The Eleventh Floor

by Shani Struthers

  This Haunted World Book Two: The Eleventh Floor, Copyright Shani Struthers 2017

  This Kindle edition published 2017

  The right of Shani Struthers to be identified as the Author of the work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved in all media. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, photocopying, the Internet or otherwise, without the prior written consent of the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. It may not be given away or re-sold to other people.

  www.shanistruthers.com

  www.storylandpress.com

  www.authorsreach.co.uk

  All characters and events featured in this publication are purely fictitious and any resemblance to any person, organisation/company, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover credits: Adobe Stock. Design by RoseWolf Design

  * * *

  Dedication

  For Rob – It had to be.

  Acknowledgements

  There’s no way writing is a lonely process. Not only do you get to meet a whole host of wonderful characters that you’ve just created, there’s practically an entire army behind you! Thanks so much to my fantastic beta readers for all your help and encouragement; I’d be lost without you all. In no particular order these include Rob Struthers, Louisa Taylor, Lesley Hughes, Sarah Savery, Rumer Haven, Veronica McGivney and Corinna Edwards-Colledge. Thanks also to Jeff Gardiner for his editing skills and Gina Dickerson of Rosewolf Design for the front and back cover and interior formatting. The dream team!

  Foreword

  If you’ve read the first in this series – The Venetian – you’ll know that novels in the This Haunted World series are all standalone stories, set in the world’s most haunted places and blending fact with fiction. The Eleventh Floor is no exception. I may have changed the hotel name and location slightly, but this hotel exists and I had the pleasure of staying there in 2016. When I say pleasure… I can’t reveal too much more without giving certain plot elements away, but again much is drawn from fact with fiction weaved around it. And actually, it really was a pleasure to stay at this hotel; it’s charming, unique, lost in time almost, as special as I’m trying to get across. One day I’ll go back.

  This Haunted World Book Two:

  The Eleventh Floor

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Also by the author

  A note from the author

  Prologue

  The building of THE EGRESS – an extract from a newspaper in 1921:

  A NEW Hotel for Williamsfield!

  No city in the state needs a modern hotel more desperately than Williamsfield. Are we equal to the occasion? Will we have this New Hotel?

  This is a civic enterprise, the biggest project Williamsfield has ever undertaken, it means more business, more social life, more visitors, and more dollars for those who live here!

  The New Hotel is YOUR hotel. It is a part of the community because WE, the community, will build it. All of us, joining together to boost our city, to make it somewhere people will want to visit, putting Williamsfield on the map!

  Grand but accessible, formal but friendly, it is somewhere to celebrate every type of occasion; a social center, a gathering place. From diplomats to downtown workers, all are welcome! Once visited, never forgotten, it promises to be a very special place indeed.

  Chapter One

  From the driver’s seat of her rental car, Caroline leant forward to turn the radio up.

  “We…e…e…ll,” the deejay said, dragging the word out, “it’s going to start getting very dramatic out there very soon. I’m not sure who amongst you remembers the Great Appalachian Snowstorm of 1950, but what’s in store looks set to rival it!”

  Caroline swore. “Shit! A snowstorm. Seriously?”

  It was mid-November, she was in Pennsylvania en route to the town of Williamsfield, and so far the weather had been fair to middling. She’d landed in the US seven days before and had spent time in upstate New York, just below the Canadian border, visiting family members she hadn’t seen since her late teens. Yes, there’d been rain, quite a bit of it, and certainly it was cold, but a snowstorm? That was the first she’d heard of it. How long was it supposed to last? Not long, surely – one or two days, three at the most? What a blow if it was the latter! With only a week left, that would seriously disrupt her schedule.

  Instinctively turning up the heating, she continued to listen.

  “Back then, the National Weather Service recorded 27.4 inches of snow in Pittsburgh – a record that still stands. But the question is, folks, for how long? Many other areas in the state of Pennsylvania at that time saw at least thirty to forty inches. Public transportation was crippled, the mail delivery stopped and industry all but ground to a halt. And you know what? We think we’re more equipped to handle extreme conditions nowadays, but I’m not so sure. I reckon the only thing that’s gonna fly when the white stuff hits is the Internet!”

  The deejay laughed heartily, clearly enjoying the joke he’d made. And well he might, sitting in his safe warm studio, putting the fear of God into those like her, travelling along America’s vast highways; those long, long roads that seemed to carry on forever, so different to the more cramped, often crowded roads she was used to in England.

  “Oh, would you believe it, here it comes, bang on cue,” she muttered as the first flakes of snow hit the windscreen, the wipers smearing them against the glass. She glanced at her Sat Nav, there was another fifty miles to go before she reached Williamsfield; the plan being to make a brief stop at The Egress Hotel on the outskirts of town just to have a look at it, this hotel she’d heard so much about. After that she’d find a stopover that was more central, close to bars and restaurants, and shack up for a night or two or however long she had to. If she put her foot down she might be able to keep the storm at bay, the thought of which made her smile: outrunning the elements, or at least giving it a shot.

