CHAPTER 2

1947 hotel diary.Friday 13.November.

The Linda girl was killed today I devoured her like the meat she was. Her family was none the wiser.





***

The Fletchers had a relatively quiet night, but at 2.00pm Rachel woke up. Someone was outside on the rocks below. Taking care not to wake her parents or her baby brother she rose to the window almost like a shade. It was dark. She could see nothing but a blurry shape. It walked slowly to the side taking great care with each step. Rachel’s breath condensed on the window, her heart started to speed up, she realized what the thing down there was going to do. Her mouth was sealed shut and she couldn’t move. She was locked in this position, her heart rate getting faster. The thing got closer to the rocks. Rachel tried to scream but her throat felt like it had been removed.
It was getting closer

Heart speeding up!

Its arms where spread

Heart reaching its maximum speed!

It took the fall

The heart burst like a punctured balloon.

CHAPTER 3

1952 hotel diary. Tuesday 3. June

A group of teenage backpackers this year. A disgusting set of skin and bone I can’t say I enjoyed them.




***

There was of course no medical help in Bay Reach Point Hotel. In fact (not to anyone’s surprise) the manager was also the hotel doctor. Last night Max and Jessica Fletchers daughter Rachel had a major panic attack and fainted, the next morning after she woke up Rachel was hyperventilating and slightly delusional. She was like 3 radios playing at once, rambling on about strange things she saw last night. This only made the manager smile. It was a sickly smile, partly because he had slight slits in the corners of his mouth. This finally gave Max a chance to strike up a conversation with the hotel manager. All he seemed to get out of this was that his name was Keith and he had spent his entire life on Bay Reach Point.
After a quick examination Keith decided that Rachel just needed to be alone and have some fresh air.

CHAPTER 4


1973 hotel diary.Thursday 23.January.

A young couple out on the balcony, Keith had to repair it after the incident, he was only a child back then.




***
Maybe Keith knew where Rachel was going for fresh air. It was what Keith did when he first saw the silhouettes on the rocks, the hotel spared him because it liked little Keith Springer. But it didn’t favour his parents.


+++
Her feet sunk deeper into the mud. Why had she come here? The waves almost lunged out at her as they crashed against the rocks and the seagulls swooped down howling with laughter. It had started raining and Rachel had gone to the rocks to investigate what she had seen last night. The thing had thrown itself of the cliff but she could see no footprints. Rachel was a normal popular teenage girl, she had a boyfriend, she wasn’t bitchy and she was polite. Most significantly she didn’t believe in ghosts or the supernatural. What she saw last night was real. The rain started to get heavier, threatening to wash away her evidence. She scanned the ground, nothing, no dropped items, and no signs of a struggle. It was almost as if the hotel had made the thing go of the cliff. She started to walk away but suddenly she heard a crunch from under her feet. Rachel quickly turned over the grassy mud; she had found a baby’s rattle. And as she held it up to the light someone grabbed her from behind.

CHAPTER 5

1995 hotel diary.Monday 26.September.

Not many guests. I am HuNgRy…..} hungry/. HunGry[[. I even gave little Keith a rattle but he still couldn’t bring in any food.




***

Max had come to Bay Reach Point because his house was being decorated and this hotel was the cheapest place, he hadn’t expected the place to be 5 star but this was bad. The rain had gotten heavier. He was worried that something had happened to his daughter, she had been gone two hours and Keith said if she wasn’t back by 7.00pm he would go looking for her. He thought she might have gone off to get something to eat or gone to have some alone time, Keith said a lot of teenage girls enjoy the hotel because it had so much space. What mainly disturbed Max was that due to the rain the phone lines where down and it was getting dark.
++++
As 7.00pm drew closer Jessica started freaking out. She was a time bomb waiting to go off. Keith couldn’t find Rachel anywhere and said that if she was in someone’s room they would have reported it. He had checked in the kitchen, games room, dining hall and the grounds. He had even checked in the old pool to make sure she hadn’t fallen in to the empty basin and had an accident. In order to calm her down Max decided to drive to the nearest town and get help. Jessica went back upstairs to see her son and Keith offered to help start up the Prius.

CHAPTER 6

2000 house diary. Monday 12. February

More rooms in the hotel. Keith is making room for my meals. I offered him a gift but he would not take it. It was a test; if he decided to leave I would send the front doorframe crashing down on him……




***

The rain crashed down on the roof of the car. The petrol meter started to drop like a fly with a broken wing. Max feared he wouldn’t get to the nearest town before his car died. The wind had come in gale-force on his front window; the wiper snapped of and flew behind the car like a plastic bag in the wind. That was when the hail started to fall.Water covered the window. He was blind; all that was in front of him was a blurry haze. The Prius hit a bump on the side of the road. Max went flying like a ragdoll, slamming into the insides of the car, destroying his internal organs. The car rolled of the bank of the road and stopped. Max realized thatthe Priuses electric battery had probably gotten water in it; he wished his wife hadn’t talked him into getting an electric car.Then the Prius burst into flame.

