Chapter 6

“While we’re waiting to ride back down to the lobby,” Rebecca began, pausing at the public elevators for her tourtakers’ attention, “notice the Mail Drop over there. We’re on the top floor, and that cast-iron chute goes all the way down to One. The postman still empties it daily.”

When the elevator arrived with a light and a ding, off stepped Mr. Beaumont with two Japanese-American businessmen. The visitors smiled at Rebecca before following the GM, who scarcely acknowledged her presence. TITHE reps, Rebecca assumed. She occasionally encountered them around the hotel, always accompanied by current managers and poking around critically.

“So these top two floors look completely different because they were added on top of the building in the 1940s,” Mr. Beaumont told the visitors, as they walked off toward a showroom.

The tour guests looked to Rebecca, confused. “That’s not what you told us about these floors,” one of them said.

“That’s because it’s balderdash,” the historian said, employing her favorite archaic word for bullshit and utterly careless of whether Beaumont heard her or not. Nothing irked Rebecca more than misinformation.

“I’m sure you’ve also noticed these wonderful 1930s rotary telephones on every floor opposite the elevators,” she continued, returning her attention to her guests. “They’re functional house phones that still work. Sometimes, when I have young children on tours,” she said, “they ask what these old phones are. They can’t figure out how they work or why they’re attached to the wall. They make me feel positively historical.”

Several in the group obviously recognized that feeling. As they stepped aboard the elevator, she suggested, “If you ever want to feel really old, try listing things, like rotary phones, that have become obsolete in your lifetime.”

“Typewriters!” one woman contributed.

“Clotheslines,” said another.

“Trash incinerators.”

“Sliderulers.”

“Eight-track tapes.”

“Customer service.”

“Common courtesy.”

The elevator landed and the doors opened.

“Thank god!” a gentleman said, relieved. “Had that depressing exercise gone on much longer, I’d have had to drink heavily.”

The historian invariably concluded her one-hour ghost tours in the ground floor elevator lobby. “So this last story is an experience of my own. I save it for the end when we’re done riding the elevators.”

People especially loved the personal accounts. The incident Rebecca shared had really happened, but it had puzzled more than scared her.

“About ten months ago, I was waiting for the elevator on the eighth floor with a hotel guest. And in a nearby room we could hear a crying baby. It wasn’t a sad cry, but an angry cry or a frightened cry. I turned to the guest and commented, ‘Sounds like somebody is not happy about staying here at the Griffins Keep.’ The elevator arrived, we climbed aboard, the doors closed. And we fully expected the sound of that crying to get quieter. It didn’t. In fact, as we started to descend, it grew louder and louder. Then at the third floor, it sounded as if that crying baby whooshed by the outside of the elevator doors – and stopped instantly.”

She snapped her fingers to demonstrate how quickly the sound had ceased. “I was glad I was with someone else, because we looked at each other and said, ‘Did you hear that?’ ‘Did you…?’ And our mutual astonishment confirmed that we had both perceived the same strange phenomenon.”

A mousy young woman who had hovered on the fringes throughout the tour asked seriously, “Were there always elevators here?”

Rebecca studied the woman’s pale grey eyes for a moment before answering. “No,” she said, “there weren’t. These elevators date to the 1930s, the same time the top two floors were converted to apartments. Before that, a second grand staircase occupied this space. It was called the Ladies Staircase because it went up to the Ladies Ordinary I told you about on 8.”

The young woman turned to the elevators and looked up, eyes wide. She seemed shaken “He was dropped,” she whispered.

Rebecca wondered if she’d heard correctly. “What did you say? Who was dropped?”

“The baby you heard,” the woman said. “His nursemaid… she couldn’t stand the crying any longer. She dropped him from the railing of the eighth floor staircase. His crying stopped when he struck the landing.”

The tour guests stared at the young woman, then at their speechless guide. Rebecca had to say something, anything. “Well….I suppose that’s an interesting possibility,” she managed, “though I’ve never come across such a story in all my research.”

Good. That was good. Surely she sounded more rational than she felt. But her blood ran cold. It was as if this stranger had supplied the missing video of a soundtrack Rebecca had somehow tuned into, and she instantly recognized the truth of it. How could the young woman have known what had happened? And how could the echoes of that awful incident have been replayed so many decades later?

Stone tape theory. Psychics and mediums had referenced it for years. In essence, the theory advanced the notion that the mineral content and crystalline structure of certain types of stone could somehow capture and preserve the sounds of events that occurred within walls constructed of -- or faced with -- those stones. Rebecca had first heard of it on one of those “ghost hunter” shows on cable TV. The paranormal investigators insisted they were able to tap these “recordings” and hear actual echoes of the past. In a cavernous old train station where a 1920s gangland shooting had taken place, they claimed to capture the sound of gunshots with their special spirit-sensing equipment. Shouts. A woman’s scream. Their earnest credulity had amused her at the time.

