The Hotel Lure

January 25, 2012

by Darrin

3 min read

Story Premise 3 min read (456 words)

"The old St. Augustine hotel had seen better days. Its lobby, once grand, now smelled of dust and disuse, but my father insisted on staying there for his architectural survey. It was New Year’s Eve, and I was tagging along to escape the monotony of home. The clock on the nightstand read 6:15 as I […]"

The old St. Augustine hotel had seen better days. Its lobby, once grand, now smelled of dust and disuse, but my father insisted on staying there for his architectural survey. It was New Year’s Eve, and I was tagging along to escape the monotony of home. The clock on the nightstand read 6:15 as I ran a bath in the cramped, tiled bathroom. The water was hot, and soon the room filled with steam, fogging the cracked mirror and the tiny window that overlooked a boarded-up courtyard.

I slipped into the tub, letting the warmth soak into my bones. The hotel was eerily quiet, save for the occasional groan of old pipes. As I leaned back, the hair on my arms stood on end, and a cold draft slithered under the door, making the plastic shower curtain ripple as if pushed by unseen fingers. I called out to my father, but only the drip of the faucet answered. A knot tightened in my stomach.

I stepped out, water dripping onto the worn linoleum, and peered into the bedroom. The room was empty, my father’s jacket still on the chair. His notebook lay open on the desk, but he was gone. The draft died, and I felt foolish, thinking perhaps he’d stepped into the hallway for a moment. I climbed back into the tub, pulling the curtain closed, and tried to focus on washing my hair, but the feeling of being watched grew stronger.

A soft creak from the door made me freeze. Then the curtain snapped open, and the small wicker trash basket near the sink slid across the floor, clattering against the wall. My heart pounded as I saw the empty room, and then I noticed the mirror—in the steam, a word had been written: ‘WAIT.’ I scrambled out, grabbing the towel, and fled to the bedroom. My father was standing by the window, staring at the courtyard, his face pale. He turned to me and whispered, ‘I heard something in the walls.’

We didn’t stay for the festivities. We packed our bags and left that night, driving in silence through the misty streets. But as we passed the old hotel, I saw a figure in one of the upper windows, watching us. I blinked, and it was gone. It wasn’t until we were miles away that my father spoke again. ‘There was a preservationist who stayed here last year. He disappeared on New Year’s Eve. They never found him.’ I clutched the towel, which I’d forgotten I was still holding, and realized it smelled faintly of old perfume—something I hadn’t noticed before. That night, I dreamed of a bath running, and a voice whispering my name, promising I’d never leave.

Related Horror Movies to Watch

Liao zhai bian yi

2016

RedBook

2015

Shubh Raatri

2020

Toof

2019

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

The Cartographer’s Room

At eleven, I thought I understood the geography of our new home—a sprawling Victorian in the outskirts of Salem, Massachusetts, where the salt air gnawed at the paint and the floorboards groaned like old bones. My parents had moved us from a cramped duplex in Worcester, fleeing a landlord who’d vanished with our deposit, leaving […]

The Stillness of the Empty Chair

The old house perched precariously on the edge of the Norwegian fjord, a weathered testament to generations past. Elara, at seventeen, found herself the sole believer in the prickling unease that clung to the air like sea mist. Her parents, pragmatic as the unforgiving mountains surrounding them, dismissed her feelings as youthful fancy, the product […]

Sensitive Or Over Active Imagination?

I have had numerous experiences in my life but there are only a few that I can remember. The first one being when I was about 3 or 4 years old I was in my bed early in the morning (around 8 am or so) and I was just lying there when I felt something […]

The Cinnamon Man

We moved into the house on Hemlock Lane in the fall of 1985, when I was five and my brother Danny was three. It was a tall, narrow Victorian with peeling paint and a sagging porch, nestled at the end of a dead-end street where the woods crept right up to the back fence. Our […]

The Cartographer’s Ghost

In the quiet town of Millbrook, nestled among the rolling hills of upstate New York, I’ve always felt a strange kinship with the unseen. As a child, I’d see figures in the hallway that my parents dismissed as shadows or tricks of the light. By forty-three, I’d learned to live with these whispers from the […]

The Uninvited Frequency

I was nine when my family moved into the old Bellweather house on the edge of a town that smelled of wet leaves and rust. The place was a sprawling Victorian with a wraparound porch and a turret that jutted into the sky like a crooked finger. My parents thought it was charming; I thought […]

The Scent of Static

In the autumn of 2012, I lost my grandfather, Elias. He was a quiet man, a watchmaker by trade, whose hands always smelled of metal and oil. I was twenty-three, living in a cramped studio apartment in the city, far from the small town where he lived. When I returned from his funeral, I sat […]

The Hungry Hive

My name is Elias, and for most of my life, the incident was a faded, almost laughable memory. A childhood fever dream, my mother would say, a night of sleepwalking that had frightened her but was ultimately harmless. But now, at twenty-seven, I’ve started to remember details she never told me, details that rewrite everything. […]

The Dial That Wouldn’t Stop

It was the summer of 2009, and I was living in a small, clapboard house in the outskirts of a town in Ohio, with my boyfriend, his sister, and her two kids. The house was old, with creaking floorboards and a damp basement that smelled of earth and old newspapers. My boyfriend’s dad, a man […]

The Porcelain Basin

Our new apartment in the city felt like a fresh start, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something had followed us from the old house. My sister, Mira, was the first to notice. She claimed she could hear the old claw-foot tub in the spare bathroom filling with water at odd hours, a slow […]

The Chalk Man on the Landing

I was twenty-five when my grandmother passed, and cleaning out her attic in the old farmhouse outside of Millbrook, I found a box of my childhood drawings. Among the crayon suns and stick figures, there was a series of chalk drawings on black paper, all of a tall, thin man with hollow eyes, standing on […]

The Damp Cellar Light

I’m Toby, and I’m twelve. I live in Michigan, in a house that’s been in my family for three generations. It’s a big, drafty Victorian with a cellar that’s more like a cave—dirt floor, stone walls, and a single bare bulb that hangs from the ceiling. My mom, my older sister Lily, my little brother […]