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One
Penny
The first thing you need to know is that Hennigin Hall is haunted. The rumors stretch back for generations, whispered through the town: ghostly sightings, spooky happenings, weird sounds in the night. Objects falling off tables as if pushed, and strange dreams among the hotel guests. Hazy memories and lost pockets of time.
The works.
The superstitious locals—which is most of them—steer clear. Lord knows there’s plenty of weird shit in this town, and they figure we don’t have to go knocking for it. Half the time, it’ll find us anyway.
Meanwhile, the bravest souls demand higher wages to work at Hennigin Hall, and then sell the tourists staying there overpriced dish towels and fridge magnets with cartoon ghosts on them. Gotta make it worth the shivers down your spine somehow, right?
The second thing you need to know is that I started work at Hennigin Hall three months ago, but I didn’t take this job for the money. As a maid, I’m at the bottom of the hotel food chain anyways. I make peanuts. Besides, they make us wear these old-timey maids’ dresses, with scalloped white aprons around our waists, and no mere greed could make me agree to that.
No, I took this job because I want to see a ghost. I want an encounter. I want a thrill, damn it, and to feel the tiny hairs rise on the back of my neck. Is that too much to ask?
Because I’m twenty three years old, I’ve lived in this town for my whole life, and everyone else has some kind of horror story. Everyone else has some freaky thing that happened to them that they’ll only tell in hushed tones, when there are no kids around and there’s a bottle of whiskey nearby. Everyone else… except me.
Seriously. What’s up with that? Am I not hauntable enough? I’ve tried wearing flowy white nightgowns and leaving my bedroom window open at night; I’ve swum at the shipwreck during moonlit summer nights, and picnicked at the overgrown cemetery. Nada.
I’m this close to dancing naked in the stone circle on the hill above town. But first… Hennigin Hall. Maybe this can still happen with all my clothes on.
* * *
“Room thirteen needs doing,” the head housekeeper says, squinting through her thick tortoiseshell glasses to read from her clipboard. We’re gathered in the kitchens to be assigned our morning tasks, all sagging against the counters or propped up by the walls, yawning.
The kitchen is old-fashioned, with cast iron pots and pans hanging from the walls, and a scuffed flagstone floor. A black cat naps on the windowsill behind a curtain of dried herbs, and the warmth from the oven is making all our eyelids droop.
“It’s a deep clean,” she says. “The walls started bleeding again in the night.”
A low groan travels through the crowd. Bloody wallpaper is a pain in the ass to clean, and we’ve all had the strained muscles to prove it. But—
“I’ll do it!” My hand shoots up, and it’s the only offer in the whole sleepy crowd. Mrs Garfunkel peers at me over her glasses and shrugs, then goes back to her clipboard. Her hair is scraped back into a severe bun, streaked with gray.
“Penny on room thirteen, then. Scrub it well, girl—some big shot author’s staying there this week. The last thing we need is a bad review. Now, I need two strong pairs of hands in the ballroom, and—oh, drat. Who let that cat in here again?”
Leaning back against my patch of wall, I let the rest of the morning meeting fade into a dull hum. It’s a dreary Tuesday morning and this room is stiflingly hot, but I’m not sleepy anymore. Room thirteen. That’s a spooky number, right? Unlucky for some?
Maybe today will be my day. Maybe the wallpaper will bleed right in front of my eyes, and I’ll see the live show rather than the aftermath.
I won’t even mind cleaning the walls a second time. Not if it means I finally get my paranormal encounter.
The hope buoys me all the way through the hotel halls, my cleaning cart trundling over the faded old rugs. The supplies rattle together, so loud in the morning hush. Voices murmur behind closed doors, and TVs drone through the walls as guests wake up.
Oil paintings line the corridors of Hennigin Hall: portraits of long-dead people with bored eyes that watch us go about our work. I poke my tongue out at a stern-looking admiral posing on the prow of a boat, sea spray flying all around him, but no luck. He doesn’t lunge out of the painting to teach me some manners.
Shame.
When I knock on room thirteen’s door, there’s no answer. I knock a second time, ears straining, but… nothing. Silence. I’m good to go, and I fish the heavy key from my pocket.
The door handle sticks, the metal strangely warm. As though someone just gripped it, their skin feverishly hot, and left their imprint on the brass…
I huff and jiggle it open. The door creaks as it swings wide. “Hello?”
White sheets are twisted on the unmade four-poster bed, and the carved wooden desk is covered in scrawled note paper. A knitted black sweater dangles off the back of the chair, one sleeve tickling the floorboards.
It’s a mess.
This author uses an old paperback as a coffee mug coaster, and an ancient old laptop that looks like it weighs a ton to lift. The screen glows with a blank word document, and the curtains are closed so the only light in the room is the desk lamp. Crimson tracks glisten on the walls, dark and sticky, and the air tastes like pennies.
