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If, two years ago, you had told Ryan he would be this excited about spending his summer in the quiet, isolated college town of Ordinary, Illinois, he would have looked at you like you’d grown a second head.
It wasn’t that Ryan was a city kid, per se. More of an “innerring suburb” kid. But for him and his friends, summer meant finding excuses to go into the city for the beaches or the festivals or the myriad other amusements that living near one of the largest metropolises in the country afforded. Especially as they finished highschool and all started at area colleges, it meant getting back together for the summer months so they could drive or take the train into the city and spend the day, coming back at night some combination of tired, sunburned, and occasionally a little drunk.
So no part of him would have predicted that he’d email his parents and friends at the end of his junior year at the Ordinary Agricultural and Technical College to let them know that he’d be spending the summer in Ordinary instead of moving back home for the summer.
Then again, he also would not have predicted Daisy.
Daisy was “if you couldn’t already tell by the name,” she’d said when she introduced herself a country girl, having grown up on an actual farm not too far from Ordinary. She had wild, wavy blonde hair, crystalblue eyes, and a lopsided smile that had a way of getting her both into and out of trouble.
On their first day of Biochem 2, she’d taken the last empty seat next to Ryan and flashed that smile and Ryan was hopelessly hooked. Distracted by the long legs and curves peeking coyly out from beneath her flowered sundress, Ryan hadn’t managed to say anything charming or interesting or … hardly at all.
Luckily for him, she had a softspot for the cute and quietly charming.
The next class, Ryan had found all the seats full when he arrived. That is, until Daisy removed her backpack from the seat next to hers. It was only a few more classes until Ryan had worked up the nerve to ask her out “to study,” of course and not long after that until they became practically inseparable.
As they spent more time together, Ryan just kept finding more and more things he liked about Daisy. She was confident and friendly, but not a huge seeker of attention. She moved through the world with easy selfassurance, taking people as they were and easily leaving them behind if they didn’t click.
It wasn’t long before he figured out he could make her laugh with his dry, quiet humor and delight her with even small gestures of kindness or affection.
In fact, that was one of the things Ryan liked most about Daisy. While she was smart and had a sophisticated streak, she seemed to take the greatest joy in the small pleasures of everyday life like a movie matinee or a walk down Main Street or an interesting leaf.
Case in point: at the moment, she was thoroughly enjoying a vanilla ice cream cone.
Ryan couldn’t help but stare as they sat in silence. Daisy sat on the bench next to Ryan, completely absorbed in what she was doing as her tongue aggressively worked at the ice cream. She was the very image of what you might call “cute casual,” her blonde hair tied back in a messy bun, her shoulders exposed by the spaghettistraps of her fine, white, lacetrimmed camisole top, which did as much to draw attention to the curves underneath as it did to cover them.
Ryan was particularly distracted by that last part. Notwithstanding a breathless makeout session on a blanket at the town’s bluegrass festival, they’d been moving slowly. Taking their time. Getting close. Ryan certainly didn’t mind, he just really liked spending time with her. But watching Daisy devour her ice cream cone was making him wonder more than ever what was under that top.
Daisy paused midlick as her consciousness surfaced just long enough to realize Ryan was watching her. She looked up at him, tongue still pressed against the ice cream.
“What?” she said.
“What?” he replied.
“What, it’s good!” she said.
“I can tell!”
“Shut up!” she said, giving his shoulder a playful push, “I like ice cream!”
“I know you do,” Ryan said dryly. “I’m just a little jealous.”
“Of me?” She raised an eyebrow at him, and started back in on the ice cream,”or the ice cream cone.”
He laughed and pushed her back. “Eat your ice cream.”
“Done,” she said, and attacked the ice cream with renewed vigor.
Ryan turned back to the cars and passersby moving leisurely past the parkette where they were sitting. It was a warm and windless summer night and the lights in the various college bars and taverns along the main strip had come on as the afterdinner crowd made their way into the streets and the last light of golden hour started to recede over the horizon.
“Do you want to go to the Cavern tonight?” Ryan said. “I think Kev is doing the music.”
Daisy chewed the last of her ice cream cone and stared off down the street with her brow furrowed.
“You know,” she said, “as much as I love Kev, I think we can do better than that.”
