by Claryn Vaile
Rebecca could trace the odd “magnetism” to an episode in her late-30s. The two-month archaeological dig on the Balearic island of Majorca was one of several lifelong dreams made possible by Great-Aunt Frankie’s bequest. During the excavations, Rebecca had apparently unearthed more than she bargained for.
The site had been a Bronze Age village, nestled into the face of a seaside cliff under a protective stone arch. Around 600 B.C.E., the overhang had unexpectedly collapsed, killing and burying most of the inhabitants. For nearly a century after that, the site had been used as a mass grave.
Rebecca and the other “volun-tourists” dug and sifted through human skeletal remains, many preserved in layers of quicklime, for two weeks. Morning after morning, the Mediterranean sun beat down as they dumped sediment onto screen frames and gently agitated them to separate dirt from the bones and burial relics. The skulls were the most disturbing finds, though mercifully most were smashed to pieces.
Rebecca would never forget the day she made her discovery: a myotragus Balearicus horn. The small goat-like creature, once plentiful on the islands but hunted to extinction in ancient times, had a single horn in the center of its forehead. Like a unicorn.
The horn Rebecca uncovered, porous and rough on its surface, was completely intact, about 3 ½ inches long. A small center hole drilled through the end opposite the point indicated that it had been worn on a cord as talisman. She never understood herself why she chose to pocket the artifact before anyone else on the team got a chance to see it.
It’s not stealing. It’s mine.
She’d wrapped it carefully in soft cloth torn from the hem of a T-shirt. By day, she tucked it into her bra between her breasts. By night, she kept it under her pillow. The feral village cats no longer congregated on her bunk bed. The nightmares that had plagued her since they’d started digging up human bones ceased.
For too many nights in a row, Rebecca had dreamt of a fathomless black void, depriving every sense. Nothing visible, no sound, no scents. Nothing to touch, to hold onto or to push against. Drifting. Falling. No bearings. Excruciating emptiness. She feared that awful oblivion more than anything. The horn had made those nightmares go away
Once home, Rebecca had threaded a wire loop through the hole in the horn and suspended it from a thin gold chain. She wore it only rarely, but always on Halloween, when she used to dress as a gypsy. Dangled amongst her many costume jewelry ropes of beads, bells and coins, the horn pendant made her feel strangely powerful.
Her housemate Maureen, a reluctant but talented intuitive herself, confirmed, but could not define, the relic’s magic. Possessing it had changed Rebecca in such a profound way that she needn’t wear it to radiate its spiritual magnetism. Safely stashed away for years now in a jewelry box in the attic, the talisman’s attraction somehow pervaded her being still.
“Extraordinary,” the psychic Rosslyn said now. “I’ve never encountered anything like your supernal drawing power. How do you cope in a place as rife with spirits as this hotel?”
Rebecca shrugged. “Truthfully, I don’t even notice. Whatever spirits may be drawn to me seem disinclined to interact. They don’t really communicate or touch me or anything. Apparently, they just like being near.”
The historian hastened to redirect the conversation. “But you’re not here to hear about me, Let’s begin your tour.”
As they moved from stop to stop around the hotel, Rosslyn contributed her impressions. Her daughter, looking a bit overwhelmed and confused, remained quiet. Her demeanor changed dramatically, however, as they approached the door to Room 864.
“There’s the ghost of a little girl up here,” Miranda said, smiling at the empty hallway to their right. “She’s telling me her name is Hennie. Her happiest times were spent on this floor, and she found her way back”
Miranda paused as if listening, then nodded solemnly. “We’ll be careful,” she said to the air. Turning to her mother, she explained. “Hennie is warning us about some bad spirit nearby. ‘Protect yourselves,’ she says.’
The young woman looked directly at Rebecca then. “The bad spirit doesn’t like you,” she said. “She wants to hurt you. And Hennie says she can.”
