Daniel Becker felt a sense of foreboding as he walked down Beaufort Street. It was a quarter to ten on a Friday night when he turned the corner on to Morris Avenue. He slowed his pace, looking up at the night sky. A waxing crescent moon and hundreds of stars lit the purple canopy. Then Daniel's focus shifted down again to the road ahead of him. A few hundred yards in the distance loomed a large Victorian house with white shingles, blue trim and a wrap-around verandah with elaborate spindlework that faced the road. Daniel knew that this building was the cause of the growing uneasy feeling that he had. He drew in a deep breath and continued walking.
The house on Morris Avenue was now The Seahorse Inn -- a bed and breakfast run by Cassie and Gordon Ellison. Daniel had begun working there part-time in mid-March to earn some spending money while he attended Kenwick College. He was twenty, in his second year of a journalism course, and glad to be making some money.
When Daniel saw the ad in the newspaper for the job at The Seahorse Inn he hurried down to fill out an application that afternoon after his classes finished. Three days later he received a call from Gordon Ellison notifying him that the job was his if he wanted it. Daniel immediately agreed, and and was given three hours of work each Monday and Wednesday evening, washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen, as well as longer shifts on Friday and Saturday nights. It was during those weekend shifts when Daniel was the night porter at the bed and breakfast that caused him some trepidation, and despite having worked there for three weeks, it had not abated. If anything, it had intensified.
On Fridays and Saturdays Daniel began work at 10PM and worked until six the next morning, when Gordon, Cassie, and the other staff began arriving for work. Nothing much ever happened throughout the night, but someone still needed to be there in case a guest arrived, or one needed something, or there was an emergency of some sort.
During the week the night porter was an elderly man named Frank Richardson. He would spend the nights doing crossword puzzles, or reading novels by John Updike or Clive Cussler. But many times Al Conway, the cook at The Seahorse Inn, found Frank asleep in a wingback chair beside a large silk fern in the lobby as the sun was coming up.
Daniel had grown up in Welsford Cove, and spent all of his life there. He was very aware of the local history, especially of the house on Morris Avenue. In the eighteenth century the tiny seaport town he lived in was a stopping point for privateers, rum runners and buccaneers of all sorts. Back then, the house on Morris Avenue was the town's only brothel. Like all heritage buildings, it had a colourful past, albeit sordid, and even rather gruesome.
From the time he was a child, Daniel had heard the local legends about the house -- that it was haunted by the ghost of a prostitute, Beverley Sullivan. Although the accounts varied, sometimes placing her age at sixteen, other times nineteen, and her manner of death being either strangulation by a client, or suicide, the bottom line always remained the same: the restless soul of Beverley Sullivan still roamed the halls of The Seahorse Inn.
Daniel had always listened with wide-eyed fascination to these chilling accounts of Beverley's fate and her continued presence at the bed and breakfast, but he had also scoffed at them. They made for entertaining yarns, but his skepticism always won out over legends and superstitious nonsense, as he often called these ghost stories.
Once Daniel began working at The Seahorse Inn, and listened to the first-hand accounts and experiences of the staff, his skepticism waned, to be replaced by disquiet. As he approached the bed and breakfast that Friday night, his mind wandered back to his second week of work, when he had his first conversation with a a co-worker about Beverley Sullivan and the haunting at The Seahorse Inn.
The first staff member who imparted her experiences at the bed and breakfast to Daniel was Naomi Stanton. She was a pretty blonde woman of thirty-one years, with alert blue eyes and a perpetual smile. She worked as a waitress and chambermaid at The Seahorse Inn, and had done so for close to ten years. She struck Daniel as being a level-headed, intelligent, and generally calm person, so he was surprised when she began recounting her story.
"I know they sound like silly ghost stories that you tell around a Boy Scout campfire, but they're not, Daniel. They're real. Beverley's ghost is real." Naomi was sitting across from Daniel in the dining room one Wednesday evening after they had finished washing dishes. She took a sip of coffee from the mug in her hand and leaned forward, locking her eyes on his. "About a year ago, I was carrying a basket of laundry down the stairs, and all-of-a-sudden I felt someone push me, hard, from behind. I damn near fell down the stairs. I dropped the basket and had to grab onto the railing to catch myself. When I turned around, there was no one there." She paused a beat, then added "But that's not all."
"Holy crap," Daniel hissed, feeling his pulse outrun his skepticism. "What else happened?"
"Well, one morning I was changing the sheets in number 11 -- they say that used to be Beverley's room -- and I felt something... not like something touched me like on the stairs, but, I dunno... a presence. It was like a cold breeze went right through me. Not washed over me like a normal breeze, but
right through
my body. It almost felt like an electric shock. It scared the bejesus out of me." Naomi's eyes danced around as she tightened her lips. "Ever since then, I won't go into that room alone," she added in a somber tone.
"Have you ever seen her?" Daniel asked.
Naomi gave her head a shake. "Her ghost, you mean? No -- thank god," she said with a laugh. "I'd quit on the spot if I did." She gulped down the rest of her coffee, then gave a suspicious look left, then right before leaning closer. "And all that talk about Beverley killing herself, or being murdered by a john is bullshit," she said. "She was murdered by Agnes Cahill, the madame who owned this place."
Daniel was intrigued, and leaned closer to Naomi, resting his forearms on the table. "How do you know?" he asked, lowering his voice like she had done.
"My great-great grandfather owned the tavern here back then," she said, then gave him a weak smile. "He also spent a lot of money at the whorehouse. He knew what really happened to Beverley, and the story was passed down to his son, and so on, for generations. Beverley was pregnant by a wealthy sea captain. He had promised to marry her, and I guess Agnes was jealous, or didn't want to lose her best customer, so she murdered Beverley."
"But... how did she get away with it?" Daniel asked with a puzzled look.
"Agnes said she died having an illegal abortion -- it happened a lot back then, unfortunately. Everyone accepted the story because it was plausible. Besides, she was just a whore, so it didn't matter anyway." Naomi shrugged, but there was indignation in her eyes.
"God, that's so sad," Daniel said.
"Yeah, it is," she agreed. "I guess that's why Beverley is still a restless spirit today; justice hasn't been done. Most people don't know the truth, but maybe that's all she wants so she can be at peace." Naomi paused and cast a wary look around, then in a hush said "If I show you something, do you promise never to tell Cassie or Gordon that I showed you? They don't want us talking about this with anyone."
"Yeah... of course," Daniel readily agreed. "What is it?"
"Follow me."
Naomi hurriedly lead Daniel out of the dining room and into the lobby, then up the stairs to the second floor. She reached in the front pocket of her black slacks as she walked and brought out a brass key fob with a cluster of keys attached to it. When they reached the door with 11 on it made out of brass she pushed a key in the lock. It clicked, and she slowly opened the door.
