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Tap tap tap, Juni’s fingers hit the plastic steering wheel as she hastily drove. The muffled noises of jazz music from her rinky-dink radio only spreading halfway through her grainy left speaker, the right being completely silent. As her car's engine puffed and sputtered along her eyes strained themselves trying to stare at the pitch black road ahead of her dim headlights, only hours prior they were working just fine. But then again, it was broad daylight at the time, maybe they weren’t as good as her aunt bargained her to think two months prior. Who knows, Aunt Elsie was strange at best.
It was about 11:33 pm or so out on the small town Texas road, Juni being the only one in it. She’d had an awful feeling about this town ever since she pulled in from the rush hour of the neighboring highway cautiously driving around to desperately find an exit to a bigger city to no avail. She had been stuck inside this town for about 3 hours now but to her longing mind three hours felt like thirty-three. She adjusted her map on her cup holder to help keep it afloat trying to make out the crumpled up street corners the best she could. She might have still had solid 20/20 vision, but not enough to make out whatever was splurged upon that crumpled map. She let out a heaving sigh as she saw the horizon of yet another gas station.
“ God, how many of these things are there?” she mumbled to herself. Just as she was driving to the top of the hill she felt a hefty halt of the engine below her. She pressed the gas pedal again, a few sputters of life sparking from its core pathetically before promptly going deafeningly silent.
Great. Just great. She slammed open her car door with a clatter, stomping her way to the hood of her car and popping it open to see what had even caused it to spark out. To her untrained eye she saw nothing that could cause such a calamity until she went back inside. Her tank was empty. She took a deep breath trying to ease her seizing nerves by the slightest and got out once more, slowly starting to push the car up with all the elbow grease her thin arms could muster. It took about a solid 23 minutes before she could even get it halfway up the hill, her lungs huffing and puffing as she longed for her engine to do once again, all she could think about was this damned car. But just as she was about to make it over halfway, she heard a voice. A deep, taunting voice.
“Well, it seems like you’ve got yourself in a pickle, eh?”
Her head shot up from the top of her car looking around for the source of the taunting banter, but finding nothing. Right as she was about to brush it off as fatigue ruining her sane mind, a heavy hand joined next to her own to push the car up. Her weary eyes slowly trickled to who was next to her, finding more fear than comfort. The man next to her was beefy and tall, a cigarette held tightly in his jaw as he let out a hefty chuckle at her startled face.
“You’ve really gotta pay attention to your gas tank sweetheart. Don’t want this old gal puffin out now do ya’?” he joked.
Juni let out a huff in response, still startled by his presence but now more offended than anything.
“I appreciate the help but I think can get this up just fine sir–”
“I’ll do it to save you the trouble, little lady. I own that gas station up ahead.”
He pointed up at the abandoned-looking gas station above them with the cigarette in his other hand, as if the smoke was pointing too. Juni let out a defeated sigh letting him roll her car on a limb up the steep hill only praying it wouldn’t crumble in his grasp. Only 30 minutes later she was with a fueled car, a random candy bar that she’d never heard of in her 24 years of walking this earth and a stranger at her side advising her which place to stay in this rinky-dink town she was now stuck in. It happened so fast her mind could barely process it.
“We really don’t got any good hotels around here ya’ see, so the best shot you’ve got of not sleeping in your car is, well..”
The man tapped the ash of the cigarette towards a rusted building adjacent from his own humble gas station. It stood tall and proud and yet looked like it could fall apart if you simply let out a sigh with its frail shape, not a single car in its driveway that was planted oh so unfittingly in front of it. Really, the building looked like it had been there since 1909 and barely looked like it had changed since then. That parking lot was the only force of modernity it really had. Wonderful.
“I know it ain’t all that, friendly lookin' but It's the best shot you’ve got to not get mugged in your car.”
“Comforting” Juni replied sarcastically, chewing the candy bar lightly as she spoke.
The man shrugged with a light, nervous chuckle, taking the cigarette out of his mouth and plopping it out on the cold concrete below him, the sole of his boot crushing it in an instant as he offered his tattered hand to her.
“Welp, if you need me, just stop by here. Blake Wydly’s the name.”
Juni looked at the hand being offered to her and shook it.
“Junifer Brooks. I’ll stop by if I find the motel haunted, you never know Mr. Wydly” she joked. Blake let out an oddly somber chuckle in response.
