Ghost Tour

by Claryn Vaile

  Content without children – except occasionally for a few days around Christmas – Rebecca nevertheless loved the role of aunt. She enjoyed her nieces and nephews, spoiled them, then sent them home to their parents when they got too whiney or tiresome. It seemed to her the perfect arrangement.

  Rebecca and her niece Hannah had a special relationship, just as she had had with Great-Aunt Frankie. Hannah was born on Rebecca’s 30th birthday. Soulmates, they shared mutual admiration and affection. Rebecca had hooked Hannah on Colorado history early with the same Bancroft Booklets that influenced her own affinity for the subject in her youth.

  The little paperbacks, which sold for 25 cents in the 1940s and 50s, were aimed at the Colorado tourist and transplant audience. Author Caroline Bancroft’s stories of the “Unsinkable Molly” Brown and “Silver Queen” Baby Doe Tabor captured both the drama and the melodrama of the state’s boom-and–bust backstory. Before becoming a historian, Bancroft had written for popular “true romance” magazines. By her own admission, she made-up key details, developments, and dialogues to enhance her narratives. But for many, Bancroft’s creative writing brought history to life for the first time. Rebecca aimed to do the same for tour guests of The Keep, albeit with more allegiance to accuracy.

  When Frankie Chase died 25 years ago, she left everything to her beloved great-niece Rebecca: a healthy bank account, a substantial financial portfolio, the Denver Tudor house, and the Cripple Creek newspaper office building which sold for an exorbitant sum to a large casino company when Colorado legalized small stakes gaming just a few months later.

  The windfall had transformed Rebecca’s life and priorities. She didn’t consider herself wealthy, but money was no longer a concern. She had been able to pursue her passions rather than a paycheck ever since. She’d traveled extensively, volunteered on archaeological digs, earned her Masters in history, and landed inevitably at the Griffins Keep.

  The dozen relatives of perennial Parapet Apartment denizen Collier Hendricks had scheduled their private tour months ago to coincide with the one time of year when they all got together. They’d understood when they’d booked the tour that the chance of actually seeing “Uncle Collier’s” old apartment was entirely dependent upon the hotel’s occupancy. With Suite 901 unavailable, they seemed content in a neighboring room.

  As far as Rebecca could determine, Hendricks held the record for longest resident guest of Griffins Keep. From 1937 until his death 41 years later, the eccentric bachelor was a fixture of the hotel, familiar to – if not beloved by – both staff and other Parapet residents.

  “We haven’t very much information on any of the Parapet residents,” Rebecca told the relatives. “But there was a funny little reminiscence from a longtime housekeeper in Hendricks’ file. She recalled that whenever she went to clean his suite or change his linens, he was notorious for tormenting her – pinching and grabbing and such. Apparently housekeepers had to put up with a lot of that in pre-feminism decades. For years after he died in his apartment, this employee reported that she was frequently pestered by a horsefly buzzing around 901, which she believed to be the reincarnation of Hendricks himself.”

  “Wouldn’t surprise me a bit,” muttered the elderly matriarch of the family.

  “Sounds about right,” her husband concurred.

  An adult niece had brought along several scanned photographs and documents recovered from basement boxes which she handed the hotel historian. “Thought you might want to add these to Uncle Collier’s file.”

  In the first photo, two fair-haired children with shoulder-length curls, posed for their studio portrait in ruffled Little Lord Fontleroy suits and looking for all the world like girls, were identified as Collier and his younger brother Lawrence, circa 1895. Other pictures showed a smiling Collier at Harvard Law School, Collier surrounded by his fellow army interpreters in World War I France, and Collier proudly posing with his new Pierce Arrow motorcar in front of Griffins Keep’s grand entrance.

  “He always loved this hotel and couldn’t wait to move in when they opened the apartments.”

  “So he was a lawyer?” Rebecca asked.

  The older gentleman, Lawrence Hendricks’ son, clarified. “He had a law degree. But he liked to boast that he’d worked only one day in his life, and that was for the Kuhrsfeld Investment Company.”

