The hotel had been closed for six years.
A mid-century concrete structure with a flat roof and a faded blue marquee, once part of a chain that lost its franchise rights and dwindled into vacancy. The Archive’s entry on it contained only a few notes: municipal complaints about noise during its final months, an unfinished insurance claim, and the vague phrase “structural irregularities,” flagged by a city inspector who never filed a follow-up.
I arrived at 09:14 after a slow drive through coastal fog. The demolition crew wouldn’t begin work until the following week. The building stood alone at the end of a frontage road, its windows blank and dark, the air salted by wind off the water.
Room 224 was the one referenced in the Archive request.
When I unlocked the door, the first thing I noticed was the smell—stale air, damp carpet, and something like pencil shavings baked into old paper.
A single bare bulb worked when I tried the switch.
The wallpaper on the far wall hung loose at the corners.
At 09:17, I approached the peeling section.
The wallpaper was patterned in thin blue stripes, vertical. But beneath it, through the rips and curls, I could make out thin black lines—straight, architectural, deliberate.
I peeled back a larger section.
Beneath the wallpaper someone had drawn a floorplan directly onto the wall. A precise sketch of Room 224: same dimensions; same placement of bed, desk, door, bathroom. Every measurement labeled, every corner squared.
But the drawn room differed in one critical way.
It had more doors.
Not simply moved or mirrored.
Additional.
A narrow door behind the headboard. A second door on the north wall leading to a shallow hallway. A corner cutout marked “Niche A.”
And a long, winding passage labeled only:
Observation Corridor — Do Not Enter
At the bottom, in smaller handwriting, someone had added:
This part unfinished. Wait for the rest.
At 09:22, I tested the wall.
I pressed my knuckles to the section where one of the drawn doors would be.
The drywall flexed slightly—not hollow exactly, but lighter than the rest of the wall. As though a cavity lay behind it.
I moved along the wall, checking for studs.
The stud finder beeped inconsistently, registering empty cavities where the original blueprint should have contained framing.
I consulted the building’s floorplan on my tablet. According to the archived drawings, Room 224 should back directly against a structural partition—no hallways, no storage alcoves.
But the wall did not behave like a solid partition.
At 09:25, I peeled back more wallpaper.
More lines. More notes.
Someone had annotated the floorplan with cryptic comments:
He stayed here last time.
Vent too low—adjust.
Noise carries. Reinforce observation point.
Avoid contact until drawing is complete.
At the corner near the bathroom, a small X was marked with the phrase:
Sound transfer strongest here.
I knelt, pressed my ear to the marked spot.
At first I heard nothing.
Then, faintly, a whisper of movement. Not mechanical. Not plumbing. Something like fabric shifting in a narrow space.
Something moving on the other side of the wall.
At 09:31, I switched off the room’s light.
In the half-dark, the drawn floorplan seemed to deepen. Shadows caught along the graphite lines, making the extra doors look almost recessed.
As my eyes adjusted, I noticed a faint glow near the baseboard—an irregular seam of pale light leaking from a place there should be no light.
I approached.
The seam traced exactly where the drawn corridor ran.
I pressed my palm to the baseboard. It was warm.
The rest of the wall was cold.
At 09:35, I examined the headboard.
In the drawn layout, an entire hidden doorway lay behind it. In the real room, the headboard was bolted to the wall.
I pulled the bed out a few inches.
Behind it, the wallpaper had been peeled and re-adhered, crudely. Beneath the reattached strip, faint graphite marks showed through like veins beneath skin.
A door had been sketched there.
Someone had tried to hide it, then reversed the attempt.
I peeled the wallpaper.
The graphite door was fully formed: frame, hinges, even a handle drawn in minimalist detail.
At the bottom of the drawn door, a note:
He won’t check here until later.
The handwriting was not the same as the earlier annotations.
At 09:41, I tested the wall behind the sketched door.
A slight draft issued from a hairline split in the drywall—too thin to be seen before the wallpaper came off.
Air, moving through an interior cavity.
I leaned close.
Something moved on the other side.
A scrape, soft and rhythmic, like someone shifting their weight while trying not to be heard.
I checked the bathroom vent. Silent. Dry. Dust-lined.
The movement came again, slightly higher.
Directly behind where the drawn eye-level was.
At 09:44, I discovered the second floorplan.
It lay beneath a separate layer of wallpaper in the corner opposite the bed. Smaller. Rougher. Drawn in softer graphite.
This one was less of a diagram and more of a prediction.
Not a layout of the room, but of me.
Small arrows pointed to places where I was expected to stand:
You (initial) — by the door
You (observational) — at headboard
You (confirming) — foot of bed
You (final) — corner near bathroom
Someone had charted my movements before I made them.
The path I had taken so far matched exactly.
At 09:48, the building shifted.
A faint vibration passed through the floorboards—localized, not structural. Not the whole building. Just this room.
Something behind the wall responded to my presence.
The light leaking from the baseboard pulsed once. Then again, in a rhythmic pattern.
A heartbeat.
But not mine.
I stepped back.
On the drawn floorplan, a new line had appeared in faint graphite, as if freshly added.
I ran my finger over it.
Graphite smudged onto my skin.
Someone—something—was still drawing.
At 09:51, sound carried through the bathroom wall.
A faint breath.
Then a whisper.
Too soft to interpret, but close enough that I felt the air move near the tile.
I turned off my recorder and pressed my ear to the spot marked sound transfer strongest here.
The whisper came again.
Clearer this time.
Not words. Just the cadence of speech. Someone speaking on the other side in a low, steady tone—pausing, then continuing.
I heard no second voice.
Just the speaker, and the faint scrape of something moving against the unseen corridor wall.
At 09:54, the drawn diagram expanded.
When I turned from the bathroom, another two feet of wallpaper had curled off the wall on its own.
Beneath it, new features had appeared:
A small rectangular room labeled Viewing Point.
A second annotation:
Almost ready. Don’t enter yet.
And below that:
If he listens too long, they’ll hear him.
I stepped away from the wall.
The floor was cold beneath my boots.
Behind the drawn Viewing Point, a section of wall—real, physical wall—thumped once, from inside.
A muffled impact.
Like a hand pressing outward.
At 09:57, I reached for the door to leave.
Before I touched the handle, something whispered through the wall again—this time louder, sharper, too swift to parse but unmistakably directed at me.
It came from the corridor sketched beneath the wallpaper, not from any structure in the blueprint.
The breath behind it was wrong.
Too close.
Too aligned with the height marked for the You (final) label.
The floorplan beneath the wallpaper had predicted my last position:
A small X, right beside the door.
The annotation next to it read:
He stands here before he realizes the door won’t open.
I pulled the door handle.
It didn’t move.
Locked from the inside—no mechanism, no latch, just resistance.
Something on the other side of the wall moved toward the bathroom, footsteps light and slow.
The baseboard light pulsed again, brighter this time.
At 09:59, new graphite lines appeared in real time.
Right before my eyes, the drawn corridor extended another six inches as if the unseen draftsman were completing the map.
And at the end of that new line:
A small room I had not seen before.
Labeled:
Final Viewing
Occupied
The air behind the wall shifted.
The footsteps stopped directly opposite where I stood.
Something exhaled, and the wallpaper fluttered inward, like fabric pulled by breath.
I stepped back involuntarily.
The door behind me clicked—unlocked on its own.
I left immediately.
As I crossed the threshold, the bulb above flickered and went out.
The last thing I saw inside the room, in the faint gray light, was a new line being drawn beneath the wallpaper near the floor.
A simple arrow.
Pointing directly at the door.
[End of recovered material]