Room 409 - Pt 4

[u/Everblack_Deathmask]

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

The room doesn’t imprison you—it convinces you that you left of your own free will.

But every hallway I manage to escape becomes a replica, a false sense of security and safety. Grief doesn’t die; it decorates.

It builds walls out of the memories that I don’t trust, gifts me keys I don’t remember earning, and it multiplies the number of doors I must walk through.

Some doors lead to moments that I swore never happened, but I couldn’t tell you if they did or not. Others feel too tender to be false.

The room knows that I will open any door if I think she’s behind it.

My one hope is finding the right door so that I can take my little girl home…

If haven’t read parts 1, 2, or 3, I urge you to start there. What follows won’t make sense otherwise.

—————————

I navigated my way through the thick darkness of the closet only to emerge back into the hallway this time.

Not in bed. Not on the floor.

Just… there.

Too quiet. Too clean. Too curated.

My knees gave out and I slid down the wall, slumping against the peeling wallpaper like a drunk dragged out mid-dream.

The rough texture of the wallpaper pricked at my skin like thorns as the lights above me buzzed with indecision — flickering in and out, caught between seconds.

For a long moment, I couldn’t move.

I didn’t want to.

Because I knew the truth before I even looked:

I was back. Not free. Just deeper.

I stood slowly, joints stiff, breath stale in my throat.

And that’s when I saw them.

Not one Room 409.

But two.

One door — rusted over, scorched black around the handle like it had once been set ablaze.

The other — soft sea-glass green, lit from within by the kind of warmth only nostalgia can fake.

I reached for the burnt door first only to realize it wouldn’t budge.

Locked.

The green one?

It opened by itself, as if imploring me to explore its interior.

The hallway behind me vanished. The path led only forward now.

I walked into the room slowly only to realize that this was my own living room. It didn’t feel like home though.

It felt like a replica, like a too-perfect stage set, waiting for actors who never come. The throw blanket was folded neatly across the arm of the couch, the air was stale, but free of dust. Familiar, but… wrong.

It was as if someone had reconstructed it from memory instead of experience.

There was a book on the coffee table that I didn’t recognize.

A Study of Grief in Nonlinear Time

I picked it up to study it further and noticed that there was no author or a barcode.

I opened the cover and noticed a handwritten note inscribed on the first page:

“What you bury does not die. It waits in corners, closets, and in the reflection that lags a little too long.”

My hands were shaking before I realized I was holding the journal again, but not in my hands...in my daughter’s hands.

I screamed in fright and dropped the journal but like a cat that lands on its feet, it landed perfectly, open.

New words filled the page where the old ones were:

“You’re not the only one who lived here. Memory is a hallway. You didn’t build all the doors.”

I backed away from the journal quickly and noticed that silence of the house had grown deafening.

I moved room to room — kitchen, bedroom, hallway — every space eerily pristine, untouched like a crime scene scrubbed clean. Sanitized grief.

That is when it shifted.

The hallway lengthened to disorienting proportions.

It was subtle at first. A few extra inches. Then feet. Then yards.

That old rose-colored wallpaper peeled from the edges, revealing something familiar beneath it.

The bones of Room 409.

It was bleeding through my life again.

I followed.

⸻

The door was new this time.

It was sea-glass green.

Worn brass knob scuffed down to silver, a victim to the erosion of time.

I hesitated before I opened it.

Inside, a child’s room awaited me. But it was not Emily’s.

Different toys littered the floor, and the walls were covered in drawings I didn’t recognize. They consisted of stick figures with hands too long, all smiling like they didn’t know how not to.

And in the center of the bed sat a boy.

He had chestnut brown hair with tiny freckles that adorned his face. He had eyes that looked far too old to belong to someone that small.

He looked up at me and smiled.

“Hi.”

I froze, unsure who this child was. “I think I’m in the wrong—”

“You came back,” he said.

I blinked in confusion, “Do I know you?”

He tilted his head slightly as if he found my question funny. “Not yet.”

