The Door - A Pacer Times Halloween

The hotel was beautiful. 12 floors tall with an amazing waterfall of lights flowing from the uppermost level. Ember, Tosha and Lilly checked into their room and headed up to the tenth floor. 

The room was just as pretty as the rest of the hotel. Everything was clean, and the beds looked extremely soft, fluffy and inviting. 

The three girls claimed their beds and began organizing and unpacking. 

“I am so exhausted!” exclaimed Lilly.

“Same.” Both Tosha and Ember replied as they finished putting the last of their belongings in a drawer. 

“I’m going to shower, then I’m out. We have to be up at seven in the morning to get ready and get breakfast before the convention starts and it's already one thirty.” Ember said as she grabbed her pj’s and walked to the bathroom. 

By the time Ember finished her shower and nightly routine, it was already two fifteen in the morning and both Tosha and Lilly were snuggled in their beds fast asleep. Ember walked over to her bed and climbed in. 

Just as she was drifting off to sleep, there was a loud slam that sounded like it was in their room. 

Ember sat up in her bed and frantically looked around in the dark, grabbing for her phone to turn the flashlight on. She looked over at Lilly and Tosha and found that they were undisturbed. 

“Maybe it was the next room over” Ember thought to herself as she laid back down in her bed. Her heart rate slowed back down, but she still had an eerie feeling as she drifted off to sleep, exhaustion claiming her. 

The next morning the girls woke up and got ready for breakfast and the long day ahead of them. Surveying the room in the daytime, Tosha noticed an extra door in their room.

“Huh, I didn’t notice that last night. I think it connects to the next room.” Lilly said as she walked over to the door and reached for the handle to try and open it. She jiggled the handle and found that it was locked. 

“I wonder if the other side can unlock it.” Tosha thought out loud. 

“Normally you have to have a key, so I think only the staff should have the ability to open it.” Ember said. 

They all looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders and grabbed their purses on the way out the door. 

After a long day of conference meetings, Tosha headed back up to their room and found that some of her stuff had been moved around. She wrote it off as it possibly being housekeeping. 

Just a few moments later both Lilly and Ember walked in and noticed the same thing, some of their stuff had been misplaced. 

“Huh, I didn’t think housekeeping was going to come today.” said Ember as she started reorganizing her stuff the way she liked it. 

Later that night the three girls were watching a movie and heard something coming from the otherside of the door to the other room. The girls paused the movie and looked at eachother. 

Lilly got up and walked over towards the door and put her ear to it, trying to see if she could hear anything from the other side. She could hear heavy breathing and heard a “click”. Backing up from the door, she examined it and noticed a small little hole at the top right corner.

“Y’all, I think there’s a peephole at the top of the door…” Lilly said as she backed up from the door. 

“No way, that can’t be right.” Tosha said as she got up and stepped closer to the door, inspecting it. 

“Holy shit!” Ember said as she noticed the hole. 

“What should we do? Call the front desk?” Tosha asked. 

“Yeah, I’ll call down and see what we should do. Maybe we should go wait in the hallway.” Ember said as she grabbed her phone and headed towards the door. 

“Yeah, let's go wait out there.” Tosha said as she and Lilly followed Ember out into the hallway. 

After a few minutes of being on the phone with the front desk, Ember walked over to Tosha and Lilly and told them that the attendant said that the room next to them was uninhabited, but that they would send someone up to check and make sure. 

About eight minutes later, an attendant walked over to the girls and opened the door to the neighboring room. The attendant went in and looked around while the girls stayed in the hallway and peered in, not daring to follow. 

“It looks like the room is empty. Let us know if you need anything else Miss Ember.” the attendant said as he walked out of the room and locked it behind him. As he walked away, the girls all looked at each other nervously. 

“Well, we watched him check the entire room, maybe we are just paranoid and tired from all the travel yesterday.” Tosha suggested. 

“Maybe you’re right. I am pretty exhausted still.” Lilly offered as the three began filling back into their room. 

Ember looked around the small hotel room. She decided to grab a tiny piece of paper and cover the hole. Even though the attendant checked the room, she still had a suspicious and uneasy feeling. 

That night, the girls had a hard time falling asleep. They left the lights on in the room and piled into one bed, that way they could see each corner of the room. 

By four thirty in the morning all three girls had fallen asleep 

At the feeling of something brushing her skin, Tosha woke up startled to find an almost pitch black bedroom surrounding her. Feeling around for her phone, she quickly turned the light on, feeling the hairs on the back of her neck stand up as if something was close to her. 

Flashing the light at her two friends, she jumped out of the bed to find them dead, their lifeless eyes frozen in fear. 

Her heart felt like it would pound out of her chest and adrenaline instantly filled her body.

Tonya let out a quiet shriek and quickly looked around the room, finding that the door to the other room was wide open, and peering back at her from the darkness was a set of bright silver eyes…