17x14: We Call Them Larry

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This podcast contains adult language and content. The stories shared in this podcast are told from the perspective of the authors. Their accounts and opinions are personal and do not reflect the stance of the production team. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show.

I was in what had to be the third most shady hotel in Vegas, which for Vegas is saying something. And I recounted to my friends what I considered to be an amusing childhood story about the time my family stayed in an even shadier so-called hotel. Rather than them being amused, however, I managed to inadvertently traumatize the entirety of my company. I decided that this would be a good place to share this story, given the reaction of my buddies. What follows is completely true, and everyone who was there swears by this narrative. When I was five years old, my family took a road trip to upstate New York to see my paternal grandmother. We were also going to tour around the countryside a bit with her. We were planning on staying in a bed and breakfast my father had booked ahead of time, which sat in a rural part of upstate that was pretty far away from where my grandmother actually lives. It had been an unexpectedly long drive due to an impending storm and weather complications, and when we found the B&B in question, we were all quite tired. We went up to the door to check in, and a woman missing her two front teeth on both the top and bottom answered. She invited us in and warned us that they didn't have any room for the night. They were booked solid. My father protested, stating that he had made the arrangements in advance, but she said she knew of another hotel just up the way that had a vacancy, and that she would give them a call, assuring him that they would offer the same rates. Before she called them though, she insisted on showing my parents around, claiming that her husband was an artist and that she wanted them to see his studio and famous artwork. We were all invited in, but after seeing the first few pieces of naked women missing their front teeth or being bound and tortured in various ways, my parents opted to leave my siblings and me outside with grandma. Apparently, most of the rooms were full to the ceiling with similarly foreboding imagery of dead and dying people, with the occasional sculpture of menacing animals.

My parents were a bit creeped out, but just figured that these people were eccentric, and that we had dodged a bullet by needing to stay somewhere else. While the woman called her friend at the hotel, we all waited out back beside a fire pit, containing what could only be described as some kind of altar, which was covered with pentagrams. My mother mentioned that it seemed strange that not only had they not met the husband, who was supposedly there somewhere during a full house tour, but that there hadn't been a single sign of life, or a piece of luggage suggesting that anyone else was even staying in any of the guest rooms in this supposedly fully booked B&B.

By the time we arrived at the hotel, the storm was upon us. We were greeted by a different woman, who was also conspicuously missing her two front teeth, upper and lower.

The so-called hotel was just her house, but we were all exhausted, and there was nowhere else to stay anywhere near there. My dad decided that we would make do with whatever they had to offer. What they had to offer was a slightly renovated barn.

During the bustle of moving our luggage in, the woman kept inviting my three-year-old brother and me into the house, saying that she had some sweets, and wouldn't we like to meet her kitties?

Unlike the first B&B, however, she made it clear that my parents were not welcome in the house, because it was too messy and she would be embarrassed. My parents herded us both into the barn and told us not to talk to the lady. My father, who was by this time pretty creeped out, went about checking the beds and the security of this one-room barn unit. The windows had no coverings whatsoever, and the doors had no locks. We placed pillows from the couches in the window frames, and my dad started to move a dresser in front of the door to block it. He quickly discovered, though, that the dresser was on wheels, which were completely silent. He also noticed that when he shifted the dresser, the wall behind it moved a little. Upon scrutinizing the wall further, he found a seam. He pushed on the wall, and it gave way.