  “Then what did he do? How did he live?”

  The old lady explained. “Trust fund took care of everything. His father made millions in Cripple Creek gold. Collier was the quintessential dilettante. Man About Town, bon vivant. Walked to the University Club almost every day and lunched with friends for hours. A patron of the arts. A connoisseur of fine wine. An impeccable dresser, as you can see in that later picture.”

  An older, still dapper Collier lounged on a park bench in the photo she indicated. Straw boater shading his eyes, pin-striped suit, walking stick topped with a brass hound’s head.

  “Love the two-toned wingtips,” Rebecca said as a vague recognition struggled to surface. Where else had she seen black and white wingtips? Not long ago…

  “After the pictures you’ll find a letter that totally corroborates your housekeeper’s memory of Uncle Collier,” the niece prompted.

  The reproduced correspondence typed on old Griffins Keep stationary was dated June 13, 1948. From Executive Housekeeper Marjory Crispin, it warned Mr. Kendricks that if his harrassment of female housekeepers did not cease immediately, he would be assigned a male housekeeper at a substantially higher monthly rate.

  “Whoa!” one of the younger family members exclaimed. “You tell ‘im, Marjory!”

  “Why did the men housekeepers make more money than the women?” another youngster wondered.

  In Rebecca’s subconscious, synapses suddenly sparked. Connections crackled. The 10th floor ladies room – Marjory’s old bathroom -- the sharp knock – a glimpse of feet and pin-striped trouser cuffs through the slats of the door. Black and white wingtips.

  It couldn’t be. It had to be. Rebecca smiled to herself.

  “Do you think Collier Hendricks might haunt the hotel?” the niece’s husband asked the historian, noticing the sudden change in her expression.

  “Sure. Why not?” Rebecca replied, surprising herself. “What else has he got to do?”

  On Saturday morning, Rebecca discovered Lochlan in the archives with two visitors. He was showing the Brookings blueprints to a willowy woman, about their age. Her long, straight, white-blond hair hung in curtains around her face as she bent over the drawings in serious scrutiny. When she looked up at Rebecca’s entrance, her green eyes shone with excitement. She reached out to take the historian’s hand.

  Lochlan smiled. “Rebecca, I’d like you to meet my old and dear friend, Rosslyn MacKay, astrologer, psychic, and medium extraordinaire.”

  The woman frowned at Lochlan. “I’m not that much older then you, thank you very much,” she sniffed, pretending insult, then smiled warmly. “Rebecca and I have met. She took us on an amazing tour a month or so ago. So wonderful to see you again, Rebecca! Lochlan’s talked about you for years. You remember my daughter, Miranda.”

  “Rosslyn, of course,” Rebecca said. “I never made the connection between you and Lochlan.”

  “That was on purpose,” she confessed. “I wanted to check you out for myself, sort of spy on you to take your measure before you knew anything about me.”

  “Roz is a Scot, too,” Lochlan said. “Clan MacKay has spawned Freemasons for countless generations. We met when we were both working at a bar in Five Points in our 20s,” Lochlan said, “Roz as a waitress and me in the band. Been soulmates ever since. Even if we go a year or more without connecting, when we get back together we just click as if no time has passed at all.”

  “And what do you do these days?” Rebecca asked her.

  “I work in hospice care.”

  “She uses her special gifts to ease people’s transition from this realm of existence to the next,” Lochlan said. “Makes the final d
ays of life less frightening for the dying and their loved ones.”

  “Doesn’t pay beans,” Rosslyn said. “But I hope I’m racking up some points in the karmic ledger, you know?”

  Rebecca nodded. “So what do you make of our Keep blueprints?”

  “Oh, they’re marvelous! I can feel Edward Brookings’s spirit just radiating from every one of them. The Griffins Keep truly was a Master Builder’s masterwork.” She turned back to her inspection of the original ground floor plan. “With this building, Brookings conceived, positioned, designed, aligned and manifested a physical representation of the higher esoteric principles the Freemasons are all about.”

