I closed the door behind me, slowly entering the room and taking a seat beside Rose on the bed.
Up close, I could see the age lines on her face and neck with slight wrinkles around her mouth and up on her forehead. She must have worried quite a bit as the years passed before her death. Her smile tough was kind and soft, unlike it had been earlier when we had our first face to face encounter.
Her arm came around me, her hand resting on my shoulder while the other one took both of mine, her voice soft and filled with a mother's warmth, "Miss Martin... Kylie, what I'm about to tell you is a very distressing story. Several of our previous guests, both living and deceased, have shown little sympathy for our family. I can hardly blame them of course, as it is their decision entirely - especially after everything that's happened."
"I understand, Mrs. Hall," I replied.
The ghost sighed, "It's just been... a very long time it seems, since someone in this place showed any empathy toward us - even Jimmy. I know that the darker side of him has none - a monster at his core - but in reality, he really is a sweet boy. He's very much like how Hugo was before everything fell apart."
"And Hugo Hall - Jimmy's father - was once a good man? What caused that dark side to appear?"
"Perhaps I should start at the beginning," Rose spoke, going back into her memories, "It was about twenty or so years ago when I eventually told the dark truth about what happened to Hugo to Jimmy. Things had gone terrible after Hugo Punch started making regular appearances during the comedy performances - the jokes going so far as to insult anyone in the audience that was... well, let's say that one guest in particular wasn't too fond of being called a 'blood cow munter.'"
"I can understand why," I answered.
Rose chuckled, "Regardless, the guest decided to bad talk Jimmy and tell him what she really thought of him and his comedy act. Hugo became offended and had tied her up, locking her away in one of the rooms on the third floor.
"She was lucky I had been around the area and found her. Neither of us would have wanted to know what Hugo would've done if I hadn't found her in time. I was surprised that she didn't press any charges against Jimmy or I, but she did tell the newspapers."
"Which opened up a whole new can of worms, I imagine?" I asked.
"Oh, you don't know half of it..."
***
Rose's POV
The journalists had been knocking at the door all day, their voices disturbing the few guests that remained in our little hotel.
"Mrs. Hall!" I heard one of them call out, "We would like a word, please? Open the door."
The last of my staff members - the cook and a housekeeper - looked on from the kitchen I stood outside my door.
I could feel the stress and anger rising inside of my body, the heat of the pressure becoming too much for me to handle. It was like when I had discovered that Harvey had passed away, when I had been notified that Jimmy's psychiatrist had died in the basement, or when that little girl had taken a tumble down the stairs and cracked her head open on the landing. I felt powerless.
I knew that they were looking for Jimmy, though. Those reporters were going to ask where he was hiding and seek him out. I wasn't going to allow them to have him, though. He may have been nearly thirty by this point, but he was still my son - he was my responsibility to take care of him until the day I died.
"Rose?" the cook's familiar voice called from the kitchen doors, "Should we go out and talk to them? It doesn't sound like they'll go away at this rate."
"No, I refuse to give them the satisfaction of nothing but rumors and lies," I growled, my anger and annoyance slightly showing, "That's all what reporters are - nothing but a bunch of bellend bastards that latch onto anything anyone says."
"Geez, you don't need to use such language," the housekeeper mumbled, "You do run a hotel after all."
I furrowed my brows at the two of them. I didn't need the reminder that I owned and ran the hotel - I had been doing so on my own since Harvey died nearly a year ago.
The knocking was now turning into banging, the voices getting louder and louder.
"Mrs. Hall! Mrs. Hall! Come on out! Let's be reasonable!"
'You're the ones being unreasonable,' I thought, growling under my breath again.
"Rose, perhaps you should let us take care of this," the housekeeper spoke up again, "They won't go away from the sounds of it. Maybe if we say we know nothing about it -"
"No, that will only fuel the fire, so to say," I argued, "They'll leave after a while. For the time being, please get lunch prepared for the few guests that remain - make something warm and comforting if you can."
The two workers nodded as they ducked into the kitchen.
I rubbed my face with my hands, praying to God that the journalists would go away and soon. I didn't want a repeat incident in this hotel - too many issues had occurred over the past twenty plus years, far too many for my taste. I ducked into my room, closing the door behind me with a soft click.
This room had been barred for so long, but it was a room that once held happy memories.
I say it was my room because it had been, once upon a time, when I was a younger woman and Hugo was still alive. He had insisted on having this room as our bedroom - it was close enough to the register desk, perfect if a night traveler came by and needed a place to stay for a few hours, and if there was an issue from one of the guests. By all accounts it made sense, and it doubled as his office when he returned from the local school each day to grade papers and write out class notes for his students.
I had moved out of it after things changed between us - when his temper slowly began to spiral out of control, when the accusations of school beatings began - it was like we had become strangers. He slept in this room, and I took a different one for myself. He would only let me in the room when he wanted me, and nothing more. Then, after his death, it hurt too much to even try to reason myself with returning to that bedroom. I had it locked, claiming it was nothing but storage when Harvey or Jimmy asked about it.
Now, I stood in the darkness among dust and decay.
The room was once painted a pale spring green with deep brown wooden floor boards. Rugs of various colors laid on each side of the bed, chasing the chill in the early spring when we first moved here from the city. Paintings and portraits covered the walls, the faces of our family always with us as we moved through life without a care in the world. It was also in this room where Hugo would try his next little magic trick - usually something small to flatter me or make my heart skip with the love I carried for him and him alone in this world.
