by JL Bryan
“Oh, we don't mind!” Stacey said. “It's a lovely restaurant. So historic.”
Madeline kept her eyes on me, and I nodded to indicate I'd caught her meaning.
“Thanks so much,” I said. “We'll be sure to take advantage of that.”
“I know you have a lot to do. Please let me know if you have any questions at all.” She turned and departed quickly, making it clear that any such questions weren't meant to be asked out here, in front of hotel guests.
“We'd better ask for a doggie bag and skedaddle,” I said to Stacey.
Five minutes later, Stacey and I slipped through a jib door in the first-floor hallway between the hotel's small library and the main ballroom. I wanted to explore the first floor a bit more, but if Madeline wanted us scarce, I supposed it could wait until the dead of night when most of the guests would be asleep.
Stacey's room on the third floor now looked like a weird mix of an antiques shop and a low-budget TV studio, with little black and white monitors removed from our van and placed on every piece of furniture so we could watch feeds from the hotel's security cameras as well as our own. We didn't have nearly enough monitors to watch all the security cameras at once, so the displays had to rotate between cameras every few seconds to keep up with everything.
It was nearly 10 p.m.—we'd gone to the restaurant just before it officially closed, but a number of guests had still been there.
Now we could feel the hotel winding down as guests settled in. The occasional footsteps in the hall became rarer the later the hour grew. Madeline had tucked us at the back of the third floor, away from as many paying guests as possible.
I crossed into my room and changed back to my work clothes—jeans, thin turtleneck, thick black leather jacket.
“I think I'll stick around here for a while,” I said when I returned to Stacey's room. I dropped into the armchair next to the one she already occupied. “It would be kind of a shame if I got killed on the first night.”
“That could slow down our investigation,” Stacey agreed. “Well, then again, once you became a ghost, maybe you could accomplish something from the Other Side.”
“I'd rather not test that out,” I said. “I'll make some coffee.”
We sat and watched, looking into empty hallways where guests and staff passed occasionally. I kept most of my attention on the thermals and night vision cameras.
Activity started to heat up as midnight approached. Occasional cold spots formed and disappeared on the fourth floor. They were mostly centered in the strange “temple” room up there, but they also showed up in the fourth-floor hallway. One of our night vision cameras caught a mist passing through the temple area, which vanished after eight seconds. None of the shapes we saw looked particularly human, and they faded rather than form into clearer apparitions.
A creak sounded over one of our audio monitors. It took us a moment to notice that one of the fourth-floor doors had opened.
“Maybe I should go up there and try an EVP session,” I said. This involves walking around with a handheld recorder, asking questions. Typically, you can't hear the ghosts while you're there, unless it's an extremely strong apparition or you've got a poltergeist situation with things being thrown all over the house. It's more common to hear nothing until you play back the audio. This makes it pretty difficult to really have a back-and-forth conversation with the ghost.
“I thought we were playing it safe tonight,” Stacey said.
“I won't go out of camera range,” I said. “If anything happens—”
“Look!” Stacey said. She pointed to the thermal feed from the second floor, where two red-orange blobs had appeared in the hall outside Room 208, famously haunted by Abigail Bowen's ghost. The shapes looked like just another pair of living people, but they were running at high speed toward the elevator.
“Where's the security camera feed for that hall?”
“Here. I'll lock it so the view doesn't shift.” Stacey tapped at her laptop keyboard and pointed to a black and white monitor on the dresser. On the screen, a man and woman who might have been in their late thirties dashed down the hall, looking back over their shoulders. There was no audio, but their mouths were wide open as if screaming. They were barefoot, the man wearing boxers and a t-shirt, the woman wearing a nightgown. They didn't exactly appear to be heading out for a leisurely stroll in the garden.
The door to 208 stood open behind them, but I couldn't see anything inside the room.
“You think they saw the ghost?” Stacey asked.
“Either that or they just found the world's biggest cockroach in their hotel room.” I jumped to my feet, double-checking that I had two tactical flashlights holstered at my utility belt. “I'm going to have a peek while they're out.”
“Are you sure that's a good idea? Stabby Abby might be the killer ghost.”
“So stay in touch and get ready to rescue me,” I said. I double-checked my headset on the way out to make sure we could hear each other.
I opened the door to the guest stairwell. Unlike the steep, narrow stairwells in the hidden service area, this one was wide and warmly lit from sconces, with brick walls trimmed in dark wood.
Above me, the stairs continued up into the darkness of the fourth floor, where the lights either didn't work or had been extinguished to discourage guests from going up there. A heavy brass floor-to-ceiling security gate across the stairs added further discouragement. The gate looked like an expensive antique itself, the bars embellished with tiny sculptures of ostriches and lions.
I dashed down to the second floor, rounded a corner, and slowed as I approached 208. The fleeing guests had left their lights off. As I drew closer to the dark room, I shivered at the ice-cold air spilling out, as if someone had left open a door to a freezer instead of a luxury hotel room.
The door was only partially ajar. I nudged it open, gaining a view of a large canopied bed, the sheets and blankets in disarray as if the couple had kicked and struggled their way out. Suitcases sat open on the floor.
