You have a higher chance of being struck by lightning, dying in a plane crash, or getting attacked by a shark than you do of meeting your demise from an elevator accident. That isn’t to say that it doesn’t happen, of course. I know firsthand. I was almost a victim of one.
“Which floor ya going to?” I asked the elderly woman stepping into the elevator.
“Well, aren’t you kind? Floor seven, please.”
I obliged as the woman claimed a spot against the handrail opposite me. I smiled at her. She vaguely reminded me of my grandmother.
“Wait! Wait, hold the elevator!” a voice yelled desperately from somewhere in the lobby. I stuck my arm between the doors and they opened back up. A winded twenty-something-year-old man soon emerged, dragging a short, blonde woman along with him, both sputtering for breath.
“Th-thanks. Nine please. Whew.”
“You got it, bud.”
I watched as the doors slowly shut before me. The elevator sat there motionless for a moment, as if pondering its next move.
“Hey man, are you sure you pressed the- shit.”
Before the man could finish his sentence, the elevator began to plummet downward. My eyes connected with the old woman’s as I grabbed onto the handrail for dear life. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes.
At first, fear jolted across her visage. Then, her demeanor melted into one of acceptance. Like she knew that no matter the outcome, no matter if she lived or died, everything would be okay. That left me with a small sliver of solace as we continued to crash.
It was over in a matter of seconds. Time seemed to move in slow motion as we hit the unforgiving ground. Metal screeched and crunched all around me. The impact sent me sprawling to the floor along with the others. I squeezed my eyes shut, praying that I would live.
When I opened them again, the scene around me was absolutely chaotic. The man was rubbing his forehead, lying against the back panel of the elevator. His girlfriend was leaning over the old woman, who was completely unresponsive. The light overhead was flickering. I watched in confusion as the elevator doors crept open.
Ding.
They stayed there, exposing us to a long, cavernous tunnel. I shuddered looking down the expanse and into the darkness. It was thick and oppressive. I averted my gaze, instead turning my attention to the old woman.
She wasn’t moving. Her eyes were wide open, staring listlessly at the ceiling. A small rivulet of blood trickled from her nose, deep crimson pooling beneath her head. The girl was hyperventilating as tears welled in her eyes.
“Sh-she’s dead?” I croaked, shattering the silence.
“Looks like it. She hit her head pretty hard. I doubt a woman her age could’ve survived a blow like that,” the man said, groaning as he rose to his feet.
His girlfriend buried her face in her hands, fat sloppy tears wetting her palms. The man placed a hand on her back, but it failed to console her in the slightest.
“We need to call 9-1-1. Anyone have good cell reception?” I asked, pulling out my outdated iPhone 7.
The man reached into his pocket, producing a shattered, useless amalgamation of glass and twisted metal.
“I’m going to take that as a no. What about her? I’m not getting any bars in this deathtrap.” The man sighed, returning the ruined mess to his pocket before turning to his girlfriend.
“Abby, look at me. I need you to work with me here.” She reluctantly met his gaze. He locked eyes with her, tenderly brushing away her tears.
“I know this is hard. And I know that I seem heartless for not being more screwed up over it. But I’m desensitized because of my job. It’s tough seeing death up close for the first time. I know that, and I promise you, I will give you all the proper time and space that you need to mourn once we get out of here. But right now, I need you to be strong, okay? Can you do that? For me?”
She sniffled, nodding her head.
“Good. I’m proud of you. Do you have your phone with you?”
“Y-yes.” She reached into her pocket and handed him a brand-new iPhone 15 with a shiny gold case. He reached as high as he could, trying his best to get a signal.
“Nothing. I knew those new smartphones wouldn’t be worth a rat’s ass. Looks like we’re going to have to try something else. Anyone got any bright ideas?” he asked, turning to me.
“Maybe we could climb up the elevator shaft? I know it’s a long shot, but it could take hours, if not days before anyone realizes that we’re down here.” The man shook his head.
