Sea Mist Ocean Resort
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A small resort town on the coast of Maryland, USA. The sea here is quite rough, and the waves have a tendency to get bigger in the winter months.
A small, family-owned motel situated right off of the highway that leads into Sea Mist, it’s mostly popular with vacationers, but there are also some long-term guests who prefer more peace and quiet than a larger hotel might provide. It was one such guest, an older man named John Smith, who had rented this room for over two weeks now.
John had been coming to Sea Mist since he was a boy. His parents would rent a cottage at the beach for him and his sisters every summer, so they could spend as much time together as possible before school started again. He loved being around the water; playing by the shore or boating out past the breakwater.
When he grew up and got married to his wife Susan, she joined him on these trips, bringing along their daughters Jennifer and Rebecca. Now both girls were grown up: Jennifer married young to Mark Johnson and moved away after only a few years of marriage (they had divorced three years ago), while Rebecca was engaged to marry her fiancé Eric Bostwick.
Susan and John decided to take advantage of having them all at home together for another year and took a cruise from New York to Bermuda last June. They enjoyed their trip tremendously, even though it rained nearly every day they were aboard the ship.
But once they arrived in Bermuda, the skies cleared just long enough to allow everyone to explore the island, and enjoy some much-needed sunbathing. After returning home, both daughters insisted upon visiting their father as soon as possible, so they booked a flight straight to New York and met him at JFK airport.
Their visit with him was short-lived because he had a business conference the next morning that prevented them from staying longer. But they promised to return in the autumn for Christmas, when they’d be able to stay at least four days, allowing plenty of time to relax and soak up as much vitamin D as possible.
That was five years ago. And since then, John has continued coming to Sea Mist whenever his work takes him through this part of the state. It didn’t help matters that he still held strong ties to his hometown of Salisbury, not far from Ocean City, which meant he had frequent opportunities to come down and enjoy the beaches and fresh air.
The only downside to spending all his free time down here, he realized, was how many memories his childhood home brought back.
The room he now occupied at the Sea Mist Ocean Resort used to belong to Susan and his daughters—it was where he slept each time they visited. That was before the girls grew up and married young, moving away. But now, for the first time in fifteen years, he came upon his old bedroom while cleaning out a closet and couldn’t resist seeing what was in store for him here tonight.
So, instead of taking a different room during their most recent visit, Susan let him take over this one again. She knew how he always liked sleeping in the same room as his wife. Even though they hadn’t lived together for decades, it felt like yesterday when the kids had shared their room.
He wanted to see if anything remained, just to remind himself why he chose this place, and why he kept coming back.
When he entered the bathroom, he saw something strange lying on top of the sink, under a pile of towels. He wasn’t sure he’d seen it the last time he was in here either, because it was covered up with a towel too heavy for its size. With all of the other things going on around here today, this was the last thing he expected to encounter.
The object looked familiar; he had to be imagining things, he thought. It was an odd-shaped piece of wood, maybe six inches in length and about the width of his palm. There must have been a crack in one side of the board because the end was slightly bent. As he walked over toward it, he noticed something else.
There were small black splatters on the wall and the ceiling above the sink. A single drop of blood had landed on the floor at the bottom of the tub, where the drain led into the sewer.
“Holy shit!” exclaimed John. He was surprised; he hadn’t heard anyone approach him. “Who’s there? Who are you?” he said, looking in every direction to find the person responsible for making this mess. All he could see were the shadows cast by the light switch and overhead fan in front of him. He turned and began examining the walls behind him.
He was standing near a window that overlooked the parking lot below. Beyond the row of cars and trucks sat an empty field full of tall grasses, swaying gently in the breeze. A single streetlight made it possible to see the area well enough to walk around outside at night.
On clear nights, John would sit on the balcony and gaze into the darkness across the street, listening to the waves crashing against the shoreline. But tonight he didn’t feel like being outdoors. Instead, he preferred to be locked in this room. His fear and anxiety made him forget his plans to venture out after dark, and he knew he wouldn’t be leaving the comfort of his hotel anytime soon.
The door leading out to the balcony was closed tight—there was no way John was going anywhere now that he knew someone had broken in. He had seen plenty of horror movies throughout his life, but none of those involved a murder victim finding a hidden corpse beneath the sink in their bathroom.
He didn’t understand what was happening right now, except that he had to do everything possible to prevent his daughter from being dragged into this nightmare too.
He reached over and flipped on the light, hoping his intruder hadn’t gotten off without paying a visit to the bathtub or shower. When he turned around, he gasped at what he saw: a severed head had somehow found its way onto the bathroom countertop. The neck was intact, and the skin was smooth and shiny like wet glass.
The lips and eyes were perfectly preserved. He had never seen a decapitated human head up close before, and now he understood why people were always so fascinated with them. But even knowing the truth behind the lifeless eyes staring straight ahead at him, he couldn’t look away. It was almost mesmerizing.
He wondered if this had happened long ago, maybe twenty years earlier. But there was another reason why this sight was especially unnerving, and it wasn’t just that the head was facing directly at him. Something about this face seemed familiar.
