Part 1 - Just Another Night Shift

Hey everyone, Like the title says, I have worked as a desk clerk on night shift at a shitty roadside motel for the last three years. Over that time, I have seen some wild things happen, and I figured I might as well pass the time by writing them down and sharing some of the things I’ve seen while working here. You’d be amazed at what happens between 10pm and 6am. I guess I’ll start with one of my favorites. This happened about a year after I started working here. It was 2 or 3 in the morning and I was sitting in my chair behind the desk, desperately trying to stay awake when the front door swung open and a man stood there, naked as the day he was born. He strolled into the lobby and before he got close, I could tell he was drunk. I could practically smell him from the door. “Can I help you?” I asked, trying not to draw attention to the elephant in the room. “Yeah, I got locked out of my room,” he slurred. “Alright. What’s the room number?” “Twenty-two,” he said as he stumbled and propped himself up against the desk. All I could think was, Great. There isn’t enough Clorox in the world to clean it now. “Do you have your ID on you?” He just stared at me like I had asked him to recite Shakespeare. “Where the hell would I keep it?” Fair point. I gave the guy his key and he stumbled out. After about 20 minutes though he came back, threw the key back on the desk and asked for another. “The damn key don’t work.” “Alright, you said twenty-two right?” “Yeah.” I sighed and pulled up the room on my computer. That’s when I realized my mistake. There was someone in the room, just not Mr. Peterson. “What did you say your name was again?” “Peterson.” I searched the reservations. Nothing. I searched again. Still nothing. “Mr. Peterson, are you sure you’re staying here?” He looked genuinely offended. “Of course I’m staying here.” “Well, according to my computer, you aren’t.” “Then why the fuck am I here?” I looked at him. “That’s actually a really good question.” After a little more back and forth we figured out that he was in fact a guest…at the motel eight miles away. I called a cab for him and tried not to look. I still have no idea whether he walked the eight miles naked or got naked after he got here. I’m not sure I want to know. Right as the cab arrived he asked the question that flooded my mind and now the mind of the less than pleased cab driver who was just staring at us both. Mr. Peterson stared at me for a second then looked down at himself. “Where are my clothes?” “I was really hoping you knew.” Another came a few months ago. A phone call to the front desk jolted me awake at around 4 in the morning. Through my haze I picked it up and tried my best to focus. “Front desk. May I help you?” I didn’t hear anyone. It was just heavy static on the line. “Hello?” Still nothing. Then the call just cut off. When I looked down at the phone, it said the call had been from room six. After about ten minutes, the phone rang again. I looked down at it, and it was room six again. When I answered this time though, all I could hear was breathing. Kind of heavy breathing like someone had just run a marathon. This time, they still didn’t say anything so I just hung up. I figured, someone is either drunk or just perverted and I didn’t get paid enough for that. About thirty minutes went by before the phone rang again. This time though, it was from room seven. “Front desk. May I help you?” “Can you tell room six to shut the hell up? It’s almost five in the morning.” That really woke me up. They went on to explain that the woman in six had been crying for the last twenty minutes and they had finally had enough of hearing it. I explained to them that yes, I would handle it and as I hung up the phone, Gary the maintenance man walked in. “Perfect timing,” I said. “Can you check on six? The guy in seven says the woman in there has been crying for the last twenty minutes.” Gary stopped. “Six?” “Yeah.” “There ain't nobody in six.” “Well, apparently there is.” “No. AC's busted. Room's been empty for a week.” I checked the computer and sure enough. Vacant. There was still an open work order for the broken AC and no one was assigned to the room. That’s when I remembered the two phone calls. “Gary.” “What?” “Both of those weird calls earlier came from six.” He looked at me. “What calls?” “Someone called twice. First time there was nothing but static. Second time I could hear somebody breathing.” Gary stared at me for a few seconds before letting out a sigh. “Alright. Grab a key. We’ll go check it out.” The two of us made our way down to the room. Gary knocked when we got to the door but no one responded. We couldn’t hear any crying or anything like that. He knocked again, still nothing. I used the key and we unlocked the front door. It was most definitely vacant. The AC unit was still ripped apart. The cover was on the floor and half