The Haunted Hotel

Amy started to wake up, slowly at first. She felt sleepy, cozy, satisfied. Well-fucked. This was all expected, given what she and her husband Greg had just been doing. The last thing she remembered was coming down from the high of orgasm, and giving in to exhaustion on the hotel bed.

But there was something wrong. It didn't feel like hotel sheets around her anymore. The damp chill on her exposed skin wasn't the heated air of the hotel interior. Through her eyelids, she could tell it was morning, but it was too bright. Not the darkness of the curtained room hotel room she went to sleep in.

She opened her eyes. The warm, sleeping body under hers wasn't Greg. It was her brother Zach.

Amy yelped with surprise and jumped up off his lap. As she did so, she felt his softening cock slip free from her, and land with a wet slap against his stomach. It glistened with fluids. She stared at it for a moment, before she remembered to look away. Dear god, what had they done? That cock, the cock that had just been inside her, was her brother's.

Greg was lying nearby, in a separate sleeping bag. Still asleep too. Amy was the first to wake up. She wanted to go to him for comfort, but how could she now?

Suddenly alert from her panic, she took in the rest of the room around her. It was a hotel room, or it once had been. It had the same layout. There was a scrap of wallpaper still stuck to the plaster that had the right pattern. But it was long-abandoned. There was no glass in the window; the wind whistled through the gap. There was no door left in the doorway. There were only shreds of carpet left in the corners.

She found her duffel bag nearby, and frantically grabbed clothes out of it. She was cold and damp, and worse, she was naked, with her brother in the room. Zach and Greg were starting to wake up. Worse still, she was freshly fucked, and all signs pointed to having been fucked by her brother. It made her sick to her stomach. She and Greg were trying to conceive, but now it might be Zach's cum inside her.

The weekend had seemed like a pleasant group outing for the five of them. For Amy and Greg, it doubled as a couple's getaway, an opportune time to spend in bed together, trying to conceive. The timing was about right.

Or that had been the plan. But every time Amy and Greg tried to make love, they'd both been assailed with disturbing visions. At times, Greg had looked like someone else entirely. He admitted he was experiencing the same thing. Now she couldn't be sure what was real, and what wasn't. But she knew she couldn't tell anyone about what she had woken up to.

"What the hell? What happened?" Zach asked groggily.

"I don't know," Amy said, shaking her head.

Her whole body shivered. She went to Greg's side, but he gave her a skeptical look. "Hey, hon. It's okay. I'm here. I'm real. We're real. We're okay. I know that much at least."

"Can we all just keep it quiet for now? I don't know what's happening, but I've got a splitting headache," Greg said.

--

Zach thought the weekend had been going really well. Normally he worked long hours, sometimes straight through the weekend, trying to earn enough to keep up with child support payments for his daughter. But here at the hotel, he'd felt unburdened for once, like his younger self, back before that disastrous one-time mistake in his freshman year of college.

First there'd been a dalliance with Jenna. It had been good and fun, but they'd almost let it go too far. If he'd impregnated one woman so easily, he didn't like the gamble Jenna had wanted to take. Then there was Violet, a tall, thin, and evidently insatiable undergrad. They hit it off immediately, and he'd been looking forward to getting her number and maybe paying her a visit on campus sometime.

Now...the hotel was all but gone, and Zach couldn't be sure what had happened and what hadn't. From the sticky mess on his crotch, it did seem like he'd had sex with someone. But he thought when he was first waking up, it had been Amy getting up off him.

That couldn't be. Not his sister. Anyone but her. But what if, while he was sleeping, she had...he didn't dare follow the train of thought. Amy would never. Besides, she was married, and Greg was right there.

Zach sat up in his sleeping bag, but was reluctant to leave it. He didn't want to be naked in front of Amy, even considering the circumstances. He also didn't want anyone to see the sexual fluids still coating his crotch. Carefully, he started slipping on clothes underneath the sleeping bag.

None of them had any answers, that much was clear. Greg was pinching his nose, trying to fight off a migraine. Zach wondered what he'd seen, but he didn't dare ask about it.

