59 - The Legend of Room 101

The legend of Room 101C
This is a story unlike any you have ever heard. So sit back and relax, for in order to hear this tale you must be prepared. Imagine the scariest horror stories you have ever been told came true, would you face it bravely or would your blood turn blue?
This is the story of room 101C; yes, the myth you had heard was as real as can be. The mysteriously appearing hotel room is indeed true. And you will believe because it will appear for you.
It will happen that on your travels back home from school, your transport will develop a fault and you will fall in need of a hotel with a spare room. You will eventually find one tucked behind a cluster of trees. You will feel a chill in your spine but you will ignore it and buckle your knees.
They will not stay buckled long enough because when the receptionist shakes her head to your request for a room they will give way. Your shoulders will go the way of gravity and your legs will begin to sway. Then you hear it, the slight scraping of wood before a loud thud.
You will wonder if the receptionist’s apprehensive look and the quick glance above is just your imagination but you will not care to find out if you are wrong.
You will turn to leave just as a man who is perhaps the manager will appear from a back room, you will hear quick hushed voices before the manager raises his voice and calls out to you.
We have a room, he says, and you spin and sprint back to the desk before his words are done. Room 101C has just become available, he continues, you can have that one. You release a sigh of relief, finally finding somewhere to spend the night made you pleased.
It does not cross your mind that it was too late a time of day for a room to become available. It does not cross your mind that the cost of the room is twice the most expensive room on the table. You ignore the sweating dripping down the receptionist’s face and fail to notice her slight hesitance in handing you the key to the place.
The manager shows you to the room and the moment you turn the key in the lock, you hear a sigh. You want to believe it is not coming from the room and so hide your initial shock.
You could have sworn you heard whispers stop the minute you opened the door, you look behind you, no one is there, but when you walk in and close the door, a cold chill passes through the air.
You notice the room is spare; just a bed, a closet and a mirror on the opposite side of the bed. A table and chair beside the mirror but no television anywhere. The lack of that extra piece of furniture infuriates you especially when you consider the amount of money you paid for the room, but you know you will not march back down to the reception and ask for a refund so you tuck your ego back down and walk into the bathroom to splash some water on your face and die down your anger fumes.
The bathroom has a tub, a toilet with the lid missing and a tiny sink with rusty pipes attached to it. You turn the tap to run some water into the bucket. The rusty pipes rumble before a gush of water spurts out.
The water has brown with large black particles that eventually cleared up to a light brown colour and you contemplate marching out for that refund but change your mind because at least it didn’t have much odour. It is late, you think, half bread is better than none. It might not be so bad, you say to yourself as you dip your hand into the bucket of chocolate coloured water and nearly scream your head off.
The water is icy cold. So cold it is like putting your hand into a working freezer that is outside, in the middle of winter. You change your mind altogether about that shower. You go back into the room and crash into the bed.
It creaks loudly beneath you and maybe even shifts a little but you cannot be entirely sure that is what you heard. You are also not entirely sure how long it takes you to sleep off but it seems like you have been asleep for barely a moment when you hear the loud chiming of a clock striking twelve.
You do not remember seeing a clock in the room so you will imagine the chiming is coming from the reception downstairs, despite the fact that the chiming was so loud it could very well have come from a clock hanging right over your head.
You turn and hear the scraping sound and thud same as earlier before, but your drowsiness gets the better of you and you stretch and turn again for your sleep to continue and that is when you hear it for the first time, like a gentle snore:
Shift make I sleep.
You think it is in your dream so you ignore it and let yourself drift back off to a light sleep, until you hear it again:
Shift make I sleep, and feel the slight nudge on your torso and another; Shift make I sleep.
It feels too real now to be a dream so you switch on the bedside lamp to see what it is. There on the side of the bed is a small creature the length of your torso, curled up in a foetal position, nudging you, saying: Shift make I sleep, eye sockets wide, same sockets empty; black as night.
You scream and bolt out of the bed, your eyes fixed on the creature curling itself on the edge, so you don’t see the thing you bump into when you stand up, but hear the croaky:
Look where you are going o! My head dey for ground but me I still dey see, that makes you gulp.
Walking across from you is a woman, and if the fact that there is somebody else in the room does not surprise you enough, the fact that the woman is walking upside down will. Her head is on the floor, her feet are in the air and somehow – you know you do not know how to explain it – but somehow, she is walking in front of you right there.
You gulp in too much air and nearly choke. As the coughing spasms double you over, you feel a hand rub up and down your back like your mother, and a voice that says:
There, there, drink some water.
You see the glass attached to a hand in front of you. The water is clear and your throat suddenly feels dry. You know you should decline but you don’t want to. If the voice had been croaky like the upside down woman or sinister like the Shift make I sleep creature, maybe you would have.
