Chapter 20
“Okay, Dave, before we go, remember what we told you?” right before Jason left with Caroline for San Francisco, he had to confirm with the temp whom Jianmen hired to take over his shift on all of the things he and Caroline detailed for him and asked of him.
“Yes, take all messages for you. Don’t ever go into the basement. Check on Uncle Bu regularly if he’s still sleeping. Keep an eye on him and never let him out of my sight if he’s awake. Keep an incense burning at almost every corner of the inn.” Dave started counting with his fingers: “Don’t let him out of the inn.”
“That’s right, and uh, if he wants to talk, let him call me. Cool?”
“Call us, if Jason’s not available, call me.” Caroline came over and told Dave, “And um, don’t keep your eyes off him for even one second, okay? You’re not getting any extras if you lost track of him!”
“But! But … do call us if you have any trouble.” Jason had to soften the tone of their message: “IF something happened, still call us, I don’t want you to hide it from us because you’re worried about not getting paid.”
“Umm, just so we’re clear, you guys are really just going to San Francisco to deliver something, right?” Dave took a look at Jason and Caroline’s backpacks, “You are not going anywhere further than that or stay there all night?”
“Do these look like what we will pack if we’re staying?” Caroline quickly showed Dave what was inside her backpack - inside was a couple of bunches of incense, round and shiny metal plate, and a small plastic bag of light-yellow folded paper.
“Um, are you going to the Serene Mantra Studio? I have a friend who works there. She’s a pretty awesome spiritual yoga instructor and she teaches a lot of people. And I mean a LOT! I bet if you mentioned my name and tell her I sent you, she will be willing to give you a discount...” Dave got a little bit excited and started rambling again.
“Okay, but no. These are for the Boss’s family. Like we told you, it’s an emergency.” Jason had to cut Dave off, “But we’ll check it out next time.” Then he and Caroline hopped on a rideshare and off to the Prime Royals Hotel directly.
“Don’t take too long! My shift ends in 7 hours!” Dave still had to yell out when Jason and Caroline left on their ride.
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In the basement of the inn, there were several giant metal boxes placed in their respective cells.
Now, three of the boxes were opened, by none other than Jason and Caroline.
Inside the three boxes opened, were three pieces of paper label, with Chinese characters on them.
“Spirit Calming Incense”, “Illusion Breaking Incense”, and “Demon Suppression Sigil”.
Both Jason and Caroline were pretty familiar with the contents of the first and second box - Jianmen uses Spirit Calming Incense during his instructed meditation sessions with them, and he uses the Illusion Breaking Incense during the instructed visualization sessions. But neither of them ever saw him using any of the folded paper sigils on any occasions.
But still, big metal box, yet only a few pieces of folded paper. The name of the sigils sounded very promising, yet they had no idea how to use them.
“If what I saw from the super old Hong Kong movies depicted things correctly, we can just throw these sigils at the ghosts. We may need some blood from the top of our fingers to activate them though.” looking at his share of Demon Suppression Sigils, Jason sighed and said, then he reached into his back pocket and took out a white card with a hotel logo: “Looks like I forgot to return the keycard, hope it still works.”
“Yeah, now I’m gonna say it, this is a terrible plan.” While searching for information about the Prime Royals Hotel and its urban legend on her phone, Caroline told Jason.
“Yeah, told myself several times that. No need to tell me once more.” Jason sighed and laid back on his seat.
“Okay, try to remember as much as possible from the encounter, what else did you see in the limbo? Besides the bendy ghost ... monster, and the creepy thing with tons of eyes.” Caroline put down her phone, looked at Jason and asked.
“Besides those, I can’t remember much.” Jason laid down his phone and scratched his head, “I just remember things turn grey and colorless, and then it seemed like no one was in the limbo but me. Donovan was in my arms, but in the limbo, it was actually that monster. Which means for some reason the limbo can suck in particular people.”
“Uh-huh, and what did Donovan say? Did your cousin say anything?”
“Donovan was still unconscious when we sent him to the hospital. Elaine woke up shortly after I was out of the limbo, but she was pretty frantic so I did not get to ask her anything.” Jason thought for a few seconds then answered, “But Elaine did say that she fell unconscious right after she and Donovan entered the room, and she was not sure what happened. And apparently, get this, Donovan never had a history of sleepwalking.”
“Wait, you said that when you discovered Donovan, he was standing on his toes? Do you know what that means?” Caroline felt like she just realized something.
“Yeah, that was a symptom of ghost possession, which I am pretty sure was the bendy ghost man.” Jason answered, shaking his head.
“OK, bummer.” Caroline laid back into her seat.
“Yo, what kind of video game are you playing? Sounds crazy interesting!” the rideshare driver said to Jason and Caroline.