The Lost Hotel

Cherie and Gail check into a hotel that mysteriously moves through space and time.

The Lost Hotel

By Cari Lynn Vaughn

 

     Cherie Carriger studied the outside of the hotel curiously.  It appeared to be stone, with gargoyles hanging off the top of the fifth story.  The Windsor had an antiquated look about it, but that was no surprise since it was built in 1890.   Cherie’s friend Gail joined her on the red carpet and together they entered through elegant glass doors.   Inside the lobby looked straight out of the early 1900s with the exception of a television set and coffee maker.  

       Together they approached the wooden front desk.  Before them stood a man in black pants that was held up by suspenders and clean, crisp white shirt.  He smiled as they stopped in front of the desk.  “Hello,” he greeted.  “My name is Ray Cabernet. I am the owner of the Windsor.  How can I help you?”

      “We’d like a room with two beds,” Cherie replied.

      “Very well,” he said checking his log book.

      “No computer?” Gail asked, surprised.

      “It doesn’t always work right,” he said, “So we went back to doing things the old fashioned way.”   He jotted something down in his book and then took a couple of keys from a hook.  “You will be in room 201.”

     “Aren’t you going to ask how long we will be staying?” Cherie said as she took the keys from him.

     “No need.”

     “Why’s that?”

     “Because no one has ever been able to leave.”

     “What on earth do you mean by that?”  Cherie replied, shocked.

     “The hotel Windsor is special.  It disappears and reappears in various times and places throughout history.  As far as I can tell though, no one has ever been able to leave once they check in.”
     “You’re telling me this hotel time travels?” Gail asked incredulously. 

     “Yep,” Ray smiled, his eyes twinkling with merriment.

     “If what you say is true, then why can’t we walk out of here now, while it is still the present?  Or walk out into any other time?” Cherie asked.

      “Guests have been known to explore other times and places, but before the hotel jumps, it always pulls you back in.  It won’t let you stay outside the hotel while it is traveling.  Everyone must be inside when it jumps or it forces you to return.”

       Gail laughed, “This has must be some sort of joke.  Whoever heard of time traveling hotels?  Are we on camera?  Is this some sort of Comic-Con thing?”

       “Comic-con?” Ray said, “Never heard of it.  No, it is no joke.”

       “How old are you?” Cherie suddenly asked.

       “I was 45 when the hotel first traveled.  I don’t suppose I’ve aged since then.  But I’ve been as far as a hundred and ten years in the future so far.  Who knows when we’ll go to next?  What year did you come from?”

       “2012,” Cherie replied.  “What year were you born?”

       “1850.”

       “Who was the president of the United States when you were born?” Gail added. 

       “Millard Fillmore.”

       Gail looked at Cherie, “Is that right?”

       “Sounds right,” Cherie said. 

       “So who’s the president of the United States in your time?” Ray asked.  “Last guest I had was in 2005 and he said George W Bush was president.”
       “Yeah, he was.  Now it is Barack Obama.  He’s our first black president,” Cherie said proudly.

        “Well, half black anyway,” Gail muttered.

        “Any other questions?” Ray asked after a moment of silence.

        “No, I don’t think so,” Cherie said stepping away from the desk.

        “I probably should tell you one other thing though.”

        “What’s that?” Cherie asked as she stopped in her tracks.

        “I’m a shapeshifter,” he said.  And with that he blurred before their eyes.  Suddenly a white wolf jumped onto the desk and looked at them intently.

        “We must be so tired we are hallucinating,” Cherie muttered.  She turned from the wolf tiredly and headed to the old fashioned iron cage elevator.  Cherie and Gail might have been scared of the wolf and the story he’d told them if they’d actually believed him at the time.  They were tired and disbelieving of what he’d told them, so they were able to go to their room and go to bed without worry. 

         When the two women went down to breakfast the next morning they found the lounge filled with a strange combination of people.  There was a mother, father and three daughters dressed in clothes from 1900.  In the corner sat a woman wearing a dress and make-up from the 1950s.  At another table a bald man in a suit sat by himself.  He read a paper from 1958 while eating hot sauce on his eggs.  A man and a woman from the 1940s arrived and sat a table for two.  They chatted over coffee and smoked together quietly.  A woman from the 1980s and the man who was from 2005 were putting food on their plates from the buffet laid out on the table. 

