Passe-Partout

“I’m trying to find my way. Can you help me?”
I practically leapt unto an antique settee at the boy’s question.

Earlier, I had been bored after a weekend on the road sandwiched between meetings, and since I’d been warned of the ghost of a wide-eyed child that was often spotted scurrying around the west wing of the hotel, I decided to go exploring Saturday afternoon. The staff had dubbed the spectral toddler Blinky due to his penetrating blue eyes. Not a shift goes by, I was assured, that someone at the hotel didn’t spot Blinky, now regarded as a kind of mascot who’d been roaming the halls as far back as anyone could remember and maybe since the day they first threw up the imposing brick Tudor revival façade in the early 19-somethings.

The hotel was fairly deserted at the time. It was the off-season, and clientele were mostly business folks, who, unlike me, had the budget to fly out weekends. Between that and the lackadaisical staff, I had plenty of vacant rooms with doors ajar to poke around in. But, after an hour of sliding into empty, open rooms and blasting away random camera shots into every shadowy nook and cranny with my cell phone, I was growing bored again.

However before giving up, in a seldom-used third-floor party room I spotted—something else.

After sneaking in and quietly sealing the door behind me, I scanned the room in the fading sunlight and found myself slowly realizing that I had come to gaze on a figure barely visible against the faded wallpaper opposite the door. It was a small boy standing against the back wall of the room, hidden between the glare of flanking windows. The child stared back with wild blue eyes. Taking in its stiff but slight three-foot figure, its ragged old-fashioned haircut, and its collarless linen shirt, I realized the obvious with a vague dread. I had found the hotel's infamous ghost. I had reached a level of acceptance and was fumbling with my camera when it—he—questioned me, throwing me into terror.

“Blinky?” I peeped back from behind my laced fingers. He had not only spoken but he looked pretty solid too— for a ghost, that is.

“Please mister, can I have a moment of your time?”

He also spoke surprisingly well; he looked about three or four maybe. Mine were obnoxious droolers at that age. Maybe he was some kind of genius or had that Gary Coleman disease.

“You’re …you’re lost?”

“Yes, sir. Please help me find my mother.”

“I’m sorry, I thought you were— the clothes, the…never mind. What can I do?”

“Your room—it has a telegraph line?”

“Yeah. It has a line. A phone. Tele-phone.”

“Telephone, yes. Can I use it?”

“Okay, yea. It’s not far.”

I lead the boy out of the ballroom. He was silent, expressionless now. I was put a bit uneasy the way the kid followed behind as we head to my headed to my room. It was W303. Same floor and wing but otherwise as far away as possible. Miles, it seemed as we walked in silence. He was silent anyway.  I put-put-put-clonk in my oxfords on and off the badly laid hallway runners. Whereas I wouldn’t even have known he was back there except that I could feel the weight of his gaze staring intensely at the back of my head.

It was unnerving. And, besides, I thought, as we reached the door to my suite, I hated to let the kid in my room anyway. I hadn’t even let the maids in for a few days. Frankly, living weeks at a time out my suitcase on this sales trip had given me a renewed taste of my bachelorhood slobbery. And besides, I realized stupidly, there was my cell.

“Here kid, I forgot. Just use this.” I held out the phone.

The boy stared at it puzzled, angry.

“Take my cell, kid. Cell phone."

“I want to use the telephone.” He was firm, teeth clenched.

“No worries. This is one.”

“Are you sure?”

“This is definitely a telephone.”

“I want to use the telephone line in your room.”

“No, no; this is one” I nodded enthusiastically. “Just no line.”

The boy showed some understanding. Also apathy. “Please let me in to use the telegraph line in your room.” He smiled a little throught the grinding white flash of teeth.

“Telegraph? Who taught you that?” Silence. “Same person who dressed you huh?”

“Please let me call my mother in your room.”

“Have I seen you somewhere before? Does your ma work at historical center down the block?”

“Please I need to come inside.”

“Okay, okay, who is she? Is she a maid here?  Are you staying in the hotel? You want to call the front desk? Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“Yes, what?”

“Yes, let me in. Please.”

“Let me dial it. I’ll bring the receiver out. What room? What’s your number?”

“Please just let me in!” This was somewhere between a growl and a hiss. It knocked me back two paces into the door.

“Listen, kid—” I stammered, feeling somehow pinned by the little thing.

“Let me in!” the kid bellowed stepping forwards, somehow seeming to tower, “Now!”

I fell back clunking my head on the door knob and sending my pass key clattering between the wall and the runner carpet. “There! Take it!”

His eyes darkened, brow furrowed. He was puzzled, angry. I snatched the card up.

“Take the card! The key! The key-card”

“No you take it.”  He was calming, reasoning, but glowering over me as I cowered “You have to open the door.”

“I can’t…just take the card, the phone whatever you want. My wallet is on the bureau, there’s not much but—”

The smile drops, but only momentarily “Open the door!” The blue eyes blink giving way to featureless black orbs. “Let me in!”

“Okay! Come in!” I scream managing to wave the card in the direction of the scanner and fall backward into the foyer as the door swings wide. He’s immediately standing over me in the breech. The urine shooting out of me and down my pant leg is the last thing I remember until I woke up and I was, well…

Here.