Ghost Tour

by Claryn Vaile

  “So this may be the only piece of its kind produced?”

  “Seems likely.”

  “Wow. You’re right. I’m drooling.”

  “You can have it for a couple days to study more carefully. I trust you. Plus I know where you work,” Pete teased.

  “Thank you, Pete. I’ll guard it with my life.”

  He grinned at her extreme assurance before turning serious. “You know, a few minutes before you came down, I was standing here in the lobby, just holding it and thinking. How long has it been since this spoon has been in this place? Probably more than a hundred years. How much the Griffins Keep has changed since this piece was crafted! It’s such a tangible link to the hotel’s past, you know? I could almost feel the power of the reconnection. Crazy, huh?”

  “Hannah came by for a nice visit yesterday,” Rebecca’s mother said about five minutes into their weekly phone call. “I know a grandmother isn’t supposed to have favorites, but she’s such a delight, practically bursting with idealism and romantic notions. She reminds much more of you than of Ruthie at her age,” she declared. “Your sister was always so down-to-earth. Hannah is as free-spirited and light-hearted as you used to be.”

  Used to be. Rebecca prayed silently that her niece would be spared having that spirit and heart snuffed by life’s disillusionments.

  “And how are things at work, sweetie?” her mother never failed to ask.

  Rebecca sighed. “More of the same. Don’t get me started. One of my favorite people – who happens to be one of The Keep’s best managers – is leaving. And he’s just one in a long line.”

  Since TITHE’s takeover, The Keep had lost its executive chef, its executive housekeeper, the banquets manager, all of the Pirates’ Pub senior staff, several engineers, countless housekeepers and kitchen staff.

  “He was too conscientious, took too much pride in the hotel’s reputation to watch her go downhill. Nearly every day I hear from one of my fellow associates about some guest or other complaining about the TITHE changes, declaring they’ll never come back to the hotel they’ve patronized and loved, sometimes for decades. It’s grim.”

  “Oh, I hate to hear that,” her mother said. “It’s such a shame. What if you and the other employees who are concerned about what you see happening write it all down, everybody sign it, and present it to the general manager? Wouldn’t that be worth a try?”

  “Branson doesn’t care about employee opinions. Input has never been solicited and, when offered, is invariably ignored or shut down. What do the worker bees know? We’re not business people. We’re just the ones in direct contact with our guests every day.”

  “Now, Becky, be careful. Bitterness is not only unattractive but also ineffective. I’m surprised to hear you sound as if you’ve given up. It’s not like you.”

  “I know, Mom. I know. And I haven’t given up completely. But lately I have to wonder why I’m sticking around The Keep. With the historian position eliminated, I’m just an unusually knowledgeable sales receptionist.”

  “So why are you sticking around? You’re obviously frustrated there.”

  “Not sure,” Rebecca realized as she said it. “Partly to see what happens next, I guess. But more than that, I feel like there’s something important left for me to do at the GriffinsKeep. Something only I can do. I don’t know what it is – yet. I only know it’s not time for me to leave. I have to figure it out.”

  Everyone at the Keep is here for a reason, Lochlan had said when she was new on the job, especially you. She’d failed as guardian of the hotel’s historical treasures. Except for the few things they’d managed to stash in the secret sub-basement room, the artifacts were gone. Surely there was another role for her in The Keep’s story.

  “Well, I don’t care what you say about the place going downhill. It will always be special to me. With our wedding anniversary stay just before your father passed and my 80th birthday brunch, the hotel will hold a place in my heart forever. And I know a lot of others who say the same whenever I proudly mention that my daughter works at the Griffins Keep. No matter what those TITHE people do to its surface, they can never wipe away the deep layers of happy memories The Keep holds for so many people.”

  It sparked.

  Rebecca had thought Maureen’s idea crazy, but there was no mistaking the intriguing result of their experiment.

