Y’all ever have a rich friend? One that casually drops stuff like “we should go to Dubai for the weekend,” or “where do you guys have your summer house?” Well, I had one, and his name is Josh.

Josh is one of the genuinely nicest people I know, but sometimes he has difficulty understanding the plight of the regular dude. His parents are old money. They run a real-estate conglomerate spanning throughout the U.S, and have always hoped Josh would join their business and take upon his father. I’ve never met his dad, and sometimes I feel like neither has he - they didn’t spend much time together on account of work. I always pictured him as a monocle wearing, thick-mustached Mr. Monopoly that would rent out park benches for the homeless if he could.

Some people have a white-picket-fence upbringing, but Josh had what I call the stone-walls-guarding-the-mansion kind. Most of his life he’d lived in a manor not dissimilar to the one Mr. Burns lives in. He even had a real life Smithers (yes, his real surname was Smithers, poor thing), whose whole entire job was to serve the family with whatever they needed.

We’ve known each other since we were kids. In elementary school, I played soccer for a small league, and that’s where we first met. Josh was homeschooled, but he’d begged his parents to let him play with the other kids after seeing footage of Cristiano Ronaldo, and begrudgingly they let him. We were a shitty team full of shitty, difficult kids, and part of me thinks Josh was put there as a lesson, his parents hoping he’d want to quit immediately after hanging out with the lower class; they had the money and connections to put him into a team that didn’t practice on an unkempt field outside that was half grass and half mud. To their disappointment, Josh loved it, and slowly, everyone came to like him as well.

For his first practice, he’d come in wearing a Burberry cardigan, chinos and leather loafers. Everyone made fun of him, but Josh tried his best, although he obviously had never kicked a ball in his life. It was a rainy day, and by the end of the practice his loafers were crumpled and torn, his cardigan muddy and unrecognizable. I remember chuckling at his get-up, sure that this was the first and last time we’d be seeing Josh the rich kid.

To our surprise, he came back the next week. This time, he was sporting the most expensive and fancy soccer gear one could get: football boots worn in the previous World Cup by Argentina, as well as custom shorts and a shirt designed by Ronaldo himself. Everyone was jealous and bitter at Josh - some kids couldn’t even afford real soccer boots of any kind. Defying the odds of him getting instantly beat up, he walked up to the changing room doors where we were hanging out and opened his puffed up duffel bag. Inside, he had a Ronaldo shirt for everyone. He handed each kid one while apologizing that he couldn’t get them the whole outfit.

With that, most kids came to accept him as one of ours. Some still had their doubts, but as Josh came back time and time again, and although he was never going to be Ronaldo, he tried and practiced as hard as anyone else until he secured his place in the team. During this time, I came to like his awkwardness, and I guess he liked that I did things with him that no one else did. We started hanging out outside of practice, and I taught him how to fill up water balloons and ride a skateboard. We watched MTV together and tried to recreate Jackass stunts we saw on TV. I won’t lie, as a kid I definitely enjoyed the fact that he could get basically anything he wanted whenever we wanted, a superpower which we used to our full advantage, sending Smithers to buy us candy and video games and action movies whenever we felt like it. Our parents weren’t the most present, his mom and dad always traveling for work, and mine just not being very attentive, so we got to do as we pleased for most of the time. In hindsight, I think Smithers felt bad for us, and that’s why he was willing to get us (almost) whatever we wanted.

Josh became my best friend. We hung out almost every day, Smithers either bringing him over to play in my neighborhood, or him coming to pick me up and take me to Josh’s place, which was the size of a neighborhood. He’d always help me - or whoever else he could - with whatever, using his resources to do good instead of hoarding them. He might not have understood what it’s like not to be megarich, but he wanted to help others any way he could.

Years later, it was time for us to go to college. Obviously, with that kind of money and a surname like Walton, Josh got to go to an Ivy League school, while I went to a middle-class college half a state away that I could barely afford. He offered to pay for my tuition, but I couldn’t say yes. It was too much, and I’m sure his parents wouldn’t have been too pleased about that either.