But it isn’t so you decide to see the face of the person instead. The voice sounded normal and the face looked as normal as well; it belonged to a young man who you might have considered good looking if you didn’t feel like you were in hell. The thought of how he had entered the room did not cross you mind again, so you reach for the glass he stretches out to you as he says:
There, there, I know how difficult this all must be.
How? You say.
It all happened to me too when I was alive, you see.
And you stop midway about to drink the water and throw it to the ground.
This time, you run rather than walk. You reach for the door but it seems farther away than you remember it. You stumble over floorboards than weren’t loose before and from somewhere around the room you hear the clock chime one o’clock.
You spin round to look for the chiming clock and realise you are back in the spot with the boy and the glass of water. Except there is no boy or glass of water, the creature is not on the bed and the woman walking on her head had also disappeared.
You begin to think that maybe you are dreaming and so you pinch yourself to wake up. When you don’t, you walk to the mirror and take a long hard look at your stressed out face, the dark shadows of sleep deprivation forming under your eyes and the surrounding space.
You lean on the mirror, the cool surface feels soothing and you rest a while that way. You hear whispers and spin around but see nothing. Frustrated you lightly bang your head three times on the mirror and groan. It is when you hear her:
Yes?
That you stagger away from it and your heart nearly stops at first sight of her in the mirror, then turn around to see if she is standing behind you in the room.
Can I help you? Have you seen my daughter? She says.
Excuse me?
Have you seen my daughter? Why did you call me?
I didn’t call you.
You did. You knocked for me.
She begins to look agitated and twirls about in the mirror. You turn round again and again, expecting to see her behind you but the room is empty; the same. You wonder how she got into the mirror but are too afraid to ask her.
As she moves, you hear the koi, koi, koi sound on the floor. Koi, koi, koi, again and again, as she asks you about her daughter.
So you haven’t seen her? She asks. Another koi, koi, koi.
You shake your head and that is when it hits you. This woman, the one that walked with her head, the boy that told you the same thing had happened to him before he was dead, the Shift make I sleep creature on the bed.
You had heard their stories before, but they had been too unreal to be true. Yet here was this woman, Lady Koi Koi, searching for her daughter with a missing shoe.
This is unbelievable, you tell yourself, what is happening here? And how did I come to be living with my worst fear?
Lady Koi Koi stops walking and looks closely at you.
It is because I like you dear, you look like my daughter so I will tell you what to do. If you want to leave this room and the trapped horrors within, find the key before the strike of three and you will be free. Don’t, and you will not ever leave.
She continues pacing, koi koi koi, back and forth the room. Then stops again and leans once more closer to you.
If you leave, she says, find my daughter and tell her I am looking for her.
And she turns and continues pacing like when you had first seen her.
You panic and wonder where the key is. You do not remember where you had kept it when you entered the room. The clock chimes two o’clock from its mysterious location somewhere within the room.
Fear spreads itself over your face to your hands and down into your gut. You rush into the bathroom to use the toilet and you immediately wish you had not.
You have no words to describe the creatures camped inside the tub, on the toilet and in the sink. They all stare at you the moment you enter, eyes wide and without even fluttering a blink. You rush back into the room and shut the door.
The moment you step back into the room, you hear a baby crying from a wardrobe that you know was not there before. You pull it open and see a small animal that looked like a human but was covered head to toe in fur. It cradled a baby wrapped in a jumble of clothes like sweaters and shirts and even socks.
Do you want to carry my baby?, the creature asks you and you do not want to nod. But the look in its eyes makes you fearful and you stretch out your hands. You’re glad you do so because then you see the key. There is no baby but wrapped in the clothes is what you think will get you out of Room 101C.
You reach for the key but the creature shoots you a glare.
Don’t you dare touch my baby, it says, or else I’ll cut out your ear.
The tears well up in your eyes for the first time since the horrors began. The creature looks at you for a while, tilting its head from side to side.
You can touch my baby on one condition; give me all your clothes.
You grab your bag and throw all the clothes at the creature but it gestures towards your feet with its nose.
And those too, it says, I like the way it shines.
You remove your shoes and give it to the creature and it turns its back to you and says:
My baby is yours as yours is mine.
You grab the key and bolt for the door as the clock begins its first chime for three. One; key in lock, Two; twist key in lock, Three; you are free.
You expect to find yourself out on the corridor of the hotel and have thought up a perfect rant for the receptionist and the manager downstairs.
But you find that there is no corridor and no hotel, definitely no receptionist or manager, and you are standing by the road side wondering if you had really escaped that hell.
If you were not missing your shoes, you would not have believed it were true, and the horrors trapped in the mysteriously appearing Room 101C could just be in a hotel next to you.
If you find yourself there, do not panic and do not fear, simply find the furry human carrying the key before the strike three or you will never be free.

• Written by Ronnie Otega

Leave a comment