The Hotel

HEY YOU! Yeah you I am talking to. Yeah you hear that, you hear that sound. A 'tick-tock, tick-tock.' Well I will try to get some sleep anyways," yelled a old man that ran the hotel, and then slammed his door shut on me, the night custodian.

The old man was 78 years old about a month ago now. He was really starting to lose it in his head. I mean he is hearing things no one else is around here can hear. About a week ago he was yelling up a storm in the basement of "The Grand Hotel" (his hotel he founded back when he was only 20 years old) about a dog barking, but when we came a running along to help him out, their was not sound. He kept yelling and screaming about this dog barking though for about 10 minutes while we were down their. He wouldn't leave the basement until he caught that dang dog he kept telling us. Then he just quit  and he never brought it up again. Look at him now though, here he is hearing a clock ticking or something. I am guessing just his mind losing it again. Like I was saying though, the old man is a tall, skinny 78 year old man. He has no hair what-so-ever on him expect a big white mustache. His skin is wrinkly like a dried up tomato. When he falls asleep though, he has no problem staying asleep. No one can wake him up too. It is like he is in a trance while he sleeps. We asked the doctor one night if we should worry about this, but he says it is normal for people his age to not be able to wake easily. Anyway I had better get back to work here, gotta clean up a mess in a bathroom on level five.

A young girlish voice whispered, "Frank Basim!" WHAM, the old man shot straight up out of his bed. His red silk blanket fell off his chest as he sat up instantaneously. "Who's their?" He hollered in his hoarse scared voice. Frank grabbed a shiny silver knife of his wooden nightstand. "I am warning you, I am armed! Don't come near me!" The old man had sweat sliding down his forehead. He was now kneeling upon his bed, in his night gown holding the knife like it was his Excalibur. The girlish voice whispered again. "Frank Basim!" Frank started swinging his little pathetic knife around him like someone was approaching him. "We warned you, Frank Basim!" whispered the voice. Sweat was streaming down the old man's, Frank's, head now. For an old man he was really sweating, then he said, "Warned me?" in his scared questionable tone. "War-warned me a-about what may I as-ask?" All Frank could hear was a voice, there was nothing to this voice but just a sound. "We had warned you years ago Frank. Now, now you must leave forever." Frank had gotten into a sitting position upon the edge of his bed now."What do you mean 'leave forever?' " asked Frank, but that must have been the wrong thing to do. His bed instantly started shaking, nothing else but his bed though. All the furniture, shelves, and things around him didn't shake. Frank leaned back on his bed as not to fall out of his bed that seemed to be having an earthquake of itself. It just kept shaking and shaking. It seemed to be going on for hours by now! Frank kept thinking, hoping that someone down stairs or near could hear the racket this was making.

WHAM! Then out of nowhere it had stopped, like someone had switched the on button to off. "Do not anger us again Frank, you do not want to feel the full extent of our wrath. Now listen closely my little pest. You have exactly 24 hours to destroy this place, AND put everything back the way it was." The voice had turned into more and more of a man's voice with every word. "You and you alone have to do this or else you WILL join us Frank! You will join us from where you had put us 58 years ago. Remember we are always watching!" Then their was a faint POP, and Frank had fainted backwards onto his bed.

The next morning the custodian had come into Frank Basim's room to check up on him. He found Frank laying on his bed with a bloody knife in his hand and his neck slit open. Police filed the death as a suicide after the autopsy came back on the body saying that Mr. Basim had suffered from schizophrenia for the past 10 years of his life. They say he must have killed himself in the dead of night to save himself from something he had dreamed up in his head. The very next day the hotel was burned down, "never to be used again after my death" said his will.. The hotel site had become a burial ground once again. Frank Basim had ended up being buried their for all of eternity. Upon his tombstone read, "Here lies Franks Basim, this is where he had lived and left the world . . . forever!"

This is a fictional story written by Noah Bitney!