“No, that won’t work. Based on how long it took us to fall, I’d bet that we’re at least a couple stories down from the lobby. Unless you’re Spiderman, we won’t be able to get up there. And even if we could, good luck prying those heavy, metal doors open.
I glanced around, surveying our options. That’s when I saw it. A jet-black phone symbol glared back at me amongst the floor buttons.
“This might work,” I said, eagerly pressing it.
A sharp static sliced through the speaker. We all clasped our hands over our ears. The noise slowly petered out until the system died completely.
“Awesome. Just what we needed,” the man grunted.
We sat there in silence for a moment. It was deathly quiet aside from the light buzzing softly as it struggled to stay on.
“Um, there’s that,” Abby whimpered, pointing into the abyss.
She’d acknowledged the elephant in the room. We had all realized that it was our only option, but in the end, it was Abby who had the guts to stand up and say it.
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to that, but it looks like we’re at the end of our rope,” the man said, pursing his lips. “If we’re gonna head into this… whatever this is together, it might help to know some names. In case you didn’t catch it before, that’s Abby. I’m Ben,” he said, extending a hand.
“Thomas. Nice to meet you,” I replied, returning the gesture.
“Alright, Thomas. We’ll need to use your and Abby’s phone flashlights. Mine’s obviously not going to get the job done,” Ben said, rubbing the back of his neck.
“Understood. Let’s get moving. I don’t want to be down here any longer than we have to be.”
I flipped on the flashlight on my phone. Ben and I stepped out of the elevator and into the darkness. I shone the light around, trying to get my bearings.
We were standing in a tunnel of some kind. It looked like someone had drilled straight through the ground. Jagged, rocky edges framed the walls. My heart was in my throat as I took a step forward. I could faintly discern water dripping from somewhere ahead of us. What was this place?
“Hey guys?” Abby called from behind us. I hadn’t even noticed that she was still inside the elevator.
“There’s no button for this floor.”
A chill ran down my spine. I was starting to get a creeping suspicion that this might be a natural formation, and that we wouldn’t find any exit.
“Shit. This might be a cave. There’s no telling if anybody even knows this is down here,” Ben said, affirming my concerns. “Looks like we’re just going to have to find out for ourselves.” Abby nodded, timidly claiming her spot beside her boyfriend.
“Right. We don’t know anything for sure yet. Might as well see where-” I didn’t get to finish my sentence. The light in the elevator shut off, plunging us into darkness. Our flashlights glowed in the inky black like a beacon. My skin began to crawl. It felt like we were prey. Like something sinister would lunge from the unknown at any given moment and feast on our bones.
After a couple agonizing seconds, the elevator light flicked back to life. Abby screamed. Ben looked like he was going to pass out. I could feel the color draining from my face. The old woman was gone.
“B-but that’s. She. It’s…” Abby trailed off.
“Impossible,” I said.
The pair looked at me, eyes wide as saucers. We were all in a state of shock.
“What do we do now?” Abby whispered.
“Only thing we can do. We keep going,” Ben answered stoically.
Ben was right. I definitely wasn’t going to wait around for whatever it was that took the old woman to return.
“Okay. I guess I’ll take the lead,” I said. Every synapse in my brain screamed at me not to, but someone had to take charge, and it might as well be me.
“Alright. After you,” Ben said, extending an arm to the emptiness ahead.
We walked in silence, drinking in every minute detail of the cavern. I noted that the ground was uneven in places. That further supported my hypothesis that this structure was not man-made. We walked for what felt like hours. Eventually, the walls began to expand. I could make out a dim light in the distance. A soft, orange glow radiated from somewhere deeper in the tunnel.
“Thomas, you see that?” Ben asked, pointing ahead.
“Yeah. Maybe that’s our ticket out of here.”
“No. Everyone stop for a second.” My brows furrowed in confusion as I turned to face him.
“What do you mean? It’s light. It has to be a way out of here, right? …Right?” Deep down, I knew what Ben was getting at. He didn’t even need to say it.
