The Ghost Of Room 20

Nora had spent three days calling the Midnight Inn and received three different answers. Room 20 was being repaired. Room 20 was empty. Room 20 did not exist on the current floor plan. The contradictions had been enough to bring her downtown after dark with a recorder, a flashlight, and the key she had borrowed from a source who claimed it opened the old service entrance.

She leaned closer to the desk. “People have been hearing voices in that room for years. Pictures fall off the walls. The temperature drops without warning. Either there’s a problem with the building, or someone is making sure nobody looks too closely.”

Harlan’s mouth tightened. “People also say the elevator stops between floors.”

“Does it?”

“No.”

“Then Room 20 should be easy to check.”

He pushed the key back toward her. “Not tonight.”

Nora looked past him. A narrow corridor led away from the lobby, ending at a door with frosted glass. A brass sign above it read GUESTS. Beyond the glass, a staircase rose into darkness.

“Which floor is Room 20 on?”

“Second.”

“Can I see the stairs?”

“No.”

The refusal sharpened her curiosity into something more useful. Nora picked up her badge and slipped it into her pocket.

“Mr. Harlan, I’m not asking you to let me interview a guest. I’m asking to see a room in a hotel where a man supposedly died.”

The clerk’s face lost what little color it had.

“Jess Lacombe,” Nora said. “Lost all his money gambling, came back drunk and angry after a night at a bar, slipped in the bathroom, struck his head, and died. That’s the story, isn’t it?”

Harlan’s pencil rolled off the desk.

It struck the floor and spun beneath the radiator.

“Who told you that?” he asked.

“Everyone.”

“That doesn’t make it true.”

“Then tell me what is true.”

Harlan bent to retrieve the pencil. When he straightened, the lobby seemed to have grown quieter around him.

“Room 20 has been trouble since before I worked here,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s a ghost. It means old buildings make noises, guests play tricks, and reporters turn rumors into headlines.”

“Which one is it?”

“Go home, Ms. Bell.”

Nora heard a faint click behind her.

She turned. The lobby doors had swung shut. A steel bar had dropped across the inside of the frame.

Harlan noticed her looking. “Automatic lock.”

“I came through those doors thirty seconds ago.”

“They lock at eleven.”

Nora checked the clock above the desk. The minute hand had reached twelve.

“Then open them.”

“I will in the morning.”

She stared at him. “You’re locking me in?”

“I’m closing the hotel.”

“People are still upstairs.”

“Guests have keys.”

“Then give me one.”

Harlan looked toward the staircase. His expression had changed from irritation to caution, as if he were listening for something beneath the floorboards.

“You don’t want to go up there.”

“That’s not your decision.”

“It is tonight.”

Nora moved around the desk.

Harlan stepped in front of the corridor. He was older than he looked, but not weak. One hand closed around the edge of the counter.

“Don’t,” he said.

The word carried no threat. That made it worse.

Nora stopped a few feet away. “If there’s nothing wrong with Room 20, you’ll have no reason to stop me.”

“I have every reason.”

“Tell me one.”

Harlan’s gaze dropped to the notebook under her arm. “Because people go looking for a story and come back with something else.”

A sound came from the corridor.

Three slow knocks.

Not on the lobby door. Somewhere beyond the frosted glass.

Nora and Harlan both turned.

The staircase waited in the dimness. Its carpet was dark red, worn pale along the center. At the top, a landing disappeared behind the wall.

Knock.

Knock.

Knock.

Harlan whispered, “The second floor is empty.”

Nora reached for her recorder.

“Don’t,” he said.

She pressed the button anyway. A red light blinked on.

The knocks stopped.

Nora crossed to the frosted door. Harlan caught her sleeve.

His fingers were cold.

“Let go,” she said.

“You heard me. It’s empty.”

“Then we can confirm that together.”

He released her, but his hand remained lifted, as if he might grab her again.

Nora pushed the door open.

