Edmund was lying in bed trying to fall asleep. The day had been long and boring; it was just like he imagined the rest of the trip would be. He was glad that Ben and Barry were there and that they made the trip a bit more interesting, you never knew what they could do. He looked over at Greg, he could hear him snoring loudly. Edmund kind of wished that Brutus were sleeping in the same room as him and Greg but according to Greg, Brutus jumps up on your chest while you’re sleeping. The idea of a giant dog laying on your chest while you are trying to sleep does not sound comfortable but if Brutus was in their room, he would have been a nice company.
The only light in the room came from the moon outside; there was not a sound to be heard other than Greg’s snoring. Edmund did not want to fall asleep, last time he had done it, he had a nightmare, unlike any nightmare he had had before. He knew he had to sleep and he knew that it would not be likely to have a bad dream again, but last time it felt like he was dying; it felt so real.
Someone knocked gently on the door. Edmund wondered if it really had happened or if he had imagined it. The gentle knocking became loud banging. The banging woke Greg up, they looked at one another. Greg looked nervous, his eyes kept going to the door and back at Edmund. It was as if he was waiting for Edmund to do something. What did he expect him to do? “Ben, Barry, cut it out!” said Edmund. He knew it was the twins as this is what they did, they played pranks and practical jokes.
The banging did not stop so Edmund shouted again, “Ben, Barry, knock it off!”
The banging stopped; it became silent. The doorknob started turning vigorously, back and forth, back and forth. The door opened slowly, it was slowly opening and revealed darkness.
Greg and Edmund looked at each other, then the dark hallway. Edmund was expecting the twins to come out, but they didn’t. It was obvious the twins were fooling them. It was nothing to be frightened of, that was what they wanted.
Edmund shook his head, got out of his bed and closed the door. He made sure to lock it this time. He could see Greg taking a sigh of relief, he looked frightened as if he thought that it was a ghost. That would be absurd, thought Edmund. Ghosts did not exist, the only people who thought that ghosts were real were babies and people desperate to talk to family members who had passed away.
Edmund heard something strange, it sounded like someone breathing heavily and it was quickly followed by footsteps. He was tired; just because he heard something did not make it real. There were two people in the room – him and Greg – and neither one of them was breathing heavily or walking around.
The sounds stopped. “Did you hear anything?” Edmund asked.
“Yes, it sounded like footsteps and breathing,” whispered Greg while he looked around seemingly searching for noises.
So, Greg had heard it too but how much of a reliable witness was he? Five minutes ago he was sleeping, parts of his mind could still be in dreamland.
There were no more sounds and there probably had never been any sounds, it was their minds running amok.
Edmund got back into bed and closed his eyes, he opened them again. Now everything was different. It was blurrier like things had grown more unclear, he felt like he was soaring like he was not in touch with the ground. He looked at Greg, he was still awake and he was still searching the room; it seemed as if he was too afraid to sleep.
“Go to sleep, Greg,” said Edmund but Greg did not react. Edmund got out of bed and snapped his fingers in Greg’s face, but there was still no response.
“He can’t hear you,” a voice said. Edmund turned around and saw a short man with a large belly, pale skin and blood running down his face from his head. He looked scared, he kept looking around the room as if he was waiting for someone to come through the door.
Edmund looked down at his bed and he was still laying in it, which meant he was dreaming – another nightmare that felt too real for comfort. Edmund faced the man and asked him, “What happened?”
“That is not your concern; we need to talk…somewhere more private…” The man looked scared; it made Edmund feel uneasy.
The man picked up a vase from a table and unlocked the room. Greg’s eyes were following the vase; his eyes did not leave it for a split second. Edmund could hear Greg whisper his name over and over again. “We have to hurry,” said the man.
It was a dream, Edmund thought that he had no choice but to follow. If a strange man with a bloody face had asked to follow him while he was awake, he would have run the other way.
Edmund followed the man into the hallway. He could hear whispers coming from different rooms. A man’s voice came from Mary’s room, he needed to listen. He could hear the man say, “Soon my dearest Mary you will be mine, a new toy to play with, your housemates will join you; the twins are already giving me a laugh. The rest is just gravy like the gravy from the potato I threw on you.”
