by JL Bryan
“Why had they given up on restoring the fourth floor?”
His smile grew, and he shook his head. “You wouldn't believe me if I told you.”
“If you're referring to the alleged ghosts in the hotel, I've been hearing these stories all along,” I said. “You won't shock me.”
“All right. They couldn't get any good contractors to stay up there for more than a week. Because of the haunting.” He took a sip of beer, looking a bit morose and philosophical, and a bit unsteady. “I never believed in ghosts before I worked at the Lathrop, except for the Holy Ghost. My church doesn't recognize ghosts as real. I know, because I've spoken with my pastor about it at least a dozen times over the years.
“That place, though. Whew. I saw more than one in my years there. Mabel Lathrop shows up in the kitchen and restaurant. Most of the staff have seen her. She seems harmless, and sometimes she'll even close doors and cabinets in a helpful way. Even tidy up the kitchen a little.”
“The world could use more ghosts like that,” I said, and he laughed.
“Don't I know it? There were worse things, though. The yellow fever kids, they show up here and there, always quick to hide. Just blurry shapes, usually. Once I saw a soldier crawling on the second floor, a Union soldier I'm pretty sure, one of his legs stiff and dragging behind him. Heard a rusty scraping or squeaking sound. He didn't look at me or act like he knew I was there, and an eyeblink later, he's gone.”
“Did you ever see the famous one? Abigail Bowen?”
“I believe so. Young woman in a bonnet walking down the hall. Wouldn't have thought a thing of it at first, except for her old-fashioned clothes. Had this kind of short cape that buttoned at the neck, a simple brown dress. As she got closer, her clothes somehow got covered in blood, and I saw she was holding a knife. Or a scalpel, I suppose, but it was primitive. The handle looked like it was made out of deer antler. The blade was dripping blood. And she looked at me and smiled, so sweetly, pretty girl covered in blood. My heart just about stopped. Her eyes looked unnatural, no real color. I'll never forget how she looked.
“Then she was gone like she'd never been there at all. No drops of blood on the floor, either. That was her, I figured out later, once I managed to calm down. Abigail.” He'd been talking toward the ceiling, but now looked at me liked he'd forgotten I was in the room. “Oh. You must think I'm crazy.”
“Only if every other person who's stepped inside that hotel is also crazy,” I said. “If you ask me, it must be haunted. There are so many witnesses who've reported ghosts. Anyway, what about the fourth floor?”
“That's no joke,” he said. “We could only do quick little jobs, like I said. There are voices on the fourth floor, whispers that come up all around you. The air turns cold. I stayed out of there, made sure everyone else did, too.”
“What about camera crews? I understand the hotel has been featured on several ghost shows on television.”
“Sure, the ghost shows,” he said, but he spoke a little more cautiously. “Or the local news wanting to do a spooky story around Halloween, that kind of thing. The owners encouraged all of that. Why wouldn't they? It was free publicity on a national level. International, even.”
“Were the films crews allowed on the fourth floor?”
“Oh, no. They were mostly interested in two and three—Stabby Abby, you know, and the soldiers and fever victims who haunt those levels. The owners forbid any access to the fourth floor, though, and I agreed with them. It would have been bad publicity in the first place. You don't want people thinking the hotel is just an old wreck inside. In the second place, there's the liability. No matter how many waivers people sign, they can turn around and sue you anyway. That's going back on your word, if you ask me.”
“The liability? Because the fourth floor was more dangerous than the others?”
“Absolutely. The lower floors, a guest stays for a week, they might glimpse a ghost, or they might see nothing at all, but that's it. Child's play. That fourth floor, though. The things up there are terrifying.”
“Did anyone sustain injuries on the fourth floor while you managed the hotel?”
“No, but I saw more than one worker—for those occasional critical repairs I was talking about—more than one worker run out of that fourth floor paler than a dead trout's underside, never to return to the hotel. Place had the same effect on me, those few times I went up there. I saw the shadows and heard the voices and avoided the fourth floor as much as I could after that.”
“What did the voices say to you?”
“Like I said, just whispering, like a dozen people whispering up and down all around you. Like they're real close and have you surrounded.” He shuddered. “People talk about the ghost of Abigail Bowen, but she's harmless to the living, always has been. There's something truly horrible up on four. I don't know what it is or what you'd call it, but it's a little slice of Hell up there.”
“This didn't deter you from working at the hotel?”
“It made me think twice—three, four, a hundred times, really—but there's something about the place that keeps drawing me back. I miss it now. Like I belong there and nowhere else.”
“So you never allowed any camera crews up on the fourth floor?” I said, trying to bring us back to the point.
“No, ma'am. That was right against hotel policy.”
“Not during the last week of your employment there? Even then?”
His face hardened into an unpleasant stare. “What are you getting at?”
“From what I understand, a camera crew was allowed on the fourth floor during that time. They stayed in the Red Suite on the third floor, and their entire visit was complimentary, on your authority.”
“Who told you that?” Gary was looking much less friendly by the second. “Who?”
“Multiple sources,” I said. “It may have slipped your mind. Do you remember now?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.”
“To whom did you comp the Red Suite, then?”