It was in that moment that I felt it. That static that buzzed behind my eyes like a hive of enraged hornets. The one I’d learned to associate with the room.

It was watching me again.

The boy’s smile faded. “You remember her, don’t you? Your daughter?”

I nodded stiffly, fear guiding my movements like a marionette.

“Then remember me.”

The walls vibrated intensely as the drawings that decorated them on them twisted and distorted until the stick figures became…me.

The drawings depicted me crying, screaming, blank faced and standing in between a black and green door.

“Who are you?” The question lurching from my throat.

The boy stood up from his position on the bed, “I’m the morning you left the blinds closed. The day her laugh slipped away. The moment you stopped caring …I’m the version of you that never left the room.”

The sound of a door screeching open came from behind me.

I turned to see that it wasn’t a closet anymore that I was looking at.

It was a hospital room, Emily’s hospital room.

The bed was empty, the sheets disheveled. Mr. Grey, the stuffed elephant was torn apart, the stuffing strewn across the linoleum like snow.

When I turned back, the boy was gone. The journal was in the place where he had been standing.

A new page was open for me to read:

“You thought grief ended when the tears stopped. But silence is where it grows strongest.”

⸻

I ran through shifting rooms and bending hallways.

Furniture contorted into unnamable shapes.

Doorways opened into impossible spaces — reality glitching and gasping for its final breaths.

Static droned in my ears as Emily’s voice echoed from within the walls like a voice trapped inside a cave.

Faint. Distant. Warped.

“You left me in the dark too long. I became something else.”

I burst into the living room again…but it wasn’t mine anymore.

The photographs were all wrong.

One showed me with no face. In another, Claire’s eyes were scratched out. In the last, Emily stood alone at the playground by the swing set.

I rushed to the front door and pulled at the door begging to be free but…

Nothing.

It wasn’t stuck. It wasn’t locked.

It just…wasn’t real.

⸻

The journal was waiting for me on the dining table, like a guest waiting for dinner.

I didn’t want to read it, but at the same time…I did.

With morbid curiosity, my eyes befell the pages again.

“Sometimes the room doesn’t show you what happened. Sometimes it shows you what you’re becoming.”

Then came the knocks.

Soft, restrained.

At the window.

I looked to see that standing outside, in the rain…was me.

A younger version of me somehow.

His eyes were wilder than mine, consumed with grief. A cracked and splintered smile adorned his face.

He was clutching something in his hand, something I recognized immediately.

It was a room key.

409.

He raised his hand and dropped it on the windowsill, before turning to walk away.

I flung the window open and cried out after him.

But there was no man or rain, just a hallway.

It was stretched out like an open wound, the rose wallpaper pulsing beneath the beige paint like a beast in a deep slumber.

My world had become the room.

⸻

I collapsed onto the couch in a disheveled heap, unsure if I was exhausted or just empty.

The air buzzed slightly, not with sound but with sorrow.

It had shape now, actual weight to it.

Then a voice permeated from the walls.

It wasn’t Claire’s or Emily’s voice I heard, it was my own.

But it was older, gruff, significantly more bitter.

Worn down by time, guilt, and memory.

“You can’t bury grief like a body. It doesn’t rot—it roots.”

“What do I do?” I asked, uncertainty dripping in every word of my question.

“You do the hardest thing, you remember everything. Even the parts that hurt, those especially.”

The voice dissipated as yet another door appeared before me.

It was sea-glass green again.

It opened before I reached for it.

I stepped through and saw the same child’s room as before only now the boy was gone.

The bed sat empty, perfectly undisturbed like a lie frozen in time.

On the wall rested a mirror.

That wasn’t there last time…I thought as I found myself walking towards it.

I closed my eyes, fearful of the reflection that awaited me.

I opened them slowly, reluctantly.

It revealed…me.

Finally, me.

There was no smile, no delay.

The man in the mirror perfectly reflected me.

For the first time in what felt like hours… days… maybe years…

My reflection wasn’t lying.

Beside me, the journal hovered in the air like it had been waiting for this exact moment.

The pages turned like a wind was directing it to do so until it landed on the final page.

