The Fifth Setting

My job at the Cresthaven Resort had been a quiet one, at least until the third week. I was hired as a banquet server, but with the summer weddings winding down and the conference season not yet in full swing, I often found myself with long stretches of empty ballrooms and polished silver that reflected my own face back at me. I told myself the flickers in the mirrors were just my eyes adjusting to the low, dim light that the hotel preferred for its evening events. But one afternoon, while setting up for a business luncheon, I caught a reflection that did not mimic my movements.

I was in the Grand Ballroom, aligning forks and knives with military precision, when a figure in a pale blue dress—the same uniform we all wore—moved across the far end of the room. I felt the hair on my arms prickle. I called out, but no reply. The figure vanished behind a partition, and I heard a faint, rhythmic clicking, like heels on the concrete floor of the adjacent hallway. I walked over, but the hallway was empty, and the clicking stopped just as I peered around the corner.

A week later, I was assigned to the breakfast shift. The hotel had a small lounge off the main lobby where we served pastries, fruit, and coffee to a handful of guests. It was a slow morning; only three elderly couples, all of whom left by nine. I sat at the hostess stand, flipping through a magazine, when I noticed a dark blur in my peripheral vision. I looked up from the glossy pages to see a woman walking toward me—black trousers, black shoes, the exact uniform of our evening waitstaff. But she was pale, almost translucent, and she stopped at the edge of the carpet, her face obscured by a shadow that didn’t match the ceiling lights. I blinked, and she was gone. I felt the temperature drop by a few degrees, and I heard a muffled scrape behind me, like a chair being dragged across the floor.

I should have left then, but I was new and didn’t want to seem flaky. I told my manager I had a migraine, and he let me sit in the break room. But the feeling of being watched didn’t leave me, not even when I locked the door. It was as if the space itself was pressing in on me, the walls breathing ever so slightly. I could hear the hum of the vending machine, and underneath it, a soft, rhythmic tapping, like a fingernail against the metal door. I counted the seconds between the taps—they were irregular, sometimes three seconds apart, sometimes ten, as if someone was waiting for me to respond.

Later that week, I was transferring dishes from the banquet pantry to the kitchen when I heard a crash from the smaller Balsam Room, a narrow space used for private dinners. I set down my tray and walked in, expecting to find a dropped plate or a careless coworker. Instead, I found a single wine glass shattered on the floor, shards glinting in the dim light, and a feather—white, from some bird I couldn’t identify—resting gently on the nearest chair. There was no wind, no window open, and no one else in the hotel at that hour. I glanced at the clock above the door. It was 3:33 PM, an odd time for a ghost, but I had read somewhere that apparitions often appear during the ‘witching hour’ of the afternoon.

That evening, I confided in the night auditor, a man named Elias who had worked at the hotel for over a decade. He lowered his voice, though we were alone in the lobby, and told me about a former banquet server named Greta, who had died on the property in the 1980s. She had been found in that same ballroom, collapsed among the tables, her uniform—black trousers, black shoes—rumpled. The official cause was a heart attack, but Elias claimed the staff at the time whispered about a guest who had been found in the same spot hours earlier, a man with a pale face and eyes like cloudy marbles, who had gone missing before the police arrived. Since then, on certain dates, Greta’s form had been seen walking the halls, always in that uniform, always looking as if she was about to take an order.

I tried to brush it off as a ghost story, but the next morning, I found a sticky note on my station, written in a neat, almost archaic script: “Room 217, they are waiting.” I had never been to room 217; it was on the second floor, at the end of a dimly lit corridor that the cleaning staff avoided. I went up, my heart pounding, and stood outside the door. I could hear a faint, low hum, like a refrigerator. I placed my ear to the door, and the hum resolved into a melody—a lullaby I vaguely remembered from childhood. Then, a voice, not really human, but not entirely mechanical, whispered through the crack: “Don’t set the fifth.”

I fled. I quit that afternoon, leaving behind my apron and my name tag. As I drove away from the Cresthaven, the sun was setting, and I saw a figure standing on the hotel’s front lawn, a black shape against the orange sky. It raised a hand, as if waving, and I felt the cold seep through the car windows. I never learned what ‘the fifth’ meant, but sometimes, late at night, I hear that lullaby, and I see the woman in the black uniform standing at the foot of my bed, her face still hidden, her finger pressed to her lips as if to silence me. And I know that I’m still being watched, that I never really left the Cresthaven, and that a part of me remains in that room, waiting for a napkin to be folded, a glass to be polished, and a guest who will never arrive.

But that’s not the worst part. The worst part is that I’ve started seeing the number 217 everywhere—on receipts, on license plates, in the digits of my bank account. And last week, I found a black feather on my pillow, and I know, deep down, that the hotel hasn’t given up on me. It’s just waiting for me to come back, to take my place at the hostess stand, to set the table for the guest who is already seated, and has been seated for a very long time.