Room 9 and Other Ghost Stories Read online

  “I know everything I need to know,” I reply, turning to her again. “Please, let go of me. I don't have time for idle chatter.”

  “Oh you poor, poor thing. This is really important to you, isn't it?”

  “I care about the truth,” I say firmly. “I care about facts.”

  “Then there's some truth and facts you oughta know,” she replies, before sighing. “I told him this wasn't fair, but would he listen to me?”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask.

  “You really think you saw the ghost of that Gwendoline Emmervessy woman, don't you?”

  “I didn't say that.”

  “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “Fine,” I reply, “I saw her ghost.”

  “In the bathtub, where she died?”

  “Yes.”

  She sighs again.

  “I don't have time for this,” I tell her. “My work in room nine was always -”

  “You've never set foot in room nine, darling,” she says suddenly, interrupting me. “I'm sorry to break this to you, but the room you were in last night sure as hell wasn't room nine.”

  “But -”

  “Anyone can stick a number on a door,” she adds. “Or move a number from one door to another. After what happened to Gwendoline in the real room nine, and all the stories about it, do you really think the owners of this place are gonna let anyone else stay in there? Sure, they did for a while, they thought it'd be a money-spinner, but the hassle soon outweighed the benefits, if you know what I mean.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” I reply, although I can feel a flicker of concern in my chest. “I was just in room nine, I -”

  “You were in the old room twenty,” she says, cutting me off again. “You were as far from room nine in this place as it's possible to get. Don't you see, girl? The real room nine was locked up and forgotten a long time ago. The number was unscrewed from its door and put onto room twenty. If you don't believe me, check out the plans. This place used to have twenty rooms, now it has nineteen. The reason for that is that the old room nine was decommissioned. Nobody's set foot in there for, I don't know, more than a decade.”

  “That's impossible,” I tell her. “I was specifically told -”

  “You were told whatever was needed to stop you causing trouble,” she continues. “I should've told you in the night, but I didn't quite realize you were going to be so invested in the whole mess. You were lied to, honey, but it was with the absolute best intentions. Believe me, the real room nine...”

  She pauses, and now her smile is gone, replaced by a hint of fear.

  “The real room nine is best left locked,” she adds finally. “Forever. The only reason they don't tear the whole motel down is...”

  I wait, but now she seems a little hesitant.

  “Is what?” I ask, still not quite sure that I believe what she's telling me.

  “Well, I mean... If the room's locked up, at least whatever's in there is locked inside.” She tries to force a smile, which is rather unconvincing. “Whereas if they knock it down, who knows what might happen? Maybe it'd be released. For now, anything bad is trapped in there, and that's good enough for most folk round these parts.”

  “Let me get this straight,” I reply. “You're telling me that the real room nine was locked up, and that ever since people have been lied to and told that they're in room nine when they're not?”

  “Now you're catching on, sweetheart,” she says. “It's all been done with the best possible intentions. Maybe there's something in room nine, maybe there isn't. Maybe some of the stories are true, maybe some of them aren't. But it's best to stay cautious, isn't it? Since that room was sealed, there hasn't been one complaint in this motel. And so long as the door stays sealed, then maybe we don't have to worry. The way I see it, and the way people around here see it, this way we don't have to find out. We can just get on with our lives.”

  “But I saw her,” I stammer, even though I know I sound pathetically desperate now. “I saw... things. I heard things, I experienced things. I felt things.”

  “Well, like I said... Are you sure that wasn't all just in your mind? Are you sure you didn't just see and hear what you wanted to?”

  She pauses, smiling at me sadly for a moment, and then she turns and walks away.

  “Go home, honey,” she calls back to me. “You're a bright girl. Find something else to do with your time.”

  With that, she's gone.

  Left standing alone in the corridor, next to the ice machine, I feel utterly deflated. And humiliated. I've been tricked, and if that room really wasn't room nine then I have to accept that my entire experience in the room really must have been a product of my imagination. The bumps, the sight of Gwendoline Emmervessy, the guy who showed up and killed her and who then attacked me. I mean, I imagined that guy doing some awful things to me, and now it seems that the whole thing was all in my head.

  I didn't know I could imagine such messed-up things. I know the human mind is a powerful and mysterious thing, capable of tricking us, but I thought I was at least slightly in control of my perceptions, but now...

  I'm a complete fool.

  “Oh God,” I whisper, feeling utterly deflated. Stepping back against the wall, I put my hands over my face for a moment as I try to come to terms with just how completely I managed to delude myself. “You idiot, Paula. You complete and total idiot. How could you not notice that he put you in the wrong room?”

  I pause, trying to calm my anger, but in fact the opposite is happening. I feel increasingly furious, until finally I realize that I need to take my rage out on someone.

  Or something.

  Lowering my hands, I pause for a moment before lunging forward and kicking the ice machine as hard as I can, with enough force to make it slam back against the wall and then topple forward.

  Startled, I step back just as the machine crashes to the floor and lands on my right foot. Feeling a blast of pain, I pull back, only to find that my foot is wedged. I have to pull really hard to get free, but finally I manage to take a step back. My foot is throbbing from the impact, but I don't think anything's broken.