We kept in touch mostly online, but college life kept us both busy and the distance made it so we didn’t see each other often. I could notice that he was hanging out with other rich kids. When I’d ask him what he’s up to, he’d text me things like “going 2 Paris with some girls'' or “staying at spa-hotel for weekend, hungover lol.” Meanwhile, as I worked as a food courier during nights, I started feeling bitter and jealous, like I had when I’d first met him on that muddy soccer field. The fact that he was rich and from a family that’s slowly acquiring the status of household name was becoming more apparent by the day. We texted less frequently and spoke on the phone only occasionally.

One day Josh called me up out of the blue. I didn’t exactly feel like hearing more tales of expensive champagne, trips to Europe, or frat house hijinks, but I took the call anyway. I thought I’d just make up an excuse if he started to go off on tangents regarding his awesome life.

“Hey, man. It’s been a while,” I said as I pressed the phone to my ear, ready to roll my eyes.

“Hey, uhh.. Yeah, it has,” he replied, his voice sunken.

“Is everything alright Josh?”

“Yeah, no, everything’s fine. Listen. I know we haven’t exactly been talking much recently. That’s my fault -- I’m sorry. I might’ve gotten a bit carried away with this college thing.”

“Yeah, you might have,” I said teasingly, a chuckle escaping my lips.

There was a pause, like he was thinking over what he was about to say.

“I want to get away for a bit, clear my head. Thought you might want to join me. There’s this old hotel my parents are trying to sell, but it’s gonna be empty for at least a couple months longer. It’s renovated to be like a house, at least from the inside - they’re gonna redo the exterior later. There’s like cinema rooms, a bunch of bedrooms, an indoor pool, the works, really. I know it’s not really your scene, but it’s smack dab halfway between our schools. Should be about a six hour drive for both of us. And with spring break around the corner, we could stay there for a while.”

“You’re not gonna do spring break? I thought that was a huge thing there. Or maybe you’d be taking a flight to Paris or London with your frat buds, be an alternative kid.”

“Okay, okay, I get it, call Jello Biafra so he can scream at me about how I need to take a holiday in Cambodia.”

Josh paused for a moment, then continued, enunciating his words clearly with a stern tone, which he always did when he wanted me to take him seriously. “I’m tired of that shit. I need some time away to think, and I’d really love to talk to my best friend while I’m doing that.”

Josh seemed genuinely concerned and serious, and it was obvious he’d thought this whole thing out. For a moment I felt bad for teasing him, but hey, that’s what best friends do, right?

“I’ll need to cancel some plans, but I think I could spare a week at least,” I replied, knowing full well that I had absolutely no plans for spring break.

“Great. I’m glad to hear it. Hey, I gotta go, but I’ll text you the address if you wanna snoop the place out beforehand. Let’s talk soon to figure out the details, ok?”

“Sounds good. Thanks for calling, Josh. I appreciate it.”

“I’ll try to do it more often,” he said with a light chuckle, sounding relieved that I’d agreed to his plan.

After the call, Josh texted me the address and a link to a website that showcased the property and its history. The hotel was reportedly built between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The faded building was shaped like a long rectangle, boasting four floors and intricate stone detailing. There were pictures of the hotel from its heyday, its paint bright and fresh, windows crystal clear, flowering bushes rimming the entrance in trimmed formations. In one of the pictures, smiling people walked about the property as staff migrated guests’ belongings in large, golden racks that moved on wheels.

Two weeks later, as spring break officially started, I drove up to the hotel and rolled up next to Josh’s Bentley, which was parked near the entrance to the property, some distance away from the hotel. Well that’s new, I thought, looking at the shiny black car with jealousy as I got out of my clunker. As I walked towards the building through the main road it invoked no feelings of grandiosity or luxury like it had on the website. Instead, it looked like a mausoleum; a tomb for something long lost. The ground was filled with concrete where bushes had been, and the exterior of the building seemed to crumble, evident by giant cracks and mossy, wet patches strewn about. What paint remained was faded, and mostly the building was an ugly gray, unfit for the springtime seeds wafting in the air through fresh rays of sunshine.

Josh opened the large, wooden double doors in a dramatic, two-handed push as I walked up the cracked steps.

“I’m terribly sorry sir, but we are fully booked. If I may suggest so, there’s a rancid cottage just down the street where you could stay the night, fit for a misfit like yourself indeed!”