Rosslyn was as taken aback by Miranda’s statement as was Rebecca. “Miranda!” she admonished sharply, “We don’t blurt out everything we perceive without considering others’ feelings. What have I told you about filtering? I think you owe Ms. Bridger an apology.”
Miranda instinctively bristled, then hung her head. “Sorry,” she muttered, again retreating inside herself.
Her mother added softly, “She has a gift, but she’s very young and inexperienced. Please find it in your heart to excuse her.”
“Of course,” Rebecca said graciously. “I’d be excited, too, if a spirit actually spoke to me.”
The public elevator whisked them back down to the mezzanine level, where their tour concluded in one of Rebecca’s favorite spaces.
“This beautiful room is the Keep’s Grand Salon,” Rebecca explained, holding the tall, heavy door open for her tour guests. The space was the single largest in the historic hotel, with a 20-foot high ceiling. “In the hotel’s early years, it was a formal sitting room, especially for lady travelers. All this stone is white onyx from the same Mexican quarry as the golden onyx in our lobby. The Grand Salon sits directly above the original Grand Entrance, which is why it has this large bay window in the center. Huge fireplaces once flanked the window, and this ceiling fresco featured vigilant angels on high. In the early 1930s, the fresco was nearly ruined by a plumbing leak. But with the help of a local artist, it was fully restored.”
“It’s awesome,” Miranda said, craning her neck to inspect the work.
“Within the oval, the artist depicted the seven archangels. The smaller four were believed to be the overseers of politics, military matters, commerce and trade – not coincidentally the purview of The Keep’s traditionally successful and powerful patrons. The two larger angels flanking the center figure are known as the Powers, warrior angels who are also the keepers of conscience and of history. My personal favorites, for obvious reasons,” Rebecca confided.
“The impressive winged figure in the center of the fresco is an even higher caste of heavenly being, a Dominion. You can tell them apart from other angels by the orbs of light fastened to the heads of their scepters or on the pommel of their swords.”
“Orbs of light?” the psychic echoed, peering up at the fresco with piqued fascination.
“In this case, the artist chose to depict the orb atop the Dominion’s scepter, since the Powers were already wielding swords.”
“How on earth did he get it to glow like that? Is there a light hidden above the painting?”
“Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Rebecca said. “I’m told he mixed his paint with mother-of-pearl and seven types of metallic leaf to achieve the effect.”
“And the swords of the Powers – are they gilded with real gold?”
“Twenty-four carat. A tissue-thin veneer applied in delicate sheets, just like on the dome of our State Capitol. You can see why this room is so popular for weddings, receptions, and all sorts of special gatherings.”
Rebecca paused, allowing her guests to take it all in. “Curiously, we don’t know of any ghost stories in this space. Do you sense anything, Rosslyn?”
The woman slowly scanned the room before answering. “Absolutely nothing. I think this may be the most spiritually silent space I’ve ever experienced. It’s unnatural… as if it’s been sanitized. All the decades of human experience that transpired here, and not a trace remains. Some sort of potent spiritual cleansing took place here. It drove everything out, both positive and negative energies. This goes way beyond smudging, even beyond exorcism.”
Rosslyn paced around the vast space slowly, pausing briefly here and there, looking up, then down, then up again. At several points, she laid her hands on the onyx, as if trying to absorb the room’s secrets.
“There must h
ave been some terribly powerful, terribly dangerous activity in this room at some point in the past,” she concluded. ”The psychic residue it left was apparently so toxic, so vile, that the space had to be purged completely. I can’t even imagine what could have compelled such drastic cleansing -- or how it might have been accomplished.”
Chapter 9
The lanky frame still moved with a masculine grace. The long, wavy hair, tied back when he worked, was salt-and-peppered now. Graying brows, graying beard and mustache. A furrowed forehead; a long, prominent nose. Dauntingly deep dark eyes that shone with searching wonder, undimmed by age. Rebecca sometimes tried to imagine Lochlan as a younger man. The image matched a vague memory, on the tip of her brain. When it finally clicked, she was almost afraid to ask.