The man’s voice was cold and unfriendly, it made the hair on Edmund’s back stand up and his heartbeat quicken in his chest. He had to see who the man was. It was a dream and nothing can harm you in a dream that was common knowledge. In a dream, you can be the hero or the knight in shining armour.
Edmund gently opened the door and peeked inside. Mary was lying in bed wearing black and pink pyjamas, there was a large giant of a man beside her bed and he was stroking her face. Edmund opened the door fully and spoke to the man, “Leave her alone.”
The man rose from his kneeling position revealing just how tall he was. He had long black greasy hair and beard. His skin was pale and his eyes black, bulging and big like the eyes to a bug. The man smiled an unnerving smile and revealed large crooked yellow teeth. “Hello Edmund,” the man said in his creepy dark voice. “I have been watching you, my friend told me about your little pointless gift. I reassure you that I will be there one day when you go to sleep. I am always watching. I will be there with a knife in my hand, I will wait until our eyes meet then I will add you to my collection. You will be a collectable.” The man started walking towards Edmund. “Who is with you? Who is hiding from me?” His voice was cold and threatening.
The man pulled Edmund away from the door and smashed the vase on top of Edmund’s head.
Edmund opened his eyes; the sun was shining through the window. He could see specks of dust floating around the room. Edmund had a throbbing pain on top of his head. It hurt when he touched it, he looked at his hand and it had blood on it. Edmund turned around to look at the pillow and it was stained with blood. He felt his head and it was he who had been bleeding.
“What happened to your head?” Edmund heard Greg ask.
“Nothing I must have fallen in my sleep, that’s all.”
“Are you sure you were not hit by the floating vase? You were asleep when it was floating but I saw it move around like it was alive.”
“Don’t be absurd, there was no floating vase of any kind,” said Edmund firmly.
Greg’s words made Edmund think. How did he know that he had dreamt about the vase? Had he talked in his sleep? He must have talked in his sleep, there was no other explanation. Greg was trying to freak him out, he wanted to hear him say there was something weird going on in the hotel. There was nothing weird about the hotel except for the décor.
“I know that you did not see the vase, but you have to believe me. Something very strange is going on here. I don’t think the hotel wants us to be here, it is trying to drive us out,” said Greg.
Edmund smiled as if Greg had told a joke. “The hotel does not have feelings, it is inanimate. There are no spooky things going on.”
They both got dressed and started walking towards the dining room. Suddenly, Greg screamed. Edmund looked down and saw pieces of the vase laying on the floor, one of the pieces had Greg’s blood on it. Greg’s foot was bleeding. “No, of course, there is no spooky business going on here. It is normal for vases to wander off at night and break.”
"Edmund looked at the broken vase, this was the place the man had smashed it on his head. He started thinking, maybe I heard it break while I was dreaming and then dreamt that the vase was smashed on my head. People had weird realistic dreams all the time, but they were still dreaming harmless dreams. There was no small fat man running around with vases and there were no giants with black hair stroking sleeping people.
Edmund helped Greg get down to the dining room. Everyone but Mary was in the dining room and Bella almost screamed when she saw the two of them. “What happened to your head? And Greg what happened to your foot?”
“I fell in my sleep; the floors here are really hard,” said Edmund.
“I stepped on a broken vase in the hallway outside Mary’s room,” said Greg.
Bella went from having a worried face to an angry one. “BEN, BARRY! So now you decided to break vases in front of Mary’s door so that she will hurt herself on the way out. GROW UP FOR ONCE! You two are going to clean up that mess after breakfast then you will apologise AND MEAN IT!”
“It wasn’t us, we swear,” said Ben.
Bella shifted her focus to Edmund and Greg and said, “Let’s get you boys cleaned up, shall we?”
Bella cleaned their wounds while Logan made breakfast. Edmund thought that it stung when Bella cleaned the blood of his head but avoided saying something about it. Greg, on the other hand, was a bit louder about it.
