Working at a hotel is pretty boring, not that anyone would ever assume differently. It’s just like any other job. You wake up, come to work and try and finish your shift without strangling anyone, yourself included.
I only just started working in the hotel industry this summer. Just trying to earn enough money to fix my broken down hunk of junk that decided to take a shit on me. Leaving me stranded in this dusty old town.
You see I’m a traveler, a transient, a fucking bum, as my mom would have put it. Unfortunately for me my travels have brought me to this old run down town and behind the front desk of an even older and dying hotel. Every night here was just as uneventful as the last. Last night was supposed to be no different, beginning just as boring as usual.
After coming in and relieving Kent, the second shifter, I got my usual shit tasting coffee and settled in for what I thought was going to be another uneventful night at the hotel. Then the phone rang.
At first I kinda just stared at it. I’ve never had to make a call, much less receive one from the hotel. I didn’t even know the phone worked honestly. After a few seconds I snapped myself out of it and picked up the phone. This is what I get paid to do after all.
“Thank you for calling the Monarch Hotel. This is Fontain, how may I help you.”
“I’m calling to reserve room 412, I’ll be there shortly.” A man’s voice said back.
“Uhmm sir, I think you may have the wrong number. We don’t ha-”
I was cut off by a click at the other end of the line. The man had hung up.
“A fourth floor.” I finished.
I didn’t have nearly enough info to actually make the reservation so I checked the arrivals bucket to see if maybe he was only calling to confirm a reservation he had already made. Low and behold there was a registration card in the arrivals bucket, the only one. I pulled it out and took a closer look at it.
Almost everything on his reg card was marked N/A. His name, phone number, address all were marked as Non Applicable. Save for the folio comments section at the very bottom.
No ID or CC Required.
Don’t Let Yourself Be In The Dark
What the hell was this? Was Kent trying to troll me or something? Not sure what it meant by the dark thing, but it gave me a weird vibe. Living on the open road you learn to trust your gut feeling, even if it is irrational. So on the off chance that something odd was coming my way I put my guard up.
So I went around the hotel and started turning on all the lights I could find. From the lobby lights all the way to the elevator and back around both stairwells. I even bumped up the brightness on my computer just in case. If all else fails I still had my phone that was charging at the front desk.
All in all I thought I was pretty prepared for any weirdness that was going to walk through that door tonight. Well, except for the fourth floor. I still had no clue how I was going to check someone into a room that didn’t exist. I guess I’ll have to cross that road when I get to it. After about an hour of aimlessly scrolling through Youtube shorts I heard the familiar jingle of someone walking through the front door.
A tall black man walked in and approached the front desk. He was wearing a tank top, cargo shorts, and sandals. He looked like a black surfer dude, though his surfing days seemed long behind him. He had a lean build and a big afro at the top of his head.
“I’m here to check into room 412.”
“Yeah, we talked over the phone right?”
He looked annoyed at my question and instead of answering, he put a heavy leather suitcase on the counter.
“Here’s my bag. I’ll need you to carry it up to the room for me.”
I hadn’t realized that being a bellhop was a part of my job description. I had a half a mind to tell him no and just give him the keys to find his own way up to the room. But the guy looked old and maybe genuinely needed my help. Plus good customer service and all that. So I took the suitcase and rounded the corner.
“Before we go up to the room do you think you could turn off or at least dim the lights? It’s much too bright in here.”
“Uhhmmm, unfortunately the lights in the lobby, hallways, and stairwells are all automatic. So I can’t turn them off or dim them.” I lied.
I could see a small frown forming at the edges of his eyebrows.
“I certainly hope that isn’t the case for the rooms as well.”
“No sir, you can dim and turn off the lights as much as you like.”
He didn’t say another word, just began walking towards the elevator. We started off side by side, but after only a few steps he was already halfway down the hall. How the hell could he move that fast? It looked like he was walking slower than me!
I started fast walking trying to catch up, but I just couldn’t. It felt like I was on a treadmill. All the lights and doors were behaving as if I was gaining ground, but I just wasn’t getting any closer to the elevator. In fact it looked like I was getting even farther away from it. The man on the other hand looked like he was moving normally and was almost at the end of the hallway.
I stopped and looked back to see how far I had gotten and saw that I was only a quarter of the way down the hallway. This confused me, but what actually scared me was the flickering lobby lights at the front desk. They were flickering tirelessly as if they were fighting to stay on and then completely gave out. Then the lights at the end of the hallway did the same, and then a few more.
I turned around and sprinted towards the elevator. Whatever the hell was happening definitely wasn’t normal and I sure as shit didn’t want to find out what would happen if I got caught out in the darkness.
As I ran through the hall I could hear the bulbs buzz and flicker all around me. Some even burst out of their sockets flinging shards of glass everywhere as they went out one after the other behind me.
I could feel the oppressive darkness nipping at my heels as I ran faster down the hallway. Still, the same illusion persisted in front of me. By this time the man had already reached the elevator and was standing just outside of it. I could see the wide grin on his face as he watched me run to him. He was loving this shit.
Pretty soon I would be out of breath. I could feel my legs start to burn and my energy leaving me quickly. I had to do something quick. So I threw the suitcase behind me and sprinted harder than I had ever had in my life. I was giving it everything I had until my face abruptly slammed into the wall and I fell on my ass.