It read:

“It’s not about leaving the room. It’s about choosing what you bring with you when you do.”

I didn’t look away from the mirror, I held my gaze like I was delivering a testimony.

“I’m here.” I spoke, my eyes focusing with intent.

My reflection nodded as if to say: For now.

The room didn’t slam shut; it quietly closed and folded like a book after its final chapter.

The air became heavier, warmer, as if someone had been crying in it for hours.

I turned back to see that the hallway was gone and had been replaced with a stairwell.

There was no railing, just worn wooden steps spiraling downward into the cold depths below.

As I approached, I noticed something was carved into the first step:

“You’ve remembered too much to go back.”

I swallowed nervously and took the stairs one step at a time, slowly descending towards whatever fate awaited me at the bottom.

Each step beneath my feet echoed wrong.

Not with footsteps but with faint whispers.

“It was your fault.” “You weren’t there.” “She was waiting.” “You didn’t come.”

I tried to remember her laugh but the room was louder, it drowned out my every thought like TV static.

It was enough to make me scream but I stayed resilient until I made it to the bottom.

When I reached the last stair, I noticed a door.

It was unmarked and…weeping?

Thick, blackened water leaked from beneath it. Slow as molasses. Heavy as oil.

I reached for the handle and felt a harsh heat burn my palm like the room on the other side was ablaze.

I pulled away, but the door opened on its own accord.

Inside: a kitchen.

The low sound of a child laughing from another room.

It felt familiar and safe.

Too safe.

It felt like a trap disguised as comfort.

Every chair was perfectly angled. Every photo frame dustless. The lamp light illuminated the room in a soft gold, like memory filtered through nostalgia.

I stepped toward the counter and noticed an open lunchbox sitting there. It was a deep shade of purple and covered in stars.

A sticky note sat beside it.

It read:

“You’ll do better today. I believe in you.” — Dad

I stared at the note. It was in my handwriting, but I never wrote it.

The hallway compelled me toward the framed photos lining the wall.

Birthday parties she never had.

Beach vacations we never took.

Her graduation, years too far ahead.

All these memories decorated the wall.

I reached out to touch one and felt the image ripple, like I was touching water.

The room wasn’t showing the past; it was fabricating an entire future.

It was nothing more than an elaborate lie.

It was offering forgiveness I hadn’t earned.

And I almost accepted its apology.

Almost.

That is, until I saw the final door.

It was a small and narrow closet.

Inside, sat a woman in a chair. Head bowed as if she were napping.

“Claire?” Her name hung in the air in quiet suspension as I awaited a response.

She lifted her head slowly to reveal her bloodshot eyes and sickly pale skin.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” she warned tiredly.

I knelt beside her, “I had to know.”

She looked at me with something like pity. “There’s a reason we buried it. The room showed me too. What comes after and what you won’t survive.”

“What did it show you?” I pleaded, eager for more answers.

Her pregnant pause filled my heart with tension before she finally spoke to me again:

“Emily and I… we forgave you, didn’t we? That’s what you needed us to do...what you wanted.”

I reached for her hand.

It was cold but not lifeless.

“You’re not her.” I acknowledged as I pulled my hand away.

She offered a soft smile laced with sadness. “I’m the version of me you needed. The peace you imagined. Not the truth.”

I stood and watched as the closet and the darkness behind her deepen.

In the distance, I could see the faint outline of the three numbers on a placard that have come to haunt me:

409.

The loop always ends here.

I looked down one last time, “You’re not real.”

Claire nodded, “And neither is the version of you that keeps pretending you’re healing.”

She faded before my eyes as did the world around us as I found myself back inside Room 409, alone.

Then came several loud knocks.

At first, I thought it came from the door. Then I realized that they were coming from beneath the bed.

I slowly crouched to peek underneath.

There was no figure, just a piece of folded paper.

It was written in Emily’s handwriting.

“You said you’d stay but you left me with the room.”

I dropped to my knees and wept, the emotional dam finally giving way.

