The Chartreuse Napkin

In the autumn of 1987, I was sixteen, and the world was a series of doors I hadn’t yet thought to open. My classmates and I were on a week-long history trip to the old city of Marburg, staying in a hotel that had once been a convent. I remember the smell of old wood and dust, the creak of the floorboards in the hallway, and the way the radiators clanked like bones in the night. I wasn’t afraid of anything then. I was too smart for that, too modern. I had my Walkman, my mixed tapes, and a copy of Stephen King that I read by flashlight after lights out. My name is not important, but let me call myself Lena.

It was on the third evening that Clara, a girl with a wild laugh and a taste for the macabre, pulled out a deck of cards and a wine glass from her bag. She had been reading about séances and was desperate to try one. The hotel had a common room with a large round table, and we snuck down after dinner, armed with a marker and a stack of paper napkins. We cut out letters and numbers, taping them haphazardly around the table’s edge. Clara found a votive candle and lit it, though the flame flickered as if in a draft though all windows were closed. Then she placed the wine glass in the center, upside down, its rim touching the paper. ‘We need a question,’ she said, her eyes bright. I shrugged, not really believing, but the tension in the room was real. ‘Is anyone here?’ I asked, trying to sound brave.

The glass trembled, then slid across the table, dragging the napkins with it. It stopped on ‘H’, then ‘E’, then ‘L’, then ‘L’, then ‘O’. We looked at each other, and for a split second, I thought we were moving it, but no one was touching the glass. My hand hovered over it, but I felt nothing. Clara gasped, and then we all started laughing, nervously. ‘This is fake,’ said Mark, the skeptic. But the glass moved again, spelling ‘ALONE’. The room seemed to grow colder, and the candle flame bent, pointing away from the glass, as if something was leaning over it.

We asked more questions, and the glass answered. It told us the name ‘Irma’, and that she had been a nun here, and that she had died in the room next to ours. We couldn’t verify that; the hotel staff were tight-lipped. But the eerie part came when we asked for a sign. The glass spelled ‘NAPKIN’, and then stopped. We looked at the table, and there, among the scattered paper letters, was a single chartreuse napkin, stained with a brownish red substance that looked like dried blood. We had not brought any napkins of that color. The hotel’s were white and beige. Clara picked it up, and it was stiff, as if it had been soaked and dried many times. She dropped it, and we hurried back to our rooms, laughing nervously but barely sleeping.

The next night, we couldn’t resist. We set up again, but this time, we didn’t ask for a sign; we asked for a story. The glass spelled out a tale that made my skin crawl. It said: ‘I was a sister here, but I hid a sin. I met a soldier in the garden, and we loved in secret. When the Mother Superior found out, she locked me in the cellar. I died there, in the cold, and no one found me until the spring. But my soul never left. I am bound to this token, the napkin that covered my face. I cannot rest until it is returned to my grave.’

The glass stopped, and the candle went out. We heard a scraping sound from the hallway, like something being dragged. Mark went to the door, but it was locked from the inside. The scraping came closer, and then stopped right outside our door. We all froze. Then there was a knock, three slow knocks. Clara whispered, ‘Maybe it’s the hotel staff.’ But I knew it wasn’t. I looked through the keyhole and saw nothing but darkness, and yet I felt a presence, as if something was leaning down to meet my eye. I pulled back, and the knocking stopped. Then the door rattled, as if someone was trying to turn the handle.

We panicked. We blew out the candle and huddled in the corner until the sounds faded. In the morning, we found the chartreuse napkin in the center of the table, folded neatly, with a small pile of dust around it, as if it had been placed there a moment ago. We asked the hotel owner about Irma, but he was old and his eyes widened. He said, ‘That name? This place had a convent until the 1950s. There was a nun who disappeared, they said she ran away. But some said she was buried in the walls. We never found her body. But sometimes, when we renovate, we find old things.’ He would not say more.

Our last night, we decided to return the napkin to the cellar, to give it back to her grave, if there was one. We found the cellar door at the end of a narrow staircase, locked with a padlock. But as we stood there, the padlock clicked open by itself. The door swung inward, revealing a dark, stone room with damp dirt floors. We stepped inside, and the door slammed behind us. We were plunged into complete darkness. I fumbled for my lighter, and when I lit it, we saw the cellar was filled with old crates and moth-eaten habits. And in the corner, there was a mound of dirt, like a grave. I placed the napkin on the mound, and the candle flickered, then steadied. We heard a sigh, a sound of relief, and then the door swung open again, and we scrambled out.

We never spoke of it after that. We graduated, went our separate ways. But I think of that napkin often. I sometimes see it in my dreams, and I feel the cold of that cellar. And I wonder if there are places where the forgotten still seek their names, their tokens, their rest. I am not the same person who walked into that hotel. I know there are things beyond the doors we close, and sometimes, they knock.