38 - Hotel for Lost Souls

With a car that refused to start and a phone with no cell signal, the weary traveller settled to sleep at midnight, on a road with a cemetery on both sides. It was so dark and so eerily quiet, and there were the possibilities of ghosts abound. But the man did not believe in ghosts and such things, so he sat in his car with much confidence till he saw the figure approaching.

Fear travelled through neurons to his body, and he shook with a violent tremor. This figure was evil. Red eyes in a hooded cloak, pale skin as wrinkled as a tree's bark, and a maleficent presence with every step it took. He wanted to run but he couldn't move. He'd lost control of his brain; every molecule of his body was attuned to the figure approaching.

'I am The Gatekeeper,' it said.

Okay. Be calm. It's just the gatekeeper of the cemetery. You've had too much to drink.

It's voice was almost a silent whisper, yet it instilled so much fear and commanded so much respect.

'There's a hotel down the road should you choose to stay.'

This was not a request. The figure was waiting, impatiently. He got out and walked, silently and fearfully, his face fixed on the approaching distance and not on the being beside him. One step, two steps, three... suddenly it stood before him, a hotel painted black with a huge metal door and several windows draped with black curtains. How?

He turned around and the being was not there, the night was strangely filled with all the normal nightly sounds and all seemed right again. He took a deep breath, chastised himself for getting drunk and lost, and retraced his steps. One step, two steps, three... the hotel stood before him again. He freaked out, ran in all directions, but there was no escaping it. With his heart beating as loud as an explosion and a mind shattered to pieces, he placed his hands on the hotel door handle and opened.

It was too silent. All he could see was a long corridor with pink padded walls, and pink fluffy rugs that buried the sound of his footsteps as he walked. He was supposed to be at a convention. How had he ended up here? One step, two steps, three... he saw the desk first, then the woman seated behind it.

'Welcome,' she said, again in that low hellish whisper. 'I can see you need a room because you look so tired, you can sit by that chair near the door while I get you one.'
'There's no chair,' he said, but on turning back he noticed a sofa very close to the door. His weary feet led him there and he sank on it musing over the weird happenings. Faithful to his scepticism, he convinced himself that he had drank far more than his usual and promptly fell asleep.

Then he woke up to the sound of a baby crying. He walked down the corridor of pink padded walls, his feet sinking into the soft pink rugs, his heart pounding. Something was not right.

The baby lay on the reception table sucking its thumb and simultaneously shrieking, and the woman was nowhere around. It stopped crying as he closely approached, its red eyes fixated on him with an emotion he recognized as awe. Something is not right. He picked up the child and looked around, hoping to see a door that would lead somewhere. Anywhere. Pink walls stared back at him, walls that kept secrets. No doors. No paintings. No sound from man, animal or machine. He picked up the baby. It was light, too light. It's eyes were too red, it's skin too white. There was something, something...

'GIVE ME BACK MY BABY!!!'

The woman had appeared, conjured out of thin air, and she was furious.

'HOW DARE YOU! YOU IMPURE HUMAN!'

He looked at all of her, red hair, blood-red long nails, pale skin, snow-white teeth. And when he looked at his hands, the baby was no longer cradled in it, but he could still hear its cries.

She smiled. Her edges were not definite, he noticed, and his eyes widened in horror. The weary traveller just realized she was an apparition.

'I...I need to get...get out of here!!!,' he said agitatedly, and fled down the corridor that he'd come to identify as a woman's womb.

'Maybe in the next 100 years!!,' she laughed, and it echoed all the way down, till it reverberated in the hollow of his bones.

It wasn't long before the weary traveller realized that the long corridor carried on forever. The door had vanished. He was trapped!

The woman floated across the corridor towards him, her
hair flaming with wild fire, and he backed up against the wall in horror. When she touched his chest, his heart stopped beating and his temperature dropped. It felt like death. Her mouth never opened. The words seemed to emanate from her essence into his soul as she bore into him with her hellish eyes.

'You are a lost soul. The world doesn't want you, heaven doesn't want you, Satan is unsure about you. You will live with us for the next 100 years unless...'
She backed up against the wall, and his heartbeat resumed it's normal pace.

'Remember your purpose. In time,' she said, with a smile as wide as a Cheshire Cat's, and completely disappeared.

In time.

He noticed his toes were ashen, and that this colour was spreading to his legs. He fell on the fluffy rug because his feet had become stiff, death-like. He was panicking but his heartbeat had slowed, and he started to sense something foul-smelling. Ashen feet, putrefaction curling around his ankles, and toes affected with rigor-mortis made him realize that he was becoming a corpse!
Remember. Out of fear and a desperation to live, he closed his eyes and let his mind travel far back to an ordinary boyhood and a less satisfactory adult life. He tried to remember why he was always so weary, why the bottle had become his bestfriend, why he had felt so calm on a road with a cemetery on both sides. Pain and disappointment; the raging emotions of a wasted life. And his eyes opened.

The night sky was filled with vultures circling each other, and he could hear the sound of a nightingale somewhere; it sounded like a dirge. Then he saw the headstones that contained beings with nonexistent heartbeats, noticed the damp earth on which he lay, and finally, The Gatekeeper. She was standing beside an open grave, her face no longer hidden by the hood of her cloak. It was an old face riddled with marks and blemishes; her blood-red eyes and pale skin did not scare him anymore. And on her bald head were etched deep lines that meandered like the course of a river. What scared him was the object she held in her right hand. It was a bloodied, beating heart, his heart, and its pace was slowing down every second.

'Soon,' she whispered. 'Your funeral will begin. In time.'

Ghosts of centuries past escaped from their earthly containers to watch the spectacle they had once starred in. Men, women, and children, all of them once guests of that hotel, were floating towards The Gatekeeper and the weary traveller's grave. They were smiling, almost welcoming, but he did not want to be welcomed. It was no longer silent; squirrels, rats, cockroaches and other creatures were gathering to watch The Gatekeeper's ceremony.

Fear. Memories buried deep in the complicated maze called brain. He remembered.

Suddenly he was back in the corridor, laying on that pink fluffy rug, with worms feasting on his lower limbs. Death was coursing through his body; there was stench and putrefaction, a receding heart beat and a dulling brain.
The red-headed woman appeared, with her baby standing beside her on its hind limbs, glaring at him furiously. 'Quick you fool! Save yourself! In time! Or it would be another 100 years!'

He could see the door a few feet away, he knew he had a few seconds to end this horror. He crawled with all of the energy left in him. He saw flash images of the gatekeeper and his spectator ghosts, they were furious. Onwards. His fingers were shaking but still he reached out, overworking his already dulled brain on this effort. His hands closed around the handle and he opened.

All he saw was darkness and something else...something was not right.

• Written by Ann Osi