Floor Eleven

Morality. One of the major differential characteristics of humankind. Humans have successfully taken their self-awareness to the highest level of any being on earth, allowing them to create all new concepts that exist only among themselves.

 The idea or knowledge of good and evil is a concept not grasped by "beings of lower intelligence". They live free from worries about whether they're making the right choice or not. Meanwhile, the sociality of humanity has driven it to make rules that govern the behaviors of the entire species.

 If someone were to break these rules, the most common result is the unique human emotion known as guilt: the feeling of having done something wrong. This emotion, depending on the nature and personality of the individual, can have all kinds of repercussions on the mind. It weighs especially heavy on the minds of those who think highly of themselves and ignore it, such as those who have accumulated much wealth.

 Naturally, as the daughter of a businessman, the guilt of taking someone else's life was beginning to crush me. Although this was an act of defense to rescue my father from a murderer, the thought of taking the life of another made me feel no better than the fiend I had just killed.

 I tried to justify myself many times, attempting to evade the negative feelings. I told myself that it was necessary, and that she herself deserved it. She took the lives of many innocent people on that boat, even if the man she was after wasn't a good man. Then again, I didn't know who those people were or if they were truly innocent. I also didn't know who she was or why she was after him.

 "Lyra, my dear, it's okay." My father, who was holding me closely after the traumatizing experience, assured me that I did the right thing in the darkness that was this room at night. "What's done is done. It was either her or me, and you chose me. Do you suppose that you would have felt better letting me die?" He reasoned.

 It was true. Although I stood there sobbing into my father's chest because of the guilt, the thought of not being able to do that was far worse. Although this was a mere comparison of losses, somehow it assured me that I had made the better of the two choices presented to me in that situation.

 "Come. Let's find the door and get up to the eleventh floor. Perhaps we can find some light up there." He stated, guiding me through the dark toward whatever doors he could find.

 It took about a dozen tries, but we eventually found the door to the dimly lit staircase. There was a small candle atop a singular fancifully decorated metal shelf attached to the wall. It didn't provide much light, but it was enough to see each step in front of us, allowing us to safely make it up to the next floor.

 The door to the eleventh floor was quite different from the others we had seen. It was in pristine condition for how old it was. It was made of much finer materials than those of previous levels as well. Between the golden hinges and the beautiful engravings on the wooden door, we could tell this floor was going to be the VIP guest floor.

 The door was surprisingly silent as we opened it, with no creaking or cracking whatsoever. It opened smoothly with no clear signs of damage or infestation. Although this usually would have somehow worried me more, I took no note of it. The mental state I was in prevented me from caring.

 "Look, a lounge. Let's go sit in there and read this book. Perhaps we will get some insights into the woman below and the man above." He said, referencing the corpse on the previous floor and the man that told us he would be waiting on the twelfth floor.

 Gently, we sat down on a red couch with golden dots studding the back of it. The wood was polished and smooth, the cushions padded and comfortable. This was truly a luxurious place. There was a smaller chandelier hanging from the roof in the center of the room, powered by fire to give light to this lounge in its entirety. The candle holders attached to the wall served only to enhance the visibility of the fine décor and engravings on every piece of furniture.

 As we sat down, I was shocked to find that my father had placed the diary within my hands. "Lyra, I feel like you should read this." He told me.

 I simply nodded in response and opened the book to the first page. I prepared myself to read it aloud, trying my best to calm my nerves at what we might discover in this book of unknown origin. An astonishing discovery was made immediately as pages began falling out of the book right into my lap.

 I picked up the first one and began verbalizing the text written upon it. "Captain's log, day five of the one-hundred and seventeenth voyage of the ship Beauté Supérieure." It read. What a conceited name that was!

 "Things have been running smoothly. I have achieved every goal I've set my mind to, and the love of my life awaits me at home when I return. She is so much better to me than the woman I once thought I loved." I supposed this to be the captain soon to be murdered. He proceeded to ramble on about how rebellious and uncouth his previous lover was, and that he felt no guilt about leaving her behind in England. Apparently, he had originally lived in England but made a "short trip" to France to escape his wife, starting a new life altogether and never returning to her.

 "It is only my misfortune that my new wife would be barren. Although that matters little since my son from my previous marriage will take over the running of my hotel when he comes of age." The captain continued.

 "This man infuriates me. Such indignity!" I yelled much louder than I had intended to. My guilt was starting to be replaced by anger.

 "Indeed. So, this man was in fact the founder of L'Hôtel Hanté, and the man within the light who speaks only to you is not." My father commented, staring thoughtfully at the pages within my hands.

 The next pages were simply data logs, calculations, and notes concerning the condition of both the hotel and the ship in business statistics. While Papa seemed very interested in this, I moved on to the remaining pages still attached to the book itself.

 Most of the words on the residual pages were bloodstained or torn, making them illegible. I continued flipping until I finally found only three pages with words written in a different language. I handed it to my father, praying that he would be able to understand it.

 "Ah yes, this is in English." He explained. His eyes scanned the pages several times over, taking a moment to translate everything before reading it to me in French.

 "Now we see the sins of this man in clarity." He began. "The captain of a crew equally as sinful, they would set out to different cities located near the waters to invite women aboard." My father proceeded to explain how the writer exposed the captain for forging statistics and revenue reports. Apparently, he even went as far as to brutally assault and blackmail anyone who dared to dive deeper into his records.

 "Hayden Hurley, the captain of the Be… Su… and owner of Hôtel du Marin, committed suicide after murdering his own crew in a sudden breakout of insanity."