  “It should have struck me as soon as Pete said he got this little spoon from a seller in San Diego. That’s where Harrison Griffin passed away in 1904. Pete’s research indicated that the spoon may be one of a kind, created for the hotel’s opening. What if it were made specifically for founder Harrison Griffin himself? And what if Griffin sold it later when he fell on hard times? Poor guy was almost destitute in his final years, having built and lost at least three fortunes over his lifetime.”

  Mo held the silver object and closed her eyes. “That would explain the vibes I’m getting from it,” she said. “Really powerful. If this were his spoon, it would have been a prized possession.”

  “A possession into which he would have invested something of himself,” Rebecca ventured, half-joking. “What if it still holds a residual trace of his spirit?”

  “One way to find out,” Mo declared, popping up from the kitchen table where they’d both been examining the small artifact. “You keep that prehistoric horn thingy in your jewelry box now, right?” she called as she headed up the stairs to Rebecca’s room. She was back to the table in no time, with Rebecca’s myotrageaous Balearicus talisman in hand.

  “I think you’ve come to realize as well as I do that this mysterious little trinket of yours somehow repels negative spirits and attracts positive ones. Let’s see if it interacts with Mr. Teaspoon here.” Mo laid the horn beside the silver spoon and watched expectantly, as if awaiting the two to strike up a conversation. Nothing happened.

  “Maybe they need time to get acquainted,” Rebecca suggested with a bemused smile, “or a little privacy.”

  “Very funny. What if they actually touch….”

  And that’s when it happened. The silver spoon sparked. Startled, the two women instinctively drew back. Willoughby erupted in his home-invader bark.

  “What the ….! Did you see that spark come off the handle?”

  Mo flashed Rebecca a told-you-so look. “Hush, Willoughby,” she said.

  “But horn is organic and porous. It doesn’t create – let alone conduct -- electricity. There’s that little twist of wire I ran through the hole to suspend it from a chain, but that couldn’t have caused it. Do it again.”

  Her roommate held the talisman and gingerly touched the tip of the horn to the hotel representation in the bowl of the spoon. The silver piece began to vibrate, like a tuning fork.

  “How are you doing that?” Rebecca demanded.

  “I’m not. I swear!”

  A mild electrical shock shot through Mo’s hand and up her arm. The top of the spoon handle sparked again. Unmistakable. Inexplicable. Thrill bumps ran up across the back of Rebecca’s neck. “What on earth is going on here?!”

  Mo laid the horn gently on the table. She laced her fingers together and pressed conjoined fists to her lips as she leaned on her elbows and studied the two potent artifacts before her. At length, she looked up and said, “I have to conclude that what we’ve just witnessed has much more to do with the metaphysical realm than the physical.”

  “Ya think?” Rebecca tried and failed to make light of it.

  “This is weird, Beck. I’m not sure what to make of it. But I think we can safely say there’s some bizarre sympathetic energy generated by both of these objects. It’s good energy, I’m pretty sure. But the combination produces a really intense dynamic.”

  “Maybe Pete will let me keep the spoon so we can touch the two together to start a fire on our next camping trip.”

  “Yeah, don’t think so. How about instead you give it back to him ASAP, and keep it as far away from the horn as possible until it’s out of this house. We have no i
dea what we’re messing with here. But it’s sure as hell paranormal.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me on that point.”

  “Oh, and by the way,” Mo called after her as Rebecca started upstairs to return the horn to her jewelry box, “The teaspoon wasn’t made for Harrison Griffith, as you thought. He had it commissioned as a gift for his wife Jenny upon the opening of the hotel.”

  “How could you know that?”

  Mo walked over to the foot of the staircase to look her roommate in the eye. “Jenny Griffin’s spirit told me. She wanted to be sure we got the story straight.”

  Chapter 25

  Teen Plunges to Death in Griffins Keep Atrium

  Denver - A local teen celebrating his seventeenth birthday at the Griffins Keep hotel fell to his death at 5:23 PM yesterday when a bungee cord anchored on the seventh-floor balcony somehow detached and sent him plunging to the lobby floor. Conner Royal died instantly of a broken neck as horrified Happy Hour revelers looked on. Miraculously, no one in the hotel atrium was injured.