  Well that was completely stupid.

  At least I got some of my anger out, although I struggle a little as I try to lift the machine. I never knew these things were so heavy, and finally I realize that I'm far too weak. I guess when I go to the desk, I'm just going to have to confess to what I did, and apologize for any damage. Then again, given the way I've been tricked, I still feel as if I've got the moral upper hand.

  In fact, I'm going to march to the office right now and demand to be moved to room nine for tonight.

  I step over the fallen ice machine and start limping along the corridor, but when I reach the intersection I stop as I realize that I'll never be able to trust these people. Gloria's probably told the old man already that I know the truth, and he'll probably be busy screwing another number nine to another completely random door. Yeah, I'm sure he's having a really good laugh about me right now, about how I fell for his stupid trick. Why wouldn't he do the same thing again? If he thinks I'm that much of an idiot, he might as well go for the double.

  I'll show him.

  I'll show them all.

  Taking the left turn that leads away from reception, I limp along another corridor. My foot is hurting more and more with each step, and I'm starting to think that maybe I did break something after all, but I don't even care. Instead, I'm focusing on looking at the numbers on all the doors, and trying to remember the notes and photos I have from the night that Gwendoline Emmervessy died. I might have been fooled once, but it shouldn't be beyond me to figure out where the real room nine is located. I start wincing with each step, and I swear I can feel fractured or broken bones grinding together in my foot, but I force myself to keep going until finally I have to stop at another corner, leaning against the wall for a moment and trying to get my head together.

  And then I see it.

&nb
sp; There's a door in the far corner, with no number. No signs or notices at all. And as I stare at the door, trying to ignore the throbbing pain in my foot, I realize that this is the opposite side of the building to where I spent the night. I think back to all the pictures I've seen from the murder investigation, and suddenly the truth becomes clear.

  This is what I've been looking for.

  This must be the real room nine.

  As I limp forward to take a closer look, I can't help but notice how uninteresting the door looks. The motel's owners have sure done a good job of making this corner seem completely bland and boring. I try the door's handle, but of course it's locked. And then, when I place a hand against the door, I can't help but notice that the wood feels weirdly, unusually cold to the touch.

  This is room nine.

  My heart is racing, but I know I have to get into this room.

  Reaching into my pocket, I take out the Swiss Army knife that I brought along for the night. I've never picked a lock in my life, but it can't be too complicated so I kneel down and get to work, struggling to work out which tool to use and where it should go. At first the task seems impossible, but I work and I work and finally I start unscrewing the entire panel around the lock. If I keep taking things apart, I should eventually be able to get the door open. It's not like this is Fort Knox, and I've always been pretty good at fixing stuff. This is just a case of un-fixing something.

  It takes ages – maybe ten minutes or so – but finally I manage to expose the slidey bit in the lock, and I'm able to pull it back and turn the handle.

  The door clicks open just an inch, and I immediately feel cold air against my face.

  Peering through the gap, I see that the room is dark. The drapes are shut, but I can just about make out the edge of the bed. The room looks to be exactly the same as the fake room nine I was in last night, but this time I've found the real deal.

  Getting to my feet, I slip the Swiss Army knife away and then I pull the door open a little further.

  My heart is thudding harder than ever as I stare into the real room nine. There's no sound, no nothing. Even the sounds you'd expect to hear from outside, like cars on the freeway, are gone. There seems to be a kind of hush in the room, a smothering of every possible sound. There's a charged atmosphere, and I swear I can almost feel the air trying to push me back, trying to tell me to shut the door and leave.

  Instead, I limp forward and let the door swing shut.

  I wait. I don't know what for, exactly, but I'm certain I can feel something in here. Maybe I fooled myself in the other room, but this time there's a real, palpable charge in the air and I know that's not all in my head. There's something here, and as I limp over to the middle of the room I feel like I'm being watched from every direction.

  And then I hear her.

  Somebody's weeping in the bathroom. The sound is soft, but there's no mistake. I stare at the bathroom's closed door, listening as the weeping continues, and I feel a shudder pass through my chest as I realize that this must be the ghost of Gwendoline Emmervessy. She's been here all this time, sobbing alone, and now I can go to her and ask all my questions, and then I'll be able to prove to the world that I was right all along. I should go back and get all my other equipment, but right now I just want to see Gwendoline Emmervessy's real ghost with my own two eyes.

  So after taking a deep breath, I step forward and open the bathroom door.

  “No,” she sobs, crumpled on the floor, covered in blood and looking up at me with terrified, tear-filled eyes. “Please, no...”

  “It's okay,” I tell her, “my name is Paula and I -”

  Before I can finish, I feel something brush against my shoulder from behind. I start to turn, but somebody grabs me and pulls me back.

  “Well hello,” a voice chuckles. “I've been waiting a long, long time for someone else to come and join our little party.”

  I open my mouth to scream, but in that instant a knife is slashed straight across my throat. All I manage is a faint gurgle, as my blood sprays in several directions across the room.

