XVI (Part I)

Where is Steven?

"Steve! Where are you?" Harris calls him out in this poorly lit room. His voice echoes in the entire room but no one responds to him. Not even Steven. Silence starts to engulf us as worry start to appear in my gut.

Where can he be? Did we take too long to come back?

I can't see properly and I see no silhouettes of alive human beings around here. I help call Steven out, too.

"Steven! Where are you?!" I shout with my hands circling the sides of my mouth in an attempt to louder my voice.

We already lost too many people tonight. I don't think we will be able to let go of another one, too. We have to find him.

"Harris, what if he jumped inside his grave?" You see, I have been tempted to jump on mine earlier so, what if he did the deed?

"What?" Harris goes silent, thinking about what Steven must have done. "That's impossible. Steven is not the type to do it. He won't do such a thing."

Harris walks around the spot where we have left Steven has been earlier until one of his feet comes across something on the floor.

"What's this?" he leans down to the ground and reaches out the thing that he has touched.

"What?" feeling worried, I start to walk towards his silhouette. He stands back as he takes the thing nearer to his face to see it better.

"It's a shoe," what? "It's Steven's shoe. Let's go find him. I think something wrong must have happened to him."

Harris grabs my hand as I try to process what he has been trying to say. "What do you mean?"

"No one leaves a shoe on purpose. Someone must have taken him."

And then it all starts to dawn on me. Right. But where can he be? Where are we going to start looking for him in this big hotel?

"So where are we going to start looking for him?" We stop on our tracks.

This place is huge. This hotel is gigantic and almost like a labyrinth of endless possibilities.

Except for those monster-eaten areas, How else can we minimize the area where we can find him?

We also spent quite a while on the storage and here, how will we know which areas have not been covered by the pitch-black darkness?

"The CCTV," I hear Harris whisper, "We have to find their security area." And he starts walking, bringing me with him.

"But how can we find it? It's too dark here, too and I don't think we can find the exit door soon enough."

How will we find it, though? We no longer know where the door is.

Harris! Amy!

And like a whisper, I feel the hairs on my neck stand up as I hear Luke's voice. We look around until we see a silhouette of a man meters away from us.

"Luke?" I call him out.

"Yes, just go straight and you will find me," says the man behind Luke's voice.

"Is that you, Luke?" says Harris.

"Yes, Harris. Now, come quick. I can see you so follow my words. I know a place where you can find Steven," says Luke.

I guess we have no other choice.

But what if it isn't Luke who is calling out to us?

But what is the use of arguing with a ghost?

I guess, all we need to do now is to trust. They have been the ones who have tried to give us answers and lead us to this place, too.

We walk across the room until we reach a wall.

"We're now, here, Luke," Harris calls out to Luke.

I almost shout when Luke makes an appearance on a mirror near us. Creepy.

"Fear not, Amy,"

"I did not know that there is a mirror there!" I tell him.

"It's a one-way mirror, behind this is where the security equipment of the hotel has been stored. Come. The door is just beside this mirror, on the left,"

Immediately, Harris and I reach out to the knob while blindly tapping on the walls. The light of the pool no longer reaches this part of the room.

"I found it," Harris says. "But it is locked."

We both hear a soft snap from the doorknob opening it and we hear Luke's voice again, "You're welcome."

I feel myself grin at how funny it is that a ghost is actually helping us escape this hell.

The moment that we have stepped inside the room, The door slams shut as a huge set of computer screens turn themselves on in front of us. There are almost around 28 computer monitors in front of us. It takes them a while to load and when they did, there are computer screens that have gone either turn pure black or just purely static. There are almost only around 8 monitors that have actual images of different parts of the hotel.

Two for the outsides of the hotel, one on the gate and one for the main entrance,

There are two for the lobby,

One for the kitchen and one for the restaurant.

And another two for the pool area.

But there are no people in it.

"The entire 2nd and 3rd floors of the hotel have been taken over by the monster. Those are the only remaining," Luke tells us.

"But where can Steven be if we see no people on these videos?" I ask him back.

"Wait a little bit, Amy."

"And where are the other two ghosts, Luke?"

"Oh, they are talking to other spirits here to ask for help."

I get puzzled, "What do you mean?"

"Your own might will not be enough for your safety here, Amy, so we figured that we, ghosts should try to help you out."

"Thank you," I reply. because I figure that we really have no one else to help us out. The best we can do in our situation is to accept their offer.

"Look!" Harris suddenly exclaims. "That's Steven!"

On the monitor in one of the pools, we see a man wearing a white polo shirt and khaki pants emerge from the hotel. He walks so slowly with only one shoe on his feet and the other is bare. Staggering and limping, he slowly walks towards the pool.

"Steven!" I call him as if he can hear me.

He stays still when he is now near the pool and pauses as if he is thinking about something. He then eventually look up at the sky and closes his eyes.

Then he allows himself to fall into the deep pool.

I run towards the one-way mirror and indeed, we can see that Steven's body has fallen inside there.

"We have to leave now," I feel Harris beside me as he opens the door and takes my wrist with him outside.

We both look up and see Steven's body floating in the pool. How can we go there?

And just like that, a little orb of blue light emerges from one of the graves nearest to us.

"Harris, What's that?" I point it out. Harris turns around and looks at it, too, as confused as me. He then slowly walks towards the orb while not letting go of my hand. We go nearer towards it.

It is a light blue orb and it looks like it is made of fire. It is just floating in the air. Harris and I circle around it, astounded by its beauty. You see, it's the only legit light we have right here. It illuminates Harris' face as I believe it illuminates mine, too. For the first time since we have been here, we can finally see each other.

What is this?

Harris reaches out his hand in an attempt to investigate it but he immediately takes back his hand the moment he has touched it.

"What's wrong?"

"It electrocuted me."

I immediately take his hand to check it, "Are you okay?"

"Yeah, it's not so bad," he pauses, "It was pretty soft, actually. Just surprising."

I look at him in confusion. I don't understand. What does he mean? He just got electrocuted by a very weird yet beautiful orb.

I am about to refute him but a sudden occurrence has taken my breath away. Another orb in orange starts to emerge from another grave. Then, another one which is yellow. Then another which is green. Then another until there are now hundreds of multi-colored orbs floating in front of us like glowing flowers in a garden at night, if it is possible, of course.

I still can't believe what I am seeing.

I almost freak out when those orbs start to move and form one straight line. What's going on?

"Amy, it feels like it wants to lead us somewhere," he then starts to walk and I follow behind him. These are so pretty and it is crazy how hauntingly beautiful this place is.

And we have to move fast to save Steven.

We start running so fast, sprinting while following the path the orbs have prepared for us. It then leads us to a door.

Harris turns the knob and now, we find ourselves on the staircase where we have entered earlier for the graveyard. We squint our eyes as the sudden light is blinding but we didn't stop running. We run so fast I feel my lungs almost give out and the wound on my side starts to tear.

But we have to save Steven.