“I could be wrong, but normal light doesn’t shine orange like that. It could be coming from a lantern. Or maybe a torch. I don’t know, but we need to keep our guard up. Does anyone have anything that we can use as a weapon?”
“I don’t th- oh wait, I’ve got this,” Abby said, producing a small canister of pepper spray from her keychain.
“Well, it’s not much, but I guess we’ll have to make do with what we have,” Ben said, unhooking the spray from her keys.
“Right. Stay on high alert. We don’t know what’s up there,” I agreed. Ben nodded and we continued toward the mysterious glow. My heart thumped furiously in my chest. Fear gnawed at me like a piranha. I wasn’t prepared for what we were going to find.
As the light grew closer and closer, the tunnel gradually expanded. Before I knew it, we were standing before a large chamber. The room was perfectly rounded. The walls looked smooth as silk. Dozens of torches protruded from the rock. At the far end of the chamber stood a solid wooden door.
“Okay, this is freaky,” Abby said, cowering behind Ben.
“You’re not kidding. There goes our natural formation theory,” I muttered, struggling to comprehend what I was seeing.
“This is wrong,” Ben said. He was extremely pale and I thought he might lose his lunch. “We’re under a hotel. This shouldn’t be here. And those torches. Someone had to light them…”
He was right. There was no good reason for that room to exist. And there was no logical explanation as to how that fire was staying lit. Not one that I could think of, at least.
“You’re right,” I said, meeting his gaze, “but I think we all know what we need to do.”
“Do we have to? I mean, maybe we can go back to the elevator and wait. What if there’s someone waiting behind that door?” Abby squeaked, clenching a fistful of Ben’s T-shirt.
“We can’t wait here forever. Maybe there’s a staircase in there. I know it’s wishful thinking, but even if there is some kind of threat, there’s three of us. And we’re not empty-handed, after all,” I said, nodding to the pepper spray in Ben’s hand.
“Thomas is right. It might be a way out. If there’s any chance that it is, we have to try it. Remember, be strong for me, okay? You’ve been doing great so far,” Ben said, locking eyes with his girlfriend.
She took a deep breath, and grabbed his free hand, interlocking her fingers with his. She glanced up at him with a renewed sense of ambition scrawled across her countenance.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
We hesitantly proceeded into the room. The soft clacks of our shoes against the floor sounded thunderous as they echoed throughout the chamber. A feeling of dread crashed over me like a tidal wave. It only intensified the closer we got to the door. I couldn’t help but feel that Abby’s assumption was correct.
“Well, here we are. Who wants to do the honors?” Ben asked, a slight tremor seeping into his words.
Before either of us could react, Abby reached out to the ominous wooden frame.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
“Why’d you do that? It’s not like anyone’s going to answer,” I whispered. I received no response.
We waited with bated breath for something to happen. Each second felt like an eternity. I found myself silently praying that no one - or nothing - would open that door.
“Okay, I think it’s obvious that no one’s going to open up. One of us is going to-”
Ben was abruptly cut short by a loud creaking. It filled the entire chamber, sending my heart plummeting into my stomach. The door had been pulled inward. We were left to stare at a pitch-black room. It was too dark to make out anything inside.
“H-hello? Who’s in there?” Ben called out, shattering the silence that had enveloped us. No one answered. Who could be doing this? It didn’t make any sense.
“Ben, I don’t like this. I think we should- AH!” Abby shrieked as a wrinkled, gnarled hand reached out from the blackness and latched onto her ankle. It pulled her inside at a sickening speed, dragging her kicking and screaming into the unknown.
“Abby! We have to go after her,” Ben cried as I fumbled to retrieve my phone from my pocket.
“Let’s go,” I said, hurriedly arming myself with my flashlight.
Ben led the charge, holding the canister of pepper spray out in front of him. The cavern was chilly, but I was coated in beads of sweat. What the hell was going on?
