by Katie Berry
Things were segregated into sections like he was in someone’s basement looking through their decades of stored bric-a-brac. One section almost a dozen feet long was labelled Christmas Decorations, followed by shorter areas marked Halloween, Thanksgiving, Easter and more. These shelves seemed to contain boxes dedicated to every holiday decoration scheme, almost. “What? No Hanukkah, Ramadan, or Kwanzaa? How typically North American.” He shook his head sadly.
After the holidays, the seasons of the year came next. He now stood at the far end of the room browsing inside a box labelled ‘Spring’ when he heard a noise; a scraping sound of something rubbing slowly over something else. Suddenly, on the other side of the divided room, a box fell off the shelf, spilling its contents onto the floor.
“Hello?” Lively said. He was standing at the end of the aisle and was able to take two quick steps to his right to look toward the entry door. There was no one in sight, only a cardboard carton laying on the floor halfway up the aisle. Thoughts of the spider flitted through his mind for a moment as he approached the box. He warily scanned the shelves nearby, keeping an eye out for a possible ambush by his eight-legged friend.
“Okay, so you want me to look at something, do you?” Lively asked the room as he poked the fallen carton with his toe. Nothing hairy, creepy, or crawly came out of the box, and he knelt to examine it. A Ouija board had spilled out, along with its wooden planchette and battered cardboard box, both looking to be many decades old. The wooden board had letters of the alphabet arcing in two rows across the top, with numbers in a straight row beneath. The word “Yes’ was engraved in the upper left-hand corner of the board with ‘No’ sitting in opposition.
“This is a collector’s item.” He turned it over to see the back. “Whoa. Even better, it’s the Canadian Copp Clark William Fuld edition!” This board was quite rare, not because of its design, but rather the story behind it. He began to put the mess on the floor back into the carton and discovered something even more interesting than the Ouija board.
Several decks of worn playing cards lay next to a snakes and ladders board game, which partially covered an old Monopoly set. Underneath all of that gaming goodness, he found a small glass orb, wrapped in an old, checkered cloth. It almost looked like a crystal ball that a medium would use, but slightly smaller, around the size of a baseball. The globe was cloudy in the centre. Lively held it up to the overhead light and peered into it. He wasn’t sure, but the cloudiness at the centre of the glass seemed to be moving, ever so gradually, almost like real clouds do when you stare up at them sometimes. You know they’re moving, but just going slowly enough to not be readily apparent. He wrapped it back up and put the orb inside his courier bag, along with the planchet and the Ouija board for good measure, the latter sticking out of the top of the bag. He would have Minerva look at them a little bit later and perhaps they would try them out to see if anything happened.
As he approached the entry door, he glanced at the remaining cartons’ labels along the way. There were parts for the irrigation system, extra dinnerware and cutlery, pillows, blankets, and pretty much any item you’d need to restock or replace in a hotel seemed to be inside this room. Lively wrote a few notes in his notebook, then paused as a thought struck him.
He suddenly reversed his decision and his direction, thinking instead that he should see exactly where the other corridor went back there at the hidden ‘T’ intersection. He returned to the heavily laden shelf in front of the secret corridor and rolled it aside, saying, “Once more into the breach.” Clicking on his flashlight, Lively stepped through the hidden doorway. He turned and slid the door shut, venturing once more into the hotel’s underworld, its darkness consuming him completely.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
December 24th, 2021 1115 hours
The door to the royal suite was currently closed, but Minerva was sure they had left it open when they’d gone for breakfast. It was a minor thing, but just another example of the little details around the hotel to which a person needed to pay attention.
Tentatively tracing her fingers along the suite’s door handle, she half-expected to feel a jolt of electricity or freezing cold, but there was nothing. She let out a small breath of anticipation she’d been holding, then fully grasped the doorknob and turned it, pushing the door open once again.
Sunlight streamed through the open drapes, bathing the room in stark white light, showcasing its dated opulence. Antiques were on display everywhere. In front of her sat a pair of Louis XIV armchairs that were surely worth a small fortune just on their own. In between them, in a mishmash of centuries, sat a French Empire Gueridon table with what looked like a Ming Vase in its centre. Just another example of the money that was invested in this hotel. She could definitely see why the holding company was so interested in getting the place up and running again, instead of leaving everything gathering dust here in the mountains of BC. Minerva gave a small shake of her head — if only they hadn’t ruined the look of the room with the thick, white, shag carpet that covered every square inch of the floors in the suite. She imagined that gruesome addition had come sometime in the late 1960s during a renovation refresh most likely.
Looking more closely at the furniture, Minerva could have sworn it was a lot dustier in here when she’d arrived earlier this morning. But now, it looked as if it had been covered with a cloth all these years, one that had only recently been removed. But if that were the case, she thought, there would be evidence of other spots still covered with dust, such as the white carpet, but the room seemed immaculate, almost as if the maid had wandered by a few minutes ago.
