FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #7

She's a local. The ghost in room 226. Of the guests she's haunted, most became parched with a distinctive curiosity that Grandma Tee was always happy to satiate with the tale. Then there were those who approached the front desk, paler than milk. It was always the same scene. The guest stood at arms length, held out the key in a shaky left hand. The key dangled and swayed like a hypnotic metronome sedating the terror they just experienced. My coltish grandmother with her inveigling charm, cupped the guests hand in her own.

"My poor dear," she soothed with a knowing voice and velvety palms, "you look like you've seen a ghost."

The ghost, or the Butterfly Lady as we called her, hadn't left much of an impression when she was alive. Her haunting would have suffered the same banality were it not for Grandma Tee's phenomenal persuasion. Grandma Tee could manipulate a fly to smack into her swatter, so the challenge to coerce a spirit to be loved as a ghost was too good to pass up.

“Anything can grow if you give it just a little attention,” Grandma Tee would say, “even the dead.”

But I did not care to nurture the dead or entertain a ghost. The sheet white faces of the Butterfly Lady’s victims were enough to convince me to avoid room 226 whenever I could. Since I could not shirk my detail of cleaning the bathrooms – her haunting ground – my brother switched with me for room 226.

“She won’t come out for me,” he would say confidently, making me feel like a coward.

“That’s because you’re too insensitive.” I would retort invoking Grandma Tee’s claim that spirits chose perceptive people. I intended the remark to sound like he lacked this desirable quality. In truth, I was grossly envious of his valor. As a result, my strategy backfired.

“Oh yeah? Is that why I’m cleaning the bathroom for you because I’m too insensitive,” he said.

If I pressed on, it would cost me. And the last thing I wanted was for him to forgo the favor. Grandma Tee would take his side and I would be forced to complete the terrifying task of cleaning the tub in room 226. The tub where the Butterfly Lady killed herself some sixty years ago – with slit wrists, she placed a Smith Corona typewriter on her chest and met her death by drowning.

As a young apprentice assigned the same cleaning details I acquired, Grandma Tee had been the one who discovered the Butterfly Lady’s body. Even at age eleven, Grandma Tee was dauntless and did not scream or shudder but simply surveyed the bathroom. The only noticeable belonging was a pair of tattered black shoes by the wood chair – the “make do and mend” shoes Grandma Tee would sigh.

Then, as Grandma Tee often told us, a strange desire took over. To the right was the medicine cabinet and reflected in the mirror, Grandma Tee saw the queer scene of herself standing beside the claw foot bathtub filled with bloody water and a dead lady with a typewriter on her chest. Grandma Tee assumed it was then the spirit of Marie Papillon Owens became attached. Fate intertwined in that moment when they were in the mirror, together on the same side.

My grandmother was a girl who somehow understood the ambiguous desire in the spirit of this woman. It was seeking something my grandmother had always given away in exalted abundance – attention.

Perhaps my brother is made of the same mettle as Grandma Tee but I know for a fact I am not. I did not wish to see my reflection in the mirror with the Butterfly Lady as one guest had experienced. I can recall the scream even now. I heard it all the way from the front desk. The occurrence was – according to my recollection – the worst she had ever inflicted.

The guest was Mrs. Alicia Samuel from Massachusetts. She had stark red hair, which she attempted to match with her lipstick – Satin Siren Red. Perhaps it was her irritating vanity that compelled Grandma Tee to accommodate her in room 226 but my grandmother would never admit it.

As I overheard the hysterical Mrs. Samuel recount, she was applying her “Satin Siren Red” lipstick in the bathroom mirror when she suddenly noticed her hair was completely gray. She screamed and groped for her makeup bag, which fell onto the floor. After she retrieved it, she returned to the mirror but her hair was back to its original color.

“Satan Siren Red.” I remember Grandma Tee murmured, feigning absentmindedness.

“Satin! Satin!” Mrs. Samuel screamed.

Not surprisingly, Mrs. Samuel checked out. Since she refused to enter the room again, Mr. Steeds, the old gardener collected her belongings. She repacked them in the lobby, checked her makeup bag and noticed the lipstick was missing. It was never found.

Grandma Tee agreed the Butterfly Lady’s act was a trite spiteful. And ever since then we stopped assigning the room to philandering couples or women with red hair. Still many tourists who had heard about the Butterfly Lady, specifically requested to stay in room 226. It’s a perverse interest to chase ghosts, if you ask me. It’s downright disrespectful and I was satisfied that many of them left disappointed.

