From me to you, happy Halloween, RAFO!

Noise Complaint

by Bryce


The hotel was quiet for Halloween. This meant I'd only dealt with about fifteen rowdy drunks, most of them college students. The seven noise complaints were far from a record, but all in all it had been a very busy night for someone used to sitting on his butt and watching Hulu.

The phone call that interrupted my TV time at 4am immediately caught my attention. For one thing, the woman on the other end was wide awake. Wide awake, and scared.

"Guest services, this is Matt. How may I help you?"

"D-Did you say Matt?" she stuttered. "Look, I'm in room 230, and there's a lot of noise coming from the room above us. It sounds like they're stomping all over up there, and I think..." She took a deep breath, composing herself. "I think I heard something break."

There was something in the way she'd said break, almost a question, that put me on edge. Whatever they were doing, it had clearly frightened this woman out of her sleep.

"I apologize, Ma'am. I'll head right up there and talk to them. If there are any further disturbances, please let me know." The words tumbled out of my mouth, stiff and robotic. I didn't care. I was tired and pissed, and right in the middle of an old episode of Buffy.

I grabbed the keys and headed for the stairs. I might be fat, but the elevator took way too long, and I wanted to get back to the part where Xander saves the day.

The drunk girl in the stairwell looked up at me when I passed, eyes slightly glazed, a small amount of drool coming from one corner of her mouth. I nodded a hello, and she smiled back, cheerfully returning to the bottle in her hand. I had bigger things to deal with. The local college had put on a huge party, and plenty of out-of-towners had come to celebrate. No doubt 330 was just another underage group stumbling around drunk and talking too loudly.

I opened up the door to the third floor, and booze assaulted my nose. The entire floor smelled like the inside of a Jack Daniels bottle. I crossed the hallway as quickly as I could to room 330. I stopped at the door and attempted to hide the grease stain on my old blue dress shirt with my tie. I knocked.

"Guest Services," I called out. No answer. In fact, no sounds at all. I did a mental check, and realized that there hadn't been a peep from 330 the entire time I was approaching the door. If they were really being loud, I should have been able to hear them the moment I stepped onto the third floor. Did the woman in 230 have the wrong room? I decided to stand there a moment and listen. That's when I heard the scratching.

This wasn't the pawing of a cat or dog at the door, like I'd heard half a dozen times when guests tried to sneak in a pet. This was less frantic, more methodical. The sound was loud, and soon I heard a faint moan, a wheezing breath. A person was on the other side of the door.

The scratching stopped just as suddenly as it had begun, and a loud thump shook the floor below my feet. I bent down low, to where someone must have been laying on the other side of the door. I was scared, but I tried to push some authority into my voice. "Is everything okay in there?"

I put my ear close to the door, and I could hear the shallow breathing of the person on the other side. They wheezed once, and then a terrible cough caused me to pull my ear away from the door. I leaned back in, and the wheezing continued. Then, very faintly, the wheezing voice spoke.

"Help me."

Someone must have fallen and couldn't get up. My mind went in a hundred different directions at once, thinking of all the possible broken bones and sharp objects in the room. I jumped up and slammed my master key into the lock. The green light blinked, and I threw the door open.

At least, I tried to throw the door open. I'd forgotten that the doors push inward, and I'd smacked 330's right into whoever was laying in front of it. Shocked and embarrassed, I panicked and slammed the door shut again.

"Sir, I'm going to try and push the door open. If you can move, please try to get out of the way." I put the key back in, waited for the green light, and gradually inched the doorway open, pushing against the body of the injured person inside. Once I got the door open far enough, I wormed my way in, letting it fall shut behind me.

The wheezing person on the other side of the door was an old man, bald, with glassy lifeless eyes. He was dead. And missing his legs. Blood covered the room, and I instinctively stepped backward, away from the old man, smacking the back of my head on the gaudy wallpaper.

My head started to spin. I couldn’t focus, the room turning into a fog of dark red blood. I clung tighter to the wall, trying to focus my eyes on the telephone just across the room. The smell was terrible. I gagged, but stayed upright. I realized I needed to call 911, even though it was too late for the old man.

I let go of the room and moved slowly to the phone, my legs shaking. I had just picked up the receiver when I heard the sounds coming from the bathroom. There were two beds in this room. Was someone else hurt as well? There was a lot of blood, maybe enough for more than one person.

The bathroom was dark. I reached for the light, and came back with blood. Cringing, I put my hand in the blood and flicked the switch.

Whatever it was, it wasn’t human. The fangs came out of the old man’s leg, and it craned it’s neck to an odd angle, staring at me with too-large eyes. When it opened it’s mouth, I expected anything but a heavy English accent.

“I say, Room Service. How delightful!”