It happened during our spring break trip, our senior year at UCLA.
What I wouldn’t do to go back in time and stop that trip. I’ve replayed it in my head a hundred times. If only Sara hadn’t broken up with me. If only my parents hadn’t let me use their car. If only I hadn’t insisted on driving all night…
Did fate want us there? With all the things that lined up just right, sometimes I think so. If anything went differently—if a fucking butterfly flapped its wings in Antigua—I don’t think we would’ve been here, at 2:45 AM, coasting down a dark desert highway.
Dev reached over and turned up the radio. “Seasons don’t fear the reaper,” he sang horribly off-key, “nor do the wind, the sun or the rain—”
“Will you please be quiet?!”
I glanced in the rearview mirror. Emmett. He was glaring at us from the backseat, his smooth babyface in a deep scowl. A travel pillow hung from his neck, a blanket wrapped around his feet.
“Sorry, did we wake you up?” I asked, with a fake pout.
“Yes.”
“Oooh, poor little Emmett is cranky because he missed his eight o’clock bedtime,” Dev said, turning around with a devilish smile on his face. “Better get his pacifier and blankie!”
“Fuck you.”
Did you know it’s scientifically proven that planning a vacation is much more fun than taking one? Now, I know why. Turns out, taking a 500-mile road trip with two other guys—one of whom doesn’t “believe” in deodorant—isn’t exactly all unicorns and rainbows.
I pushed my foot on the accelerator. The road stretched out before me, all the way to the horizon. Dark sand, dotted with cacti and shrubs, whipped by on either side. No sign of civilization for miles. Nature, untouched by man.
But then I saw it.
A shimmering light on the horizon. Shining like a beacon through the darkness.
And it was strange. As soon as the light met my eyes, I felt a wave of fatigue. It was like the Monster had worn off eight hours early. My arms ached, my fingers were stiff around the wheel, and my head felt so heavy…
“Actually, I think we should stop for the night,” I said.
“What? You chickening out on us?” Dev asked.
“Fine with me,” Emmett huffed.
The light twinkled and shimmered in the desert heat. I pushed down further on the accelerator, trying to reach it as fast as I could. It’s got to have a motel. Got to. I glanced down, and noticed I was going near 80. I lay off a little.
“Might not be a motel,” Dev said.
“Well, whatever it is, we’re stopping. I at least need a coffee or something.”
“Mixing coffee and Monster? That doesn’t sound healthy, dude.”
“I have a soy latte back here,” Emmett offered, “if you want it.”
I only made a gagging sound in reply.
The light on the horizon grew. Smaller lights appeared around it, and as we got closer, I could make out the details. A narrow road, shooting off from the highway and cutting into the sea of sand. Just a few buildings. I didn’t see any huge, lit-up signs for motels—or even gas, or food—which did not bode well.
As I turned off on the exit, my heart dropped further. The off-ramp wasn’t even marked with an exit sign—it was just… there. And the town itself…
No golden arches, no brightly-lit gas stations. The buildings that lined the street were all small, mom-and-pop type stores, that had long ago closed for the night. Amy’s Diner read a sign overhanging a small brick building, the windows all foggy and gray. Oak & Maple, read another—as we passed, I could make out furniture, empty wooden chairs and dusty dressers.
“Sorry, bro,” Dev said.
So tired…
I stifled a yawn as we approached the only intersection. The traffic light above us flashed yellow, bathing the closed shops in an eerie glow.
“Wait—there!” Dev said, excitedly. “Hotel!”
My eyes snapped up. He was right. There was a sign, small and inconspicuous, that simply read HOTEL with an arrow pointing left.
I swung left—and as soon as I did, the hotel came into view.
“Woah,” Emmett said from the backseat.
It was fancy. Incongruous with the dark, run-down buildings we’d passed. Four stories stretched up to the starlit sky, the windows glowing softly gold. Victorian architecture, with turrets on either side, and curled embellishments under the gables. A sign stood in front, gold script on wood reading: HOTEL ORA.
“This is totally going to completely blow our budget,” I said.
