Secrets of the Queen

July 21st, 1947

I had told her everything save the one thing I would never forgive myself for. She was so innocent and trusting and saw life as beautiful; she did not deserve to bear the weight of what I had done. We had met during the war so of course she knew of the trauma and the bloodshed, and her gentle soul had quietly come alongside mine and offered an anchor in the storms that flooded my mind. We were courting when I was awarded the medal of honor for my actions aboard The Grey Ghost and I’ll never forget that look of pride on her face. I was proud too, undoubtedly, but I could not shake the truth that I knew a different story than the one the world had been told about an American soldier. Yes, I had bravely prevented a mutiny of German prisoners of war, but at the cost of my conscience.

At the end of the war I had asked her to be my bride. Humbled to one knee, looking up into her warm brown eyes, that silly half grin that adorned her lips nearly every time she looked at me. She had laughed out loud the first time I had asked to kiss her, filling the restaurant with her zeal for life and beckoning my heart to join. She had said yes then to the kiss and she said yes now to the ring. I would whisk her away back to our homeland, the future filled with a promise of a better tomorrow as the dust of war settled into the past. My Ghost had been restored to her true self, to the majestic Queen Mary who would carry us to our new life across the Atlantic where I would begin to be restored from my own ghosts as well.

The ceremony had been small and sweet, the vows heartfelt and earnest, and I was convinced that no man had ever been as happy as I was at that moment her hand slipped into mine, my treasure and my bride. Up the gangplank as husband and wife, the sensual sea breeze toyed with her dress the way I intended to that evening. Inside the lobby she turned to me with a look in her eye I had seen before, a look she was finally going to act upon. My pulse quickened.

Her fingers laced behind my neck, pulled me in towards her. For the sake of decorum I won’t recount what she whispered into my ear. She slipped something out of my coat pocket; I knew her well enough to know what she had taken, knew her well enough to let her think I didn’t.

I watched her prance down the hallway to our room, B055, her small suitcase swinging at her side. I knew what was in that case, and I was eager to see her in it. I turned back to the bellman to finish checking in. He winked at me, the knowing nod of an older gentleman who knew what I was in for that night.

July 21st, 2017

He had figured out everything save one portion of his family’s history that seemed determined to stay in the dark. Dean, a long time lover of the old, the odd, and the dead, had spent the last eighteen months turning over every stone possible about his family’s past and its connection to The Queen Mary. His father has told him to let it die, leave it all in the past where it belonged, but Dean just couldn’t let the story of his great uncle go. Through his research, Dean has learned that his great uncle had been a war hero, yet had died alone behind the cold walls of an asylum.

He had also discovered that his uncle had requested to be returned to his bride upon his death. For whatever reason, there was no record of her death – not how she died, when she died, nothing, so fulfilling that request had long been abandoned by his family. Until Dean. Though he wasn’t certain, every clue he had pointed to The Queen Mary. He had found her ticket, her passport, all bundled up with his great uncle’s papers in the attic of their family home. But after their transatlantic crossing, there was no record of a Mrs. Marion Lauffner. Though his heart wanted him to be wrong, Dean had a deep conviction that the fate of that young bride rested within the hull of the once fabled warship.

Dean entered the main lobby of The Queen Mary, the beauty of her almost catching him off guard. He had spent years dreaming of this moment and her first impression did not disappoint. Though some may call her a relic that belonged in a museum, Dean still saw all the marvelous ways in which The Queen was still alive. The past pulsed through her in a tangible, exhilarating way for those who knew how to slow long enough to feel it, to sense it. Dean dragged his fingers along her multicolored wood paneling, mixing his fingerprints with the stories of those who had done the same for centuries before him.

“Can I help you?” asked a man that Dean had not noticed before. He stood almost a head taller than Dean, his blonde hair glistening under the glow of the grand chandelier that hung above them. Blue eyes bore through Dean but Dean held his gaze, slowly removing his hand from the wood paneling.

