The Dark Hotel (Part One)

“Excuse me, miss chambermaid, but the hall seems to be a little dark?”
The sullen chambermaid, with her unwieldy large bow, turned her large face to Horace Gesson as he stood outside the door of his room. “This is the Dark Hotel.”Gesson chuckled a short, dry chuckle. His white shirt was uncomfortably wrinkled from the long, musty day and he wanted only to splash his face with water as quickly as possible. “Yes, I know that’s the name of the establishment. But I hardly see . . .”
The maid interrupted with axe-like ferocity. Her face jutted forward with the momentum of a large wasp. “That is the name and that’s the way it is. I advise you to take it for an advantage.” She began marching down the hallway, her ebony-clothed backside quickly disappearing in the dimness.
“Take it for an advantage!” Gesson stood at a loss in his grey trousers and puzzled chin, miffed at the chambermaid’s odd locution.
He turned back to his door and inserted the large antique black iron key that took up a large part of his hand as he held it.
The key made a wheezing sound as it entered the keyhole, a wheezing like the moan of a small rubbery artificial animal. Gesson winced slightly. He wasn’t sure if he had ever heard that precise sound come from a keyhole, but it had been a long time since he’d used an iron key, so he couldn’t say for sure. Upon entering the room, Gesson saw nothing particularly noteworthy. There was a large, almost monstrously large bed, that spanned the breadth of the room with a heavy authority, covered in a dark lime blanket. The room had a smell not uncommon to large and infrequently visited hotel rooms, an urban smell of dense population masses and unwashed clothes.