We burst into the room, my light illuminating the center of it. I shined it around. Eventually, it landed on an altar. A severed goat head lay atop it along with a plethora of demonic trinkets. A pentagram had been crudely painted on the ground before it in what appeared to be blood. I continued searching. Amidst the sound of our hearts nearly beating out of our chests, we could hear a muffled screaming.
I followed the noise and directed my light to the left side of the room. It fell on a pair of people. A figure shrouded in a crimson cloak had a hand pressed tightly over Abby’s mouth. Its other hand was wrapped around a knife, pointing directly at the poor girl’s throat. Ben took a cautious step forward.
“Please, put the knife down. We’ll do whatever you want. Just let her go,” he said, his tone disarming and tranquil.
The figure began to laugh. A dry, maniacal cackling reverberated off the walls, sending fear coursing through my veins.
“Do you really think it’s that easy? What I need is a soul, and hers will be more than sufficient,” the figure bellowed. I could tell that it was a woman, and I had a pretty good idea of who that woman might be.
“Take me. I’ll go in her-” I held up a hand, silencing Ben.
“I’ll do it. I’m thirty-three years old, working a dead-end job with no family to speak of. You two have something special. People that care about you. I don’t. Take me.”
The woman pondered my proposal for a moment. Ben looked taken aback.
“You don’t have to do this. There has to be some other way,” he reasoned.
“I’ve run through all the options in my head. This is the best that I could come up with. Lead happy lives. Just don’t forget about me, okay?” I said, shooting him a knowing smirk. All he could do was nod.
“Does that work for you?” I asked the figure.
“I would have preferred the girl, but I will accept your trade.”
I reluctantly walked toward them, resigning myself to my fate. This was it. I was going to die at the hand of some insane cult worshiper. There was no point in fighting it. At least I was sparing someone else’s life in the process.
The woman pushed Abby away. She instantly fell into Ben’s arms, sobbing uncontrollably. The woman placed the knife over my throat.
“Are you ready to die?” she whispered.
“No, but you should be.”
I reached back, smashing the vial that I’d been concealing hard over the woman’s forehead. She shrieked, releasing me from her grasp. I swiftly kicked her to the ground and threw the hood from her head.
She was the old woman from the elevator. I knew it. The skin on her face was melting like plastic in a microwave. Steam wafted up from her burning flesh.
“Wha-what did you do to me?!”
I smirked. Everything was going according to plan.
“That was holy water. You see, Proserpina, I’m a demon hunter. I was sent here to investigate you. We’ve been onto you for quite some time. I had no idea that you’d go to these lengths to secure a victim, so I must say, I’m impressed. I don’t know who let you out of Hell, but prepare to make your return,” I said, reaching into my waistband and unsheathing a cross with a jagged point at the bottom.
“No. No, please wait. This is cruel. You can’t-”
“Oh, but I can,” I said, plunging the cross into the demon’s heart.
She released a guttural shriek. The three of us watched as the skin around the puncture wound began to deteriorate. She flailed and writhed on the floor, desperately pulling at the cross to no avail. Embers danced along her mottled skin and the putrid stench of cooking flesh assaulted my nostrils. I always hated that part.
Eventually, Proserpina was reduced to nothing more than ash. I turned to my companions. They were understandably shaken up. Their mouths hung agape and their eyes were wide as dinner plates.
“H-how did you… I mean, is she really?” Ben stuttered.
“Yes, she’s dead. Look, I’m sorry that you two got wrapped up in all this. I know you have a lot of questions, so I’ll try my best to answer them. My superiors had received word that Proserpina had escaped from Hell and was causing mischief in the area. The woman she took possession of went missing last week. That’s how I knew that I was on the right track. Surprisingly, the old lady had an extensive history with the occult. She probably summoned Proserpina and got more than she bargained for. Also, we’ve known about this place for a while. This cavern has had a variety of uses throughout the years, but none of this nature.”
