Part 9 – St. Agnes

Hello again everybody. Well where to start. Dan and Elliot are still here. They’ve been busy the past couple of days going all over the motel, interviewing guests and annoying Gary some more. He has been tripping over their equipment left and right, each time uttering a louder string of obscenities at them. They’ve been going nonstop for the past few days and have basically taken over the lobby with equipment. They’ve got their own cameras set up across parts of the motel. Elliot has been going through all of the articles and whatnot that I got from Janet for the first couple of hours of my shift. It kept him busy and quiet for the most part but his curiosity broke the silence a little bit ago. “What’s the Bluebird?” he asked. “It’s a bar over on Route 8,” I replied, looking at him over my computer. “Have you been there?” “Yeah. I’ve been a few times why?” “It’s listed a few times in these articles.” “For what?” “A couple of disappearances and some other strange things.” “Okay.” “Okay? That’s all you have to say?” he said, looking at me with concern. “Yeah.” “You don’t think that’s strange?” “You’ve been at this motel a few days now. You get used to it.” He stood up and walked over to me, a dumbfounded look on his face. “Get used to it? A man walked into the bathroom that had no windows or other exits, and never walked back out. Just poof and he’s gone.” “Maybe he just left?” “His friends were sitting by the door and never saw him leave.” He started flipping through pages and pulled another article out. “Another man walked in after being missing for 40 years who believed it was only one day later.” I held my hands up in surrender. “Okay. That one’s weird. I’ll give you that.” Dan walked up with a notebook in hand and changed the topic. “What about the hospital?” “What? The Bellweather?” “Yeah. What do you know about that?” “I mean it’s a hospital.” I recalled my visit a couple weeks ago and retold them the story of the body sitting up in the room. Dan wrote down more notes and walked back to the desk, resuming his normal stoic ways. The two of them started talking back in the corner, flipping through more articles and writing down more notes. When I first got to work, Dan told me about a couple of things that they saw last night. Apparently, at one point, they walked up the stairs for well over an hour without reaching the top, even though we only have two floors. “Our equipment was going insane. There was a huge spike in EMF. It was right outside the stairwell, and we started to follow it. It just kept going up and up and up.” He also said they went into one room and instead of it being normal size, it seemed to be infinitely bigger on the inside. He said they started to walk further into the room, but nothing ever got any closer, like they were just walking on a treadmill. He was in the middle of telling me about hearing Elliot’s voice being projected from different parts of the hallway while the two of them were standing still when the phone rang. “Front desk. How may I help you?” “It sounds like children are running up and down the hallway. Can you please make them stop?” I sighed, “Yes, ma’am. I’ll go take care of it.” I stood up and started to walk to the second floor. Dan and Elliot walked closely behind me, equipment in hand. When we got to the second floor, we didn’t see anything. A door beside me cracked open. The guest who had called and complained peered through the crack between the doorframe and door. “They stopped just now,” she said. “I don’t see anyone here. Did you look in the hallway when you heard them?” I asked. “No, I didn’t.” “Okay. Well we will walk around a bit and see if we can find anyone.” She thanked us and closed the door. After only a few steps though, we heard it. Footsteps and laughing rang out down the hallway. The sounds rushed towards us like a stampede of eight-year-olds. Dan and Elliot’s equipment practically exploded. Ringing and lights went wild as the two men grabbed their camera and started to film. The sounds continued to rush towards us. We braced as the sound finally made its way to us. I could feel a slight breeze as it passed us, reaching the end of the hallway behind us. The sound disappeared suddenly. The silence was broken by one more, single child’s laugh. The three of us turned around to face the wall that the sounds had gone into. Elliot and Dan rushed to it, scanning every inch of the surface. I just stood there watching them when a single sound caught the three of us off guard. Click. I turned to see the doors of the rooms opening slowly, perfectly in sync. Every. Single. Door. There was only one guest staying in this hallway. When I looked towards her room, it was completely empty. The bed was even made, as if she had never been there. I knocked on the now opened door and peeked my head in. “Ma’am?” Nothing. “Are you here?” Silence. I walked into the room and looked around. There were no clothes, no suitcases, nothing. There weren’t even toiletries in the bathroom. The only sign of anyone ever being in the room was the TV being on, but there wasn’t a show playing. It was just static. I continued to look around when Dan’s voice broke my concentration. “Uh, was that there before?” he asked. “Was what there before?” I asked, walking out into the hallway again. At the very end of the hallway, there was now a single blue door. A door that had never been there. “Uh… No. No. I haven’t ever seen that door,” I said, taking a step forward. Dan and Elliot started to walk towards