Floor Ten

Along the path of deep thought and wonder, a person may stumble upon curiosity as to what causes a human being to take the life of another. They will find that many variable factors are strewn across the downward spiraling path to murderous intent. Things such as justification, motives, and convenience.

 Even those who must kill out of self-defense must bring themselves to do so in one way or another. Their justification is simply that they must defend themselves. They may not have any other reason except that they want to live. This still is justification that processes through the brain before making a critical and harsh choice.

 To take the life of another is a serious thing… but what about those who have already had their lives taken? Those murdered in cold blood, simply cut off from their mortal experience simply because they were in the way of someone who had already mentally prepared themselves to take another's life. I speak, of course, of the poor souls thrown overboard after the mass murder aboard the captain's ship. What had they done to deserve assassination?

 What was the motivation and justification of the hooded murderer now chasing us through the halls, I subconsciously wondered as we shut the door to the stairs and locked it. My father seemed abnormally panicked; his breathing was rapid and his movements clumsy.

 "That woman… we must get away from her." He gasped for breath, dragging me into the tenth floor as we heard the door at the bottom of the stairs get bashed down off its hinges.

 "That woman?" I questioned him.

 "Yes. That woman is…" Before he could finish, we had turned the corner at the end of the hall to find that like some of the other floors, many of the walls had been smashed and torn down. The only remaining things undestroyed were a table, a book on top of that table, and a few damaged walls here and there that hadn't been completely bashed. Broken glass lay scattered across the floor in every direction from shattered mirrors and windows.

 Through the broken windows, I could see that the sun had nearly set, and nighttime was nearly upon us. Soon, we would have no light at all in this nightmare that had thrust itself upon us. I looked up at my father to see if he was going to start grabbing things to craft something ingenious; that way we might have some way of defending ourselves. To my dismay, he had frozen in fear. His gaze was fixed upon the door at the end of the hall.

 "Papa! Snap out of it!" I said, clapping my hands in front of his face. "This isn't the first monster that's chased us, and she likely won't be the last! We need to find a way to stop her!" While I was shouting at him, the bloodthirsty killer behind the door had begun bashing at it.

 "You're right… I need to get myself together." Although his words implied that he was trying to calm down, his attempts were completely unsuccessful. He grabbed at a nearby piece of broken glass and fumbled with it until it slipped out of his hand, leaving a small bleeding cut on his thumb.

 Taking matters into my own shaking hands, I rushed over to the table and grabbed the book sitting upon it; it looked to be some sort of journal. I immediately shoved the book into his arms and gestured for him to go find the door to the next floor. "Find our escape route. I'll distract her."

 Before I could stomp my way over to the rubble to make myself a weapon, my father grabbed my arm and repeated the phrase: "Matis Gibeau is afraid, but he is not a coward!" With that, he picked up two wooden rods from smashed furniture and stuck various shards of glass in them like a mace. "We will fight back." He stated as he handed me one of the crude, pointy clubs.

 As he spoke, we heard the door get kicked down in the hall. Positioning ourselves behind one of the standing corner walls, we held our makeshift weapons in our hand and awaited the arrival of our enemy. Hearing her bootsteps, we peeked through some holes in the wall to see her walk in.

 The being I saw walk in sent shivers down my spine and my stomach turn. Not because of any horrid appearance, but rather because of the opposite… This woman was indeed a living, breathing woman.

 She had blonde hair, her eyes a sharp, icy blue. Her face was sunk in as though she was starving, but the way she moved was the most natural human movement I had seen from a physical entity in this hotel save for that of my father and the man that danced with me in the ballroom. She had weapons strapped across her waist, her eyes burning with violent intent. Within her hands was an old, worn-down dagger with unfamiliar characters carved into it.