  “I’m sure Lochlan has discussed this with you already, but we wonder if the building has – or had -- a cornerstone, and where it might have been laid,” Rebecca said.

  “Seems to make the most design sense that it would be in the 90-degree-angled corner at Seventeenth and Carson,” Lochlan said. “But I’ve always suspected the corner where the Pirates Pub is today – the northeast corner of the structure, where Freemasons traditionally laid their foundation stones. Nothing evident there today, of course. Could be below street level, hidden by all sorts of later mechanical equipment in the basement. Or maybe the Kuhrsfelds found and removed it when they were doing all their 1930s remodeling.”

  The psychic swept her open palm back and forth across the blueprint, just as Molly had done on her visit, her hand hovering just above its surface, deep in concentration. The puzzled look on her face suddenly brightened with a Eureka.

  “Wow,” she almost whispered. “I’m getting that the whole building is a cornerstone! A cornerstone for the city itself.”

  Positioned as it was at the intersection of the financial and political districts of Denver, the Griffins Keep’s keystone location had anchored the community since its debut. Rosslyn’s revelation rang true.

  “I’d like to get some of those old “birdseye” maps of the city from 1890 and plot the lines radiating from the two sides of the Keep’s right angle corner,” she said excitedly. “I’m pretty sure the resulting diagram will border and encompass every significant building around that time.”

  Something else had been nagging at the historian ever since Margaret brought her father’s Masonic secret items to the hotel. “Another medium told me that the spirits of the Freemasons involved with the construction of the hotel revealed to her that there were bones incorporated into each corner of the building. Does that make any sense to either of you?”

  Lochlan and Rosslyn exchanged knowing glances. The engineer explained. “In ancient times, stone masons were known to put the bones from sacrifices inside the foundation stones of their buildings. The bones were thought to impart structural and spiritual strength.”

  “What kind of bones?”

  “Animal, usually. Cats, lambs, even bulls were among the animals typically sacrificed. Some cathedrals and monasteries were said to have religious relics sealed inside their foundation stones.”

  “You mean, like the bones of saints?”

  “Or a piece of the True Cross, a vial of the Virgin’s tears, a scrap of Christ’s shroud. Anything that would infuse the building with religious significance and power.”

  “By the same token, ancient builders often smeared sacrificial blood on the top of the foundation stone or capstone – like an altar,” Rosslyn added. “I’ve even read that for extremely important structures, the Master Builder would sacrifice his own spouse and sanctify the foundation stone with her blood and bones.”

  “Jesus,” Rebecca swore without thinking. “Sounds like I’d better do some research on the circumstances of Mrs. Edward Brookings’ death.” She was only half joking.

  Lochlan cautioned, “Remember, these were ancient practices. I’ve never heard of builders, even Freemasons, incorporating sacrifices or relics in historically recent times.”

  Miranda, who had hovered in a corner and said nothing until now, trembled. “I feel the bones in this place,” she said quietly. “And blood. At the roots. They feed the building life. They’re vital to its function.”

  “Its function?” Rebecca sought to clarify, remembering Lochlan’s earlier assertion. “What do you mean by that?”

  Rosslyn moved to the corner and put a comforting arm about her daughter’s shoulders. “Many of us sense that the Griffins Keep is much more than a hotel,” she told the historian. “The Keep is a waystation in a vastly larger sense. Lochlan and I have talked about this a lot. I believe this building serves as a portal between realms of reality, between the worlds of the living and the dead.

  “I know it sounds wild, but over the course of many visits and many years, I’ve come to understand The Keep as a sort of processing center for souls on their spiritual journey,” the psychic continued. “The spaces surfaced with onyx are like huge amulets, imparting the healing and centering magic properties of the stone to all inside. Onyx has long been associated with the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. It’s believed to aid psychic contact with the dead, as well as between-lives progression.”

  Glancing up at Rebecca’s face as he carefully slid the blueprints back into their drawer, Lochlan smiled knowingly but said nothing.

  “This building is a sanctuary for contemplation, for acceptance and for furtherance. A gateway to enlightenment,” Rosslyn concluded.