the door; their eyes fixed on the tools in their hands. I looked in each room as we passed the endless rows of open rooms. Each was the exact same as the one before it. No belongings in them, beds perfectly made, and the TV on showing nothing but static. We continued walking. And walking. And walking. Despite our persistence, the door was not getting any closer. “We should have made it there by now,” I said. “I don’t even know where that goes. There isn’t anything there for that door to lead to.” The three of us stopped and looked back at where we had come from. The end of the hallway was far away, as it should be. It was like things behind us were being stretched while things in front were paused. We all jumped when we turned back. The door was somehow right in front of us, no more than arm’s reach. I felt nauseous. It was as if the motel moved around us. Dan and Elliot’s equipment started going crazy again. Constant ringing filled the empty hallway. They scanned the door slowly while their equipment began to max out. “Do you hear that?” Dan asked, as he leaned in closer. “I don’t hear anything,” I said. He pressed his ear against the door. Soon, his face changed and he pulled his head away slowly. “What?” Elliot asked. “You should listen. It was like a busy room or something. I could hear people moving around.” Elliot leaned in but pulled his head back quickly, turning to us. “I heard a woman talking.” “I still don’t hear anything,” I said, moving closer to the door. I leaned in and pressed my ear against it. Nothing. “I still don’t—” Knock. Knock. Knock. The three of us jumped back, staring at the door. Elliot raised his hand. “Don't,” I said. He looked at me. “I was just—” “I know what you were going to do. Don't.” We stood there for a few minutes waiting for something that never came. Dan went back to his investigation. “You know,” he said, looking back at me, “we really should try it.” “Fine,” I said, “be my guest.” He slowly brought his hand up to the handle, grasping it firmly. It wouldn’t budge. No matter how hard he tried, the handle stayed perfectly in place. SLAM. The three of us spun around quickly, looking behind us. The guest’s door at the very end of the hallway had slammed shut. SLAM. Another closed. SLAM. SLAM. SLAM. The wave continued to get closer and closer until the door directly beside us slammed closed. The heavy silence was broken by a soft subtle sound that came from the blue door. Click. Dan took a step back from the door, his eyes fixed on the handle. Elliot didn’t move as my eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. “Well?” I asked. Neither of them moved. “You two wanted to open it.” Dan nodded his head in reluctant agreement, his hand slowly rising back to the handle. He slowly turned the handle and pulled the door open. There was another hallway on the other side. Except it wasn't ours. The walls were painted a dull cream color, with dark wooden trim running along the bottom. Small lights hung from the ceiling every few feet, giving everything a dim yellow glow. Instead of motel rooms, there were wooden doors lining both sides of the hallway. They were closer together than ours and none of them had numbers on them. The floor was dark wood, polished enough that I could see the lights reflecting off it. There were little wooden benches against the walls, and coats hung from hooks above them. Children's coats. “What the fuck?” I whispered. Somewhere farther down the hallway, I could hear people talking. Then a child laughed. A group of children ran down the hallway towards the door, laughing loudly. The boys wore trousers and button-up shirts, while the girls wore simple dresses. Their leather shoes clicked against the wooden floor as they ran. A woman in an ankle-length dress stepped out of a room further down the hallway. “No running!” she shouted. The children stopped and went into one of the many rooms. None of them acknowledged any of us. Elliot’s mouth hung open as he turned his head to Dan and me. “That’s the woman I heard.” We continued to stand there watching for a few minutes when Elliot's expression suddenly changed. “Wait.” “What?” Dan asked. “I’ve seen this.” “What do you mean you've seen this?” He looked back through the doorway. “There was a picture in those articles.” He paused. “This is St. Agnes.” “The orphanage?” I asked. “Yeah.” The three of us were startled by a voice coming from behind us. We turned to see the woman from the room at the end of the hallway. “Did you find them?” she asked. “Uh… yeah. I think so,” I said. “Good. Thank you.” She turned and walked back towards her room. When the three of us turned to look back, the blue door was gone. All that stood before us was a blank, windowless wall. The three of us made our way back down to the lobby. I was quiet on the walk back while Dan and Elliot went back and forth over their theories. When we finally made it back, Gary was sitting behind the desk. “What happened to you three?” Nobody answered. “Well, that's reassuring.” I grabbed a cup, poured myself a coffee and started to explain what happened to Gary. Elliot went over to the stack of articles Janet had given us. After a minute of searching, he came over to me with a photograph in hand. It was a picture of St. Agnes orphanage. There was a woman in an ankle-length dress standing behind a group of children in a hallway. The same hallway. The same benches. The same doors. “Read the sentence below the picture,” Elliot said. It read: “St. Agnes’ Home for Children. 1912.”