Even in the dim light provided by my phone’s flashlight, I could tell that the two were slowly processing the bomb I had just dropped. I remained silent, allowing them time to drink in the reality of their situation. Eventually, Ben spoke.
“But… how did you know that she was going to crash the elevator when she did?”
“In all honesty, I didn’t. Some things just work out like that… If that’s all you have for me, let’s get out of here. I don’t know about you two, but I could use a drink,” I said, pointing my light toward a door at the right side of the room.
As we climbed the secret set of stairs that led to the ground floor, a grin began inching across my face. I couldn’t have been more grateful. I’d managed to eliminate the threat with no casualties. Those two had no idea how unlikely their situation was.
Your chances of being in an elevator crash are about one in 10,500,000. Your odds of being in an elevator crash AND defeating a demon in the same day? Incalculable.
I can’t believe that a few weeks have passed already. I’m sorry it took so long to get this update posted.
Everything that happened has been… a lot... to process. At first, I didn’t want to even write it down – I didn’t want to relive that night, but I guess I can’t avoid it forever.
Almost exactly two years to the day from my first post, my best friend Liz disappeared from room 347 in the middle of the final night of our stay. I woke up alone the next morning to the door still bolted from the inside, she had left everything behind. The only place she could’ve gone was through the dark, narrow space behind the small door and false wall leading from our room. Even after crawling through it myself, I never found her.
The hotel manager and the police were not just insistent that she left of her own volition, but were almost threatening when I pushed further.
Her fiancé, Jarrod, and I had been searching for her ever since.
When I finally got the chance to stay in that same room again, hoping for even a slim chance of finding out what happened to her, I took it.
So, I bought a little can of triple action pepper spray, packed a bag, and scheduled an email to go out to Jarrod the morning after the final night of my stay.
You know – just in case I never came back.
I’ve been home for a few weeks, and even now, I’m still struggling and trying to put some of the pieces together.
I’m starting to accept that there are some things I may never fully understand.
During my recent stay, I didn’t spend much time in the room, with its overpowering smell of bleach mingled with something else that I couldn’t quite place. Mostly, I tried to search the surrounding city for anything I may have missed before, and, of course explored every part of that hotel that I could.
Details I didn’t catch during our first stay, or pay enough attention to before my final night a few weeks ago, are now haunting me – details such as how a ritzy looking hotel in the middle of a popular tourist destination never seemed to have anyone else in it.
Or, how there was no way to get to the 7th floor. The buttons so casually skipped from 6 to 8 on the lone elevator, and from the main stairs what should’ve been the entrance was just a solid wall.
As I traversed the winding hallways, I realized that on every floor that I could access, other than my own, the new carpet and cheery paint stopped abruptly after a certain point. As I ventured deeper into the hotel, I found myself surrounded by the original, fading wallpaper, stains marring the swirling patterns of the torn carpets. Even the light fixtures along the walls looked dated – most struggled to stay on at all, often throwing the windowless halls into near darkness without warning.
Whenever I crossed over to the old, unrenovated side, I always had a strange sense of discomfort – the kind you get when there’s no one else around you, but you can tell that you are most certainly not alone.
Traveling down those halls felt like stepping back in time, but to a time that was clearly better left forgotten.
Initially, I thought maybe that was their way of saving money – neglecting the portions that most guests wouldn’t venture to.
One night, I was wandering around one of those eerily quiet floors, further in than I had ever gone before, and was drawn to a bit of brick peeking out from under cracked plaster and peeling wallpaper in the distance. It was almost entirely bathed in shadows – just beyond where the struggling hall lights had finally given up, and seemed older than everything else around it. There was a thin gap in the mortar and while it was so dark that I couldn’t see anything, I could feel a faint, stale breeze that carried with it an overpowering smell of rotting meat.
Gagging, I turned around abruptly to see the hotel manager just a couple of feet behind me, his eyes glinting at me, unnatural looking in the low light.
I pushed past him without incident, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there had been other times he’d silently followed me down the dimly lit hallways without me noticing.
