Beneath the Bed: Kaylee’s Motel Nightmare

“Kaylee, why are you crawling under there? You’re gonna find a spider nest or something way worse,” Madeline calls, a nervous laugh in her voice. Her words echo off the brown, water-stained walls of our $39-a-night roadside motel, halfway between Nashville and nowhere. My phone flashlight flickers in my hand, the beam trembling with my pulse as I stare at the strange slit in the faded carpet beneath my bed.

“I dropped my AirPods,” I mutter, but even I don’t believe myself. There’s something off about this place—the way the front desk clerk avoided eye contact, the persistent, metallic tang in the air, the way our room key stuck in the door when we tried to get in. And now, this: a perfectly straight cut, about three feet long, right at the edge of the bed frame. No dust, no grime. Like someone’s been here recently.

Madeline sighs, setting down her Diet Coke and flopping onto the other bed. “We should’ve just driven through the night.”

“Too late now.” My fingers graze the carpet, and I feel the seam give. The edge lifts easily, revealing a trapdoor—barely big enough for a person to squeeze through. My heart thuds. I turn to Madeline and raise my eyebrows. “You seeing this?”

She sits up, her eyes wide. “Kaylee, what the hell?”

I swallow hard, adrenaline rushing. “I’m opening it.”

“Don’t. That’s how horror movies start.”

But curiosity—stupid, reckless curiosity—wins. I slip my phone between my teeth, wedge my fingers under the door, and pull. It groans, the sound muffled by years of neglect. Cold, damp air breathes up from the darkness below. The beam of my phone swings wildly, illuminating a ladder. It disappears into the void.

“Are you filming this?” Madeline asks, voice shaky. She knows me too well. My TikTok had blown up over the past year with ghost stories, urban legends, and creepy motel reviews. But this—this wasn’t a setup. This was real.

I nod, pressing record. “If anything happens, at least people will know.” My voice breaks a little. I swing my legs over the side, ignoring Madeline’s frantic protests, and start down the ladder.

The air thickens with every step. My phone’s light sweeps over concrete walls, scratch marks, a tangle of wires. I reach the bottom. It’s a room—maybe eight feet by eight—bare but for a stained mattress, a rusted bucket, and a dozen Polaroids taped to the wall.

I freeze. My hands shake as I zoom in. The photos are of women—girls, really. All different, but each one with terror etched in her eyes. One photo—a girl with straight brown hair and a chipped front tooth—looks so much like my little sister, Emily, that I almost drop my phone.

“Kaylee, come back up right now!” Madeline screams from above. I choke down bile and snap as many photos as I can. My mind races—serial killer, sex trafficking, drug den? My breath comes in shallow gasps. I scramble up the ladder, slamming the trapdoor shut, and collapse onto the threadbare carpet.

Madeline grabs my shoulders. “What did you see?”

The words tumble out in a rush. “There’s a room. Pictures. Girls. We have to call someone.”

She stares at me, pale and shaking. “Are you serious, Kaylee? This is—this is like, crime scene stuff.”

I nod. “Call 911.”

My hands are still trembling when the police arrive. The officers—one young, one old—don’t seem surprised. They usher us out, barely glancing at my phone. “We’ll take it from here, girls.”

The next hours are a blur: statements, questions, the cold glare of cop car headlights. I upload the video to TikTok, despite the knot in my stomach. Within minutes, it’s viral. Comments flood in—some calling me a hero, others accusing me of staging it for clout. My phone explodes with notifications, but all I feel is numb.

Back home in Memphis, I can’t sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see those Polaroids. I start digging—old missing persons cases, news articles, forum posts. After days of scrolling, I find her: Jessica Turner, missing since 2008, last seen at a motel twenty miles from where we stayed. She’s the girl with the chipped tooth. Her mother’s Facebook is a graveyard of unanswered posts and candlelight vigils.

I message her. “I think I found something of your daughter’s.” She never responds.

The motel gets shut down a week later. The story makes local news, but it fizzles. No arrests. No answers. The owners claim ignorance. The cops move on. But I can’t. I post updates, share everything I know. My followers turn into amateur sleuths, DMing tips and theories at all hours. Some nights, I wonder if I’m helping or just keeping the wound open.

My mom begs me to drop it. “Kaylee, you’re obsessed. You’re scaring your sister.”

I snap at her. “Someone has to care. What if it was Emily?”

She flinches, and for a moment, I hate myself. But then I remember that girl’s eyes—Jessica’s eyes—and I keep going.

Madeline pulls away, too. “You’re not sleeping. You’re not eating. You’re chasing ghosts, Kaylee.”

But I can’t stop. Not when I know what’s hiding in the dark. Not when I know how easy it is to overlook the evil just beneath our feet.

Sometimes, late at night, I lie awake replaying it all—every second, every choice. If I hadn’t crawled under that bed, would anyone ever have found that room? Would Jessica’s mother ever know the truth?

And I wonder: How many secrets are out there, festering in the shadows, waiting for someone curious—or reckless—enough to find them? Would you have opened the trapdoor?