Renard (Final Chapter)

How long must a man suffer before his limits are breached? Is it truly a matter of how long, or is it a matter of how much? Does a man truly have a limit on how much he can suffer before the pain breaks his mind and turns him into a monster?

 As surely as all things in this world have a limit, so too must a man's resilience eventually run out if sufficient rest and healing aren't achieved. Sanity is not something easily maintained in an environment of loneliness, pain, and death. Emotional scars run deeper than any other, and like other scars, never fully heal for the duration of the existence of the imperfect human body.

 Although the man who had just thrown my father down a ladder to the lower floor had no apparent physical scars, I knew for a fact that his emotional scars were more than most people in France had ever suffered. The life within his eyes had faded, and his scrawny, lanky form should not have had the strength to climb up that ladder, never mind pick up another grown man with ease and toss him single-handedly.

 "What are you doing!? Why!?" I screamed at Renard, my tears running down my eyes. My body was in pain from the impact with the floor, but my soul ached even more. I had finally gained a sufficient understanding of him and his past, giving me a sense of caring for him.

 "You have five minutes to vacate this place. Forget what you have witnessed here and go on about your lives." Renard responded, sealing off the entrance to the "thirteenth floor" by pushing a giant wooden object on top of the opening.

 "And if we don't!?" I yelled back at him.

 Maddened, I climbed the ladder and began pushing at the blockage. I had scarcely budged it when I felt the heavy obstacle slide out of the way. My arm was grabbed, and I was yanked up into the room with Renard. He looked in my direction with emotionless, colorless, lifeless eyes. His enlarged pupils were so dark that they seemed to absorb all the light in the room.

 Suddenly, I found myself dangling off the roof held up only by Renard's hand, standing at the edge with a firm grip on my arm as he held me up to his face. I screamed at the sight of the deadly drop beneath me, trying not to imagine the kind of impact my body would have on the ground below if he had dropped me. I reached up and clung to his arm as tightly as I could.

 "You will disappear along with every memory of this hellscape." He answered. His breath was so hot that I thought my face might melt. After holding me out a little further, he climbed down the wall and tossed me in through an open window into my father, who toppled over upon the impact. Renard made haste disappearing after that.

 It wasn't long afterward that I heard crashing and bashing sounds above, as though he was tossing and breaking everything he held dear in that room. I heard him scream in simultaneous fury and agony, an entire wooden chest plummeting through the ceiling where it landed only a foot away from where my father and I sat. The sound of the impact made my entire body flinch.

 We only had enough time to stand up before Renard's elongated arms stretched down from the hole he had created in the ceiling, knocking down bits of wood and other building material as he crawled through it. His nails were long, ragged, and sharp looking. His teeth had become pointy, his hair much longer than it previously appeared with knots, tangles, and frilly messes all throughout it. He latched onto the ceiling and looked straight through my soul.

 "Run." He said threateningly as he yanked his head back up onto the floor above and began tossing more objects through the ceiling. "Lyra, he's gone mad! Get out of here!" My father grabbed my hand and pulled me through the door into the outer offices of the twelfth floor.

 An entire bed frame flew out of the door and crashed into the wall just behind us as we ran toward the door to the stairs. Pieces of wood and walls flew everywhere, one of the splinters sticking into my forearm. The shard of wood was fairly large but the pain it caused was far greater. I fell on the ground and wailed. Blood was already streaming from the wound, and I could see multiple splinters breaking off of it, spreading my flesh and leaving dangling bits of skin. It hurt to such great severity that the panic in my mind spiked beyond my control. I lay there on the floor, hyperventilating. The world spun around me, and I could no longer feel my appendages.

 I only barely managed to retain enough consciousness to be able to tell that my father had lifted me up in my arms and taken me down the stairs. Everything was blurry, but I could see what had the vague shape of a heavy wooden chair fly past the open door at the top of the stairs, crashing into a window where it would fall twelve stories down to the hard ground and smash into splinters.

 My ears felt like they were convulsing and closing in on themselves, leaving me nearly deaf. My head felt lighter than air and heavier than a boulder simultaneously as it swung back and forth in my father's arms.

 "We're… tenth floor." I could make out the words from my father. If we were on the tenth floor, that meant we were passing the corpse of Renard's mother. Forcing myself to snap out of it, I managed to regain enough consciousness to speak. "Let me see the corpse of the blonde woman." I spoke, placing my hand on Papa's shoulder.

 "It's too dark; I can barely see where my own feet are! Besides that, there's no telling when that monster's rampage will reach this floor. We need to keep moving!" He denied my request, holding onto me tighter as he tried to navigate through the dark floor.

 "He's not a monster." I shot back with as much feeling as I could muster, still dizzy and regaining my senses. "He's as human as we are."

 My father scoffed as he searched for the door. "You clearly must not have seen his face. Those eyes, those claws, the way his cheeks sank in. He is the most alive person in this hotel other than us, yet he is almost dead himself.

