Echoes of Fairborn High

Wallace Pettibone’s work hours at the hotel this night would take him out of the option of going to the game, but the dance afterward might yet be an option, if there was any point in going.  He didn’t ordinarily watch the desk and phone system, but Mr. Bodenhorn thought that this boy could probably handle it adequately for short periods.  When the manager went out for dinner himself, he wanted Wallace to cover the desk.  If he was going to do it for the first time, it was fortunate that tonight’s guest population was expected to be very sparse.  Young Pettibone’s most pressing concern as Bodenhorn was about to depart for a while was whether or not he really could do this job all by himself.  He did finally by now know how to do a sign-in procedure, and he did know, at least superficially, how to work the switchboard.  The moment the old man disappeared out the door, however, another concern swept over him like a fast descending fog.  Suddenly he was alone, in a place reputed to be haunted, and he quickly found himself experiencing feelings very similar to those reported by Jeff Murdock.

            Wallace looked up at the fancy chandeliers, which he knew to be able to put out a lot of light, but Bodenhorn had turned the rheostat back to dim the lights to about what they had been when Jeff was working here.  So here the boy sat at the desk, the light of day fading quickly outside, and the daytime employees gone home for the evening.  Surely all those people and their rumors had made too much of the hotel’s reputation for being haunted.  Was he really alone, he wondered?  He knew of no one else that worked at this hour, not even the dining room, which was closed due to replacement of major kitchen equipment.  It was uncertain how long it would remain closed.  The switchboard was dead and quiet.  Wallace inserted a plug into the city line, just to make certain it was live.  Fortunately, it was.  No sound now except occasional cars passing by.

            As the boy felt fear gripping him tighter and tighter, he recalled someone telling him that the best way to conquer one’s fear is to face it by doing something straight on to challenge it.  He thought of the interior corridor, that passageway to the back of the hotel, which had a louvered door, the utility room, and the big heavy metal door separating him from it.  He felt gooseflesh as he rose to approach the much feared hallway and got himself to go through the louvered door, although cautiously.  But as he contemplated opening the metal door, even for a brief moment to conquer his fear, he was hesitant.  He put his hand on the knob, but couldn’t turn it.  He mustered the will to do it anyway.  The big door opened perhaps a foot or so, enough so that Wallace could see down the length of the corridor.  Just the sight of this passageway was strangely frightening to him, but now one thing added to his concern.  Although the ceiling tiles were now intact and in place and the corridor was otherwise “normal” looking, about half of the fluorescent light tubes were out.  And as fate would have it, two more winked out in the few seconds while he was watching!  Wallace quickly slammed the door and raced back to the quarter-circle desk area outside of the louvered door.  He was gasping for breath, and his heart was pounding. 

            It took several minutes for him to calm down and get his heart beats back to normal, but just as it seemed like everything would hold to its natural pattern until Mr. Bodenhorn got back, the boy heard a very heavy metallic scraping sound coming from the direction of the interior corridor.  Its suddenness made him jump a foot out of his chair.  It was an agonizing kind of scrape, like something in great distress, and it echoed for a second or so afterward.  Then, another sound that he couldn’t identify, except perhaps something like a human voice in great agony, followed by a swish-swish sound.  He imagined something—or someone—swinging back and forth.  He thought of the stories of the old man, dangling from the hook four stories above the passageway.  Wallace could think of only one thing that made sense to him now, and that was to get out of there!  He didn’t bother to go through the utility room to get out of the quarter-circle desk area.  He jumped up over the desk and ran to the front door.  He was tempted to simply bolt and run down to the street, but he saw Mr. Bodenhorn coming up the front steps.  The old manager wondered why Wallace was nearly outside of the building, but since things were so quiet anyway, he decided to let the boy go home early.  The truth was that Wallace couldn’t have tolerated anything else.  He resolved to quit his job the next day.