The Haunting of Anna McAlister (15 page)

The article went on to outline the types of rooms the hotel had to offer, their features and rates. It discussed the hotel’s three restaurants and bar, which it said were often frequented by the artistic elite of Paris and visiting foreign dignitaries from every continent. Finally the tour guide’s description ended with a single paragraph about the hotel’s history. This was the part of the story that Anna had now memorized word for word.

“Long a favorite of aristocrats and artists, this hotel has a history as colorful as the plush red velvet curtains that hang from it’s
two story lobby windows. During World War I it is believed that Mata Hari often entertained her guests in one of its suites. In World War II it was commandeered to serve as headquarters for the dreaded German Gestapo and SS. Its history is laced with scandal and intrigue. For those easily frightened by bumpsin the night, the Hotel Baronette is said to be quite haunted.”

Chapter 14

Despite her fears, the cab ride from Orly airport into Paris was one of the most thrilling experiences of Anna’s life. She had traveled to London once, Mexico a few times and Canada quite often. She enjoyed all her trips, but this was different. This was Paris. The first sight of the Eiffel Tower from the expressway filled her with so much excitement that it bordered on erotic.

“Look, Tom. Look!” Anna pointed. “The Eiffel Tower. The real Eiffel Tower.”

“This is your first time in Paris, yes?” The cab driver, who was Algerian, and therefore got no pleasure in hiding the fact that he spoke English, asked.

“Yes,” Anna said. “I mean,
oui
.”

“The first time you visit Paris is like the first time you make love.”

Anna remembered Stanley Katz and the back seat of his big brother’s Dodge. They had parked in the darkness behind a closed factory off a street called Wyoming on Detroit’s west side. “I hope it’s better than that,” she laughed.

“No, no, no,” The driver returned the laughter as if he were reading Anna’s thoughts. “You do not understand. I do not mean that it’s like the first time you had sex. It’s like the first time you truly made love.”

Anna smiled and looked out the cab window. She was so enthralled with every view that she didn’t notice Tom was silent and staring straight ahead.
 

The driver knew the shortest route to the Hotel Baronette, but decided on his own to give his American riders a fare-raising mini tour of Paris.

As he drove, Anna’s feeling of excitation changed from the thrill of seeing something new to the kind of comfort that is bred by familiarity. Anna felt as if she had come home.
 

That feeling intensified ten fold when the cab turned a corner and the driver pointed to a large, beautifully designed, stone building. “There it is, La Hotel Baronette.
Tres belle
, no?”

Anna looked at the hotel through the cab windshield. It was a view she just knew she had seen many times before. She felt as though she recognized every detail of the building from the ornate windows at street level to the gargoyles that lined the roof.
 

When the cab stopped Anna, quickly opened the door and jumped out. She stared up at the hotel. She felt somehow embraced.

* * *

Anna first started to feel a little dizzy as they approached the hotel door. When they walked in, they were greeted by a bellhop. Anna saw his face change before her into one she knew, or had known, well. That was when her world went black.

When Anna opened her eyes she was lying on a bed in a small hotel room. Tom and the house doctor were at her side. The doctor was closing a small container of smelling salts.

Anna sat bolt upright in bed, her eyes wide open and afraid. “Where am I? What happened?”

“You fainted,” Tom put his arm around her. “We’re at the hotel, remember? You passed out almost as soon as we walked in.
 

“It was probably the travel and the heat,” the doctor dabbed his sweating brow with a handkerchief which he returned to the inside pocket of his suit coat. “Paris is rarely this hot this time of the year. The forecast says it will be in the 90’s Fahrenheit for at least the rest of this week. Eh, se la vie.”

The doctor felt Anna’s forehead and took her pulse one last time. “I think you are fine. As I said, I am sure it was the weather and exhaustion from the trip. Not to worry. Perhaps you should rest until tomorrow. If you have any more difficulties, which I very much doubt, contact the concierge and he will be able to find me.”

Anna thanked the doctor before he left, but did not share his optimism. She was quite sure her difficulties were just beginning.

It
was
hot, very hot. The hotel air conditioning wasn’t designed to deal with this type of heat. The best it could do was make the room temperature somewhat bearable. Tom laughed when Anna described the air conditioning as being “subtle.”

“Boy, I’m glad you’re okay,” he said, handing Anna a glass of cold water. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Me too,” Anna said, ran the cool glass across her forehead. “Tom, did anything happen just before I fainted. You know, in the lobby, with the bellhop?’

“That’s funny that you should mention him,” Tom got himself a glass of water. “Did you know that guy, or something?”

“Why would you say that?”

“Well, the way you looked at him. It was like you recognized him. Just before you fainted you had this look in your eye, as if he was some long lost friend. You called him Pierre and said something in French.”

“What did I say?”

“That’s what’s so weird. The bellhop said you told him to take your parcels to your suite and to expect more later. Does that make any sense?”

“No,” Anna answered, although somewhere deep inside her soul she knew that it did, at least it did when those words were first spoken to a bellhop named Pierre in the Hotel Baronette almost 100 years earlier.
 

Anna refused to follow Tom’s suggestions, or the doctor’s advice. Rest was the last thing she wanted to do. She was finally where she needed to be. Where
they
wanted her to be. Anna jumped up to her feet. “Let’s explore.”

Anna led Tom out the door and into the hallway. He turned left and started to walk toward the elevator. “No,” she said. “It’s this way.”
 

Anna moved with complete self-assurance. With Tom trailing by several feet, she walked around three corners and to the end of a narrow, poorly lit corridor. The area was clearly marked “employees only”, but the thought of stopping never entered Anna’s mind.

