Groaning after a long drive I let my bag fall to the floor with a loud thud, the thin and threadbare carpet doing little to mitigate the impact of the heavy full bag. Throwing my head back I close my eyes for a moment, enjoying being off the road and stretching my legs after hours and hours behind the wheel.
I never would have made a trip like this, driving hours up the coast only to be heading back after a day or so, however with my mother's birthday around the corner I had been forced to make the journey in order to keep the peace. While the day had been filled with gorgeous summer weather I simply didn't have the energy to enjoy it, my mind turning to the fact that while I had to drive up I wouldn't be staying at the house. Thanks to her taking a recent interest in home design my mother had started to remodel the house herself, starting with the guest room. As it stood my choice was to sleep in a room without floors, the couch, or find a hotel.
Thankfully, despite the summer season causing most of the accommodation nearby to be filled up by tourists, I managed to get the exact room I had wanted. Thanks to losing my job at the local college a few months back my savings had been running low, if I was staying anywhere it had to be cheap and the Seaside Inn certainly met that bill.
Tilting my head back forward I let out a sigh, drinking in the dark dank room as the light streaming through the open door struggled to illuminate it. The carpet is downright ancient, a geometric pattern to faded burgundy and navy blue with white lines carving it up.
A large double mattress rests on a simple wooden frame, the base appearing ever so slightly small in its width while being unnervingly high off the ground as to fit several shelves and bag space underneath. The baby blue sheets, while looking clean, look less than comfortable and appear to be fairly scratchy. A thicker duvet sits atop the bed, a red and green tartan cover clashing with practically everything else in the room.
The walls are covered in a set of floral wallpaper, with a repeating set of pink flowers running down from the ceiling to the floor on a cobalt blue background. A thick cable hangs from the center of the yellowing white plaster ceiling, a rippling orange glass shade resting on the end and obscuring the bulb within. Despite being right by the beach, the sounds of the waves still just barely reaching me from where I stand, the room itself lacks any sort of window.
To the left of the entryway sits the strangest sight. While the tiled white bathroom is fully exposed, the cheap detachable showerhead being visible from the doorway along with the rather large mirror lining a major section of the bathroom wall, another door sits right beside it.
"Was that just...Did they install the door wrong?" I mutter to myself, shuffling my way towards the offending object.
Reaching the large and heavy-looking chestnut door I tentatively reach out for the round and heavily worn brass handle. This has to lead to another room, at least based on the layout I had seen as I came in. My heart races and my palms grow clammy as I wrap my fingers around the doorknob, my anxiety peaking as my mind floods with worst-case scenarios.
"I can't just...barge into someone's room" I mutter, fiddling with the handle a little as I find it turning rather easily. It definitely wasn't locked, the subtle feeling of the doorknob shifting the internal mechanism of the door making the fact readily known.
As I twist the handle all the way I give the door a little shove. Despite what little force I was applying the door didn't budge, the frame blocking it in as I try to push it open. Realizing my mistake I give the doorknob a slight tug only to find a great deal of resistance. It was like the door was vacuum sealed shut, or perhaps super-glued around the edges, as each pull seemed to do little at all to rip the door open.
"Guess they sealed it up" I muse, running my hands through my sweat-slicked hair as I remained blissfully unaware of just what lay beyond the closed door for the time being.
Over the years the site of the Seaside Inn had been many things, from the family home of town's founders to a makeshift hospital to the cheap hotel it now was it certainly had a storied history. However, despite what could be found in the town hall archives one aspect of its history remained buried to this day.
For decades the home had been used for all manner of occult rituals and practices, the eccentric owners utilizing the many rooms to host visiting practitioners to perform their rites in peace and away from prying eyes as well as share in their esoteric knowledge. The location of the house had been chosen largely for this purpose, aligning with the moon and stars on the summer solstice in a manner the builders had deemed 'fortuitous'.