  "’It was horrible,’ said a tearful Caitlin Royal, twin sister of the victim, who was in line to leap next. ‘like the part holding that end of the cord to the balcony post just dissolved all of a sudden. I was taking a picture with my phone, and something weird flashed through it. It was so quick, it was over before we got what had happened.’

  “The TITHE corporation, which acquired the Griffins Keep eight months ago, recently began offering atrium bungee jumping as part of their efforts to make the hotel more entertainment focused. The teens chose to hold their joint birthday party there because they thought leaping from the seventh floor and bouncing back up again would be fun.

  "’No expense will be spared in our efforts to determine the cause of this tragic accident,’ said TITHE spokesperson LaTishia Jordan. ‘The bungee jumping attraction was closed immediately and will not reopen until the investigation is concluded and we are satisfied that the activity can be resumed with complete safety assurances. Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to the young man’s family.’”

  Rebecca's boss stepped up to the PR challenge like the seasoned pro she was. Privately, Ms. Jordan was badly stricken by the incident.

  "We've got to pull any mention of bungee jumping from the website, all social and print media – stat,” she told the hotel's PR team in their emergency damage control meeting at 6:30 the next morning. “The so-called experts who rigged up that damned thing certified the cords as safe and secure. The official line from the top is that this tragedy was a freak accident that no amount of precaution on TITHE's part could have averted. Let’s erase this nightmare fast and furiously, people.”

  A moment later, her tone transformed from authoritative to vulnerable. “I have a 17-year-old son myself,” she said softly. ”That poor Royal kid probably didn't even weigh 135 pounds." LaTishia's voice broke. She paused to pull herself together before concluding with steely resolve, “If they even consider reinstating that deathtrap, I swear to god I'll walk.

  “Now get busy, all of you. We’ve got a reputation to salvage.”

  Chad Tagawa himself appeared on property the next day. The amusement resort industry giant could ill-afford a public stain on his safety record. Chad was pissed. As he watched morbidly curious visitors in the atrium gaze upward and point to the section of the seventh-floor balcony cordoned off by crime-scene tape, he made his executive decision.

  “This frickin’ atrium is no good to us,” he decreed. “It’s not only a liability, it’s wasted space. It’s gone. I want it closed off at the third floor and a 25-story – no, 17-story -- tower erected right in the center of the building. We’ll call it the Conner Royal Tower in memory of the dead kid. One floor for every year of his young life -- so tragically cut short," he added with mock drama. "The Royal Tower in the Griffins Keep. How perfect is that? A goddam gift,"

  "Dude, it's like brilliant," gushed the sycophantic Mickey Branson.

  "Hell, yeah," Chad said, actually breaking into a grin. "PR gold, bro! Might even keep his family from suing us. Imagine the revenue from all those new rooms."

  Tagawa high-fived his managing director. "You can buy me a brewski in the Pub to celebrate."

  The Denver Landmark Preservation Commission presented an obstacle Tagawa and Branson had not anticipated. Any change to the exterior of a historically designated structure required the DLPC's sign off. TITHE attorneys argued that the proposed tower was an interior addition and thus beyond the commission's purview. The battle was on.

  Longtime Keep associates and patrons were appalled by Chad Tagawa's atrium infill idea. It went without saying that the stained glass skylight, too, was slated for obliteration. The developer's sword dangled over The Keep's heart. The hotel's magic and majesty hung in the balance. Only the laughing children in the lobby bouncy castle seemed oblivious to the gathering clouds.

  "What do you make of all the recent disturbing developments?" Rebecca asked Lochlan one afternoon as they waited for the service elevator.

  "Seems Rosslyn was right about drastic changes unfolding this year when she charted The Keep’s horoscope," he said. "With this new proposal of Tagawa’s, for the first time, I actually fear for The Keep's continuation."

  "What do you mean? Do you think it will go out of business?"

