Hotel Mortis - Chapter 1 Part 2

Part 2

Around the time he had counted up to 300, the tense stiffness in his body finally relaxed.

“Phew…”

He let out a very deep sigh, exhaling all the anxiety and fear that had accumulated within him. He did this for a long time, even after he had counted to three hundred.

“What on earth was that?”

In a tone that sounded utterly exhausted, he whispered his thoughts into the air.

“Could it have been just a hallucination or an illusion? Or perhaps, it was a dream.”

He didn’t believe in superstitions like ghosts. However, the recent events had been both shockingly realistic and surreal at the same time. Though he thought it was utterly implausible, it felt too vivid to dismiss it as a mere momentary dream or illusion.

In the end, what he had to do was clear. There was only one way to dispel this fear. 

He was determined to personally investigate how this situation was unfolding and what issues were at play.

“…..”

Overwhelmed by a sense of pressure, he tightly closed his lips.

Every nook and cranny of the room, which had so far appeared ordinary and sophisticated, now felt chilling. The dimly lit interior was filled with shadows here and there, and each shadow seemed to harbor something ominous.

In response, he shouted in a voice louder than usual. 

“I’m not a five-year-old kid anymore. I’ve outgrown the age to be afraid of the dark.”

Even though he couldn’t recall his exact age at the moment, he was certain that he was not five years old anymore. The time to fear monsters under the bed, inside the closet, or within the shadows had long passed.

He swallowed a dry spit and got up from the bed, placing his feet on the floor. His feet felt heavy, as if stuck to the ground like a ton of bricks.

However, he had to move. Since he couldn’t rely on anyone else, he was the only one who could confirm the truth.

‘It’s probably just a simple equipment malfunction.’

With that thought in mind, he slowly took one step after another. The soft carpet on the floor completely muffled the sound of his footsteps.

‘The scariest situation would be if someone with ill intentions were lurking in the bathroom.’

Humans are scarier than ghosts. He repeated this in his mind. 

He thought about what he should do if a person jumped out from the bathroom.

‘I need something to protect myself.’

It was a reasonably convincing thought. He picked up an iron chair and held it in front of him as he cautiously moved forward step by step.

In fact, the hotel room was not that large, and the bathroom was just a few steps away from the bed with the strides of an adult. He hesitated in place for a while, took a deep breath and then moved forward.

The bathroom he finally reached was engulfed in silence, as if everything that had just happened was nothing more than his imagination…

As he took one more step, the sensor lights in the corridor next to the bathroom automatically turned on.

“Oh my god!”

Embarrassingly, he let out a loud scream and jumped in surprise from his spot.

As the corridor lights illuminated, the light also spilled into the open bathroom. He quickly glanced inside. There was no one there. It was just an ordinary bathroom with a wide-open shower booth, a mirror, a sink, a toilet, and stacks of towels.

‘There’s nothing, no one at all…’

Only then could he finally feel a great relief. He wasn’t sure why the bathroom lights had been flickering on and off, but at least it wasn’t the work of a person. It seemed more likely to be an equipment issue.

Before the corridor sensor lights could turn off again, he fumbled along the bathroom wall and turned on the light switch. The bathroom instantly brightened up, and along with it, the lingering fear completely disappeared.

“Well, that was really nothing to be scared of.”

He explored the inside of the bathroom, taking deep sighs of relief. There was no person, and in the first place, there couldn’t have been anyone there… There were no ghosts either.

‘The flickering lights seemed to be an issue with the electrical wiring… And the sound of water, could it have been coming from the neighboring room?’

As he examined the interior of the bathroom, trying to deduce the cause of these eerie occurrences, he stepped into the shower booth and almost slipped. There was still some water left on the floor.

“Ahh!”

He was lucky he held onto the shower booth wall and stabilized himself. If he had fallen, it could have been a disaster. It was a close call. He ran his fingers through his hair, venting his frustration with all his might.

“Damn it! Why is there still water on the floor?”

Uttering curses, he examined the shower room floor and discovered something long and black, crushed under his shoe.

