Urging away his panic attack, Roland ran to the end of the hallway, realizing with a gasp that he knew exactly where Jake’s blinking dot was coming from. Shoving his phone into his pocket as he no longer needed it, Roland exchanged it for his master key-card before forcefully opening the door to the supply closet. Without hesitation, he ran forward to the next door and jammed the card into the slit between the door and its frame.
The trip through the long-forgotten break-room and into the narrow hallway beyond was a blur to Roland as he sprinted through the dust and darkness to the smoking room beyond. Now standing just outside of the smoking room, Roland took a deep breath before shoving the door open and running through. Freezing on the spot, Roland’s heart nearly stopped as he noticed rather quickly that the room was completely empty.
“NO!” Roland screamed aloud as he stood in the middle of the room and started to fall into full-blown panic.
Yanking his phone from his pocket once again, the medium looked at the GPS app once more. The little purple dot that represented Jake remained stationary in the room that Roland was standing in. Shoving his phone back into his pocket, Roland looked to the floor where he noticed a long drag mark of disturbed dust that led from the door to the fireplace.
Following it, Roland looked up into the dark chimney. A churning sense of guilt knotted in his stomach as he looked at the black spots he had asked Jake to scrape away mere days before. Above his head was about fifteen feet of concrete that led to a solid ceiling. Confused as he noticed this for the first time, Roland didn’t understand how a chimney could function without letting out into the roof unless…
“It’s not a chimney!” He shouted aloud.
Roland hurriedly turned on his flashlight and pointed its beam to the left where it met nothing but more solid concrete. Shaking his head, Roland ran the beam of light over the floor to what should have been the right wall. Instead of finding that, however, the man’s eyes landed on a small metal door.
Digging his fingers into the small grove at its side, the medium forced the door open to reveal what appeared to him at first glance to be a smaller scale model of the elevator shaft he had just climbed up. As he leaned forward to look into the pitch darkness, Roland’s foot grazed against something small but solid on the floor. Bending over, Roland retrieved what was unmistakably Jake’s cell phone.
“Alright.” Roland pocketed the device, “I have to go down the scary tunnel of blackness.” He took a deep breath, “Down the…?”
Reaching in, Roland tugged gently on the ropes that were fed through a pulley system over his head and out of sight. After a mere ten seconds of tugging the rope, Roland’s eyes landed on a small wooden box.
“Dumbwaiter. Of course. I mean, what could possibly be better than a narrow dark shaft but a tiny wooden death-box in that narrow dark shaft. Sure.” Roland took a deep breath, “It will take me to Jake, though…”
Roland refused to allow himself any more hesitation as he crammed his tall frame into the box and grabbed onto the rope. Sliding down the shaft as quickly as he could, Roland’s chest felt tight as his panicked brain convinced him that there wasn’t enough air in the small box and that this is where he would die. As the anxiety became overwhelming, Roland’s hands slipped from the rope, causing him to free-fall the last eight feet to the floor.
Groaning as he was nearly winded by the fall, Roland rolled out of the small box and into yet another pitch black room. Grabbing desperately for his flashlight as he remained sitting on said floor, the medium clicked it on and looked around the space he was in. A mere few inches above his head was the ceiling and just below him rested about six inches of insulation. This made him extremely glad that he hadn’t stood up.
“Good. Great even. I’m under a floor.” He muttered aloud to himself.
Raising the beam of his flashlight, Roland started looking for any sort of exit. As his beam moved across the room, it started to flicker in and out of life. Starting an internal mantra of ‘no, no, no, no, no, no, no’, Roland’s eyes landed on a slight discrepancy in the wood above his head before the batteries of the little plastic cylinder died.
“Dear God,” Roland muttered to himself as he carefully scooted his body under the trap door, “please don’t let me be stuck in here.”
Pushing up, Roland’s heart soared as the board gave away easily and a dim light shown from the crack above his head.
Without thinking beyond his claustrophobia, Roland shoved his body up and lifted himself into the room above him.