My tears were not ones of fear; they were of recognition from finally understanding that I had never left.

My body went home, filed reports, and wore smiles.

But the part of me that held her hand when the machines turned off?

That part never made it out.

And the room?

It fed that part comfort, false memories, and just enough hope to continue to play pretend, until the truth was just one version of the story.

I wiped the tears that stained my face and saw it.

A door had manifested itself in the middle of the room.

It was new, but not.

The door was numbered:

409.

The journal sat in front of it, its pages fluttering.

I opened it and noticed there was only one line embedded into the page:

“If you walk through this door, there’s no forgetting again.”

I turned the page.

Blank.

Except, there was a key.

Etched into it were the numbers 409.

And beneath it, Emily’s name.

I whispered it aloud like prayer, surrendering myself to the room.

It shuddered and drew its breath before letting out an exhale that felt final before I opened the door and stepped through the doorway.

Inside, things were familiar once again, but not mine.

The room looked almost untouched: bed made, curtains drawn, no blood on the carpet. There were details I couldn’t explain, however.

There was a pair of women’s shoes by the dresser and a little girl’s coat draped over the chair.

Static blared from the TV in a deafening manner as I approached it.

As I got closer, I noticed a VHS tape resting on the nightstand.

Its worn-out label read: Room 409 — short film.

I inserted the tape into the battered VCR under the television and watched the screen crackle to life.

At first, only a title card: The Lotus Hotel presents…

Then: me. Standing with Brenner and other investigators in a brightly lit room, looking down at the photographs of a man and a woman, narrating the scene.

Only… I wasn’t speaking. My mouth moved, but a different voice spilled out — slower, brittle, almost stitched together from a dozen different recordings like memories falsifying their own reconstruction.

A voice made from fragments rather than complete thoughts.

The lines it spoke… they were mine.

From the briefing with Brenner.

From the report.

From the story I told myself.

“The detective believes he’s solving a crime… but what he’s really doing is running from the ending.”

I shut it off and as I did, the light to the bathroom turned on.

It was like I was being beckoned by the room to explore further.

I headed towards the bathroom and found a file folder on the sink.

The cover bore my name, handwritten.

Inside were intake forms, psych evaluations, and words like disassociation and trauma-fueled construct.

There were dates on the reports as well. Some matched the timeline I remembered, and others were from almost a decade earlier.

There was even a photo of me. I had shorter hair, wore a hospital bracelet, and had eyes that looked like they hadn’t slept in years.

That’s when I noticed it: the mirror behind the sink.

And the version of me staring back.

He didn’t move when I did. He didn’t flinch when I recoiled. He just stood there, smiling. Slowly. Sadly.

“Who are you?” I trembled.

He mouthed back: “The real one. The one who never left.”

I ran out of the bathroom and down the hallway, adrenaline coursing through my veins as my feet thudded against the carpeted flooring.

My feet guided me through the stairwell. The lobby flickered—pristine, then rotted—two timelines fighting to overwrite one another.

A bellhop stood at the front desk, humming to himself.

When I approached, he turned—and had my face.

“Welcome back, Mr. Cartwright,” he said courteously. “Will you be staying with us long this time?”

I backed away, the color draining from my face as the elevator dinged behind me.

I watched the doors open and heard a child’s voice singing softly from within.

Emily…

“Row, row, row your boat…”

I practically leapt into the elevator and pressed the buttons in a frantic plea that one of them will lead me towards the exit.

I hit every floor. Each opened to a different version of the Lotus. One looked like a hospital. One like a courtroom. One like a funeral home. In one, I saw myself sitting with a doctor. In another, I stood at a graveside alone.

All timelines. All versions of me.

I couldn’t breathe.

Eventually, I made it back to Room 409—the original one, I think. Or maybe a new copy. It didn’t matter anymore.

I stepped inside. The lights were dim. Dust settled in slow motion. The air felt ancient.

And there, burned into the wallpaper above the bed in blackened letters:

THIS IS THE ROOM YOU MADE TO FORGET HER.

And for the first time…I didn’t want to leave.