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Pay n' Stay

The Pay n' Stay (formally the Econo-Thrift Pay n' Stay) is the run-down cash-only motel in Radford, Virginia, across the street from the Ferry Lodge, where the task force stays on both of its Radford cases and which becomes a running joke for its bedbugs, mold, bats and rabid mice.
Type Location (motel)
Aliases Econo-Thrift Pay n' Stay; Econo Thrift Pay n' Stay; the motel
Region Radford, Virginia
Staff Rutherford (night clerk, first arc); Charm (clerk, second arc)
First appearance Radford Horror 01

Description

In the first arc the motel has a half-lit sign, a gas station behind it and an open-window front office. Rooms cost $26 a night, cash only, and are avocado-brown with 4-inch black-and-white 1950s TVs with three channels, peeling wallpaper, a nicotine-stained mirror, carpet that extends into the bathrooms, and bedbugs. There is no continental breakfast; coffee costs 50 cents (Radford Horror 01). The doors are thin, and someone once died of heroin in a bathtub, according to a joke (Radford Horror 05). Its payphone is by the front desk (Radford Horror 04).

In the second arc the motel is within 1,000 feet of a school, which cost the old UFO-fan manager his job. Mold, bedbugs, bats and rabid mice are all present. The bed sheets are washed this time, and keys are on huge red rulers (Radford Horrors 02).

History of events there

The Radford Horror

On arrival, the group finds the nearby Ferry Lodge full and the clerk points them across the street. From across the street the motel looks "real, real old and not particularly well-maintained." The group pays for a second night in three rooms ($78) (Radford Horror 01). Dick sleeps on the shower curtain to avoid bedbugs, Kurt in a wetsuit, Andrew Howard in the tub, and Huell gets a rash (Radford Horror 01).

The motel's owner listens to a UFO radio station (the Art Bell station), and the Biz finds the radio in the room of the missing Abelforth Whateley tuned to the same one. The motel also supplies the tourist map that the team later uses to chart the missing dogs and the craft's headings (Radford Horror 02, Radford Horror 06). See Abe's radio.

In Radford Horror 04 the rooms have been searched. Bathroom windows were pried open from outside and suitcases opened, with nothing taken. The Biz chats up the night clerk Rutherford and buys $40 of DMT from him. He also learns of a guest in a fishing hat, Red Dutchford, who checked in under that name and left that evening. Kurt bump-keys the man's room and finds it wiped (Radford Horror 04). Huell takes no precautions against the bedbugs and ends up with a rash (Radford Horror 04).

In Radford Horror 05 Kurt develops the burglary film here in his portable darkroom and scalds Huell's sheets. The team then moves to the Ferry Lodge around 1 p.m. (Radford Horror 05). The diner waitress blames the motel as "Motel Patient Zero" for the bedbugs (Radford Horror 05).

The Radford Horrors

After the IRS shuts the Ferry Lodge, the team checks into the motel. A homeless man there says he was kidnapped in a van with chimpanzees and molested by "John Travolta" (Radford Horrors 02). See Billy Thornton. The new clerk, the teen Charm, gives them two doubles. Kurt hoses both rooms with pesticide. Charm says a three-day chlorine tent killed the bedbugs, but hides "something"; she admits only to mold (Radford Horrors 02).

At about 3 a.m. a foaming, stiff-legged mouse climbs up Daniel Webster's stomach. He flicks it off with his gun barrel and it bites him through his shirt. Kurt spears it to the floor with his spear gun. Charm admits a rodent problem, saying a bat infestation gives the mice rabies. She refunds them and says she doesn't sleep there. The team ends the session at the Radford ER, where all receive rabies shots (Radford Horrors 02). See Rabid mouse.

Afterward, "Pay n' Stayed" becomes the local joke for catching something there; Sheriff Molly Underhill greets the team with "I heard you got Pay n' Stayed" (Radford Horrors 03). In Radford Horrors 04 the homeless man, Billy Thornton, is again said to haunt the motel; a teenage staffer in hip waders says he goes to the woods past the Ferry Lodge to use heroin (Radford Horrors 04).

Inhabitants

Appearances