But the young woman’s chilling interpretation of the baby’s cries on the elevator now caused Rebecca to reconsider her initial dismissal of stone tape theory. At the time of construction, the Griffins Keep incorporated more onyx than any other single building of its day. The semi-precious stone, similar in appearance to marble, was actually a variety of quartz Aren’t quartz crystals used in radios and other transmitting devices?

There was, of course, no stone on the elevators. But she knew from an article in the archives that the contractors had recycled and reshaped the rare golden onyx that had faced the old staircase in the new art-deco-styled elevator lobby. Might some of that onyx still reverberate with the final cries of a terrified infant?

“Our tour has come to an end,” the historian said, eager to wrap up, “but the stories of Griffins Keep ghosts continue to unfold. When your time comes, we invite you each to join whatever spirits may linger here in the hotel. But we sincerely hope to see you again before then.”

Today the guests applauded, as they often did. A well-dressed older gentleman smiled and thanked her as he slipped her a tightly folded $20 bill; other guests followed suite with smaller denominations.

The rest of the guests had dispersed when a man with dirty gray hair and a beat-up denim jacket held out his hand to shake hers.

“Hey, whoa… So you really are Becky Bridger! The Rebecca thing threw me off for a minute. It’s Gary Floyd – ‘Pink’ Floyd. Remember me from Steamboat?”

She remembered him. She wished she didn’t. There was always the chance on public tours of running into people from her painful past.

“Shit, it’s been like what – 30 years or something? You look just the same, except classier. You’re not still with Bryce, are you?” Gary asked.

“Not for a long time.”

“That’s good, man. Glad to hear it, I really am. No way he was good for you. Hey – we have to catch up. You free for a beer or something?”

“No thank you, Gary, I’m not.”

“That’s cool. I get it. It’s really great to see you, though. So wow, you’re good at this stuff. A big fancy historian now, huh? Who woulda guessed it way back when you were waiting tables at The Cellar. Whatever happened to Bryce, do you know? Last I heard he was gonna be a big famous actor or director or something in L.A.”

“No idea. Lost touch.”

“Back in the day, he sorta pimped you, didn’t he?”

Rebecca had never attached the ugly word to her ex-husband’s machinations, but she realized as she heard it from someone else how apt the characterization was.

“I guess you could say that.” But you didn’t have to.

“I mean, I know it was the ‘70s and ‘free love’ and all that. But I think he got off on giving you to other guys for dope and drugs and shit. It was pretty sick, his own wife. Lots of us thought so. Did you really like it, or did you just go along because he asked you?”

“I wanted to do whatever made him happy.” I thought that was what love meant.

“Oh man, don’t know about him, but I reckon you made plenty of other guys happy.”

“I think we’re done here…”

“No wait. Don’t be mad, Beck. Hey, I just hafta ask, compared to all the guys you did it with, I was pretty good, wasn’t I? I mean, one of the best, right? ‘Cause you sure acted like you enjoyed it, if you know what I mean…”

Acted. That was it exactly. To emotionally escape the sordid scenes staged by her ex-husband, she’d tried to imagine the other men he set her up with to be Bryce himself. Or tried to imagine herself as someone else. None of it was real. Pretending she was playing a role in a drama was the coping mechanism to which she had clung.

“Good-bye, Gary,” she said. “Please don’t come back here for another tour. Please.”

“Hey, it’s cool. Don’t wanna be reminded of that shit now you’re all respectable. I get it. You don’t have to take it out on me. Geez.”

The door to Sales Director Dick Plotz’s office was open. Rebecca rapped on the metal frame and poked her head around the corner. “Knock, knock.”

“Oh,” Plotz said, scarcely looking away from his PC monitor. “You. We have a meeting, right?” As he peered at her over the rims of his square-framed glasses, Rebecca imagined the perverse stylist who had convinced him his poorly dyed hair would look cool with bangs.

It’s been three months. Time for our “regular” bi-weekly. Rebecca kept her sarcasm to herself. “We need to talk about the ghost tour packages.”

“Yeah, right.”

Have a seat, Rebecca invited herself when Plotz did not. “Dawn’s joining us, isn’t she?”

“Wasn’t she out there?” Plotz asked, finally getting up from his desk. “She needs to be here.”

His ever-cheerful admin assistant appeared in the doorway as if on cue, notebook in hand. “Rebecca! Great to see you,” she said. “The memorial for Momaday was wonderful. I’ve got some mail for you to pick up when we’re finished.”

The three gathered around the circular table displaying Plotz’s many sales awards under its glass top. He leaned back in his leather upholstered chair, laced his fingers behind his head, and exhaled impatiently. “So?”