After that, I made more of an effort to avoid him and his predatory smile.
Every floor I could access had a similar makeshift wall in the same place. I eventually realized it was once a second elevator shaft, since bricked in and plastered over. Once, in the near silence, I thought I heard the sound of something moving behind it.
It’s probably easier to seal it off than to fix it, I’d told myself at the time.
I preferred that explanation, rather than to acknowledge my distinct feeling that there was something – not someone, some thing – back there that I had no desire to meet.
Eventually I reached the final night of my stay, no closer to finding out what happened to her.
The only thing left I could think to do was to try and recreate what I believed may have happened to her that night.
As I prepared for bed, I shoved my phone in my pajama pocket, and grabbed my little can of pepper spray.
My grand plan at that point was to pretend to be asleep, and see if anyone came for me that night. If they did, I’d hit them with the pepper spray and try and get a photo of them.
It may not have been the best idea, but I knew it would be the last chance I’d ever get to find out what happened to her. After glancing nervously at my small can of pepper spray, I grabbed the swiss army knife off my keychain and shoved it in the other pocket for good measure.
I began to wonder, as I stared up at the dark ceiling that night, in the exact room she’d disappeared from two years earlier, if they invited me there specifically for nothing to happen. I’d been telling anyone that would listen for years all about Liz’s disappearance, about the narrow, dark space in our room I’d crawled through. Jarrod had been doing the same – like I had said in my last post, he’d been trying to book that same room for years with no luck.
What better way to further discount our concerns than for me to have a perfectly normal stay?
Of course nothing would happen, I realized, disappointed – although with the tiniest bit of guilt-tinged relief mixed in.
My thoughts were interrupted by the sound of furniture moving across the carpet.
All the confidence and determination I’d felt in the daylight was gone in an instant. Never was I more aware that I was just one person alone in that awful place armed with a phone, less than an ounce of pepper spray, and a tiny keychain knife, as in that moment where I wondered if someone would try and pull me out of bed and drag me into the dark.
Maybe it would be easy enough to make me disappear inconspicuously, after all. They had my credit card information – what was stopping them from using it a few towns over and then throwing all my luggage in some ditch?
As I heard the old hinges of the small door protest, a flurry of jumbled thoughts went through my head, as I clutched my little canister to my chest. I had always assumed Liz to be alive and that someone took her out of the room and into the tunnel. But what if she hadn’t been? What if they killed her, and they did it right here? There had been blood in the small crawlspace, enough had soaked into the carpet that it was still wet by the time I went looking for her.
I was in the room with her physically that night, but I’m such a heavy sleeper that she may as well have been alone. Another sharp pang of guilt crept in to mingle with the terror.
After a moment, I heard what sounded like raspy, strained breaths, the sound filling the otherwise silent room. It grew louder as whoever – whatever – it was, emerged and began to head towards me.
And then, only a few feet away, they stopped.
I was so worried that if they knew I was awake, they’d leave before I could find out what happened. I tried to keep my eyes squeezed shut and hoped they’d get just a bit closer, to make sure they’d be in range of the spray since I’d probably only have one chance at this. The waiting in those long moments, though, as I wondered who or what was in the room with me – I finally couldn’t take it.
My eyes shot open.
I don’t know what I thought I’d see looming over me in the darkness – a stranger, a monster?
But, I know who I did not expect to see.
Liz.
She was barefoot, illuminated in the faint moonlight shining through the open sliver between the curtains.
It was dark, her face mostly obscured in the shadows and contorted slightly as if with a strange little smile, but I could tell it was her. I could feel it.
I gasped, and she seemed almost as startled as I was, because she took off running. I had barely stumbled out of bed by the time she’d already ducked through the door, past the false wall, and was crawling through the dark passageway faster than seemed humanly possible.
I hissed her name, trying to get her to stop, but she just kept going.
