Chapter Fourteen: Checking In Day One; 10:23 p.m.
His footsteps slam against the pavement, running down the street. Up ahead is a large building with a parking lot in front and a sign reading: "Moth Lake Hotel". Trees, on either side of the road, seem to thicken as Aryus comes closer to the hotel. They gain a dark and sinister look to them as well. Their long, thin arms reach out, partly over over the street. Aryus slows down, getting exhausted from running, and finally stops.
Ahead on the road is a figure standing there. Aryus couldn't see it from further back, due to the lack of light. The figure looks like a person wearing a dark trench coat, and long blonde hair. They seem to be looking at the hotel up ahead, but aren't moving at all, with their back turned. Aryus starts walking slowly towards the figure, not sure of whether or not he should be.
As he gets closer, the figure's head lowers, and their arms move. Aryus then thinks back to when he met that woman, who explained a lot to him. He opens his mouth and calls out to the person there, only about ten feet away from him.
"Hello?" The person stands there, as if to be ignoring him. He walks up to the person's side, and looks to see that it's the woman who he had seen earlier. She stands there, her eyes closed, facing down. Her face looks like it has been burned, red marks all over it. Her hands are held out in front of her, which appear purple, as if the circulation has been cut off from them for a long time. He stands there looking at her a moment.
Her eyes suddenly open slightly, and she looks over at Aryus. A quiet voice comes out from her throat.
"You will see..." She pauses a moment, "the terrors faced..." Aryus looks at her, confused, when she closes her eyes again. Suddenly everything fades away into darkness. Everything is gone, as if Aryus has suddenly become blind. He begins to panic and throwing his arms everywhere, trying to find anything, and maybe figure out what's going on.
His vision slowly returns to him, but he is somewhere else now. He finds himself to be in a small house. He's standing in a bedroom, where a little girl lays on a bed, reading a magazine, and listening to music through headphones, as she hums along to the tune. The room has plenty of pictures, and assorted objects all over. The girl looks like she might be nine or ten years old, and has long blonde hair.
Suddenly the door to the bedroom slams open, standing there is a man with a crazed look upon him. Veins stand out all over his neck and arms. Clutched in his hand is one end of a large chain. The girl jumps off of the bed, the headphones falling onto the floor. She stands there, looking at the man, terrified. Her eyes become watery and a few tears come out.
The man steps into the room, his large foot pounding heavily on the floor. He continually opens his mouth and moves his jaw around, making him appear insane. The girl presses herself up against a wall, crying out, "No, no, please...please dad, I don't want..." The man suddenly leaps over to her and holds the chain with both hands up above his head. His head starts bobbing around as he cackles and laughs, with both a sinister and creepy tone, and his tongue flails around as his head shakes. His hands quickly throw themselves to the girl's waist, and he holds her there, towering over her. He picks her up and throws her onto the bed, and leans over her, pulling the chain down across her stomach, tightly. He continues laughing, when blood suddenly flashes out and sprays all over the girl's body. A woman stands in the doorway, holding a shotgun.
The man falls over from the shot, but gets back up onto his feet, bleeding from several holes on his side. He stumbles towards the woman, but only manages one step, and stops there. The woman walks toward the man, an angrily determined look flared in her face. She cocks the shotgun and fires again, right at the man's head. The girl, sitting on the bed, screams out in terror, as the torn up head from the man falls onto the edge of the bed, then slips off. The open neck
bleeds immensely and the body collapses to the floor.
Aryus stands there, completely confused and shocked at what he just witnessed. A sudden flash overcomes his vision, and he gains it again to find himself in another place. He finds himself standing just inside of the house's front door. It appears to be late, and rather unactive outside. The doorbell rings out, and a teen-aged girl comes running up to the door. She appears to possibly be the girl he had just seen. She turns the knob on the door and open it, to reveal two large men in police uniforms. They step inside, and the girl steps away from them. One of the officer's closes the door, before they come further into the house. The woman Aryus saw shoot that man, comes through a doorway into the kitchen, and freezes at the sight of the officers. Both of the officers quickly draw their handguns and shoot at the woman, but only hit her twice, before she ducks around the corner.
The two officers run over to the corner, and one of them is struck with a frying pan, in the hands of the woman. The officer falls down to the floor, laying near a fireplace. The other officer raises his pistol and shoots the woman in the leg, before she swings the frying pan at him, hitting him in the neck, and killing him. The teen-aged girl stands there, staring at the scene, not doing anything, just staring with wide eyes, and a dead expressino on her face.
The woman steps out and looks down at the officer she just killed, when a fire poker slams into the back of her neck. The officer stands there, holding the other end of the fire poker, and pulls it out of her, to stab her again with it, in the back. She falls to her knees, blood developing from her mouth, and she coughes, spitting some out. She turns her head towards the girl, before she collapses, her lifeless eyes staring at the girl standing there.