“You sure will hon’. Oh and–”
He reached into his tattered overall pocket, his tattooed hands sprawling around inside it, rustling and such coming from it until he pulled out a strange, small red stone from his pocket, an open slit in the middle.
“If you can’t see what's hiding in that place, this will open your eyes.”
His voice became hushed, his amber eyes narrowing slightly at her, not in a cruel way, but oddly cautionary instead. She hesitantly took the stone, laughing nervously under her breath in response and keeping her head low.
“Thanks, Mr. Wydly.”
He nodded, grabbing another cigarette and a lighter from his other pocket as he walked back to his gas station.
“Oh and, be careful. It's sharp!”
“Alright.”
She stared at the strange rock in her palm, its glittery crimson core beaming with pride in the yellowed gas station lights. She felt a strange, awful gut feeling twist and turn in her stomach. Sure it had been there all night but it was exemplified by Wydly’s behavior. She slowly stepped inside the lone vehicle and revved up the newly revived engine and right as she looked up to glance at the man one more time, he was gone. She blinked once. Then again. Guess he was fast. Only a few moments later she pulled out of the crumbling gas station parking lot and dragged along to the motel, she hoped the beds would at least be clean. Maybe.
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2:28 am.
The moment she stepped inside the motel the overwhelming scent of walnuts and cheap berry air freshener engulfed her nostrils causing her nose to scrunch up slightly. Her eyes darted around the place. Oddly the interior being fairly modern for what looked to be a 1900’s esque place.
“Welcome to the Amber Rock Motel. How can I help you today?” a weary voice spoke up.
A teenager was slumped at the motel desk in front of her, a name tag pinned to his chest saying “Martin S.” and a bag of walnuts next to his impatiently tapping hand. Juni swiftly took note of the fact he was the only worker inside, bizarreness at its finest.
“One room please?”
“Which floor?”
“Uh, whichever is the cheapest.”
“They’re all the same price, Ma’am.”
“Oh. Then I guess the third floor would be alright.”
“Great.”
The teenage boy click-clacked away at the small cashier at his desk half-heartedly with a yawn, before looking up at Juni once again.
”$37.88 please.”
“ Pricey, tsk.”
Juni dug through her pocket before fishing out a crumpled 50 bucks and reluctantly slapping it on the counter. The boy took it with a slightly brighter smile.
“Thanks, ma’am! I appreciate it.”
He mused, giving a toothy grin, his greasy hair flopping back into place the moment when Juni brushed him off once more. His once heightened posture falling back into its slumped position, Juni taking the key from his sweaty hand and walking to the elevator with a small annoyed look scrunched up on her face.
When inside the elevator she immediately noticed the small mirror next to its door inside. She walked up to it, pumping up her curly brown hair just slightly as she held her white bag tightly in her other arm. But as she gazed leisurely she noticed a small shadow in the upper hand corner of the elevator. It looked like a bugs nest, or maybe a trick of the eye, but even so Juni stood close by the door. She swore it had eyes. She stared at it for a moment and slowly began to inch closer and closer to the door as she saw it start to move, growing bigger and bigger. The second she heard the elevator chime she sped out, her bag swishing through the air. As she went through the ever-winding hallways an odd rush of adrenaline surged through her skull. She just wanted to get out of there as fast as humanly possible. She heard little crawls and taps from the elevator right before she booked it, proving her statement to be correct. She swiftly grabbed her key card and swished it through the lock. After a moment of thick stressful silence it unlocked the door. She tossed her bag onto the motel's stiff bed and slammed the door shut with a huff, the sound echoing through the empty hallways. As she caught her breath, she felt her haze of fatigue start to catch up with her and that once stiff bed was now looking rather promising to her dazed mind. In only about 40-50 minutes she was in a slippery nightgown and collapsed on her bed, her body raveled in the tight sheets as her eyes began to flutter. Though comforted, she still couldn’t shake the feeling away that she was being watched. Not at all. But rest got to her faster than her sleepy thoughts and as her head began to fall deeper and deeper into her pillow, she swore her bed was shaking. But who cares, it was 2 a.m. Better to have bug bites than eye bags.
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3:01 am.
Juni was in a deep settled slumber, one hard to break by any mere mortal force by all means. Her curly hair sprawled about on her bed and her eyes shut tight. She looked as peaceful as she could be.