Roland was now standing in the corner of a room with a wooden floor and four solid concrete walls. The room appeared to have no electricity but was instead lit by hundreds of candles that had clearly been lit before as their drippings had cascaded into large chunks of congealed wax that pooled around the floor.
To his right, Roland saw the hunched figure of an elderly man who had clearly lived a hard life. His withered frame was dangerously thin and held gnarled joints that were covered by sagging, pale skin. Having only a few patches of shockingly white hair and noticeably fake teeth, the physique of the man was less than intimidating.
Turning to the center of the room, Roland saw that Jake was sitting upright in the center of the giant inverted pentagram that had been stained into the floor with blood that had long since dried and was now covered in flecks of dust. Jake’s wrists and ankles had been bound together with rough looking pieces of rope and a line of duct-tape had been placed over his mouth.
“So,” Roland was doing his best to remain calm, “you must be Walter Riley.”
“I am.” The man had a twisted grin splitting across his face, “You must be the medium.”
“I am the demonologist actually.” Roland lied in an attempt to intimidate the man.
“Liar.” The man chuckled, “My demon threw that woman down the elevator shaft and then squashed her like the cockroach she is. Well…” He released a wheezing laugh, “Was.”
“You sonofabitch!” Roland took one step toward the man before he heard Jake attempt to scream through his covered mouth.
Roland stopped and saw that Jake’s cheek had been cut and was now bleeding down his chin and neck.
“If you do not cooperate, I am going to have my demon torture your lover before I send his soul to Satan.”
“He isn’t my lover,” Roland was confused and frozen in place, “but either way I will not allow you to finish this blasphemous ceremony!”
“Oh,” the man looked slightly put off, “well that does take a little bit of the poetic irony out of the situation, but it just makes the whole ordeal more devastating for the boy. My demon does love the taste of a tortured soul.”
“What are you talking about?!” Roland was now more confused than ever, “How is you being a selfish, life stealing jackass ironic in the slightest?”
“I AM NOT SELFISH!” Walter’s voice came out at a volume that Roland thought would be impossible for a man with such a frail figure.
“You’ve murdered sixty-five people, Walter! You are selling innocent souls to the fucking devil so that you can obtain power! Honestly, I can’t think of anything more selfish than that!”
“I’m not doing this for me, you imbecile!”
“Oh, so it’s okay to slaughter because you’ve somehow found a way to convince yourself this is a selfless endeavor?”
Roland was attempting to stall as he realized he had run into this deadly situation completely without a plan. Glancing sideways, he could see that Jake remained in the center of the pentacle with the black mist floating just in front of him. Tears were running down his cheeks and mixing with the blood that was soaking into the collar of his shirt.
“Your GOD,” Walter was still shouting, “gave me love. He showed me pure love and light and then TOOK IT AWAY FROM ME!”
Roland turned away from Jake who now appeared to be discreetly attempting to wiggle out of his ropes, “Go on.”
“I am too old to waste time on a monologue.” The man scoffe
d.
“If you are going to murder my best friend and shove a demon inside me, I think you at least owe us an explanation.”
“You are just stalling.”
“Do you think it will work?” Roland was doing his best to keep his breathing at a steady pace.
“No, I do not.”
“Then what is a few more minutes after waiting nearly a lifetime?”
“Fine, you insolent brat.” The man started pacing, “When I was fifteen and still going to church with my family, I met a girl. Her name was Mariana and she was the sweetest thing I had ever seen.
I courted her and, by the time I was sixteen, I was certain we were meant to be together forever. She was my one and only twin soul. As soon as I finished my schooling, I went out into the world and got a job working at a bank in town. I had to work long hours every day of the week, but that girl deserved the best and I intended to give it to her.
The day she celebrated her eighteenth birthday, I proposed and she accepted. We started planning the wedding immediately, though, I did miss out on most of that while I finished saving up enough money to buy her a grand house that was for sale in town.