 Was this what he truly looked like, or was this a form he was taking on to scare us away? Whatever the case, it was likely that I wasn't going to be seeing him again. I was sure he didn't want me to see him anymore, either.

 "Matis… This way, my friend!" A feminine voice urged my father in a certain direction.

 "Vivienne?!" My father called out, walking toward the voice. I wasn't sure who he was talking to, but she seemed to want to help us.

 "Yes, it is I. Follow my voice, and I will lead you out." She echoed, this time making her location much more obvious.

 Before we could reach the door where this Vivienne had called out from, I heard something massive collapse above us. Chunks of the ceiling began falling off and crashing onto the floor behind us. I felt more rocks and shards of wood brush against my hand as the crashing sounds above us continued. We did not have time to move slowly!

 Having regained enough of my senses, I leapt out of my father's arms at the bottom of the staircase and followed him out into the ninth floor. He had wrapped my arm in a nearby curtain to slow the bleeding, though it most certainly did not help the pain. The ballroom was still lit by the enormous and beautiful chandelier above head, though the cracks in the ceiling implied that it would fall soon.

 "Do not cease moving!" Vivienne warned us, though she was nowhere to be seen.

 "Yes madame!" My father replied as we rushed across the ballroom floor to the hallway. As I predicted, the walls and roof began shaking once more, causing the chandelier behind us to fall onto the beautiful floor. It shattered into millions of pieces, taking away only source of light left on this floor. The sound thereof was awful, almost demonic sounding as it vibrated through my eardrums. Fortunately, we had made it to the stairs before it became too dark to see.

 We went down those stairs so very quickly, yet it seemed not to be fast enough. The door at the top of the stairs fell over and slid downward toward us, threatening to take out our ankles if we hadn't left the staircase in time.

 My father shoved me out into the eighth floor, narrowly avoiding the sliding door himself. He stumbled over what I assumed was a piece of rubble as he tried to catch up with me.

 "My apologies to whoever the owner of that head was!" He shouted out to the room. I hadn't fully comprehended what that meant, nor did I want to at that moment. The crashing above our heads grew louder and it felt as though the entire hotel was shaking violently.

 "You must go faster! He is not far behind and the other spirits here are struggling to slow him down!"  Vivienne warned us.

 "If these spirits are in our favor… why didn't they help us… when we were climbing upward!?" I gasped between breaths as we passed the rotting corpses and got to the stairs where she was verbally leading us.

 "There's no time for that now! What's past is past, we need to get out of here now!" Papa corrected me.

 We were nearly to the seventh floor when I heard: "Make haste or perish like everyone else that has stayed in this hotel since the murder of Hayden Hurley!" Renard had shouted at us from the door to the staircase behind us. Had he already destroyed the floors behind us and caught up in so little time!?

 Several knives stuck into the wall on either side of us as we went through the door to the next staircase. I was beginning to lose hope that we could make it out in time if he was making such quick work of each of the floors! I could hear him roaring and smashing walls, the structure of everything on the floor above us shaking violently with each vocal outburst.

 Knowing that the seventh floor didn't have any walls except for the ones with paintings hung on them, we rushed straightforward through the darkness. The moonlight shone through holes in the outer walls that weren't there before now. The hotel really was falling apart quickly!

 The next floor we had reached was the sixth, where we had played a game of hide and seek with the crawling, undead woman with an upside-down face. The crash of Renard's wreckage was getting closer and closer, so we had no time to worry about that creepy thing!

 To my shock, we found the corpse of the zombie lady strewn across the floor near the door; completely motionless. In fact, it showed no signs of ever having moved since we left the floor the first time.

 I had no time to wonder what had caused this, for the destruction was nearly upon us. The roof cracked, the walls rumbled, and the floor quaked. The staircase we had just left crumbled, a flood of rocks, wood, and nails poured out from the doorway. How was he causing that much destruction so speedily!?

 To our despair, the staircase to the fifth floor was demolished. Nothing remained save for sharp pieces of wood and stone, nails, and splinters. Shards of glass, broken furniture and a skeletal hand were also among the wreckage that was this staircase. It was then that I remembered that we had climbed to the sixth floor via the metal staircase outside.

 "Papa! The staircase outside!" I reminded him in a panic, dragging him away from the rubble. The quaking began to throw me off balance as we ran there.

 "Lyra, it's…" My father had begun to warn me but it was too late. I opened the door to the metal staircase only to find that nothing was there.

 "Gone! I forgot we destroyed it on our way up!" I exclaimed in my breathless state from the endless running. There was nowhere left to go!

 "Find some curtains, rope, or anything we can use to scale the side downward!" Papa commanded.

 There were no ropes around and all the curtains were old and full of moth holes. There was no way to utilize those things by any means unless we wanted to end up dead on the ground six stories down.