  Making the most of the weather as a news item, the deejay introduced listeners to a guest, a woman, her voice old, gnarled almost, as well it might be, considering she was someone who remembered the great storm he’d been talking about.

  “It was beautiful,” she informed them, a wistful sigh escaping her. “Everything was cloaked in white and the silence… I swear you coulda heard a pin drop.”

  The deejay and the old lady – Betty Jean Ramsey – laughed together and even Caroline raised a smile.

  “I was getting married the week it hit. I always did pick my moments! And Paul, my husband-to-be, had some miles to travel to church, miles I didn’t think he had a hope in hell of making as
I stood at the altar and waited… and waited… and waited.”

  Clearly well versed in the dramatic arts, Betty Jean paused for effect putting Caroline on tenterhooks. “Come on, Betty, did he make it or didn’t he?”

  “Betty Jean…?” the deejay prompted.

  Still there was silence, stretching into two seconds, into three… into four…

  “He made it!” Betty Jean declared at last. “But he had to walk a fair amount of the way. And he was cold, so cold he was shivering, poor soul, his teeth chattering so much he could hardly say his vows. But he was determined. He told me later on that night that no damn storm was going to stop him from making an honest woman out of Betty Jean!”

  Again there was much laughter and, as the snow started to fall in earnest, a thin layer quickly covering the once lush countryside but not yet claiming the asphalt in front of her, another similar story of devotion sprang to mind; one that involved her parents.

  They’d been caught in a storm too, in this very state, in the nineteen eighties – 1983 to be exact – when another weather front of note had swept across northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania. A Valentine’s Day blizzard that was also their wedding day. Unlike Betty Jean, it was her British father, Tony, who’d been waiting at the church for his American bride, Dee, to reach his loving arms. And he’d waited and waited too, breaking into a cold sweat at the thought of not making the woman he loved most in the entire world his, to have and to hold on this most romantic of days. Oh, how he’d loved her, how she’d loved him – their feelings towards each other never failing to shine through, at least not in Caroline’s memory. Displaying the same kind of grit that Paul had, Dee had also made it to the church, not on foot – although Caroline was sure she would have walked if she’d had to, wedding finery and all – but driving a Chevy C10 Pick-Up commandeered from a willing neighbour. She’d got to the church, marched up the aisle, and said ‘I do’. Later, unable to travel the two-hour distance to the suite they’d booked in the Pocono Mountains for their honeymoon, they’d gone somewhere closer instead – The Egress, a few miles outside of Williamsfield, and stayed there for the best part of a week.

  “Such a nice hotel,” her mother had said, her expression always dreamy whenever she talked about it. “It was quaint, you know, that English kind of quaint, everything so nice, so proper, so grand. It had class, real class, and the staff were my idea of great too, always there, always on hand, but never intrusive, giving you the space you needed.”

  At this point her father would always interject. “It’s an interesting building granted, but Dee, you’re wearing your rose-tinted glasses again. The hotel was faded, run down, it had potential, but somehow, maybe because of the location it’s in – a forgotten location it seems, nothing much around it – that potential was never quite realised. A shame really, because a lot of effort went into it, I think. As for the staff, they were nice, but you know what? They always looked jaded to me, as tired as the hotel.”

  Her mother had starting laughing; it was such a girlish sound, the tinkle of her laughter. “To be honest, Caroline, we hardly ventured out of our room, our corner suite – room 210, on the second floor. See I remember the number, of course I do, I’ll never forget it. I had everything I wanted right there in those rooms, in that hotel. The world outside simply failed to exist. We did eventually make it to Mount Pocono, although it was some months later, when the weather was on the up, but I’m honestly glad we spent our honeymoon where we did. Faded or not, there’s something so… special about The Egress. I’ve never been anywhere else like it before or since. We should go back, Tony.”

  “Relive old times?” Tony had smiled at her indulgently.

  “Why not?” And then she’d given a shake of her head. “I can’t think why we haven’t.”

  After their marriage, they’d moved back to England, to the Hammersmith area of London to be precise, so that Tony could take over the running of his family’s building firm from his father. They’d made a good life in England, producing Caroline nine months after their marriage and then Ethan two years later – who now lived in Canada with his wife and two children. Work had taken over, and what with the rigours of kids and life in general, that’s why they hadn’t revisited. Or was that strictly true, wondered Caroline? After all, they’d been to America a few times while she was growing up, doing as she was doing now, catching up with friends and family members, but somehow the hotel never made it onto what was always, admittedly, a packed agenda. In truth, Caroline wouldn’t be making a detour to visit it now if her mother hadn’t mentioned it yet again as she lay dying in the hospice the previous year.