“I’m actually booked for the king suite, courtesy of m’lord Sir Josh Walton. Haven’t you heard of my name, boy?” I replied in jest.

Dropping the act, Josh took me into his arms and hugged me tightly, pressing down on my bladder.

“Good to see you, Luke. I'm glad you could make it.”

“I still need to make it – to the bathroom that is - you’re squeezing the piss out of me Josh,” I said, it occurring to me that I hadn’t taken a bathroom break through the whole drive.

“Shit, sorry,” Josh said, loosening his hug. “There’s a bathroom just down the hall, first door on the left.” I skittered off awkwardly to the lavatory.

After I relieved myself, I found Josh standing in the main hall that opened up from the entrance. Above him hung a chandelier the size of a small car, and directly in front of him stood what used to be the receptionist’s desk. Mirrored on both sides of the desk were two elevators, as well as a door leading to a staircase.

“Welcome to the Carlton hotel!” Josh shouted as he saw me enter the hall, spreading his arms in a dramatic fashion.

I obliged to Josh’s offer of a grand tour, which wasn’t too long as much of the building was still completely empty, and seeing as it used to be a hotel, most rooms were completely identical - not much to see. He said that the building was basically a mirror image of itself, the two halves exactly the same for the most part.

The first floor was stuffed with all things grandiose: a large dining hall that connected to an industrial-sized kitchen, a social room with a fireplace and tables set for board games, as well as staff and storage rooms that were renovated and combined into a large gym. Next to the reception there was a small bar area with a few leather chairs and tables. The pool, which was supposedly nearly as long as the ones they use for the Olympics, resided in the basement, which we didn’t take a look at after Josh implied we’d be taking a dip later on.

The second floor held mainly bedrooms, most fully furnished “to attract buyers,” as Josh said. We only checked out the left-side corridor, where our rooms were. The first door on the right was where he was staying. All of the rooms were along a wide, long corridor with no discernible differences at any point. They’d renovated everything to look modern, but some parts of the original hotel were kept as is.

For example, the floor still boasted a patterned red carpet throughout, as well as golden railings along the walls that kept the carts from scratching and bumping at the walls and baseboards. Along the way Josh showed me which door led to the bathroom. “It’s the middle door on the left hand side, so if you don’t want to check each door, just count to four from either side,” he said as we walked past the halfway mark. As we reached the end of the corridor, he stopped and pointed his arm at the last door on the right as he leaned in for a deep bow, exclaiming “Your room, Monsieur.”

The bedroom held no attributes of the old hotel's decor. Instead, it had been renovated to look like a boring, white and gray bedroom fit for a country house owned by a millennial couple. There was a walk-in closet, as well as a bathroom, the layout probably not too dissimilar to how it had been before.

“Looks nice,” I said to Josh as I threw my suitcase on the perfectly made bed, crinkling the smooth fabric. “What’s it gonna cost me?”

“You know I have a throbbing pro bono for you, Luke.” Josh gave me a concerned look. “Wait -- you’re not seriously asking to pay for this, right?”

“You never know. I thought maybe you’d finally be getting into your parents' business.”

“Look, man… I know I’ve been a dick. But come on! You’re my best friend, for fuck’s sake -- I’d never ask you to pay for this. You need to know that, Luke. I’m serious.”

I felt ashamed, pondering whether I’d taken the jabs I’d given him too far. “Yeah, yeah, I know. I’m sorry. Just been a bit stressed out is all, I shouldn’t take it out on you.”

I gave Josh a smirk and continued “Maybe we’re even with the being dicks, now.”

Josh chuckled, relieved as the tension we’d tried to resolve through jokes finally unraveled. “Well, I’ll leave you to settle in. Come find me at the bar downstairs when you’re ready.”

“Ready for what?” I asked.

“To have some rich people fun,” Josh answered, winking over his shoulder as he turned around to leave.

Once I changed and unpacked a bit, I met up with Josh at the bar. It was eerie to walk along the long corridors of the building all alone, the silence staggering for a place that used to house so many people.

After Josh poured me a hefty scotch and we properly sat down, it was like everything went back to the way things used to be. We talked about everything that came to our minds: the girls and boys we’d dated, how annoying frat houses can be, the shittiest courses at school, how our families were doing, I mean everything.