Apart from that, we could not discern how she chose her quarry. At times, her pleas would be heard by the guests in room 228 or 214 – the room across the hall – while the guests in her room, slept solid like a rock. Her form varied. Sometimes her voice was old and brittle, other times she spoke like a little girl but most described her voice as a young woman’s. Her lament however, was always consistent – once she developed it.

It was a couple from Bath, England who was the first to hear her simultaneously and to hear her speak. It was nearly four years after her suicide before she communicated. Until then, the Butterfly Lady announced her presence with the mere sound of dripping water and inhuman sounding sighs.

The couple, as they recounted to Grandma Tee who was fifteen at the time, said they were stirred to the sound of water dripping. The drips resonated, echoed as if falling into a filled bathtub. It was followed by a faint whine of an indescribable beast. Then they heard the voice of a young woman softly begging.

“I want to go home. Please? Can you take me home, please? Can you take me home,” the voice pleaded with desperate urgency.

When the wife of the English couple entered the bathroom for a glass of water, it was twilight. From the corner of her eye, she noticed a chair that she could not recall being there before. She looked over her shoulder and dropped the glass into the sink, it shattered with a startling crash. Neatly aligned underneath the chair, she saw a pair of small, tattered black shoes.

Then countless others, including Mr. Steeds the day he collected the belongings of Satan Red Mrs. Samuel, have looked into the tub and noticed it appeared to have been drawn.

Though she had pleaded to many guests thereafter to take her home, she had yet to reveal where “home” actually was. Grandma Tee knew she had lived in the dark mansion that sat ominously at the end of Crooked Road – it was just two miles north from our inn. The house appeared black from mold and moss and it seemed that even the sun avoided touching it. She lived there for the better part of her life, having arrived at the tender age of fifteen to be a child bride to the wandering Thomas Franklin Owens.

They did not have children and it was rumored she was barren. Although, Mr. Owens’ numerous affairs with countless young women bore no fruit as well, no one ever challenged who was to blame.

By the time she checked in at the Devins Inn – our modest family run Bed and Breakfast – Mrs. Marie Papillon Owens looked like a very old lady. She was in fact only in her late forties but to the eleven-year old Grandma Tee the woman appeared to be a hundred. With her frail bones wrapped in black lace, tattered black make-do-and-mend shoes and unruly strands of long gray hair – she checked in under the premise that a tree collapsed onto her house. That she would stay until her husband returned from his “business” which should be in just a matter of days.

Grandma Tee said a small black case by her feet raised an irresistible curiosity. “What’s in the case?” Grandma Tee had asked.

Marie Papillon Owens looked down at the little girl with the emptiest hazel eyes and as if a cloak of sadness were suddenly draped on her, every wrinkle on her face just sagged. My great grandfather apologized on behalf of his daughter’s impudence but Marie Papillon Owens was disinterested.

“It’s a type writer, my dear.” She said.

Grandma Tee remembered her voice sounded surprisingly younger than she appeared. Although it was all she ever spoke, Grandma Tee recalled distinctly how she called the content of the black case a type writer, as if it were two separate words.

 The next time Grandma Tee saw Marie Papillon Owens was the following morning – the morning after she had accomplished her final deed. From what I heard, my great grandfather had a baffling time locating any kin. Mr. Owens had not returned from his “business” until some months later. By then, she had been buried in the Unnamed Cemetery. My great grandfather covered the expenses.

Grandma Tee said there was no ceremony, just Father Desmond who recited a passage from Corinthians 13 after confessing he did not know her. No one held it against him because in truth, nobody knew anything about her. Not even Mr. Owens.

Her suicide was a spectacle in a small town. And since nobody knew her, they spun their tales of speculation until the truth no longer mattered. She was a child bride, yes. That much is deduced from the marriage certificate in Town Hall. It also stated that she was from Pennsylvania, but the propagated tale that she was originally from Europe was so much more romantic. People fabricated that she was from France due to the maiden name but even the origin of the name was unclear. Whether it was her maiden, her middle or a nickname her husband tagged on, to give her an air of sophistication, could be anybody’s guess.

So too, was the reason for her suicide. Though Grandma Tee would intuitively know better than anyone, the conjecture was declined because it would not do her any justice. What my grandmother decided from the moment they met in the mirror was that her spirit would not be known by her husband’s name but by Papillon - the Butterfly Lady.

back to Contest #7