Daniel Mercer noticed the missing room because the hotel had given him too much time to notice things.
Rain had closed the road through the valley shortly after nine, trapping half a dozen travellers inside the Ashdown Hotel until morning. It was the sort of place Daniel would normally have driven past without seeing: four storeys of dark brick, ivy pressed against the windows and a brass sign above the entrance that had turned almost completely green.
The receptionist had apologised for the lack of choice.
“Fourteen is all I have left.”
Daniel didn't care. He had been driving for six hours. He wanted a shower, a bed and enough phone signal to tell his sister he wasn't dead in a ditch somewhere.
The lift was out of order, naturally.
He carried his bag to the third floor.
Room 10.
Room 11.
Room 12.
Then Room 14.
Daniel stopped.
He looked back along the corridor.
There was no Room 13.
Not especially strange, he thought. Hotels skipped thirteen all the time.
Except there was space for it.
Between doors twelve and fourteen was a section of wallpaper almost twice as wide as anywhere else in the corridor.
And beneath the wallpaper, if he looked carefully, Daniel could see the rectangular outline of a door.
The wall between twelve and fourteen
Room 14 smelled faintly of lavender and old carpet.
Daniel showered, changed and spent twenty minutes holding his phone beside various parts of the window in search of a signal.
Nothing.
The room had a telephone on the bedside table instead. An old cream-coloured thing with a coiled cable and numbered buttons that had yellowed with age.
He considered calling reception to ask whether the hotel had Wi-Fi.
Before he could lift the receiver, the telephone rang.
Daniel stared at it.
It rang again.
Then again.
He picked it up.
“Hello?”
For several seconds there was only static.
Then a man's voice said:
“Is this Room 13?”
Daniel smiled despite himself.
“No. Fourteen.”
Silence.
Then the man whispered something Daniel couldn't quite hear.
“What?”
The voice became clearer.
“Then I haven't arrived yet.”
The line went dead.
Daniel called reception.
The receptionist answered immediately.
“Sorry,” Daniel said. “Someone just rang my room asking for thirteen.”
There was a pause.
“Who?”
“I don't know.”
Another pause.
Longer this time.
“Mr Mercer, please don't answer the telephone again tonight.”
Daniel laughed.
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
Something in her voice stopped him laughing.
“Why?”
The receptionist did not answer.
Instead she said, “If you hear anything in the corridor, stay inside your room.”
Then she hung up.
1:13 a.m.
Daniel woke to knocking.
Three slow knocks.
Not at his door.
At the wall beside his bed.
He lay perfectly still.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
The sound was coming through the wall separating his room from the missing space between twelve and fourteen.
Daniel switched on the bedside lamp.
The telephone rang.
He remembered what the receptionist had told him.
He let it ring.
After the seventh ring, it stopped.
The knocking stopped with it.
Daniel sat upright for several minutes, listening.
Nothing.
Then somebody tried the handle of his door.
Once.
Twice.
Daniel crossed the room and looked through the peephole.
The corridor was empty.
But something had changed.
There were now three doors opposite the stairwell.
12.
13.
14.
Daniel opened his door.
He knew immediately that this was a bad idea.
The corridor was colder than before. Not simply cold — abandoned cold. The sort that seemed to have been waiting undisturbed for years.
Room 13 stood between twelve and fourteen.
Its door was dark wood.
The brass numbers were scratched and tarnished.
A thin line of yellow light showed underneath.
Daniel stepped closer.
From inside came the faint sound of a telephone ringing.
He should have gone downstairs.
Instead, he touched the handle.
The door opened by itself.
Room 13
The room looked almost identical to his.
Almost.
The wallpaper was older. The television was a heavy wooden box with a curved glass screen. A suitcase sat open on the luggage rack.
Clothes lay across the bed.
Men's clothes.
Daniel stepped inside.
On the desk was a newspaper.
He looked at the date.
17 October 1986.
The telephone rang.
Daniel flinched.
It sat beside the bed.
Cream coloured.
Yellowed buttons.
Exactly like the telephone in his room.
It rang again.
Daniel picked it up.
“Hello?”
A voice answered.
His own voice.
“Is this Room 13?”
Daniel couldn't speak.
On the other end, his voice continued.
“Hello? I asked if this is Room 13.”
Daniel slowly looked toward the mirror above the desk.
There was somebody standing behind him.
A man in a rain-soaked coat.
His face was grey.
Water dripped from his hair onto the carpet.
Daniel spun around.
Nobody was there.
He looked back at the mirror.
The man remained.
And now Daniel recognised him.
It was the man whose voice had called him earlier.
The man in the mirror raised one finger to his lips.
Then pointed toward the telephone.
Daniel still held the receiver.
His own voice was breathing on the other end.
“Who are you?” Daniel asked.
The answer came immediately.
“I'm in fourteen.”
Daniel's stomach tightened.
“No you're not.”
“I just checked in.”
Daniel looked at the newspaper again.
1986.
He looked at the wet man in the mirror.
The man's lips moved.
No sound came from him.
But Daniel understood the words.
Don't answer him.
Daniel dropped the receiver.
The lights went out.
The guest book
Daniel remembered running.
He remembered the corridor stretching far longer than it should have.
He remembered passing Room 14 three times without reaching the stairs.
Then he remembered nothing until he found himself in the hotel lobby.
The receptionist was waiting behind the desk.
She did not seem surprised to see him.
“You opened it,” she said.
Daniel slammed his room key onto the counter.
“What is that room?”
The receptionist looked toward the stairs.
“Something this hotel should have got rid of a long time ago.”
“You can't get rid of a room?”
“We tried.”
She opened a drawer beneath the desk.
Inside was an enormous leather guest book.
She turned through the pages until she found October 1986.
One entry had been circled.
Room 13.
A man named Peter Vale.
“He disappeared during a storm,” she said. “His car was found in the river the following morning.”
“The man in the mirror?”
She nodded.
“But he wasn't the first.”
She turned backwards.
1961.
Room 13.
1948.
Room 13.
1922.
Room 13.
Every few decades, another name.
Then she turned forward.
Past 1986.
Past pages filled with thousands of guests.
Until she reached the final page.
There was only one entry.
Written in fresh black ink.
Daniel Mercer.
Room 13.
Daniel stared at his name.
“I didn't write that.”
“I know.”
The receptionist closed the book.
Daniel stepped backwards.
“What happens now?”
She looked genuinely sorry.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Whether somebody answers you.”
The next guest
The road reopened shortly before dawn.
Daniel left without sleeping.
He drove for two hours before his phone finally found a signal.
Seven missed calls appeared at once.
All from the same number.
The Ashdown Hotel.
Daniel pulled onto the side of the road.
His phone rang again.
He nearly threw it onto the passenger seat.
Instead, after several seconds, he answered.
Nobody spoke.
Then came the sound of rain.
A man's breathing.
And finally a voice.
Not Peter Vale.
Not Daniel.
A stranger.
“Hello? Reception said this phone was connected to Room 13.”
Daniel gripped the steering wheel.
He could have hung up.
He should have hung up.
Instead he heard himself ask:
“What room are you in?”
The stranger answered.
“Fourteen.”
Daniel closed his eyes.
From somewhere very far away, he heard three slow knocks.
Not through the telephone.
From the boot of his car.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
And on the hotel guest book, beside Daniel Mercer's name, someone quietly wrote a time of departure.