Till Death Do We Part?
A large crowd was gathered around the old storyteller ofRoswell who sat on a stump in the middle of the town common whereRoswellAnnual Fairwas being held. Children teens and even some adults sat in front of him. Not one of them spoke. They were all captivated by the old man's words. They didn't care that he frequently interrupted his own stories with a coughing fit or to clean his old worn out spectacles. The old man strung his words together in such a way that even the lousiest storyteller would sound as though his words were made of hunny. The crowd accumulated more and more as word spread that he was going to tell the town's most famous story. He cleaned his spectacles off on his dirty handkerchief before he began. When he was finished cleaning them he started in his raspy worn voice "There was once in this very town a young woman staying at the oldRoswell Guesthouse, she thought she would just stay one night as she was just passing through on business but that soon changed…"
"Miss," Liz said to one of the frantically busy women behind the receptionist's desk. "Yes?" came her breathless response. Liz smiled at the woman sympathetically and gave her a couple of seconds to recover from the burst of tourists that had been before her in line. "Don't you hate tourist seasons? They just never seem to stop coming do they?" Liz said friendly to the weary looking receptionist. "Yes, they drive me absolutely insane. But they are what keep our hotel in business." Having regained her composure she smiled at Liz and said, "I'm sorry, I don't think I caught your name." "It's Liz, and that's okay I know how you feel, I just got out of the hotel business. Tourists can be brutal." The woman nodded her agreement and said, "My name is Isabelle." She said.
"Is there anything I can help you with?" Isabelle asked. "I certainly hope so, are there any rooms available?" Isabelle's smile faded at the question "I'm sorry there isn't, that mob of tourists took our last rooms." Liz looked over the receptionist's shoulder and saw one remaining key on the wall. "What about that key, room 34?" The calm and relaxed if not slightly stressed nature that Isabelle had shown through the entire conversation suddenly became jittery and nervous. "I'm sorry I can't let you take that room." She said, the tone of her voice leaving no room to argue. "What's wrong with it?" Liz asked slightly taken aback by the pleasant girl's abrupt words. "I'm sorry; it is hotel policy that no one has that room." She spoke no longer friendly and casual but as though she were reading her words straight from the manual showing no emotion. "I don't understand. What could be so bad about the room that you would refuse to let me have it even though I am willing to pay?" Isabelle looked to each side of her as though she feared that one of the other busy women would pick up their conversation. She leaned towards Liz and whispered "it's haunted." Liz would have laughed had the look on the other girl's face not been so gravely serious. "Well," she said "I am not afraid of ghosts so I would like to have the room please, and if I die during the night you can say that you warned me fairly and that I refused to listen." Isabelle reluctantly handed over the key and charged her for the room. "I hope that the spirits do not look upon your fearlessness as an insult" were the last words she spoke as Liz made her way up to the third floor.
She put the key in the door only to find that the door had become jammed from years of disuse. She jiggled the key in the lock and gave the door a shove with her shoulder when it finally came free and she gained entrance into the room. The room looked no different than the other rooms she had stayed in, in previous visits to the hotel. The only major differences were that the paint was starting to peel a little around the eges, it was very dusty, and where the paint looked the freshest there were large stains, although she could see that they had painted over them. All in all excluding the dust she figured that the room would be satisfactory.
She wiped the dust off the little TV set and the table and flopped down on the bed exhaustedly. 'So the room is haunted?' She thought to herself. 'Doesn't seem too bad to me. I wonder what happened to make them think that it was haunted.' She looked up wearily when she heard a knock at the door. She got up and let the late night visitor in. When she saw that it was Isabelle she moved out from in front of the door so she could come in and motioned for her to sit down. Isabelle politely declined the offer saying "I don't have a lot of time, but I needed to tell you why this room has always been off limits."
"In 1966 this very hotel was just newly opened. On our opening night a young woman came and stayed in this room. She stayed for three nights she said that she was in the process of moving her belongings into a new house where her and her fiancé were moving after they were married. Her fiancé she said was going to be coming home from Vietnam just in time for their wedding. The night before her wedding She received two letters. One was from the army informing her that her fiancé had died in the line of duty. They said that he had been tending the wounded in the medical tent when a bomb dropped out of the sky and demolished the whole campsite. There hadn't been enough of his body left to medically identify him but they found his tags inside the tent. The other letter was from her fiancé; he had sent it just hours before the bombing. The letter read:
Beloved, in only a few a more hours I will finally be able to see you again. The only thought that has stayed with me trough all of this is that even if I die today not even death could end our love. I will see you soon.
-Alex
After reading both of these letters she decided that she wanted nothing more than to be with Alex once again. The next morning house keeping came into her room using a passkey and found her hanging from the rafters. On the wall the words 'Not even in death do we part' were written." As Isabelle finished the story Liz noticed that a tear ran down her cheek. "What's wrong?" she asked. The woman gave a mournful laugh and said "That story gets to me every time, now enough of me keeping you up with old stories of the dead get some sleep now. The spirits won't bother you tonight." She left the room and Liz fell asleep thinking about the story and she continuously heard Isabelle's words "not even in death will we part" over and over in her head.
The next morning Liz packed her things and went down to the lobby and asked the people working at the receptionist's desk if Isabelle was working that day. The women looked at her oddly as she handed over her room key. "Room 34?" the woman asked. "Yes, and I'm very disappointed that for spending the night in a haunted room I didn't see one ghost." The woman smiled and said, "I think you did." She passed Liz a newspaper clipping that they had in the hotel scrapbook. "Is this the Isabelle that you saw?" The newspaper article told of a woman committing suicide in room 34 of theRoswell Guesthouse and writing the words 'Not even in death will we part' on the wall.
In a state of shock Liz handed the woman the article, collected her recite, and left. But she soon found out that she had a knack for writing and published a book about her experiences called "Till Death Do We Part?" She frequently returned to the hotel for inspiration. During her time of research for her book she found a man by the name of Alex that lived in the house that Isabelle and her fiancé were planning on living in. When she questioned the man she found out that he was Isabelle's betrothed and he had escaped the campsite before the bomb had hit. He had arrived in Roswellthe day after Isabelle had committed suicide. He now makes his living telling stories in Roswell, stories about his time in the army, about his one true love, and even some ghost stories.