Without even the slightest hesitation, Anna opened a swinging door which revealed a tightly spiraling staircase leading both up and down from their position. There appeared to be small lights around each curve, which dimly illuminated the staircase and filled it with shadows.
 

“Are you sure we should do this?” Tom stopped.

Anna didn’t listen, but just started walking down. Anna knew exactly where she was going, although she had no idea how she might have acquired the knowledge. Still, walking down this stairway was as familiar as the steps in her own house.

After she had fainted, the hotel employees had carried her to a room on the second floor. As she and Tom now circled down to the first floor, Anna turned and put her right index finger to her lips, signaling for him to be quiet.
 

Tom peeked through a small window on the door to the first floor and saw the hotel’s kitchen. Several chefs and their helpers were busy preparing that evening’s meal.
 

There were no lights below that landing and the stairway turned pitch black. Anna didn’t seem to notice.

“Anna,” Tom whispered, carefully feeling for each step in the darkness. I can’t see a thing.”

“It’s okay. Follow me.”

“We’re going to break our . . .”

Before Tom could fully express his concern, the stairwell filled with light from below. Anna had opened a door, stepped through and turned on the lights.
 

When Anna had passed the first floor, she actually walked faster down the steps. She wasn’t worried that she couldn’t see a thing. She counted exactly 13 steps, stopped, turned to her right and opened the door she knew would be there. Anna stepped inside a room and had no trouble finding the light switch. When her eyes adjusted to the brightness, she saw that she was standing in the Hotel Baronette’s Grand Ballroom.

When Tom walked in a moment later, he found Anna waltzing across the dance floor.

The light in the ballroom came from fourteen grand crystal chandeliers that hung in two rows from a ceiling that was at least two stories high. The ceiling itself was white and edged with gold filigree. The room was at least 100 feet long and half that wide. The walls were lined with alternating panels of white marble and floor to ceiling mirrors.

As Anna spun, she saw the light from a thousand crystal prisms reflected in each mirror. She felt as if she were floating. She embraced many partners, feeling their bodies press against hers. She smelled their scents. She was being caressed. She was lost. She was enraptured. She was both captive and in command.
 

“Come on Anna. We better leave. We don’t want to get thrown out of the hotel on the first night.” Tom stopped her dancing by grabbing her shoulders from behind.
 

Anna slowly turned and faced Tom, who gasped and quickly backed away. Anna’s blue eyes now sparkled a dark emerald green. The light danced off them and Anna smiled seductively.

“Anna?” Tom couldn’t swallow. A moment later he watched as her eyes changed back to their original color.

“Great room, huh?” she said. “But we better leave. We don’t want to get thrown out of the hotel on the first night.”

“Didn’t I just say that?” Tom was beginning to doubt both his eyesight and Anna’s sanity.

“No, I did,” Anna took Tom’s hand in hers and led him across the ballroom toward a large door that was cut into one of the mirrors. It stood between two marble panels and, when closed as it was now, was almost invisible to the naked eye. Anna, with Tom in tow, walked directly to it.
 

“Shouldn’t we go back the way we came down?” Tom asked.

“No,” Anna shook her head. “That’s for the servants,” she giggled. “And for anyone else who needs to sneak around,” she whispered.
 

In Anna’s mind she saw various costumed dancers waltzing over to the servant’s entrance. They would carefully look around the room before disappearing up those spiraling stairs for a secret liaison.

Many times couples would complete their task right on the stairway. The waiters and servants would politely and discreetly step around them. When sufficient wine had been consumed, they were sometimes asked, or ordered to join in. Certain male and female servants, those with interesting or impressive physical attributes or talents were most in demand.

As she and Tom walked, Anna remembered, or imagined watching a servant girl servicing a man with her mouth. He held her head and thrust his hips until he groaned and collapsed back on the steps. The girl stayed in place until he was soft and laughing. The man slapped her face and the girl ran away. Now Anna heard a woman’s laughter join the man’s.

The image was gone almost as quickly as it came. It was replaced by another. Anna could see a woman straddling a waiter who sat on the steps with this trousers down around his ankles. She reached behind her and guided his enormous member into her lowering body. As the scene unfolded in Anna’s mind she actually felt first the lips and then the walls of her vagina being stretched and penetrated. She gasped and fell to her knees, which she spread wide apart on the ballroom floor.

“Anna, are you all right?” Tom stepped to her side.

Anna felt the withdrawal. She moaned at the loss.
 

“Anna?”

“I’m okay,” she said almost completely out of breath. “Help me up.”

Anna’s legs felt weak when, with Tom’s assistance, she rose to her feet.
 

“Maybe we should go back to the room and rest for awhile,” Tom said.

Anna felt unusually tired, and very sore. “Okay, we can play more later.”

She led Tom up a large straight marble staircase to the main lobby. No one saw them move quickly from the steps to the elevator. Once inside, Anna pushed 5.

“No, were not on 5.” Tom reached around Anna and pushed 2. “We’re in 201.”

“What?” Anna seemed surprised. “That’s not right at all.”

Anna stopped the elevator door with her hands and pushed it open. She marched to the front desk. “Pardon,” she said. “We need to change rooms.”

“Is there a problem?” One of the hotel managers, the one who had been on duty when Anna had fainted, walked out of a small door that led to a tiny room behind the desk. “Are you feeling,” the man searched for the right word in English, “Okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine. We just need to change rooms. We want to be in room 531,
s’il vous plait
.”

The manager and the two clerks who had been manning the front desk glanced at each other briefly. The look lasted only a moment, but Anna could clearly see a spark of fear in their eyes.