The Maintenance Cart

I was in Portland for a regional dance competition, and my mom had booked us into the Grand Continental, a hotel that had seen better decades. The lobby was all marble and brass, but the hallways smelled of old carpet and lemon polish. After the finals, we were starving for something greasy. My brother stayed in the room, sprawled on the bed with his headphones on, so it was just Mom and me.

At the front desk, a young woman with tired eyes told us there was no vending machine, but a soda machine at the far end of the corridor on our floor. The main elevators were on the other side of the hotel, a long walk with aching feet, so we decided to use the service elevator a few doors from our room. It was tucked behind a fire door, with a faded ‘Staff Only’ sign. The button was worn smooth, and when the doors creaked open, they revealed a metal box that felt like it hadn’t been cleaned since the 1970s.

The elevator car was small and dim. A single fluorescent light flickered, casting a buzzing glow. In the corner stood an ancient office chair, its brown vinyl cracked and peeling, one wheel missing, tilted against the wall. It looked like something from a boiler room, not a hotel. Mom and I exchanged a glance. ‘Maintenance probably left it,’ she said, but her voice was thin. We stepped in, and the doors shuddered closed behind us.

As the elevator descended, a cold dread settled in my stomach. The air was stale, with a faint metallic tang, and the humming of the machinery seemed louder than it should. I could feel a presence, like we weren’t alone. The chair seemed to watch us. I tried to ignore it, focusing on the numbers above the door, but I kept catching movement in my peripheral vision, like the chair was shifting slightly, as if someone had just sat down.

We got our sodas, but the ride back was worse. Mom kept glancing at the chair, and I could see her knuckles white on the soda can. As we passed the third floor, the chair moved. It didn’t slide, it tipped forward and back, as if someone had rocked in it. Mom gasped and pressed the button for our floor, but the elevator kept going up. It stopped at the penthouse, and the doors opened to reveal a dark hallway. A figure stood there, backlit by a single sconce, too tall and thin, with arms that hung too low. It stepped aside, and the doors closed before we could get off.

The elevator continued up, and the floor indicator blinked past the roof. We were going higher than the building allowed. I felt the temperature drop, and the light flickered out. In the darkness, the chair began to roll toward us, a slow, scraping sound. Mom screamed, and I banged on the doors, but nothing happened. Then, just as suddenly as it started, the light came back on, and we were at our floor. The chair was back in the corner, motionless.

We burst out, slammed the doors, and ran to our room. My brother asked why we looked so pale. We didn’t tell him. But the next morning, I woke to the sound of wheels rolling and a creaking hinge at the door. I opened it a crack, and there was the chair, parked right outside our door, facing us, as if waiting. The room service cart we’d seen earlier was nowhere to be found, but that chair stayed there all day. When we checked out, the bellhop who took our bags looked at the chair and said, ‘Ah, that old thing. It’s been here as long as I can remember. They say it belonged to a manager who died in the elevator back in the ’80s. Sometimes it moves on its own.’ I never drank soda again.