While most of these rituals and summonings had never yielded results one had and still clung to the building to this very day. Decades prior, at the height of the summer solstice, a bridge was formed between our world and another inside what would one day become the Seaside Inn. The large chestnut door forming the foundation of this connection, the large bathroom mirror acting as a viewing window between the worlds. This other world seemed much like our own, a mirroring timeline that had been able to make contact thanks to the other side also attempting the exact same thing in the exact same manner.
For those scant few hours that the doorway remained open the two sides conversed in an attempt to discern just what if anything was distinct between the two worlds. While most everything appeared the same minor variance soon began to emerge, a different name here and there or slight differences in appearance.
As time grew shorter the parties decided to take the next step, crossing the thresholds and exploring each other's worlds in kind. However, as the final person stepped through the large chestnut door it slammed shut behind them and each were trapped in these unfamiliar timelines. Despite being locked out, the mirror still appeared to work as before for those beyond the threshold as a faint outline of their former home remained on the surface for days after the ritual had ended.
Vowing to return next year the various occultists went their separate ways, eager to explore their new lives respectively. While most simply got to explore right off the bat, some had to 'adapt' to their new world. Slowly but surely their bodies were molded to fit their new life, with hair shimmering and shifting colors for the lucky few while those less lucky found guts bulging out and hair rapidly receding. The more they interacted with their temporary home the further the changes progressed, hats leaving a ring of rapidly altered follicles where it lay and food causing the flab to grow from the inside out. Despite looking various degrees of difference from the person they were pretending to be no one appeared to notice, their reflections betraying the new form they appeared to have to the rest of the world at large.
Over the course of the year they found that what at first had seemed to be small changes rippled out through their lives, compounding and dragging them further from the life they had known. A different name changed how people had treated one of them leading to bullying in their childhood and leaving them with far less friends than their former life, another found that in losing their blonde hair they never caught the eye of the love of their life and as such had an entirely new family to navigate. The earlier the change the more it appeared to balloon outwards, tipping their lives further and further away from what they were once familiar with.
After the year of joyous exploration for some and terrible languishing for others the group eventually returned to what would one day be the Seaside Inn in the hope of returning to their homes. However, while the door was able to be opened once again the group on the other side was different to the first. For a moment both sides stood in confusion and disappointment, not recognizing those on the other side as their old selves. The bridge between worlds had reformed, but not to the same world as the previous year.
Some eagerly switched over to the unknown, lying and doing whatever it took to try and get better lives in another world. Others fumed and fought with their other-selves and with those that had proposed the ritual in the first place, angered by the fact that it was unlikely they would ever return home. As the doorway began to wane once more the unthinkable happened, the fighting and feuding escalating to the murder of the homes owner and the organizer of these terrible events.
From that point on the house remained vacant, the door reopening each year to find no one on this side to open it. It wasn't until the house became the Seaside Inn that it began to see use once more as the occasional unlucky guest would stumble upon the magic during their stay.
Leaving the door behind I shuffle my way towards the bathroom, eager to splash my sweaty tired face with some cool water in the hopes of waking up. I still had so much to do today, my stomach growling from skipping both breakfast and lunch so I could make the early check-in time reminding me I needed to eat while the nagging thought in my mind demanded that I find any sort of present for my mother.
With a droning sigh I lean over the uncomfortably low sink, my back aching as I bend down low as to not splash water everywhere. Wiping the sweat from my brow and sleep from my eyes I stand back up, somewhat refreshed and somewhat refocused.
As I look into the mirror I'm forced to double take at what I see. The room reflected in the surface is exactly like my own, from the ancient wallpaper to the tired carpet in desperate need of replacement. However, what is in the room is entirely different. Twisting to look over my shoulder I check to see if my stuff was still where I left it, my large bag resting right by the open door, before snapping back to the mirror.
My bag is nowhere to be found, my heart sinking as I wonder if this is a two-way mirror or even just a simple window. On the other side and inside the other room I spy...
No comments:
Post a Comment