✔[BL]Haunted Places Live

Chapter 1 - 10

Chapter 1 - De Rosa Hotel (1)

Chu Yang had taken a new job as a room service attendant at the De Rosa Hotel a few months ago. The hotel was about three hours' drive from the city centre, surrounded by hundreds of miles of coniferous forest in the Rocky Mountains, with only the clear blue of Lake Rosemary in front of it. In Spring and Summer, standing in front of the hotel, you could see the snow-capped mountains in the distance beyond the mirror-like surface of the lake and the cascading sea of trees, reflecting an almost holy light against the blue sky, but in Winter, by the beginning of November, the snow would have already sealed everything. The lake would be crushed under a metre of ice and snow and as far as the eye could see everything would be white, so white that if you looked at it for too long your eyes would tear up and you may even feel dizzy.

Lake Rosemary wasn't as famous as Lake Louise and naturally didn't have as many guests as the Lake Louise Inn. The other selling point of the De Rosa Hotel was its spa, but unfortunately it wasn't as famous as the Harrison Hot Spring Hotel near Vancouver. So the hotel had little worth and Winters would be especially bleak. The hotel had once had its glory days, the architecture style still belonged to 19th century Europe, with an elegance that was slightly worn from life, as if clinging to the past rather than bowing to modernity. However, the building was old and the facilities were somewhat archaic and maintaining it had become increasingly difficult as a result of the recent recession. In the end, the hotel had no choice but to close all the rooms in the west wing and only keep the east wing open.

Due to its remote location, the hotel's service staff were mostly from the local town and Chinese attendants like Chu Yang were increasingly rare. Fortunately he had previously attended university in Vancouver and spoke good English, otherwise he would easily have been unconsciously ostracised by his colleagues. On top of this he was a cautious and calm person who was very practical and competent, so he was soon accepted by his manager and other colleagues.

He was responsible for cleaning and tidying up the rooms and corridors on the third and fourth floors, delivering items requested by guests, providing information about the hotel or restaurants in the surrounding area, or fulfilling any reasonable requests from guests. However, the definition of "reasonable" was relatively broad, so Chu Yang's understanding of this was that he must try to meet any request from a guest, as long as he wasn't being asked to sell his body or break the law.

Although the job was relatively boring, he had seen a few...... oddities as he had access to different guests' rooms.

The rooms at the De Rosa Hotel were also retro in style, with light blue floral wallpaper on the walls and grey carpets on the floor. The layout was usually a bathroom to the left of the entrance door, a cloakroom to the right and two double beds or a King Size bed further into the room, with two cat foot armchairs and a small round table by the window or balcony. Facing the bed would be a chestnut wardrobe, a TV cabinet, a small fridge and a writing desk. On the fridge would be a coffee machine and on the desk a vintage lamp with a long green shade.

Less than a month after he started work, Chu Yang entered a king-size room with a "Please clean now" sign and was struck dumb when he entered.

There was red blood all over the bed and chunks of fleshy, sticky stuff strewn everywhere, reminiscent of offal or raw meat. There was also a fishy smell in the air, as if from a pork stall in a vegetable market. Chu Yang's face turned white at the sight and his stomach lurched with acid, but he carefully dipped his gloved hand into the red and brought it up to his nose to smell what he was sure was the smell of blood.

He just didn't know if it was human blood.

He then took off his cleaning gloves, called the manager on the intercom and took out the mobile phone he had discreetly brought with him to take a few pictures. The manager rushed to the scene within five minutes, looking round with a deathly pale face.