  Her eyes becoming as blurred as the windscreen, she wiped roughly at them. It still hurt so much to think about her mother’s final days.

  She’d looked so fragile, lying amongst sheets and pillows that were not as white or as soft as Caroline had wanted them to be – like a child that had been ravaged or starved for an eternity. Dee adored her two children. She’d been an amazing mother, the very best, but losing Tony two years prior had floored her. That’s when the rot had set in, that rot being cancer, a strain of the same disease that had felled her husband.

  As she drove, Caroline was aware of voices on the radio still, and bursts of continued laughter, but her memories effectively drowned them out.

  “Such happy days they were.” Dee’s voice had barely been above a whisper, forcing Caroline to lean closer so that she could hear. “Just me and Tony.”

  Taking her skeletal hand, Caroline had stroked it. “You and Dad were so lucky to have found each other.” That they had, never ceased to amaze Caroline – two people from two different continents meeting in a diner one day, their eyes locking, their souls knowing.

  Dee had nodded, the gesture barely caught.

  “Loved him,” she said.

  “I know, Mum, I know you did.”

  “Loved you and Ethan.”

  The fact that she was speaking in the past tense, as though she were dead already, had caused a tear to fall onto Caroline’s cheek. “Mum.” Her voice was as strained as her mother’s. “Don’t. I know it hurts when you speak.”

  So weak she’d been – the cancer in her breast spreading like a bush fire.

  “I wish I had more time.”

  That was something Caroline wished too, fervently. Ethan was due to arrive later that evening. He was flying in from Calgary and she only hoped he’d make it in time.

  “Such happy days,” her mother repeated.

  They had been; a happy life spent together, all four of them. And now that life was being snatched away. Dee was so young still, as her father had been – both of them in their late fifties, no age at all. Why had he been taken? Why was she being taken too? She was needed here, this once vital and carefree mother. She was needed so damned much.

  “The hotel, the honeymoon.”

  Caught in her own grief, Caroline hadn’t been able to recall the name of the hotel her mother was talking about. She’d barely been able to think at all.

  “Hotel,” Dee’s voice had grown insistent. “Caroline.”

  “Erm… erm…” It was a strange name, beginning with an E. “The Egress. That’s it.”

  Incredibly, a smile graced Dee’s face – the first in a long while. “Bliss,” she muttered.

  “It was just you and Dad against the world,” Caroline replied, forcing a smile too.

  “Against the world.” Dee clearly approved of those words. “Should have gone back.”

  Yes, thought Caroline, you should have.

  “Conceived there.”

  “Was I, Mum?” Caroline acted surprised but in truth she’d always suspected she was a honeymoon baby.

  “Special place.”

  “It sounds it.”

  Dee suddenly gasped.

  “Mum! Are you in pain? Shall I call a nurse?”

  Again Dee’s shake of the head was barely perceptible. “No, don’t,” she implored before having to rest again to catch
the breath that rasped in her throat. “It’s important, Caroline.”

  “What’s important?”

  “To love.”

  “Yes, yes, I know it is.”

  Dee’s grip became firmer and she leant forward slightly. Caroline was stunned that she still had the strength to do either. “It’s important,” she said again.

  “Mum, please, relax, stay calm, it’s best that you stay calm.”

  “Live, Caroline.”

  “I am, I will.”

  “Don’t grieve for me.”

  How could she say that? Of course she’d grieve for her. Her father’s death had wrenched her heart and now her mother’s threatened to shatter it completely.

  “Live. Love.”

  Two words followed by just a few more.

  “Such a special place.”

  And then Dee’s grip relaxed as she lay back against the overly starched sheets once more. She’d closed her eyes to never open them again.

  Ethan had arrived too late but his presence was still welcome. He was a rock to Caroline, but of course he had a family to return to after the funeral and she had her job as a financier in the city – an environment she’d once found exhilarating, but which now seemed soulless. Despite having turned thirty-three and with a wide circle of friends, she felt every bit the orphan she now was. There were plenty of people who loved her still but no one who loved her unconditionally. Would she ever find that kind of love again? Did it exist outside of immediate family? She honestly didn’t know. Certainly, no relationship she’d had to date had served to enlighten her, but in truth she wasn’t really that bothered. She was independent, fiercely so; it was something she prized. Men came and men went. More often than not, they went.

  But connection – she craved it. She was human after all. And that’s why she was back in America, connecting to her parents’ memory via Dee’s relatives that were still living, reminiscing with them about her mother and the day she’d met a tall young man with the shyest of smiles who was on a sabbatical from England to learn about construction in America, principally the Amish way of building, which had fascinated him.