Chapter 293: Middle Term Stays

The first thing Ann noticed was that there were more rooms. More doors. The ritz that she’d seen on the second and third floors were still here, but less prominent. Anthony knew this wasn’t somewhere to put all of his efforts into. No, this was nice enough to call home for a bit, then move along. At least, that’s what she got from the hallway. Instead of sconces that enclosed the light crystals on the previous floors, these were fully exposed, out on ledges that were still decorative, but not at all fancy. The carpet was nice, though.

Something else hit Ann as she stepped up onto the barren landing. A sense of fear. It was subtle, tugging at the edges of her mind with cold fingers, but when she focused on it, the feeling fled. Like those dots you’ll see out of the corners of your eyes, but when you try to move your eye, they’re gone.

Rosalyn flinched as she joined Ann. “Oh, this is bad. You feel this too?”

Ann nodded, eyes watching the doors warily. She didn’t trust them to stay closed.

“Xirali’s laughing.”

Those words did not make Ann feel any better. The manipulative satyr being so up front with her glee gave Ann the idea that whatever was coming up, she knew about, and it was far worse than anything she could do.

“Tell her to help or shut up,” Ann growled.

“She’s not listening,” Rosalyn sighed. “Knew her being quiet for so long was weird.”

“Hey, at least she’s not trying to do anything else. Just block it out.”

“Can’t,” Rosalyn groaned, kneading her forehead with her free hand. “I’m trying, but my brain is just so all over the place that as soon as I try a million other things start popping in then I forget to focus on blocking her out and she’s right back in there, laughing.”

“We’ll have Bren teach you meditation,” Ann said. “Or Lucia, honestly. She seems like she’d be good at it.”

Rosalyn let go of her forehead and summoned her staff as Kat and Lucia hit the floor, hesitated, then stepped forward.

“D’ye…”

“Feel that? Yeah,” Ann nodded. “Think we all do.”

“An ill omen,” Bren said, joining them. “A fear effect much like what your howl inflicts on enemies, Annita. I suggest we proceed with caution. If this is not from a singular source, then it may have seeped into the building itself. That would be the best-case scenario.”

“That’s the best?” Rosalyn laughed incredulously.

“Compared to a powerful spirit emanating a fear effect that we have only stepped into the edge of, one that is noticeable at this range? Yes. I prefer the building itself,” Bren said.

Ann was taken aback by how sarcastic he was. Normally he explained things to Rosalyn calmly, and with great patience. He was being affected more than she was, it seemed. She caught Lucia’s jaw clenching and unclenching. Maybe them both being affected doubled the effect?

A spectral face poked up from the stairs.

“Shite, let’s get movin’, people!” Kat barked.

Twenty rooms, ten on each side. Forty in total for the short-stay.

“We have time to get to all of these?” Ann asked as they took doors. She was alone this time. It honestly wasn’t much different than having Minnie with her when it came to a fight. She was also the fastest, and could easily outrun something if she didn’t have the strength to deal with it.

Bren handed out keys.

“Nae! Every other unless ye feel a need. Listen tae that feelin’!” Kat growled. She braced herself and led Lucia inside.

Ann followed her example as Bren and Rosalyn did the same.

The first room was small. It was a living room, sure, but there were none of the amenities that she’d seen before. A few chairs, a table, a couch, and a small kitchenette with a sink and small stove. Towards the back, she found another door, closed, that would likely lead to the bedroom. Barely more than a studio apartment. There’d be a shower and bathroom, too, likely in the back, but Ann couldn’t see the entrance.

Like the rest, she found the place annoyingly clean. The most prominent feature of the space was the dust that clouded everything, including a decent spiderweb in one corner. Had to be a half-inch thick, and came away in a huge clump against her gauntlet’s finger as she traced it across the singular table.

“The hell happened here?” Ann asked the empty room. “Like, I get that you all probably had some awful experience, but where?”

Normally, she’d feel a little dumb for talking to herself, but there was a good chance she would be talking to a spirit. Testing her new senses, she searched like Waheela had taught her, but didn’t feel anyone nearby. Either the ghosts didn’t pick up, or they just weren’t there.

Not here. I am watching as well.

Appreciate it. So, you’re feeling all of this, too?

I am. As I said before, this place is old, but I am limited to your experiences in this case. The spirits around us are foreign to my knowledge. I know not what waits for us at the top.

Let me know if you pick anything up, Ann thought, then got back to her search.

Another thing that was bothering her was the lack of any extra sensations. The tingling, burning, freezing of the other floors were completely absent. Even as she stepped into the bedroom, there was nothing that keyed her into what might have happened.

She was about to leave when something barely caught her eye.

A seam! On the right side of the room, there was a tall, rectangular seam in the wall. It was… like there used to be a door there.