Mary came into the dining room and said, “Someone broke a vase in front of my door. I suppose we all know who it was.” Mary had her hood on and sunglasses, which Edmund thought was very peculiar because everything in the hotel was dark and sunglasses would just make it darker.
Doctor Wrath told the kids that all the adults had to go down to the town and explain what they had found so far. He said that it was inconvenient but there was no point in arguing. He also told them not to burn down the house.
Greg and Edmund decided that they could deal with the dishes; Bella said that Ben and Barry should rather do it, but Greg insisted on doing it and drag along Edmund.
Edmund looked over at Mary; she looked tired and he didn’t think it helped when Barry knocked on her forehead asking if moaning Mary was home. He didn’t like that they treated her so badly, she did not deserve it. She might not be the most sociable or friendly person he had met but she deserved to be treated with dignity. If he had had a sister, he would not put broken glass in front of her door or throw food at her face.
Greg said that he had to feed Brutus and then they could deal with the dishes.
Edmund ate a piece of dry toast while he waited on Greg.
The two of them gathered the plates and glasses before they went down the stairs to the kitchen. The way down to the kitchen was narrow and the steps were tiny. Edmund went slow so that he would not fall, the steps were tiny and there was little light.
They walked into a narrow hallway that was even colder than the ground floor. Edmund had to crouch down so his head did not bump into the ceiling. He had never been downstairs to the kitchen; it was an unpleasant experience and a one he did not want to repeat.
There were plenty of wooden doors along the hallway, but they just kept on walking until they entered a bigger room with four identical hallways leading four different ways. In the middle were a modern oven, fridge and dishwasher. They started putting the dishes in the dishwasher when they heard bouncing and out of one of the hallways came a ball followed by a child’s laughter.
They both looked at each other, Greg looked scared and worried while Edmund picked up the ball and threw it back. They heard the laughter once again and the ball came bouncing back. Edmund threw it back once more. “Now will you admit something strange is going on? You can’t deny it this time,” whispered Greg with a shaky voice.
“I must have hit a wall and it just came back to me. It’s nothing to worry about,” said Edmund but that was not what he was thinking. There was something to worry about – the vase, the man and now the ball. There was something going on, but he could not admit it because it would make it real. If he just denied it and looked the other way, maybe the weirdness would go away.
Edmund continued to fill the dishwasher while Greg was looking into all the hallways searching for something, or someone. Edmund started getting fed up, he picked up the ball and walked into the hallway that it had come out of. He was going to prove that it was nothing there.
He lit up the hallway, it went deeper than he had thought. He walked past a broomstick that dropped to the floor. Edmund jumped to the side. His heart was rising and he wanted to run but he needed to be brave just like in his dream – the dream that could have killed him. He was not a lion; he had never been one but maybe that could change. He could start by proving that there was nothing dangerous in the kitchen.
He lit the place up, there were few mirrors on the wall. He stopped and looked at his own reflection for a couple of seconds before moving on. He saw a few paintings but only one of them was of Dorian Black and the rest were of rivers and mountains. He reckoned that it was not important to decorate the place where the staff lived. Edmund looked around, he could not see anyone – not any child or adult. It was just as he had hoped, it was empty.
Edmund went deeper into the hallway and saw something move, it was neither small nor big; it was like a child’s size. He searched for it again and spotted a shadow on the wall, the shadow to a child – a shadow which he did not know who cast. The shadow waved to him and without thinking he waved back.
Was he going insane? Was there another option? It was not normal to see a child’s shadow without seeing the child. He heard the laughter again, did it come from the shadow? How can a shadow laugh? He needed to use logic but what kind of logic could he use other than the fact that he was going bonkers.
The shadow disappeared; the child ran through a crack in a door. Edmund opened the door and went inside. He had entered what seemed to be a family’s bedroom. There was a small bed – that could barely fit two adults – and a small bed fit for a child. There were a small desk and a wardrobe with an old lock on it. Edmund looked on the desk, there was a black and white picture of a Chef holding what looked like his son.
Edmund saw the child again, he was standing in front of the wardrobe and he was pointing at a drawer on the desk.
