“Are you sure there’s no way I can get out of this?” Lois asked. “There are real stories I could be chasing, not chasing ghosts in the boonies.”
She listened to the telephone for a moment.
“It’s not like I actually died or anything,” she said again, weakly.
This was punishment, she was sure. She’d heal just like she always had, on the job. It wasn’t like she actually had a death wish or anything.
She sighed. She was already in Michigan, sitting in the cab as the driver loaded her luggage into the trunk. She might as well go through with the story.
Sliding her telephone into her pocket, she grimaced. Moving still hurt. This was the best Perry had been able to come up with to slow her down. He’d known that even if he’d enforced vacation time she’d have simply kept on working, ready to turn stories in when the time was done.
Exiling her halfway across the United States had been his way of getting her away from it all, an enforced vacation. Without access to any of her sources, or her city, she would be forced to do everything on the Internet.
Better to accept it and just chase the story, even if she knew nothing was there.
At least the Grand Hotel was supposed to be something to see. Maybe she could write a travel piece. It’d at least be better than some ghost hunting drivel.
The rain was hitting the glass outside her window harder now, and she shuddered.
She’d almost died.
Perry didn’t seem to understand how work was the only thing she had to keep the thoughts away, the certainty that death had only been a hair’s breadth away.
The thought hung in the back of her mind, and no matter how hard she tried it was always there.
It was better to work; at least then she was able to banish it to the back corner of her mind.
Only when she had nothing to do did it all come rushing back.
************
The Grand Hotel certainly lived up to its name. Riding the ferry across the lake, Lois had felt her mood lighten a little as she’d seen an isolated lighthouse situated on an outcropping of rock.
Everything was so green here, with vast swathes of deeply green grass and vibrant trees. It had been a long time since Lois had paid the least attention to nature, but there was a fresh scent now.
In Metropolis after it rained it usually smelled of old petroleum and gas fumes after it rained, but this was fresh and different.
The lobby was vast, and while it wasn’t as modern as hotels like the Lexor, there was a certain timeless charm about it that caught her attention.
“Can I help you with your bags, Miss?”
The man in front of her looked like he was older than the hotel itself. He had to be in his nineties at least, if not older.
Lois was horrified. He looked as if a good breeze would knock him over.
He grabbed her bags before she was able to answer, loading them onto a cart. He turned and looked up at her for the first time, and the smile froze on his face.
“Are you all right?”
The last thing she needed was for her bellhop to collapse of a heart attack because she’d decided to pack a few extra outfits.
The man shook his head, and his smile resumed. “You just reminded me of someone I knew, a long time ago.”
Lois forced herself to smile.
“Let’s get you checked in.”
***************
Hotels loved ghosts.
Ghosts intrigued guests, brought them to stay for curiosity value. Every time there was a cold spot because of a flaw in the air conditioning system, or a rattling of pipes somewhere in the building, a hotel was happy to proclaim a ghost.
The fact that people tended to die in hotels, for any number of reasons only made it easier to make that kind of claim.
Older men with something to prove having sex with mistresses who were decades younger, and having heart attacks. Husbands angry at straying wives and coming with guns. People slipping in unfamiliar bathtubs; there were any number of reasons people might die early.
Although the place was beautiful, it wasn’t exactly the kind of place a single woman would stay. If she’d had someone in her life, she could see herself having a very pleasant weekend away here, but there was no story.
Hotels loved ghosts, but they didn’t have any proof.
Even if ghosts existed, which Lois didn’t believe, there would be no way she’d be able to prove it.
She couldn’t afford to believe in ghosts; that was a lesson she’d learned long before she’d gotten into journalism.
Photographic or video evidence could be easily faked, more easily now than at any time in history. Eyewitness testimony had never been reliable. There was no way that Lois would be able to spin this that wouldn’t have her either looking like a kook, or a spoilsport for debunking a pleasant little legend.
In any case, ghosts were even harder to disprove than they were to prove. At least with the Loch Ness monster it was possible to use sonar to look beneath the empty waves. Ghosts were intangible, unprovable.
If it was Ralph or Cat, or any of the other reporters at the Planet, really, they’d have done the minimum work possible, written a puff piece and taken the trip in the spirit it was intended, as a paid vacation.
Lois, though, needed to keep working.
***********
“Well, there are several ghosts, really,” the man behind the desk said. “But there’s only one that really gets people’s pulses racing.”
“Go on,” Lois said, trying not to look bored. This had the feeling of something the man had said many times before.
“The others are mostly just eerie sounds and cold spots, but the Ghost…he’s actually been seen by guests and staff alike.”
Lois perked up. Maybe there was someone hiding on the premises; a homeless man or something. She’d read about a Japanese man who’d discovered a woman hiding in his cupboard. She’d been living in his house for months, hiding and only coming out when he left to work.
“How long has this been going on?”
“More than ninety years,” the man said. He smiled.
Lois forced herself not to grimace. So much for that idea. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen this ghost yourself?”
The man shook his head. “I keep hoping.”
These stories were always that way. Someone knew someone who’d known someone else who’d seen something. It was like every other urban legend. Hoakum.
“I don’t suppose you know who the ghost was?” she asked.
He nodded eagerly.
“He was a stage actor who played our theater in 1912. He disappeared on the night of the great fire, and no one ever saw him again, not alive anyway. We have his picture in our hotel museum.
He led her into a small room with glass cases and pictures on the wall.
The Grand Hotel was more than a hundred years old, and there was a lot of history. Lois found herself looking at the items in the case with a certain amount of interest.
“You said there was a picture?”
The man nodded toward the end of the hall.
Lois looked up at stared, her breath caught in her throat.
“His name was Clark Kent,” the man was saying. “People said he was really going to be something. They never found his body, but after a while, people just knew.”
Lois couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe.
“Are you all right, Miss?”
Finally she nodded.
“Thanks for all your help. If I need anything else, I’ll know where to ask.”
The man left, leaving her alone in the room with her thoughts, and with the picture of him.
At least she finally had a name for him after all these years.
As a child she’d thought she’d seen him watching her. Once she’d even stopped when she would have run across a street for a ball when she’d seen him standing with a stern look in his strange, old fashioned gray suit.
A car had come rushing through the space she’d have been.
Later she’d rationalized it away. She’d seen him before, always watching her, but it hadn’t meant anything. He’d probably lived in the neighborhood.
Kids always thought everything was about them. When her parents had divorced, she’d blamed herself for a long time. It had taken time for her to realize that it hadn’t been about her.
Really, very little was. The world didn’t care much about her at all, and the things she did to succeed were just ways to make the world acknowledge her.
They were ways to make her father acknowledge her.
Still, it didn’t explain the sudden flashes of recognition she’d occasionally had. She’d thought she’d seen him occasionally, always in the same old fashioned suit.
She’d have thought she had some kind of weird Cosplay stalker except that she’d seen him in places he couldn’t have escaped. It had happened; it rarely happened more than once every few years.
The fact that it happened more often when she was in danger had been noticed by her.
It had only been a week since the last time she’d seen him, and again, it had saved her life.
Lois Lane didn’t believe in ghosts; she couldn’t afford to. If she told anyone what she’d seen it would be a quick trip to the sanitarium.
People who saw ghosts were crazy, and the one thing Lois knew she wasn’t was crazy.
Ergo, no ghosts.
Still, it was good to finally have a name to put with the face that had saved her a half dozen times in the past twenty years.
Clark Kent. He was real.
For the first time since she’d learned about this trip, Lois began to feel really excited.
Last edited by ShayneT; 07/28/14 12:41 AM.
