Part 7 – Mirror Mirror

Hello again, First of all, thank you to everyone who reached out. I’m doing alright. My ankle is still sore but I’m fine. I’ve gotten a ton of messages and whatnot from you all and I’m trying to work through them all. It was way more than I was expecting. A couple of things I can answer right now though. Janet got back to me. She didn’t say explicitly what she had found but said there was a ton of stuff about the motel. It’s a lot older than I thought it was. Apparently, there are records of this place being around for over 100 years, which is kind of crazy. I didn’t think it would be near that old. I’ll have to go through everything and then get back to you guys on that stuff specifically. I’m not sure what all is in there or how interesting any of it is. It’s hard to judge when the only frame of reference is from a lady who just yells shush at people all day. Still not sure how I feel about the whole hospital incident. To be fair, I was already given painkillers and still reeling from something pretty terrible so, who knows. It bothers me but hospitals kind of freak me out anyway so it could be anything. To the guys who reached out wanting a full account of literally everything I have ever seen here, I don’t have time to sit down and type that all out in one night. I tried to include things as I remember them but I’ll get more for you when I can. So what’s been happening here. The writer left. Apparently after hearing about the thing in room 26, he didn’t want to stay any longer. I guess he got what he wanted. I can’t wait to read that when it comes out. I’m sure there will be all kinds of stuff in it about the town. Gary and Richard got into it again, no surprise there. Gary left the window down in his truck after picking me up from the hospital. We were inside the office for maybe 15 minutes tops. He went to leave and came storming back into the office, jabbing a finger in my direction. That is all it took for Richard to climb through the open window and find a stash of oatmeal cream pies that Gary had in the truck. Apparently, the whole thing is my fault and now I’m the hook for a replacement box. I’ll get right on it, Gary. About 15 minutes after my shift started tonight I got my first issue of the night. It was room 36. The guest is named Mr. Roberts, and he’s been here a couple of nights. Not much to say about him personally. I mean he seemed normal, check-in went off without a hitch, seemed like just another guy. He said he was moving across the country and wanted to rest a couple of days before continuing on. It’s been a normal stay for the most part up to this point. He did call a few times about hearing stuff in the walls yesterday though. Gary and I went to the room and checked it out a couple of times, but we couldn’t ever find a source for what was going on. He said it was a tapping sound, and Gary wasn’t sure if it was plumbing related or what. It never happened when we were in the room. Tonight was much different though. Right after I got to work, I could see him on the camera, absolutely losing it. He was just scooting backwards away from his room, yelling and panicking in the hallway. I called Gary out of the back office and the two of us ran to his room. We rushed over and when we got to him, he was white as a ghost. It took forever to get him to finally calm down. He kept saying, “No. No. Get away from me. Don’t let it get me.” Once we finally got him calmed down a little bit, he explained what happened to the two of us. He said that for the last 20 minutes the tapping had been on and off, seemingly moving around the room. He said that he was lying on the bed reading a book when it started to tap on the wall right above his head. He tried to ignore it based on how our conversation went yesterday but it kept on going. He then said that he had just about drifted off to sleep when the wall started moving. When I asked him what he meant by that, his face lost any color it had left in it. He started to stammer and then he fainted. Gary stayed with him while I ran and got some water for him and a cool rag. When he woke up again, he refused to talk about it. After getting him calmed down and settled, Gary and I then went in to check the room out. Gary and I walked into the room, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary. There wasn’t any obvious damage to the wall, and we didn’t see it moving. We started to check out the bathroom when we started to hear something coming from the wall right by the bed. Tap. Just one single tap. Soft and almost inaudible. Then another. Tap. Then another. Tap. We walked over and Gary put his ear to the wall trying to hear it more clearly. Tap. I turned to look back at Mr. Roberts when I saw something out of the corner of my eye. The wall, right behind Gary’s head. A fist-sized bubble started to bow outwards slightly. I started to tell him about it when he noticed it too, pulling his head away. “Water line maybe?” I asked. “Maybe. I haven’t ever heard that cause a tapping sound though.” The bubble started to recede back into the wall as we stared. “What the hell?” Gary asked. The