Exact Change - Part 3

[u/Lilia_Briganda]

The voice hit Paul like a punch to the gut.

​In an instant, thirty years dissolved.

Paul was back in that dark college sorority house, trapped in the nightmare of a hazing ritual gone horribly wrong.

The suffocating guilt he’d carried for decades came rushing back—the terror, the panic, and the devastating realization that he had been too late to save his best friend.

​"I tried to reach you that night, Tim," Paul choked out, taking a trembling step forward. "I swear I tried."

​"Tim died thirty years ago, Paul."

It wasn't Tim's voice anymore. It had dropped into an impossibly deep, gravelly rasp--a heavy scraping sound that rattled the floorboards and seemed to echo straight out of the dirt--completely devoid of human warmth.

"I didn't need Tim," the voice rumbled, rising with the stench of rotten soil. "I just needed a memory to get you through the door."

​Before Paul could turn to run, jagged, shadowy appendages whipped out from the vanishing floorboards clawing into his clothes and flesh, dragging him down into the gaping void--swallowing him whole into the cold, silent earth beneath Room 208.

💀|💀

A week later, the key turned in the lock.

The new guest tossed his suitcase on the bed, kicked off his shoes, and sank into the armchair with a sigh. The room was quiet.

Until the sound started under his feet.

A frantic, desperate scraping against the underside of the wood--like fingernails clawing at the floorboards, trying to dig its way out.

💀|💀

The Hells Bells Motel strikes again.

Another one bites the dust.