++++
Little Tom fletcher was lying in bed with his mum. He hadn’t seen his sister anywhere. He couldn’t sleep, he hated the smell of the hotel and it kept him awake. Suddenly Tom heard thumping in the room next door. Someone was moving around. He had learnt about hotels in his nursery, it was where lots of people went to stay. During his time here Tom hadn’t seen anyone else or heard any remotely human sounds.He decided to investigate the noises next door.Tom tiptoed across the room and out into the hallway. As he walked the floorboards creaked almost like warning signs to tell Tom to go back, but this did not stop him. He went up to the door and tuned the knob.

The smell almost knocked him over, it was as bad as an international cesspool. As he slowly walked in he stepped in something. It was sticky and crispy. Tom knew what it was; it was the gooey stuff that comes out of you when you fall over, the thing in your body that they teach you about at school. Blood. The further Tom went in to the room the more putrid the smell became. It was dark but Tom could make out the shape of somebody lying in bed. The person’s tummy didn’t seem to be going up and down, so Tom suspected he had….. ..He couldn’t remember the word; it was one that mummy and daddy used. Yes now he remembered… the word was PASSED. The man on the bed had PASSED. Tom backed out of the room. As he reached for the door he tripped over something. It was a book; he picked it up and held it to the moonlight. Holetel dariaray perhaps he was reading it wrong, hotels can’t make diaries. He wasn’t very good at reading maybe he would go and ask his mum for help.

CHAPTER 7

2006 hotel diary.Tuesday 28.March.

The man in his bed I swallowed whole. But I spat him out because he tasted like sewage.



2010 hotel diary.Friday 16.June .

Mrs Samson next, I made her take a dive of the cliff onto the rocks.



2012 hotel diary.Sunday 4.August.

The little fletcher girl saw Mrs Samson’s ghost, I saw that Keith dealt with her. Later that day her father went for help, I saw to it that Keith loosened the battery so water could get in.



***

Jessica Fletcher screamed. She closed the book, picked up Tom and ran. The hallways seemed to go on forever; she was running through the corridors of her mind. If Keith had killed her husband and daughter then she wasn’t going to let him kill Tom. But it didn’t feel like Keith was trying to kill them, it felt like the house was.
++++
Jessica decided to cut through the old pool at the back of the hotel and then through the kitchen. The only thing on her mind was escaping this hotel but as she opened the door to the pool she rememberedsomething Keith said “I checked in the old pool to make sure she hadn’t fallen into the empty basin and had an accident”, but it was too late. Keith smashed through the pool door like a hungry animal and grabbed Jessica by the scruff of the neck and threw her into the empty basin. Tom ran as fast as his legs would let him and hid in a cupboard in the reception. He swore he could hear the faint screams of his mother.

CHAPTER 8

Two things were going through Jessica Fletchers mind while she was lying in the dried out old pool. That her legs and one arm had been broken due to the fall and that she was lying right next to the corpse of her daughter. She remembered her husband’s confusion over the full logbook when they first arrived at the hotel, she understood now that the hotel was full. It was full of the dead.

Keith stood over her, his eyes on fire and his fist clenched around a cricket bat. He was like an icon or statue; he was completely motionless, until he brought the bat down on her healthy arm. Jessica screamed, her whole body felt numb and she started to go into shock. Keith left the pool and went up to a control console on the side of the basin. As he turned the leaver Jessica realized what he was going to do. Then the pool started to fill with water.
She could not swim and her broken limbs pulled her down. The water got higher and she gasped for air like a fish out of water. The last thing Jessica Fletcher saw was her daughter’s dead body floating up towards the dim light.

++++
Tom was still in the cupboard; his vision was restricted to a small crack he could peek out of. He heard footsteps behind him and his heart speeded up. It was Keith. He staggered up to the front door and rested on the door frame. There was something about Keith Tom hated, maybe it was the smell, the look, or even the hair but it wasn’t that, it was that Keith reeked of the dead, as if he was the last man standing from hundreds of battles. Yes he was a survivor all right, but not for long. The frame buckled under his wait like the walls of Jericho and the arch collapsed. On Sunday the 4th Keith was crushed by a door frame. It was as if Tom willed it to happen, as if Tom had a connection with the hotel.



2012 hotel diary.Sunday 4.August.

Keith was no longer needed so I disposed of him. Now I have found a new friend, little Tom Fletcher has decided to help me.
I can’t say I enjoyed his family. I am still hungry.