Everything's Eventual

   Mike, who had been working on Ten Haunted Hotel Rooms for about four months at that point, said: "I know what it means." A light turn in an unoccupied room would include opening the windows to change the air, dusting, enough Ty-D-Bowl in the can to turn the water briefly blue, a change of the towels. Probably not the bed-linen, not on a light turn. He wondered if he should have brought his sleeping-bag.

   Crossing the Persian from the bar with their drinks in his hands, Olin seemed to read Mike's thought on his face. "The sheets were changed this very afternoon, Mr. Enslin."

   "Why don't you drop that? Call me Mike."

   "I don't think I'd be comfortable with that," Olin said, handing Mike his drink. "Here's to you."

   "And you." Mike lifted his glass, meaning to clink it against Olin's, but Olin pulled his back.

   "No, to you, Mr. Enslin. I insist. Tonight we should both drink to you. You'll need it."

   Mike sighed, clinked the rim of his glass against the rim of Olin's, and said: "To me. You would have been right at home in a horror movie, Mr. Olin. You could have played the gloomy old butler who tries to warn the young married couple away from Castle Doom."

   Olin sat down. "It's a part I haven't had to play often, thank God. Room 1408 isn't listed on any of the websites dealing with paranormal locations or psychic hotspots—"

   That'll change after my book, Mike thought, sipping his drink.

   "—and there are no ghost-tours with stops at the Hotel Dolphin, although they do tour through the Sherry-Netherland, the Plaza, and the Park Lane. We have kept 1408 as quiet as possible . . . although, of course, the history has always been there for a researcher who is both lucky and tenacious."

   Mike allowed himself a small smile.

   "Veronique changed the sheets," Olin said. "I accompanied her. You should feel flattered, Mr. Enslin; it's almost like having your night's linen put on by royalty. Veronique and her sister came to the Dolphin as chambermaids in 1971 or '72. Vee, as we call her, is the Hotel Dolphin's longest-running employee, with at least six years' seniority over me. She has since risen to head housekeeper. I'd guess she hadn't changed a sheet in six years before today, but she used to do all the turns in 1408—she and her sister—until about 1992. Veronique and Celeste were twins, and the bond between them seemed to make them . . . how shall I put it? Not immune to 1408, but its equal . . . at least for the short periods of time needed to give a room a light turn."

   "You're not going to tell me this Veronique's sister died in the room, are you?"

   "No, not at all," Olin said. "She left service here around 1988, suffering from ill health. But I don't rule out the idea that 1408 may have played a part in her worsening mental and physical condition."

   "We seem to have built a rapport here, Mr. Olin. I hope I don't snap it by telling you I find that ridiculous."

   Olin laughed. "So hardheaded for a student of the airy world."

   "I owe it to my readers," Mike said blandly.

   "I suppose I simply could have left 1408 as it is anyway during most of its days and nights," the hotel manager mused. "Door locked, lights off, shades drawn to keep the sun from fading the carpet, coverlet pulled up, doorknob breakfast menu on the bed . . . but I can't bear to think of the air getting stuffy and old, like the air in an attic. Can't bear to think of the dust piling up until it's thick and fluffy. What does that make me, persnickety or downright obsessive?"

   "It makes you a hotel manager."

   "I suppose. In any case, Vee and Cee turned that room—very quick, just in and out—until Cee retired and Vee got her first big promotion. After that, I got other maids to do it in pairs, always picking ones who got on well with each other—"

   "Hoping for that bond to withstand the bogies?"

   "Hoping for that bond, yes. And you can make fun of the room

1408 bogies as much as you want, Mr. Enslin, but you'll feel them almost at once, of that I'm confident. Whatever there is in that room, it's not shy.

   "On many occasions—all that I could manage—I went with the maids, to supervise them." He paused, then added, almost reluctantly, "To pull them out, I suppose, if anything really awful started to happen. Nothing ever did. There were several who had weeping fits, one who had a laughing fit—I don't know why someone laughing out of control should be more frightening than someone sobbing, but it is— and a number who fainted. Nothing too terrible, however. I had time enough over the years to make a few primitive experiments—beepers and cell-phones and such—but nothing too terrible. Thank God." He paused again, then added in a queer, flat tone: "One of them went blind."

   "What?"