 As my father read the cover-up for murder, the room became dark, replacing the light with the same glowing oceanic pattern we experienced on the floors below. The record player in the corner began playing an eerie old-fashioned tune, despite being completely empty. The darkness was soon replaced with the night sky, the moon full and vibrant silver. The high-caliber room that once surrounded us was now just the black waters of the sea at night.

 We floated on that couch in a paralyzed trance for what felt like hours until we eventually reached a boat with the title of Beauté Supérieure painted on its side. As we grew closer, the couch below us sank deep into the ocean as we became translucent figures of light. We floated aboard the ship where the hooded woman had just finished throwing the bodies of her victims off the boat.

 The stars in the sky seemed to turn a light shade of red as she stared out into the ocean, the water reflecting the ghastly red dots. Her gaze was empty and emotionless, her hands coated with the blood of the people who once danced and made themselves merry upon this ship. She soon turned around, the sound of her boots making an other-worldly muffled echo as she headed toward the captain's room where Captain Hurley lay dead in a pool of his own blood.

 "Your greed and adultery have finally come to an end, Hayden." She spoke condescendingly to the corpse. "It would have been one thing to simply abandon me, but you decided to go and take my son, too. This was merciful compared to what you deserve. I predict your punishment in Hell will be far more fitting, though." She continued to ramble, a smile creeping across her face.

 She stood there staring at his corpse and reminiscing of the good memories he had ruined until the sun rose, casting a shade of red across the horizon. She finally decided to move again, stepping toward the corpse of her former husband. "Join me for one last dance, before the sun has completely risen." She commanded him, dragging the body into the open light against a barrel in the middle of the boat where she proceeded to dance around it.

 I wanted to look away from the scene that proceeded but found that I could not. This vision was fixed upon this scene, and I could not stop the ungodly sight before me.

 The woman kicked off her boots, twirling and leaping gracefully around the body. Mid-dance, she drew out another knife and stabbed it elegantly into his chest before returning to her deranged choreography. She proceeded to throw varying kinds of small weapons into different parts of his body as she danced, until finally the sun had climbed its way entirely over the horizon.

 "Finally, this world is free of the burden that is Hayden Hurley!" She shouted as she lifted the corpse up by its hands and swung it around in a circle, eventually using the motion to throw his mutilated remains surprisingly far into the sea.

 She then continued to dance, each twirl disorienting my vision more until eventually everything became blurry and faded into darkness.

 Only a few seconds passed when my eyes were opened once more, except that the eyes were not mine. I could see the woman dancing on her bloodstained dance floor from behind a barrel of wine, the tiny hands that the eyes belonged to quivering and shaking.

 It seemed to be hours before the woman finally ended her dance, walking over to the barrels where I could see from. She collapsed in front of the barrels, causing a fearful gasp to escape the mouth of the small person whose vision I was borrowing.

 The woman sat up immediately, looking over at the barrels into the eyes of the little person. My heart started racing, except that it wasn't my heart. Tears blurred the vision of the young boy, his breaths rapid and sharp.

 "My son…" The woman gasped, a mortified look taking over her expression. She became pale, falling back down to the ground where she sat gasping for breath.

 The child wailed and screamed, unable to escape his hiding spot due to the size of the barrels. He pushed and shoved, but the heavy barrels full of the neurotoxic red substance wouldn't budge. He bashed his shoulders into them in vain, his scream almost drowned out by a wave that crashed into the side of the boat.

 Eventually, the boy passed out, leaving my own senses completely void once again. A few seconds later, my senses of vision and hearing returned, a view from a dock in Port-Louis in the middle of the night. The woman carried her sleeping child off the boat, leaving the murder scene empty.

 The scene changed to a room inside of the hotel where she laid the boy down in a bed before heading out and shutting the door behind her. Screams and the sounds of bloodshed continued, a dog whining mixed somewhere in the midst of it.

 Finally, the world swirled around back into the void of the night. The stars and moon seemed to converge upon me, returning me to the realm of consciousness where I lay on my father's shoulder. He too had just awoken wide-eyed from the vision.

 "Are you satisfied now?" the small voice of the boy from the vision spoke, plain as day. I looked around to see if he was in the room but saw only a pair of red eyes on a tall figure in a dark corner of the room. The ambient ocean-themed lights turned red once more, this time a more sinister shade of crimson.

 "You came seeking answers, and you now have them." He spoke, the small voice sending painful vibrations through my eardrums. "You have what you desired. Make your decision now and present it to me on the next floor." The voice switched to the voice of the young man that danced with me in the ballroom.

 "You…" I tried to speak to him, but a cloth tore itself from the cushion of the couch and wrapped itself around my mouth.

 "Utter a single word more to me before making your decision, and I will throw you both out of the windows of the highest floor, where you will be impaled by the pointed metal fence below." He threatened. A detailed and gruesome image of my father's corpse with several metal posts impaling his body was forced into my head.

 "The decision you make will decide your lifespan." The voice uttering those words were firm, implying a sure promise. Yet was a hint of distraught beneath them, a smidgeon of hesitance and dismay.

 Without another word, the eyes disappeared, and the lighting returned to normal. The cloth released its hold around my mouth and fell to the floor. We sat there, processing what we had just seen.

 "Papa." I said, grabbing his sleeve. "This place… it is Hôtel du Marin."

 He nodded in agreement with my statement, looking into my eyes. His eyes were glazed over with depression and fear.

 "That man… That boy…" I continued. "HE is L'Hôtel Hanté."