  Lochlan offered his own take. “The artesian water, the central sunlight, the structural geometry – they’re all integral to The Keep’s mystical purpose.”

  “Think of it as a sort of halfway house en route to the next level and, ultimately, to The Light, the source of all things,” the psychic said.

  “You make it sound like a church.”

  “A temple,” Lochlan corrected. “Not unlike the temple built for Solomon by the first Freemasons. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you all along.”

  Acknowledging the skepticism in her eyes, he took Rebecca’s hand and patted it affectionately. “It’s a lot to take in. I understand. It’s OK to doubt.”

  “The Keep’s truth will reveal itself to you when you’re ready,” Rosslyn assured her. “I revisited the building’s star chart last week, and it looks like the developments around the winter solstice are going to be even more profound than it appeared at first.”

  “Is that a good thing, or a bad?”

  The astrologer took a moment to frame her forecast clearly. “A challenging thing,” she declared. “It’s like The Keep is going to undergo a major identity crisis. Many changes will be imposed upon her by outsiders. It’s going to be a very difficult period for the hotel and, I have to assume, for those who love her.”

  She looked from Lochlan to Rebecca and back. “If my predictions are right, you two will need to hold onto each other for balance and strength in the coming months.”

  Chapter 14

  “You’ll be happy to hear we plan to incorporate all sorts of historical elements in the reimagined Griffins Keep experience,” Jason Nguyen assured Rebecca as she sat at the big board room table surrounded by members of the new marketing and sales teams.

  “Like a bouncy castle in the lobby?”

  Jason chuckled amiably. “No, no. That’s a family-friendly addition, nothing really to do with history, obviously.”

  “Obviously.”

  “Let me give you an example of what I mean. We read in one of the hotel histories that the Army’s 10th Mountain Division – guys training to fight in the Italian mountains -- practiced repelling from balcony to balcony in the atrium during WWII.”

  “Actually, it was one drunk soldier on one unauthorized occasion,” Rebecca corrected.

  “Really? Well that doesn’t matter. We want to recreate unique experiences for our guests, set up bungee jumping from the balconies, Hey, we could have rock climbing on the outside of the building, too. It’ll be way cooler than those fake climbing walls people are used to. We can have one side for repelling down the building, another for tech climbing up it. And we can still do th
e atrium balcony thing, right guys?”

  “We could riff on the Depression when dudes who lost all their money in the crash or whatever jumped to their deaths from the seventh floor. Except we’ll spin it in a black comedy direction. Call it the “Stock Market Ups and Downs Bungee Leap” or something like that.”

  “Awesome concept, Brendan!” Jason said enthusiastically. “Madison, tell Rebecca what you’ve been working on.”

  “Well, I’m basing it on The Keep’s historic tradition of High Tea. But this will be an updated take on that, capitalizing on Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana.”

  Rebecca waited for it, nausea rising.

  “So instead of a cigar lounge, we can turn the Kipling into the ‘Pot Party Pad.’ Don’t know about the licensing issues yet. But can’t you picture it? I see ‘60s hippie-style décor. Beanbag chairs, black light posters, wait staff in super-wide bellbottoms and beads. And bongs. But here’s the historical part. To go along with The Keep’s rep for elegance, they’ll be like fine china or porcelain bongs, with a custom Keep griffin logo. And we can sell them as souvenirs, too.”

  “Yeah, it’ll be like really ‘high’ tea. Get it? And the ‘60s are history, right?” Jason said, eagerly soliciting Rebecca’s buy-in.

  Rebecca slowly got to her feet and scanned the faces of the MBA whiz kids around the table.

  “Stop,” she said as calmly as she could. “Just stop. What you’re envisioning has nothing to do with Griffins Keep history or Griffins Keep tradition. Call me when you’re ready to get serious about respecting and celebrating the hotel’s past. But I will not be party to the sort of carnival crap you’re pitching here.”

  As Rebecca hit the double-doors and fled the asylum, she heard Madison stage-whisper, “She’s probably just pissed because she actually remembers the ‘60s.”