At some point we’d both unloaded our thoughts and feelings enough for the night, or perhaps our blood alcohol levels had just spiked to a level where sensible conversations were impossible to uphold. I was glad to have him back, and I hoped he felt the same way.

We decided to take a midnight dip in the pool, which was arguably not the smartest idea for two drunk college students. After changing to our swimming shorts, we descended the concrete staircase down to the basement.

The pool hall was just slightly larger than the pool itself, with small dressing rooms opening up on one side. Faux wood paneling decorated the walls and ceiling, most likely kept intact from a renovation done in the 70’s. The room glistened as light reflected from the tiny waves on the surface of the water.

I jumped in first, cannonballing my way to the bottom of the pool. As I came up, I saw Josh taking the final strides preceding his jump. During that small flash, I finally took a real look at his body. Although he’d gotten a bit rounder on account of the frat house lifestyle of beer and pizza, he looked adorable, yet manly. His shoulders were defined, and a small line of hair that I hadn’t ever seen before trailed down from his belly button until it disappeared into his shorts. A moment later he was in the pool, the impact from his jump splashing water into my eyes, washing away the image.

“Pretty nice, eh?” Josh said as he came up for air.

“Is this that rich people fun you were talking about?”

“No,” Josh said as he swam back to the edge of the pool and pulled himself up with his arms.

He walked up to a wall panel and held his hand over it, reveling in the anticipation he’d instigated. “This is.”

Just as the words left his mouth, he pressed a button that replaced the regular lights with coloured disco lights that swirled and moved around the room. Two small disco balls emerged from hidden panels in the ceiling on both ends of the pool, reflecting the lights all the more. The cherry on top was the music: speakers hidden throughout the room started to play Earth, Wind & Fire’s hit song Boogie Wonderland.

I burst out laughing. The sight was completely surreal, as much ridiculous as it was purely fantastic. The water reflecting the coloured lights along with the disco balls produced a psychedelic light show that resembled a coarse mist that covered the room in flashing, swirling rainbows.

“What the hell is this?” I asked Josh, my head spinning around in awe as I giggled like a schoolgirl.

“A gift from the 70’s. They don’t know who built it, why they built it, or who they built it for. All I know is my dad had to do some jedi mind tricks for my mom to let him keep it as is.” Josh jumped back into the pool with a wide grin plastered proudly on his face.

We danced and drunk-boogied in the water to a few more 70’s jams until we tired ourselves out, deciding to call it a night. We shut off the disco machine, dried ourselves off and went up to the second floor.

“Sleep well, Boney Mmm...” Josh trailed off as he stumbled through the door and fell on his bed.

“Good night, Rasputin,” I replied, my intoxicated brain convincing me that the quip made perfect sense on multiple levels: a) relating to Boney M’s song b) the distant Russian relatives that Josh had, c) his status as part of a rich family, and d) his apparent luck with the ladies. I doubt it made sense on a comedic level, though, and Josh was practically passed out be the time his head hit the bed.

I walked in zigzags to my room. Much like Josh, I plummeted on my bed and fell asleep in an instant, still wearing my swimming shorts.

I woke up to hearing scratching above me. As I turned on the bedside lamp, I got a splitting headache; the scotch was coming for payback. I checked my phone for the time, which was a bit after 3 AM. Then I heard it again: scratching above me, in the ceiling, to my left. I sat up on the bed and held my head, hoping it’d relent with its painful throbbing.

Thump

I looked up. Something was in the ceiling.

SkrrrRRThump

Sounded like it moved to the hallway.

thump

It was moving further away.

Figuring that the noise was a rat or possum or something, I got to my feet and tried to find something to use to shoo the animal away. Critters finding their way inside the house was a reality I’d lived through as a kid. Our house wasn’t exactly airtight, and we lived near some woods that were infested with raccoons. My experience was that you just needed to get them out before they shat all over the floors.

By sheer automation stemming from those years living in an impromptu zoo, I found a small broom and dustpan set in a closet. “Good enough,” I surmised in a croak to myself, the taste of scotch still uncomfortably present in my dry mouth. Leaving the dustpan behind, I wielded the broom and entered the hallway, ready to send the bugger off.

