The moon was completely covered by thick black clouds disallowing the moonlight to pass. The pitch dark streets looked like they had been abandoned for years. Same was the case with a hotel in the nearby locality. This was a very old hotel built around 50 years ago and since then it was never refurbished.

Most of the people living in the town avoided visiting this hotel. A customer in this hotel was a very rare sight indeed. But oddly enough, the hotel had visitors today. A soccer team of school going boys had come to the town for playing a league and was staying at this hotel.

The boys had just finished their game in the evening and went over to their hotel for the night. The boys freshened up, had dinner and were sitting in one room discussing about the next day’s matches. Some of them had already given up and retired to their beds. Also, the coach had called it a day and was fast asleep. The only people who were awake in the hotel were 5 boys in the room; even the person at the reception had drifted off to sleep. And at this point of time, there was a sudden turn in events. The electricity went off and the night got darker with every second. Even if there was slight fear in the boys, it was not seen.

In fact, these boys started discussing about ghosts and how they stupid they might be if they ever existed. It appeared that these were the trouble-makers in their school. A boy named James got up and went to the toilet. A few moments later, there was an ear-deafening scream. The voice was James’ and on hearing it, the other four boys approached the bathroom. James was still screaming and the others were trying to open the door. But the door wouldn’t budge and James was trapped inside. Then, with all his might, Jamie kicked the door hard and opened it. Finally, James came out frightened and narrated how there were fumes coming out of the toilet seat and were suffocating him.

The five of them, rushed downstairs to at the reception to complain. While going down, the voice of an old man toddling along with his stick was audible. But, not a single soul was present in the corridors. At the end of the stairs, what the boys saw was a shocking sight. There were fresh blood stains all over the place which led to the reception area. Covered in a pool of blood, the guy at the reception lay there motionless, brutally murdered. Scared to death, the five of them looked at each other as if signaling something. Because of the shock, nobody could utter a single word.

They could only hear voices and sounds; sounds of doors banging hard all through the hotel, windows closing and opening on their own accord, a scream saying that people who stay awake at night will be killed and an old man toddling with his stick along the stairs. The sound of the stick was coming closer and closer every second. And now it was audible from the bottom of the stairs. The boys were paralyzed from head to toe due to fear. They had lost all senses and were scared even to run. The only way out was to run through the front door and never come back again. Then all of a sudden, all of them took off and ran out of the front doors as if they had read each other’s minds. It was clear that the invisible old man was not happy at all and threw his stick at the door which missed James by a few inches. The glass shattered into pieces and that was the last sight that the boys saw that night.

They knew that they had left the hotel and the old man behind. The moment they were out of the hotel, they turned back to take a look at what had happened. The glass door which had broken few minutes ago was in place and looked as if it had never been disturbed. Apart from that, the reception area was glimmering with golden yellow lights. And, the highest water mark came when they saw the same guy who was murdered sitting at the reception, alive.