As she slept, the thick layers of bliss slowly started to get cut one by one by a sinking pressure being newly forced upon her defenseless body shoving her deeper and deeper into her bed. Her lovely dream started to get painfully thrashed by this newfound pressure. The pressure slowly started to turn to suffocation. The suffocation to pain. It felt as if icy hands were wrapped like a rope around her neck, cold nails digging into her skin with painful squeezes, each time a huff coming from her desperate lungs. She started to squirm but found she wasn’t able to. The thick layers had been snapped as soon as she felt herself starting to slip away from life. Her eyes shot open and upright at whatever was choking her so tightly, its grasp wavering slightly as it realized she was awake.
A translucent shimmery figure was what she saw that was choking her, its fog of haze sewn into a human form, the form looking like a teenage girl. A very spiteful one. Juni’s heart slammed and slammed on her chest as if screaming to be set free as she began to squirm violently. Huffs and puffs of desperation began to escape from her closing throat, her mouth wide and loose with fear.
The shimmery figure's eyes narrowed, its grip starting to loosen, its tight scowl softening into a glare. It's cold hands let go of Juni, letting her head slam into the headboard with a “Clunk!” and it began to speak.
“I despise you for even daring to come to this place. I suggest you get out while you can. The others won’t be so merciful, Junifer.”
And with that, it was gone in a mist of light. A ghost it was. Juni took slow steady breaths, her wide saucer-like eyes traveling to her bag on the floor and commanding her body to follow suit, which it complied. Juni swiftly snatched the flashlight from her white bag, slipped on some house shoes and ran out the door. She began to call for help. She was going to escape.
“Hello? Anyone? Is anyone here? Martin? Hello?”
As she called out for the teenage cashier, the dim, barely functioning fluorescent lights above her began to flicker. Flickering on and off until, with a single strong gust of the AC, all the lights were out. Only her dinky flashlight illuminated the ebony halls.
She paused for a moment, hearing laughter and high chatter from the rooms below, the sounds of footsteps walking on the same path she was on the ceiling below her following her own sound, her breathing once slow and steady becoming unmanageable and spotty.She whipped out the rock Mr. Wydly had given her, holding the small slit in the rock up to her left eye. In a crimson tint she saw ghosts waltzing around her, laughing and joking around with each other in vain, all from starkly different time periods. One ghost was a man who looked like he had once owned this place when it was first made. Another looked like a tourist that may have gotten their arms stuck in the elevator, considering their bent ghastly state and another a teenage worker, in the same uniform as Martin. The two didn’t look very far apart in age or time period either. What two years? At the most? She felt fear for both herself and Martin. What happened to the worker that killed them? Nothing showed the cause of death. The only odd thing about them was their abnormally sharp teeth, that's it. She felt a rush of blood to her head and the thump of adrenaline in her heart, she had to get them both out of here. Fast. Now she understood why that ghost said that.
She skipped the elevator and ran straight down the emergency flight of stairs. Bangs and slams of what sounded like pure and utter chaos coming from the walls around her, she tried not to trip down the two flights of stairs, feeling as if ghastly hands and feet were pushing her down deeper and deeper into the abyss of urgency. Her shaky hands finally managed to slam the wooden door open. To her surprise she saw the teenager's back slumped on the counter, though worse than before.
“Martin!” she cried, hearing a low start of laughing coming from his tired lungs.
“..Martin? You alright bud?”Juni said wearily.
Martin's head slowly turned at an angle, halfway facing her to his side. She halfway pointed her flashlight at him, seeing an oddly sharp grin widely plastered on his face, his teeth more yellow than before.
“Martin, there's really no time for laughing right now. You won’t even believe what I saw... You really should get out of here! Maybe Mr. Wydly could help us and–”
“There's no need for all of that.”he replied, his voice sounding almost as if doubled with an odd echo to it.
“What?”
Martin's head snapped 360 all the way to face Junifer, blood pouring down the sides of his neck as his skin began to pale. She let out a yelp.
“I said there's no need. This is your new home after all.”
Juni was speechless. The worker had gotten possessed. That's how they died, she thought in horror, her hand desperately slapping the door behind her trying to find the lever from where she once came, finding it to have completely disappeared.
“Now let me ask you something Juni,” he cackled, his eyes ablaze with a lime flame.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
Juni began to scream.