A man, John Clark, checked into a hotel near the airport, because his flight left tomorrow and he was going to meet up with his family. The receptionist gave him the key, and just as he was about to leave, she grabbed his arm and pulled him close.

"There's something you need to know. The room next to yours, 310, is painted red. It's locked tight for a reason. You must not knock on that door or look in through the keyhole, or face the consequence." She let go off his arm, resumed her typical receptionist smile, and waved at him. "Have a nice stay at Travelodge!"

It was late at night so the man wanted to go straight to bed. He passed the red door and resisted the urge to peer through. The number was strange, and almost seemed to resemble an upsidedown word, but he couldn't make out what. He shook it off and went into his room to go to sleep.

In the middle of the night, he was woken up by scratching on the wall next to him. It was coming from room 310. John got up and walked quietly to the room with the red door. He decided not to knock, but to look in through the keyhole. Nothing could get to him through the keyhole.

He saw a dark room, with a single spotlight focusing on a single chair in the centre of the room. Her hands tied behind it, a woman sat on it, black hair tumbling to her waist, skin white like ice. Shivering at the sight, the man stood up straight and went back to his room, wishing that he could have seen her face.

***

In the morning, John got his things together and locked the door behind him. He couldn't resist peering through the keyhole one last time. But there was nothing there, just red on the other side as if someone had draped a red curtain on the other side of the door. He shrugged it off and went to return the key.

The same receptionist was there. "Did you have a nice stay?"

"Yeah," John replied, "but there was scratching noise coming from 310 last night and I didn't get much sleep."

Her eyes widened. "You looked in there didn't you?"

"Fine, I did, so what?"

She took a deep breath and began. "Well, ten years ago, just before I came here, the manager's daughter was murdered in that room, but she still lives there. We had to lock the door to keep her inside. But, someone went in there to put in a chair for her to sit on, my best friend in fact, and looked into her eyes, and was killed that same day, and I had to replace him." She looked so sad, but John wasn't buying it. It sounded absurd. "Apparently she had hair as black as a raven's wing and skin as white as ice, and..."

John was shocked. At least I didn't look into her eyes, he thought. She had her back to me.

"Her eyes are the worst." The receptionist continued. "They're a blank, staring red."

John started to panic. "Um, I think I left something in my room. Let me just go get it."

He disappeared down the corridor and up the stairs. Then, sunglasses covering her eyes, a woman with black hair and white skin was standing next to the open door to the forbidden hotel room. She had scraped off the numbers and set them out to read DIE. Knife in her hand, she pushed John up against the wall, and stabbed him in the shoulder.

Blood gushed from the wound, and he let out a scream. The receptionist came running. The woman took off her sunglasses, looked down the corridor, and waited for her to come, knife at the ready, dripping with blood the red of her eyes...