Chapter 8 #2
“Which room?” I grab my phone and start taking notes. I have a feeling I’m going to need them later.
“It’s the Garden Suite now. Back then, it was 203,” Maisie says helpfully. “That’s the room I died in.”
What am I supposed to say in response to that?
Fortunately, Joe isn’t waiting for platitudes. “Inside the room was a cesspit of darkness. It was almost too thick to move through. The guest was already dead when we got there, lying in a heap on the floor, and she’d opened a vortex to the spirit world.”
I hastily add spirit world? to my notes. I don’t know what that is, but I don’t want to interrupt the story again.
“Her soul was gone,” Hattie adds in a hushed voice. “Normally they linger for a little while after death, even if the person wants to cross over. It can take time to adjust to being dead, you know. But hers was just… gone. The dark spirit consumed it.”
A chill races down my spine. That doesn’t sound good.
“We were unprepared,” Joe says grimly. “None of us had dealt with the spirit world before. We didn’t even know what the vortex was at first. The dark spirit struck at us while we were still trying to understand what we were seeing.”
“That’s when we lost Mona.” Freddie’s voice cracks. “I’ll never forget the look on her face when the dark spirit consumed her.”
Oh my god. This is getting way darker than I expected. “Mona was… one of you?”
Freddie nods. “She was a dear woman.”
Okay, so the dark spirit, whatever it was, ate souls, including ghost souls. What a happy thought.
“What happened then?”
“We fled,” Joe says simply. “We didn’t know what to do, how to fight, or even what we were fighting. So we fled.”
“Yeah, but… to where? Was the, uh, dark spirit bound to that room?”
All six of them shake their heads. When things are a bit less tense, I’m going to ask them to stop doing things in unison like that.
“No, it was free to roam about. That’s why the hotel closed.
In the course of the first week, it caused two serious accidents and several minor ones.
We were all so afraid, hiding at the manager’s house with Carter and hoping it would stay in the main hotel and not venture to the grounds.
” Joe’s gaze goes distant, like he’s remembering.
He sighs. “It was then we realized we had the ability to fully manifest.”
I blink. “You’d never known that before?” I just assumed that they’d always been able to do it—wasn’t that why they told me about the “mineral-rich land”?
“We’d never been able to do it,” Joe corrects in a tone that implies I should have known that.
“The energy here allowed us to partially manifest for brief moments—allow people to catch glimpses of us, or for us to knock small items off tables—but we were never able to fully manifest and actually interact with the living. The opening of the vortex changed that. It took us a few days to notice, because the dark spirit was tainting the air and we were so afraid, but there was so much more energy. There is so much more. And we hoped that a medium or an exorcist would be drawn by the changes and be able to help us.”
Makes sense. I nod encouragingly, hoping this is when he’ll say “and someone did, solving all the problems. Now you know the history of this place, the end,” and then they’ll leave, and I can marvel over what they’ve told me while I snuggle in my bed.
“But then the dark spirit knocked a guest over the third-floor gallery.”
Okay, maybe not.
“He fell two stories to the ground and cracked his head on the floor.”
I swallow hard. “He died?”
“No,” Hattie hastens to assure me. “He was rushed to a hospital before he could die. We found out later that he’d slipped into a coma, but the hotel was closed and abandoned before we could learn if he survived or not.”
“It was then that we realized the dark spirit couldn’t merely snatch souls from living bodies. It had to kill them first. And with the hotel closed and all other sources of souls out of its reach, it came after us.”
I’ve gotta hand it to Joe, he’s one heck of a storyteller. Even knowing they’re all here, obviously safe and not consumed, I’m still freaked out about what comes next.
“We discovered we could fight it off when we were fully manifested, and we outnumbered it. So we stayed together all the time, stayed fully manifested all the time. Our hope of someone coming to help us was gone—why would anyone come to an abandoned hotel?”
“We began to seriously consider crossing over,” Carter says somberly. “But with all the dark energy the spirit was emitting, we weren’t sure it would work. What if we ended up in the wrong place?”
“And then the young people started coming.” Maisie shakes her head. “An abandoned building outside of town? It was the perfect place for them to meet and… do things.”
I blush, though I’m not sure why. It’s not like I’ve never “done things” before, and I know Maisie has.
“We couldn’t let the dark spirit kill them and take their souls,” Hattie declares. “Not on our watch.”
“And it was too hard to run interference for all of them,” Joe continues. “We had to be on alert at all hours, and sometimes there would be a lot of teenagers here. So we decided we had to get rid of the dark spirit. Send it back where it came from.”
I swallow. It sounds like the kind of plan a bunch of teens in a horror movie would come up with. But they must have succeeded, right? Because the place is open now and teeming with people most days, and there’s no dark spirit trying to kill anyone and harvest their souls.
Is there?
I’m pretty sure I would have noticed that.
“It was difficult.” Joe sighs, suddenly looking less grouchy and more like a tired old man.
“We didn’t know what we were doing. One time, we managed to force it back through the vortex, but unfortunately, the vortex isn’t directly linked to the spirit’s presence here.
So it didn’t close, and the spirit was able to come right back through. ”
“Wait,” I interrupt. “What do you mean, the vortex isn’t linked to the spirit’s presence? I thought they appeared at the same time?”
“They did. But we think the vortex opening was one thing, and then the dark spirit coming through wasn’t connected to that. The vortex isn’t a door specifically for the dark spirit; it’s just a door, and the dark spirit happened to use it.”
The implications of that are terrifying.
“So potentially this vortex, which you said is still open and you need my help with, could be used by hundreds or even thousands of soul-eating entities to gain access to Earth?” My voice is rising.
“Why haven’t you mentioned this to Kieran or anyone?
Why wait, when another dark spirit could come through at any moment and eat all our souls? ”
“Chill, bro,” Johnny says, and we all stop and stare at him. His expression turns uncertain. “Did I use it wrong? That’s how they says it on TV.”
I start to laugh. It sounds a bit hysterical, but I don’t think anyone can blame me for that. “You said it right,” I manage, and he beams.
“Great! Anyway… chill, bro. It’s still open, but it’s mostly blocked. And we think the dark spirit keeps other ones away.”
“Fair...” Wait. Wait. “Did you just say the dark spirit’s presence keeps other ones away?”
He gives me a questioning look, nodding.
“As in… it’s still here?” My head whips around so I can stare at Hattie and Joe, who I think are the oldest in the group. “There’s a soul-eating spirit in the building?”