But now, that warmth was sucked away by the cold reality of what it was I had married.
The room's paint had faded, the floorboards cracked with age. Photos had dropped from their hooks over time, glass and wooden framing broken beyond repair. Hugo's warmth and memory had evaporated as well from this place, it now held the darkness that had slowly over taken him leading up to his death.
I crouched down and pulled one of the old photographs from the broken glass, careful not to cut myself. The marriage photo was one of a few happy moments in our short lived marriage. It was simple - just us, a friend of ours, and a priest. Hugo already had a captive audience from his magic performances, our simple wedding was perfect for a celebrity like him. I had often wondered if he had started down into the darkness because he had married me - a simple girl with nothing but the clothes on her back and her love for magic shows that kept her moving through life.
But I knew what the locals said, what they whispered behind closed doors. It was something about the Hall family curse. Personally, I didn't believe in that mumbo-jumbo about family curses, but when things had begun to change was when I started to really worry.
Now, with these new events taking place with Jimmy as the main perpetrator, I was worrying all over again.
"Will things ever go back to normal for either of us?" I asked no one in particular.
But something told me that this was just the beginning.
***
"Jimmy? Jimmy, dear?" I knocked on my son's door, trying to get his attention, "I brought something up for you. Will you come out and talk with me, please?"
James Alexander Hall was much like his father with either forgetting that I existed or ignoring me. Though, unlike his father, James - or Jimmy as I liked to call him - was a bit more attentive when I asked something from him to a point. However, it seemed tonight he wanted to ignore me.
When the journalists had arrived in the later hours of the afternoon, I had rushed Jimmy up into his room and had asked him to stay there until one of the workers came by. I didn't want anyone else involved in our little misunderstanding the night before and Jimmy didn't remember tying the guest up at all - it was that other side of him, Hugo Punch.
About an hour after the journalists left, some vowing to return at sunrise to get an answer out of me and my staff for what happened, one of the workers returned to my office with a note from Jimmy.
Dear Mum,
I'm sorry for everything.
Good-bye
The stress of everything that had been going on the past year without Harvey to help us had taken a toll on all of us. I knew that Jimmy blamed himself for Harvey's death, even though I knew it was self-defense. Harvey had come at him with a loaded gun - five rounds still in it too. He could have killed Jimmy.
I took the note and left it on my desk in the office behind the register counter. I intended on taking Jimmy's supper up to him and talking with him myself. There had been times when I had felt emotionally unavailable for him, now he was all the family I had left in this world. I was going to try and make things right.
I heard water running through the doorway when Jimmy didn't answer my calls.
"Jimmy?" I pushed my hand against the door, opening the room up as the sounds of water became louder. The carpet squished under my shoes as I walked inside, meaning that the bathroom must've had a leaking problem and was spraying water everywhere.
"Jimmy, honestly," I sighed, opening the door to the bathroom, "you have to shut the wat-"
My heart caught in my throat at what I saw.
Jimmy had sprawled his long lanky body into the bathtub face down. He was entirely soaked through as the water on the tub taps sprayed water on his head, keeping him permanently trapped under the running water as it sprayed aggressively out of the tap into the tub and over-flowing onto the floor and out the doorway, soaking the carpet.
"JIMMY!" I dropped the plate of food, the china shattering as I ran into the bathroom shutting off the water.
I pulled Jimmy's body out of the bath and onto his side, patting his back as water erupted from his throat and mouth, eyes opening wildly. He coughed and sputtered as he regained his breath, my hand on his back rubbing slow circles.
"It's alright, Jimmy," I smiled, "Everything is alright now..."
"Everything is NOT alright!" Jimmy leapt up from his spot on the ground, like he had been possessed by the devil himself, "You keep saying that everything is alright, but it ISN'T MUM! I know what Hugo did! And I know that you've been covering for him to protect me! I can't take it anymore! I-I..."
His voice trailed off as he broke down into tears, crying, "Why does he make me do these things? I just want him to stop it... I want to stop it!"
"I know, Jimmy, I know," I stood slowly, not wanting to make the situation worse than it already was, "but taking your life is not the answer."
"Then what is mum?" Jimmy's voice sounded so broken, lost, "If I don't take my life, he's going to keep hurting people!"
"Then you do have at least a sense of what Hugo's been doing," I answered solemnly.
"Now I do! Especially after everything that's been going on around here! What in God's name is happening to me? Why am I like this?!"
"Calm down, Jimmy," I came close and took his hands away from his face. The tears had started stains down his reddening cheeks while he was still soaked in the clothes from the bath. His tall body was shaking from either the cold or the fear, I wasn't sure - but I needed him to calm down. I needed to explain things.
I pulled a handkerchief from my pocket and whipped at his eyes, the touch comforting to my son, "There is something that I should have told you long ago - I blame myself for the way you turned out, it wasn't your fault. Everything that's happened has been because of me and my ignorance."
"I-I don't understand, mum," Jimmy was confused.
I licked my lips, "I think you had better sit down, love. I think... no, I know that now is as good a time as any to tell you about your father. The man who gave you to me, but at a cost - a very high one at that."