Intro Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8
Great, I get the room next to the family with the screaming kids.
Or at least one anyway. It’s late though, so maybe it’ll settle and get to sleep.
I was lucky to get a room I suppose, my brother got a fairly nice room on the other side of town but they wouldn’t let us share, full to capacity for fire safety, they said.
I can’t hear any adult voices though, not even mumbled or muffled ones. The kids sounds like a girl, that only becomes noticeable when she starts to sing to herself.
“Ring around a rosie,
A pocket full of posie,
A – tischa, a – tischa,
We all fall down.”
Nothing more creepy if you ask me. Surely she couldn’t be in there on her own?
It’s a creepy singing as well, enough to send shivers all through you. I’ll have to shake that off, there’s obviously something wrong with me if I find a child’s singing creepy. It’s the same melody over and over again. I can’t make out the words but the tune is the same all the way through and it’s familiar, so it’s easy to know what it is without hearing it. It gets quiet for a moment and then I hear sobbing.
I’m just getting pissed off now. Can I knock in next door and complain? I can’t call downstairs to complain, that crazy old bitch at reception. Fuck it, I had to put up with that when I worked in hotels, I’m complaining.
“Hello, front desshhk?”
“Hello, I’m in room 17 and there’s a small child who seems to be alone and upset. Are the parents downstairs?”
“The parentssh?”
“Yesh, I mean yes. The parents.”
“I don’t know I’ll have to check.”
“Well if you find them can you tell them to come back to their room?”
“A pleassshhe would be nisshhe.” “What’s a pleassshhe? Oh, please. Right, yes please ask the parents to come back.”
“Will do Johnny”
“Johnny? Hello?”
I’ll bet she’s got my room mixed up with someone else, It might be better if I just knocked into the room myself, just to make sure she’s ok. I grab my key and head for the door. It’s a cliche and I hate them, but I feel like there’s somebody here with me. The noise has stopped from next door, maybe she called the room or maybe the parents were there all along.
Jesus knowing my luck I’d have been caught in a strangers room with a crying girl and an angry look on my face, when all I wanted was a bit of peace and quiet to get some shut eye.
This place has the feeling that the decorator was trying to parody every single moody suspense horror flick ever made. Faded wallpaper, dodgy lampshades and a slightly brown shower curtain.
All complete with a wide selection of guests and staff to properly give a short story writer enough inspiration to be rejected by publishers. There’s a really creepy guy that actually smells like wank. He was in reception leering over the reservations book. You get weirdo’s everywhere, but when he walked past me muttering “Mmm, young ones”, that was all I needed to note to stay well out of his company. Fuck this, I might just get to bed and have a shower in the morning.
There is a deathly silence in the room since the girl has stopped crying, creepy to the point that I can actually hear my own thoughts and my mind is thinking of running away with itself. I have to get into bed. the radiator is not working and I’m not calling the front dessshhk again in case she sends up one of her inbred looking offsshhpring asshh maintanensshh.
I’m in bed, wrapped up in pyjamas, jumpers and my coat. The bed sheets smell dusty and the bed creaks. I hate this place. All I have to do is clear my mind and drift off, I’ll be out of here first thing.
The room is so dark that I can make no distinction between my eyes being open or closed, if I could I suspect the only thing I would see would be my breath in the air. There is deathly silence. The kind of silence that causes you to focus on every thing. Your breathing, your heartbeat, your eyes blinking. Everything.
“Johnny“
What the fuck was that?
I’m up and out of that bed with the lights on faster than I’ve ever moved in my life. My senses are so alert with adrenaline that I can hear silence. The blood rushing around inside and I become aware of my eyes bulging. My fists are clenched and I’m tense.
Silence.
Nothing.
Freaked, but fully aware that I’m alone I get back into bed. I must have been in that twilight state between consciousness about to drift off.
Back in bed, lights out.
I hear footsteps outside the door and thank Christ for the company, even if it is on the other side of a door. I don’t know why, but I take comfort in the fact that there are other people here. The footsteps stop.