“When we met a few months ago you mentioned planning a ‘Haunted Happy Hour’ package again this year. Do you have a date or dates in mind for that?” Plotz seemed to brighten suddenly. “Oh yeah. Halloween’s on a Tuesday this year. Sucks. So I think we’ll do the overnight package the Friday before.”

He leaned forward in his chair. “I’ve got an awesome idea for a new twist. With everything here at the hotel about to change, and with the massive popularity of all these ghost hunter shows on TV, we should do something for the wackos who buy into this crap. Invite them to bring all their ghost-hunting gear – special lenses, magnetic meters, ‘spirit’ recorders – all of it. Hell, we can advertise for psychics and mediums to come and see what they can ‘sense’ in the old place. Charge them up the ass for this unprecedented opportunity.”

Dawn and Rebecca exchanged wary glances.

“It would be popular all right,” Rebecca began. “We often get requests from paranormal investigation groups to set up their equipment, spend the night in one of our ‘haunted’ rooms. But we always decline, because Mr. Beaumont doesn’t want them disrupting business and insists that The Keep is not a haunted hotel. Have you talked to him about this idea?”

Undeterred, Plotz continued as though he were dictating copy. “One night only. For the first time in its long history, Griffins Keep opens its doors to paranormal investigation. What has the hotel been hiding? What will scientific methods and extra-sensory explorations reveal? It’ll be huge.”

“But Mr. Beaumont…”

The sales manager waved his hand dismissively. “Don’t worry about him. I’ll get him on board. He’s a lame duck now anyway, with the TITHE takeover”

Dawn rolled her eyes at Rebecca when Plotz looked away, foreseeing a massive clash of egos over this proposed bit of sensationalism.

For now, they went along. Rebecca said. “How do you see this event? Drinks in the Silver Spoon Club, my introductory ‘Ghost’ Powerpoint, then just set them loose in the hotel?”

“No, no. Can’t let them run around by themselves. You’ll have to take them around on the tour, but let them do their thing as you go.”

“I’d like to draw the line at audio and video-recording then,” Rebecca insisted. “After all, it’s the stories we’re selling. If recorded versions of the tour were available everywhere, who would come to the hotel to pay for it?”

Plotz considered this for a moment, then nodded agreement. “OK, no recording the tour stories. They can take pictures, walk around with their thermometers looking for cold spots – whatever the hell these guys do. The media will be all over it.”

“No question about that,” Rebecca agreed, glancing again at the equally leery Dawn. “No question at all.”

After the meeting, Rebecca followed Dawn to her desk to collect the mail she’d mentioned. “I’ll look through my old emails for some of these ghost-hunting groups I’ve turned down in the past,” she said. “But I’m not contacting any of them until we hear Mr. Beaumont’s approved of all this.”

Dawn nodded. “If we really do offer it, everybody’s going to want to spend the night in the ‘haunted’ room, 940. And you know they’ll be up at all hours, wandering the halls in their bunny slippers, setting up equipment around the hotel, desperate to ‘capture’ something. It’ll be a nightmare for Security. It’ll be a nightmare – Period.”

Although TITHE management was not due to take over until November, their outsourced market researchers had already been at work for months, analyzing The Keep’s clientele and hospitality niche. When they presented their findings to the sales team, Dick Plotz insisted that Rebecca be present. Typically left out of the marketing strategizing, the historian was wary of the invitation. Why was Plotz so keen on including her now?

Riesen-Shyne was an audacious L.A. marketing firm, all about “positioning” and “rebranding.” Their presenter this morning, Marcus Riesen himself, delved right in with Powerpoint piecharts, probing for plums with a dispassionate thumb.

“To get a feel for the hotel and your customers, we conducted several focus groups, and I’d like to share the results with all of you.” His hand-held clicker brought up the first graph. “The initial focus groups were drawn from regular and frequent Griffins Keep patrons. When asked why they chose The Keep over other Denver luxury hotels, their responses consistently mentioned two things: history and elegance. As you can see here, a combined 76% indicated those two factors as influencing their choice.”

Yes! Rebecca wanted to cheer. Here was proof of what she’d been trying to tell Plotz all along. Surely now the marketing focus would reflect these results.

But Riesen-Shyne’s interpretation of the data took none of this into account. Apparently they did not hear – or did not care – what current clientele valued about the hotel.

Mr. Riesen brought up the next piechart. “The second round of focus groups was comprised of people who had never been to The Keep but who were considered desirable customers. When these folks were asked why they did not choose the Griffins Keep, time and again they responded with variations of ‘I heard it was old,’ or ‘I heard it was snobby’ – or exclusive or expensive. Here again, you can see the results charted.”

And on those misperceptions, Riesen-Shyne chose to base their new approach to marketing the hotel.