the guts were splayed out across the bed. There was clearly no one in that room. Still, we checked the bathroom, closet, and even under the bed. We didn’t find anybody. Just as we turned to leave, the phone rang. Gary just looked at me with a puzzled look on his face. I answered the phone. No one said anything. Just more static. Just as I was about to pull the phone away from my ear, the soft sound of a woman crying filtered through the static. I hung up the phone and explained what happened to Gary. He just bent over, unplugged the phone from the wall and said, “Problem solved.” We got the AC fixed and rented the room out a few days later. I never got another call from the room and I still don’t know who was on the other end. Speaking of Gary. I should probably tell you this one. Gary has been our maintenance guy for as long as I can remember. He’s a nice enough guy. Mid-50s, pot belly, bald head, he’s a funny son of a bitch. One night, Gary came bursting out of the back room with a bat in his hand. I was on my third straight hour of trying to beat my high score on Snake, and was obviously surprised by this. “That son of a bitch is back,” he said. “Who is?” “Richard.” Gary had been at war with Richard for two years. He was Gary’s arch nemesis. Richard was a possum. The way Gary tells it, Richard essentially sinned against all mankind. In reality, Gary was at work one night and was sitting on the back of his truck eating. He got a call and stepped away for a couple of minutes to talk to our boss about something. When he came back, there was Richard, almost finished eating Gary’s sandwich. According to Gary, Richard had been watching him. Just waiting for that exact moment. From that moment on, Gary has been on a never-ending vendetta but he can never catch him. And ever since that night, Gary has been keeping score. “It’s him.” “How do you know it’s him, Gary?” “I know it.” “You realize there is more than one possum in the world right?” “Yeah but that’s him.” I am not exactly sure what the score is, but Gary is down by a lot. So far I think he’s down five sandwiches, three bags of chips and at least one sprained ankle from “the incident.” “One of these days, I’m going to get that little bastard and take him out into the woods. Maybe then he’ll stay the hell away from my lunches,” Gary said as he threw open the front door to go outside. I didn’t follow him out there, but judging from the loud crash and string of obscenities coming out of Gary’s mouth, we can chalk another one up for Richard.

This is my last one for the night. It happened about six months ago. A man came into the office around 1 AM, claiming he had been locked out of his room. This was something that happened more often than you’d think. I reached over to the computer and asked the man what room he was in. “Seventeen.” When I checked, the room was registered to a woman who was travelling alone. He didn’t seem drunk like Mr. Peterson did. I explained to the man that he must have been mistaken and asked for his room number again. He insisted the room was his. “I’m sorry sir. You’re not assigned to that room. I cannot give you a key.” “That’s okay. She’ll let me in eventually,” he stated as he turned towards the door and walked out. I immediately called the woman and asked her if she was expecting anyone. She wasn’t. I told her that she should not open the door for any reason. I instructed her to make sure the door was locked and to hide in the bathroom while I called the police. As soon as I got off the phone with 9-1-1, she called the front office in a panic. She said that someone had been knocking nonstop since we last talked. I told her that I would be right there. I grabbed the bat from the back and jogged to the room. No one was there. I knocked and identified myself. Understandably, she was incredibly hesitant to open the door. She just spoke to me through it until the police arrived. The police officers separated us and had us each give a statement. After I finished mine, the officer asked me a few more questions. “Do you have any security cameras?” “Oh, yeah. There’s a few of them.” “Can we go take a look?” “Yeah, of course.” The two of us went back into the office and I pulled up the security feed. Everything seemed normal at first. The man walked in, came up to the desk, we had our conversation and he walked out. Only, he didn’t walk towards room seventeen. He walked around the other side of the building. We followed him from camera to camera. Then we got to the time that she claimed she heard knocking. “Wait.” The officer paused the video. “What time did she call you?” I looked at the timestamp. “Around then.” “About the knocking?” “Yeah.” He pointed at the screen. The man was still standing in the parking lot. Eventually he just walked off across the street and out of frame. The police searched the motel and the surrounding area. They never found anyone.