Author's Note: I named this "Not Another Ghost Story" because anyone who has read any of my other stories knows I like to write about magic, and ghosts, and otherworldly tales. This story isn't that… not exactly at least.
Parked in front of a timeworn and abandoned roadside hotel the pale blue pickup truck looked out of place; the only sign of life for miles and huddled under the flickering light of the lone street lamp as if it was seeking warmth against the howling wind outside. Years ago, the Whispering Wolf Hotel was a bustling high-end establishment, wealthy guest, important businessmen, and fashionable ladies stayed here. It was gorgeous, elite and pricey… and then the interstate was built a few miles west of the hotel. The whole landscape of the area changed as traffic was diverted elsewhere and slowly, in time, no one came to the Whispering Wolf anymore
Of course, that was why Kurt Hummel was here. Hunched down in the front seat of the blue pickup and grumbling under his breath as the wind beat into the side of the truck. Kurt glared at the text message that'd just came in from his supposed "best friend".
We're on our way! Set up without us. Be there soon.
"Damn it, Rachel!" Kurt growled glancing outside at the hotel. To say the hotel had seen better days was an understatement. Most of the windows were busted out, the paint on the siding had long faded away, and the roof sagged causing Kurt to worry about the safety of the entire structure. Watching the building it almost seemed to sway with the harsh wind and Kurt wondered even if his friends got here soon if it was safe to go poking around a building that looked like it could collapse as easily as a house of cards.
He had certainly never planned on going into this deserted and decaying building alone. Kurt's long-time friend Rachel and her boyfriend, Kurt's stepbrother Finn, were supposed to be here with him. Then Rachel got held up at her day job and Finn said he'd pick her up and bring her when she was done. They asked Kurt to pack the equipment and head out there himself, Rachel swearing they'd be right behind him.
Now it was nearing nine o'clock, the sun had set, and Kurt was left outside a creepy old hotel by himself while the wind wailed and the damn street lamp flickered as if it was a dying soul about to be snuffed out. To top it all off, if the rumbling in the air and the heavy clouds above were any indication it was about to start pouring down rain.
Kurt wasn't a naturally fearful person. In fact, out of the three-person Ghost Investigators team, Kurt was typically the unflappable one, but here alone, looking out at the looming and decrepit Whispering Wolf (and who named a hotel something so menacing anyway?) Kurt felt a bit apprehensive… and very frustrated.
You owe me big after this. Kurt texted Rachel back. And you better actually be driving here on your way, not I'm thinking about getting to the car soon on your way.
Kurt slipped his phone into his back pocket before Rachel had a chance to answer and hopped out of the truck before he could change his mind. At least he could get inside and set up before the rain started. He was having a particularly good hair day and there was no point in messing that up by getting caught in a downpour. Especially when he was about to be in front of the camera.
Kurt lifted the cover off the bed of the truck and started taking out what he needed. A generator and a couple collapsible set lights. He would grab the big camera if Rachel and Finn were here, but without them Kurt would probably only need the hand-held steady cam. He'd let Finn haul in the heavy camera when he got here. Which had better be soon. Kurt may be an amateur ghost investigator, but he did not sign up to wander around a building that could topple down on top of him all on his own.
"This was Finn's idea in the first place," Kurt grumbled under his breath as he lugged the heavy generator towards to hotel. "It will be fun! We can post videos online. We could become famous!"
Rachel had jumped on board at the word "famous".
Kurt had only agreed because his school and his part-time job working the switchboard for a car dealership was boring as hell and there was little interesting to do even in his time off around Lima, Ohio. With Finn's wild idea of starting a ghost hunting show, there was at least a small opportunity for acting. Kurt was at his best when performing. Besides, he was only doing this until he was done with his second year at the University of North Ohio and then he was transferring to NYU and getting out of Lima for good.
The Whispering Wolf wasn't the first 'haunted' sight Rachel, Finn, and he had explored. They filmed episodes at a couple old houses in Ohio and their last exploration had been an old abandoned restaurant, where purportedly someone had died a few years back. Rachel had declared they been murdered! Poisoned by some deranged cook that used to work there… though the information Kurt dug up said heart attack.
Of course, when they investigated, they found nothing, no ghosts or otherworldly apparitions. They never did – but as she did with everyplace they investigated, Rachel had acted scared and enthralled and had faked a few ghost sightings. Finn was easily impressionable and swore he felt a chill every time they turned a corner. Kurt went along with it all for the acting challenge. After some editing and some music and sound effects were added, the episodes weren't so bad. They might not be believable exactly, but Kurt could at least say they were entertaining. The Ghost Investigators even had a decent online following.
Kurt lugged the generator and his backpack to the front door of the dilapidated old building and tried the rusted metal handle. The door only opened half an inch before jamming. Kurt sighed and placed the heavy generator on the ground before shouldering the door a couple times, it took all his strength to get it to swing inward wide enough to grab the generator and slide through.