A sudden chill ran through his body when he realized the features belonged to a woman he recognized well enough to know her name, but not quite. Her hair was brown and long, and she wore glasses when she worked at the library. This was a dead giveaway—the librarian at his local branch of the New York Public Library, whom he saw nearly every day during his lunch hour.
Now she lay on her side atop a mound of towels; her arms were bent upward at the elbows and tied behind her back with a rope, just like the one hanging from the shower rod near the bed. John knew he shouldn’t be shocked by this discovery because it explained the blood on the ceiling and in the bathtub.
But his mind refused to accept that he had actually encountered her, and not one of the countless people he met in the course of his work. He had known many women in his life who possessed this same face, and yet he didn’t want to believe this was one of them.
The door leading out to the balcony had been shut tightly when he first walked in, and so John tried to open it now to see where the killer had gone, but he failed to notice the lock until he lifted the handle. To his surprise, when the door swung open, the knob fell off in his hand.
He picked it up carefully, wondering how many more surprises he’d get to experience before the night was over. In the hallway, he heard voices coming closer—a man and a woman.
“I’m sorry,” said a male voice as they passed him by. “We’ve got to go.”
John stood motionless, unable to move. They were headed toward the elevators. He thought back to the events that led him into this nightmare, and he knew what was expected of him now: he had to run downstairs, out into the parking lot, and call the police. If he called for help, the murderer could still be in his room, but there was nothing he could do to stop him.
He knew it would be impossible to escape through the window without being noticed by whoever was in there with him.
But what about his daughter? She would have to be protected, no matter what. John didn’t need to think too hard to realize that this must be his wife’s doing, but how could they expect him to act differently? After all, they had already lost their child, and now her mother was asking this man to sacrifice himself once again. The only difference was that this time it would be for his own daughter.
His wife and daughter might have forgotten him, but they weren’t going to let him die without making sure he fulfilled his obligation as a father. And although it sounded like a terrible idea, he had no choice but to obey.
He put the knob back where it belonged, then hurried to the door leading outside. As he went down the stairs, he glanced back at the bathroom door, which remained shut and locked. He had the urge to go inside but knew it was pointless. The moment he did so, he would be trapped with whoever was hiding in there.
The bottom floor lobby was dark when he stepped out of the elevator, but he quickly made out a couple sitting alone in the corner booth. The man held a gun, and when he saw John approach, he smiled. The man and woman looked at each other, nodded their approval, and rose to their feet.
Their plan was simple: lure the man upstairs with his family, then kill him while he slept. Then they would dispose of the bodies, hide in the shadows nearby, and wait for someone to come searching for them.
It was time for John to join them, but he hesitated. He didn’t want to take part in anything this twisted, but it would mean saving his daughter’s life. He needed to choose between his wife and daughter because there was no way he was going to leave either of them behind.
So instead of heading for the door, he turned and ran straight to the men, hoping to distract them so he could save his family. As soon as they saw his expression change, they fired a shot that sent him stumbling back onto the carpet. John felt pain shoot through his leg as he fell to the floor.
He tried to stand up, but another bullet hit him in the shoulder and knocked him back down. When he reached for the wound, his hand came away covered in blood. He had sustained enough damage so that the bullets couldn’t penetrate deeply.
He could see from the woman’s eyes that they were both enjoying watching this happen. The man was standing behind the table now, aiming his gun directly at John. He aimed for the chest, not wanting to miss. John knew this was it—he would never be able to return home if he failed.
His legs shook violently, but his willpower wasn’t going anywhere. He forced himself to stand and walk straight toward the man who had just killed his wife. With his dying breath, he managed to tell the man that his daughter was waiting upstairs—the very thing they had told him they wanted.
“I can hear you,” shouted the man as he squeezed off another shot.
John felt a searing pain in his left side, but his will hadn’t wavered. “Get out here, Molly,” he said, “because I’ve done your mommy a favor.”
He heard her cry out, and when she came running to the foot of the stairwell, he took her hands in his. But he wasn’t able to speak anymore before one last shot found its mark and ended his agony.
A few moments later, when Molly entered her room and saw what had happened, she was filled with a sense of confusion and fear; but when the woman in black appeared next to her bed, she immediately understood. It was too late for John, but she would survive.
The woman pulled her into the closet. When they emerged, Molly was dressed in a red dress, and her hair had been done up in curls. She wore makeup and lipstick. The two women then escorted her past a line of sleeping figures, and finally arrived at the elevator. She got in first, followed by her mother and grandmother.
They walked through the deserted halls, down three flights of stairs, and out into the parking lot. Once again there was a full moon shining in the night sky over the hotel grounds, casting a glow across everything in sight. There was no sign that there had ever been any sort of struggle, leaving Molly confused about how her dad had died.
As much as she wanted to believe that he had saved her, she also wondered whether or not he had really sacrificed himself for her benefit. Maybe this was just what he had been trying to do all along: die for his family, and then hope that they would forgive him because he had succeeded in returning his daughter to the safety of their world.
When they got to the van, they opened the doors, climbed in, and drove out of town with Molly’s father still on his lap. He would remain there until dawn when the creature who had killed him would emerge from hiding and carry him away forever.
The End