“So, how are we going to appeal to this affluent, mostly younger, demographic?” Mr. Riesen asked before presenting his solution. “Are you ready for the Griffins Keep’s first-ever TV commercial? Run the video.”

Ready or not, here it came. An in-your-face blast of techno-pop music, quick-take images of young people posing around the hotel, and the tagline; “Griffins Keep: Trending Away from Traditional.” Dick Plotz and the sales staff applauded and hooted.

“This is just a taste of the branding strategy and breakthrough tactics Riesen-Shyne is known for. We’re gonna make the Griffins Keep the chic and contemporary hotel of choice for a whole new generation of consumers.”

From that moment on, history would become a dirty word in the world of Griffins Keep marketing, determined to ignore what made The Keep distinctive.

“Why do we want to be like every other hotel?” Rebecca dared to ask when Mr. Riesen took questions. “There are plenty of places in Denver for people looking for trendy and modern. The Keep is the last place they’ll come for that sort of thing. This should be the one hotel where they can find the warmth and the charm of another era.”

Fully intending to harsh the Riesen buzz, she plunged on,

“And you’re wrong about young people dismissing the past. Kids into steampunk have their own creative take on old tech and old styles. Many of them love historical fiction, historical architecture, historical fashions. And millennials get hooked on the cable TV period dramas as much as older viewers.”

The young marketing guru glowered at Rebecca, saw his grandmother, and discounted her as hopelessly out of touch. “Surveys don’t lie, ma’am,” he replied, pissing her off further with his disingenuous courtesy. “No one wants to turn back the clock except those who can’t keep up with the times.”

So numerous and varied were reports of unexplained phenomena at the Griffins Keep that Rebecca often told different stories to different tour groups. She tried to gauge the particular interests of her audience and tailored her selections accordingly.

“How many of you are familiar with the phenomena known as ‘orbs?’” she asked the guests on today’s tour. Nearly everyone in the group was, some enthusiastically so. For the uninitiated Rebecca explained, “Orbs are relatively new players on the paranormal scene. When people began using digital cameras in the 1990s, they were occasionally surprised to find in their photos these glowing, iridescent bubbles -- though they had seen nothing of the sort when they snapped the pictures. Theories of what these orbs might be range from motes of dust or specks of moisture to spirits of the dead or beings from another plane of reality. Whatever they are, The Keep seems to attract them like flies to honey.”

At the tour stop overlooking the lobby from the mezzanine balcony, she cited an example. “Last year, one of our bellmen was taking pictures of the Griffins Fountain below us here, and when he got his photos developed, he discovered quite a mystery in three of them.

“He was shooting from the Grand Staircase side, so in the background was the front desk, which is where it’s always been. In the first photo, there’s no one behind the desk, but there’s an orb clearly hovering over one side of it. In the second photo – taken, he claims, less than minute later – the orb is gone, and behind the desk stands a man that no one recognizes. And in the third photo – again, less than a minute later – the man is gone, and there’s an orb hovering over the other side of the front desk.”

“Have you seen the actual pictures?” a skeptic asked.

“I have.”

“Can we see them?”

Rebecca shook her head. “Sorry. Our managing director won’t allow us to share any of the ‘ghost’ images we’ve collected. He’s a non-believer, convinced they’re all trick photos created with Photoshop or something like that.” Note to self, Rebecca thought. Screw Beaumont and bring the pictures along next tour.

“I think the orbs are angels,” declared a 60-ish woman in a periwinkle blue polyester pantsuit, taking pictures with her phone in hopes of capturing her own phenomena. “They’re spirits of the dead, but only the good dead.”

“Oh yeah?” said an irreverent young man in the group, apparently no acquaintance. “Then what happens to the spirits of the bad dead? If they’re not orbs – or angels – what are they after they die?”

Unfazed by his challenge, the woman replied bluntly. “Nothing. Total, absolute nothing. Death is the end. Evil souls don’t get eternal life. Not in any form. They’re just suspended, forever and ever, in a terrible black void.”

Rebecca hoped no one saw her shudder. She believed she had experienced that fathomless oblivion in recurring nightmares, decades ago. She remembered the terror as if it were yesterday.

The woman turned to Rebecca and asked directly, “Do you believe in angels?”

“Me? Um, sure. Why not?” But Rebecca couldn’t take the whole idea of angels seriously. Wings and robes, harps and halos? She believed in them about as much she did Santa Claus now. It was all part of the anachronistic Christian doctrine with which she was raised, but which she had finally come to see for what it was. Its dogma ranked alongside fairytales and legends, moralistic fables from a less sophisticated age. Rebecca considered herself more intelligent than the unquestioning faithful who swallowed its mythology. She had not counted herself among them in a long, long time.