It was pitch dark inside the hotel of course. Kurt turned on his handheld camera, mostly for the small beam of light projected in front of it and swung around the light. It was a typical hotel lobby. If Kurt used his imagination, he could almost picture how it must have looked once upon a time, plush red carpet, blue and gold damask wallpaper, polished wood check-in desk, and a sweeping staircase to the second floor. Now it was nothing more than a sad monument of a forgotten golden era, the carpet was ripped up in parts leaving the rotting wood floorboard beneath, the wallpaper peeled off the wall and hung lifeless like the petals of a dying flower and the check-in desk was covered in dust and cobwebs. Worst of all, the entire place smelled of mildew and decaying wood.
All in all, Kurt had to admit, it was the perfect location for a hunting. Rachel and Finn would be thrilled.
If they ever got here.
Kurt sat the generator down and began shooting some b-roll of the lobby – first just with the attached flashlight and then in night vision mode to get that green eerie lighting that was a hallmark of a good ghost hunting video. Thunder rumbled outside and Kurt's spine tingled as he was reminded of the impending rain. He went back outside to grab the lamps he'd left leaning against the truck and made sure the bed cover was secure so none of the remaining equipment would get wet. He glanced up at the sky as he headed back in, dark storm clouds covered the moon and the wind was picking up. It was going to rain any second now; he really hoped Rachel and Finn got here before it started.
Kurt took a few minutes setting up the lights and hooking them up to the generator. If Rachel wanted some shots of herself in the lobby before the lights were set up, well then she should have gotten here on time. After that, Kurt did a few takes of himself standing in the lobby and introducing the hotel, his camera on a tripod in front of him. "Built in 1921 the Whispering Wolf is a protected historic building, which is the only reason the whole place hasn't been torn down. It hasn't been in use since 1970." Kurt had actually enjoyed looking into the history of the old building.
The Whispering Wolf was on the outskirts of Westerville, Ohio. A couple hours' drive from where Kurt lived in Lima, but he'd heard about it before. Of course he had, since its closure in 1970 it had been a hangout for teenagers, a place for transients to lay their head, and most of all – the center of ghost stories and urban myths. The story was that someone had been murdered here and their spirit still-hunted the hotel even as it sat empty all these years. The story had very little continuity, some said it was a 1920s mobster killed shortly after the hotel opened, others said it was a 1960s hippie girl murdered after running away from home, and there were many other claims as well. The only thing locals seemed to agree on was that the hotel was definitely haunted.
When Kurt did some research, looking at old newspaper articles and police reports, what he found was that someone had been killed there. Not a hippie or a mobster, just some unnamed young man killed at the Whispering Wolf in the 1950s. Kurt was happy with just finding out that, it was a lot more than Rachel, Finn, and he usually had to go on when exploring a 'hunted' structure. His research also uncovered that at one point in the 1950s the hotel had been used as a convalescent home. Rachel and Finn had been ecstatic about that fact.
"Holy crap! It was a loony bin?"
"You can't say 'loony bin', Finn." Rachel chided him. "It was an insane asylum."
"Mental hospital." Kurt corrected with an eye-roll, "Not that it matters, because it wasn't one. It was more like an upscale spa for rich people recovering from minor surgery or illness."
"Kurt you have no imagination. For our purposes, tortured mental patients and the spirits of malevolent doctors roam the halls of that hotel! That's way scarier."
"But there was a murder-"
"Malevolent doctors, Kurt!"
"Oh yeah, the crazy house spin is perfect." Finn had agreed and Kurt didn't fight them on the idea even if he thought the killing in the 1950s made a better and more accurate story. It wasn't as if anyone took the show seriously anyway. People didn't watch for historic accuracy.
Now that Kurt was alone in this god-forsaken hotel, he was glad to remind himself that it had never been a mental hospital and he tried very hard not to imagine anyone being killed here - or dying here in any way.
It was just an empty building. It wasn't scary, haunted, or sinister. It was just… old. The howling sound was just the wind outside, and the creaking sound was just an old building's shifting foundation, and he did not believe in ghosts.
Kurt pulled his phone out, no messages from either Rachel or Finn. Traitors.
You better be here in the next five minutes or you're dead to me! Kurt texted them both.
There was a loud boom of thunder outside followed almost immediately by the bright flash of lightning through the windows and the hair on Kurt's forearms stood on end. "Shit," Kurt swore as he fumbled with his phone in surprise.
Even with the light provided by the lamps he had set up the lobby was still dim and ominous, he looked around the empty room, the few pieces of old furniture and the check-in desk casting long shadows in the light of his lamps.
