Orpheus - Haunting the Dead.pdf - Dice

HAUNTING THE DEAD
RICK CHILLOT
“You’re here because this hotel isn’t finished with
you yet.” Goodman pauses, looking down at Tina, who
is sitting cross-legged on the floor and inspecting her
doll’s dress for rips. “I’ll explain what I mean.”
“Go ahead.” Ed glances around the room, sees piles
of newspapers, shelves of books, a coil of rope, a fire ax
leaning in a corner, cardboard boxes with dented
corners, jars of dark liquid with darker shapes floating
inside. He imagines his own body suspended in a giant
tube of formaldehyde somewhere, slowly dissolving
into nothing. “It’s about time somebody explained
something.”
“I wish you could have met all the fascinating souls
who used to dwell in this house, Mr. Lighthouse. Such
history.” Goodman’s eyes grow distant. “In the basement,
there was a crazy medicine man named
Crooked-Foot, leading a group of his braves in search
of vanished trails. And poor Jane Brown, the trapper’s
wife, she used to wander the third floor, searching for
her starved children. The streams of blood from her
slashed wrists trailed behind her like pretty red ribbons.
The newlyweds who had OD’d on heroin lay together
on the king-sized bed in room 715, picking the insects
off each other’s skin….”
Ed can only stare at him.
“They’re all gone now, Mr. Lighthouse. Taken away
by a dark storm that blew through this house years ago,
or dragged away by the things that came soon after. I
was one lucky survivor; Tina, here, was another.”
Goodman glances at Tina, who nods intently back
at him. “The living who come and go here, well, they
never noticed the difference, of course.” He leans
forward, and Ed finds himself doing the same. “But the
house noticed, Mr. Lighthouse.” His voice is nearly a
whisper. “After centuries of accommodating the deceased,
the house just did not like being so empty. It
craved the deep vibrations of the dead, their sighs and
the trace of their fingertips across the walls. It needed
them.”
( 248 )
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