        Gail looked at her best friend Cherie and asked, “Do you think Ray was right?”

       “About the time traveling thing?” she said taking toast with jelly on it. 

       “Yeah,” Gail said grabbing a glass of orange juice and a bagel.

             While they were eating breakfast, the man from 1900 approached him.  “Hello there.  My name is Donald Darko.  What might your name be?”

     “Gail Priest,” Gail answered.

     “Cherie Carriger,” Cherie answered.

     “Nice to meet you Miss Priest and Miss Carriger.  Sitting over is my wife Hannah and our daughters Stana, Phillipa and Edwina.”

      Gail and Cherie looked over at the girls in their white dresses.  They smiled and waved pleasantly before going back to eating their breakfasts. 

      “So how long have you been here at the Windsor?” Cherie asked.

      “That is a bit of trick question isn’t it? We arrived on the 15^th of July in the year 1900.  By my estimate we’ve spent a total of two years here, traveling from time to time.”

       “Two years is a long time to spend in a hotel,” Cherie replied.

       “I suppose it is, but it could be worse.”

       “Don’t you miss your home?” Gail asked.

       “I do, but there is nothing more we can do. The hotel has a mind of its own.”

       “Does it now?” Cherie asked.  She didn’t believe the hotel was a supernatural entity.  She felt there had to be some sort of logical explanation for the time dislocation they were experiencing. 

       “Ostensibly,” he sighed.

       “Who are they?” Gail asked pointing the blonde woman from the 1950s and the bald man sitting beyond her.

        “The woman is called January and the man is named September,” he replied.

        “Those are peculiar names,” Gail replied.

        “So they are.  Peculiar names for peculiar people.”

        “Any idea where they came from?” Cherie asked.

        “They are agents of some kind.  Some call them observers and others call them protectors.”

        “Whom do they protect or observe?” Gail asked.

        “The hotel.  There was some interest in it as a phenomenon in the late 1950s I am told.  They were sent to investigate,” Donald said.

        “Let me guess, they checked in to see what the fuss was and got stuck in time like the rest of us?” Cherie said, still not quite believing their predicament. 

        “Quite right,” Donald replied.  He paused for a moment and then said, “Well, if you need anything we are in room 210.  Good day.”  He nodded and headed back over to his family.  Gail and Cherie watched as he sat down beside his wife Hannah and began to eat. 

        “Do you really think we are stuck in time?” Gail asked as she turned back to Cherie.

        “Only one way to find out,” she said.

         When they finished their breakfast, they headed out the front door.  The door opened and they stepped outside into the fresh morning air.  Outside the world look different though.  The cars that passed by were from the 1970s and the streets looked dirty and run down.  It was not at all the clean and safe neighborhood they’d entered the night before.   Gail and Cherie turned to one another in amazement. 

         “We really time traveled didn’t we?” Gail said slowly.

         “Either that or someone spent a lot of money trying to convince us we did,” Cherie replied.

         Together they set off down the street and soon found a newsstand.  There they were able to purchase a paper for 35 cents and read that the date was October 24, 1975.  They were Lansing, Michigan of all places.

      “Didn’t we check into the Windsor in Denver?” Gail asked puzzled.

      “Indeed we did.  I wonder where Donald checked in at if the location changes as well as the time,” Cherie wondered aloud.

      “Where was the hotel originally built I wonder,” Gail said, gazing around. 

      “This is strange indeed,” Cherie mused. 

      “I don’t want to be stranded in the 70s.  We should go back.”
      “Yeah, that sounds like a good idea,” Cherie agreed.  They turned around headed back to the hotel. 

       When they walked back in the door, Ray greeted them with a huge smile.  “Didn’t I tell you? The hotel time travels.”

       “Yes, you did indeed warn us,” Cherie replied.

       The two women went up to their room to rest and ponder their dilemma.  Gail decided to take a shower while Cherie lay in bed staring up at the ceiling.  She wondered if the hotel was built of some sort special material or if someone had created a machine within the hotel.  It couldn’t just be magic.  Could it?  Someone had to know something.  Perhaps she’d have better luck wandering around the hotel looking for clues. 

       When Gail got out of the shower she tried the TV, which looked dreadfully out of place in the elegant Victorian room and turned it on.  However, all that was on were shows from the 1970s. 