Ann whirled, looking around. There were no other doors! If Anthony was from her time, he’d probably put bathrooms in every living space. He definitely would if he didn’t implement a shared bathroom, and Ann hadn’t seen one yet.

Walking up to the rectangle, she traced the outline with her claws. It wasn’t like she knew what she was doing, but she did want to get the door open. Gently, she tried to work a claw into the upper seam, but couldn’t. She tapped around the left and right of the hidden frame, but nothing responded. Hell, she tried pushing, pulling, lifting, or lowering the obstacle, and it would not budge!

Pressing an ear to the surface, she tried to hear anything. Maybe she could get some sound of machinery, or ghosts trapped? Nothing.

Ann kicked at the door. “Fucking open!”

It remained stone. Cold. Grey. Unmoving.

“Fine!” Ann threw her hands up in defeat. “Next room it is!”

She stalked out of the apartment and ran into Bren and Rosalyn.

“Oh, Ann! You find anything?” Rosalyn asked. “We didn’t. It was really normal, and there wasn’t much at all to see, cause it was so normal.”

“Did your place have a bathroom?” Ann asked.

Bren nodded. “It did have a washroom, yes.”

“’Cause mine has the outline for a door to one, but it’s all rock. Like a nearly perfect slab just got slotted into it. No drag marks, nothing. Can’t get it to move, either,” Ann huffed. She’d thought she’d found a clue, and it was annoying to be turned away.

“Strange. We did not notice anything amiss with our room. Perhaps we check the next and determine if this was a singular occurrence, or a pattern? Perhaps the washroom was faulty.”

“Ooooor it was a secret trap and that one didn’t get disarmed!” Rosalyn gasped. “But if that was the case, then that room would be super dangerous for the person staying there. Can you imagine getting shut into a bathroom and not being able to get out? I mean, maybe they had magic to get out, and we’re just not seeing how they did? It is stone, and Minnie would be better at checking it, but she’s downstairs, and I hope Daisy is behaving.”

Ann rolled her eyes and tousled Rosalyn’s hair playfully. “Those two are going to be fine. Still, yeah. Got a real murder motel vibe from this place. I mean, the receptionist is screaming about how this place will harm you. I do not want to know what the hell Anthony could do to people if he made Daisy.”

Bren sighed. “Neither do I, yet we must. Thirtieth floor, top of this section,” he reminded them all.

Kat and Lucia emerged from their room and got a full rundown of what Ann had found. They hadn’t seen anything either. It really was just Ann who’d run into the anomaly. Kat quickly ran into the room and tested the door before returning.

“Aye, that thing ain’t movin’ a mole’s hair. We’d ‘ave more luck gettin’ Alruna tae break it down.”

“Next rooms it is,” Bren said, pulling out the keys and handing them out.

Ann had room 408. She steadied herself, clicking the key into place. It was a door handle. A door. This fear aura they were under was really making everything feel like it was going to grab her. It didn’t, of course, but it still didn’t feel right.

The room was exactly the same as the other. Ann checked the main room just for safety, but was eager to get to the bedroom and, hopefully, the bathroom. There were some belongings here, this time. A crappy-looking mace made of a stick and rock was propped up against the wall. There was a bag, a few scraps of decayed and desiccated leather. Whoever this had been, they were a hunter.

Ann paused when she caught the white of bone in the corner. Dread filled her as she approached, but they were just animal bones. Some small cat with three eyes and a… something. Ann knew her animal skulls pretty well, but this didn’t seem like any of them. A weird mix between reptilian and rodent that looked entirely natural, besides the fact that those two things did not go together. Some new animal from the Return? Ann pocketed the skull for Rosalyn to look at later.

Her girlfriends had the weirdest gift lists.

Sensitive ears twitched on her head, tail thrashing with anticipation as she poked her head inside the room. It was empty, of course. The bed was a mess, and whoever had stayed here clearly didn’t know how to treat a place you were just visiting. Pillows were tossed, the bed looked like it’d been used as a punching bag more than a place to rest, and Ann was pretty sure the frame was broken.

Looking to her right, the door to the bathroom stood wide open.

Inside was a bathroom one could expect from a world with limited technology and a lot of magic. The toilet was surprisingly normal, if the reservoir wasn’t cracked and the lid missing. A quick peek inside showed a rune that likely created the water needed in lieu of plumbing. No rubber ball, but a nugget of Cloudstone was used as a bobber.

There was a bathtub, but no shower. Seemed that Anthony didn’t care for showers, or couldn’t figure out how to get it to work right. Or any of his guests, for that matter. Limitations of an apocalypse that gave everyone magic, Ann supposed.

There was a small drain in the tub, and a sink next to the toilet, but nothing else looked remarkable. She paced back to the doorway and dropped to a knee. It looked like a pretty normal tile border. It was slightly raised to prevent water from getting out and into the carpet should the bath splash, but it didn’t look like anything … was….. amiss.