It took a minute for my eyes to focus after being dazed like that. I found myself actually sitting in the elevator. I had to catch my breath for a moment before I stood up. Once I did, the man came into the elevator holding his suitcase. That shit eating grin he had replaced with a tight frown.
“Fourth floor.” He said.
Instinctively, I pressed the fourth button on the elevator and heard the familiar ‘ding’ that accompanied it. I looked at the control panel and saw that there were more floors that had been ‘added’ to the hotel. Some of these buttons didn’t even have numbers, just odd symbols on them.
As the doors to the elevator closed I looked out into the now almost pitch black hallway. At the end I could make out a very faint flicker of light at the front desk. I think I just got a text. I checked my pockets and sure enough I had forgotten my phone back at the desk.
“That’s okay. The worst has got to be over right.” I thought to myself as the doors closed and we began our ascent.
“You scared of the dark? I saw you running.” The man said.
“More like scared of the weird shit inside of it.” I said back.
The man chuckled at that.
“Haven’t worked here long, huh?”
“Nope. Honestly, I don’t know how the last guy did it. No wonder he quit.”
“Is that what they told you happened to him?” The man asked.
“Yeah.. He did quit, didn’t he?”
“No. He. Did. Not.”
“Then what happened to him?” I asked.
“Me.”
The single light overhead began to buzz loudly. Just like the ones that were back in the hallway and just like those it began to flicker quickly. I knew it would only be a matter of time before it would be completely out and I would be shrouded in complete darkness with this guy.
I had to think fast and act even faster. Escape obviously wasn’t an option and my last resort for a source of light was sitting back at the front desk. It sure looked liked I was fucked, or maybe not.
As my frantic eyes searched for salvation they happened to glance over the emergency control panel in the wall. You know, the one that you can open to call the fire department if the elevator gets stuck or something. I quickly threw it open and found exactly what I was looking for. A small button sat just beside the phone with the words: EMERGENCY LIGHT just above it.
I pressed the button and all at one the yellow light overhead went out and was replaced with the red glow of the emergency light. With this old building I was amazed that the light had come on at all. I breathed a sigh of relief and felt my panic begin to subside.
I looked over at the man and saw that he was basically fuming with anger. His thick black eyebrows cast a deep shadow over his eyes as his frown deepened. With the red glow of the emergency light reflecting off his pupils, it looked like his eyes were on fire.
Behind him and deep with the darkness of his shadow. I could see a kind of ripple, almost like a vibration, in the darkness. These small ripples grew and grew into bigger waves that expanded his shadow into several directions. The more the waves reached out and expanded beyond the boundaries of his shadow, the more distinct they became. To my horror they weren’t waves at all. They were hands, human hands, reaching out from the depths of his shadow.
They would grab hold of the dimmest parts of the elevator where the red glow of the emergency light couldn’t quite reach. Once they made a foothold the area would become shrouded in darkness, expanding his shadow.
It sounds pretty horrific, but if you saw just how slow it all took you would have been just as confused as I was. The shadows were moving like an inch at a time at the most and the elevator wasn’t small at all, I could fit like two luggage carts in there easily. So I wasn’t exactly in any danger, maybe if we were going to the 50th floor instead of the 4th.
He had to have known this too, so in my mind I thought he was just pissed I had managed to survive and was just trying to scare me. Not gonna lie I kinda felt bad for the guy. Him being a supernatural entity or demon or whatever aside. It seemed like he had put a lot of effort into this whole killing me thing.
So I kinda just crouched down and near the emergency light and shifted and shook a little bit like I was scared and get this the guy fucking smiled when I did it too. God, the ego on this fucking guy, jesus. Peak customer service this was.
After a couple more seconds of my superb acting the elevator doors opened and the light from the hallway washed away all of the “impending” shadows. To my surprise the man offered me a hand to get up. I figured I was safe in the light so I took it and he led the way out into the hallway.
Honestly I was a bit disappointed. For a floor that shouldn’t exist it looked surprisingly normal. We got to his room and I gave him the keys. When he opened the door I could see that again, the inside was the exact same as the other rooms in the hotel.
The first thing he did when he entered was turn off the lights and I say “turn off the lights” in the loosest of terms. Once he hit the light switch all the light in the room was completely washed out. It was like looking at a wall that had been painted in shades of Vanta black. It was basically two dimensional at this point. Along the edges of the doorframe were the same waves I had seen in the elevator.
“Well Sir, you have a great night. If there’s anything else you may need please don’t hesitate to call the front desk.” I turned to get the fuck outta there.
“Wait.” The man called out from beyond the darkness.
“You are a very resourceful young man, your tenacity should be rewarded.”
A bundle of bills passed through the void. I could see that the entire bundle was all hundreds. He waved the bundle of cash at me in a beckoning manner.
“It’s all yours.” He said.
I reached for the money and when I did he pulled his hand back so that more than half of the bundle was back inside the void of darkness. I could see the waves of black tendrils violently swirling at the edges of the bundle. Like a tiger ready to pounce at the slightest of movement.
“No thank you Sir. Your thanks is thanks enough.” I turned and walked away.