3.0 - Shadows In The Garden Hotel

by Krista Walsh

  He shook his head and stepped away from Allegra as one of the guests walked by. The man had a gym bag slung over his shoulder and walked with the gait of someone looking to be admired for his efforts in getting into shape. Allegra barely spared him a glance, too irritated at the interruption to assess him for future meal potential.

  When the door to the gym closed behind him, Cody turned back to her. “If you’re serious about wanting to know the full story, you should talk to Lee Horton, the hotel cook. He’s been here fifteen years or something, which to me seems like a lifetime.” His smile returned and he leaned in close to her. “But if you’re looking for ghost stories as a way to add some spice to your life, I guarantee that spending time with me would be a much more heart-stopping experience.”

  Allegra raised an eyebrow at him, and he raised his hands in surrender. “All right, fine. Lee it is.” She frowned. “You say he’s the cook?”

  “One of the best in the city, according to his reviews. He pretty much lives in the kitchen, so that’s usually the best place to find him.”

  Her frown deepened into a grimace at the thought of entering the realm of grease and heavy smells that would cling to her hair and skin. She hated being where the laborers were — they were a pathetic reminder of where she could end up if she stopped playing the game for a single moment.

  “Very well. What else can you tell me about this Lee?”

  If she were going to pry information out of the cook, she would rather know something more about him going in than his name and career choice.

  Cody tapped the side of his fist on the wall and shrugged. “He works here and he cooks. That’s all I know, really. I guess he’s kind of private. Doesn’t share much about himself. You can ask him more yourself, if you want.”

  So helpful, she thought, but bit back on saying it aloud.

  “Very well,” she said. “Take me to him.”

  Cody raised his fingers to the imaginary brim of his cap and turned on his heel. Allegra rolled her eyes, then followed him to the kitchen.

  5

  Cody pushed open the swinging door at the bottom of the stairs, and Allegra covered her nose with her hand to block the smell.

  She took a cautious breath and grimaced at the thickness of salt in the air. Grease was spitting off a pan on a stove to her right. She kept to the left side of the room near the counters and dry ingredients, hoping she would be able to leave this hell quickly with as little damage to her person as possible.

  She also hoped that Lee could tell her what she needed to know without asking too many questions about why she wanted to know it. With her reputation to uphold, it wouldn’t do to begin rumors that she was some sort of ghost hunter or paranormal junkie. She had no desire to open her darker self to ridicule. The result wouldn’t be good for anyone involved.

  Around her, the kitchen staff milled about the ovens and stovetops, winding down from the lunch hour. She scanned each face, guessing which one of them might be Lee.

  “Cody, my man, what trouble are you getting into today? You know guests aren’t allowed down here.”

  Allegra looked toward the far end of the room as the person who had spoken stepped out of a narrow nook, fog billowing around him from a room to his right, which she guessed was a walk-in freezer. She took a step back on recognizing the same man who had called her attention away from the shadow by the stairs that morning.

  Based on what Cody had told her of Lee being familiar with the stories, she supposed she shouldn’t be surprised.

  Her displeasure over the kitchen smells faded as her skin flushed with certainty that Cody was right. If anyone could tell her what she wanted to know, it would be this man. Unfortunate that she had to seek him out among the heat and fat.

  “The lady wants to know about the hotel curse,” Cody said, wriggling his fingers in front of him as though he were a child casting a spell. He laughed. “I guess even the pretty ones get a kick out of stupid superstitions.”

  Lee shot him a dirty glance, which only made Cody laugh harder. He plucked his cap off his head and set it down on the stainless steel countertop, then he ran his fingers through his thick brown locks, leaving them askew across his forehead. Under the lights of the kitchen, Allegra shifted her opinion of his age from his late teens to his early twenties, perhaps as old as twenty-four.

  She turned her attention to Lee. His thick beard was tucked into a hairnet, something he didn’t bother with for the top of his bald head, his blue baseball cap apparently serving as an appropriate replacement. His apron was stained with grease and brown sauce, and the rest of his white uniform showed similar evidence of his morning’s activities. Allegra shuddered at the mess.

  “People have all kinds of reasons for wanting to know about the curse,” he said in a chiding tone. “Sometimes it’s curiosity, sure, but other times it’s because they want to understand something they’ve seen for themselves.”

  He caught Allegra’s gaze, and she knew he understood. Hopefully, his guess about her motivation for seeking answers would mean he wouldn’t ask for a deeper explanation.

  She wondered how well he would accept the truth.

  Well, Lee, I’m a succubus with preternatural strength and a nasty temper. I would hate to destroy this lovely hotel in my efforts to remain alive, so please tell me what’s trying to kill me.

  “So what kind of story are you interested in today?” he asked her, interrupting her musing over his possible reactions. “The whole ins and outs or just the basics?”

  Allegra glanced at the clock. She only had another hour before she was due for the next shoot. “The basics should suffice for the time being.”

  Lee jerked his chin toward a room on the right side of the nook, across from the walk-in freezer. “Right. Come with me.”

