my friends and I broke into an old roadside motel. One of the rooms was still occupied.

This happened about a year ago.

I’m 21 now. My friends Tyler and Marcus were both 20 at the time.

We were driving back from a concert around 2: 30 in the morning when Tyler spotted the place.

It was an old roadside motel sitting about fifty yards off a rural highway. The kind with a long row of doors and flickering neon signs.

The sign still said VACANCY but only the letters V and C were lit.

Everything else was dark.

Tyler slowed the car.

“Yo…that place is abandoned” he said.

Marcus leaned forward between the seats. “Looks like it.”

The parking lot was cracked and full of weeds. Half the windows were boarded up.

It looked like it had been closed for decades.

Tyler grinned.

“You guys wanna check it out?”

I should’ve said no.

But it was late. We were bored. And dumb.

So we pulled into the lot.

The wind was dead-still. No traffic on the highway. Just the hum of those two neon letters buzzing above the office.

Marcus grabbed a flashlight from the glove compartment.

“Five minutes,” he said. “Then we leave.”

We walked down the line of motel doors.

Most of them were locked. Some hung halfway open revealing empty rooms full of dust and broken furniture.

Room 4 had a mattress leaning against the wall.

Room 7 had black mold creeping up the bathroom tiles.

Room 9 smelled like something had died inside it a long time ago.

Then we got to room 12.

The door was closed.

But light was coming from underneath it.

Not bright light.

Just a faint yellow glow.

We all noticed it at the same time.

Tyler whispered, “That’s weird.”

Marcus knocked lightly on the door.

No answer.

He knocked again.

Still nothing.

I said “maybe someone actually lives here.”

Tyler shook his head.

“Then why doesn’t the office have power?”

He pushed the door.

It creaked open.

The room looked mostly normal at first.

A small lamp sat on the nightstand. That was where the light was coming from.

The bed was made.

Perfectly.

The sheets were tucked tight like someone had done it recently.

Marcus stepped inside first.

“Hello?” he called.

No response.

The bathroom door was open.

The shower curtain was drawn.

Tyler walked over and pulled it back.

Nothing inside.

“Okaky” he said. “So someone—”

Then we heard something move behind us.

A soft dragging noise.

From the closet.

All three of us turned slowly.

The closet door was cracked open about two inches.

And something inside shifted again.

Marcus whispered “did you see that?”

Tyler stepped forward.

“Probably a raccoon or something.”

He reached out and pulled the closet door open.

What we saw inside didn’t make sense.

Gray.

Wet.

Slumped in the corner.

Then the pile moved.

Slowly.

A hand slid out from underneath the fabric.

Except it wasn’t shaped right.

The fingers were too long.

The joints bent wrong.

And the skin looked stretched so tight it had split in several places.

Marcus said quietly “That’s a person.”

The thing lifted its head.

Its neck was incredibly thin.

Too thin to hold up the skull resting on top of it.

Its skin was pale and blotchy like it had been underwater too long.

But the worst part was its mouth.

Someone had tried to sew it shut.

You could see the thread.

But the stitches had torn open.

And the lips were split all the way back to the sides of its face.

When it inhaled the torn skin pulled wider.

The sound it made was wet.

Like air being sucked through damaged lungs.

Tyler backed up immediately.

“Okay” he said quietly. “We’re leaving.”

The thing in the closet started to crawl out.

Its elbows dug into the carpet and dragged the rest of its body forward.

Its legs barely moved at all.

Marcus whispered “why are its legs like that?”

They were twisted inward.

Like they’d been broken and healed wrong.

The creature stopped halfway out of the closet and looked at us.

Its eyes were wide.

Too wide.

Unblinking.

Then it spoke.

Or tried to.

The words came out shredded and breathy.

“Dont…go.”

We froze.

Tyler shook his head.

“Nope.”

He grabbed my arm.

“Door. now.”

We turned to leave.

The creature suddenly moved faster.

Much faster.

It lunged forward and grabbed Marcus by the ankle.

Marcus hit the floor hard.

“GET IT OFF!”

Tyler grabbed a chair from the corner of the room and smashed it down on the creature’s arm.

Once.

Twice.

On the third hit the arm bent sideways with a dull crack.

The creature didn’t scream.

It just kept pulling Marcus toward the closet.

Marcus kicked wildly, hitting its face several times.

Each time his shoe connected I heard teeth snapping.

I grabbed the broken chair leg and jammed it into the creature’s mouth.

It bit down immediately.

The wood split.

But it slowed it down.

Tyler grabbed Marcus by the shoulders and yanked him backward.

The creature’s fingers tore strips out of his jeans before letting go.

We scrambled toward the door.

But when Tyler opened it—

Something was standing outside.

Another one.

This one was taller.

Its arms hung all the way to its knees.

Its jaw was hanging loose like it had been broken.

And it was staring directly at us.

Tyler slammed the door shut.

Marcus was breathing hard on the floor.

“Tell me that was a person.”

No one answered.

Behind us the first creature started crawling again.

Closer.

Dragging its broken arm across the carpet.

The sound of its nails scraping the floor was unbearable.

Tyler whispered “window.”

We ran to the window at the back of the room.

He punched the glass with the chair leg.

It shattered.

We started climbing out when the thing grabbed my shirt from behind.

Its grip was unbelievably strong.

I turned and saw its face inches from mine.

Its mouth opened wider than it should have been able to.

And I could smell something inside it.

Rotting meat.

Old blood.

Tyler grabbed the lamp from the nightstand and smashed it over the creature’s skull.

Glass exploded everywhere.

The bub shattered.

The room went dark.

For a second everything was silent.

Then the creature started thrashing violently.

Marcus kicked it in the face one last time and we all climbed out the window.

We ran across the parking lot without looking back.

When we reached the car Tyler finally turned around.

The motel hallway was dark again.

No light under room 12.

No movement.

Nothing.

We drove away without saying a word.

The next morning Marcus noticed something on his ankle.

Finger shaped bruises.

Deep purple.

Like someone had grabbed him as hard as they possibly could.

We looked the motel up online.

It closed in 1998.

Three guests disappeared there the final year it was open.

All from room 12.

The last report said police found the room empty.

Except for one thing.

The closet door was broken.

From the inside.