“… Hair?”

It was a strand of long, black hair extending over two hand spans. Upon closer inspection, it wasn’t just one strand. The wet hair was scattered all over the shower booth, sticking to the walls and floor.

Upon seeing the hair stuck here and there like bugs, he suddenly felt shivers all over his body.

“T-The bathroom cleaning here… isn’t great.”

Muttering to himself, he backed away from the shower booth. And as he did so, he came to a realization.

“How can it still be wet……?”

It was the same question as before, but the implied meaning was different. It wasn’t simply about the fact that the shower booth floor was wet.

‘I was alone here for at least well over two hours, so how could the shower booth be so wet like this?’

The shower booth wasn’t even closed. When he entered the bathroom, the booth door was wide open. The air was dry, and unless someone had recently used the shower, there was no reason for it to be wet.

“No way…”

He remembered the loud sound of water running along with the sound of the switch.

‘What if that sound was this sound?’

But how could a perfectly functional shower suddenly turn on and off by itself? It was something beyond his comprehension.

He fumbled along the wall, backing away cautiously, and suddenly felt moisture under his fingertips. Then, something long and thin tangled around his fingers…

It was another strand of hair.

“W-What is this?”

His mouth went dry with a creepy foreboding, and his voice trembled. He followed the dampness on the wall slowly with his gaze. Water droplets and strands of hair formed a line, leading somewhere. And at the end of that line…

“Ah.”

He let out a sigh that was more like a gasp, as a creepy chill ran up his spine.

… At the end of the moisture trail, there was the light switch of the bathroom.

He swallowed hard, trying to calm his nerves, and bent down to examine the switch closely. It didn’t take long before he felt a jolt of shock, as if struck by lightning. That lightning was fear.

There were clear traces of someone forcefully pressing the switch multiple times. When he checked it under the bright bathroom light, he saw dull fingerprints all around the switch, along with numerous other fingerprints.

His throat tightened with the tension of witnessing the unknown. Breathing shakily, he took a step back from the bathroom light switch.

-Click!

He could see it clearly with his own eyes. The switch was being pressed on its own, turning the light on and off.

“Gasp.”

He staggered and took another step back. It was an unbelievable sight.

-Click, click, click.

The switch moved on its own, and the light flickered on, off, and on again. He stared at the scene as if mesmerized, and then suddenly, the speed of the lights turning on and off increased.

-Click-click, click-click-click-click.

-Click, click-click-click-click-click-click-click.

It looked as if a beast was baring its teeth, threatening him. If he didn’t leave right away, it felt like he would confront something horrifying.

“What, what is this?”

Pressured by the increasingly rapid sound of the switch, he hurriedly left the bathroom. As he was leaving the bathroom, he caught a glimpse of something dark and white in the mirror. Long, torn lips were visible through the tangled, seaweed-like wet hair, leaving a vivid impression on his mind. He was completely engulfed in panic.

‘This place is haunted!’

He rushed out of the bathroom and glanced at the bedroom and the entrance. There was no need to ponder where to go; he chose to escape from this eerie room.

The sensor lights turned on, and he gripped the doorknob. Since the latch was already unlocked, all he needed to do was turn the doorknob and pull the door. He felt a presence behind him, as if someone was watching the back of his head, but he didn’t turn around. Instead, he ran outside the room and slammed the door shut. At that moment, the chilling and eerie gaze that sent shivers down his spine disappeared.

“… Whew.”

He leaned his back against the door of the room and slowly sank to the floor. Although there seemed to be something indescribable inside, he felt an unwavering conviction that it would never come out of that door.

He sat in front of the room’s door, hunched over for a long time, catching his breath. He buried his head between his knees and thought about the strange phenomenon. It was an event or existence that he couldn’t explain or comprehend with his common sense. Never in his life had he encountered anything like it…

‘… I don’t know. I can’t remember.’

He now realized that the whole situation was really strange. He woke up in an unknown place without any memories, and the hotel room he woke up in was also haunted.