The key to Room 107 felt unnaturally cold in my hand, a sliver of polished brass that seemed to suck the warmth from my palm. The Grandiose Hotel was a faded beauty, all dusty chandeliers and the scent of old polish. I was here for a story, the same story that had consumed me for weeks: the disappearances. Seven people. Seven years. All from this same room.
My editor called it a paranoid fantasy. I called it a pattern. Now, standing before the dark, varnished wood of door 107, the pattern felt less like a journalist’s hunch and more like a physical force, a low hum of wrongness in the air.
The room itself was… ordinary. A queen-sized bed with a faded floral spread, a heavy mahogany desk, a landscape painting of a serene, pathless forest. It was aggressively normal, which made the history feel like a grotesque lie. I unpacked my recorder, my notepad, my digital thermometer. Nothing. No cold spots, no whispers. Just the dull thud of my own heartbeat.
It was in the silence that I first felt it—not a sound, but a presence, a subtle shift in the room’s pressure, as if the walls had taken a half-step closer. I shook it off. Nerves. A journalist’s overactive imagination fed by his own research.
I sat at the desk, opening my laptop. The screen remained black. I pressed the power button. Nothing. A prickle of frustration, then a slow, creeping dread as I noticed the painting. The pathless forest now held a single, narrow trail, winding deep into the dark trees. I blinked, and it was gone. The canvas was once again an impenetrable wall of green.
Fear. It was a cold knot in my stomach. This was real. The logical part of my brain, the part that dealt in facts and evidence, was screaming to leave.
But then, curiosity—a hotter, sharper impulse—reared its head. This is the story. This is the proof. I reached for my camera. Through the viewfinder, the room looked different. The shadows in the corner of the ceiling were thicker, deeper, like a spreading stain. I zoomed in. The stain had a shape, a formless, shifting outline that seemed to pulse with a silent, hungry frequency.
My breath hitched. I lowered the camera, and the corner was just a corner. But the hum was louder now, a vibration I felt in my teeth. The air grew heavy, syrupy. I tried to stand, but a profound, soul-deep lethargy washed over me. My curiosity was curdling into pure, undiluted terror.
The painting began to change again. The forest was receding, the trees thinning to reveal a vast, grey, empty plain under a starless sky. It was a vista of absolute nothingness, and it was… inviting. A terrible, peaceful silence called from that emptiness, promising an end to the fear, an end to the questions.
I felt a pull, not on my body, but on my very consciousness. The room, the hotel, my life—it all seemed so loud, so heavy. The grey plain offered a release. My hand, moving of its own volition, reached toward the canvas.
The last thing I saw was my digital clock flashing 00:00 before its numbers winked out forever. The last thing I felt was not the cold key in my hand, but the warm, welcoming embrace of the void. Room 107 was quiet again, waiting, its pattern complete. For now.
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