“Did you used to play in a band?”
“I did, many years ago.”
“Skye Span?”
Lochlan nodded and smiled. The Celtic-Rock band had enjoyed a spate of popularity in the 1970s.
“I loved your music,” Rebecca almost gushed. “You played the violin and sang lead vocals.”
“Guilty as charged.”
“I saw you perform at Snowmass one summer. It was magical. Really magical. And then afterwards, we met the band backstage, my husband and I. Went to your condo, and …“
She stopped abruptly. The memory from this point on grew painful. Scarcely daring to look at him, she glanced up and knew that Lochlan knew. He had made the connection long ago, soon after she started at The Keep. He’d never said a word.
“The poker game.”
He nodded. “I won.”
She swallowed hard. “We slept together.”
“That we did.”
“No, I mean, we really just slept,” she insisted earnestly as the memory unfolded completely. “You didn’t…take advantage of me, as they used to say.”
“Some would call me fool. I prefer gentleman.”
“What you must think of me…”
“It was your husband I thought badly of. He ‘traded’ you to our drummer Ian for a bag of cocaine.”
Bryce had left with his coke and a giggling groupie and abandoned Rebecca, with no way home. It had not been the first time, nor would it be the last. Each desertion cut a little deeper. And she’d swabbed her wounds with alcohol.
“Ian would not have let you sleep,” Lochlan said. “You were so messed up, had way too much to drink. It wasn’t right. So I bet against him, with you as the ‘pot.’ Beat him with a straight flush, I’ll never forget.”
“You didn’t think I was pathetic or… immoral?”
He shook his head. “I thought you were hurting and vulnerable. I didn’t judge. Your only transgression was valuing yourself too cheaply.”
Rebecca’s eyes blurred with tears. “Thank you,” she said softly, “for banishing at least one of my many ghosts.”
Rebecca shouldn’t have picked up the call. Should have let it go to voicemail. It was only 10 minutes until she was scheduled to present a luncheon hotel history program. But she was expecting a call from a lady interested in scheduling a private tour for her Red Hat Ladies group.
“This is Rebecca. Can I help you?”
“Hello? Who…?”
“This is Rebecca, the hotel historian. Is this Betty?”
“Betty? No. This is Deanna. Who are you?”
“I’m the hotel historian. Can I help you?”
“I don’t know if you can help me. I just told the operator I needed to talk to someone about some weird things that happened to us in our room at the hotel last week.”
“Some weird things?” Rebecca repeated. “Like unexplained things? I do our hotel ghost tours, and I’m always interested to hear new stories.” If you can cover it in five minutes…
“Well, OK. It’s been a week now and I can’t stop thinking about what happened. It really bothers me, and I have to tell somebody there.”
“All right,” the historian prompted. “What happened?”
“It was last Tuesday night. We were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary and we were in Room 864. It’s a beautiful suite, really big and open.”
“I know the room.”
“Well, that night we were just sitting on the sofa having champagne and chocolate-dipped strawberries. But then we began to hear sounds coming from the other side of those double doors opposite the sofa. Voices and laughing – lots of people – and music, like a party.
“We didn’t know what was through those doors, so I stepped outside our room and a few feet down the hall to see what was next door. I saw the ‘Kuhrsfeld Board Room’ sign, and I peeked around the corner. The doors were partly open, and I could see the conference table and some of the high-backed chairs around it. But it was completely dark. There was no one inside.”
“Yes, the board room adjoins the suite you were in. Often, if companies are using the room for several days of meetings, their president or CEO stays in 864. What time was this in the evening?”
“Oh, it wasn’t evening anymore. It was 10:30 or 11:00 at night.”
Nothing would have been scheduled in the board room at that late hour.
“We were getting really weird feelings by then. My husband swore he heard scratching inside the wall. We watched some TV in the bedroom to try and shake it. Then we finally went to bed around 12:30.
