Marcus came awake with a jolt as Tiff parked the car rather abruptly just to see if he'd been sleeping. He smiled, rubbing his eye as he looked over at her. "Are we there already?"
"It was three and a half hours on the road," Tiff said. She climbed from her car with a groan and stretched grandly, rubbing her back.
"It felt like no time at all," Marcus said, springing out. "Once we got on the highway and you started that boring book on tape, I was out like a light."
"What? That book explained the whole backstory of this hotel, and the ghosts that haunt it!"
"Oh, yeah," Marcus said.
"Yeah!" Tiff said, shutting the car door. "We were supposed to be knowledgeable about them together, so there wouldn't have to be so much exposition."
"I remember," Marcus said, yawning. He took their suitcase from the trunk and turned to the neogothic building as the sun sank behind it. "Sorry, Babe, it was a long day. This place is obviously haunted anyway, I don't need to hear a whole book about it."
Tiff sighed, frowning at him. "It was a lot of complex, emotional stuff. Also, does that mean you didn't even hear my witty comments?"
Marcus frowned, shaking his head. "Sorry."
"It's okay. I feel better now that you didn't laugh."
Marcus pushed the trunk closed and joined her on the way up the stairs. "So what ghosts can we expect to see?"
"There are so many ghosts here," Tiff assured him, grabbing his arm. "This hotel opened in 1909, and less than a year later, a man named Sam Lamour was sleeping with a married woman in room 16, when her jealous husband comes in brandishing a pistol. He killed them both, then himself, pow, pow, bang!" she pointed the bang of her hand-gun at her own head and leaned on him more in death. She looked up grinning, "Apparently, there's a ghost that sits in the corner and watches people fuck!"
Marcus laughed. "Awesome."
"Well, except for the senseless, violent deaths."
"Tragic," Marcus agreed somberly.
"But they say that to this day, people can feel the sexy presence of Sam Lamour and his lover. Through the years, a bunch more horny ghosts started appearing as people have died here in mysteriously sexy circumstances."
"Uh oh. How dangerous is this?"
"It might get pretty scary, and it can't be scary without some danger, can it?" Tiff asked. "It's a haunted hotel, of course there's a chance of going insane and murdering each other."
"Hopefully we'll get the ghosts just out for a good time. And their idea of a good time won't be making us go insane and murder each other. Or elevators full of blood."
"I wouldn't have come here if this was one of those haunted hotels that has periods," Tiff assured him. She curtsied when he pulled the extravagantly carved wooden door open for her with a bow and entered the cool, dim lobby. Tiff gripped Marcus' arm as she looked around warily at their dark surroundings, sure something was going to grab her. She stumbled against a piece of furniture.
Marcus laughed. "Take your shades off, you goofball," he said.
"So much better," she admitted, pushing them up over her forehead. The room was still dim, but she could see the ottoman she had almost tripped on, the chair next to it, and the plastic skeleton in a leisure suit that lounged there. She shook her head. "No, I preferred it dark."
Marcus smirked. "You've got a bone to pick with this place already?"
"Fucking terrible," Tiff laughed, leading him toward the desk she could now see, and was glad the person behind the desk was oblivious. The young woman was twenty or so, with headphones on and watching something on the small screen, her feet were up still as they approached, she appeared not to notice anything until Tiff rang the bell.
She looked up and sighed, pulling the headphones off and tossing them to the desk. "Welcome to the Scarier Inn," she said. "Do you have a reservation?"
"We do," Marcus said, holding his phone up with a barcode, which she scanned. "How haunted is this place?"
"Oh, completely," she said, rolling her eyes. "Ghosts everywhere, do you want the tour?"
"No thanks," Tiff said. "I heard the book on the way in, and you've already shattered the illusion enough."
"You want me to be scarier?" the woman asked.
"That's not scary, that's attitude-y. Do it in a spooky voice."
"Tiff," Marcus said, shaking his head as he set a bracing hand on her shoulder. "Let's just save it for the room?" He looked at the clerk and mouthed the word 'sorry' as he took the room key. Tiff did not like the smile she gave him in reply. "Are there a lot of guests here?"
"It's mostly skiers this time of year, but none with how warm it's been." She leaned forward on the counter, checking him out. "I just threw old Bonesy out because of the spooky reservation."
"This place is going to make me actually go insane," Tiff said.
The clerk rolled her eyes, grabbing her headphones. "Room 16, the Lamour Suite."
Tiff clapped her hands as Marcus collected the keys and bounced up the stairs ahead of him to the second floor. She bounced down the hall to room sixteen, and bounced as he inserted the old-fashioned room key into an old-fashioned lock. The room, unlike the plastic bones and disinterested clerk in the lobby, had the perfect atmosphere for a haunted hotel. The elaborate neogothic moldings carried through from the door to the dresser to the four-poster bed, set in shades of red that stood out as the brightest color in the room. Tiff moved past it to the chair in the corner, upholstered in worn blue velvet, it didn't fit in with the rest of the décor.
"This is it," Tiff said. Her hand stopped a few inches shy of touching the fabric, her heart pounding.
"What is it?" Marcus asked. "It looks like an old chair."
"You should have listened to the book with me."