The officer picks up his pistol and walks over to the girl. She turns her head to look at him, staring at her, when another flash of light alters the world, once again, for Aryus.
He now finds himself standing at the front of a church, where a strange looking, table is. The doors come open, revealing two men pulling a woman into the church. She resists, but isn't strong enough. The woman looks like the one that Aryus had just seen, the one who told him all about what was going on. She struggles and squirms as much as possible, but she remains being pulled by the two men.
They bring her over to the strange table and throw her on top. They pull out chains from underneath and pin the woman down to the table. She tries to scream, but barely manages anything through duct tape over her mouth. One of the men stands up and pulls a lever, opening a hole, which releases a dark liquid onto the table. The strong scent of gasoline fills Aryus' nostrils. He looks down at the woman on the table, who continues struggling and trying to scream.
The two men stand back and stare at the woman on the table. A priest suddenly comes up, with a candle in his hands. He chants in a strange language. Aryus watches the priest, who's face is covered by a silk mask. He stands before the table, and finishes the chant. He then looks down at the woman and lowers the candle, when another flash of light consumes Aryus' vision.
Aryus finds himself back on the road where he had seen the woman, but she's gone now. "It was..." He mutters to himself. He looks around, finding no one around any more. He turns and starts walking to the hotel.
He comes to a stop in the parking lot, looking up at the hotel. A single window on the top floor, which is the third. He watches as some shadows pass over a curtain on the window, and some lights on it change colours.
Aryus looks back down at the front doors, and jumps back with a gasp, to see a strange man standing in them, staring at him. A man with thin, gray, skin, and a bony face. His wide, bloodshot, eyes staring at Aryus. He then stands up straight, taking on a normal face, and turns around, vanishing into thin air. Suddenly, hard footsteps start toward Aryus from down the street. With little other choice, he quickly dashes inside the hotel.
Inside, he finds the hotel to be quite nice. It seems very strange in a place like this. A gigantic chandelier hangs from the tall ceiling, golden lights blaring out dimly from it. The lobby is quite large, and has some fancy furnishings in it. Aryus looks around in amazement, as he approaches the desk.
Just as Aryus comes up to the desk, a small, round, bump comes stretching out from the surface of the desk. Aryus stares as it, as it looks like something bending reality, pushing through the wood. Almost as if the desk is made of rubber, when the bump finally opens around a little bell. Aryus stands there, thinking that he's hallucinating. The bell shakes, and a little ring comes out from it. Aryus stands there in amazement, when a woman comes walking out from a door and up to him at the desk. She has long brown hair, with a strange uniform on. The woman looks at Aryus, and smiles. She looks at him, smiling, for a minute, before she slowly starts tilting her head to her shoulder. An eerie creaking sound seems to come out from no where, as the girl tilts her head, awkwardly.
The girl suddenly reaches up and grabs her eye, tearing it out of the socket, and holds her hand out to Aryus. He looks down at the eyeball in her hand, with no blood having spilt anywhere. On the back of the eye, the stems move and shape themselves into a key. Aryus can't help himself from taking the strange thing from the girl. When he looks back up at her face, another eye has appeared in her head. However her new eye, looks like it has a cross, cut into the pupil. She stands there, strangely, with her head bent over, touching her shoulder.
Aryus turns around, and looks at the eyeball in his hand. Around the iris of the eye, is veins shaping several sixes. He shakes his head and puts it into his pocket.
Looking back up, Aryus gets more confused. He looks at the huge chandelier, which it's glass pieces seem to have stretched down somehow. The strange glass pieces, look almost as if they're still stretching, like they're reachign down towards the floor. One of them stretches out further than the others, and thins out, before it separates and actually drips down in front of Aryus. He looks down at the weird looking little, puddle on the floor, in front of him. The glass looks like it had become a weird kind of mercury, and lays there on the floor, having dripped from the chandelier.
Another one of the things drip down, and it falls right onto Aryus' forehead. He lifts his hand to it and goes to move it, when it acts like glue, sticking to his hand. It stretches out from his head, then snaps onto his fingers. He waves it around, shaking it off, then backs up, avoiding the over glass fragments, dripping down. He watches as the chandelier continues dripping, until it is completely stripped off all glass, and all that remains on it, is the golden, metal frame.
Suddenly, all of the little puddles on the floor start floating up individually. They float back up, turning into glass fragments again, and returning to the chandelier, almost as if to be dripping in reverse.
