At the concierge's stand, a man was discussing theater tickets with his wife while the concierge himself watched them with a small, patient smile. For a moment he glanced around the small, smart lobby, as if for help. On the mezzanine level, someone was playing 'Night and Day' in the bar, as if to underline the summary. The woman was blond, dressed in black, of course, and the light, flowery smell of her perfume seemed to summarize New York. A man and a woman dressed in evening clothes passed Mike as he reached for Olin's hand, switching his small overnight case to his left hand in order to do it.

The Dolphin was on Sixty-first Street, around the corner from Fifth Avenue, small but smart. Olin was crossing the room with one pudgy hand held out as Mike left the revolving door. And even if Olin had decided to throw up another roadblock or two between Mike and room 1408, that wasn't all bad there were compensations. Maybe I should have brought the lawyer along again, after all, he thought. Mike Enslin was still in the revolving door when he saw Olin, the manager of the Hotel Dolphin, sitting in one of the overstuffed lobby chairs. and you might take time to notice what those four innocent numbers add up to. In any case, let's check in, shall we? Here's your key. But hotel rooms are just naturally creepy places, don't you think? I mean, how many people have slept in that bed before you? How many of them were sick? How many were losing their minds? How many were perhaps thinking about reading a few final verses from the Bible in the drawer of the nightstand beside them and then hanging themselves in the closet beside the TV? Brrrr. It originally appeared as part of an audio compilation called Blood and Smoke, and the audio scared me even more. I think that what scares us varies widely from one individual to the next (I've never been able to understand why Peruvian boomslangs give some people the creeps, for example), but this story scared me while I was working on it. But something nice happened: the story seduced me, and I ended up writing all of it.

Most of all, I wanted to provide concrete examples of the principles I'd been blathering about in the text. I wrote the first three or four pages as part of an appendix for my On Writing book, wanting to show readers how a story evolves from first draft to second. The only unusual thing about it is that I never intended to finish it. As well as the ever-popular premature burial, every writer of shock/suspense tales should write at least one story about the Ghostly Room At The Inn.

1408 short story