“I don't have to answer this.” He sat up. “Maybe you should get going.”
“Did they pay you a location fee?” I asked. “Would a quick check of your bank records show a mysterious extra deposit around the end of your employment? Or did you credit the fee to the hotel's general account, as you should have?”
“There was no—”
“So far, this information has not been released to your former employer, nor the current ownership of the hotel,” I said. “Should I share it with them or keep it to myself?”
“I don't see how it matters. They already fired me, so what else can they do?”
“Your former employers could sue you to recover the sum you embezzled,” I said. “The new owners will be even more furious. They don't want any footage of the fourth floor released to the public any more than the old owners did. They could file a legal injunction, and then the production company might sue you to recover what they paid you. There's a whole mess of things that could be thrown at you, Gary.”
“Well, thanks for stopping by,” Gary said. He swigged his beer and pointed toward the front door. “The way out's just the same as the way in, only backwards.”
“On the other hand, I'd be happy to not mention this to anyone. All I want is the contact information for that production company. You're not my concern here, Gary, unless you make yourself into an obstacle.”
Gary looked back at me, not saying anything.
“Everyone's going to figure it out when that footage airs on television, anyway,” I said. “Why don't you just put me in touch with them now and help us build this lawsuit against Black Diamond? Then they'll be too busy to worry about any silly TV shows. I thought we were on the same team here, Gary.”
“Team Bleed Black Diamond Dry,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“It's obviously not the best-kept secret in the world, anyway.” He shook his head, looking disappointed more than anything else, as if it hadn't occurred to him that
his authority over his former employees had ended along with his job. He left the room and returned with a business card. “You can copy that down, I guess. It's not as if a business card is private information.”
“Thank you.” I arranged it on the end table beside me and took a few snapshots with my phone. It read METASCIENCE PRODUCTIONS, LLC with a simple clip-art logo of a camera, a phone number with an 828 area code, and the name KARA SMITH, PRODUCER. “Who's Kara Smith?”
“The lady who contacted me and made the arrangements.”
“Can you describe her?”
“Blue eyes. So thin she almost looked sick. Like a fashion model. She was charming, could probably talk a turtle right out of its shell.”
“All right. I'm sure I'll be talking to her soon. Thanks for your help, Mr. Schultz.”
“You're not going to mention the, uh, anything to do with me and that production company to anybody, are you?”
“I'll keep a tight lid on it. Maybe it won't air for a long time.”
“Maybe.” He swallowed, looking worried.
Stacey had been listening the whole time, so I didn't have to update her when I climbed into the car. I'd worn a hidden microphone under my shirt, so she could record whatever he told us, and so she could come help if he turned threatening. You get the best results from a one-on-one interrogation, according to Calvin. People are more likely to open up in front of one person than a group of them.
“So we don't have to burglarize his house later?” Stacey asked, frowning.
“I thought you hated plan B.”
“Yeah, but I got kind of excited thinking about it. It would have been fun.”
“And illegal. Good thing plan A worked out.”
“I guess.” She looked at my phone while I started up the van. Then she did a quick search with her phone. “828. That's North Carolina.”
“Metascience Productions?”
Stacey thumbed it in, then scrolled slowly, frowning. “Nothing on Google. Kind of weird for a media company. Maybe they only produce industrial films or something.”
“Industrial films about haunted hotels?”
“Yeah, I admit that's kind of reaching,” Stacey said. “But I thought we were at the brainstorming stage. I didn't realize we'd skipped ahead to the telling-Stacey-her-ideas-are-silly stage. I'm not finding anything, not even an address.”
“Can you narrow it to just North Carolina?”
“Yeah, of course. I just add the word 'North Carolina' to the search bar. I bet detective work used to be a lot harder. Okay...and nothing. I'm finding multiple video production studios in Asheville, but nothing even vaguely like 'Metascience Productions.' Want me to call old Kara and see what she has to say?”
“Call old Calvin instead, pass the information to him. Maybe he can find something, or one of his buddies on the police force.”
“We're callin' in the coppers, see?” Stacey said, squinting with one eye and doing a cheesy 1930's gangster-movie voice.
“Yeah. And then make sure Jacob's still planning to come see us.”
“Then he can finger our button man, see,” Stacey said, really doubling down on that voice. “Make our killer ghost sing like a canary.”
I hoped she was right. I also hoped she'd stop with the bad movie-gangster imitation, like right away, but mainly I hoped she was right.
Chapter Twelve
We had some time before Jacob arrived. We'd scheduled him later than usual, since Madeline was so concerned about keeping our investigation secret. In the later hours, it would be easier to walk the hotel without encountering too many guests.
In the meantime, I headed downstairs and spoke to a few more of the hotel staff. The workers in the kitchen all seemed to have a story about Mabel Lathrop's plump, red-cheeked ghost, either encountering her or seeing objects move on their own. She was generally considered a benign presence, and the kitchen staff had far less turnover than other areas of the hotel. I didn't encounter her myself while I was there, but I lingered at her portrait out in the restaurant, the merry-faced woman depicted in a giant hoop skirt, standing by the giant ballroom fireplace. A great fire roared within, and evergreen branches decorated the mantel, making me think of Christmas.