One week before our wedding was to take place, my sweet Mariana came to give me dinner as I was behind on paperwork and would be working late into the night. It was just me and her in the building as the sun had set long before and the other bankers had gone home to be with their families.
I do not wish to relive that night but, to make a gruesome memory short, a robber came in and shot her in cold blood. She died in my arms on the floor of my office. There was nothing I could do and the man got away. The bastard that took my darling from me never even paid his dues!” Walter spat, “I was inconsolable and my life no longer had a point so I moved away from my little town and found this place for sale. I bought it up with the money I had saved over the years, made a few secret renovations, and here we are.”
“You are really deluded enough to think that her murder was somehow God’s work?” Roland’s heartstrings tugged only slightly for the man before him.
“If God had given a shit about me, he would have sent that bullet into my chest instead,” Walter’s voice was rising in volume once again, “or stopped the thief from even coming in on that night! At least the demons area clear with their motives!”
“I still don’t understand how all of this is for her.”
“I’m going to have access to necromancy! I am going to bring my Mariana back to life and then the demon will grant me youth and power and I will give her the life she deserved to live!”
“You don’t think she’s going to hate you for how you gained this power? A good and pure religious woman would never stay with you, knowing you did something like this.”
“She will understand that I did it all for her.” The man was rubbing the palms of his hands together now as he stopped pacing and looked away from Roland, “You will stop bothering me now.”
“WAIT!” Roland snapped out, “I just have one more question.”
Walter rolled his eyes, “You are so obnoxious that I am considering trading places so that you will be dead and gone and the other boy here will take on the demon.”
Undeterred by this, Roland continued, “Who bound your demon with the quincunx and why has it taken you so many years to get these souls? Surely that would have been easy when you were younger. This hotel has more than enough people in a month to have settled your deal than you’ve killed in all these years.”
“Ah, that.” Walter looked like he had a bitter taste in his mouth, “I was doing quite well in the beginning. My demon would even draw in people to help me take lives in this place. Unfortunately, after a couple of decades, some of my maids caught on. They found the room that led here and used some sort of voodoo or hoodoo or some utter shit to bind my demon. I did not know it was so simple to break the spell, though I do thank you for that. It is why I locked off the private rooms. Unfortunately, they ran off before I could silence them, but nobody believed their stories anyway.
Over the years of working alone, I had to avoid suspicion as this town got larger and the police force got better. In my older age, as you can well see, I have taken quite ill and can only manage to continue my work in between hospital stays.”
“You were the one that sealed Devon into the wall.” It was not a question.
“I was.” Walter let out another wheezing laugh, “He was too nosy. He had to go and I needed more souls so I took care of the problem.” Walter gestured vaguely to his demon, “Alright, we are done having our chat. Make sure this one can’t stop me while I finish the job.”
Roland’s breath caught in his chest as his entire body locked up and he found that he could no longer move anything but his eyes as the mist engulfed him, but did not enter his body. Turning his eyes toward the center of the pentacle, his heart nearly stopped as he saw that the ropes remained, but Jake was gone.
“Where in tarnation…” Walter’s head snapped around and his eyes widened as they scanned the room for his last sacrifice.
Jake stepped out of the shadows that covered the corner of the room diagonal to the one Roland was trapped in, “This is twenty-eighteen and I am a transsexual, gay man. I’m carrying a knife, you absolute asshole. Now, let Roland go or this is going to get ugly.”
“I don’t think so.” Walter released a wheezing chuckle, “I don’t think you quite comprehend that the power of the demon is stronger than any human weapon, you filthy pouf!”
Rolling his eyes, Jake released a scoff, “You really couldn’t come up with a better insult than that?” He was now twirling the switchblade in his fingers.
“That is not the point you were supposed to focus on, boy!” Walter’s cheeks and ears were starting to turn pink with frustration.
Jake was now walking forward, “It does matter. You release Roland and you let him leave, or I am going to stab you and then it really doesn’t matter who the demon belongs to as your death will break the deal.”