It did feel wrong to me even then as I followed her – if she’d truly been okay all this time, why hadn’t she left and contacted her fiancé, or family, or friends? Why was she crawling around in the darkness behind the walls of this awful place, alone?
But at the time, the only meaningful thought I could really focus on – overpowering in its insistence – was how I couldn’t lose her again.
While I was fumbling for my phone, I realized that Liz didn’t have any source of light with her. She’d entered the tunnel the same way she’d left through it those years ago.
In the pitch blackness.
As I followed her, I realized what the smell had been in my room, that mixed with the bleach, had been almost too faint to detect. But there in that tight space, just feet behind her, I recognized it.
Earthiness.
Death.
I knew something was wrong, but were so close to the exit and I was too focused on getting her out of there, walking out that door and never coming back – not for my purse, my shoes – anything – because I had a very strong suspicion that if I did, we would never leave that hotel again.
As we reached the end and stepped out of the cramped space and into the familiar back room, I nearly cried in relief. We were only two flights of stairs above the exit, we were actually going to make it out. Both of us.
But she didn’t go down. She started to go up.
“Liz!”
I pleaded for her to come back, told her I knew where the exit was, but she continued on as if she hadn’t heard me. I pulled at her in desperation, she shook me off with strength I didn’t know she possessed. Realizing she wasn’t going to stop, I reluctantly followed – thinking she must have known something I didn’t, a better way out. It was the only thing that made sense. She’d slowed her pace to allow me to catch up – she was no longer fleeing, she was leading.
I’d been occasionally pausing to shine my flashlight down below us, deep seated fear growing as the exit became further and further away, and was eventually swallowed up by the darkness entirely.
After what felt to my tired legs like a lifetime, she stopped, and began to enter another crawlspace – heading back deeper into the hotel.
I froze, the already intense sense of wrongness overwhelmed me at the thought of going in. She turned back to smile at me briefly from the darkness, and I realized then that everything was going to be okay.
I had found her. I knew that following her was the right thing to do – the new feeling of calm overrode my deeply seated fear of seeing what was on the other side of the tunnel.
So, I took a deep breath, and I found out what was on the 7th floor.
I instantly felt much safer than I had anywhere else in that god forsaken place as we stepped into the immaculate room that the tight tunnel opened into. This was a good place. Safe.
I was suddenly very confident that we were going the right way.
I followed her out of the room and down an immaculate hallway to a huge ballroom. Art deco details, the chandelier, it was beautiful – that much was obvious, even in the dark. I felt an odd sense of excitement at the thought of approaching it, nearly giddy at the sight of the elegant golden elevator at the end.
The exit. Finally.
I froze for a moment when I heard a door slam shut somewhere behind me, but no matter how hard I tried to hold on to that concern, the intense feeling of alarm, I couldn’t – it was quickly gone, beyond my reach.
Everything was fine.
She stepped into the elevator, and smiled at me over her shoulder. I knew that was where I needed to be. I was ready to leave.
I was only a few feet behind her when I tripped and fell to the side.
I felt around to see what I had tripped over – it was a single shoe, the canvas stiff with long-dried blood. When I looked up from it in confusion, I realized that the entire room had changed – the air carried a hint of old things, mildew, and despair. The chandelier hung at an odd angle, ruined, rendered dark and useless by decades of neglect, glass from shattered and now boarded up windows littered the ground. The wooden floor was warped and stained, and the dated wallpaper had mostly peeled away. A sense of longing, and ruin, and sadness, radiated through the huge room.
I shivered as my beam illuminated what I had fallen into – a group of disintegrating suitcases.
Torn clothes and other discarded belongings formed messy piles, encircling what had minutes ago appeared to be an elevator. With a new sense of horrified clarity, I realized what I’d almost stepped into – the open shaft, the one that had been walled up on every other floor. The doors were long gone, leaving only a few feet of damaged flooring between me and the 7 story drop below.
Maybe if I had been paying more attention, I would’ve noticed the sounds sooner, the familiar, earthy-rot smell on the stale air coming from within it.