Something I hadn’t noticed during my drunken stumbling was the ambient lighting throughout the hallway. It was much dimmer than it had been in the daytime, and the lights must’ve come on automatically for the night. I felt like I was staring into a dimly lit shadow, the red carpet seeming shaggier than usual under my bare feet.

THUMP

The sound came from behind the third room on the right, evident by the door's slight shake, like it had been the victim of a tiny earthquake that shook it on its hinges. I approached the room slowly, my grip tightening on the broom’s handle. As I walked up to the door, I heard no more sounds of movement. It must have fallen in there, I thought. Nowhere to run.

With the househusband’s ax in my right hand, I slowly opened the door with my left, posturing myself for battle.

The room was nearly empty, with no apparent signs of animalistic intrusions. The only thing the drab, windowless room had inside it was a jumble of plastic and cardboard storage boxes leaning erratically against the back wall. I started to carefully walk towards the boxes, tapping the broom on the floor in front of me like a blind man with their white cane, hoping to alert and flush out whatever creature hid among the boxes.

As I came up to the stacks of boxes, all remained still and quiet. Giving up on the stealthy approach, I put the broom down on the floor and started to move the boxes around, sliding them in different directions to check if something lurked behind them or within, hoping to scare out whatever it was that was hiding.

From what I could tell, they’d dumped a bunch of the old hotel’s memorabilia into the boxes. Vintage bedside lamps, landline phones, and ice buckets were just a few of the items I saw as I rummaged around the piles of junk. To my dismay, nothing jumped out or sprinted away in fright. I took a few steps back and reassessed the mountain of boxes, trying to figure out where the creature might be. As I looked up, I realized where it had escaped. Right above the boxes in the far left corner of the room was a large hole torn into the ceiling.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen any food scraps, feces, or other indications of an animal among the boxes, so I decided to stack up some of them on top of each other and have a look inside the hole. If it has a nest or whatever up there, I could tell Josh the next day and he can just hire someone to come and evict whatever pigeons or raccoons lived up there - or ask them to sign a lease and make his father proud.

The cardboard boxes were too shoddy to stand on, but there were just enough of the plastic kind to build a small staircase of three steps. I leaned the boxes against the wall for extra support and tested their balance by shaking them around a bit. Satisfied with their structural integrity, I carefully put my right foot on the first box, ready to ascend.

I kept my right hand pressed to the wall for support and made my way up to the third step, bowing down slightly as I could no longer stand straight against the ceiling. Aiming my head at the hole, I steadied myself into an upright position, which placed me shoulder deep inside the ceiling, the hole barely big enough to fit my torso in full. I couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of me, so I took out my phone from the shorts pocket, pressed the torch on and aimed it at the far wall inside the ceiling, illuminating the space surprisingly well.

What I saw was not at all what I expected. Firstly, the ceiling had birchwood paneling throughout the ‘floor’. Secondly, it was high enough for an adult to crawl through with ease, the ‘real’ ceiling made of concrete standing almost four feet above. Thirdly, at the far end, there was a small latched door made of dark brown wood. In essence, it looked like a small version of the room below it.

I stared at the space in confusion, completely forgetting that I was looking for animals, although there were no traces of anything having moved through there.

I almost fell off the makeshift stairs when I started to hear crying. Loud sobs that almost reminded me of guffawing in their intensity echoed into the room through the hallway. It didn’t sound like Josh, the voice more feminine and light.

I quickly jumped down and almost stood on my ankle, barely avoiding an accident. “Hello?” I asked the hallway, the cries sounding closer now that my head was no longer in the ceiling.

Whoever was out there didn’t answer. As I made my way to the door the thought occurred to me that maybe there were in fact other people staying here that Josh just forgot to tell me about. Leaving out key information was one of his worst traits, often resulting in me getting super annoyed with him, and Josh perplexed as to my reasoning. He had some trouble… relating, sometimes. He liked to do first and think afterwards - I liked to assess, and if possible, produce a pros and cons list of doing before jumping to action.

As I stepped into the hallway, ready to help out whoever was there, the crying stopped, like it had never been there at all. Before I could ask myself whatthefuckjusthappened, I saw that the bathroom door to my right was open. A moment later, I could hear the shower start to run, its white noise emanating from deep within the room.