 "I told you to never touch another woman…" She said furiously, her veiny eyes bulging out of her face. Her heavy boots stomped on the ground into the clearing, the chains on her leather leggings rattling with each step. "I warned you of the consequences…"

 With a snap of her fingers and a stomp of her left boot, she seemed to summon rats from the hall behind her that scattered themselves across the room. "Find him." She ordered them with gritted teeth.

 Obeying her commands, they began scouring behind all the walls, some of them beginning to make their way toward our hiding spot. I turned over to my father to ask him what we should do, but to my surprise he had already moved to another location. I could see him sneaking behind a wall closer to the woman.

 Thinking quickly, I threw a chunk of drywall out from my hiding spot away from my father. Thankfully, the rats seemed to respond to this exactly how I wanted them to. They rushed over to where I had thrown the chunk… near an unstable wall that was about to tip over. Just as I had hoped, the wall was unstable enough that the sudden vibrations from dozens of madly dashing rats crashing into it caused it to topple over. With many pained squeals, the rats were crushed underneath the wall, throwing up dust and rubble into the air.

 Although some of the rats remained, they were too frightened and retreated. Screaming in anger, the woman stomped on one of them as they ran by her, sending shattered bones and blood splattering all over the floor and her boots. The crunching and squishing sound it made was among one of the worst sounds I had heard to that point. Speaking of sounds, the sound of her boots continued as she walked through the dust that had been thrown into the air, clearly not caring whether she could see.

 My legs froze and my heart seemed to stop when I could no longer see her in the dust cloud. Her figure seemed to completely disappear in the dirty fog. Although I couldn't see her, I knew she likely couldn't see anything either. I thought to myself that I would take advantage of this and run toward my father.

 When I reached the other end of the wall I was hiding behind, I was immediately greeted by a black leather glove to my throat. The woman picked me up by my neck and pinned me to the nearest wall, her hand squeezing my neck too tightly for me to breathe. "So… how long have you had this kid!?" She turned her head away from me and shouted out into the settling dust cloud. Now that she was closer, I could see her facial details more clearly. She may not have been entirely dead, but it wouldn't have been shocking to me if she too was a zombie, only recently dead. She looked exactly like the corpse we had found in the library… in fact, I was sure that she was the same one.

 "She looks to be nearly eighteen years old… It sure would be sad if she met her end here and now, especially with her beauty!" She growled, clenching my neck tighter. I felt like my eyes were going to pop out of my skull! I didn't know where my father was, but I hoped he had a plan!

 "Put her down. I am not your husband, and she is not his daughter!" My father's voice echoed throughout the room. In response to his call, she threw me at least three feet off to the side, coughing and sputtering as I hit the ground.

 "I know your kind… my wife came from the same place you did. I know how much it must have hurt you when your husband you had traveled so far to meet abandoned you for another woman." He attempted to reason with her, walking out from his hiding spot and dropping his weapon.

 "You know not my pain!" She shouted, pointing her dagger at him as she marched in his direction. The sun had then set enough to make the light even dimmer, the sound of the wind blowing through the shattered windows making an ominous draft that blew the dust away.

 "You are correct. I do not, but I do know that you have a child that you love just like I love my daughter." He said firmly, stepping closer to her. I wanted to shout for him to back away, but I was yet to get my breath back from having my throat squeezed.

 She stopped walking toward him, only about ten feet away. She kept her dagger pointed at him, her hands shaking with rage. "You… you remind me so much of him. Your slimy businessman ego… you use your daughter as a shield and leave your wife simply for the opportunity to make money! How many other women have you been with since you left her!?" She questioned, looking ready to throw the dagger into his head.

 "Not one." He answered with undeniable conviction. "I may be a businessman, but I did not leave my wife, especially not for money. We never divorced, and so I have kept my vows even as she has traveled afar for so very long."

 It seemed to be working, judging by her softening expression. Just to ensure that things were clicking, I added "If money were all he cared about, he would not have raised me!" with what breath I could regain.