Eventually, Jenna and Mike found them. Those two apparently woke up on different floors of the abandoned hotel. They had no explanations either. They seemed to be taking in the situation with more good humor. Maybe they hadn't woken up in a compromising position.

The five of them piled into Mike's car to leave. The car felt stifling and cramped now. They were all shocked and sullen about what had happened. Zach was grateful no one was pressing the issue right now. He took one last look back at the hotel. What had happened to Violet? He spent most of the weekend with her, but missed his chance to ask for her number. He'd thought he would at least get to wake up with her one more time.

After an interminable silence as they drove away, Jenna asked, "I just want to know one thing. We all remember that hotel being intact, right?"

There was a long moment before Mike spoke up. "Yeah."

Now that someone had said so, Zach echoed it. No one said otherwise. Whatever happened, it happened to all of them. That was some small comfort, even as Zach turned over the problem in his brain that there was no solution for.

--

After they all went their separate ways, Amy and Greg went home. In the complete silence of their own house, they exchanged the minimum required words to agree that Amy would take an emergency contraceptive. She could no longer be sure who she slept with that weekend, and she didn't want to conceive a child that wasn't Greg's. If she ended up pregnant anyway, she'd get it terminated. She didn't dare say so, even to Greg, but if there was any chance the child was Zach's, she couldn't let it grow. Hopefully this would only mean postponing their plans to start a family by a month, two at most.

She felt exhausted by the experience, emotionally worn out, and still unable to face the truth. It was a relief when she eventually got her period, but Greg didn't seem to share her enthusiasm. Ever since that confusing morning in the shell of the hotel, he had been distant, wary of her, maybe even afraid of her. He didn't touch her affectionately the way he used to, let alone make love to her. She didn't want to press him on it, but she knew eventually she might have to. He said he just needed time to sort himself out. She wasn't sure either of them saw him as the problem.

Amy was ready to try again. She could feel it in every fiber of herself. More importantly, she just wanted the feeling of having him close, having their bodies joined into one. She found herself shaking with unfulfillable desire. Sometimes to quiet it, she'd drink herself to sleep.

It hurt her to see Greg like this, but she didn't know what to do, especially since she didn't know how to process her own alarming experience. Sometimes she wanted to scream that she didn't fuck her brother. But even a denial of it was a sort of admission of guilt.

Besides, she wasn't even sure how true it was. She kept replaying that moment of waking up on top of Zach, his cock inside her. Something had already happened between them by that point. Even though she'd yelped and jumped up like she thought she ought to, that hadn't been her first instinct.

One day Zach called her. "Hey, I went back to that place. Just to try to understand, you know?"

He hesitated, maybe to see if she wanted to talk about this. "Yeah?"

"It was like we left it. Cracked walls, rotting floorboards. I meant to get some pictures, but I guess being out of range drained my phone battery fast."

"Huh." Amy didn't know what to make of that. She still didn't know how much of what she remembered from that weekend was real. "So?"

"Well, I'm going back up there this weekend, with my film camera. I just want some proof that I can share with everybody. I just need to...I don't know. Anyway, I figured if you wanted to see it yourself..."

Amy couldn't see how it would resolve anything for her, but at least it'd be doing something. Maybe it would help her feel some closure about the incident. Maybe that could help Greg too.

"Sure," she said. Then it occurred to her that it would be her first time alone with Zach since that time. "I should check with Greg."

After she hung up, she found Greg working out. He was always in the middle of something these days, something that didn't involve her.

"I just want to go back there and try to understand what the heck happened," she told him, after explaining Zach's plan. "Would you come with me?"

"No. No thanks," Greg replied.

"Please?" she asked.

Part of her wondered if this was the time to start fighting for their relationship, when he seemed to be giving up. At the same time, she didn't want to risk pressing too hard and driving a rift between them.

He shook his head, sort of to her, sort of to himself.

Amy texted Zach to let him know Greg wouldn't be going, but she would. She could have called, but she didn't want to navigate that. It was all too complicated as it was.

--

Zach pulled up in front of his sister's house, and idled there for a couple minutes before she came out. It had been well into fall when the group went out to the hotel. Now it was verging on winter, and there was frost on the lawn. Zach warmed his hands against the car's heater. He still felt a little on edge about how to be around Amy now, particularly alone with her, after what happened. But maybe if they got through this weekend with some semblance of normalcy, that would be a good start.

