Room 313

“Room 313 is cursed.”

That’s what they whispered at Everlight Grand Hotel, where chandeliers sparkled and secrets clung to the walls like dust.

But Mira didn’t believe in curses. She believed in tips, clean sheets, and staying invisible.

She had worked at Everlight for five years, and nothing surprised her anymore. Until the day a man named Dr. Elias Kade checked into Room 313.

He had no luggage.

No phone.

No past.

“He paid cash,” Rosa whispered, her co-worker’s eyes darting. “Three nights. No ID.”

That was against hotel policy—but when guests looked rich, or dangerous, rules melted. Management called it “discretion.” Mira called it trouble.

She was assigned to clean his room.

She expected the usual: messy sheets, damp towels, and an untouched minibar.

Instead, the room was immaculate. Almost untouched. Except for one thing.

A mirror.

It had been covered in black cloth—tight and purposeful, not dust protection.

Curiosity won. Mira peeled it back.

But there was no reflection.

Not of her.

Not of the room.

Just blackness. Moving blackness, like smoke swirling behind glass.

She stepped back, goosebumps rising. Something was wrong.

The next morning, Room 313 was empty. The bed untouched. No sign anyone had ever stayed.

She checked with the front desk.

“Dr. Kade hasn’t checked out,” said the clerk, glancing at the screen. “And he didn’t leave through the lobby.”

Security footage confirmed it: He had entered… and never came back out.

It was as if he’d dissolved into air.

That night, Mira couldn’t sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the mirror.

Or what wasn’t in it.

She returned to Room 313.

The keycard still worked.

The air inside was colder than before. Lights flickered, despite the hotel’s pristine power system.

She uncovered the mirror again.

Still no reflection.

But this time, writing formed in the black glass, like breath on a frozen window.

“HELP ME.”

She backed away, heart pounding.

A flash appeared. A face—hollow-eyed, mouth stitched shut, pale and screaming without sound.

Dr. Kade.

She didn’t tell anyone. Who would believe her?

The next day, the hotel’s night manager vanished. Same floor. Same pattern.

Checked into Room 313.

Security footage: Blank.

Now the whispers became louder.

Determined, Mira visited the hotel archive, a forgotten basement filled with old blueprints and dusty ledgers.

What she found chilled her.

There had never been a Room 313.

Just Rooms 312 and 314.

But in 1965, a fire had consumed part of the third floor. A guest, Victor Elwyn, a physicist, had died in the blaze. He had been conducting mirror experiments—“temporal inversion using dark matter,” the article claimed.

No body was recovered.

Victor’s last recorded experiment involved a mirror coated in black mercury, said to reflect not just light, but memory. Consciousness. Possibly even time itself.

She returned to the room.

This time, with a hammer.

Inside, everything was still. Too still.

She uncovered the mirror.

No reflection. Just thick, living blackness.

A whisper crawled up from the silence.

“Break me… and you join them.”

She hesitated.

Then swung.

Glass shattered—but instead of falling, it dissolved into liquid darkness, bleeding across the wall. The room groaned. The bedframe split. The walls twisted. Air was sucked out of the space.

She screamed—

Then—

Silence.

Mira awoke lying in the hotel lobby. People bustled past. Soft music played.

Normal.

Too normal.

She stood, dazed, and rushed to Rosa.

“I—I was in 313,” she stammered. “The mirror—it was alive—”

Rosa gave her a strange look. “Room what?”

“313!”

“There’s no such room,” she said slowly. “There never was.”

Mira turned to the front desk. “Dr. Kade? The guest?”

The receptionist typed politely. “No guest by that name ever stayed here.”

She turned around.

Behind the desk, the room keys hung in neat rows. She stepped closer.

There it was.

Key to Room 313.

Dusty. Cold. Still hanging.

For days after, Mira wandered the hotel halls at night, listening.

Sometimes, she’d catch movement in other mirrors. A flicker. A breath. A second set of eyes.

And sometimes, when alone, she would hear it:

A knock.

Soft. Faint.

From the other side of the glass.

Ending Note:

The Ever light Grand Hotel eventually renovated its third floor.

Room 313 was officially sealed, bricked off completely.

But late guests still say they hear things—

Knocks. Whispers. Faint tapping from behind the walls.

Some even say they’ve seen their own reflections vanish, just for a moment.

And somewhere, in the space between time and truth, a mirror waits…

Still covered in black cloth.

Still watching.

Still hungry.

About the Author

Shafi is a fiction writer who believes that the most haunting stories are not born from monsters, but from mystery. With a passion for the unseen, the forgotten, and the psychologically thrilling, he crafts narratives that invite readers to question reality—and sometimes fear it. When not writing, he explores human behavior, time theories, and the eerie silence of abandoned places. His goal? To leave you thinking long after the final word.