“You really are waking up, aren’t you?” she asked the room nodding her head slightly. Minerva gazed into a large, framed mirror that occupied a section of the far wall. Her likeness nodded back in agreement with her observation. She stopped nodding and stared at her reflection, lost in thought. What echoes of lives lived had this glass seen over the decades?
An overwhelming urge to touch the mirror came upon her. She moved slowly toward the oversized looking glass, wondering, if she made contact with it, would she be able to step through like Alice?
The reality of her flight of fancy, she discovered, was icy cold glass, like a jar from just out of the freezer. With a short intake of breath, she pulled away for a moment, rubbing her fingertips together, feeling the flesh chilled to the bone. The glass was almost painful to touch, but she didn’t want to put on any gloves and lessen the contact with its surface. The brief moment she’d just experienced had been more than enough to tell her there was much more to this mirror than met the eye. She closed her eyes and cleared her thoughts. After a moment, she touched the mirror again.
Echoes of life resonated through her fingertips, flooding up her arm and into her mind with a kaleidoscope of images and sensations. Millions upon millions of ‘moments’ swirled through her head. Brief snippets of people and the things they had done throughout the day, and the night, while staying here in the royal suite. Echoes of love and passion, pleasure and pain, joy and heartbreak, and lust and horror. It was that last echo from the mirror that was strongest of all.
“Okay, that’s enough.” Minerva withdrew her hand from the mirror. She needed to know more but needed a break, saying, “Let’s finish this little story first.” She pulled out Lively’s manuscript once more, wanting to finish the last page of the Sonny Wright saga that she still had to read. But before she did that, she wanted to move her reading into the room where the event happened, the royal suite’s bedroom. From everything she’d read up until Sonny broke into the suite, it certainly sounded like that fall day five and a half decades ago had ended in a case of domestic violence and/or homicide.
It turned out she was both correct and incorrect at the same time. There was plenty of violence, but not of the domestic kind. Isabelle Wright had been found naked in the centre of the round king-sized bed, her eyes wide and staring, unable to utter a word. The room around her had been in complete disarray as if a tropical
storm had blown through in the middle of the afternoon. In a way, it had, and the storm’s name had been Sonny Wright.
When hotel staff arrived soon after the fracas, no sign of Sonny or Rob had been found. Something extremely violent had occurred in the suite, of that there was no doubt, and it had left Isabelle an emotionally damaged vegetable for the rest of her life. However, no blood or bodily fluids were ever found anywhere in the room, something that surely would have been expected in a fight in which Sonny Wright had been involved.
The official RCMP report came back that there had been signs of a struggle, and that indeed, someone may have been hurt, but no one knew where either man had gone, and Isabelle Wright wasn’t talking. She never said another word after that day, spending the rest of her life, semi-comatose, in a small room at Vancouver’s Sunnybrae Mental Institution. They had tried drugs, shock therapy, literally anything to get her to talk about what had happened. But nothing had worked, and she remained mute until the day she died, a little over fifty years later.
Photos from inside the suite showed massive damage to the furniture, walls, and windows. It appeared that Sonny had literally cleaned the room with Rob Ruby. Indented in the plaster of one wall, the outline of a man could be clearly seen. Scattered nearby, numerous antique chairs and tables lay in pieces. Whether they were crushed from somebody being thrown onto them or by being smashed over somebody’s head, no one would ever know for sure.
No staff or guests reported seeing either of the men after that afternoon altercation. And it wasn’t like the pair could have just sauntered past the front desk and out the door. Rob Ruby’s fame and Sonny Wright’s physique were two factors that made it virtually impossible for either of them to go anywhere without being noticed. In addition, judging by the damage to the suite, just the thought of Rob Ruby walking out of the Sinclair Hotel of his own volition would have been an act of purest optimism. Neither Sonny Wright nor the object of his attention, Mr. Rob Ruby, were ever seen or heard from again.
Minerva returned to the mirror, wanting to touch its surface once more. The glass wasn’t freezing cold now and…” She jerked backward in surprise several steps when the mirror began suddenly sliding aside.
The reflective glass disappeared, moving sideways into a recess on one side, leaving the intricate wooden frame still attached to the wall's exterior. Standing on the other side of the frame, posing like a full-length living portrait, was Lively.
“Hey, Sis! Welcome to Wonderland!” As he spoke, he broke his pose and poked his thumb over his shoulder toward the dim, dusty corridor at his back.
Clasping her chest slightly from surprise, Minerva said, “Lively! You scared the bejesus out of me!”
“Yeah, sorry about that. I just got here a few seconds ago when you were walking up to the mirror. Poor timing on my part I suppose,” he said, smiling sheepishly, then brightened and concluded, “But you gotta check this out!” He gestured excitedly over his shoulder with his thumb once more.
“I presume you’ve found the March Hare or the Mad Hatter?” Minerva shook her head slightly, still feeling the adrenaline coursing through her veins.
“Well, not quite. But this is where it gets interesting, trust me!”
“It wasn’t interesting already?”