“Just here to check in for the night.” replied Dean, shifting his overnight bag that hung off his shoulder and the suitcase that ladened his right hand. The man nodded and beckoned Dean to follow him. As Dean did so, he couldn’t help but notice how outdated the man’s clothing was, not that he was one to talk. Dean donned a beaver felt fedora, a sports coat that once belonged to his grandfather, and a pair of leather boots with enough wear and tear to make Indiana Jones proud.

“Name?” asked the man, whom Dean could only presume worked here and perhaps was a part of a reenactment event on the ship.

“Dean, Dean Lauffner. Should be booked for one night in room -”

“B055. Yes, of course. You’re all checked in Mr. Lauffner. Here is your key. We hope your stay aboard The Queen is wunderbar.” The man handed Dean the keycard, smiling. Dean

took it and nodded his thanks. He hadn’t realized he would be needing to utilize his high school German on this trip.

Making his way down the hall, genuine excitement began to brew with each passing step. This was the same room his great uncle Henry had booked on his honeymoon. And if his theory was correct, it was also the room where Henry’s new bride had been murdered.

July 21st, 1947

I stood just outside the door, excitement and nerves spreading through my limbs as I juggled the eighty two red roses in the crook of my left arm. I had made sure they would be waiting for me behind the front desk – one red bloom of her favorite flower for every day we had been engaged. With my one free hand I unlocked the door, picked up my suitcase, and entered the room.

“Hello, my love.” I whispered, setting my bag down and removing my hat. The room already smelled like her, the exoctic aroma of her perfume flooding my senses and quickening my pulse. From where I stood I could see her feet; she was laying down on the bed, legs draped in the fine white silk of the dress I had purchased for her. Her silent waiting teased me. I rounded the corner, ready to shower her in roses, ready to come together in love.

I stood for a moment, marveling at how beautiful she looked and the astonishing fact that she was mine. There was no one else I would rather grow old with. I arranged the roses at her feet and sat next to her on the bed, gently taking her hand. It had been a long, eventful day and I didn’t blame her in the slightest for drifting off to dreamland while she waited for me. I would have waited a thousand years if I knew I’d be with her at the end.

Her hand fell limp into mine, all spark of life doused from her veins. I shook her arm. It moved as if a puppeteer was controlling her with strings. I shouted, yelled her name. Her eyes stayed closed. My extremities went numb and my breath stayed trapped in my throat. My eyes were drawn to a small speck of red on the pillow. I lifted up her head.

Plunged into the back of her neck was my medal of honor, still warm blood dripping all the way down her back, seeping into the edges of the white silk that framed her curves. My mouth went dry, my gut reeled. I turned away, my lunch expelling from my stomach onto the floor. With shaking hands I wiped away the bile, smearing my lips with her blood. Again my gut lurched and I fell to my knees. Crying, shaking, I pulled myself onto the bed next to her. She was cooling but not yet stiff. I wrapped my body around her, willing my own pulse to keep her warm. Shock, in its kindness, dragged me from consciousness.

When I awoke, my soul was begging that God would have mercy and shake me from this nightmare. Yet the smell of iron assaulted my senses with the violent truth that my young bride was dead. Her life giving vitality reduced to the blood that was crusted under my fingernails, her eagerness to live life growing stiff in my arms. A gull screeched outside the porthole window as the morning sun mocked me with its hope of a new day. Slowly I stood, and I knew a part of my soul had not risen with me. Something had broken that would never heal.

July 21st, 2017

Dean entered the dark room; it felt as if it had been vacant for decades, when in reality he knew it had been treated with room service that very morning. He flipped on the switch, illuminating the present and the past. The room had been restored, along with the rest of The Queen, to her original glory. Dean gave a contented sigh as he sat on the bed, taking in his surroundings. He felt such a connection to this ship, always had, and knowing that he had personal family ties to this very room nearly transported him to the era long gone.

Enough with the sentiment. Dean shook his head as he cracked open his suitcase and set to work. He pulled out files bursting with old letters and documents, journals that his great uncle had kept while locked in the asylum, anything that might help him unravel the tangled history of this tragic couple.