Ryan laughed. “Right, okay. Put that in the maybe pile. We could go to the evening show at the Heartbox? I think they’re playing Poltergeist …”
“Nah,” Daisy said, still staring out at the street, one side of her mouth turned up at the corner, “I don’t think I could sit through a movie right now.”
“You couldn’t sit through Poltergeist?!”
Daisy laughed. “Yeah,” she said, “I’m shocked too, but here we are.”
“Well what should we do, then?”
Daisy huffed through her nose and thought for a moment.
“Ooh! What day is it?”
Ryan paused for a moment and looked at her.
“It’s Friday, Daisy.”
She sighed with exaggerated exasperation.
“The date, I mean, what’s the date?”
Ryan looked at his watch. “It’s July the 21st. Why?”
Daisy counted on her fingers for a moment before exclaiming, “The Lotus! We’re going to the Lotus, come on!”
“Wait a minute,” Ryan said several minutes later as Daisy led him by the hand down the road leading out of town. “The Lotus do you mean that old abandoned building?”
“Abandoned hotel,” Daisy said. “And yes.”
As they passed the high school football stadium, they stepped off the last square of proper sidewalk as it gave way to the gravel shoulder that ran along the twolane highway that led out to the surrounding farmland.
“Why are we going there?” Ryan asked.
Daisy flashed that smile of hers.
“We’re going to see some ghosts,” she said.
“What?” Ryan said. “What ghosts?”
“Scared?”
“No,” he replied quickly. “I just didn’t know there were ghosts there. Why do you think there are ghosts there?”
“Everyone knows there are,” Daisy said. “At least if you grew up around here.”
Ryan snorted. “Oh yeah? Everyone just knows?”
“Yes!” Daisy said. “It’s part of the, you know, local lore.”
“I’ve been here like three whole years, how have I not heard this before?”
“Because,” she replied, “you’re from Chicahgo.” She turned to face him and took both his hands in hers, drawing herself to him. He felt his heart beat harder as she pressed her chest against his, trapping their hands between them at the waist. He felt the soft squish of her breasts against his chest through her white camisole and smelled the subtle flowery scent of her perfume as a few wispy strands of her blonde hair brushed against him.
“You’re not a local. You have to be a local to know the local lore. Or know a local. But lucky for you,” she turned back to the road and started walking again, pulling him by the hand, “you know me!”
Very lucky, Ryan thought to himself, completely without irony.
“Okay,” he said. “So then what is this local lore? What’s so interesting about a big abandoned hotel?”
“Besides the fact that it’s cool and creepy?”
“Yes,” he said, “besides that.”
“Well,” she said, her voice taking on a dramatic tone. “Let me tell you.”
“Back in, like, the early 1900’s or something, this guy bought a bunch of land out here.”
“Randomly?”
“I don’t know,” Daisy sighed, “for mining or something. Anyway, he was rich already but then with the mine he got super duper rich”
“Super duper, eh?”
“Do you want to hear this or not?”
Ryan raised his hands defensively and said nothing. Daisy continued.
“Okay, so now he’s mega rich and he uses all that money to build this huge mansion out here near where the mine was. I guess he thought the town was going to get really developed because of all the money coming out of the mine so it would be a good investment.”
Ryan looked around them. They were now walking past endless acres of soy and corn fields punctuated by the occasional farmhouse.
“Clearly he was correct,” he said.
“Yeah well,” Daisy replied, “good with minerals, not so much with real estate, I guess. Anyway, so this rich guy builds this giant house and then suddenly just, like, dies.”
“Whoa,” Ryan said.
“Yeah,” Daisy continued, “and his son inherits the house. But he didn’t want to actually live in it, so he converted it to a hotel.”
“There were enough people coming out here for a giant hotel?” Ryan asked.
“Well no,” Daisy went on, “see, that’s the thing. The son used to throw these wild, wild parties. For like days at a time. And all these wealthy people would come out to stay at the hotel and party.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble when you could go to the city and party,” Ryan said.
“Ah,” said Daisy, her face lighting up, “but see by then it was the ’20s and the hotel could serve alcohol, so they’d come out here to drink and party.¨
“Why were they allowed to serve alcohol?”
