“It would’ve been better around Halloween, don’t you think?”
“Yeah, well. The Read House wasn’t having problems back around Halloween. You’ve said it before yourself—the dead don’t give a shit about the calendar or the clock.”
“They certainly don’t seem to,” I agreed. “I wonder what’s got the Lady in White’s panties in a bunch.”
“It would be nice if you could shed some light on the subject. Soon. Because I haven’t got all day. Which is why I said three o’clock, and not three thirty.”
“Knock it off, Nick. I’m practically there already. If you’re really pressed for time, you ought to pick another day to do this. There aren’t any guarantees, and it may take more than a minute.”
“I know, I know. Just get here soon. I’m up on the mezzanine level. Waiting.”
I hung up on him.
He was an impatient bastard, but I tried to keep in mind that he worked with very strict deadlines for a living. He’d moved here from up north—from a Midwestern NBC affiliate to our local Tennessee one. There were rumors that naughty conduct had prompted him to seek professional asylum in Chattanooga, but it was hard to prove and I didn’t really care, so I hadn’t asked.
I first met Nick a year ago, when Old Green Eyes had wandered off from his post at the Chickamauga battlefield. Nick was both a help and a hindrance down there in Georgia, but in the end he worked out to be more useful than useless, so I chatted with him when I saw him around town.
This wasn’t to say we were friends or anything.
I’d agreed to meet him that afternoon because he wanted some unofficial assistance with a story. Mostly I was curious, partly I was bored, and partly I wanted to be distracted from my upcoming family meeting.
Besides, it was the Lady in White. Granted, that’s not the most original name for a ghost, but this one was almost as famous as Old Green Eyes, the quiet, elusive battlefield ghoul.
To tell the truth, I’d very much doubted that she existed at all—at least until recently. Stories about the mysterious lady sounded entirely too made-up. According to local lore, she wandered the second and third floors of the historic hotel, crying piteously and vanishing spookily. There were thousands like her, woven into the history of old buildings across the globe. Often she’s a spurned bride, a widow, or a scorned lover. Usually she’s upset about a man.
I’d long suspected it was a tourist thing, something contrived to lure in curious travelers.
But then I saw it happening, the same thing that always happens when a nervous rumor becomes a real fear: people began leaving. First the housekeeping staff refused to clean a certain room. Then they avoided an entire wing, then an entire floor.
Soon the repair people began refusing to fix the strange damage in that first tainted room. A light fixture here, a curtain rod there. A busted marble-top vanity. A hole in the wall. It didn’t matter if they got fixed, anyway: other acts of vandalism would soon undo the careful repairs.
Before long, the people who were paying to rent the room began leaving, too—in the middle of the night, without pausing to seek a refund. Sometimes without collecting their belongings, or without being fully dressed. They left without looking back.
Though it would seem that at least one traveler had made a phone call to the front desk after taking his leave. He wasn’t a superstitious man, or so he told the concierge. He wasn’t an overly imaginative man either, but there was something awful in that room and he thought they should speak with a priest.
Instead, the hotel management simply quit allowing visitors to stay in room 236.
But the awfulness spread—from the room, to the hall, to the floor.
To the whole building. And then to the media.
To Nick.
I parked down at the end of the block, across the street from the Read House hotel. It’s a ten-story brick affair, built in the 1920s to replace an earlier structure that burned. Part of this one burned too, years ago, but it’s been rebuilt and joined by a parking garage. But I didn’t have any cash on me except for a handful of change, so I fed the meter rather than keep my car close.
Inside, the hotel is made of mirrors and brass, with shiny marble floors for my heels to click against. The ceilings are high and the carpets are patterned with a baroque kind of lushness that wouldn’t look right anyplace at all except in the corridors of a fancy old hotel.
In short, a ghost was all it needed to become a perfect cliché of vintage southern hospitality.
I’d made Nick promise not to bring a camera crew, and I was pleased to see he’d behaved himself. This wasn’t an expose. It was just an investigation—an attempt to see if I could give him anything to work with. Nick wanted a name, or a motive, or an excuse. He wanted a historical figure to hang this ghost story on, so he’d have something to take to the network in a tidy, three-minute package.
I met him up on the mezzanine, where he was lounging on one of the big pseudo-Victorian couches. A bright chandelier loomed above him, bathing the area in sparkling brightness.
