The Strange Occurrences At The Grand Hotel

So far, Ollie’s day was going perfect, sarcastically speaking. The snippy girl with two colors in her hair was rude, obnoxious, and didn’t listen to a thing he said; and on top of that she switched floors with a friend of hers and now they were stuck in the huge presidential suites that were a pain to clean. They were huge and had three bedrooms and a main room with a small kitchen attached to it and plush couches and a huge TV. The bedrooms were another story. Each room had a king sized bed with beautiful furniture matching the headboard of the bed and the master bedroom had its own full bathroom and the two smaller bedrooms had a bathroom that they shared attached to the rooms.

The first room they had walked into was nothing short of a disaster. Ellie gave a low whistle as she walked in further and picked up a broken champagne bottle and sighed. Ollie followed her in and opened the master bedroom door and quickly shut it since it was that bad. He had never seen a room that bad and prayed that they would be able to clean this up as quickly as possible and that the other rooms weren’t that bad.

He noticed that Ellie was already starting to clean up and he followed suit and started to pick up the rest of the garbage on the floor. Thankfully the other two bedrooms were even used to all they had to focus on was the master bedroom which Ellie had just walked into and began swearing and groaning as she examined it. He followed her in and handed her a pair of gloves and a mask and she quietly thanked him as they walked to either ends of the room and began to pick up the things.

Finally everything was done in that room and they left as quickly as they could. Ollie took the lead that time and walked down the hall with Ellie pushing the cart and knocked on the door to the next room. When there was no reply, he pulled his key card out and unlocked the door and held it open for Ellie. Thankfully, the room was much cleaner than the other one and looked as if the guest had done a little cleaning of their own before they had left that morning.

Ollie wandered farther into the room and into the master bedroom. He found the bed was made and that there was a suit case on top of the dresser. There was also an old looking brown wooden box sitting on the nightstand. It had a light blue piece of cloth sticking out of the side of the box and Ollie reached out to open it. Normally he wouldn’t go through anything inside a room but somehow felt compelled to open it. The lid opened easier than he would have guessed since it was really old looking and inside laid two dark stones about the size of your palm.

“Did see you as the snooping type,” Ellie said as Ollie turned to see her next to him. He hadn’t heard her walk in the room so he jumped when he realized she was right next to him. “What are those?”

“I have no idea,” He replied as they both reached in the box and pulled out one of the stones. When he first held the stone it was heavy and cold, but after a few seconds it started to grow warmer and warmed in his hand. He glanced over to see that the stone Ellie was holding seemed to be doing the same thing since she had a freaked out expression on her face.

“What the heck?” She asked as she gasped as the stone started to smoke and she tossed it from hand to hand before putting it back in the box. Ollie’s stone was becoming really hot also and he winced as he put the stone back next to hers and looked at his hand. There was a circular red mark that stretched across his palm that the stone had left, and realized that Ellie had the same mark on her hand also.

“That was really weird,” He muttered as he glanced at the stones and saw that they looked just like they had before they had picked them up. “Maybe we should get out of here now,”

All she did was agree as they grabbed their things and left as soon as it was clean. Neither of them said anything else really as they entered the next room and began the routine they were easily falling into. As they worked, he heard Ellie groan and mutter something under her breath as she tried to tie the garbage bag. He turned to see her gently holding her burnt hand and a pained look on her face.

“Here let me see,” He said quietly as he walked over and pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and started to wrap it up.

“So you’re the maintenance guy and first aid guy too?” She asked a little sarcastically as he began to tie the bandage.

He rolled his eyes as he finished and then looked up to her, “I have two little sisters at home, let’s just say accidents happen.”

Then he turned not saying anything else as he finished making the bed then shoved the dirty sheets in the garbage bag that the others were in. When they finished up that room, they only had three more rooms to finish. Once they were finished, they silently went back to the storage room to put the cart away then headed to the employee area to take a quick break for lunch.

“Hey Olls!” A familiar voice called pulling him out of his thoughts. He covered his burnt palm with his fingers and looked up to see his friend Colter walking over. Colter sat down next to him at the small table at the back of the employee area. There were matching metal tables with plastic chairs set in the back where the employees were allowed to eat and relax with an outdated TV mounted on the wall.

“Oh hey, what’s up?” He asked trying to get his thoughts together. All his thoughts were drifting back to the stones and the strange mark he now had on his hand.

“Bored out of my mind, I had to unclog eight toilets and fix three faucets and all these people think it’s a dire emergency when there are bigger things to fix.”

“At least you’re not on maid duty,” He mumbled to his turkey sandwich before taking a bit.

“Oh yeah, how did that go with the weird girl!? What’s her name again? Emily?” Colter asked as his eyes got wide and he dropped the sandwich he had been holding.

“Ellie and it was defiantly weird.” He replied not bothering to mention the stone thing that happened.

“Oh dude you’ve got to give me more than that!”

“What else should I say?”

“Did she have any weird habits? Did she have weird voodoo tattoos or start speaking in another language? Tell me!” Colter edged closer and closer with the familiar excited expression he got whenever he wanted the latest gossip from people.

“I worry about you sometimes,”

“Whatever, you don’t have anything good you can tell me about her?”

“Why you want to ask her on a date so that it’ll turn into some sappy love story and you’ll get married and have a billion children and live happily ever after until one of you gets some horrible disease and dies?”

“Well that’s the idea but it doesn’t have to turn out exactly like that.”

“Really?” Ollie asked as he rolled his eyes. “I really don’t know what to tell you, she’s normal. Wait,” He said as he glanced at his watch and sighed. “I’m late, I’ll talk to you later dude.” He stood and shoved all his things back into his lunch box and shoved it in his locker before going to the supply closet where he was to meet Ellie for round two of cleaning.