“Well they weren’t allowed,” Daisy said, “but it’s not like the cops were going to come all the way out here when they were busy in Chicago. And the son probably paid them off or something, the family still had a ton of money.”
“Ah, that makes sense,” Ryan nodded. “Okay, so where did the ghosts come from?”
“Well,” said Daisy, “I guess the son got really into occulty type stuff. Like, I think Aleister Crowley stayed there once, that sort of thing. So they used to try to, you know, summon demons and stuff at these parties.”
“And so they summoned the ghosts?”
“Or something like that. Occult energies, evil karma, portal to hell, who knows. But the place is definitely super haunted, especially since it’s been abandoned.”
“Why was it abandoned?”
“Nobody really knows,” said Daisy. “Most people figured the family lost a bunch of money in the ’29 crash and abandoned the property after it became basically worthless. Or the son lost all his money and jumped out a window or something.”
“And nobody’s gone there since?” Ryan asked.
“I’ve heard that kids used to sneak up there sometimes to smoke up or whatever, but nobody goes there regularly. People mostly avoid it.”
She lowered her voice to a near whisper.
“People say that sometimes, when the moon is full, the ghosts come out and can be seen roaming the halls. People have even been known to disappear.”
Ryan snorted. “That’s so hokey.”
Daisy laughed. “I know, but it’s fun. And the part about people disappearing, that’s actually true.”
“Yeah, right.”
“It is true!” Daisy protested. “It was back in the ’90s or something, two people from town just sort of vanished.”
“Wait, really?” Ryan asked.
“Yeah,” Daisy continued. “I mean it was this young couple, so they probably just ran off together or he got her pregnant and they moved away. But you know how that stuff works, somehow a rumor got started that they’d gone up to the hotel right before they disappeared and it just kind of took on a life of its own and became, like, a thing.”
“Like a local legend,” Ryan said. “Campfire .”
“Exactly,” Daisy replied. “OR IS IT, ooOOOOOoooOOOOH!”
She waved her hands dramatically in front of his face, widening her pretty blue eyes and making cartoonish spooky ghost noises at him. He laughed and playfully batted at her hands, capturing one of them in his own and holding on to it.
They walked along holding hands in silence for a few minutes. The sun had fully dipped below the horizon off to their left, but there was still just enough of civil twilight left to make their way down the road. In the deepening gloom, Ryan could see a row of raggedlooking maple trees stretching from the ditch at the end of the road back into the distance on their right. The trees were scraggly and twisted, but still leafy enough that he couldn’t see what lay beyond them.
As they approached, he could see an elaborate black wroughtiron fence 8 feet high that emerged from the patch of trees and ran along the length of the road.
Daisy squeezed his hand as they passed the line of trees and Ryan’s eyes widened. On the other side of the trees, set back from the road about 200 yards, was a massive, empire style mansion. The house’s two pavilions framed a central tower, which loomed high above the property. Each pavilion had at least three sets of windows on each floor, the ground floor dominated by large, elaboratelyframed windows and the higher ones by sets of tall, arched double panes.
Daisy led him to a large doublegate in the fence that stood partially opened. A short gravel drive led to a circular driveway in front of the house surrounding a concrete slab that, Ryan presumed, once held a statue of some kind.
Ryan gave the gate a slight push. It gave a harsh, haunted groan but swung open.
“So security is…” Ryan began.
“Somebody cut the chains off ages ago and nobody in town really cares enough to replace them,” Daisy explained. “Well? Are we going or what?”
She slipped easily between the gates and started up the drive toward the house. Ryan paused for a moment, glancing between the old house and the curves of Daisy’s tight jeans. He sighed and followed her.
Their shoes crunched over the gravel as they walked between the overgrown hedges that lined the drive. Two massive oak trees dominated the lawn in front of the house where the driveway in from the road met the gravel circle, their branches twisted and low to the ground.
As they approached the grand staircase leading up to the double front doors, Ryan could see just how rundown the building was. The columns holding up the roof over the front door were chipped and stained, and what little white paint remained was cracked and peeling. At the corners of the house, bricks were cracked or even missing. And the stairs themselves were rotted and crumbling with planks missing and one railing broken off completely.
