Weird motel corridor by Pat Groves
There’s still no sign of any sort of clerk, so I give in to temptation, and vault over the counter for a closer look around the reception area. The first thing that strikes me is that there’s no TV. When did you last see a night-shift clerk in a crappy little motel who didn’t have a TV? There’s a closed-circuit camera though, cycling through the corridors and car park. It reckons the place is empty, but that’s hardly news.
According to the desk log, there are eight rooms occupied tonight. Mine isn’t one of them. The keys are kept in a cashbox in a small, messy office just off the reception, and it looks like a bunch of them are indeed missing. There’s another cashbox too, with a couple of hundred in it. Apart from that, it looks like invoices, receipts, a big file of check-in forms, all the usual rubbish. No sign of my bag of tricks, of course. The invoices are addressed to one Joe Sansom. Presumably he’s the manager, because this is supposed to be one of Weir’s places.
A flicker of motion catches my eye, and I glance up at the CCTV monitor. It’s showing a stretch of corridor. For a moment, just a moment, there’s someone standing there, staring up at the camera. At me. Then there’s nothing there again, and I don’t know if I’m imagining things or not.
I try to tell myself that it’s my mind playing games, but I’m not convinced.
Poll results:
I think I ought to…