  Allegra followed him toward what appeared to be an office. As she passed through the doorway, she struck her elbow on a small cupboard that sat on the wall outside the room, a padlock hanging down from the latch. Rubbing her elbow to ease the sting, she stepped inside and appraised the narrow, cluttered desk, two wooden, unpadded chairs, and a small bar fridge in the corner. A single narrow window near the ceiling offered a stunning view of an earth-touched snowbank piled against the side of the hotel. Traffic buzzed beyond from the main street.

  She turned to close the door, but Cody had followed her inside and did the honors for her, then he gestured for her to take one of the two chairs. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door, his smirk already in place for whatever tale Lee was about to weave.

  “I would not have thought you’d care to stay,” she said.

  Cody grinned. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard Lee’s version of the story, and he tells it better than anyone.”

  Lee snorted. “Don’t tell half-truths, my boy. You’re curious about how the lady takes the news. That curiosity will get you into trouble one of these days.”

  Allegra settled into the chair, her nose wrinkling with distaste as the unfinished wood poked into the backs of her thighs. She crossed one leg over the other and rested her hands on her knee. Briefly, she worried she’d wandered into a prank fabricated by these two bantering men, but when she looked to Lee, his earnest expression assured her that he, at least, believed. His gray eyes were steady, offering honesty and warning, and she realized he intended to put her on guard. He wanted her to know the truth so she could protect herself.

  Her mouth dried in anticipation, and she smoothed her skirt against her thighs to keep her hands steady.

  Lee sank into his chair across from her, the wood creaking under his weight. He rested a beefy arm on his desk and gestured to Cody over Allegra’s shoulder. “Whatever buddy boy here told you, the Garden Hotel has never been home to ghosts. A place like this wouldn’t host anything so ordinary.”

  He snorted a laugh, and Allegra forced a tight smile. She had come down here for answers, not to feign amusement.

  “I don’t know what these creatures are called, but if
I were to put together everything I’ve heard from others, they look like decomposed corpses. Gray skin flaking off, tendons clinging to bones by a Hail Mary pass. The only thing not dead about them are the eyes, as dark as onyx. Those eyes are eerie as sin and they should be, because they’re what you should fear most about them.”

  Allegra dug through her memories to match the description with anything she knew, and her stomach tightened when she came up with a blank. Her knowledge of the otherworld, while not as vast as those who actively studied it, was extensive. She felt it was important to understand the sort of beasts who might pose a challenge to her way of life. If this creature was something she didn’t know about, then it meant it was rare, and rare might mean something she wouldn’t know how to defend herself against.

  Her desire to pack her bags and head home reared its head again, but she brushed the temptation aside. Even if she commuted from home, she would need to protect herself while she was here. The only way to do that was to concentrate on Lee’s story and learn.

  “Where did they first come from?” she asked.

  Lee shrugged. “Where do any of these critters come from? I can’t say I believed the stories at first either — all old buildings have their bogeymen — but too many people have spotted them and told me about them for me to ignore the pattern.”

  Allegra huffed and smoothed out the creases of her dress. “I did not mean to ask their origin story. If you don’t know what they are, I could hardly ask what part of hell you believe they hail from. My question was about where and when they first appeared at the hotel.”

  An image flashed in her mind of her grabbing this man by the neck and slamming his head against the wall until he told her what she needed to know, but she took a deep breath and allowed her anger to fade. Her darker half was impatient, but she was still in control.

  Lee didn’t appear to notice her shortness. He pressed his lips together and rolled his gaze toward the ceiling. A moment later, he tapped his thumb against the desk and said, “My best guess is that people started seeing them twelve years ago or so. At least, that’s when the stories started. I’d taken the job as cook here a few months earlier. Even then there was some talk of ghosts, but at the time it was clear the staff were making it up to give the guests a bit of a thrill. You know how it is. Give tours of the historical site and mention the mysterious death of one of the architects or something like that. Broken ashtrays and red eyes staring at you from the shadows.”

  He wiggled his fingers at her as though to startle her. She stared at him blankly, and he chuckled, settling back in his chair.

  “I’ve had a lot of time over the years to think about what might have brought these things here, but I still can’t narrow it down. As far as I can tell, they just popped up one day.” He shook his head. “This place was different back then. The owner was an ongoing storm named Penny Orlay. She was this short little thing.” He raised his hand to the level of his chest. “Wore her gray hair tied back so tight her face looked like plastic, and had a temper that could blow a house down. The guests loved her, and the staff held her in awe. Most of us hated her, if I’m being honest, but I saw she was doing her best to make this place run as smoothly as she could. And she did for a good twenty years.”

  He twisted his head to stare out the window at the snow. Allegra followed his gaze and watched as the peak of the bank slowly crumbled into itself. A trickle of water was washing down toward the window. In the growing circle of bright daylight that was revealed beyond the small mountain, Allegra spotted a blue, cloudless sky.

  A perfect autumn day, and she was spending it buried in a cramped room in the basement behind the hotel kitchen. The stink of grease wafted up from her dress, and she wondered how she would explain her condition to Courtney. A moment’s regret rose inside her that she’d changed for the afternoon shoot before speaking with Cody, and she had to remind herself that the sacrifice would be worth it. If the man ever got to the point.

