The Haunting of Anna McAlister (27 page)

* * *

The cab ride back to the hotel took place in total silence. Even the cab driver had nothing to say. As soon as the cab stopped at the front entrance, Anna got out and walked quickly inside.

“Anna! Anna, it’s me!”

Anna turned at the sound of the familiar voice. She saw the woman running toward her from across the lobby. “Stacy!”

Anna opened her arms and a moment later Stacy filled them. The two women hugged and cried.
 

“You know, don’t you?” Stacy looked at Anna. “You know about Jeffrey.”

“I know,” Anna felt the tears streaming down her cheeks.
 

“I wanted to tell you,” Stacey’s tears matched Anna’s. “I didn’t want you to hear it from that shit-head cop.”

“He told me.”

“I visited Jeffrey the night he was . . . the night he died. When I was leaving he said he wanted me to tell you that he loved you. He also said to say goodbye. Anna, I think he knew what was going to happen to him.”

Anna hugged her close. “I have to stop this before someone else dies,” Anna cried softly. “I have to stop this now.”

Chapter 25

Anna started from the bottom and pleaded her way to the top. She tried desperately to convince everyone from the most newly hired chambermaid to the hotel’s top manager to let her into room 531. One person said no because the room was being painted. Another said it was being fumigated. A third said that there was no room 531 at all, only a storage closet with numbers on it so it matched the other doors.
 

While the excuses varied, all of the employees Anna approached had one thing very much in common. All seemed uncomfortable with Anna’s questions, and would always look around the room nervously while making up their answers.
 

Anna kept asking until she ended up in front of the manager in charge of all hotel operations.
 

“Please, let us stay in room 531 for just one night.”

“No,” the manager didn’t ask for or want the reasons for Anna’s request. “That is final.”

“But why? I’ll pay more. I’ll pay whatever you say.”

The manager shook his head. “This is not a matter of money. You simply can not have 531.”

“Why?”

The manager thought for a moment. Anna saw his eyes quickly scan the room. “Because it is already occupied.”

The man quickly walked away, covering his ears to block out Anna’s protests.

When Anna finally fell silent, she knew that finally someone had told her the truth.

“They just won’t let me in there,” Anna took a sip of wine, and then another. “They’re all scared.”

* * *

Anna, Tom and Stacy met for dinner in the hotel restaurant. All of the employees were now intentionally ducking away when they saw Anna coming. Nobody even bothered trying to hide the fact that they wanted nothing whatsoever to do with this particular
crazy American
.

Anna raised her glass. She swung it slowly around for the whole room to see. She spoke in a voice loud enough for the whole room to hear. “A toast my friends. To those who know, but won’t speak.”

No one reacted to Anna’s toast. She hated to be ignored.

“And, to Ariene LaMoreau. May she rest in peace.”

Anna’s glass shattered in her hand.
 

“Holy shit!” Stacey reached for Anna and wiped her wine covered hand with her napkin. “Are you alright? Are you bleeding?”

Anna put down the stem, which was all that remained of the wine glass. “I don’t think so.” She watched as the red wine slowly seeped into the white table cloth. The shards of glass sparkled in the candle light.
 

The waiter, Louie, arrived a moment later with a large white towel. He knelt next to Anna and tried to wipe the spilled wine from her sleeves.
 

“I’m sorry,” Anna said. “The glass exploded. I guess it was just some bizarre accident.”

“You believe that it was just an accident?” Louie asked.
 

“What do you mean?’

“I heard your toast,” Louie continued to wipe. He spoke softly, barely moving his lips. He didn’t want anyone to see that he was talking, or hear what he was saying.
 

“Mademoiselle, please. Leave Paris. Go home. What just happened proves you are in danger here. Go. Never mention that name again and forget about room 531. This is not a door you should open, ever.”

“You don’t understand.”

“No, it is you who does not understand.” Louie scanned the room. He moved closer to Anna. “Room 531 is the room de mort . . . the room of the dead. Many people on the staff have seen things near that room. More say they’ve heard noises from inside.”

“What kind of noises?”

“Music, laughter, screams, many kinds of noises.”

“Did they ever find anything inside.”

“No one has been inside for 20 years. That room has been locked and off limits to all. No exceptions, ever.”

“Why, what happened 20 years ago?”

Louie pretended to be wiping up the floor. “The last guest to stay there, a young writer, committed suicide.”

“Do you know how he did it?” Anna asked.

Louie held out his right arm and ran his left thumb up from his wrist to the inside of his elbow.

“Louie, I would have a word with you please?” The gruff voice came from the manager who now stood next to the table. “Immediately.”

The manager looked at Anna and smiled politely. “Bon nuit, Mademoiselle.”

“Yeah, right, goodnight,” Anna said, watching him and Louie walk away.

As soon as the two men were far enough from the table, Anna got up and followed them. They walked into the lobby and stopped at the far end of the room. Anna hid by the door between the lobby and the restaurant. Although she couldn’t hear what the manager was saying, she could see his anger in his wild gestures and rapidly reddening face. Finally he pointed toward the door and looked like he was holding his breath.

Louie threw the wine soaked towel at the manager’s feet and stormed out of the hotel.

Anna quickly returned to Stacy and Tom. “Louie’s been fired.”

“The waiter?” Stacey said. “What for? For talking to you?”

“Yeah,” Anna said. “I have to see him. I’ll be right back. Wait for me here.”

“Haven’t you done enough to the poor guy?” Tom asked. “Maybe you should just leave him alone.”
 

A mean little smile spread across Tom’s face. “Unless of course you just want to add another Frenchman to your stable of studs.”