“Oh yes, it certainly was. But let me just say this: you ain’t seen nothin’, until you’ve seen what lies on the other side of this looking glass, Alice. So, c’mon!” He gestured with his arm for her to follow and turned. Moving away into the dim corridor once more, he began singing the refrain from David Bowie’s Golden Years as he walked.
Minerva shook her head and pulled out her flashlight. She turned it on and speared the gloom that seemed to have swallowed her brother whole, then stepped through the frame to follow his lead. Behind her, the mirror slid silently back into place, a hidden latch inside clicking closed as it did. To Minerva’s jangled nerves, it sounded like a gun being cocked.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
December 24th, 2021, 1143 hours
Row upon row of weak incandescent lights hid behind red glass housings. “What in the world?” Minerva asked. This corridor stretched for what looked like the entire length of the hotel. There seemed to be an entire underworld behind the walls of this resort.
No longer singing David Bowie, Lively had stopped a few feet past her position in front of an unmarked door in the narrow corridor. He looked back over his shoulder, saying, “What’s the matter, Sis? Not my singing, I hope?”
“Well, first of all, I don’t think Michael Buble has anything to worry about. And no, it’s not that, it’s the lighting here. What’s with the darkroom lights?”
“Isn’t it something? This network of corridors runs throughout the entire hotel from what I can see, and these lights are everywhere. They’re usually used in places where regular light could cause a problem, such as a dark room like you said, or perhaps in a surveillance operation.”
“Surveillance operation?”
Lively pushed the door in front him open, saying, “Allow me to show you.”
A large room lay beyond the unassuming door. The air had a stale smell in here like a wardrobe full of old clothes, long unopened. It was almost lounge-like, tastefully decorated with a variety of comfortable leather chairs and chaise lounges. A teakwood drink cart stood next to one wingback chair, as if ready to serve a cocktail to whoever was next waiting their turn in this hidden den of depravity, located behind this seemingly respectable hotel’s walls. The chair sat facing a series of one-way mirrors.
Minerva moved toward the glass. On the other side lay the royal suite’s common area, daylight streaming through its partially opened drapes.
“What is this? A lounge for peeping Toms? Or an observation room for recording and blackmailing people?”
“Oh, no, it’s much more than that!” Lively led her to another door on the far side of the room and pushed it open.
“You seem to know where you’re going. Is there something you’re not telling me?” Minerva didn’t enter the room but hung back a moment so she could ask her question, concern heavy in her voice.
“I’ve had a few minutes to explore since I last saw you, you know. But now that you mention it, it’s strange.”
“How so?”
“Well, I almost feel like I know my way around in the gloom, which is impossible since I’ve never been back here in my life.”
“Maybe it’s because you’re so comfortable around surveillance situations from your time in CSIS?” Minerva suggested.
“Maybe,” Lively said with a shrug. He stepped through the doorway into the new room and added, “But you’ve gotta check this out.”
Thick soundproofing material lined the walls of this new room, giving whoever was back here the privacy they might need to fulfil some of their more secret desires, perhaps. A surgical table with straps lay in the centre of the room. “Okay, this is getting seriously creepy.” She moved to the table and touched one of the straps, then yanked her hand back with an intake of breath, as if the strap were red hot. The emotions of anguish, sorrow and horror rushed through her mind, overwhelming her senses.
“What’s up?” Lively turned from a cabinet he’d been inspecting, concerned.
“This table and the straps.”
“I take it you sensed something?”
“Oh yeah, all sorts of different things, but none of them good.” Apart from the emotions, there was something else she’d sensed, pain, overwhelming and unrelenting pain. She shuddered a little, still seeing disturbing images behind her eyes when she closed them briefly. “Remind me not to touch any more restraining straps around here, okay?” She moved away from the table and returned to the observation room with her mind awhirl.
“There’s more to see, Ms. D, follow me,” Lively said, moving toward the door to the corridor.
Minerva followed Lively down another long, dusty hallway working their way further into the guts of the old hotel. Her bootheels made no noise as she wa
lked since all of the corridors were lined with thick industrial carpeting, presumably to cut down on any chance of the sound of someone walking behind the walls alerting anyone on the other side to their presence. Whoever or whatever walked behind these walls walked silently. “It certainly is well soundproofed back here,” she observed.
“Yes,” Lively replied, “It makes it much easier to stalk people that way.”
“What a charming thought.”
“I calls it as I sees it.”
He led her down a wrought-iron spiral staircase to the second floor. Instead of carpeting, thick latex rubber covered these stairs to mute any sound made by the inhabitants of this netherworld as they climbed up and down. More hidden hallways branched off on both sides leading to more discrete viewing areas behind their respective one-way mirrors. While these were not as large as the ‘lounge’ upstairs, they all shared the same concept. Mixed in with the viewing areas dotted along the way were what she could only think of as ‘emergency exits’ leading into the public corridor. She tried one of them and popped her head out into the brightly lit hallway. “It looks like they could pop in and out of here whenever they wanted.”