After evading the police by turning down a gravel road, Black and Riviera see an old hotel ahead and decide to stay there.
Upon waking up the following morning, Riviera finds he is paralyzed; he sees the elderly man inject a needle into Black's arm.
The story ends with the elderly man informing Black and Riviera that they are being added to his museum of "living mummies".
[7] The character of Kelso Black reappeared in "The Stranger" (another short story within People, Places and Things) [8] and again in King's 2018 work The Outsider.
[3][9] Rocky Wood describes "The Hotel at the End of the Road" as "as derivative as one could expect from an early teenage writer".