After her parents dismissed her fervent pleas, attributing her panic to trauma rather than a tangible threat, Thecla felt a chilling isolation settle over her. But this solitude only fueled her determination; she would uncover the truth, even if it meant doing so entirely on her own. The hotel, once a perceived sanctuary, now felt like a gilded cage, its opulence a deceptive mask for something sinister beneath.
For the next few days, Thecla adopted a new routine, her every move calculated. While her younger siblings played innocently, and her parents found a fragile sense of normalcy, Thecla embarked on a covert investigation. She moved through the hotel like a ghost, her senses heightened, acutely aware of every shadow and whispered conversation. She navigated discreetly, always mindful of the unblinking, unsettling presence of Mr. Griff, (the hotel manager),who disguised as a guide. His constant surveillance felt less like attentiveness and more like guardianship.
Her clandestine explorations led her to areas explicitly marked as off-limits—staff-only entrances, disused stairwells, and dimly lit corridors beyond the main guest areas. Here, the lavish décor gave way to peeling wallpaper and dusty, forgotten corners, hinting at secrets the hotel desperately tried to conceal. She strained to catch snippets of hushed conversations between staff, picking up fragmented rumors that confirmed her burgeoning fears. Whispers of a dark history persisted: tales of guests who had checked in but inexplicably vanished, strange occurrences that had plagued the hotel for decades, and an unsettling quietness that sometimes descended upon certain wings, lasting for days.
One particularly cold night, unable to sleep, Thecla found herself drawn back to the forbidden fringes of the hotel. Her internal clock told her it was late, nearing midnight. While wandering through the sparsely lit hallways beyond the service wing, a draft of unnaturally frigid air hit her, prickling her skin. Following the sudden drop in temperature, she stumbled upon a heavy, unmarked wooden door at the very end of a desolate corridor. It was slightly ajar, revealing a sliver of impenetrable darkness within, and an undeniable chill radiated from it, far deeper than the ambient cold. A profound sense of dread coiled in her stomach.
Taking a cold, ragged breath, she instinctively checked her phone. It was 11:30 p.m. As her foot crossed the threshold of the hidden doorway, a jarring anomaly occurred: her phone's screen flickered, then went entirely blank. The signal bars vanished, the Wi-Fi icon dissolved, and her device became a useless, heavy brick in her hand. This inexplicable digital void solidified her fears. Her parents might dismiss her as delusional, but this, this was undeniably real. This place existed.
Then, through the rising tide of panic, she heard it—the familiar, calm voice resonating from deep within her, clear amidst the thrumming silence of the digital void: "Look closer."
Stepping fully into the hidden space, she found herself in what appeared to be a narrow, dusty old corridor. The heavy door creaked ominously as it swung inward, sealing her in. This hallway was lined with seemingly ordinary, full-length mirrors, their silvered surfaces dull with age. Ignoring their mundane appearance for a moment, Thecla frantically searched every corner, running her hands along dusty shelves and peering into dark alcoves, desperate to find any tangible evidence to show her parents—a hidden journal, a forgotten key, anything that would validate her terror. She couldn't find a single object.
Frustration bubbling, she slowly raised her head, and what met her eyes made her freeze, a profound terror seizing her heart. The mirrors, which had seemed so innocuous, now reflected distorted, horrifying versions of her and her family. Her own image was gaunt and hollow-eyed, a mere shadow of her vibrant self, utterly devoid of the defiant spark she tried to project. Her parents appeared frail and exhausted, their faces etched with a weariness that went beyond physical fatigue, their eyes haunted by unseen burdens. Her younger siblings looked spectral, their smiles replaced by expressions of profound, unsettling sadness, their forms almost translucent.
As she stared, transfixed by the horrifying reflections, the mirrors began to flash. The terrifying zombie visions from her dreams, those gruesome, lurching figures, now flickered across the glass, playing out in a sickening, real-life nightmare. The air grew impossibly colder, and a faint, putrid smell filled the enclosed space.
Panicking, her heart a frantic drum against her ribs, Thecla stumbled backward, away from the mocking reflections, and burst through an adjacent, unlatched doorway into another, larger room. This was a vast, circular chamber, shrouded in an ethereal dimness, and filled from floor to ceiling with ancient, leather-bound books. They weren't the kind of books found in a hotel library; these were monumental tomes, seemingly limitless, radiating an old, silent power.
These books weren't filled with stories of adventure or romance—they contained the chillingly detailed life histories of every single person who had ever come to the hotel. A horrifying realization dawned on her: every guest, every fleeting moment, meticulously recorded. As she gazed around, a spine-chilling hum vibrated through the air, and her eyes landed on a specific shelf.