He gasped as he thought he saw something moving out of the corner of his eye and spun to face a broken window, there was nothing there, nothing outside, all he could see was his truck sitting alone under the fading streetlamp.
Kurt shook out his shoulders; he was letting himself get spooked over nothing. Maybe he should just go sit in the pickup until his disloyal ghost hunting partners finally arrived. He started towards the front door when, with another crack of thunder, the storm clouds finally opened and sheets of rain came roaring down. Water splattered in from the broken window frames, but it was still far dryer here than it would be racing out to the truck in this torrent. Kurt chewed on his lip. Fine. He'd wait inside. At least until the rain died down a bit and at that point he might just pack up and leave. This was becoming more of a fruitless endeavor by the minute.
He glanced at his phone again, caught between anger and worry that neither Finn nor Rachel had texted him back yet. He had a couple options here; he could wait in the lobby until the rain lessened, or he could make good use of his time and actually go exploring a little, taking some shots and seeing if there was anything here for a good episode of Ghost Investigators. Kurt sighed, he was Kurt Hummel and the Hummels didn't just sit around on their hands and wait.
He grabbed the handheld cam off the tripod and slowly crept past the check-in desk, the stairway looked solid enough, it wasn't going to give way under his feet at least. He could probably poke around some empty rooms upstairs. The rain rattled against the side of the hotel and the wind wailed, Kurt's spine tingled and he had to let out a long deep breath before he started for the stairs. This was silly; he was not scared of the dark. He turned the camera on and pointed it towards the staircase. "I'm going exploring while I wait for the untrustworthy Rachel Berry and her bumbling boyfriend. 'We're on our way!'" Kurt rolled his eyes as he whispered to the camera, "Yeah, right." He started up the first few creaky steps. "No reason not to get a look around just because my partners have become completely undependable."
Kurt smoothed down his designer button-up shirt; it was midnight blue with little white crescent moons all over it. It had seemed appropriate for ghost hunting, besides, Kurt knew he looked really good in it and he never passed up a chance to look good on screen. Kurt turned the camera to face him as he paused on the stairwell. "Rumor has it that the Whispering Wolf is haunted by the spirit of a young man who died here in the 1950s after being shot and killed by a jealous ex-lover. James Doyle was barely older than me when he met his grisly death."
Rachel and Finn had forfeited their right to fight him on the main story for the Whispering Wolf episode when they hadn't even shown up. The made-up mental hospital was out. The real-life murder was back on.
Kurt looked up the long staircase not able to make out the second floor in the heavy darkness. He licked his lips nervously, the camera still trained on him. It was okay to let some of his nerves show on camera; it built suspense, as long as he didn't let himself actually get too scared. He was a professional after all. "I guess I should go up there?" Kurt said into the camera before turning it around to view the dismal staircase that led up to utter blackness. He did not want to go up there.
There was a loud crash and a bang from behind him, Kurt spun around with his heart in his throat. The set lights had crashed to the ground, light bulbs popping as the curtains on the front windows flew outwards floating in the air like luminous specters. Kurt let out a startled shriek and then barreled up the rest of the staircase.
"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!" Kurt panted once he reached the second floor and rounded a corner so he couldn't even see the lobby anymore. He leaned up against a wall and caught his breath turning the camera to face him again. He covered his mouth with a hand and laughed nervously through his fingers before letting his hand drop and taking a deep breath. "I better have gotten that on camera." He joked with his future viewers as he tried to breathe and calm the beating of his heart. "Did you see that? Sure it was probably just the wind, but you would have freaked out too if you were here alone while your co-conspirators are safe and warm somewhere probably making-out having forgotten all about you."
Kurt gently smoothed back his hair and took a deep breath, time to be brave. "I guess I'll check out the second floor now that I'm here." He turned the camera around to face the long dark hallway in front of him. "This is where the murder is said to have taken place. In one of these guest rooms." Kurt looked from the hallway down to the image of the hallway on his camera, "If there is a spirit haunting this place it-" Kurt stopped talking, his throat going dry and a cold chill running down his spine.
There was something in the hallway ahead of him. Just out of sight, he was sure he'd seen something move.
"Hello?" Kurt called out, but his voice was barely above a whisper, "Is… is anyone there?" In the back of his mind, he was just starting to think that if this was a prank by Rachel or Finn he was going to murder them – when something in front of him in the darkness moved again.
"Oh god." Kurt glanced back at his camera; the night vision making out more than his eyes could in the darkness, just as something stepped into frame. Kurt took a stumbling step backward, a scream choked in his throat, as the green night vision revealed the grainy outline of a young man.
Kurt gasped audibly and looked up from the camera to the form standing in front of him, donned in slacks, a snuggly fitting button up shirt, suspenders, a bowtie, and looking like he'd just stepped out of the 1950s to personally haunt Kurt.
Kurt screamed.
The ghost screamed back.