Chapter 24
Maybe Jason’s “ink” spots worked, Adam stopped whimpering and sat up on the floor, just looked a bit confused.
“What is happening here? Where are we?” Adam’s question made him seem more confused than he looked.
“Okay, what did you last remember?” Jason helped Adam stand up and asked.
“I just remember … the streaming cutting off.” Adam struggled to come up with an answer: “But where are we now? Why is everything … so grey?”
“Ok, long story short, we are in a limbo.” Jason looked back, and just in time to witness a woman with a half face swollen being beaten down to the floor by Caroline, and her body started flickering, like a broken hologram from the Sci-Fi movies.
“Limbo? What the fuck? ” Adam started trembling, looks like the fear started to get to him again, “Are we locked in the limbo inside the Prime Royals Hotel? Holy shit! This can’t be happening...”
“Hey! Focus!” Jason lightly slapped Adam’s face again, “Do you know anything about the limbo? Looks like you know more than us, and I have been into this one and back.”
“What?”
“Do you know how we can get outta here!? You are the fucking field researcher for Christ’s sake!” Branston grabbed Adam’s sleeves and shouted.
“Ah! Okay...” Adam tried his best to calm down, but still freaked out a bit, “I don’t know much about limbos! I just read about it from the internet!”
“Okay, what did you read? Maybe that will help!” Brian asked.
“Umm, okay...” Adam took a look at Caroline and Jason, she was facing down a terrifying woman ghost and he was standing between them and two ghosts and the shadowy hallway, “Let me think, let me think, I must have remembered something...”
“We need to move. This place is no place to stay.” before her opponent could escape or dish out another attack, Caroline was able to finish her up with one final baton strike to the neck. Though the sight of a ghastly looking ghost crumbling into a small pile of ash and broken rag was very satisfying and relieving, the whole fight took a lot of her energy.
“Agreed.” Jason looked to the side of the man with bruises around his neck and the woman with glasses in her neck, the two ghosts seemed to have recovered, but still unwilling or hesitant to cross the lines he drew on the ground with his “pen”.
Right now, Caroline’s direction facing the door to the fire staircase was clear, so it was only logical that they moved in that direction.
After going into the staircase, they quickly moved to the floor down below.
But the strange thing happened: they still saw some more stairs leading to the floor below, yet they were on the second floor, both Jason and Caroline remembered quite clearly that the fire staircase on the first floor did not go down.
“I think we might be in a loop.” looking from where she was standing and down, Caroline shook her head and said: “I can’t see an end going down.”
“And looks like no end going up either.” Jason took a quick look up and said.
“Oh my god. What are we gonna do! I can’t die here!” Branston seemed overwhelmed with fear and was starting to break down.
“Hey, cool it! The more you panic the worse it gets!” weirdly, Adam was the first one to call out Branston.
“How do you know that? You’ve never been in this situation before!” Brian started pulling his hair in distress, “Branston’s right, we’re gonna die!”
Caroline, while still trying to hold back her frustration and anger, was just about to attempt at calming these two down, but not before Jason gave them each a quick poke on the forehead with his “pen”.
For a quick second, Branston and Brian recovered from their almost frantic state, and both displayed confused expressions on their faces.
“Woah, what’d you do?” looking at the strange markings on Branston, Brian and Adam’s foreheads, Caroline asked.
“My weapon, I think it’s some kind of pen.” Jason explained, “I don’t fully get it yet, but the mark it leaves seems to be some kind of ghost repellent.”
“Hmm.” Caroline thought for a moment looking at his small shield and short baton, “I don’t get mine either, but I think we can work together on this. Give me and my weapon a mark, it can’t hurt.”
“Hehehehehehe...” the eerie laughter followed them into the staircase and seemed to come from the floors above them.
“Move! Move! Move!” even with an “ink” mark on everyone’s forehead, Jason and Caroline and the others still would not want to face whatever’s giving out that laughter, so they proceeded to go down through the stairs.
“Wait!” before they were able to reach the next floor, Adam stopped everyone.
“What?” everyone else asked at the same time.
“We should face it.” Adam said with a calm and serious face and a trembling voice, “We should go up, and go down that hallway.”
“What are you, nuts? There are at least two ghosts and who knows what in there!” Branston was not panicking, but he was in fear.
“That’s the point.” Adam said: “From all the different things I have read. One idea is really common among them. It’s that in the limbo, souls that died of horror relive their memories and they will terrorize and torment those who are trapped.”
“So?” Brian asked.
“So, if we escape, we are literally giving in to our fear, which is the very thing they are gonna torture us with.” Adam’s face got sweaty and his jaw shook as he spoke, but he sounded like he was never more sure of anything else in his life: “We must face it, we must break the cycle of fear. Trust me, I am terrified, I am scared shitless. But thanks to Jason, I think my head is clear. We must try to break it.”
“But how?” Branston and Brian asked at the same time.
“Give me your hands.” Jason sighed and said, “I’ll mark your hands. If you had to, try punching them.”