bubble reappeared. Then a second one about three feet away from it. They started to expand and grew to about twice the size they were originally. Both of us backed away when a third appeared between them. This wasn’t shaped like a bubble though. It was shaped like a head. The features were generic and plain. It was like a thin cloth stretched over someone’s face. The wall flexed and bowed as the face pushed further away from the wall, turning side to side, like it was searching. The two original bubbles opened and spread, becoming clearer in shape. Hands. The face then turned and locked onto Gary and me as we started to back away towards the door. Even without eyes, it felt as if it was peering into my soul. The face’s expression then shifted from blank and cold to enraged. The mouth opened impossibly wide. It looked like it was screaming but no sound came out. The hands curled with razor-like fingertips. It started to stretch further into the room towards the two of us. We turned and ran out into the hallway as it suddenly stopped. We stood there watching as it strained and pushed but couldn’t reach further out. It was like it was at the very edge of some kind of barrier. It continued to strain for a few more seconds before the wall snapped back into place like a rubber band. It was perfectly flat again. No damage. No cracks. Nothing. The three of us hurriedly grabbed Mr. Roberts’ belongings and helped him load his car. I wasn’t going to try and stop the guy from leaving after being left almost catatonic. Things were quiet for a few hours after that. I didn’t have many calls other than normal stuff. Someone complained about music coming from a car out in the parking lot and I had to go ask them to knock it off. It was just a couple of guys having beers and listening to rock music. Another guy was sleepwalking out in front of his room. He didn’t do anything super weird but was walking in circles for about an hour. I don’t know if the “never wake a sleepwalker” thing is true, but I wasn’t going to test it out. I did get a phone call at about three in the morning from Ms. Allison in room 71. “Front Desk. How may I help you?” “There’s someone in my bathroom mirror.” “Excuse me?” “They’re getting closer.” “Okay step outside and I’ll be right there.” With what happened earlier, I wasn’t going to wait around. I walked up to her room to find her, wrapped in a towel, chewing on her fingernails. “Okay ma’am, tell me what happened.” “Well, I’ve been noticing this small figure in the mirror. I thought it was just a smudge but…” she trailed off. “Can you show me?” I asked, regretting it almost immediately. Reluctantly she agreed but I asked if she would like to get dressed first. It was a little awkward with her just wrapped in a towel and I didn’t want a naked woman running through the motel if something happened. I waited outside facing away from the door while she threw on some sweatpants and a top, and then she proceeded to walk me back to the bathroom. Before I could even get into the bathroom to see the mirror, she turned back to me and said, “It moved again.” As I made my way into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, I could see what she meant immediately. There was a figure appearing over my shoulder. It looked small, kind of like it was far away. It was all black, like a mannequin that had been painted. I turned around to look at the wall behind me and didn’t see it. When I turned back to the mirror though, it was bigger. I turned back to the wall again and then back to the mirror. Bigger again. It was like every time I looked into the mirror, it was getting closer to me. “How long has this been going on ma’am?” I asked. “It started this morning. I didn’t see it last night when I checked in, but this morning when I walked in to brush my teeth, I saw it. When I looked down to spit, I saw it again and it had moved. I thought my eyes were just playing tricks on me, but when I got out of the shower, I knew it had gotten a lot closer. That I wasn’t just seeing things.” I opened up the mirror to look behind into the medicine cabinet but didn’t see anything. Then I closed the mirror and the figure had grown again. Every time I saw it though, it was perfectly still and its arms hung straight down by its sides. I stepped away and asked her to show me roughly how big it appeared to be to her. When she held out her hands, it was clear that the figure she had been seeing was MUCH closer. We didn’t look in the mirror anymore after that. Gary had the idea to actually remove the mirror itself for the time being and keep it covered. I agreed but moved Ms. Allison into a new room anyway. I also gave her very explicit instructions that if she notices the figure again to notify us immediately. The rest of the night has been thankfully uneventful. I’ve got about two hours left before the morning guy gets here and shift change can’t come soon enough. My ankle still hurts like hell and I took another painkiller. I’m really hoping to just rest for the remainder of my shift and then head home.

Edit: Morning guy hasn’t made it yet. Just heard a tap from the wall behind me.