Part 5 – Unregistered Guests

Hello again everyone. Dear lord, where to even start with how today went. Not ten minutes after my shift started I got my first complaint call. “Front desk. How can I help you?” “Yes, this is Ms. Thomas in room 63. The room next to me is being incredibly loud.” “Okay ma’am. Is it like music or anything?” “No. It’s like…a loud buzzing sound.” “Buzzing?” “Yeah…” I told her we would be right there, grabbed Gary and we started towards the room. We talked and speculated the whole way there. Buzzing is a weird description to give for a complaint, but Gary did bring up that maybe it could be an electrical fault or the ballast in the lights could be going out. I’m not great with electrical stuff so I felt I would just have to trust Gary. He is the maintenance guy after all. As we were walking toward the room though, the noise was getting louder. I mean from down the hallway we could hear it and it kept getting louder and louder as we approached. When we finally arrived at the door, both of us stood there waiting for the other to open it. “Go ahead Gary,” I said. “Hell no. You’re the face of this operation. I’m just the maintenance guy.” Reluctantly, I started to knock on the door but as I did, the door slowly creaked open. We both froze. Gary and I just stood there in complete and utter silence. The door didn’t open into a room. It opened into an absolute nightmare. It was a dark, endless void with a mountain far in the distance. Dark, stormy clouds converged around its peak, slowly spinning around like a tornado in the sky. The mountain was bare but for the pale, naked figures clinging to the blocks as they attempted to reach its summit. Gary and I just looked at each other. “Oh, absolutely not,” he said. I nodded my head in agreement and slowly pulled the door shut. Ms. Thomas is either going to have to move or just get used to the noise. Gary put an out of order sign on the door. A few hours later, I was sitting in the office when Gary called me to tell me he needed me to watch the cameras. Apparently, he walked by the same spot a few times throughout the night and some guy had been in the same spot for hours. I flipped to the area he was talking about, second floor, west wing and there was the guy he was talking about. This guy was tall and incredibly skinny. His arms seemed almost too long? I don’t know how to describe it really it just seemed…off. I watched him for a couple of minutes but he didn’t move or do anything. He just stood there staring at the same spot on the wall. Eventually I gave up watching. I mean yeah, the guy was weird but standing isn’t a crime so I flipped to the next camera. There he was again. The same guy in a completely different spot but he was in the exact same stance and still not moving. It didn’t even look like the guy was breathing. I switched again. There he was. Then again. Then again. Every time I changed the camera, the same guy was there and it didn’t look like he was moving a single muscle. I switched between cameras at opposite ends of the hotel. Still, he was there. I switched to the next camera that looks down a section of rooms, and he was there outside room 17. This time though, he wasn’t staring at the wall. He had turned his body. He was staring directly at the camera, not moving, not blinking. I switched again. Same thing. Then again. Then again. I finally switched to the camera outside the office. He was there…his face inches away from the camera. My eyes shot to the door. I couldn’t see him outside, so I walked over and checked. I didn’t see anyone. No mysterious figure. Literally no one. I went back to the cameras and he was gone. He didn’t show up on any of them now. It was like he had just vanished into nothing. I sat back down and gave the cameras another look. That was about the time Gary came into the office and asked about the guy. I started to explain what had happened but was interrupted by the sound of a water pipe rattling in the wall behind me. The rattling got louder and louder. More pipes started to rattle. It was so loud, it seemed like every pipe in the entire motel shook. Then, a low rumbling groan rang out. Like one thousand empty stomachs at once. I noticed the sound of liquid coming from the faucet in the bathroom. I looked and it wasn’t water. I don’t know what the hell it was. It was like a thick, dark brown liquid with a hint of red. In an instant it was over. The shaking stopped. The leak stopped. Everything was quiet again. Gary and I stood there unsure of what the hell just happened. Was that an earthquake? But what was with the stuff in the sink? Then the front office phone exploded with calls with an endless stream of complaints. “Yes ma’am. We heard it too. No I don’t know what it was.” “We will come check out your pipes.” “The faucet and the shower?” “The toilet water changed?” “We’re trying to figure it out now, sir.” “No it’s not safe to drink, what the hell?” After assuring every single person in the motel that we were going to look into it, I turned to Gary. “Does this mean…” I started, knowing the answer already. “The maintenance corridor,” he said, nodding his head. “Son of a bitch. Alright, let’s get this over with,” I said, rubbing my face. I hung my head as we walked into the back room to grab flashlights and Gary’s toolbox. I felt like a little kid dragging my feet as we walked to the maintenance corridor. Ever since the last time there, I have tried to avoid it like the plague. We finally made our way to the door. “You first,” Gary said. “Fuck you, buddy.” Gary let out a little chuckle and unlocked the door. It was just as dark as ever. It was quiet, the only sound a faint drop of water hitting a puddle. We walked up and down the corridor. We couldn’t find a single leak. Gary and I checked every inch of pipe in that damn cursed place and there wasn’t a single explanation for what happened. Hell there wasn’t anything that even showed something HAD happened. We walked up and down the corridor over and over until Gary stopped suddenly. “What’s up?” I asked. “Do you hear that?” “Dude that’s not funny.” He started shifting his light rapidly. “I’m not playing. I heard something.” “What did you hear?” “It was…like a whisper.” “I’m sorry. Fucking WHAT?” “Yeah. It was right in my ear.” “What did it say?” “I don’t know, it…it was really soft.” Both of us started looking around, desperately searching for anything that could be blamed for what he heard. At the time, he was in front of me so anything whispering in his ear would have had to be BETWEEN us. Then I heard it. A quiet. Calm. Whisper. I spun around to face behind me. Nothing. Then we both heard slight mumbling of multiple voices. They were slightly louder now. They came from every direction, all around us. It was impossible to locate where they were all coming from. It surrounded us, like a rushing flood. Louder and louder and louder. Then we heard footsteps. Lots. Of footsteps. Desperately we flashed our lights down the walkways, even into the air. There was no one there with us. No one we could see anyway. It was deafening. Thousands of footsteps and voices, mixed together like a marching choir of chaos. Then, everything went quiet. I could hear the rush of my heartbeat in my ears. That’s when we heard a soft, distant, scratching sound. Like nails tracing down the wall. The sound grew louder. Closer. My goddamn flashlight went out. I hit it in a panic. Trying anything I could to get it back on, like it was my one lifeline. My only safety blanket. It continued to get closer. I kept hitting it, shaking it, praying that the damn light would just turn back on. Closer. “COME ON DAMMIT!” Closer. Finally I got it to come back on just in time to see it… Mother. Fucking. Richard. That furry little bastard was in the damn maintenance corridor. Gary LOST it. “YOU LITTLE SON OF A BITCH!” he yelled, throwing a wrench. “You almost gave us a damn heart attack!” Richard hissed and scampered back into the darkness. “I don’t know how he got in there but I’ll be damned if I’m chasing that little asshole down this Eldritch horror of a hallway,” I said to Gary, and motioned back to the door. We both started back for the door, our pants thoroughly shitted. We made our way back to the front office. Each of us cursing Richard until we were blue in the face. I was a little startled when we arrived to find a tall man standing at the front desk. Hadn’t I locked the door? Quickly, I made my way into the room and behind the desk. “I’m sorry to keep you waiting sir. We had a bit of a thing in the back and…well how can I help you?” “I would like a room,” he said flatly. The man was thin, mid-40s, short blond hair and blue eyes. He kind of looked…never mind. I asked for his ID and he gave it to me. I started inputting his info and then made his key. “Here you are sir. Room 42,” I said. He responded with, “Actually, I’d prefer room 14. It’s the one I always stay in.”