The Haunting of Room 501
- Feb 2
- 19 min read
A short story by Angelina M. Lopez
This story contains: her and him, contemporary romance, nonhuman, strangers, cunnilingus, BIPOC
“But mija, I don’t understand why you’re there all by yourself,” Sylvia Beltrán’s mother whined through the speaker. Sylvia was using her phone’s mobile key app to let herself into the last room on the left at the end of an art deco hallway. The view out of the hallway’s French doors gave a tantalizing hint of what she would see inside.
The view inside Room 501 was so much better.
“Mom,” Sylvia said, interrupting a rant she knew by heart. “I’m sending you some pictures.”
Leaving her suitcase by the door, she took a photo of the behemoth four-poster bed and its pink satin canopy. She snapped a shot of a Tiffany lamp on a marble-topped bedside table. Then she took a picture of the view: Even nestled back against the bed’s rose-embroidered pillows, she could see the beach and the Gulf and a line of white pelicans flying battalion-straight through a pure blue sky.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Sylvia asked once all the images were sent.
“Can the people on the beach see inside your room?” her mother replied.
Sylvia laid the phone on the bed, pressed both hands against her diaphragm, and slowly inhaled and exhaled as she counted.
She only had herself to blame for telling her mother that she’d booked a much-needed three-night vacation at the Grand Galvez, the recently renovated grand dame of Galveston beach hotels. Without the excited phone call, her mom would’ve assumed Sylvia was spending the weekend as she’d spent most weekends since she’d moved to Houston: working. Sylvia had stopped sharing proof-of-life on social media when her mom just used those posts to pick her life choices apart. But when Sylvia’s travel agent included the opulent room styled in the mode of a bygone era among the list of possible beach stays, calling her mom was the first thing Sylvia did after booking it.
Her great-great-grandparents met and married in Galveston and, according to family lore, her great-great-grandmother had once cleaned rooms at the historic hotel. Over the generations, their family migrated from Galveston to Houston to Kansas City, where Sylvia grew up. Now, after moving to Houston two years ago to work as a director of finance for an impact investing firm, Sylvia was the newly named CFO—a newly named female, Mexican-American CFO who’d booked the most expensive room in a hotel once cleaned by her great-great-grandmother.
“You’d enjoy that fancy room more with a husband sleeping beside you,” her mother said.
“I’ve got a massage, Mom. Got to go. Love you.”
She hung up without waiting for her mother’s reply.
She didn’t have a massage appointment, not until the day after tomorrow. But she knew the continued absence of a ring on her finger blinded her mother to the beauty of the room just as it blinded her to Sylvia’s many accomplishments. Sylvia refused to allow that ever-present cloud to ruin this sunny day, not when she had a reserved cabana, a ‘new’ bathing suit she’d bought two years ago, and a succession of mango margaritas calling her name.
Wrestling her way up and out of the marshmallowy bed, she grabbed her suitcase. She’d packed to live in this room’s era for the weekend and she liked the look of her lacy underwear and vintage nightgowns in the top drawer of the carved bureau. The large flatscreen TV above it was the only obvious sign of the 21st century.
She glanced up into its dark screen.
A large man stood behind her. His hand was reaching for her. Cool fingertips touched her bicep.
Lita, Sylvia heard like a groan inside her head.
She whirled around, knocking his hand away, and saw that he was sepia-toned—bow tie and tux shirt and perfectly parted dark hair—before he disappeared.
Sylvia screamed a scream she didn’t know she could hold inside her.
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