“Shut up.” Anna didn’t look at Tom as she half ran from the table. She didn’t want to see his face.
 

“Slow down. Keep your clothes on,” Tom called after her. “If you can.”

Anna thought of going through the lobby, but instead pushed through the restaurant door. It led to one of the streets next to the hotel. Anna sprinted to the corner, hoping to catch up with Louie before he disappeared. As soon as she reached the front of the hotel, she slowed to a walk. There really was no need to rush. She saw Louie on a bench in the park across the street.
 

It took Anna less than a minute to sit down next to him. For a long moment the two sat in the growing evening shadows, silently staring straight ahead, back at the massive hotel.
 

Without turning her head, Anna said, “I’m sorry you were let go.”

“It is not your fault,” Louie said, he also continued to look at the Baronette. “I chose to speak with you.”

“Maybe I can talk to the manager and . . .”

“No,” Louie said. “It was probably better this way.”

“How so?”

“Very bad things happen to those who involve themselves with that room. By firing me, he may have saved me from worse, who knows?”

Louie turned and looked directly into Anna’s eyes. “Please, I beg you once more. Go home. You must leave now, while you can.”

“Why must I leave? Tell me, Louie.”
 

Louie remained silent.
 

“Why won’t you just tell me?”

Louie looked from Anna to the hotel. Anna followed his gaze up the fifth floor. “Look,” Louie pointed. “The fourth window from the left. Room 531.”

Anna counted the windows. All were dark, except for the fourth one from the left. It looked as though someone had a lit a candle in the room.
 

“You said no one goes to the room and that it’s locked.”

“They don’t. It is.”

Anna then noticed that the curtains in room 531 were slightly parted, as if someone was watching.
 

* * *

That night, Anna dreamed of Jeffrey. They were sitting at an old wooden picnic table under an enormous flowering tree. The tree, with its millions of small pink flowers filled the center of a clearing in a large field of very tall grass. The grass was blowing in the gentle summer breeze and stretched out to the horizon in all directions.
 

The grass in the clearing itself had been chopped short and was very bright green. Occasionally small petals would drift gently down from the tree like pink snowflakes. They dotted the earth with color. Anna sat on the bench on one side of the picnic table. Jeffrey sat on the other.

“Jeffrey,” Anna heard and felt herself saying. She reached out and carefully took his arms over the table. She could feel his hands gripping her arms as well. Anna saw that Jeffrey’s right arm was once again whole.
 

“It’s really you, isn’t it?” Anna said. “Oh, Jeffrey, help me. Please help me.”

Jeffrey smiled, but it was a smile void of happiness or joy. “Hello Anna,” he said sadly.

“What’s wrong, Jeffrey?” Anna asked. “We’re together again. We can stop this thing together.”

“Anna,” Jeffrey sat two feet from her, but his voice sounded as if it came from very far away. “I came to warn you. Don’t go into that room. If you do you might never come out again.”

“Jeffrey, what do you mean? Tell me more.”

“Anna, please listen to me . . .”

“Who killed you, Jeffrey?” Anna interrupted. “When I was walking with you to the ambulance back at your apartment you said that ‘he did it.’ Who is ‘he’, Jeffrey? Is it Renee?” She heard herself hesitate. “Is it Tom?”

“You don’t understand, Anna. You can’t understand. There is so much more to it. They’re trying to . . .”

Jeffrey turned his head toward one side of the clearing. He listened closely. Anna also could hear what had taken his attention. There was a distant rustling sound coming from somewhere in the grass.

“They’re trying to what, Jeffrey? What do you mean,
they
?”

Before Jeffrey could answer, the rustling grew to near deafening proportions. It was coming closer very fast.
 

“No,” Anna could hear Jeffrey screaming over the storm. She saw the tall grass part to her right. It revealed a path of fire through the field. Something then burned a charred streak in the cropped grass. It moved like black lightening through the clearing and cut between Jeffrey and Anna.
 

“No!” Anna heard Jeffrey scream as she opened her eyes. Anna stared up at the ceiling of room 201. She felt her heart racing in her chest.
 

“It was a dream,” Anna said out loud, as if hearing the words would make them true. “Please, just a dream.”

Anna was still sweating and scared. She rolled from her back onto her side in an effort to find refuge in Tom’s body. As she moved, she closed her eyes. When she opened them, she lay face to face with the severed head of Madam Isabelle Lapautre.”

Chapter 26

Madam Lapautre’s eyes opened and Anna screamed. The head moved closer to her face. Its mouth opened and blood poured freely onto the bed. Anna swung her right arm to knock it away, but her fingers became entangled in its long, gray, blood-soaked hair. Anna jumped out of bed, violently shaking her hand. The head was heavy, the hair, warm and sticky. “Get it off me! Get it off me!”

“What is it?” Tom muttered sleepily. He turned on the light to see Anna standing next to the bed madly shaking her empty hand in the air. “What are you doing?”

Anna looked at her empty hand. “It was her head,” Anna stammered.
 

“What? Whose head?” Tom forced his eyes open.

“Madam Lapautre’s head. It was in the bed!”

Now it was Tom’s turn to jump up. He pulled the blanket and sheet off. The bed was empty.

“It was here, Tom. It really was. I woke up and it was right in front of me, between our pillows. Its eyes opened and then it came at me. I tried knocking it away, but my fingers got tangled up in its hair.” Anna continued to shake her hand.
 

“I’m sure it was nothing,” Tom said, smoothing out the sheets. “You just had another nightmare. That’s sure not surprising under the circumstances.”