I walked a few steps towards the room, stopped behind the open door and said “Hey, you left the door open! Uhh… I’m with Josh, the owner’s son. Uhm, he didn’t say there’d be anyone else here.” I gulped, realizing that this was going to be a very awkward encounter no matter how it panned out.

There was no answer, the shower splashing the floor in a steady, monotonous stream. “Are you okay?” I asked with my voice raised, hoping that whoever was there could hear me over the shower. “I heard someone crying, so just wanted to check that everything’s fine!”

Still no answer. I circled the door to look inside. The bathroom was large, most likely done to fit a storage room from the building’s days as a hotel. On the left was a double basin, with arching, golden taps, and crystal knobs. Directly ahead was a wide shower stall fitted with opaque glass.

“Helloo-oo?!” I asked, my voice returning in a miniscule echo through the white tiling. I started getting increasingly concerned, my thoughts racing as my mind seemed to sober up in a second. What if they’re hurt? Slipped in the shower and hit their head? They’ve still not said a fucking thing, that’s NOT normal. go IN.

“I’m coming in, okay?” I said in a half-yell, and forced myself to start walking inside. As I reached the shower stall, I knocked on the door as my final warning. “Hey, you okay in there? I’m gonna open the door, okay?” The lack of an answer pulled me into action, preparing myself for the worst. I pulled the sliding door open in a jagged, quick motion, the adrenaline pumping in my veins.

Nothing.

The shower ran idly in the empty stall. Suddenly, I felt drunk all over again as doubt flooded my mind. As I stood there, staring through the stall, I couldn’t quite piece together a plausible explanation for what I had just experienced.

With nothing to cling to, the stress I had accumulated started to leave my body. My eyelids started to feel heavy, and the warm steam of the shower relaxed my body. Finally, using Occam’s razor, I concluded that I was just way too drunk and tired, and the only fix to such problems is to sleep it off. I turned off the shower, closed the stall door and turned off the bathroom’s lights as I returned to the hallway, ready to pass out for the second time tonight.

It took a considerable amount of strength to keep myself in a standing position as I saw what unfurled before me, the adrenaline piercing back into my veins with a cold vengeance.

Each of the fourteen doors in the corridor were open in a straight 90° angle, standing in rows like pawns on a chessboard. The rooms were all dark as earth, like small black holes.

Suddenly, the crying returned, jumping between the rooms every few seconds in a strange pattern.

First door on the right (Josh’s room).

Last door on the left (opposite to my room).

First door on the left.

Last door on the right (my room).

I was frozen in place, sure that I’d lost my mind, or that Josh was playing some sick prank on me. I wanted to run to my room, but the thing would return there each time, following its pattern. Whatever it was, I’d rather stay put than face it.

After the third round, I hatched a plan. Just as the laughing began its fourth round, I started sprinting towards my room.

First door on the right.

Three doors to go.

Last door on the left.

One door to go. I picked up my pace for the final sprint.

First door on the left.

Reached my room and clamored around the inside of the wall for the light switch.

click

Light filled my room, and the crying didn’t resolve its fourth round to the end, instead leaving the room silent. Relieved, I leaned at the door frame and tried to catch my breath, droplets of sweat dropping between the knees I held with a tight grip for additional support.

Out of nowhere a loud bang filled the space. My ears started to faintly ring, and I cocked my head up and looked down the hallway, as my heart pumped like a jack drill, ready to puncture through my chest.

Each of the open doors were now closed, except for mine, slammed shut so violently it’d sounded like a gunshot. My heart throbbed as I jumped inside my room, locked the door and secured a chair to lean tightly under the doorknob, so nothing could break through from the outside.

Josh must’ve heard that, he MUST have, I thought, and decided to text him. As I opened up our text conversation, I started to doubt myself once again. Am I just drunk as fuck? Am I dreaming? Is this delirium experienced firsthand?

After a few minutes of pondering, my mind a haze, I texted him “hey, heard something weird. u up?” just to see if he was awake without arousing suspicion of my possibly deteriorating mental health.

I laid under the covers, staring at my phone, hoping for a notification, until eventually I passed out. Josh never answered my text.