Ryan and Daisy stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up at the house. The longer Ryan looked, the more the house seemed to curve up and over him, the windows at the top of its central tower like eyes staring down at him. He could see clouds moving across the nearblack sky, emerging from behind the tower and tumbling away in all directions. The air felt warm and quiet and close. A sweet, gentle scent slowly came to him from somewhere he couldn’t identify. He dimly recognized roses and … vanilla?
“What are you doing?”
He blinked hard and looked up. Daisy was standing on the front porch holding one of the cracked, waterstained front doors open with one foot already through.
“Come on, let’s go look inside!”
He shook his head and looked back to the sky. The tower still looked high and imposing, but no longer seemed to curve over him and the clouds made their way urgently across the sky, but uniformly from left to right. He shook his head again and started toward the stairs, aware somewhere in the back of his mind of a soft breeze that blew against his back.
The building was a mess inside, but there was no mistaking how spectacular it must have been in its prime. The front doors led to a large central atrium that ran the length of the house with a ceiling that went all the way up to the second . Along the upper floors, Ryan and Daisy could see railings that looked down over the atrium.
At the far end of the atrium was a curved, double staircase with stairs leading up to the second floors of both pavilions on the left and right. There was a set of double doors beneath the stairs. One of the doors hung off of one remaining hinge, partially revealing some kind of large space beyond.
To their left and right were identical rooms with fireplaces and chairs with moldy stuffing oozing out of cracked, red leather. Builtin bookshelves pale with dust and crusted with cobwebs lined the walls. A baby grand piano sat in one room, keys cracked and missing and its lid shut.
“Would you look at this place,” Ryan said, as he scanned the atrium.
“Yeah, right?” Daisy replied. She pulled her phone from her pocket and switched on the flashlight. The broken, dirty floorboards lit up a harsh, decayed gray color and dust danced in the sterile, white light. Ryan thumbed the flashlight icon on his own phone and the two of them slowly started making their way down the length of the atrium, their steps echoing up into the highceilinged room.
“Whoa, check this out,” Daisy said, shining her flashlight on the wall at the center of the atrium.
“Wow,” Ryan said. They were looking at a faded oilpainting, at least twice lifesized, mounted in a baroquely swirling wooden frame with a few flecks of gold paint still clinging to it. Pictured was a young man with black hair slicked back to reveal a pronounced widow’s peak. He had a fine jaw and a thin, slightlyupturnt nose and wore a gray suit with an expensivelooking white shirt and black tie. In his hand, he held a walking cane with a round, silver head. The chain of a pocket watch was slung between a button and a pocket of his vest. He wore a contemptuous, arrogant smile.
“Must be the son,” he said.
“I guess,” Daisy replied, as she continued towards the stairs. “Wonder why they left it here.”
“…yeah,” Ryan said, taking another look at the painting before following her. As he moved away, the young man’s sneer seemed to follow him and Ryan felt his shoulders tense. Someone once told him that the eyes of a painting seem to follow you when they are painted as though they’re looking straight out. Just an optical illusion, he told himself, as he hurried after Daisy. Just an illusion.
When he reached the end of the atrium, Daisy was leaning with her head poking through the broken door beneath the staircases. Ryan forgot all about the painting when he saw her leaning forward to look through the gap left by the broken door, giving her butt a pronounced, heartshaped curve.
Ryan positioned himself behind her so he could look through the door, being careful not to touch her. He leaned over her and peered through the doorway.
In the dim light, he could see what looked like a large banquet hall. Along the left side of the room was a long bar, its shelves empty and its mirrored backstop cracked and tarnished. A few tables and chairs were haphazardly pushed up against the walls. Along the right side were the desiccated remains of what were once plush, leather booths.
The hall was dominated by a large, curved stage in the center of the room. The stage protruded into the hall from the back wall, raised about 2 feet off the floor. It was bare, the rotting wooden supports visible beneath it, the bunting having crumbled away long ago. But even in its deteriorated state, it was clear that anyone who stood on that stage could command the attention of absolutely everyone in that room.
“God, can you imagine?” Daisy said, turning over her shoulder. As she did so, she shifted backwards so her butt pressed against Ryan’s crotch. He froze and held his breath, expecting her to pull away. But she stayed pressed against him, her soft backside pushing into his thighs.
ero
