Page 9 of Room Serviced
“How do you know my apartment’s circuit-breaker situation?”
“Everyone’s apartment is like that.” There were probably apartments that weren’t, but Sloane had never lived in one. Even her parents’ house in Last Chance had a one-hot-appliance-at-a-time rule. “I mean. I think they are.”
“They did keep building houses after 1970,” Max said, and Sloane laughed.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Yeah, me neither,” he said, shrugging and smiling, and there was that weird warm twist in her stomach again. “Anyway, the doorway should be here somewhere.”
“I thought we weren’t going into the attic.” Her stomach dropped at the thought.
“No, there’s apparently creaking and moaning from the attic,” Max said, consulting the iPad and then looking up at the ceiling. “It’s the crawlspace we’re not looking at.”
Confirmation that there was at least one enclosed space she didn’t have to enter should have made Sloane feel better. Instead, it mostly reminded her that the crawlspace existed, which meant she had to think about going into the crawlspace, and that made her skin feel unpleasantly cold.
“Ah,” she said. “So we’re looking for a door?”
“Yeah, but it’s not any of these,” Max said, still distracted. Which was probably good because Sloane was pretty sure she was making a face. She’d never been much good at not making a face.
They were in an interior hallway with white walls, dark hardwood floors, and matching doors. It wasn’t inherently spooky, but the longer they stood there, the more Sloane remembered every creepy movie she’d ever seen that featured a hallway.
To distract herself, she leaned in, her arm against Max’s, and looked at the iPad.
“Here’s us,” he said, turning it so she could see. “We’re right there on this floor, and the entrance to the attic is”—he swiped to another picture—“on this floor here. Which should be…” He gestured to indicate the hallway, which had zero attic entrances.
“Can I see?” Sloane asked, and Max handed over the iPad. The pictures—both hand-sketched layouts of the building—looked like they’d been drawn at different times, by different people, with differing artistic abilities. It made them hard to match up. After a moment, Sloane sat down on the floor so she could think.
“Okay,” she said, after a minute. “I think the entrance is off this room, right here.”
Max crouched behind her, down on one knee.
They weren’t touching, but she could feel his breath on her shoulder and the closeness of his chest to her back, and when he said, “Yeah, I think you’re right,” it sent a shiver trickling down her spine.
The Hotel Bellwether was a fucking maze. At least, the original part was. The first building on the site had been considerably smaller than what was there now, and none of the expansions seemed to have taken the existing buildings into consideration.
At least, that was what Sloane told herself as she stared at several different walls in several different storerooms, wondering why the attic stairs clearly indicated in the blueprints weren’t there.
“Maybe they’re sealed off,” she said, scanning the wall and ceiling yet again. “Maybe that’s why the ghost is so pissed off. They can’t get out.”
“There’s probably a missed marketing opportunity here,” Max said, sounding thoughtful. “They should renovate the attic, put some rooms up there, and make it Flowers in the Attic themed.”
Sloane turned to stare. Max blinked, and after a moment, raised his eyebrows.
“Have you ever actually read Flowers in the Attic?” she asked.
“I think I started it once when I was, like…thirteen, but I only got a couple pages in. Why?”
“Right,” Sloane said, and looked back down at the iPad. Max had internet access and knew how to Google; he could find out about Flowers in the Attic for himself. “I want to try one more thing before we give up.”
“This can’t be up to code,” Sloane said. A thumbnail-sized chunk of plaster landed on Max’s hair as the ceiling opened up with a sound she could only describe as dire. “There’s no way we’re supposed to be doing this.”
Dust and white bits fell gently to the floor—all lit by a single light fixture in the middle of the ceiling—as Max coaxed down some contraption that looked positively medieval. They were in a small room, surrounded by shelves piled high with sheets and blankets.
“Brian said we had free rein of the place except the top level of the library, the reception area, and any open bars and restaurants. And most of the rooms, obviously,” Max said. The trapdoor descended with a jolt and a creak, and he reached up to unfold more stairs. A ladder? An unholy combination of ladder and stairs? “And this is clearly a storeroom with an attic entrance, so we’re in the clear.”
He got the stairs/ladder all the way down, placed its feet on the floor, then shoved against it like he was testing his weight. It didn’t budge.
“Does Brian know there’s a creepy attic entrance in a storeroom that’s in the back part of the old building, away from the other storerooms? That can only be accessed by one set of stairs clearly built before fire codes existed?”