“You have to make sure they don’t allow pets,” Emmett piped up. “I’m very allergic to—”
“Oh my God, Emmett, please just shut up,” Dev replied.
We pulled into the parking lot. Surprisingly, it was packed with cars. But we’re in the middle of nowhere, I thought. Who’s sleeping here on a Sunday night, exactly? Lizards? Cowboys? Tumbleweeds?
I pulled into the first empty space I saw. Then I stepped out of the car—and stopped.
The cars parked on either side of us… were old. One I recognized immediately—a Pontiac Firebird, from the ‘70s. The other I wasn’t sure, but its chrome bumper and long hood seemed to be ‘70s or ‘80s as well. In comparison, my parents’ 2012 Accord looked positively futuristic.
“Check it out! It’s a Pontiac Firebird!”
“Cool,” Dev replied. Emmett shrugged and started towards the front door of the hotel at a fast pace.
Lame. I took my phone out and snapped a photo of the Firebird. I’d never seen one in the flesh (or metal, as it were.) And as I put my phone back, I noticed something.
It looked… new, almost. The black paint was incredibly shiny, reflecting the streetlamps above us perfectly. Not a single chip or ding in its surface. The windows were clear, the seats inside were unblemished leather, and a pair of fuzzy dice hung from the rearview mirror.
“You gonna drool over that car all night?”
I turned to Dev. “Sorry, man,” I said, breaking into a jog to catch up with him.
The three of us entered the lobby. It was beautiful—a two-story octagonal room, with dark oak walls and a chandelier. Hanging crystals diffracted the golden light in strange, broken shadows along the walls. A six-point buck stared at us from the back with glass eyes.
But the room was empty.
Emmett began ringing the bell on the counter as loudly as he could. Dev flopped onto one of the dark leather armchairs. My legs still felt like rubber from driving so long, so I paced around the room, examining the decorations.
Until I came upon the photos.
Three framed photos. Black-and-white, grainy. The first showed a woman standing outside the hotel, smiling. The second, a guest standing in his room. The third, the same octagonal room we were standing in right now.
Boring. I was about to turn away—
And then I froze.
There was something… off about the photos. I leaned in to the first one, squinting. The woman standing out in front of the hotel wasn’t smiling, exactly. When I got in close, I could see her lips stretched over her teeth in a pained grimace. And it was hard to tell with the low-quality photo, but I thought I could almost make out tears rolling down her cheeks.
What…?
I looked at the next photo. A man, standing in his hotel room. But… there was a thin line, above the man, breaking up the grainy shapes. What is that? I slowly traced its path down from the ceiling… to where it thickened and wrapped around the man’s neck.
What the fuck—
“Matt.”
I jumped.
“Come on,” Dev said, clapping me on the back. “We got a room. Only 99 bucks. That’s a steal for a place like this.”
“But—” I turned back to the photos. But there was nothing wrong with them. The woman, she was smiling. The man, he was just standing in his room, no noose to be found. I rubbed my eyes, squinted, and stared at the grainy shades of gray.
“What?” Dev asked.
“Nothing,” I muttered.
Man, I really did need some sleep.
I followed Dev through the doorway at the back of the room on shaky legs. Passed under the deer head and its glassy eyes. The hallway opened to a set of stairs, carpeted in a deep red rug with twisting, gold patterns.
“No elevator,” Emmett said, as if reading my mind. “But we’re only on the second floor.”
We climbed the set of stairs and entered a dimly lit hallway. Too dimly lit, really, to be functional; the only light came from brass sconces between the doors, filled with a sort of fake firelight that flickered and danced. Old-style gold lettering was screwed to each closed door, but sometimes the letters hung slightly askew.
“Here we are,” Emmett said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out—I kid you not—a real metal key. It slid into the lock with a satisfying ching, and then we were inside.
The room itself was nothing out of the ordinary. Small, with two beds set in white linen and a nightstand between them. A small bathroom sat off to the right, and thick red curtains hung over the only window. Out of curiosity, I walked over and peered out. Our room faced the hotel’s courtyard area—not a true courtyard, as one side was open to the parking lot—and there was a nice little area with patio chairs and manicured shrubs. Even a fountain, water dripping softly from a concrete statue into a rectangular little pool.
