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ARCHIVIST
Statement of Darcy Waller regarding her stay at the Lotus Hotel. Original statement given October the 23rd, 2009. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Statement begins.
ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)
It happened... well, I'm not sure. My sense of time has been broken after all of it. It was the summer of 2004, I think? It might have been June the 30th, but don't quote me on that. I don't remember the date, but the events... I remember them like it was yesterday. My father, James Waller, and I went on holidays, you know, just like families do. It was supposed to be just a short camping trip up north in the Lake District. However, the weather got all messed up, so we had to look for a hotel last minute. Everything was full. It was the peak tourist season, so, of course, it was.
After another hotel, I think that was the sixth one, told us they didn't have any rooms, my father almost gave up and wanted to go back home. I was the one who pointed out to him another hotel close by. I didn't realise it back then, but now it seems so obvious that something was off... While all the other hotels looked cosy and bricked, I don't know, you could say they were more just like cottages? This one was, well, it was huge, at least six storeys tall. The entrance was all lit up with various coloured lights. Above the door, you could read "Lotus Hotel". My father agreed to try and check in there. We walked in, and the lobby itself looked grand. You know, too grand even. Like it was a hotel for the rich, and we couldn't afford it, so we almost immediately turned away.
Someone approached us. She was wearing the staff uniform, clearly. She had a nameplate with her name. It was... Jane, I think? Or maybe Joan? Maybe even Jade. I'm sorry, I know it's confusing, but the memories from that period are both so vivid while also being so... foggy? Anyway, she smiled at us and invited us in. Somehow, she knew our surname, as she told my father that they had a reservation with the surname Waller for tonight. I remember the look on my father's face, he was as confused as I was, but at least we had a place to stay in, no? Well, she showed us to our room, a spacious twin bed, gave us a platinum card for everything in the hotel, and left, just like that. I haven't seen her after.
My father went to sleep, exhausted after the long drive, but I was just a curious child. I took the platinum card and sneaked out to the arcade that I saw on our way to the room. The machines were so colourful, I really wanted to play some, but basically every single one that I was interested in was taken by other children and teens.
I remember, though, that I drew attention to their clothes. It was... It was like I was looking into my history book, you know? This one girl had such a beautiful dress, but it looked so out of place. I tried talking with her, befriending her, you know, normal stuff. We had some language barriers, though. She had a weird accent? I couldn't quite place it, really. I remember, though, that she was sitting with some other kids playing Monopoly, but in our conversation, she mentioned she's playing chess. So I just decided that maybe she's, well, quite mental. I decided to leave her alone.
I remember this one little boy, completely alone, playing some racing game. I decided to talk with him because I felt it was weird there's no one with him. He looked like he could be seven years old at best. I don't remember his name, it was something really, really odd, but his surname reminded me of that one stupid horror movie that my father loved. "Halloween" was the title? I talked with him a bit, and he told me that his mother died due to some illness, and he was staying here while his uncle? Cousin? I don't exactly remember. But he said his relative was figuring out where he should go now.
Everything would be fine if not for the fact that this child talked to me like an old man. I remember looking into his eyes and thinking that they looked just like my grandpa's. Like he saw enough horrors and lived through the war, you know?
I tried chit-chatting with him for a while more, you know, worried about the guy being there alone. I asked him about, like, the usual: toys, colours, and other stuff that children like. I quickly ran out of topics, so I asked him for how long he was there. He told me he's been there for weeks. I was genuinely concerned, because who in their right mind leaves a child in some random hotel for weeks without anyone to look after him? I tried to take him to my room, to tell my father, and just to help him somehow.
As I was walking back to our hotel room, a tall man appeared in front of me. It was almost as if he appeared out of thin air. He had black hair, and I had to look up to look him in the eyes. He looked mad. No, not looked. He had a full poker face. I just felt that he was mad. And the moment I bumped into him, I felt immediate dread wash all over me. I think he told me to leave his son alone and go back to where I came from, or something like that. I was too scared to react anyhow, so I just ran to my father.
I don't exactly remember what happened then. My father told me that I looked really pale and my hands were unnaturally cold as I was shaking him to wake him up. I was mumbling some rubbish things that he couldn't understand. He grabbed our stuff, grabbed me, and we left the hotel.
Now, with what I'm going to write, you might think that I'm crazy. But I swear, that's what happened. We walked into the hotel on the evening of June the 30th. But I swear, as we left and came back home, we saw letters delivered for the next few days, the newest being dated to July the 7th. A whole week. That's not normal. And no, no one was playing a prank on us. My uncle told us he was starting to get worried, as we were supposed to come back days before.
It's not normal to travel to the future.
Recently, I visited the area with my friends. We stayed in tents, but we went into the city for some groceries, you know. I tried looking around for the hotel, but there was nothing. Neither the hotel itself nor the huge building it was in. Nothing. Almost as if the hotel never existed.
ARCHIVIST
Statement ends.
We contacted Miss Waller for a follow-up statement, but she refused, telling us that she said everything already. However, she gave us the exact location of where the Lotus Hotel apparently stood.
I had Sasha do some basic research about it. There's no official mention of the Lotus Hotel anywhere on the internet; however, there are many recommendations by various different people on various different sites. What's weird is the fact that all of them are in different languages, stating that the hotel is in various different cities all over the world. It might be just a hotel chain, as far as we're concerned.
We tried looking for the people mentioned in the statement but had no luck. As far as we're concerned, those might have been just children playing a dress-up game and playing a prank on everyone around them.
Tim and Martin went to investigate the plot of land where the hotel apparently stood. While Tim told me that he didn't see anything, Martin argued that he saw a building a few blocks away, which looked eerily similar to the hotel described by Miss Waller. Tim says there was nothing like it. Maybe Martin should undergo some mental testing.
There's no real evidence of the events described by Miss Waller, other than Martin's hallucinations. To put it generously, nothing about this story is verifiable.
Recording ends.
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