Amy came got in on the passenger side with her bag. Zach saw Greg looking down at them from the window, and tried to wave hello, but Greg didn't wave back. Maybe he didn't see it after all.

As they got on the highway, Amy noticed the pile of gear in the back. "Camping gear?"

"It's a long drive. If it's okay, maybe we don't have to drive both ways in a single day? I stayed overnight last time, and nothing funny happened." It took conscious effort for him to speak lightly of what happened before, but she didn't seem to notice.

"Well, you better have two sleeping bags," she joked. That sounded strained too.

"Two separate tents, actually," he said. "You won't run into me even if you sleepwalk."

He turned on the radio so they wouldn't have to keep making conversation. It would fizzle out before they got there anyway.

He still wondered about that mysterious Violet. She had seemed so real. Whatever they had all been through, it hadn't been just a dream.

He knew going back there again wasn't likely to reveal anything new. This was mostly for Amy's benefit, and to have some tangible proof. But he still hoped. Maybe Violet was out there somewhere. Maybe their paths would cross again somehow.

Once they were out in the country, the wind started to blow flurries across the front of the car, but it wasn't sticking to the road yet. The closer they got to their destination, the harder it fell. Zach had to take the road slowly because he could only see a few feet ahead. There was about an inch on the pavement already, and more accumulating.

"You think we should keep going through this?" Amy asked.

"At this point, we're closer to the hotel than anywhere else we could stop. At least there'll be a roof." Talking it out helped, but Zach wasn't sure this was a good idea anymore.

"Only if we can get the rest of the way up the driveway," Amy said.

Zach grunted in agreement. It wasn't guaranteed. He could feel the car seat getting colder against his back. He didn't want to weather the storm in the car, but he knew it might come to that. And if they had to huddle for warmth? They could if they had to. They would be two siblings. Nothing more.

Even through the snow-smeared windshield, the front of the hotel didn't look like the wreck he'd found here last time. Zach pulled into a parking space alongside plenty of other cars. They got out and stretched their legs in the falling snow.

Zach grabbed his camera out of the back. He took a picture of the hotel's fancy facade, the glass doors barred with wrought iron, under an arch of sculpted art deco concrete. With the snow, the picture might not be very clear, but it should at least show that the building is intact and lit up.

"It wasn't like this last time, I swear," he hold his sister.

"I believe you," she said.

"Should we at least peek inside?" he asked.

"I don't know..." She had her arms crossed against the cold, but she wasn't trying to get back in the car just yet.

"Just for a little while, to warm up? Maybe the snow will stop soon."

She shrugged, and headed for the doors.

It was warm inside, nothing at all like an inert, abandoned building. Zach saw fires burning in all the fireplaces. He took another photo of the open lobby area, with its velvet-upholstered couches, stretching away towards the bar, which glowed with stained-glass lamps.

Then he saw her. Violet. Tall and thin and elegant, in a dark blue shirt that hung from her angular frame. He remembered her every curve, and the way her body felt against his. He approached her without thinking about it.

"Violet, right?" Zach said, trying to play it cool.

She turned to him and smiled. "Zach! Hey. Fancy running into you here again."

"Yeah. What a coincidence!" Zach said. "What brings you back here so soon?"

"Another college break, just a month after the last one. It's stupid, I know," she said, laughing. "What about you?"

Zach felt himself genuinely smiling back at her, his worries and disbelief fading easily at the sight of her. She was here and real and alive, obviously.

Now he didn't know what to make of the last time he was here, when this place had been desolate. But he was willing to wait and figure that out in time.

"I would love to tell you that story, but I think my sister needs my help right now," he said. "Let's catch up later?"

"Yeah," Violet said. "Let's!"

--

"Welcome back!" came a chipper voice. Amy turned and saw the front desk attendant smiling at her.

The attendant was a curvy woman, not much older than Amy. Her uniform was bulged in the front by an obvious pregnant belly. Amy felt a pang of envy, considering her current stalled situation.