  Ten years later

  “That was rubbish,” a girl's voice says, far off in the distance but slowly coming closer. “There was no ghost in that room!”

  “I felt weird in there all night,” a man replies, and now their footsteps can be heard heading this way along the corridor. “Like, unsettled. Like I was being watched.”

  “You just imagined that.”

  “I don't think I did. I swear, I could feel a kind of presence.”

  “Whatever, loser.” They walk past the room, their shadows briefly showing at the bottom of the door. “You just bought into that room nine nonsense, that's all. It was just a room, Tommy. You let it get to you, that's all.”

  “Please,” I whisper, clawing at the door in the dark, hoping against hope that finally someone might hear me. “I don't want to be here. Please let me out.”

  Their voices continue, but now they're getting further away again, heading off into the distance. Soon I can't hear them at all. I can only hear my own gentle sobs, and the sound of Gwendoline weeping in the bathroom.

  “Please,” I whimper. “I don't want to be here. I want to go home...”

  The Ghost of Daniel Dowd

  I

  “Hey Martin, someone was looking for you earlier.”

  “They were?”

  Raising a skeptical eyebrow, Martin Tugwell turned and looked over his shoulder. Crabbett and his mates were at their usual table at the far end of the pub. Martin had noticed them when he came in, but he'd been feeling a little out of sorts all morning so he'd preferred to take his spot at the bar and have a crack at the Times crossword. In all honestly, he'd been hoping not to be disturbed. Most people in the pub understood that when a man eschews company and goes to the bar alone, it's not an accident. It's because he wants to be left alone.

  “Some chap not from around here, I think,” Crabbett explained, his pudgy smile beaming from beneath a too-large-for-his-head golf cap. “Had a whiff of London about him. Maybe someone from your old days in the streets of shame.”

  “There's not a lot of us around anymore,” Martin muttered, as he tried to think of anyone from the old newspaper who might look him up these days. “Did he leave a name?”

  “Not that I heard. He seemed a bit flustered, if you want to know the truth. Didn't even take a drink before swanning off. I told him where you live.” Crabbett's smile grew; he knew how much Martin disliked unexpected visitors. “I hope you don't mind.”

  “No-one knocked on my door.”

  “Must've just missed each other. I'm sure he'll be back if it's important.” He raised his pint and nodded at Martin. “To your health, as always. If you need a hand with the crossword, come on over.”

  “The day I need a hand with the Times crossword is the day I might as well give up on life,” Martin replied.

  He began to turn back to the newspaper, but then for a moment he stopped and looked out the pub's front window. About twenty feet away, beyond the shingle beach and the wooden benches where lunchtime punters were enjoying sandwiches and drinks, the sea was a kind of murky turquoise color. Martin hadn't been living by the beach for too long – only ten years or so – but in that time he'd learned when to distrust the sea and when to be comfortable. Most people were scared of the water when it was rough and stormy, but he knew that the real dangers came when the sea was calm. And today the sea looked very calm indeed.

  “Hmph,” he muttered, before turning back to the newspaper and starting to tackle the next clue. In the back of his mind, however, he still couldn't help but wonder who might be trying to track him down. There weren't many people from his London days who'd be too welcome in they showed their faces again.

  II

  The shingle path crunched loudly as Martin walked – a little unsteadily, after his habitual lunchtime G&Ts – back toward his cottage. He stopped to unlatch the wooden gate at the head of the private path, and as he did so he co
uldn't help but feel that he was just a tad more tipsy than usual. Probably just a -

  “Tugwell,” a voice said suddenly, sternly, right behind him.

  Martin froze. The voice immediately sent a shiver through his chest, and he felt that this was a voice he'd heard before.

  He half turned, then hesitated, then turned fully and saw a man stepping out of a shabby red hatchback car and slamming the door shut.

  “Tom Holland,” he whispered, still coming to terms with the sense of shock. “No, I... Tom bloody Holland, is that really you?”

  “We need to talk,” Tom replied, his eyes filled with fear. “Martin, I -”

  “Listen, there's nothing to talk about,” Martin said, interrupting him as he turned and opened the gate. “I'm happily retired down here, old boy, and I'm not interested in chin-wagging about the bad old days. Give my regards to the old gang, but tell them to leave me alone.”

  He began to stumble along the path, although after a moment he heard the tell-tale sound of another set of footsteps following him. He managed a few more paces, but sighing and stopping and turning to Tom again.

  “Just don't, okay?” he said with a sigh. “What do you want, Tom? It must be the best part of a decade, why would you come and bother me now?”

  “You know why,” Tom replied, as the wooden gate swung shut behind him and the latch clunked back into place. “It's about Danny.”

  “Oh fuck,” Martin said, sighing again. He wanted to be dismissive, to wave Tom away and tell him to not bother him again, but somewhere deep inside there was a part of him that had feared this day for a long time. He wanted to hide away and pretend it had never happened in the first place, but he knew that by doing so he'd be condemning himself to a life of even greater fear. “What's happened?” he asked finally. “Has someone been asking questions?”