Edmund opened the drawer and inside were a couple of pictures and an old key. Edmund looked at the pictures. He gasped on one of the pictures was the man he saw in his dreams, the man who was stroking Mary’s face. The man was shaking the hand to the chef and the chef held his son tight. Edmund took the key and unlocked the lock on the wardrobe. He heard the boy sob as Edmund opened the door. On the inside of the door were scratch marks as if something tried to claw itself out. There laid a big blanket on the floor; Edmund took it out and underneath it laid a small skeleton.
Edmund wanted to scream, it was the boy. He had been locked in the wardrobe and he had been left there to die. He felt his insides turn as if it was tying itself into a knot. Tears started running down his face. He shut the door and he could not look at the boy anymore. “Who did this to you?” asked Edmund.
The boy’s shadow pointed at the picture laying on the desk. “Was it the man in the picture, the tall man?” asked Edmund and the shadow nodded.
Edmund’s insides hurt as if an alien was in his stomach and about to rip itself out, he had to get out of the kitchen.
Edmund ran back to the kitchen; Greg was not there anymore and the dishes were in the dishwasher. Edmund ran through the narrow hallway and up the narrow staircase.
He wanted to be alone; his hands were shaking and felt like throwing up. What had he seen? Was it real? Was any of this real? There had been a skeleton in that wardrobe and the shadow had told him to open it up, the shadow had told him to find the remains of a child. The shadow was the child, how could that be possible? He was tired, he had not slept very well lately. This night he needed to get better sleep and now he needed to keep busy, to not think of the haunting thing he had witnessed.
He wanted to be alone, but what could he do alone in the hotel? He would end up sitting and thinking about everything, which he did not desire to do. He had to be with someone maybe that would keep his mind occupied.
Edmund started walking around searching for someone to be with. He felt skittish like a horse, the slightest sound made him jump.
He was heading for the game room; it was most likely someone was there. Edmund thought that the paintings were more unsettling than ever, he felt like Dorian Black’s painted eyes were watching him and his every move.
Edmund tried to think of something else than the skeleton and his nightmares. He tried to picture himself jamming with his friend, then he pictured himself playing Romeo in Romeo and Juliet; he pictured his friend Lucinda playing Juliet. He pictured her smooth creamy skin and her nut-brown wavy hair blowing in the wind. He pictured the two of them standing on a small bridge in an old forest. He pictured himself staring into her emerald eyes and watching her red lips move towards his lips. He felt warm and happy, then the image of shadow invaded his thoughts, which was followed by the skeleton in the wardrobe and by Dorian Black smiling unnervingly. Edmund pictured Dorian forcing the boy into the wardrobe and locked the door while he was laughing.
Edmund opened the door to the game room; Greg and the Twins were there. Ben and Barry applauded when they saw Edmund and Ben said, “Mate, we have been waiting for you.”
“Took your sweet time that is for sure. Thought we had to start without you,” said Barry.
“Sorry for leaving you…anyway, Ben and Barry are planning on having a water fight,” said Greg.
“And we need two per team, and that is where you come in my good man,” said Ben with a smile on his face. “It’s you and Greg versus the dream team, of course.”
Edmund thought that this was exactly what he needed to keep busy.
Edmund and Greg agreed to meet Ben and Barry outside in roughly half an hour. Edmund and Greg sat mostly in silence; Greg tried to apologise a few times for leaving him in the basement. Edmund just shook his head and said it was all right. Greg tried to come up with excuses, most of them involving magic or ghost, and that was not something Edmund wished to hear.
When Greg asked him what he had seen, Edmund just said that he found a bedroom with a few balls up a ramp. He said that one of the balls had fallen off. It did not seem like Greg believed it, but he did not want to argue about what had happened either.
The time went slow but, eventually, it was time to meet the twins. Greg turned off the light in the game room before they started wandering towards the front door.
The sun was shining but it felt cold, colder than any summer Edmund had experienced. The air however felt fresh, it made Edmund wonder how he even could breathe inside the hotel. The statues outside the door were as creepy as ever.
