March 1925. A young bellhop named Eddie works the night shift at the Imperial Hotel in Red Bluff, California. He's fifteen, small for his age, and desperate to prove he belongs among the older men. One night, a woman in a blue dress checks in alone. She asks for room 313, the same room Eddie's been warned to avoid. The room where, one year ago, a guest was found dead with her throat cut. The bellhop carries her bag upstairs, unlocks the door, and steps inside. The room is cold, colder than the hallway, and there's a scent of violets and something metallic. The woman sits on the edge of the bed, her back to him, and speaks without turning around. What she says makes the hairs on his arms stand. Eddie tells this story years later, to a woman sitting alone at a train station bar. That woman was me. I did something I shouldn't have. I went back to the Imperial Hotel, to the third floor, to the end of the hall. The bellhop didn't lie. Some doors stay unlocked for a reason.