So what if the mansion has a dark history? Centuries-old buildings often do. Still, my mind plays a reel of death scenarios. If I could take snapshots of this building’s past, what would I see? Would I see a woman being attacked?
Would I see her strangled on the floor, fighting for air?
Pushed down the stairs, landing with acrack?
Or stabbed in the kitchen, dress turning red?
Pressing my hands to my temples, I shake my head and will the images away. In the absence of knowledge, imagination takes over, and that’s all I’m seeing. Figments of my overactive—over-morbid—imagination.
Pulling my hair back in my hands, I clear my thoughts and refocus on the script. It’s not a sappy romcom or feel-good film, but a movie that touches on other emotions. Self-doubt and discovery, betrayal and pain, and all with an underlying vein of fear.
A fear I can almost taste.
The best actors use their own experience, bringing memories and trauma into their work. If I’m smart, I’ll do the same. Using this place to my advantage, I’ll channel everything this building is making me feel—isolation, loneliness, paranoia.
I’m by myself in a new and unfamiliar world, just like the heroine in the screenplay. It seems Claudia and I already have some things in common.
The Whisper Houseisfiction. Maison Marteau is my reality.
And both are horror stories.
My Hotel Peculiar
I leaned as far over the railing as I could, the tips of my toes barely scraping the wood floor.
I was trying to peek at the people below. My parents were having a dinner party. Not the big party they have every year, the one with dancing and games, but still a lot of guests.
When I heard my mother’s voice, I pulled back over the bar. Peering through the balusters, I saw her walk by below. She was with a woman.
“This house is amazing,” the woman said. “How do I get a hotel peculiar of my own?” She laughed then, a funny sound, like she had a potato stuck in her mouth. And when she stumbled, my mother grabbed her arm.
Keeping the woman steady, my mother led her down the hallway, whispering to her with words I couldn’t hear.
Once they left, I sat on the floor and thought about it.
What was wrong with that woman? Why did she call our home a hotel peculiar? Was she making a joke?
I didn’t understand and decided to ask Mother the next time I got the chance. She’d know I was spying on the party and up past my bedtime. She might be angry. But not too much. Not as long as I stayed upstairs.
Which is why I had to be careful.
I waited a few more minutes, until I could no longer hear the clack-clack-clack of their shoes. Then I crept down the stairs, hurried down the hallway, and headed toward the blue salon. But I didn’t go inside.
Peeking around the corner, I saw all the people had finished dinner and moved to the salon. A quartet had set up their instruments in one corner, and an area of the floor was cleared for dancing.
Keeping my head close to the wall, I looked around the room. A flash of silver caught my eye. The woman again.
Her sparkly dress was hard to miss. Only my mother was gone, and the woman was leaning into my father.
He smiled in a way that made me uncomfortable, and he pulled her into his arms to dance. I kept looking until I found my mother. She was watching my father and the woman. She didn’t look happy, but she didn’t look angry, either.
Until she turned her head and spotted me.
I raced back down the hall, but my mother’s sharp voice stopped me before I could get away. “I thought I told you to go to bed.”
I turned back to her, afraid of how much trouble I was going to be in. I’m not supposed to be downstairs when guests are here.
She walked up to me and crossed her arms. “You know the rules.”