       “Do you suppose the broadcasts change with the years?” Gail asked brushing her hair while sitting on the bed.

       “Most likely,” Cherie sighed. 

       “Which means we won’t have any TV at all if we travel back as far as the 1940s right?”

       “Yep.”

       “That sucks.”

       “Yep,” Cherie said again as she took her key from the nightstand.  “I’m going to explore.  Are you coming with me?”

        “Nah, I think I will stay here and enjoy some reruns of Little House on the Praririe or something.”

         Cherie smiled and headed out the door.  She traveled down the hallways, which all looked the same.  She studied each door, trying her keys in the unmarked rooms.  Her key did not fit any of the rooms she assumed were storage.   She took the stairs down to the first floor, but did not see any stairs going to a basement.  Did the hotel even have a basement?  Many of the newer ones did not, but it was likely an older hotel would.  How could she get to the basement?  Through the office perhaps?

        Cherie wandered through the first floor hallway and back out into the lobby.  Ray was standing guard at the desk, so she browsed a bookshelf.  There was a note attached to the shelf that said books were free for the guests to read so long as they returned them to the shelf when they were finished.  They were also welcome to leave additional or replacement books should they be inclined to keep the one they borrowed.  Cherie studied the titles from all different eras.   There was everything from The Secret Life of Bees to The Thorn Birds to Peyton Place to The Time Machine.  Cherie pulled the tattered first edition of The Time Machine by HG Wells off the shelf and examined it.

       “Good choice,” a woman with black hair said.  She was dressed in pin stripe pants that looked to be from the early 1900s with a blouse from the same era. 

       “You’ve read it?”

       “Yes, but I recommend A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain instead.”

        “Why?  Is that one better?”

        “Yes, I should think so.  I wrote it.”

       “But I thought Mark Twain was…”

       “A man?  Technically that is true.  Samuel was my brother, but I wrote the novel for him.  He took all the credit when I found it impossible to publish under my own name.”

      “So you are just the woman I wish to speak to,” Cherie smiled.

      “And why would that be?”

      “Because I have questions about this time traveling hotel we seem to be stuck in.”
      “You want to know if I had anything to do with it?”

      “Yes.  And if there is a way to control it?  How does it work?  Where is the machine located in the hotel?”

       “I wish I could tell you.  I’ve not seen any sort of engine here.”

       “How did your character time travel in your book?”

       “Oh, he hit his head and fell into a deep sleep in which he dreamed about his adventures.  I always loved the days of King Arthur and wanted to travel back in time to see what it was like then.”

        “So your character didn’t really time travel at all then?”

        “Perhaps.  Who is to say what is real and what isn’t.  The dream was very real to the dreamer.  How do you know we aren’t dreaming this adventure now as we speak?” the woman replied.

        “Because we aren’t,” the bald headed man replied.

        Cherie put her hand over her heart, “You startled me.  I had no idea you were standing there.”

        “Time travel is both scientific and magical at the same time.  Or should I say that it appears to be magic because reality is a lot more flexible than one might imagine,” September told them.

         “So how is the hotel traveling then?” Cherie asked September.

         “It is traveling along a fault line�"a rip in the space-time continuum. The hotel was built on land that was unstable.  When one of Dr. Eli’s experiments went wrong, the hotel began leaping.  Only it doesn’t just leap through time, it travels between alternate universes. That is why we’ve never made it back home.  We’ve traveled to everyone’s home time, but not their home world.”

        “And how do you know all of that?” Cherie asked. 

        “Because I too travel between worlds.  I traveled to many times and places before becoming stuck in this particular loop,” he replied.  “I’ve been trying to figure a way out of the loop so that we can all go home, but so far I haven’t been able to work out the equations properly.  We need Dr. Eli to complete his work before we can go home.”

        “What happened to Dr. Eli?” Cherie asked.

        “No one knows.  He vanished from the hotel.  I believe that he got trapped in the original universe while we were sent elsewhere.  If that is true, then there is little hope for us.  It is a tragic paradox to have the one need in the place we need to be but have no way to get there.”

        “Perhaps we can find a way to send a message to him even if we can’t get there ourselves,” the sister of Samuel Clemmons suggested.

         “That is a good idea that I intend to work on,” September nodded. 

         “Maybe a typewriter, computer or some other mechanical object would help,” Cherie added.  

          September nodded thoughtfully.