Ann squinted at one specific spot, just where the tile border overlapped with the carpet. There was a dark spot. It was tiny, but it was there. She removed her right gauntlet and hooked a claw down into it. The spot was crunchy. Something sticky had dried here.

Putting her gauntlet back on, she tried to chip at the tile around it. It was tough. Tougher than it had any right to be. Scratching sure as hell didn’t get her anywhere, so Ann tried to find a weaker point. After her most thorough inspection, she decided that it was perfect in every way. Minnie could have figured this out.

Ann shrugged and pulled her fist back. When her way didn’t work, she’d try Kat’s, then Bren’s. Her gauntlet made a sharp thock against the tile, and Ann was happy to see a crack! Eagerly, she repeated the process two more times, making sure that the part she was getting at could be lifted away.

Carefully, she grabbed the edge again and lifted.

Something fell away as Ann lifted the tile. It was about an inch long, very flat, oblong, and had ragged edges.

Ann poked at it, just to be sure.

It didn’t move.

She picked it up, turning it over in the light of the wall crystal. It was nearly black, and kinda leathery when she scraped at it. One part was smooth, though, towards one end.

“Shit!” Ann cursed, flinging the finger away reflexively. It hit the wall and clattered down onto the bedside table.

“This fucking fear aura,” Ann griped to herself. It was just a finger! She’d seen far worse. Blushing at her outburst, she stalked over and retrieved the severed, squished digit.

The thing was bruised to hell. Ann would have thought that getting crushed like that would force all of the blood out, but it seemed like this one had fallen in just the right way to not have that happen.

“What happened to your owner?” Ann asked, returning to the bathroom barrier. “Definitely a booby trap. What’s the trigger, though?”

Ann went around the bathroom again, checking for anything suspicious. Now that she knew there’d been a person in here, she picked up a few new details. A couple of the tiles on the walls were chipped or broken in half. All of them were about head height, like someone had beaten their fists against them. A couple of the floor tiles were crumbled as well. Whoever had been in here had probably gotten stuck for a while. If that was the case, and the finger was on the outside, that meant that the door had slammed shut while they were in the bathroom.

Ann shivered. That was an awful time to get trapped. People let their guard down when they were in a bathroom. It was supposed to be a safe place. Putting a trap there was perfect.

“So,” Ann said to the finger. “Your owner was taking a shit, and the door started to move. Before it could get all the way up, he tried to stop it and lost either just you or more of your friends as well.”

Ann lifted a finger and traced the gaps between tiles. This place being shaped, rather than built, meant there was no grout, but she’d hoped there might be a sign.

“After he did, he freaked out. Pretty normal reaction to that,” Ann continued, looking around the room, feeling like Sherlock. “Then something happened to take him away. I’d say he probably died in here, somehow, but he doesn’t seem like the type to go easy. I also don’t think Anthony was the type to gas his victims either. Not that I think he had the brains to come up with that after his tantrums earlier. Still, this is a murder hotel, and unless he read about Holmes, I bet he’s flying on intuition here.” Ann paced, placing the finger down on the bed as she continued to talk to it.

“So, you got smushed off and fell. Your owner got trapped, missing fingers or a finger. He goes apeshit in the bathroom trying to break his way out. Anthony probably shows up and does something awful to him. Once that’s done, he cleans up the mess the best he can and moves on. The broken tiles suggest that he was in a hurry, though. So either your owner got him good in the fight, or something else was pressing him.”

Ann turned to the living room. “Dragging a body through all of this, and with fingers missing, would leave blood. Yeah, he could have cleaned up, but if he was in a hurry, I don’t think he’d put much effort into it. Magic complicates it all because that’s cheating and makes cleanup easy. If he didn’t, though, that means there’s something in the bathroom that lets him take the body. Does that sound right?”

The finger said nothing.

Ann shrugged. “Sorry, know I’m talking to myself. I’ll burn you later so whatever ghost that’s attached to you gets released.” She walked back into the bathroom, checking the fake grout again. If there was a door here, there should be a telltale seam somewhere. After a minute, a spectral hand poked out of the wall, in front of her face, making her jump. It had all of its fingers, so it wasn’t the person who’d been in here.

“Alright, alright, I’ll get going,” Ann grumbled. Her time was up. She had a general idea of what was happening here. Now she just needed to figure out how.

Maybe other rooms would give her hints that she needed.

Ann nearly slammed into the door as Kat threw it open in her face. “Shit!”

“Nylir’s sword, ye scared me! Where’ve ye been? We cleared most o’ the rest o’ the floor!” Kat asked.

Ann spotted a concerned Rosalyn and Lucia behind the princess. “Sorry, found something. Definitely a murder hotel, and I was trying to figure out how it’s a murder hotel.” She held up the finger. “Say hello to our first piece of evidence.”

“Hi!” Rosalyn chirped.