Maybe You Will Remember is a story about a young girl and her mother who are taking a vacation, but as the girl's mother falls ill, the girl begins to question her sanity. The story appears in Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill your Bones. The urban legend is the basis to the novel and film So Long at the Fair. Along with writer Alexander Woollcott finding it was possibly a true story in England in 1911 in The London Daily Mail, along with Detroit Free Press in 1889.
The Story
Mrs. Gibbs and her 16-year-old daughter Rosemary arrived in Paris on a hot morning in July. They had been on a vacation and now were returning home. Mrs. Gibbs did not feel well. So they decided to rest in Paris for a few days before going on. The city was crowded with tourists. Still, they found a place to stay at a good hotel. They had a lovely room overlooking a park. It had yellow walls, a blue carpet and white furniture. As soon as they unpacked, Mrs. Gibbs went to bed. She looked so pale that Rosemary asked to have the hotel's doctor examine her. Rosemary did not speak French but fortunately the doctor spoke English. He took one look at Mrs. Gibbs and said, "Your mother is too sick to travel. Tomorrow I will move her to a hospital but she needs a certain medicine. If you go to my home for it, it will save time." The doctor said he did not have a phone right now. Instead, he would give Rosemary a note for his wife.
The hotel manager put Rosemary in a taxi and, in French, told the driver how to find the doctor's house. "It will take only a little while," he told her "and the taxi will bring you back." As the driver slowly drove up one street and down another, it seemed to take forever. At one point Rosemary was sure they had gone down the same street twice. It took almost as long for the doctor's wife to answer the door, then get the medicine ready. As Rosemary sat on a bench in the empty waiting room, she kept thinking, "Why can't you hurry? Please hurry." Then she heard a phone ring some place in the house. The doctor had said he didn't have a phone right now. What was going on? They drove back as slowly as they had come, crawling up one street and down another. Rosemary sat in the backseat filled with dread, her mother's medicine clutched in her hand. Why was everything taking so long? She was sure the taxi driver was going in the wrong direction. "Are you going to the right hotel?" She asked. He didn't answer. She asked again but still he didn't reply.
When he stopped for a traffic light, she threw open the door and ran from the cab. She stopped a woman on the street. The woman did not speak English but she knew someone who did. Rosemary was right. The taxi had been driving in the wrong direction. When she finally got back to the hotel, it was early evening. She went up to the desk clerk who had given them their room. "I'm Rosemary Gibbs, "she said. "My mother and I are in Room 505. May I please have the key?" The clerk looked at her closely. "You must be mistaken," he said. "There is another guest in that room. Are you sure you are in the right hotel?" He turned to help someone else. She waited until he was finished. "You gave us that room yourself when we came this morning," she said. "How could you forget?" He stared at her like she had lost her mind. "You must be mistaken," he said. "I have never seen you before. Are you sure you are in the right hotel?" She asked to see the registration card they had filled out when they arrived. "It's June and Rosemary Gibbs," she said. The clerk looked in the file. "We have no card for you," he said. "You must be in the wrong hotel." "The hotel doctor will know me," Rosemary replied. "He examined my mother when we arrived. He sent me for medicine she needs. I want to see him."
The doctor came downstairs. "Here is the medicine for my mother," Rosemary said, holding it out to him. "Your wife gave it to me." "I have never seen you before," he said. "You must be in the wrong hotel." She asked for the hotel manager who had put her in the taxi. Surely he would remember her. "You must be in the wrong hotel," he said. "Let me give you a room where you can rest, Then maybe you will remember where you and your mother are staying." "I want to see our room!" Rosemary said, raising her voice. "It's room 505." It was nothing like the room she had remembered. It had a double bed, not twin beds. The furniture was black, not white. The carpet was green, not blue. There was someone else's clothing in the closet. the room she knew had vanished. So had her mother. "This is not the room," she said. "Where is my mother? What have you done with her?" "You are in the wrong hotel," the manager said patiently, as if he were speaking to a young child. Rosemary asked to see the police. "My mother, our things, the room, have disappeared," she told them. "Are you sure you are in the right hotel?" they asked. She went to her embassy for help. "Are you sure it's the right hotel?" they asked. Rosemary thought she was losing her mind. "Why don't you rest here for a while," they said. "Then maybe you'll remember..."
But Rosemary's problem was not her memory. It was what she did not know.
What happened to Rosemary's mother
When the hotel doctor saw Mrs. Gibbs, he knew at once that she was about to die. She had a form of the plague, a dread disease that killed quickly and caused very frightening epidemics. If the word got out that a woman had died of the plague in the heart of Paris, there would be panic. People in the hotel and elsewhere would rush to escape. The doctor knew what the hotel's owners expected. He was to keep the case a secret or else, they would lose lots of money. To get Rosemary out of the way, the doctor sent her to the other side of Paris for some worthless medicine. As he expected, Mrs. Gibbs died soon after she left. Her body was smuggled out of the hotel to a cemetery, where it was buried.
A team of workmen quickly repainted the room and replaced everything in it. The desk clerks were ordered to tell Rosemary that she was in the wrong hotel. When she insisted on seeing her room, it had become a different place and, of course, her mother had vanished. All those involved were warned that they would lose their jobs if they gave away the secret. To avoid panic in the city, the police and newspapers agreed to say nothing of the death. No police reports were filed; no new stories appeared. It was as if Rosemary's mother and her room had never existed.
TRIVIA
In an alternate version of the story, Rosemary and her mom have separate rooms and while Rosemary goes to bed, her mom passes away at night. The hotel staff quickly removes the mom's dead body and quickly redecorates the room. When Rosemary gets up the next morning and can't find her mom, everyone pretends not to know anything of her mom claiming Rosemary was there alone. In other versions, Rosemary discovered the truth about what happened to her mom herself, she bribes an employee of the hotel who tells her the truth or, she becomes so upset and confused that she has a mental breakdown and is admitted to an asylum for the rest of her life.