Drip, drip, drip.
I sat down on the bed closer to the window with a sigh. I pulled out my phone: 3:02 AM. Somehow I’d expected it to be a whole lot later than that.
“What’s the WiFi password?” I asked.
“No WiFi,” Dev replied.
“What?! No WiFi? No wonder it’s only 99 dollars!”
Emmett rolled his eyes at me. “You know, it wouldn’t hurt to be offline for five seconds. Read a book or something.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “I haven’t read a book since high school.”
“Engineers,” he muttered.
“Come on, it’s not so bad,” Dev said, pulling the covers up to his chin. “Let’s go to sleep, huh? That’s what we came for, isn’t it?”
“Okay, okay.” I rolled away from Dev, and clicked out the light.
If only we knew what was going to happen that night, sleep would’ve been the last thing on our minds.
***
I woke up with a start.
For a second, I thought I was back in my dorm room. But then the unfamiliar gray shapes came into view, and the memories of the strange hotel flooded back. I glanced over to Dev—and froze.
The bed was empty.
I sat up. Looked over at Emmett’s bed. His, too, was empty—the sheets all tangled in a lump, which was totally unlike him.
My feet hit the floor. I checked the bathroom, then swung the door open into the hallway. “Dev? Emm—”
“Shhhh!”
Dev grabbed my arm and pushed me back into the hotel room. As soon as I was inside, both of them rushed in behind me. Emmett slid the deadbolt. Dev panted like he’d just run a mile.
“What… are you guys doing?” I whispered.
“We got locked out—” Dev started.
“The power went out, so my white noise machine went off, and that always wakes—”
“Nobody fucking cares! Matt, there’s someone out there.” Dev stepped away from the door, glancing at it like someone might burst through at any moment. “We tried calling the front desk but the phones are out too. So we were going to the front desk and then we saw him. There is someone just standing there, in the middle of the fucking hallway, like a psychopath.”
“Or… like another guest wanting to get to the front desk?” I offered.
Emmett snickered.
Dev crossed his arms. “Okay. Fine. You guys laugh.” He crossed the room and began tossing his clothes into his bag. “I say we get the fuck out of here before whatever that is murders us.”
I reached up to the deadbolt, then wrapped my hand around the doorknob. Before Dev could stop me, I pulled the door open—and stuck my head out into the hallway.
Dev was right.
There was a figure. Standing in the middle of the hallway, completely still.
Except it wasn’t a psychopath—it was a woman.
An incredibly beautiful woman. Her face was illuminated only by the flickering candle in her hands. A soft, oval face with delicate features and dark eyes. Her blonde hair shone in the light, falling down her shoulders, nearly to her waist.
When she saw me, she smiled.
“You fucking idiot,” I whisper-shouted back into the room. “You want to see what you were so afraid of?”
Dev looked at me with a blank expression.
I opened the door and stepped into the hallway. “Hey there,” I said.
She was standing in the exact same place as I last saw her. But now, she was turned directly away from me.
“Your power’s out, too?” I started, lamely.
She didn’t reply.
I stepped towards her. The candlelight danced across the walls. Her hair blew, softly, glinting gold in the light. She was quite tall, and thin, wearing a white dress that reached the floor. A nightgown of some kind… though odd for her to just come out in that.
“Hey, are you okay?” I asked.
She slowly lifted her arm out in response—and curled her finger slowly, in a come-hither motion.
Huh. Curiosity piqued, I picked up my pace towards her. When I got within two steps of her, she started to slowly turn around.
I froze.
Every ounce of blood drained out of me.
She didn’t have a face.
Blank skin stretched over the contours of her face. Over the sunken sockets where her eyes should be. Over the hollows of her cheeks, straight down to her chin, no mouth—
An arm grabbed me. Tight.
