Trevor and Gabrielle celebrate their first anniversary at a supposedly haunted inn on the Northern California coast. But is the hotel really inhabited by spirits, or are the innkeepers perpetrating an elaborate hoax?

From The Mendocino Room: A Ghost Story

As the October sun fell behind a bank of clouds, illuminating them in pink like cotton candy, a seagull drifted lazily in circles around the lamp room gallery of the lighthouse. Breaking its pattern, it turned to the northeast, sailing over the line of keepers’ cottages with their red roofs and across a field of dry grass toward a gazebo where two men were sitting. The bird, brown and aged, its beak chipped from fighting, spiraled around the wooden octagon as if looking for potential scraps, then veered westward to the waves that churned into a beaten egg froth atop the treacherous reefs.

Studying the seabird’s path, Lalo lounged back on his seat in the weathered gazebo, one foot on the bench and the other on the wooden floor. He turned his gaze from the bird to the 115 foot tower standing tall on the opposite bluff, silhouetted by the sun like a gaunt prophet of doom looking out over the edge of the sea. Despite Lalo’s appearance of ease, he had felt restless all day. He scratched himself where the climbing harness had bunched his pants up into his crotch.

It wasn’t just that April had punched him in the eye and slammed the door in his face. He was used to his girlfriends finding out about each other and emphatically leaving him. No, there was something else on his mind. He was, by nature, superstitious, and he couldn’t but think that meeting his double in Bodega Bay that morning was a bad omen.

Next: The Phosphorescent Terrier

Copyright 2015 Ian G. Wilson