“You know that big ottoman in the bedroom? Up against the wall? We both left our cell phones in their chargers in the middle of the ottoman when we went to bed.
“At 4:07 in the morning – I know because I looked at the digital clock on the nightstand -- a loud sound woke us both so suddenly that we sat straight up in bed and grabbed each other. Seconds later, another loud noise, like a firecracker, came from the direction of the ottoman, and my cellphone flew out of its charger and across the room at the foot of the bed. The charger pulled right out of the wall. We were both so scared, we could hardly move or talk. We just sat there holding each other, with hearts pounding, holding our breath.”
“I can imagine.”
“Of course, we couldn’t go back to sleep. We were so upset. After about 10 minutes, when nothing else happened, we got up. I never packed so fast in my life. I was too afraid to go pick up my phone, but my husband said when he touched it, he felt a chill run up his spine.
“We checked out of the hotel at 4:30 without a word about the occurrences. But like I said, it’s been bothering me more and more ever since then.”
“I can completely understand why all this would upset you,” Rebecca said, amazed as always by the power of imagination. “And I’d like to talk with you more about your experience, all the details. But I’m very sorry I can’t do it right now. I’m late for a presentation. Can I get your contact information and I’ll call you…”
“Have you heard about anything else like this in the hotel? Or am I crazy? I’m not crazy. My husband heard and saw everything I did.”
“I haven’t heard anything quite like your story before. But can I call you back tomorrow and talk some more? I’m really sorry, I have to go.”
“All right. I’m not usually like this. Please understand.”
“I understand. Can I get your phone number, please, Deanna?” The distraught caller finally gave her number, but continued to fret for another few minutes before Rebecca seized upon a break to end their exchange without seeming rude.
Intrigued though she was, Rebecca did not call Deanna back the next day. Nor the next. The luncheon speech, combined with the sudden onset of a wicked cold, completely robbed the historian of her voice. Rebecca conducted the following day’s three tours in hoarse, raspy whispers – all the creepier for the tour guests, she hoped. When she finally regained her power of speech and contacted Deanna, the woman answered calmly and cordially. But her angst quickly resurfaced. If anything, she seemed even more overwrought than three days earlier.
“I’ve always believed in spirits. But my husband…well, he’s very skeptical and logical. The fact that he can�
�t explain what happened to us makes him angry because I know he was freaked out, too.”
“Of course he was.”
“I want to know what happened in that room. The bellman told us all those top rooms used to be apartments in the Depression. I want to know who lived there. And what was in that space before then?”
“I’ll do what I can to find answers,” Rebecca assured the haunted recent guest. “We have original blueprints of the 8th floor. And partial lists of residents of the Parapet Apartments. And I promise I’ll get back to you next week with whatever I may find out. Is there an email address where I might send the information?”
On the other end of the line, the woman drew a deep breath. “Thank you,” she said. “I’ll look forward to hearing from you.”
Rebecca’s work was laid out for her. She cleared a large space atop the archives island worktable and carefully withdrew the unwieldy original blueprint of the 8th floor. She had examined the floor plan many times before, but never with the scrutiny she now brought to the task. She took note of the relative positions of the stairs, the elevator, and the hallway angles as they related to the current Room 864. Excitedly, she hurried down to the 8th floor to confirm her calculations. It was just as she’d thought.
The wall between Room 864 and the boardroom exactly corresponded to the original division between the serving area of the kitchen and the far end of the ballroom itself.
Had Deanna and her husband somehow eavesdropped on a long-ago soiree?
The former resident piece of the Room 864 puzzle was trickier. Documents in the archives Parapet Apartment files included a few random reminiscences of permanent residents of the top two floors, supplied by relatives and former employees. The only other resource providing clues to the residents’ identities was a series of typed “Christmas Poinsettias” lists from the 1940s and 50s, noting all those slated to receive plants from the hotel management for the holidays, along with their apartment numbers.