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“Are rooms still available ?”
“Yep! Fortunately, we basically had to beg the police to let us keep the hotel open.” Laughs the woman at the front desk “after the accident y’know.”
“Accident?”
“Apparently someone was found dead in room 81,” she points to a room across the hall with caution tape on it “ Police are all up in there, it’s the weirdest thing tho I swear to the lord I didn’t see a single suspicious thing.”
Staying in a murder hotel or “accident” hotel as the woman would probably say wasn’t particularly high on Danny’s to-do-list, but with the roads closed it was really that or sleeping in the car which was never a fantastic idea even in the most remote places like Kearney, Nebraska.
“Well then, I’ll take a room as far away from 81 as possible.” He said trying to make light of the situation, since the women was clearly doing so.
“Of course! I was worried we wouldn’t get business with this whole thing” She waves her hand in 81’s general direction “but I guess the snow wanted to save my ass” She chuckles as she hands the keys over.
“I’m Dolores, come right on over here if you need anything.”
Danny took the keys and began walking over to the room, Dolores had done as he asked and put him in the room all the way down the hall, away from 81.
Lugging his suitcase behind him he couldn’t help but stop in front
Of the caution tape.
Morbid curiosity got the best of him and Dolores wasn’t looking she was busying herself with a magazine, So he just peaks real quick inside the key hole.
He found himself bracing to see something truly disturbing that would drive him mad, but truthfully it looked rather normal. Police were checking all around the room and thankfully not looking at the key hole, there was no blood or murder weapon really just the corpse lying face down on her bed. If you ignored the police and squinted it could have just been a women coming home after being wasted.
She was pale and in a red party outfit with her stiletto heels struggling to stay on. The only weird thing was that the room looked completely untouched.
Before he could be caught Danny ripped his eyes away and continued down to his own room, opening the dingy door with some effort.
After checking the news for updates on the closed down rode situation and calling his parents that he’ll be a few more days, Danny brushed his teeth and went to sleep.
The next morning the roads were thankfully back open and he was about to go check out when Danny decided to take another look into the murder room.
He was expecting to see a similar sight as last night but was startled to be met with plain red.
Danny jumped back and then took another look, it had a weird sheen to it, but then he figured the police probably covered up the hole with a tarp or something so no one could see inside.
Danny hoped they hadn’t noticed him earlier, that would be awkward.
He kept walking to Dolores to sign out of the hotel.
“Checking out so soon?” She asked while reaching for the key.
“Yeah I was just staying while the roads were closed.”
There was a beat of silence as she put the keys away.
“Did they find anything out about the dead person?” Danny asked hopeing he didn’t sound too interested.
“Not really, they asked me some more questions, but I really didn’t notice anything…”
“Even the victim was pretty unremarkable ….other then one thing”
“What?”
“She had the spookiest eyes”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, they were bright red.”