Frightful Fables: Flash Fiction

#FlashNonfiction: A Souvenir From the Stanley Hotel

If you’ve seen a few scary movies, you’re probably familiar with the harbinger-of-doom trope. You know, an elderly zealot stalks the townspeople/babysitters/nonbelievers/camp counselors, warning them of imminent danger. Well, if you ever receive one of these advisories in real life, learn from my own experience and heed it.

My mom—and I, for that matter—should have known better. We’ve always watched horror films together; it’s our thing. I vividly recall renting the same Vincent Price VHS tapes ad nauseam, being traumatized by Night of the Living Dead at six years old, catching an afterschool matinee of House of Wax...and, of course, watching The Shining while shrouded in darkness and crunching popcorn. (For the record, I’m team Stephen King on this one. The book is better.)
 
In any event, when my mom went on a Thelma-and-Louise-style roadtrip with her bestie to Colorado, she naturally detoured to the Stanley Hotel. For the uninitiated, the legendary Stanley Hotel inspired The Shining, and the 2003 miniseries was filmed on location. According to my mom, the tour guide played coy for the duration of his spiel, choosing to focus on the lavish beginnings and the luxurious decor of the hotel with a sunny smile. At the tail-end of the tour, he gave the small group what they had all been waiting for. With tongue in cheek, and with the same unfaltering cheer, he mentioned as a final anecdote that some strange things had happened in a couple of rooms. 

Some strange things? Some rooms? That was it?
   
The guide nodded. Yup, not much to see here, folks. Feel free to fork over a tip, and be sure to stop by the gift shop on your way out. As the others muttered their thanks and cleared out, my mom lagged behind. Was there really such limited paranormal activity to report?
   
“Well,” the guide began, cutting eyes from left to right and back again, “if you really want to know, take a rock.”
   
“A rock?”
   
The guide nodded, the grin still plastered across his face. Was he teasing?
   
As if reading her mind, he said, “Some guests who take bits and pieces of our mountainous foundation end up sending them back. Funny business in their homes,” he added with a campy flourish of the fingers. He squatted down and, righting himself, extended a hand. “Only one way to find out if I’m fibbing!”
   
My mom accepted the dusty piece of rubble with her cynic’s laugh and went about her trip.
   
A couple of days later, leaving a family dinner on Sunday, the rock was gifted to me. It served as the piece de resistance of a souvenir baggie, accompanied by a keychain and model key to room 401, a movie poster, and a chapbook. It was compact enough to fit in the palm of my hand and left a light, reddish residue at it bounced once, then twice. I shivered and slipped it back into its makeshift napkin sheath. I’m not typically the superstitious type (yes I am), but the aura and mythology surrounding the rock were enough to make the recently ingested contents of my stomach tumble. 
   
My husband and I arrived home after nine, ready for bed. It was a chilly evening, and the covers beckoned to me. Within minutes, I had doubled the unassuming gift bag over with a satisfying paper crinkle, placed it in our walk-in closet,  and slipped into some PJ pants. That’s when the Really Weird Stuff started. 

I plunged into a deep, wakeless sleep full of dreams—the kind that leave you feeling exhausted the next morning. The next day, after all was said and done, my husband and I would realize that we had both succumbed to the most vivid and disturbing nightmares we had experienced up to that point in our adult lives. While my guy watched himself, helplessly in third person, cough up bloody shards of glass, I dreamed of a shadowy, nebulous figure that entered with ease through the front door of our townhome, stepped  painstakingly up the set of silent, carpeted stairs, and who waited—breathing—on the landing just outside our bedroom door. I was powerless to act, to respond, to wake up—like some sort of somnambulist prisoner.
   
When my alarm finally released the both of us, we rubbed the drowse from our eyes and went about business as usual. Dogs walked? Check. Showered? Check. Coffee percolated? Check. Then, just as the time came to put on real pants and face the day, the Really Weird Thing happened.
   
The resounding crash brought me running up the stairs (with a glance over one shoulder to check for the Nightmare Intruder) and my husband out of the bathroom, face half-covered in shaving cream and razor in hand. I stopped just short of the closet door, which stood ajar. The same closet where I’d stored the gift bag the night before. The bag with the napkin-wrapped rock tucked safely inside. I braced myself before turning the knob. 
   
The shelving unit that spanned the length of the storage space, once bolted into the wall, now lay on the floor in a cloud of white dust. It had been wrenched from the drywall, a clean rip except for the ragged, gaping screw holes. Our once-orderly closet now resembled  a demolition site; piles of winter garments, shoe boxes, and other mementos had caved at my feet. 
   
The sliver of stone was on its way back to its rightful resting place within twelve hours. Even my husband—the eternal skeptic—adopted a better-safe-that-sorry attitude. Reason would chalk the avalanche up to a simple domestic mishap, but what about the dreams? Why tempt fate by keeping the not-so-desirable keepsake? 
   
Using a vial of holy water left over from Easter, we went to work from corner to corner of the bedroom. I sealed the cursed object inside an insulated envelope along with a disculpatory note, Googled the address to the Stanley Hotel, and mailed it ASAP. I had learned a valuable lesson. You don’t always need a souvenir. Memories—and perhaps a photo—are more than enough.