  Lochlan shook his head sadly. "I think it may lose its soul -- and its souls. This building was designed by a Master Mason to be spiritually significant, with incorporated elemental and geometrical powers we can only guess at. There's no way of telling how major structural alterations will impact or pervert those mystical elements."

  Has the transformation already begun? Rebecca wondered, Was the bungee death evidence of an ominous shift in The Keep’s nature, somehow tied to the changes TITHE had undertaken and the occultist practices the Tagawas might be engaging in? What would closing off the atrium mean to the building’s role as a waystation for transmigrating spirits?

  Griffins Keep GM Mickey Branson did not hold “All Hands” meetings, as had his predecessor Mr. Beaumont, to inform staff of developments that affected hotel operations. That sort of forum invited questions and opinions, neither of which Branson cared to deal with. Instead, he sent down what Rebecca characterized as decrees, email blasts announcing executive decisions handed down by himself or TITHE. The latest proclamation was an unprecedented two-in-one:

  “Due to the recent tragic accident in the hotel’s lobby, the atrium space is slated to be permanently closed off at the third-story level. Additional guest rooms and meeting spaces will be added in the proposed 17-story tower addition as soon as the TITHE legal team can conclude ongoing negotiations with the Denver Landmark Commission.

  In the meantime, we plan to wean the Griffins Keep from its artesian well and connect to Denver Water as our sole source henceforth. This process will entail at least one temporary complete shut-off of the system, a minor inconvenience to hotel operations of which you will be apprised in advance.

  We appreciate your cooperation as we implement these changes over the course of the coming weeks.”

  “Our cooperation’ -- like we have a choice,” longtime houseman Marty muttered when he read the printed version posted above the timeclock. “Just when I think they can’t screw up this place any more than they already have, they prove me wrong."

  Lochlan clocked out for lunch right behind the houseman. “I’m afraid these latest proposed changes may do much more than just screw up The Keep. They have the potential to kill it altogether.”

  “Whadja mean about killing The Keep?” Marty asked when they’d filled their trays and found seats in a corner of the employee dining room. “You make it sound like a living thing.”

  Lochlan stabbed a garbanzo rolling off his plate. “Not so much living as functioning,” he clarified. “This building was constructed with a purpose more important than sheltering wealthy visitors. Alter its key structural elements, and you jeopardize that higher function.”

  “A function for spir
its, right?” Marty had chatted with the engineer often enough to know that his focus extended beyond the physical maintenance of The Keep.

  “Aye, for spirits,” Lochlan confirmed. “They need this place to help them on their way to the next plane of existence – into The Light, some might say.”

  “And without the open atrium and the well, their way will be closed?”

  “Without its special sunlight and subterranean water source, I fear that it will.”

  “And…what will the spirits do if they can’t move on?”

  Lochlan said nothing, but noting the veteran employee’s grave expression, Marty concluded, “So this is WAY worse than bad redecoration.”

  “Way. These changes are so serious that it wouldn’t surprise me if the spirits themselves find a way to stop them.”

  Monty considered the possibility. “But ghosts can’t affect the real world, can they?”

  “Which real?” Lochlan countered. “You make a good point, though. Spirits can produce minor phenomena, like electrical anomalies, cold spots, sensations of contact, sometimes even kinetic movement. But to effect major developments, undertake significant action, they need a physical host.”

  “Like you?” Marty ventured.

  Lochlan gulped his iced tea and shook his head. “Not me. No. But someone we both know. Selected long ago, snatched untimely from her own continuum to serve the spirits of the Griffins Keep when the need arose in the future. Someone whose destiny is about to be realized.”

  Rosslyn had not yet seen the new décor in The Keep’s lower-floor guestrooms. Rebecca invited her and her daughter Miranda for lunch in the Pirates Pub in order to get their take on all the changes the hotel was undergoing.

  “Would you mind terribly if we visited Room 864 before we see the redecorated rooms?” Rosslyn asked. “I know it has weird vibes for you, but I’m keen to know what’s going on with the nasty spirit in there. Wonder if we can get her to move on.”