The Hotel LaNeau
Sandy
DeLuca
Decades
gone since people
gathered here…
reinvented
countless times.
Grand
reopening tonight...
Solstice…
My
friends and I drink red wine,
listen
to a piano man play
an
old Stone’s song.
When
done, the crowd applauds,
performer
nods,
sips
from a bottle of whiskey.
Is
that blood on the baby
grand’s keys?
Beelzebub’s
face etched on the
lid?
Reminds
me a conjurer
once
owned this place.
Unclear
for how long;
city
records are sketchy,
years
of details missing.
People
were murdered…
women
found on the grounds,
throats
and wrists slashed,
skin
stripped away,
feathers
fastened to raw and
bleeding limbs.
Demon
sigils carved into trees.
Rituals
performed at Solstice.
When
I was young,
I
came here for the music.
Sometimes
the bartender served
me
beer, or something stronger.
Some
nights, I ignored requests
for a dance,
ignored
sly lines whispered as I
stared
at
photos on walls…
women
gathered in a circle,
men
with painted faces stood
behind.
Inside
a lobby’s case…
decorated
masks…
postcards
from Transylvania…
bird
bones and silver
pentagrams…
and
black feathers on top of
thick grimoires.
I
loved the strangeness…
the
eerie feeling I got when
gazing up a stairway
at
the edge of the ballroom…
was
colder there, darker.
One
night I glimpsed a spectral
figure…
bowing
slightly…
before
disappearing into shadow.
Last
time I was here…
I
climbed those stairs.
Head
full of masculine and Jack
Daniels.
Dark
hall,
velvet
curtains,
ornate
mirrors.
A
guy sat on a sofa,
smoked
a thin cigarette,
dressed
in an olden suit,
hair
a bit too long,
cap
on his head,
feather
tucked inside the brim.
Smiled
slowly,
asked
if I wanted to dance.
Seemed
like he held me for
hours.
When
he let me go,
saw
a sinister glint in his
eyes.,
Then,
he was gone…
Not
much has changed here…
the
same fancy mirrors…
eerie
photos and the lobby’s case still here.
They
play the same old songs.
I
shrug when the piano man winks,
singing
Sympathy for the Devil.
I
shiver…
from
the top of the stairs drifts a feather…
Solstice
rituals have begun.
©
Sandy DeLuca 2024
