I put on the suit anyway.
I don’t know if you will understand that. I’m not sure I understand it myself. I only know that for twenty-nine years, nobody ever waited for me. And for seven nights, someone did.
At 11:50 PM on June fourteenth, the bell for Room 9 rang one last time.
I climbed the stairs slowly. The hallway was so cold that the window at the end had frost on it. In June. In Savannah.
The door was open. Rose stood inside in her lace dress, white flowers in her hair. She looked at my suit. Then she looked at my face, and she saw what I knew.
“You read it,” she said.
“Lillian wrote it down,” I said. “Before she died.”
Rose closed her eyes. When she opened them, they were wet.
“The first night you came up those stairs,” she said, “I wanted you dead. I wanted him to pay, and you were all of him that was left. By the third night, I wanted you to stay because I wanted you. I don’t know which one is stronger, Sam. I really don’t.”
The clock downstairs began to chime. One.
“Go,” she said. “The door is open. Go now, and don’t come back.”
Two. Three.
I thought about the window I used to stand at as a kid. Waiting. Nobody coming.
Four. Five.
I stepped into the room.
Six. Seven.
“He promised he would come up by midnight,” Rose whispered.
I took her cold hands in mine. “I came,” I said.
Eight. Nine. Ten.
She kissed me. It was like kissing winter.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Behind me, very softly, the door locked.
What Walter Found
Walter came in at six, like always. The bell board was quiet. The night desk was empty.
He took the spare key and climbed to the third floor. The hallway was warm. In the sitting room, the record player was still turning with no sound, the needle stuck at the end of the record.
Room 9 was unlocked.
Sam lay on the made bed in his dark suit, his hands folded on his chest. He was smiling, the way people smile when they are having a good dream. In his fingers was a single white rose, dry and brown at the edges, like it had been pressed in a book for a hundred years.
Walter sat on the end of the bed for a while. Then he called the police, and then he called Mrs. Hayes.
The next night, a new clerk sat at the front desk. At 11:50 PM, he looked up at the old bell board, the way Walter had told him to.
The bell for Room 9 did not ring.
It has not rung since.
About This Ghost Love Story
The Marlowe Hotel is made up, but Savannah is known as one of the most haunted cities in America. If Rose stayed with you, read Every Woman He Loves Disappears and The Collector of Broken Hearts, or browse more dark romance stories. For another haunted hotel, try Charleville Lodge.