He grinned at me and rose, opening his arms in a gesture that encompassed the entire floor. “What do you think? Spooky, or what?”
I smiled back at him, because I didn’t really have a choice. His TV face is contagious when he turns it on and lights it up. “Or what, at the moment. It’s tough to get a good chill going before suppertime.”
“That’s no way to get into the spirit of things,” he cheerily fussed. With one hand he lifted a satchel off the couch and slung it over his shoulder. I was happy to see that he wasn’t in “about to go live” mode. His hair wasn’t sprayed into immobility, he hadn’t bothered with a suit, and, to my astonishment, the man was wearing jeans. I would’ve sworn he didn’t own any.
“I have to say, I think this is a good look for you. Less . . .”I looked for a word, and found it. “Smarmy.”
“You think? Damn. I should’ve worn a suit. I didn’t mean to put you at ease or anything.”
“Then consider your day a failure and brief me already. What’s the story? Or, should I say, what’s the scoop?”
“There’s no scoop, yet—not past what you already know. Weird shit keeps happening, and the hotel’s new owners are freaking out. The long and short of it is that room 236 would prefer to remain unoccupied.” He pulled a digital voice recorder out of his pocket and held it out to me. “We need one of these, right? Isn’t this what you used when you worked with Dana Marshall?”
I shrugged. “Can’t hurt. Might help. Probably won’t be necessary. And what do you mean ‘new owners’? I thought this place was family-owned or something.”
He cocked an elbow towards a bit of repair scaffolding at the end of the hall. A major chain logo was emblazoned on the side. “It’s been bought out. Back in November. That’s why all this renovating is underway—they’re going to revamp the place and set up a storefront down on the first floor. They’ve already gotten the Starbucks open and ready for business.”
“I know, it’s revolting. And right down the street from Greyfriar’s, too.”
“Hey, I like Starbucks.”
“Philistine.” I glanced around and noticed, for the first time, that there were corners marked off with construction signs, and an elevator door with an “Out of Service” notice across it. “I don’t know. Maybe the old place needs a facelift. Maybe the previous owners couldn’t afford it.”
“Maybe. But I bet you a five-dollar espresso beverage that that’s not the reason they sold the place.”
“You’re thinking they couldn’t handle the ghost.”
“Precisely. Half their night staff has walked out and the other half demanded hearty raises for hazard pay. According to the day manager, the big chains had been circling like sharks for a while anyway, making offers, courting the family—hoping to pick the place up. It’s on the historic registry now, and with a little spit and polish, the big boys could turn this into a five-star affair.”
I guessed the rest. “And when the owners changed their minds about keeping it in the family, it didn’t take any time at all to find a corporate sucker with deep pockets to take it off their hands. Have you talked to the old owners?”
“I tried. They weren’t feeling very forthcoming.”
“That figures.” We stood there for a minute, looking and listening around. Seeing and hearing nothing. “This is just a factfinding mission, right?” I asked, noting the room number nearest me and assuming we must be close to the troublesome quarters.
“Sure,” he agreed, tapping his fingers at the recorder I was still holding. “But wouldn’t it be nice if we found some spooky facts and got them on tape? Wouldn’t that make for a marvelous addition to the story?”
“You don’t really think they’d let you run it, do you? They’d get letters, I’m sure. We can’t have our local affiliates promoting the occult, inviting the presence of Satan and all that jazz.”
“You can’t be serious.”
I smiled while I fiddled with the recorder. “Oh yeah, that’s right. You’re not from around here, are you?”
“No, thank God. But Chattanooga residential temperament is neither here nor there. If this turns out well enough, I can always take a stab at going to the network. I’ll just label it a human interest piece and see who bites.”
“Or ‘post-human interest,’ as the case may be.” The recorder he’d handed me was an expensive model with plastic wrap still clinging to it. I picked off the leftover packaging and flipped it on. “Just so you know, this might not get you anywhere. It might not turn up anything at all. Even if the room is haunted, ghosts don’t always feel very talkative.”
“Why else would they act up, though, if they didn’t want to communicate?”
“Any number of reasons. From what you’ve given me so far, I think maybe this one wants to be left alone. Maybe the remodeling is making her crazy. The dead are like cats, in my experience. They don’t like change. You start messing with their familiar surroundings and they get antsy.”
