The Message

A Short Story Photograph by the author

I wrote this story for the NYC Midnight Fiction Contest way back in 2021. The genre had to be “Ghost Story” and I decided to set it at the Excelsior Hotel in Jefferson, Texas – rumored to be haunted. I published a copy of the story on the Medium site but it didn’t get many views, so here it is again, for anyone who didn’t read it back then.

The Message

The day before her twentieth wedding anniversary, Doreen Clark traveled alone to the Excelsior Hotel, where ghosts were rumored to roam the halls. The hotel, built in the late 1800s, had wood floors that creaked and moaned at night, as though the place were filled with spirits burdened by ghostly pains.

“Welcome,” the chipper clerk greeted her. “Have you stayed with us before?” The woman wore black cat-eyed glasses around her neck, suspended on a rhinestone studded cord.

“Years ago.” As the clerk confirmed her reservation, Doreen stepped over to study the photographs arranged on the lobby wall.

“Fascinating, aren’t they?” The clerk gestured to a gilt-framed photo of a seated woman garbed in old-fashioned, dark, mourning clothes. A translucent figure, a man with a drooping mustache, hovered behind the woman, one hand resting on the carved wooden back of her chair. “Are you familiar with the history of spirit photography?”

“Oh yes,” Doreen replied, “my husband was an amateur photographer. He loved the stories behind the photos.” Spirit photography dated back to the late 1800s, when enterprising photographers used long exposure to create ghostly images transposed onto the pictures they captured. The enterprise proved profitable, as grieving relatives longed to see their beloved again.   

“They’re interesting, but I feel sorry for the folks who believed they could connect with their dead loved ones.”

Doreen smiled and shrugged. “I’m sure they got some comfort at least, the true believers.” If she told this woman the real reason she’d journeyed back to this particular hotel, on this date, Doreen wondered if the clerk would pity her or think her crazy.  

After she dropped her bags in her room, Doreen texted her daughter, then carried a book to the courtyard, to warm herself in the late October sunshine. Fragrant crimson roses climbed the brick walls. Had there been roses back then? The novel, a gaudy romance, couldn’t hold her. A nap would suit her better.

She woke at dusk and rose, wishing for a candle. Houdini’s widow, she’d read, kept a candle burning for him every night for years. Doreen placed her palm on the frosty glass of the French doors, looking over the courtyard. Something moved outside, a wisp of white that could have been a bit of gauzy cloth batted in the wind.

She remembered her wedding day, so many years ago. They had danced in this courtyard, Doreen’s white lace dress sweeping the cobblestones. What are ghosts? Doreen believed them to be the echo of memory, suspended in air like motes of dust. When Houdini died, he promised to contact his beloved. His widow waited years for that signal.

Her fingers clutched her phone as she unlatched the door leading into the courtyard. The modern equipment lacked the romance of the long exposure on glass photographic plates, but maybe it would do. Lifting the phone, she centered her image in the screen and focused on the wall of roses behind her. She snapped a shot, then another, and another, turning to capture all of the courtyard until she felt faint and dizzy.  

Back in the room, Doreen scrolled through the digital images. The phone’s camera had done a fine job of capturing the splash of red roses and the moss-dotted stone of the courtyard, even in the fading light. Nothing else. No outline or familiar face, no time-worn hands resting on her shoulders.

Leaning forward, her lips a finger’s width from the panes, Doreen breathed on the cold glass of the French door. “Oh Bill, I miss you so.” The pane fogged, and she lifted a finger to scrawl a heart. She turned her back to drop the phone on the bed’s quilted coverlet. All those photographs -they couldn’t all be fake, could they? She vowed to return next year, and every year after that, as long as it took.

On the courtyard side, a shape appeared on the pane then quickly faded—the imprint of a kiss, as though tenderly etched on a photographic plate.   

The End