They start again, inside the door. Instantly my heart is in my throat and I’m in a fight or flee state of mind, but I haven’t got the brainpower to move right now. Right now I’m still getting over the name Johnny being whispered in my ear moments earlier and now there’s someone in the room with me. Louder they get, closer they get and then they stop. It’s still too dark for me to see anything, but I dare not open my eyes for fear of what I might see even in my minds eye. I know there’s someone beside the bed, I can feel their presence and hear their breath. It’s not my breath because it’s out of sync. I breath out, they breath in. I’m in full panic mode now. My heart is on overdrive and adrenaline pumps in my veins like electricity, yet I can’t move.
“Please don’t”
Oh fuck off.
The girl from next door has started again. Only this time I can hear everything. She sounds concerned like she’s seen something happen before and doesn’t want it to repeat.
“Please don’t”
Don’t do what? Who’s she talking to? The breathing next to me is heavier and I can feel whatever it is leaning over me. I’d rather gouge my eyes out now than open them.
“He didn’t mean it, please don’t do it”
What didn’t I mean to do? Was she even talking about me? I feel a pressure on the bed like a hand pressing down to support someone – “Johnny” – and that’s all I can stand.
Up, out of bed. Lights on.
“Johnny?”, I say “Who the fuck is Johnny?” “If there’s anyone in here and acting the bollox then you can kiss my arse cause I’ve nearly pissed myself”.
There was no one around though. I did all the usual checking under the bed, behind the curtains and in the bathroom. Nothing.
I’m going back to bed, but the fucking light is staying on.
I’m shaken after that, it has to be my mind playing tricks on me, what with this being Halloween and everything in a strange and creepy place. I suppose I just scared myself.
“AAAAAAAGGGGGGGGHHHHH!”
A blood curdling shriek from the little girl that I will never forget. Just as I’m in mid flight out of the bed, the lights shut out. I’m disoriented in the pitch black but shaking with fear. It’s silence again, apart from a soft sobbing from the other side of the wall next door. I can’t see where I am, but at least I’m not in bed. The footsteps start again, I hear them down the corridor. Heavy, big footsteps and once again they stop outside the door. I’m getting ready for them to come this side of the door, just like last time but they don’t.
The foot steps don’t begin again, but the heavy breathing by my ear does. I start to sob myself I’m so frightened and out of place that my mind packs in and reverts to that of a child. The breathing continues and I can feel it on the back of my head. I have no in cling of what to do, I actually want my mother.
BANG
What the fuck?
The breathing, still.
BANG
Fuck.
I can smell the breath.
BANG
BANG
Stale roll up tobacco.
BANG
BANG
BANG BANG
“AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHH Please don’t do it. He didn’t know. He didn’t do it.”
The lights come on and back out again just as quick. In that brief moment I catch a vision of the person behind, breathing on me. He’s big and in dark clothing. It wasn’t long enough to see exactly what he looked like, but I did notice he was looking at me through the mirror instead of directly at me.
Stunned but with a little notion of where I was in the room I try to run towards the door, but stub my toe on the bed and come crashing to the floor in a clumsy lump. The breathing has stopped, as well as the banging and the little girl. There’s a flicker of light on the mirror. Another flicker and then a few short bursts of light and image. I’m beyond caring about logic at this stage I want out, but before I can formulate a plan, the whole mirror lights up. It looks like a TV screen, it has a grainy picture on it. The picture begins to move. It’s a video camera and the voice of the little girl comes from the mirror:
“Johnny”
The picture moved around to show a pair of feet and as it moved away I could see that they belonged to a man who was lying on the ground. He wasn’t moving.
“Johnny likes to hug me”
The picture moved so show that the man was bleeding from the crotch.
“Johnny likes to kiss me”
The man’s arm was twitching as the picture zoomed into his eyes. His scared and bulging eyes that must have been what I looked like as I watched this. The sound accompanying the picture was the heavy breathing that had been terrorizing me.
“Johnny likes me to call him Daddy”
I could see his face, it was that pervy dude from reception.
“Johnny won’t be making me do things anymore”
With that, the camera hit the floor and I heard Johnny take a last laboured breath as the picture fell on the image of a young pair of bare feet walking away and as she sang, the mirror followed her.
“He won’t be watching anymore”
She stopped in the corner, a single hand that dangled a shabby teddy bear hung in frame.
“Ring around a rosie,
A pocket full of posie,
A – tishca, a – tischa,
We all fall down.”
