Cherry Bank, Part II
"Where are you guys here from?"
"Vancouver."
"Ah, locals, nearly. Where are you staying?"
"A place called the Cherry Bank? Do you know it?"
"Oh, man."
". . ."
"You picked a doozy."
"Oh?"
"Yeah, that's an old place. You're not in room 4 are you?"
"No, we're in room 10. What's in room 4? We saw that one."
"Last year, we had a paranormal investigation team went in there and checked things out. Room 4 was where they set up all their equipment, because they'd had the most reports from there."
"What did they see?"
"Nothing. The whole time that they were there. But when they got back to their office they were reviewing audiotapes, and the tape from room 4 had a voice on it. A little girl. Asking them if they'd like to join her for tea. She kept repeating it over and over."
"Creepy."
"Yeah."
"That's it?"
"There were at least two other ghosts. One is an older woman. She hangs around in the kitchen. I don't know what the third is like."
The subsequent Victoria Haunted Walks tour did not disappoint. We wandered around downtown Victoria to a soundtrack of enthralling stories about rooms replaced by an elevator in the Empress Hotel, night stalkers against which the only defense is to lie down naked in the street, ghostly chocolate shop owners, haunted restaurants, haunted wells, Hawaiian murderers, perfumey prostitutes, perturbed poets. All the while, however, we remained painfully aware of the creepy hotel to which we were returning afterward.
"Before we go back to that scary room, I think I'm going to need a stiff drink," she announced triumphantly, as we exited the final stop on the tour, an abandoned restaurant which was finally rented by the tour group at a reduced rate because it had finally been deemed unrentable by its owners. "Or two, perhaps."
I didn't disagree, so we made a detour by the Sticky Wicket Pub, where a couple of drinks and a big bowl of goat cheese fondue steeled our nerves.
"Want to try the front side of the hotel this time?"
The front of the Cherry Bank proved to be quite different from the back. Rather than a squatty white stucco building, the forward facing structure took the form of a huge white wooden house, four storeys in total, framed by a small grassy lawn and lush trees. A white wooden staircase roped up the left side of the building.
A sign on the door read FOR AFTER HOURS ACCESS PLEASE USE YOUR ROOM KEY IN THE FRONT DOOR.
The key turned in the lock, and we found ourselves once again standing in the small front parlour, near which we had been yelled at for missing the stairs earlier in the evening. Most of the lights were turned out. The entire interior seemed oppressively dark this time.
We mounted the first staircase once again, passed through the ROOMS 2 to 13 door, rounded the corner in the long dark corridor which traversed toward the back of the house, and both stopped at the sight of the lone door to room 4.