I moved into the cold, dim space with my hand on my flashlight, ready to draw if I needed it. A powerful blast of light can sometimes discourage ghosts or even make them leave you alone, but of course I was trying to find the ghost, so I kept it turned off.
The room was as nice as any of the others, including a brick fireplace and a bay window looking out onto the night. The flowers in the vases had all wilted and shriveled, though the flowers throughout the rest of the hotel were still fresh and bright.
“Hello?” I whispered, stepping inside. The air was frosty, and I probably would have seen my breath if it hadn't been so dark. “Is anyone here?”
Nobody answered. A bronze plate was screwed onto the wall just inside the door, and I turned my flashlight on to read it, keeping the light to its dimmest setting.
NOTICE
Room 208 is inhabited by the Lathrop Grand's famous ghost, Abigail Bowen. Guests have reported seeing apparitions of a woman in white, hearing voices, and being physically touched by the ghost.
The desk clerk should have informed you of this ghost's presence. If you were not informed, you may request a different room. The Lathrop Grand is unable to offer refunds due to ghost activity in Room 208.
“Wow,” I said, after reading it aloud to Stacey over the headset. “Imagine if you got this room and didn't know about the ghost. That sign alone would freak you out.”
“So the power of suggestion could play a role here?” she asked.
“When people have been told an area is haunted, they're more likely to attribute unexplained....” I fell silent.
“Ellie?”
I'd happened to look at the ornate mirror above the room's dresser, trimmed in a wooden frame carved with wildflower shapes. In the mirror, I could see a portion of the bed, a portion of the bay window, and an armchair parked at the room's polished spinet desk, which is a deceptively simple piece of furniture that looks like a small table with a single drawer but actually unfolds into a
more complicated arrangement with pigeonholes and a pull-out writing platform. Like a lot of our haunting cases, it's much more complex than it first appears.
In the space between the spinet desk and the bay window stood a misty white shape, suggesting a woman about my height. There was no clear face, only the hint of long white hair around the head and shoulder areas. I could also faintly see the wrought-iron stiles of the bay window behind her. Definitely an apparition, not a live person.
From her stance, she appeared to be watching me in the mirror, her blank, misty face angled directly toward me.
My breath seemed to freeze inside my throat as the room grew colder. My heart accelerated to triple-time. When encountering a ghost, you'll likely find that every cell in your body, motivated by basic survival instinct, will scream at you to run away as fast as possible. Animals have the same negative reactions to restless spirits. Only humans are stupid enough to stick around and try to have a conversation with an unfriendly dead person.
“Abigail?” I whispered, summoning all my courage just to speak aloud.
“Ellie?” Stacey replied, but her voice sounded distant and full of static. “Ellie? I'm flying blind—can't see—you okay?”
I tapped my microphone three times with my fingertip, our usual sign for Yes, I'm still alive, now please be quiet.
The figure in the mirror didn't react to the word “Abigail,” but it was possible I'd said it too quietly to be heard. I couldn't quite force myself to speak again, so instead I turned around slowly, not taking my eyes off the apparition in the mirror until I was fully facing the window.
I drew my flashlight as I turned, but resisted the urge to lance the ghost with three thousand lumens of white light.
She wasn't there. I looked at where she'd been, then spun back around to look at the mirror, worried she might use it as a doorway from which to attack me.
The woman had vanished in the mirror, too. I did see some movement in the darkness outside the window. I ran to the window and looked out.
She was hanging from the thick oak branch outside. She was clearer now, her clothes torn, her face and long blond hair filthy. A hemp rope was tight around her neck, and her eyes were closed, her face as limp and lifeless as the rest of her body.
When Abigail Bowen's crimes had been discovered by the Union army, she'd been arrested and executed on the same day, in the manner of military occupations everywhere. She'd been hanged from an oak tree on the hotel grounds. This oak tree, I was guessing.
A hand touched my shoulder, and I screamed, letting out all the pent-up fear and tension in my body. I turned and clicked on my flashlight, illuminating a very pale white face framed in blond hair.
It was Conrad, the beefy security guard who'd questioned us while we'd hung the cameras. His thin eyebrows rose as I screamed into his face, and he squinted and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the searing white light.
“You shouldn't be here,” he said.
“I was just...there was a woman...” My brain was scrambled, leaving me momentarily unable to speak. I pointed to the oak tree outside, but the gently swaying corpse was gone. “She disappeared.”
Conrad grunted and pointed to the big wall-mounted plate that explained about the ghost.
“Yeah, I know, I just...” I tried to shake it off. “Have you ever seen her?”
The security officer grunted, a completely uninformative response. Behind him, an older bellhop gathered the guests' belongings and zipped up their suitcases.
“If they're not coming back, I'll need this room tonight,” I said, forcing myself to sound calm.
“I would need Madeline's permission to do that, and she's gone home,” Conrad said.
“Okay...but if nobody else is going to be in here tonight—”
“There are other guests requesting this room as soon as it becomes available. Even if it's the middle of the night. People travel from all over the country to try to see that ghost.”
“But surely housekeeping needs to come through—” I began.