  “Anyway,” Lee continued, “one day Penny just up and left. Packed a bag and walked out in the middle of the night while everyone was asleep. No one knows why or what became of her. Within a week, the ghost stories changed. Now they were darker, and the staff got scared when they had to work nights or pass through empty parts of the hotel alone. They said they sensed someone watching them.”

  Allegra’s blood ran hot and her spine tightened as her demon prowled through her thoughts. She forced her fingers to droop over her knee to keep herself from fidgeting and eased back in her chair.

  “We had a mass staff exodus over the first three months, and the turnover rate for our cleaning crew and concierges has been high ever since,” Lee went on. “Not to mention the guests have stopped coming in droves the way they used to.”

  Behind her, Cody snorted, and Allegra started, having forgotten he was there. “That’s got nothing to do with any stupid curse, old man. Turnover’s high because the pay is crap and the boss is a tyrant. No one in their right minds would want to stick around in a job like this.”

  Lee tilted the brim of his cap to stare at him over Allegra’s shoulder. “You’ve been here for what? Six months now? I think that gives you seniority by a wide gap. How great is your mental health, then, if you’ve stayed here as long as you have?”

  Allegra turned in time to see Cody smile. “Desperation keeps me here, you know that.” He looked to Allegra. “Only two more months, and then I’m out of here to go back to school.” He laughed and returned his attention Lee. “Why else would I stay? You think it’s because I like your cue ball of a head?”

  “You might not like the cue ball, but you sure seem to enjoy my casserole,” Lee shot back.

  “So when did the deaths begin?” Allegra asked, turning once more to Lee. She needed to bring the subject back on point. The clock on the wall was ticking away to her next photo session, but she couldn’t walk out when she still had so many questions.

  Lee’s eyebrows rose. “You’ve already put that together, have you? Was it something about the woman you found that gave it away?”

  Allegra crossed her arms. “I do not know what you mean. I’m not suggesting Monique’s death has anything to do with these creatures you speak of, but if the staff’s stories grew darker, as you say they did, one can only assume there was some evidence to support them. In my experience…traveling around old hotels,” she added in a rush, seeing no point in leaving them to guess what her experience might be, “that evidence is usually the deaths of one or more guests.”

  Amusement danced in Lee’s eyes, but he didn’t question her story. “Your experience taught you well. I’d guess the deaths started within the first month of these creatures showing up.” He pulled off his cap and rubbed the top of his head before replacing it with a tug. “That was a rough time, let me tell you. I still remember the screams of the daytime desk clerk when she came in one morning to find the night-shift worker dead behind the counter. The coroner marked it as natural causes — just one of those freak accidents where the heart stops beating. Never mind the man was just thirty-six.”

  “So of course everyone jumped to the conclusion that these monsters were involved,” Cody jumped in, his words dripping with sarcasm and disdain.

  Lee narrowed his gaze at him. “I might have let it go as nothing if it hadn’t happened again eight months later, and another four months after that, six months after that, and so on. We never know when it’s going to happen, or to who. Sometimes guests, sometimes staff, but always in a way that looks natural. My guess is whatever these creatures are, they scare people to death.”

  Allegra frowned, but when she felt the skin between her eyebrows bunch together, she smoothed her expression. She would be even more upset if this situation gave her wrinkles, and she had been frowning too much already.

  “I’ll give Lee that,” Cody said. “In the six months I’ve been here, your friend is the second person to drop dead. This time I heard some of your group saying drug overdose, which I personally thin
k is more likely than any curse. In the last case, the guy was found face-down in the pool, still wearing his suit. The leading theory there, aside from Lee’s monsters, is that he got drunk and fell in.”

  “You’re free to believe what you want, boy,” Lee said. “Maybe it’ll keep you safer if you don’t go out of your way to check every nook and cranny for proof and stumble across something you shouldn’t.”

  Allegra tapped her thumb against her lip. “You said you’ve worked here for over twelve years and noticed a pattern, but you also said you could never tell who would be attacked by these creatures. So what is the pattern? If these creatures are in the hotel all the time, why would they not go after every person staying under this roof?”

  Lee scratched his beard through his hairnet. “I can’t answer that one for you, unfortunately. Although, since you asked my opinion, I think it has to do with how close people get to them. Physically, I mean. I’m not talking about anyone inviting these creatures up to their rooms for a glass of wine and a soul-baring chat.” He chuckled again, but this time Allegra didn’t bother to indulge him with a smile. Her skin crawled and the muscles between her shoulder blades clenched. For a moment, she worried the shadow had followed her even here to this small office, but she shook the thought away. It was only the story that made her uncomfortable. She was safe here.

  Even so, she shivered as Lee said, “I’ll hear whispers sometimes from people who catch something out of the corner of their eyes. Sometimes they manage to walk out of here just fine, but other times…” He shook his head. “Other times people turn to look at what’s watching them. That’s when they see them. The only reason I know what the monsters look like is because other people have described them to me. And most of those people have ended up dead. I’ve sensed them before, watching me from the shadows, but I’ve never looked. That’s why I’m still alive. Because that’s the trick to these things. Once you look them in the eye, they have you.”