around for a pen. “What time and where?”

  “At the Empire House, of course. I’ll email the pertinent information before I go home this evening; make sure you long on to get it, and use tomorrow to prepare for the meeting. Make sure you go over it before the meeting. I’ve cleared it with dePuy, who’ll be expecting you.” Snow chuckled. “Remind me to tell you how I finessed the invite.”

  “Yes, please,” said Bright because it was expected of him.

  “So you make sure you make the most of it. I want to know where those two new hotels are going to be. My bet’s on Cairo for one, maybe Mexico City for the other. I know the New York hotel is still on hold.” He made it sound as if he didn’t want to be wrong. “I’ll want details, of course, and schedules.”

  “I’ll make sure to talk to dePuy,” said Bright.

  “And get as much information as you can out of the rest of the executives. They all probably have plans and projects we’ll want to put in the story.” He paused. “I’m upping your article to 18,000 words. I’ll push it as high as 20,000 if you get an extra scoop.”

  “That’s great,” said Bright, contemplating the prospect of filling eighty pages with enthusiastic puffery.

  “I want you to call me after the meeting. Right after. No half hour delays. Use your cell-phone—why else do we pay for international connections. I’ll be waiting.” Snow didn’t wait for a response, but hung up without farewell.

  Bright looked at the receiver in his hands and shook his head slowly before putting it back on the cradle. “Thanks,” he muttered, returning to his meal with mixed annoyance and fatigue. The food had lost most of its savor, but Bright knew that was because of the pall of tension that had come over him, not anything in the meal itself. Three bites of the sturgeon-in-pastry and he was done. He poured himself a glass of the wine he had ordered, and drank it down too quickly. He debated ordering a second carafe when he remembered that he had a little of the cognac left in the bedroom, so he tossed off the last of the wine, moved the rolling tray toward the main door, picked up his Gladstone bag, and made for the bedroom, determined to do his utmost to relax. He hung up the Turkish robe and scrambled into his pyjamas, noticing again that there was a draft in the room. Pulling back the duvet, he got in between the sheets and pulled the duvet up to his chin as he reached for the television remote and toggled the sound back on.

  “—ooding has claimed the lives of at least a hundred people in the town of San Tomas,” the anchorman intoned while pictured of a torrential river filled the screen. “Authorities are concerned that with two bridges and three roads wiped out, rescue wo
rkers may not be able to reach San Tomas for at least thirty-six hours.”

  A suggestion of a pop claimed Bright’s attention; he sat up and felt a cold finger of air trace along his arm and shoulder. “Shit,” he said, and got out of bed to fetch his laptop: Snow’s email might be waiting for him, and he wanted to look it over. The air was chilly as he crossed the bedroom, and he took a little time to conduct a search for the source of the draft, and once again found the bathroom door into the outer hall ajar. Now he was bothered. He closed the door firmly and made a point of locking it. “I forgot before,” he said aloud, as if to reassure himself that he had. Returning to the bedroom, he turned on his computer, made his email connection and saw that Snow hadn’t yet sent the information. He conducted a desultory check of the rest of the emails, added one to Sheryl, telling her of his changed schedule. As he sent his email to her, he admitted to himself that their relationship had probably cooled past saving. She no longer worried when he traveled, and didn’t fret when he was delayed. Her own career was thriving, and increasingly she put her attention on her work rather than on him. He was startled to realize how much this saddened him. “Maybe if we’d married…” he said, closing his laptop, setting it on the night-stand, turning down the lamp, and getting back under the covers.

  The television was showing a fast-moving twister cutting a swath across southern Missouri, flinging buildings and vehicles into the air in crazed abandon; then a pasty-faced middle-aged man describing how his wife had vanished into the eye of the storm. “I couldn’t b’lieve it. I just couldn’t,” he said, his expression blank. “Up she went. Up. I couldn’t stop her.” This was followed by a weather man with maps and charts, talking about activity zones and possible new tornados.