2012-366 Day 206 – Hillside Lodge II

Read Part 1 here. If. You. Dare.

Making our way to the door of our room, suddenly a loud rumble could be heard. A train ripped by directly across the street, horn blaring as it receded into the late night mists.

Yup, right behind the railing on the other side of the streets were train tracks.

After recovering from the shock of the unexpected train, I pulled out the card key and approached the dark room. The card slid into the slot and the door lock gave way with an audible click. I pulled down on the handle and breached the threshold revealing . . .

I swear I backed as far into the corner as I could and almost had the phone in my face to make it look as big as I could.

Pretty much the smallest hotel room I had ever seen. Jess and I holding hands could reach both walls and that was without even stretching. Furniture was jammed into every available square inch of floor, with the only unoccupied space leading either into the postage stamp sized bathroom or the “walk in” closet which had the door removed. The bed was tiny, only a double size, but still managed to dominate the vast majority of the room.

With a room so small it was very easy to quickly familiarize ourselves with the little pieces of CSI evidence that had apparently either been missed or not cleaned up from the previous occupants, which was odd since Jess’ first comment upon entering the room was how it smelled of bleach. Apparently they did not use enough bleach to get rid of the suspicious specks above the bed.

I’ve seen this on CSI before. It’s not arterial spray, so maybe it was just a paper cut?

And they definitely did not use enough spackle to cover the suspicious holes in the wall.

Either someone REALLY can’t hang a picture, or can’t aim a shotgun. Actually, you know what, maybe both?

This kind of inattention to detail absolutely littered the place. Remember how I mentioned the furniture was crammed into every corner of the place? I’m pretty sure this was so it didn’t try to escape.

This nightstand isn’t going ANYWHERE!

It’s like the we were in the castle from Beauty and the Beast, you know, if it was the size of a drive up locksmith stand (you know the ones I am talking about right? The little buildings on the corner of the lots. Sometimes sell flowers or were photo developing stands back when that was a thing? No? Darn.) or some other tiny structure. There was a desk with two chairs between the closet and bathroom.

Right under that mirror that makes the room look so much bigger, right?

Hey, wait a minute, I said TWO chairs. Where did the other one go? Granted it would be blocking the bathroom door if it was in the appropriate place, but we can’t have unaccounted for furniture.

Ah ha! Found it trying to escape!

Perhaps we should have followed the furniture’s lead and headed for the door. especially after going into the door-less closet and discovering it was as empty as a necromancer’s soul and housed just as many skeletons. At least I’m pretty sure it did, I kind of ran out screaming when I looked up and saw the bare light bulb . . . that had NO on switch!

Seriously, I looked for like five minutes and couldn’t figure out how they turned it on.

Yet I could do nothing to appease the dark maw of the closet, since there was no way to shut a door that doesn’t exist.

Nothing says classy like a door jamb with no door.

Resigned to our fate, we brought in our luggage and prepared a bulwark against the dark forces that were sure to assail us that night. Or just threw them on the table, my memory is a little unclear on that one. My refusal to place anything into the dark hole that was the closet left only one other unexplored location, the dark and (with the addition of water) dank portal into a putrid land of terror, an area whose purpose (a place to get clean) was so subverted by its contents that one could actually consider it a true case of irony, if I had any confidence in using the word correctly after all the years of the mainstream butchering it.

I’d step inside to take a picture of the whole thing, but I could never fit all of me in there at one time, some body part kept sticking out.

Where to begin with this vile place? Shall I begin with the coffin-like recess they claimed was a shower? A figurative coffin with just as much access to light as its literal counterpart, so much so that external measures were required to lighten its foreboding corners?

Funny, you normally don’t want to be in the spotlight when you shower.

And by what magic did we beat back the darkness? What force of good could stand up to such a shaded terror?

Let there be . . . you know what, not going to finish that one, probably tiptoeing a few lines as it is.

Although it turns out that you’d probably rather not see what was in the shower in the first place. Maybe the management (or whatever lived here when people weren’t around) was doing us a favor, since pulling the shower curtain closed revealed this lovely tableau of mildew (I hope) on the back of it.

Please don’t be mold . . . please don’t be mold . . . please don’t be mold.

What of the towel rack, which, despite its fortification with, I kid you not here, duct tape . . .

Is there anything you can’t be used for duct tape?

But still gave way fairly easily at the tender touch of my lovely bride and possibly became a weapon for our defense against the darkness? I’d say the room might have been doing us a favor, but I’m pretty sure even the weakest werewolf wouldn’t mistake that for a silver implement and could figure out they easily would rend it in twain. Fortunately it was fairly easy to place back on the wall.

Jess’ face here really sums up the whole experience. Maybe I should have just posted this picture as the sole entry on this topic . . . Nah, this is too much fun.

But the piece de resistance was (of course) our toilet, which came with a cryptic message of foreboding and doom.

Looks pretty harmless, right?

What’s that, you want to see closer? Okay, I risked my life for this next picture, I hope you think it is worth it merely to satisfy your morbid curiosity . . .

You want me to do what?

Yes, it wanted me to reach inside the musty maw and perform minor surgery upon it before being made to perform its intended purpose. Only the next morning after survival was insured did I dare peel back the porcelain dome and discover that tag was an installation instruction and no longer applied to its normal operation. But these were chances I was not going to take in the dark of night, with danger lurking on all sides.

Ah, I figure it is not spoiling too much to reveal that we did indeed survive our ordeal, as otherwise you would not be reading this post. (Or would you? This entry easily could have been set to post in the future . . .) The evil spirits denied us internet access that night, as I could not divine the hotel’s wifi password (the suggested “red rum, red rum” did not work) and I did not want to awaken the keepers again lest they try to imprison us in a yet smaller receptacle. My phone hovered on the edge of usefulness, so no help could be called for, as it was observed that our friends room was just far enough away that they would not hear our screams. We settled into the bed quickly and arranged for an early time of departure so we could leave this place far behind, remaining only to haunt our dreams, nay, nightmares.

So I guess the upshot of all this is not to stay at a location that when you type in “Hillside” the autofill on Google populates “Strangler” before the hotel name as you go to look up reviews. Also don’t assume Expedia knows what in the world they are talking about.

Weight: 229 Loss: 11 lbs – Running Yearly Mileage: 214.6 miles
Volleyball Match Record: 4-2 (10-8 Game Record)
Fitocracy Level: 23 ID: disciplev1