“Want to give me a hand?” I whispered. “Surely you want this place safe for guests. You must want the dangerous ghosts out of here. Can you help?”
Mabel's painted face didn't reply. Her eyes had a laughing look, and she was smiling just slightly, though people usually tried to look very serious, even grim, in their portraits back in those days.
Upstairs, Stacey had something interesting to show me on her laptop.
“This is the second floor,” she told me, pointing to grainy black-and-white footage from a security camera, timestamped at just past four in the morning. “It's the opposite side from Abigail Bowen's room, near the fitness center and the art gallery. Check it out.”
She clicked the play button on the video-editing app. For a long moment, nothing happened except for the timestamp changing once per second. The hallway lay empty and silent, the carpet runner lying still along the center of the old polished hardwood floorboards. Two wing-backed chairs occupied a niche in one wall, flanking a small table topped with an overflowing vase of flowers.
I caught a blur of movement at the corner of the hall, which vanished as quickly as it appeared. Two seconds later, the vase toppled over, spilling flowers and water across the floor.
“What was that?” I pointed to the corner of the hall where the blur had appeared.
“Exactly.” Stacey reversed the footage slowly, paused it when the blur was most apparent, and zoomed in. The little apparition had appeared right where the hall turned ninety degrees, as if it had crept up and peered around the corner.
As Stacey blew up the image, I realized it was two apparitions, not one. They were not distinct at all, but I could make out two pale oval shapes with simple dark smudges to indicate eyes and mouths. They were stacked on top of each other in a way that made me think of small children peering around the corner together.
“Maybe those are some of the yellow-fever kids we keep hearing about,” I said.
“They've got enough psychokinetic energy to pull a few pranks, obviously. Knocking over decorations.”
“Kid ghosts can have a lot of energy. It makes them dangerous.”
“Do you think they're our killers?” Stacey asked, maybe half-kidding.
“We have to consider it. I've seen child ghosts who think killing someone is nothing more than an amusing joke.”
“At least they haven't lost their sense of humor. Jacob should be here in a few minutes. Should we wait for him downstairs?”
We arrived at the lounge portion of Mabel's a few minutes before ten. Several well-dressed people drank here, alone or in small groups, a mixture of tourists and locals.
Jacob already sat at the bar, drinking a glass of dark liquid garnished with a cherry on the rim.
“Hey, why didn't you tell us you were here?” Stacey approached him wearing a mock scowl.
“I knew you'd come down to wait for me here,” Jacob said. He dropped into a goofy horror-movie mad-scientist tone and wiggled his fingers mysteriously in the air. Stacey joined in with the same voice and gestures as he said, “Because I'm psyyyychiiic.”
I was beginning to understand where Stacey was getting her dorky bad-movie impressions.
I waited for the obligatory kiss, which seemed to run on a bit long for a public place, before greeting Jacob with a light clap on the shoulder. “Hey there,” I said. “Picking up any vibes in this place?”
“You must be joking,” he said, shifting to a B-movie vampire Transylvanian accent for some reason.
Stacey sipped his drink. “Are you having a Shirley Temple, Jacob?”
“Don't insult me,” he said. “It's a Roy Rogers.”
Stacey and I ordered small iced coffees to help jazz us up for the night. They immediately fell into a conversation about some concert the
y'd attended, but I interrupted.
“So Jacob,” I said. “The vibes?”
“I'm picking up a strong female presence around this restaurant. I'm going to save time and say it's that lady.” He pointed to the large portrait of Mabel Lathrop on the wall. “She doesn't seem hostile. Her main concern is actually seeing that this place is run well and the patrons are happy. That's what she's indicating to me. She likes to be among the living, listening to their stories and watching them come and go. Not a powerful presence, but friendly. This whole restaurant area is her domain.”
“No latent violent tendencies brewing under that surface?”
Jacob zoned out, looking off in the direction of the kitchen, then shrugged. “Not unless she's hiding something. The hostile ones tend to make their attitude known pretty fast. Unless they're intelligent and manipulative and drawing you into a trap, of course. You know, like Admiral Akbar—”
“Star Wars, got it,” I said. “What else?”
“There's more. Let's walk.” We left cash on the bar and headed out into the lobby, and from there to the main ballroom. It was silent, just a couple of lights on. Our movements echoed through the empty space. Stacey tracked alongside him with her handheld camera, recording his walk-through of the hotel.
“There are little spirits all over, but they keep hiding and scurrying away between the walls,” Jacob said, his voice echoing in the empty room though he wasn't being particularly loud. “I'll call them the wally-crawleys.”
“Aw, they sound cute,” Stacey said.
“They look like dead children with bleeding eyes,” he said. He walked to one wall and pressed his hand to the paneling between two floor-length mirrors. “Yeah. Up and down inside the walls, hiding. Because there are worse things...” He looked up at the ceiling. “Something that makes them run and hide. They aren't talking to me, but I can feel the heavy darkness up there, and they're trying to avoid it. Now they're running down, away from me. They're nervous because they know I can see them.”