 She lowered her dagger, her gaze moving from my father down to her feet. "No…" She muttered. "You lie like every other man on this planet." As she spoke, the last of the sunlight disappeared, leaving the room too dark to see in. Her pale skin seemed to glow a pale blue, making her location apparent.

 "Don't." I heard the voice of the man that hid in the light. "Do not kill her." He must have been warning my father. The lighting in the room suddenly became a dim blue with the same rippling pattern as the seventh floor.

 The new lighting revealed that my father was now being held to the wall with a rusty dagger up to his neck. The woman had taken advantage of the distraction to get close. "I am going to end you before you have the chance to hurt anyone. The corruption of men entangled with filthy lucre knows no loyalty to anyone, and I refuse to believe that you are an exception!" She shouted, holding the dagger closer.

 Without a word, I rushed behind her with a long shard of glass in my hand. I didn't care who she was anymore, and I didn't care what may have happened to me at that moment. All I knew was that I wasn't going to let the man that had sacrificed so much for me die by the hands of a half-dead woman judging him for her ex-husband's mistakes.

 I heard the voice of the man in the light behind me shouting at me, telling me to stand down but it was too late. Before I knew it, there was foul-smelling blood leaking down my arm. I had actually stabbed her through the chest with the elongated shard of glass. It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on, but it struck me like a freight train. I had just killed her.

 She fell to the ground without any other words, whatever life she had leaving her body as her blood spilled on the floor. "What have I done?" I whimpered, dropping the glass onto the floor and staring at my hands.

 The feeling and the sound of it entering her flesh would never be fully erased from my mind. I had taken a life for the first and I had hoped for the last time.

 "Lyra…" My father gasped in shock, still comprehending the situation himself.

 The blue light in the room became red and the rippling pattern of the water-like lights moved faster, becoming a furious stream of bloodstained lights.

 "Lyra… of all the people to hurt me, I hadn't expected it from you." The voice of the nameless man sounded anguished and upset. "That was my mother!" He shouted.

 My father's eyes went wide, and his knees gave out, causing him to slide down the wall he was against into a sitting position. I looked back to see the sight that had frightened him so and saw the nameless man. His eyes were glowing red, his facial expression unreadable as he stumbled toward me. Although his appearance was close to the same as it was in the ballroom, the intense aura around him sank into me, paralyzing me. I felt like I might die there just from his eyes cutting through my guilty soul.

 "I… I was protecting my father." I told him somberly, tears forming in my eyes. "I didn't know she was your mother. Why is your mother here?"

 He stomped a single step forward and bent over to get his face as close to mine as possible. "Perhaps if you had asked the right questions while we danced, you would have known." He snarled. His red eyes glared into mine like focused flames in a forge. "But I should have known… I thought you were different from all the other people that had tried to get to the top of this hotel. Everyone else ran away and gave up or died trying to fight the monstrosities. But you… your ingenuity and your connection to the deeper things of this world… I thought for sure that I had finally found someone I could trust!"

 I stepped back toward my father and placed my hand on his shoulder when I reached his side, wanting nothing more than to crawl into his arms and hide behind him.

 "If you have such an affinity for me, then why didn't you step in to protect my father!?" I shouted back at him. I was very afraid but not enough to let him continue this. He looked away from me, hesitating for a moment before turning around and walking the other way.

 "You don't understand this at all. Read that journal and I will meet you on the twelfth and final floor. That will be our last time speaking to one another…" His words were emotionless, but they literally shook the entire hotel as he spoke. The ceiling cracked, more walls crumbled, and the lighting in the room disappeared. Only his red eyes remained, faintly glowing in the darkness until gradually faded away.

 I stood there for a moment, my heart pounding and my lungs heaving. I thought without a doubt that he might kill me there like his mother wanted to kill my father. He was surely capable of it with his height alone.

 My father and I stayed there for a moment, the journal in my father's lap. We were alone in the darkness, trying to comprehend the things that we had just witnessed... truly, there wasn't a more fitting name for this hotel than L'Hôtel Hanté.