The Linen Room Interloper

The old Riverside Hotel had a way of pressing down on you, especially in the dead of night. I’d been the night auditor there for three years, and by now the creaks and groans of the place were like the breathing of a tired old animal. That night, though, the air in the lobby felt charged, like before a storm, but the weather was clear. The only guests were a quiet couple on the third floor and a reclusive novelist in 214 who’d been there for a week and only ever came down for ice. I was at the front desk, nursing a cup of lukewarm coffee, when the elevator at the end of the hall chimed. The doors slid open with a soft hiss, and a girl stepped out. She couldn’t have been more than six, with long blonde hair and a white nightgown. I’d never seen a child in the hotel before. She walked straight toward me, barefoot on the cold marble, and stopped a few feet from the desk. Her face was pale but not sickly, and her eyes were wide and empty. I tried to smile, but my mouth felt dry. ‘Hey there, sweetheart. You lost?’ I asked, keeping my voice gentle. She didn’t answer. She just stared, her lips moving, but no sound came out. I leaned across the counter, trying to hear. It was like she was whispering, but too faint, like a radio station just out of range. The words felt almost there, almost English, but twisted. The lobby, always humming with the old AC, went dead silent. I could hear my own heartbeat. She stopped moving her lips, tilted her head, and then turned and walked back toward the elevator. The doors opened for her like they knew, and she stepped in, facing me as they closed. The floor indicator started to move, slowly, going up to the second floor, then the third, then the fourth—but the hotel only had three floors. I stood there for a long time, not daring to breathe. Finally, I went to the elevator and pressed the button, but nothing happened. The floor indicator stayed above the third, frozen. I spent the rest of the night on high alert, but nothing else came. When my shift ended at seven, I mentioned it to the morning manager, Margaret. She was a no-nonsense woman with forty years in the business, and she just shook her head. ‘You’re not the first to see her,’ she said, lowering her voice. ‘About thirty years ago, on the fourth floor—there was a fourth floor then, before the fire—a little girl named Emily died in a fire that started in the linen room. They say she’s still trying to tell someone what happened, but no one can understand her. The building was rebuilt, but they sealed off that floor, and no one goes up there.’ I asked her what the girl was trying to say, but Margaret just shrugged. ‘Nobody knows. But you did right not to follow her. That’s the thing—you have to stay put. Because if you follow her, you’re not coming back.’ I thought about that as I walked out into the early morning light. But as I turned the corner to my car, I saw a small figure standing in the window of the fourth floor—the window that should have been bricked up. It was her, but now she was smiling, and her mouth was moving faster, as if she were in a hurry. And even with the glass, I swear she was saying, ‘You’re next,’ but maybe I was just tired. I got in my car and drove home, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that somewhere behind me, in the rearview mirror, there was a flash of white in the backseat. I never looked, and I never went back. But the hotel still calls to me in my dreams, and every time I wake, I feel like I’m just about to understand what she’s been trying to say.