It did not take long before Ben and Barry came out carrying water guns and balloons filled with water; at least, Edmund hoped it was water. It was as if Barry had read Edmund’s thought because he quickly said, “Don’t worry, it’s water. We haven’t filled it with hot sauce like the ones we threw at our teacher a while back. Boy was she angry!”
“She went absolutely mental,” said Ben while shaking his head as if he was disappointed.
Barry handed Edmund a large water gun that was coloured black and blue, then he handed Greg a small pink one and said, “For the woman who has everything.” The twins sniggered and Greg shook his head trying to hide a smirk. The twins had given themselves the biggest and coolest water guns, but they were generous enough to give both Greg and Edmund a few water balloons.
The game started, Edmund and Greg got a ten minutes head start. They ran around the hotel; Greg was complaining that his water pistol had barely any water in it.
They could hear one of the twins shouting. “TIME’S UP.”
Greg and Edmund pressed their backs together, ready for an attack on both sides. Ben and Barry came strolling with a balloon in each hand.
Edmund and Greg made themselves ready and shot their guns. The water did not come out in a powerful stream, it barely came out at all as the guns had been tampered with.
The twins sniggered and threw their balloons at Greg and Edmund. As the balloons hit them, Edmund figured out that it was not water. As a balloon hit him in the face, he realised that it was ice-cold orange juice. Greg was hit by a balloon filled with cream and then one with oil.
Edmund threw his balloons at Barry and Ben making their clothes soaking wet. Greg threw his balloons as well and Edmund saw that his and Greg’s balloons were in fact filled with water.
All four of them laughed. Edmund’s clothes were soaked in cream, juice and oil what else could he do but laugh. He had always wondered what it would be like to have brothers; he felt that now he had gotten a taste of what it was like and it seemed fun.
Ben and Barry were fun people, they would certainly be exhausting to live with for long periods, Edmund thought. They did not treat their sister with much love and respect but that was the kind they were, they did not take things too seriously. If anything, Ben and Barry were the kind of friends you go to parties with. The twins had never a dull moment which Edmund thought would be very tiresome in the long run.
A thick mist started to consume the ground and their feet. Greg suggested that they go inside but Barry just laughed and said, “Fog never hurt anyone.”
It did not take long before the fog had made their legs impossible to see. Their bellies and chests became consumed by the fog and then it swallowed their heads. Edmund could not see a thing, not even his nose was visible to his eyes.
He needed to get inside as the hotel would be safer. Shadows cannot hurt anyone, not even ones that can move on its own accord.
Edmund felt a hand lay on his shoulder and then he heard a woman whisper in his ear, “The hotel is not safe, it never has been.” Edmund turned around but could not see anything because of the fog, he tried to feel around but there was no one there. He must have imagined it; the hotel was just as safe as every other old house. The only thing that could hurt him in the hotel was falling on the hard floor or maybe the musty air, it certainly could not be healthy to breathe.
“Stick together. Follow my voice!” he heard Greg shout. Edmund started moving towards Greg’s voice. It felt like the world got colder when the fog was raised; it was freezing and it did not help that his clothes were soaking wet.
Edmund heard the female voice once again, she whispered gently in his ear, “He is always watching. He is waiting for the inevitable.” Her voice made the hair on Edmund’s back stand, he could feel her cold breath against his skin and her breath blowing into his ear. Edmund shrugged and shook his head; his mind was playing tricks on him that was all it was – his mind. Edmund felt something ice cold and hard, it was the hotel, he had found it. Greg kept talking and asking them to follow him. Greg did not strike Edmund as a brave man but now he sounded calm and confident as if this was a normal part of his life. Edmund’s hand fell upon someone. Who was it? Was his mind playing a trick once again?
“Edmund is that you?” Greg asked. Edmund responded by saying yes and trying to sound calm even though he felt like a mouse staring up at a hungry cat.
Edmund followed Greg then he heard the voice again calling out to him, “Edmund, Don’t go in there. Run while you can.” Edmund waved his arm to get the voice to stop, the warning burrowed into his soul but he tried to wave it off. The hotel was not dangerous anymore; maybe, at one point it was but now the danger was dead and had been dead for quite some time.