I screamed as Emmett dragged me back, faster than I thought he could run. In seconds I was on the floor of our room, still screaming like a baby, as the deadbolt clicked back into place.
A hand slapped my cheek. Hard. And then Dev’s face appeared above mine.
“Be quiet, you fucking idiot. They hear you.”
And now, in the silence, I could hear it. Footsteps. Not just one set of them—many.
All getting louder.
“We’ll go out the window. We’re only on the second floor. No problem.” But his voice shook as he spoke. “And then we drive as fast as we fucking can.”
“Okay,” I said.
My legs shook as I followed them over to the window. Emmett turned the lock, and with a grunt, slid the rusted window up. Dev reached over and pushed on the screen; it popped out of the window, falling onto the bushes below.
The footsteps were right outside the door.
“Go. Go!” Emmett whispered.
Dev wasted no time. He scooted out backwards, like he was climbing down an invisible ladder. He hung onto the ledge for a second, and then—thud, as his body hit the ground. “Fuck, that hurt,” he whispered.
Emmett ran to the window next. He was significantly clumsier, contorting his tall frame to squeeze out the opening. He started to jump—
“DON’T!”
Dev’s terrified yell met my ears.
His back was pressed against the wall. Features contorted in a look of terror that I had never seen on him before, as he stared into the hotel courtyard.
Where there was… a party?
Seconds ago, it’d been empty. But now there was a throng of people, dancing rhythmically to a melody played from unseen speakers. Red skirts twirled, black suits twisted, heels clicked along the gray flagstone with each dancing step.
And then I realized why Dev was so scared.
All together, they looked like a perfectly normal, dancing people. But when I focused on any one particular dancer… they were moving in a way no human possibly could. Their joints bending the wrong way. Their bodies twisting and contorting in a way that defied physics. Their heads swiveling too far around…
And they were, slowly, dancing towards Dev.
“I’m going to jump,” Emmett said. “You right after, okay, Matt? And then we run for the car as fast as we can.”
I nodded, my throat dry.
He gave me a nod—and then disappeared.
I climbed halfway through the opening, the window scraping my back. But as I stared down at them, my throat went dry. That’s a big drop. Dev and Emmett, and all the dancers, looked so tiny. Like ants. Fear swept through my body. It felt like my blood had turned into a million tiny needles, pricking me inside, as I stared down at the dizzying distance—
“Matt! Jump!”
One of the dancers was only a few feet from them. A woman. Red dress. Dark hair flowing out behind her. Her neck bent at an unnatural angle. She twisted and contorted her body with the melody, her head flopping with each movement that made my stomach churn.
She’s going to get them—
Jump. You have to jump.
I shut my eyes tight—and jumped.
Thud. Stinging pain shot through my chest. Gasping, I rolled over in the cold grass. Dev and Emmett grabbed my arms and forced me up. And as they did, I saw the woman’s face up close.
It was the same woman from the photograph. The one who had been crying outside the hotel.
But this time, she was smiling.
“Run!”
The three of us ran across the grass. I could hear the rhythmic footsteps behind us, feel their eyes on us. But I didn’t turn around. None of us did. We didn’t stop until we were in the car, peeling out of the parking lot, coasting towards the highway.
***
After we graduated, we went our separate ways; Dev got a tech job in Seattle, I got a similar one in NYC, and Emmett is working on his PhD down south somewhere. None of us ever talk about what happened that night. If we do talk—which is rare these days—it’s always just about work, or the ‘good ol’ days’ during our first three years of college.
I’m glad they haven’t brought it up. Because if they had, I might have told them.
That every night, before I drift off into sleep, I hear that strange melody from the courtyard. I see that beautiful blonde woman, standing in the corridor. I imagine driving that Pontiac Firebird down a dark desert highway.
No matter how many raises I get, no matter how wonderful my new girlfriend is, there is an emptiness. A void. An itch that can’t be scratched, a hunger that can’t be satiated. No matter what happens during the day, when my head hits the pillow, it’s always that same melody playing in my head.
And if I really focus on it, I think I can make out four words, sung so softly they’re almost inaudible.
You can never leave