Aryus clutches his head, completely lost, and turns around. He mutters to himself, "Ooohh, I don't like that chandelier..." When he notices the woman at the desk staring at him. She tilted her head back to normal, but her smile is gone, and her eyes have enlarged, to stare intensely at Aryus. Aryus just looks at her, confused for a moment. Her mouth suddenly opens, quadrupling in size somehow, and black tentacle-like things fly out of it, shaking everywhere, while she lets out a gurgling scream. She only does this for a second, then her mouth closes and she remains standing there, staring at Aryus, who is quite shaken, by all of the weird things going on around him. He remains there, staring at the clerk. Neither of them move, Aryus hardly even breathes.
The woman's head suddenly jerks, almost as if it warped. It was normal, then flashed and was tilted to the side for a second. She 'twitches' again a couple more times, just flashing, as if she's on a damaged video cassette. Aryus continues staring at her in his frozen state. The woman's facial features then start changing rapidly, and andomly. The figure of each eye, her nose, and mouth change, as if switching the picture of them with another. They continue switching
constantly, while Aryus just stares. Finally her face stops changing around and returns to normal, and she smiles.
"Thank you, have a nice stay, while you last here." Her voice says, even though her mouth, and throat don't move at all. She's just standing there, lifelessly. Then she turns and walks into the back room.
Aryus snaps out of his paralysis and shakes his head. "Oh god, what's happening to me?! I'm hallucinating..." He turns and looks at the front doors, where shadowy figures cloud the windows, their eyes piercing through the darkness, staring into his soul. He backs away, coming up to the desk again, quickly spinning around and noticing the little bell has disappeared.
Scared, Aryus dashes to one of the hallways of rooms. On the right side is the rooms, on the left is a glass wall, displaying a large, dark, pool. Aryus glances at the pool, when a door comes flying open, smashing right into the charging priest. Aryus stumbles, nearly falling from the blow. He stumbles over to the glass and leans on it, to keep himself up. He looks over through the glass, and notices a body floating in the middle of the pool, blood flowing out from it, colouring the water. He turns to the door, to find it closed, and not even damaged at all anymore.
A strange sound calls out from the pool, causing Aryus to turn is head back to it.
There in the center of the pool, where the body had been, previously, a figure rises from the water. It's a humanoid shape, but with plenty of small tentacles and organs hanging down from it. The crimson water drips down from all over the thing. It's head looks like a human's skull, but with a jaw that reaches lower. It's head is lowered to an angle which creates a shadow over it's eyes.
Aryus stands there, watching as the strange creature rises out from the water. It floats up to the point where only it's feet are submerged, where it stops. It's head moves up, and just as the shadows open around it's eyes, a flash of light sprays out, and the glass in front of Aryus shatters. He jumps back from the sudden crash, when the door behind him, opens again, hitting him in the back, and pushing him towards the pool.
Aryus stumbles, and slips, but only falls to his knee, at the edge of the pool. Looking down into it, he can see hands reaching up from the bottom, and plenty of bodies, and faces at the bottom. He quirks his head when he notices a certain group of limbs, which have writing carved into them, reading: 'Dead souls shall not impact the living.'
Aryus quickly jerks up his head, to find the creature, staring down at him, a large hook on a chain has appeared in it's, raised, right hand. Aryus throws himself to the side, avoiding an attack, but falling into the water. He surfaces, barely able to keep himself above the surface. His robes weighing him down immensely, cause extreme difficulty for movement.
The demon floats over to Aryus, and starts spinning the hook. In a desperate escape, he dives underwater, towards the hordes of hands reaching at him. The large hook swings through the water, catching Aryus' robes. He squirms, when one of the hands at the bottom reaches his shin and clutches it. The single arm pulls him down, where plenty of other hands grip tightly on his leg. Other arms and hands grab onto his other leg and attach him to the bottom of the pool. He struggles against the entanglement, panicking, and losing breath. The hook swings in again, just barely missing his head. Aryus starts beating at the arms clutching his legs, trying to break free, but none of them even losen their grip. Aryus' breath runs out, and he takes in a deep breath of water.
Aryus takes on a confused look. He stands there, breathing at a quick pace, but still breathing. He looks down at the arms, still clasped to his legs. He gets completely confused "How am I still breathing?!?!" The thought fires through his head. He looks back up and sees the hook swinging down at him. Instantly, he puts up his hand and grabs the chain on the hook. He pulls it tightly down and starts stabbing the arms with it, finally breaking the vices from him. The chain suddenly pulls taught and flies out of the water, with Aryus attached to the end of it.
Aryus releases the chain and lands on the floor, just outside of the pool. He scrambles to stay out of the water, and gets up on his soaked feet. He stumbles around, slipping everywhere, and finally comes to the wall, holding himself up on it. The demon stands there, on top of the pool, staring at him.
Without any further hesitation, Aryus turns and runs through the broken glass wall and charges down the hall. Reaching a corner, he flies around it, and smashes right into a laundry cart, flipping over into it. His head hits a bar and knocks him unconscious...