There, nestled amongst centuries-old volumes, she saw it: a book with her family's surname, "The [Joeys] engraved in gold on the cover. Her hands trembled violently as she reached for it, the leather cover cold beneath her touch. She pried it open. The pages were densely filled with elegant, archaic script, detailing their stay—each mundane moment, every conversation, every trivial choice, written down with an unnerving precision, as if someone had been watching them, recording their very existence from the moment they arrived.
Her gaze raced down the pages, her breath catching in her throat with each new, impossible detail. Then, near the bottom of the final filled page, she found a line that made her blood run cold, draining all warmth from her: "Departure: Not recorded." It wasn't "Checked out" or "Left hotel." It was a chilling declaration of absence, a testament to their fate should they remain.
Next to it, a much thinner volume sat, pristine and unsettling. It bore her own first name, "Thecla," etched onto its cover. With trembling fingers, she opened it to find its pages utterly blank, waiting. The implication was clear: her story was yet to be written, and the unmasked enemy intended to be its author.
A sudden, desperate surge of defiance flared within her. She decided to take both books with her, clutching them tightly to her chest—the proof she needed, the proof her parents couldn't deny. As she glanced around the vast, silent library, she also discovered other volumes, their ancient bindings hinting at profound knowledge. These weren't personal histories but larger, more intricate texts that seemed to reveal clues about the King Hermon'
s past—who he was before his eternal curse, how he became undying, and perhaps, crucially, the source of his weakness. These she couldn't take, but she committed their covers to memory.
Turning, she made her way back into the Hall of Mirrors. The air was still unnaturally cold, heavy with a pervasive spiritual chill, and the ornate mirrors continued to stretch on forever, reflecting fragmented horrors. Panic, a cold, hard knot in her stomach, began to set in again. The mirrors were still showing grotesque scenes of her and her family's twisted fates, their surfaces rippling with her own fear.
But then, the soft, divine voice, calm and unwavering, resonated in her mind: "You are not alone. Be strong. Look closer."
Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Thecla forced herself to focus, to truly look closer at the next mirror. As she did, she saw the terrifying vision of the zombie outbreak from her dream playing out in the reflection once more. It was a terrifying, moving image, a chaos of groaning figures and desperate flight. But this time, she wasn't just experiencing the raw terror; she was looking for something. Her gaze, guided by the divine clarity, honed in on a single detail amidst the gruesome horror. She saw a faint, almost imperceptible symbol glowing on one of the zombie's decaying hands—a strange, interwoven mark, a Triquetra, that seemed to pulse with a dark, primal energy, the very source of its unnatural animation.
Her breath quickened, a new kind of understanding dawning. This wasn't just a sign of power; it was a weakness, a binding.
Suddenly, a profound shift occurred in the chamber. The grand room darkened, the flickering candlelight guttering as if starved of oxygen. The mirrors behind her began to hum softly, a low, resonant thrum that vibrated through the floor. Their surfaces rippled like disturbed water, and from within the glass, shadowy figures began to emerge—faint, ethereal outlines of former guests. Their eyes, hollow and empty, fixed on her, observing with an unnerving stillness. These were the souls of the vanished, bound and trapped, silently witnessing her impending fate.
Thecla stumbled backward, clutching the books to her chest as if they were talismans. "No… this can't be real," she whispered, her voice barely a tremor in the cold air.
The ancient floorboards groaned beneath her feet, a sound like a whisper of agony. A low, collective murmur echoed through the corridor, a chorus of faint, ethereal voices: "Stay with us."
"Be one with us."
Panicking, a desperate, primal scream caught in her throat. She turned and ran, the mirrors flashing a terrifying montage of faces—the same faces she had seen in the old, faded photographs displayed in the circular chamber . They were all the same people, the vanished, now reaching out from their spectral prisons.
She burst through the hidden door and back into the main corridor, gasping for breath. Instantly, the familiar, ordinary lights of the hotel flickered back on. Her phone, which moments ago had been a lifeless brick, buzzed with a sudden rush of notifications, the digital clock on its screen now reading 12:01 a.m.
She leaned against the cool, solid wall, lungs burning, trying to regain her composure. When she looked down, her hands were empty. The books she had clutched so tightly were gone, vanished. Only a faint, shimmering golden dust remained on her palms, a lingering echo of the divine aid, a testament to what she had just experienced.
Somewhere, deep within the now-silent hotel, a familiar, ancient voice, laced with chilling amusement, whispered,
"This has just begun."