The hours washed by like the tide against the hull, Dean piecing together the past with painful precision. He scoured the journals, wondering why his uncle had never logged what had happened on that fateful night all those years ago. Had it just been too unbearable to remember? Just as that thought crossed Dean’s mind, an unopened envelope fell out of the back of the journal. How Dean had missed it before was beyond him. Across the front of the faded paper was one word scrawled in calligraphy: Confession. Dean slowly peeled open the past.

To God or whomever else will listen,

I can no longer live with this inside me. I’ll be dead soon, I’m sure of it. Death will be welcomed, for perhaps then I will stop being haunted by that damned medal that no longer holds any honor. The medal I see in my sleep, everynight, rammed into my sweet wifes neck. The medal that never should have been bestowed to me in the first place. I am no hero.

That night in which others say I stopped a mutiny is the night I looked at another man, a man who pleaded, said he was a husband, to just let him slip off the boat and swim back to his wife, as I held a gun to his head. I doubted his swim would be successful but the earnesty of his request bore through me. This young German soldier only wanted to return to the woman he loved. I had caught him on the main deck with stolen keys in hand. I held the gaze of his blue eyes that bore through me, two men alone on the deck of a ship, and I pulled the trigger.

All evidence pointed to a mutiny. A prisoner of war caught out of his cell, above deck, with keys that never should have found their way into his hands. I never told anyone how he had pleaded, what he had said. I tried to move on. But I couldn’t shake the notion that I could have let him go. He could have slipped into the darkness and his disappearance would have been chaulked up to another POW suicide. But he was dead and I was a hero and somewhere a young bride was waiting for a husband who would never come back.

I am no hero. That’s why I did the unimaginable. That’s why I had to send her to the sea. I didn’t know what else to do. I still remember the force it took to remove the medal from her spine, how light she felt in my arms as I carried her towards the porthole. It was just the right size. I told her it was for the best, told her she belonged to the ship, to the sea now, and I vowed that I would join her one day. I kissed her goodbye and let her body slip through the porthole and into the sea below.

They all blame the trauma of the war for the way I’ve ended up. Little do they know how secrets can kill a soul.

– Henry

Dean couldn’t believe what he had just read. The weight of it all rested heavy on both his head and heart. Slowly he reached into the very bottom of his bag and pulled out what he had considered his prized possession: his great uncle’s medal of honor. He has always presumed that the stain on the ribbon was just from age. He grew sick at the thought of it.

The lights flickered off as the horn of an approaching cruise ship groaned in the distance. Footsteps thundered down the hall. The scent of roses caught Dean off guard. His body ran cold. He stood up slowly, trying to find the lights, trying to ward off the rising sense of panic. He reached out for where he remembered the light switch to be and grabbed hold of the arm of the blue eyed man whose eyes now gleamed in the shadows.

Dean yelled and fell back onto the bed. The man tore the medal from his hand. He pinned Dean down and raised the medal over his head. He knew the strength needed to lodge metal into bone.

“He’s sorry!” yelled Dean. “Henry is sorry for what he did to you.” The man froze, as did Dean. He was not altogether sure if what was happening was real, but his heart told him to continue.

“Henry, the man who shot you. He regretted it every day until he died. And, and…it was you who killed his wife, wasn’t it? Henry had taken you from your love so you took him from his.” The words came out of Dean like a confession and the man reeled back in agony. In the dim moonlight coming through the porthole Dean could now see the bullet hole between the German soldiers eyes. Then another figure appeared next to him. A woman, draped in a white dress, reached out her hand towards the soldier, softly touching the medal with painful familiarity. They held each other’s gaze for a breath longer, and then they both faded into the darkness, the medal thudding against the carpeted floor.

Dean sat up with a slow and steady reverence towards what he had just witnessed. His great uncle was right; secrets can kill a soul. So perhaps it was the truth that finally set them free.

He packed his things back into his bag and left the room, but not before sending the medal into the harbor through the same porthole that had delivered a bride to the sea. Perhaps now Henry could finally be with his Marion. Dean had accomplished what he set out to do and felt this room would be better put to use by those who had gone before him. Perhaps now they would finally come together as husband and wife. With a tip of his fedor, Dean stepped out of the past with a new vigor for his future.

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