“Why risk the wrath of a demon for some idiot who doesn’t even feel about you the way you feel about him?” Walter took a step back, only to find his spine pressed into the wall.
“If you are asking me that, you don’t really understand love,” Jake was now standing only a few feet before the man, “and you don’t deserve someone like Mariana if you do not understand true love.”
Jake thrust his arm forward and sank the knife into Walter’s stomach. As the man howled in pain, his demon solidified into a three-dimensional shadow figure and ran at Jake.
Feeling his ability to move return, Roland only had time to turn his head and look to Jake before the demon lifted the blonde man into the air and slammed him into the center of the inverted pentagram on his back. The resounding crack of shattering bones that followed the motion nearly made Roland vomit on the spot but he managed to choke it back as his sense of urgency rose.
“Kill him now!” Walter yelled, “Finish this before I bleed out!”
A savage scream left Jake’s lips as the black mass lowered itself over him. Roland’s body froze for only a moment at the sound and started moving again only when he saw a trail of blood follow the sound out of Jake’s mouth. Roland’s feet hit the edge of the pentacle as another sick gurgling sound arose from Jake.
“GET OFF OF HIM!” Roland shouted and threw his own body under the demon and over Jake, “You will not kill him!”
Walter was outright laughing by this point, “The blonde will die soon enough! Possess the medium now!” He started reciting a chant in a tongue that sounded foul to even Roland’s ringing ears.
As the words started to flow, Roland felt an intense burning sensation on his arms. Grinding his teeth, he couldn’t manage to care that the demon was trying to possess him as his best friend was choking to death on his own blood below him. Understanding that his tattoos may only be a stall, Roland looked down into Jake’s face as he wasn’t sure if he would have another chance to speak to the man.
&nb
sp; “He was wrong!” Roland winced as the burning got more intense and his eyesight started to blur, “I do feel the same way! I just hadn’t thought to say anything because I assumed we would have plenty of time after this was over.” The smell of burning flesh hit Roland’s nose as he looked into Jake’s eyes, “Hang on just a little longer for me, alright?”
Jake released something between a laugh and a cough as he turned his head to spit, “You piece of shit.” He sucked in a shuddering breath, “Don’t you know that near death admission of love are the worst? You would never make it as a writer.”
Roland felt his eyes flood with tears as the pain had risen to a level he didn’t even know was possible, “Then you gotta get out of here and write this story for me. It’s a pretty good one.”
“It’s not that good.” Jake’s voice was barely a whisper at this point, “There wasn’t even a kiss. Fans always want at least the first kiss.”
Even though he had never been more scared in his life, Jake felt completely at peace. He wasn’t sure if it was the blood-loss, the shock, or the admission that Roland had uttered, but looking up into the soulful, dark eyes of the medium had eased his torment for the moment.
Reaching his hand up to caress Roland’s cheek, Jake was determined to get his first kiss from the man before he allowed the black dots that were forming in the corners of his vision to take over. He was just starting to guide Roland’s face down to his when Roland’s body stiffened. Confused, Jake looked back to the medium’s eyes in hopes of finding his peace in the warm irises before him, but only black remained.
“Oh…” Jake’s breath caught in his chest as any semblance of comfort left him, “Roland, no!” Jake swatted at his cheek, “Roland, NO! You fight that thing! Kick it out!!!” Jake could feel hot tears streaking down his cheeks as the last of his hope left him.
A resounding growl left Roland’s lips as he thrust his body into an upright position and away from Jake. The blonde watched as, what was now a demon simply wearing Roland’s body, stepped back out of the pentacle and stood next to Walter who was staring at Jake. Roland’s arms were no longer covered in sleeves as they appeared to have caught fire and burned away. Where the tattoos of protection had once been inked into the medium’s arms now sat only angry red muscle-tissue that was leaking clear liquid and blood to the floor, though the demon didn’t seem to notice or care.
The Moorsfield Hotel Page 12