But I was focused on something snagged on the metal opening.
I told myself it couldn’t have been Liz’s. It couldn’t be the Melvin’s shirt she bought at the concert we went to years ago.
The one she had worn to bed that night.
It could have been anyone’s – because Liz was fine. She was here with me.
I heard the sound of something sharp on metal, the awful, ragged breaths she had been taking.
I shined my flashlight up to see her slowly climbing up from the dark gaping pit of the shaft. Her perfectly round eyes reflected back at me, like an animals’ – like a predator. Something that evolved in the darkness and could see far better in the lightless space than I could ever hope to.
What I thought had been a smile – I realized then that she – it – simply had more teeth than it could comfortably fit in its mouth.
The more I stared, frozen, the more I realized how wrong the face, all the details were. I couldn’t understand how I didn’t see it before – how I could've mistaken that thing for my best friend since childhood.
For a brief, fleeting moment, I thought the not-Liz was the most terrible thing I would ever see in my life, until I noticed more of them crawling up the shaft behind her – when I saw what they looked like when they weren’t attempting to imitate a person.
I was suddenly very aware of the door I had heard open and close behind me moments before.
True fear, I’ve since learned, is seeing something you can barely comprehend – much less hope to out run – standing between you and the only exit.
I realized I was just holding my phone – I’d lost my pepper spray at some point. So, I did the first thing I could think of – I shined my phone flashlight towards it, hoping that something so pale, that saw so well in the dark, that it wouldn’t be able to handle the bright light.
All I managed to do was get a clearer view of the too-long limbs and those awful eyes as it continued towards me, unfazed.
I fished my tiny knife out of my pocket, and ran towards it – I didn’t have any other plan, I just knew that I didn’t want to die down there in the dark.
With the haze I’d been trapped in earlier lifted, I became aware that the entire floor smelled like death – unlike the room downstairs, no one had felt the need to try and mask it with a splash of bleach.
Some doors had long fallen off their hinges and formed additional obstacles as they lay splintered. I tried dodging around the thing in the hall but it managed to grab me, leaving a deep gash in my leg as it tried to pull me to the ground. I stabbed at it until it let go, all the blood – not sure whether it was its or mine – allowed me to slip through its grasp.
At the end of the hall was the room we’d entered through – 747 crudely painted on the door. This time around, I realized it was filled with the remains of decaying furniture, along with other things I’d rather forget. I was actually relieved to shove myself back into the tight, lightless passageway, but not as much as I was when I stepped out of it.
I was only two flights from the exit when I heard a chorus of wheezing breaths above me. I made the mistake of looking up, saw so many eyes trained on mine. There was another familiar face among them, wearing his usual predator's grin.
I moved as fast as my tired, bleeding legs could carry me, hearing them quickly close the distance between us was an excellent motivator.
I was only a few feet ahead of them by the time I stumbled out the back exit, and I didn’t stop running, unsure if they would follow me outside.
Finally, I turned back to see nothing was there.
I still didn’t feel safe until I’d called Jarrod, and I was in the car with him and almost home. I refused to go to the hospital in that town – I didn’t trust anyone. I was so afraid that they’d put me under, take me back to the hotel, and I’d wake up on the 7th floor again. Or maybe I wouldn’t wake up at all.
So, yes, I did make it home, but I wish I had a happier update to give.
I still wonder who Liz must have seen in our room that night, who she would have followed so blindly. I try not to think about what must have happened afterwards, it’s too painful.
I haven’t been able to sleep much since I’ve been home. All I see whenever I close my eyes are those things staring at me from down the dark hallway of the 7th floor.
There’s something else that’s been keeping me awake, too. I had originally booked my reservation with a fake address, but in addition to everything else, I left my purse and ID behind when I fled my room.
It’s been a few weeks now, but I still can’t help but wonder if soon I’ll see those perfectly round eyes glinting at me from within the darkness of my own home, too.
