(WHNWC) The Night Auditor Part 1

He awoke when the moonlight broke over the mountains. It was a night like any other night. The alarm clock chirped the signal for him to awake groggy and hung-over, just like any other night. He stretched and looked over at his rats to find they were safely in their tank. He grabbed his towel and opened the door of his dorm room to the shower down the hall. He was the Night Auditor at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. It was a lonely job as he worked alone but he rarely minded this as he was usually an introverted person.

The dorm was alive around him filled with the laughter and chattering of young people who all had finished their work for the day and were relaxing. The air was filled with the smell of old beer and socks. He didn’t care for it nor did he do much about it.

After finishing his shower he walked back to his room and got dressed. He selected his grey suit out of the closet and quickly got dressed. Flung his trademark leather duster on, he was out the door to the front of the north dorm in a half an hour after waking.

He walked down the short hill to the large hotel that was full of life and energy. It was the summer time. Tourist season in Estes Park, he had grown up in this quaint mountain town nestled just east of the continental divide. Coming up to the door as usual the door would open without aide of any human or electronic hand. He was well known by more than the hotel staff at this historic place and the “other” employees were usually glad to see him.

He had gotten so used to the doors opening for him and chairs moving for him he rarely noticed or flinched as he once did years ago when he first took the lonely night time post at the hotel. He clocked in and walked up the service stairway through the wait staff area of the kitchen to the bar. He took a quick look around at the patrons taking note of anyone who may potentially be trouble later on. He also noticed that several of the managers of the hotel were gathered at the bar getting their nightly drinks in.

He stepped behind the bar got himself a soda and asked the bartender how her night was going. She laughed a silly joke about it being slow for a summer night and tended to the now well intoxicated general manager.

He went out the twin doors of the bar and hooked a quick left to the reservation office, walked through to the front desk where he asked how things were going. Darla the front desk agent, a rather pretty girl with horned rimmed glasses who lived in the same dorm as the night auditor winked and made small talk about how many rooms were left for the night and who was left to check in.

The night auditor noted the names printed out the registration cards and dismissed Darla and began his work. Soon the bar cleared out and the bartender dropped off her receipts for the night and left the building. The hotel once again became quiet.

The night auditor as usual would quickly get his work accomplished. He would send through the credit cards and post room and tax to all the rooms that were listed. When midnight came around he would cancel out the left over reservations and settle in listening to internet radio and typing in a chat room.

About three in the morning is when the night auditor would go in to the bar for a more interesting conversation. He would fill his cup with more soda and sit at the bar and quietly wait for them to arrive. Almost like clockwork they would arrive one by one into the darkened room. The maid, the bartender, the original owner of the hotel F.O. Stanley and the greedy land baron and the small girl, all of whom would materialize from different directions around the room but would congregate near the bar.

The night auditor only knew the F.O. Stanley’s name as he was the only one that the night auditor could recognize. They would sit around at the bar and tell him their stories. The night auditor would intently listen to each story, even though he had heard them all hundreds of times before he listened intently because he had the unique opportunity to converse face to face with the dead.

The maid’s tale was a sad one; she had taken her own life one night when a lover of hers had left her to go back to his wife leaving her pregnant and alone. In her day it was considered bad form for a woman to be pregnant out of wedlock so one night she hung herself in room 414. After each retelling of her sad tale the maid would start to weep.

The bartender started next and regaled his tale of getting caught between an angry cook wielding a knife and one of the long forgotten waitresses long ago. He lived for 20 minutes before giving up his struggle for life there in the cold room in the back of the hotel.

F.O. Stanley loved his hotel and the town, which he had helped, create, his story was not one of a tragedy but one of devotion to what he had ingeniously made. He was a true gentleman and a scholar. He knew in his heart that this was a special hotel his ghost was also one that was free from the bounds of simply retelling his story. He had often looked after the night auditor even would wake him up on the off chance that he would doze off at his desk. He showed the night auditor the secret tunnels under the hotel and would also alert the young man if someone was waiting for him at the front desk.

The greedy land baron was an evil man in life. His goal was to buy up the town and turn it into his own private hunting lodge. The townspeople had not agreed with his idea and had shot him on the spot of the Stanley Hotel’s bar. He had remained there ever since brooding over his loss of financial and physical freedom.

The worst tale of them all and the one that would pull at the heartstrings of the stoic night auditor each time was the little girl. She was a victim of tuberculosis she had lived at the Stanley for the remainder of her short life. Sick and incarcerated by her illness on the fourth floor of the hotel. Crying in vein for her parents to return to her, yet they never did. She had died both from the disease and from loneliness and heartbreak she had the look on her face towards the night auditor that of a little orphan seeking acceptance in a cruel world.

After each night the spirits of the hotel would fade into the darkness of the bar and the night auditor would once again be alone. He would walk to the door of the bar and make a left to the reservation office and await the living guests to awake and start their mountain vacations.

The Stanley Hotel was well known to be haunted and many of the guests would ask the night auditor about any experiences he had. But in respect to his other worldly friends the night auditor would deny any knowledge of apparitions and ghostly happenings in the dead of the night.

The morning shift front desk agents would show through the door and the night auditor would grab his duster and head out into the brisk cool mountain morning out through the now once again bustling kitchen down the stairs and out the door that would open for him. Singling once again that his night was over and he could pass by the hung-over young men and women that were just getting up to go to work.


[edit on 25-2-2007 by whatukno]

[edit on 26-2-2007 by asala]