The stairwell smelled of wet wool, old plaster, and something metallic beneath the damp. The lobby’s warmth vanished at once. A draft slipped under her collar and traveled down her back.

She climbed.

Each step complained beneath her boots. The walls were painted a yellow that had once been cream. Small framed pictures hung at uneven intervals: ships in the harbor, mountains under summer sun, a black-and-white photograph of the inn’s original entrance. As Nora passed, the picture nearest her tilted sharply on its wire.

She stopped.

The frame settled.

Behind her, Harlan called, “Ms. Bell.”

Nora looked down through the stair rails. He stood at the bottom, half-hidden by the frosted door.

“Which way is Room 20?” she asked.

“Left at the landing.”

She reached the second floor.

The corridor ran left and right, but the left passage ended after ten feet at a blank wall. Nora frowned. From below, she had seen the staircase turn toward a long hallway. There should have been a corridor there.

She tried the right side.

The carpet changed beneath her boots from red to gray. Doors lined both walls, their brass numbers dulled with age. Room 16. Room 17. Room 18.

At the far end, a narrow turn led out of sight.

Nora glanced back.

The staircase was gone.

Not hidden. Gone.

The wall behind her was solid, covered in faded floral wallpaper. A small picture hung there, showing the Midnight Inn beneath a clear sky. The frame had been nailed directly into the plaster.

Nora touched the wall.

It was cold and firm.

“Mr. Harlan?”

Her voice traveled down the corridor and returned thinner.

No answer.

She pulled out her flashlight and swept its beam across the hall. The light caught dust floating above the carpet. Nothing moved. The hotel’s pipes ticked behind the walls.

Nora forced herself forward.

Room 18 stood open by an inch. From inside came the soft scrape of something dragging across the floor.

She stopped.

“Hello?”

The scrape ceased.

Nora kept walking. Room 19 had no number. Its door was covered with a sheet of plywood, nailed across the center. Beyond it, the corridor narrowed into the turn she had seen.

A brass plaque waited on the wall.

20.

The door stood at the end of a short landing, separated from the hallway by three shallow steps. Unlike the other doors, it was painted black. Its brass knob shone as if someone had polished it recently.

Nora’s pulse quickened, though she refused to call it fear.

She took the borrowed key from her pocket.

The lock accepted it.

Before she could turn it, Harlan’s voice rose from behind her.

“Come back.”

Nora spun.

The hallway had changed again.

The open door to Room 18 was gone. Room 19 was gone. The passage behind her stretched straight and narrow, with no staircase and no frosted door. Harlan stood at the far end, impossibly distant, his face pale beneath the weak ceiling light.

“You said the hotel was closed,” Nora called.

“It is.”

“Then how did you get up here?”

“I didn’t.”

The light above him flickered.

Nora tightened her grip on the key. “What’s inside Room 20?”

Harlan shook his head. “Not what you think.”

“Then tell me what I should think.”

A low murmur rose behind the black door.

Nora turned toward it.

The sound was too faint to make out, but it had the shape of a voice. A man speaking through a wall. The words blurred into the pipes and wind.

Harlan shouted, “Nora!”

She put the key in the lock.

The voice stopped.

For one second, the landing was silent.

Then the door clicked open.

Cold poured through the gap. It rolled over Nora’s boots and curled around her ankles, sharp enough to sting. The hallway light went out behind her.

She stepped across the threshold.

The room beyond was dark, but her flashlight found a bed beneath a sheet, a washstand, and pictures hanging crookedly on the walls. A bathroom door stood open at the far side.

Nora took one step inside.

Behind her, the lock turned.

She whirled and seized the knob.

It would not move.

On the other side of the door, the corridor was silent. No Harlan. No footsteps. No hotel.

Nora pulled harder. The black door held fast.

Then, from the bathroom, a man’s voice said, very clearly, “You came to see what happened.”

Nora’s recorder continued to blink in her hand.

She raised the flashlight toward the open bathroom door.

The beam trembled across the tile.

And the door behind her locked again.

End of chapter one. 32 more chapters in the full book.