Shadow and Stars

Eight

In Eureka Springs, you'd have to be living under a rock to be unaware that the Crescent is supposedly the most haunted hotel in the country, but this is the first I've ever heard of a curse.

It turns out that Julian has a slight—okay, a massive—obsession with all things creepy.

And the top of his list of fixations?

The Crescent Hotel.

"I still can't believe your dad works there," he says, shaking his head in awe, pulling his laptop out of his backpack and turning it on.

"He doesn't just work there, he manages it," I say proudly. 

My dad has worked in the hospitality industry all his adult life, starting in housekeeping and moving his way up. When we came back to Eureka Springs, his resumé had impressed them, and they offered him the job on the spot. I miss my mom every single day, but I am blessed with a kindhearted and hardworking father who does his best to fill both roles.

Julian looks up from the keyboard and gapes at me. "Oh my God, can he get us in to explore all the restricted areas?" he asks, his dual-toned eyes widening in glee. I can't help but notice the brightness in his face, and his use of the word us sends a little tingle down my spine.

I cock my head to the side in amusement. "Gym Class Julian," I say with a clap of my hands, "can we focus on the matter at hand here?"

He lets out a little huff and turns his computer around. "Fine, but don't think I'm going to forget about this."

I smirk and lean forward to look at the laptop. "I'm certain you won't. Now, will you tell me about the curse before I—" My eyes settle on his screen and I snort. "You made a PowerPoint presentation?"

"Hey, don't make fun. There's a lot of information to unpack here, and I wanted to make sure I didn't forget anything."

I pull my lips between my teeth to quell my laughter. "Sorry, sorry. Go ahead, Professor."

Julian gives me a sidelong glare but points at the screen. "All I did here was make a list of all the weird shit connected with the Crescent. And there's a lot. First, the springs have always been fabled to hold magical powers; the Native Americans believed that when they saw the water heal a princess from the Sioux tribe, then the Scotch-Irish immigrants began settling here too. Pretty soon everyone around here believed in the power of the Springs. Constructed in 1886, the Crescent quickly fell into disrepair because it was just too much to manage. In 1908, they turned it into a conservatory for young women, closed again in 1924, opened again in 1930 as a junior college, then 1937 is when the quack doctor showed up pretending that the springs held the cure for cancer." I already knew about that last part; I'd done a research project on Norman G. Baker in 9th grade. "After that fiasco, it was turned into a hotel again. But weird shit had been going on for a long time. And mind you; this isn't even the complete list."

I read the bullet points in front of me; according to the list Julian had compiled, the strange things had begun during the construction of the hotel in 1886 when a stone mason fell from the building and died inside one of the rooms; 1905: someone shot and killed a man while defending a girl who was being assaulted by the hotel gardener; 1918: two students got into a fight, one of them went missing and never came back; 1922: a teacher choked on a piece of steak at dinnertime and died in front of the entire school; 1934: a guest fell down two flights of stairs to their death, but the way they were sprawled at the bottom made it appear that they were pushed; 1955: a janitor at the hotel lost his entire family in a car accident on their way to pick him up from work; 1967; the hotel nearly burned to the ground; 1979: someone robbed the front desk at gunpoint and killed two clerks; 1985: there was an exorcism performed in a guest room without the knowledge of the management.

But it is one of the last bullet points that grabs my attention and holds it.

1993: a seventeen-year-old Eureka Springs High School senior attending prom at the Crescent jumps to his death from the rooftop balcony after he and his friends slip away from the dance to have a cigarette.

Julian notices my gaze and nods. "The one from 1993? Yeah, that one is fucked up. His friends all saw him jump, but they insist that he never would have committed suicide, that he loved life too much and had a football scholarship to the University of Arkansas. The accepted theory is something made him do it," he says in a low voice, and even though he's being over-the-top and campy, an uneasy feeling settles in my belly.

"1993..."

"Yeah, what about it?"

"I think that's the year my dad graduated high school."

His eyes widen, and he leans forward on his elbows. "That's it; you have to get us in there."