Hotel rooms are, in essence, purgatory charged at a nightly rate. They exist in that same curious hinterland as the departure lounge at airports, not quite in one country and yet not quite at the destination. They are, in essence, neutral spaces, transient environments which are defined, which exist, only for as long as it takes you to check out.

They’re also prime horror real estate, this very transience allowing for the things on the other side of the door, the wet things, the singing things with impossible claws and the voices of children to break through. From the hotel in The Shining to the Bates Motel in Psycho and the snuff palace in the recent Vacancy, hotels have provided fertile ground for horror writers for years and one in particular. Stephen King has survived stays in Hotel Horror before with two versions of The Shining and last year returned to the field again, when Lasse Hafstrom adapted his short story, 1408.

So join us as we pay a visit to the Dolphin Hotel, home to the most evil hotel room in the world and the crucible which will either destroy Mike Enslin, or rebuild him. Welcome to 1408, room service is suspended. Forever.

 

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By Jerome Dent

Read by Ben Phillips

Music by love is nothing.
(featuring Bill Abdale and Lee Bartow)

Samuel found the secret of the death of the universe in a box. The box was small and plain, with a corked opening, like a jack in the box without a handle. Samuel forgot how he’d gotten the box before he even got home, the facts smothered and dismantled in a haze. All he thinks he knows is that there was a tree involved, sun-bleached to a moth-white with gnarled branches, fruit with eggshell skin that burst and bled crimson at the touch, a man who had misplaced his heart, and something very painfully white or made of light. But he could have picked it up at Jericho’s. Much more likely, some knickknack impulse buy that’ll prompt his roommate to ask for Samuel’s half of the rent, again.

 

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