“We have policies in place,” Conrad said, cutting me off. “Do I have to escort you out of here? You're not a paying guest, so we don't need to play nice.”
“Okay, okay, just asking.” I started for the door. It wasn't going to take much to convince me to stay out of the room for the rest of that particular night, anyway, no matter how valuable it was for our investigation.
“Can I give you a hand with anything?” the bellhop asked with a forced smile. He was loading the suitcases onto a luggage cart as I passed him.
I shook my head and continued into the hall and around the corner.
The stairwell was silent when I entered it, but as I ascended, I could hear the echoes of footsteps above me. They sounded as if they were descending from the fourth floor.
I paused, but the footsteps continued, approaching me from above.
“Hello?” I pointed my light up, but I couldn't see much beyond the undersides of the flights above me. Some living person could easily be up there, choosing not to answer me, but I didn't feel like waiting around for the details.
I ran as fast as I could to the third floor landing. The footsteps were louder and closer, but I didn't see anything through the ornate brass security gate that blocked the way to the fourth floor.
Shoving the stairwell door aside, I dashed around to Stacey's room. She jumped up as I burst into the door.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I saw her. Stabby Abby.”
“What did she do? Did she hurt you?”
“No, I'm fine,” I said, but then I winced as I dropped into a chair. My back was stinging as if something nasty had bitten me back there.
“You sure?”
“Not so sure anymore.” I stood and shrugged off my jacket, then turned my back to the room's biggest mirror and lifted my shirt.
A long, thin slash ran between my shoulder blades, weeping blood. I hadn't felt it happen. Some of these ghosts are as sneaky as piranhas with their attacks—you don't even know they got you until you see the blood.
“Ellie, that looks awful!” Stacey grabbed our first-aid kit from the heap of gear.
“Take a picture for our records.” I sat on the bed while she snapped a few shots of the wound, then swabbed it with antibiotic ointment.
“What do you think caused it?” I asked Stacey.
“Um, a mean ghost?” Stacey guessed.
“More specifically. Does it look like a claw mark to you, or what?”
“Maybe a really sharp knife?”
“Like the scalpel Abigail used to kill those hospitalized soldiers?”
In the mirror above the dresser, I saw Stacey's eyes widen.
“Like a scalpel,” she agreed. “Well, congratulations, Ellie. You finally met one of Savannah’s most famous ghosts.”
I nodded, but I couldn't say I was thrilled about it. If Stabby Abby could cut me across the back, she could do the same across my throat. Stacey and I would have to be extremely careful for the rest of the investigation.
Chapter Five
We spent the rest of the night holed up in the hotel room, watching the monitors. Occasional cold spots appeared in the hall around Room 208, but the most active area still appeared to be the fourth floor. In the “temple” room, spots of extreme cold as well as extreme heat repeatedly formed up and vanished, about one every fifteen or twenty minutes.
The strangest thing that happened in those early-morning hours, though, had to do with the living and not the dead.
After Conrad the Amazing Albino Security Giant escorted me out of 208, he lingered in the door of the room while a housekeeper arrived to clean the place and switch out linens. After that, Conrad left and returned with the bellhop and three hotel guests. Though it was close to two in the morning by then, the hotel staff had apparently woken them and transferred them to 208 the moment it became available. I assumed the guests had requested this treatment.
I recognized them as the Seattle
family we'd encountered earlier, Carla and Maurice and their tween daughter. Carla and Maurice wore giant smiles as they approached 208, but the girl looked pretty annoyed at being awake, her rumpled hair framing a scowling face. Carla had bothered me a bit at dinner, but now I worried for the safety of all three of them. Abigail Bowen might have been a benign ghost for decades, but it looked as if she was back to her old slice-and-dice tricks again. I had to wonder what had triggered her, what had made her turn to violence.
We called the front desk and asked to be put in touch with Conrad.
“Yeah, what?” he finally answered.
“I think Abigail's ghost cut me,” I said. “You might want to warn the guests in 208.”
“They know about the ghost. They want to see the thing.”
“But the ghost has turned to attacking people—”
“It's covered by hotel policy. I know my job.” Conrad hung up, leaving me shaking my head.
“Well?” Stacey asked.
“He's not going to help. He doesn't seem to understand that things have changed.”
“So what do we do? Camp out by 208 all night?”
“I doubt Madeline would appreciate that. Just keep a monitor locked on that hall for the rest of the night. Watch for white apparitions or screaming tourists.”
We watched until sunrise. Signs of paranormal activity continued throughout the night, including bubbling hot as well as cold spots on the fourth floor, accompanied by more of the low whispering voices. On the third-floor hall outside our door, our microphone caught a few faint footsteps accompanied by a strange, rusty squeaking sound I couldn't begin to identify.
At about seven in the morning, when the sun was just beginning to rise, a room service cart arrived with breakfast for both of us. Good stuff, too—little cheese omelets, grits, cut melons and strawberries, French toast, orange and tomato juice, coffee. We avoided the coffee, since daylight meant bedtime was approaching, but we took the rest out onto the veranda and ate at a small table.
“This is great,” Stacey said. “We should live here full-time.”