"Hi, don't mind us. We just came in to get out of the snow for a moment. We'll be back on the road in a sec," Amy explained.

"Oh. No need. It's only expected to get worse out there tonight. We wouldn't turn anyone away in a storm like this. The roads wouldn't be safe," the woman said.

Amy vaguely remembered this woman from her last time at the hotel.

"Thanks, I'll keep that in mind," Amy said. But her heart sank when she saw her brother chatting up a woman in blue. It looked like the woman he had hooked up with before.

Zach came striding back to her. "Hey, maybe we shouldn't try to drive back tonight after all."

"Zach, whatever's going on here, this isn't what we expected," Amy said in a low voice.

"I know, but what are we supposed to do? Plus I'll take this over camping on concrete and eating granola bars."

"You're not wrong about that." Amy wasn't all that comfortable with the idea, but none of the alternatives appealed to her either. And she saw in Zach's smile that he had other ideas that didn't involve her. That at least seemed like a good thing. It also meant she might have a hard time talking him into leaving now.

She turned back to the desk attendant. "How much for a couple of rooms?"

The woman in grey leaned over the desk, as much as her pregnant belly would allow. "Don't worry about it. Pay what you can afford, when you check out tomorrow."

"Thanks," Amy said. She handed Zach his room key, taking note of the number, and then set off towards her own. The stress of this all was starting to exhaust her, and she just needed a minute to herself to reset.

When she got in the room, it was nearly identical to the one she had stayed in before. But just to reassure herself, she sat down on the bed, running her fingers across the bedspread, to convince herself it was real. Surely in a dream, it wouldn't have texture. It wouldn't have that freshly-laundered smell.

Amy tried to text Greg, letting him know about the storm, but that she made it there safely. She found it unexpectedly hard to put together the words. "Spending the night" made her cringe. She hit send, but the signal was so weak that she wasn't sure when or if it would go through.

As alone as she felt at home with Greg while he ignored her, she felt alone now too. Zach at least seemed to be in his element, chatting up cute girls. Amy felt a little out of place. There were cute guys here, and she noticed when she caught their eyes, but she was on a very different path in life.

Even though she was young and in her prime, she was already married, and getting ready to start a family. She'd known Greg since high school, and while he hadn't been her first, they had been together a long time, and she knew she had narrower experience than most. Part of her wondered if she was settling down too early, whether it was still too late to change paths. A month ago, the thought wouldn't have even crossed her mind, and now she tried to bury it, feeling guilty.

The hotel room was silent, but in a good way, unlike at home, where silence was a constant reminder of how she had tried and failed repeatedly to get Greg to look at her, to talk to her, to care again. Here the silence felt freeing, like a blank slate. Finally having a moment of complete privacy to herself, she was tempted to touch herself. She could feel the heat building in her.

But as soon as she did, she remembered what brought her there. She couldn't fantasize about Greg now, her feelings were all tied up with the rift between them. She sighed heavily. Sitting in this hotel room alone wasn't going to do it either. She'd ultimately end up stewing over problems she couldn't do anything to solve.

Amy decided as long as she was here, she should explore the hotel, and try to understand it better. The door to her room clicked shut as she left, and she set off down the first hallway of many. Maybe she'd get lost. That might be fun, she thought.

--

After dinner, Zach found Violet sitting in the lounge, with a drink in her hand. He couldn't resist the urge to approach her, particularly when she gave him a sly glance from afar.

"Want company?" he asked.

"Sure," she said. "But only if your 'sister' doesn't need you right now."

Zach laughed, but he was also surprised. "You don't think she's actually my sister?"

"I wouldn't know," Violet said. "She's pretty, but not quite in the same way you are. But if you say she is..."

The compliment made Zach laugh again. "Are you jealous?"

He knew there was more to it than he'd like to admit. His mind went back to that moment of waking up in his sleeping bag with Amy on top of him, feeling his cock slide out of her as she got up. In that moment, he had felt briefly reluctant to be parted from her, before he realized what was going on. Now he couldn't look at his sister quite the same way.

"Gosh, I'm just teasing," Violet said, pressing herself closer to him.

"Where are your friends this time?" Zach asked. The last time he met her here, she was traveling with a few classmates from the same college.