The Last Room at Wren House

Editorial note: This is an original ExtremeWrites Editorial horror story. It is not a copy, translation, or adaptation of a modern copyrighted story.

I took the night porter job at Wren House because the place became almost silent after midnight. The hotel had once served railway passengers, but only two floors were still in use. The third floor had been closed after a ceiling collapse, and the manager told me never to send anyone above room 218.

On my fourth night, a woman in a grey coat entered just after two. She was dry although rain hammered the glass doors. She placed an old brass key on the desk and said, “Three-seventeen.”

I explained that the third floor was closed. She only asked whether the room had been aired.

The tag on her key really did read 317.

I called the manager. He went silent when I described her and told me not to follow. By the time I looked up, she had entered the stairwell.

The third-floor chain hung open. Beyond it, the corridor smelled of wet plaster and lavender. Every brass room number had been removed except 317 at the far end.

The woman waited there. “You kept me waiting last time too,” she said, and unlocked the door.

Inside, a lamp burned beside a neatly made bed. A railway timetable dated 1968 hung on the wall. I heard a train approaching although the nearest active track was far away. The floor began to tremble.

She sat on the bed. “He promised he would come back before the last train.”

The sound became unbearable. I shut my eyes. When I opened them, the room was ruined and empty: broken plaster, black mould, no furniture. The key lay at my feet.

The manager arrived twenty minutes later. He told me that in 1968 a bride had waited in 317 for a fiancé killed in a rail accident that night. She vanished from the hotel before morning. Her body was found days later beside the abandoned track.

Before demolition began, I checked the key cabinet one last time. The brass key for 317 was hanging there again, dry and polished.

I resigned before sunset.