 The only other option we had left in the little bit of time was something we could only pray for the success of. "Renard!!!" I shouted with all the emotions I had. The pain in my arm was forcing tears into my eyes and added greatly to the severity of my scream.

 Not two seconds later, something smashed through the ceiling and landed a few meters in front of me. "You dare scream so violently at the man who gave you everything you came here for!?" Renard stomped heavily up to me and leaned over to look me in the face.

 Each step he took made the room shake, and his arms and legs were covered in what I assumed was his own blood. He was really tearing himself apart along with the hotel!

 "How dare YOU presume that you have given me everything I wanted! You act like you know me and want to befriend me then proceed to hurt me in more ways than one!" I was in a full combat de puer as I screamed at him, tears gushing out uncontrollably. My arm was still bleeding as I showed it to him, removing the cloth that my father had wrapped around it. My breaths were loud, rapid, and uncontrolled, yet were my words able to travel forth nonetheless.

 "Am I supposed to pity you!?" He shouted back, his pointy teeth grinding together.

 "No! You're supposed to return the empathy I've given you!" I cried, taking a step closer to him, our faces less than two inches away. The walls continued to crack around us, little by little. We would have to find a way to the lower floor before this room collapsed on its own!

 While I spoke with Renard, my father ran frantically around to each room in search of something that could help us escape.

 "Just what empathy have you shown me!?" Renard argued, punching a nearby wall with his elongated arm. The sound of the impact made my left ear ring, as though a small explosion had just been set off. Pieces of wall were launched from the impact, one of them flying into my shoulder and falling to the floor.

 "Why don't you stop breaking this place down for a second and have a real conversation with me! Tell me more about your past, tell me more about the monsters beneath us and the souls that have wandered your hotel! That's what I want!" I was now formulating my words more effectively, the pain in my arm and shoulder fading as I screamed at this horrid-looking man before me.

 Without another word, Renard grabbed me and held me in one of his arms. I screamed in surprise, but that didn't seem to faze him in the slightest as he jumped up and wound up his legs before slamming them into the floor. The resulting impact opened a hole through the floor to the fifth story, where we were once chased by the massive killer face.

 "Look at this!" He ordered me, tossing my limp self onto the floor in front of him. As I looked up from the floor, I saw shattered white glass all over the floor. More than that, though, I saw a red vein-like pattern embedded in some of those shards.

 "Glass?" I questioned, picking up one of the shards to inspect it.

 "Yes. The face that once chased you was merely a puppet, a creation of mine to scare you away" he confessed in a less enraged tone, though he still sounded dead inside.

 It was all starting to come together. "Then… what of the terrors on the other floors?" I questioned him, standing up to look up into his eyes.

 He looked down and met my gaze, his fist clenched and his long, frazzled hair hanging down almost into my face. "The only souls within this hotel were myself and those of my mothers. Everything else you saw was me." He explained. "What else do you want to know? I will tell you if it means you will finally be satisfied and leave this place."

 I reached up with my uninjured arm and placed a hand gently on his tear-stricken, bloodstained face. "Renard, do you know how to love?" I questioned him in a quieter voice, calming my anxiety, fear and anger to let my sincere concern for him show. It was the only thing I could think to ask him in that moment, though I had no idea why in the moment.

 His eyes went wide, the life I once saw there beginning to return. He took a step back, this time without the shaking and roaring sounds. He grabbed his head with both hands. "You… don't ask me that!" His demeanor changed from lifeless and threatening to emotional and panicked.

 "It was a serious question, Renard. Forget about the hotel, forget about your parents, and focus on me!" I walked forward and grabbed his bony, sunken-in face. "Do you care about me?" I asked him quietly.

 Renard's face melted and he fell onto his knees. There were tears pouring out of his eyes… he was crying almost as much as I was. Those words seemed to have affected him greatly.

 "I…" He sobbed, looking down at the floor. "I must show you." He looked up at me again, his eyes blue. The water-patterned lights returned, this time leading only myself and Renard into the vision.

 The setting changed to the dock of a pier somewhere I was unfamiliar with. People walking around spoke in a foreign language to me, and standing before us was the very same little boy that witnessed the gruesome murder scene of his own father. He stood there laughing as two little girls ran away from him crying.

 "Renard… why did you do that?" A familiar voice echoed. It was the voice of his mother but not tainted with death and insanity. Instead, it was her true, pure voice. The voice of a caring mother.

 "I couldn't help it! They were foolish enough to turn their backs on me, so I seized the opportunity to startle them!" The little boy responded with a smile full of tiny pointy teeth.

 "Renard… those two trusted you despite your unusual appearance. Why would you break that trust?" She inquired, kneeling to look him in the eyes.

 "I… I wasn't trying to be mean." He looked over at where the girls were last seen running. "I just wanted to have fun with them."

 His mother let out a sigh and placed both hands on his face. "Renard… do you know how to love?"

 It clicked then. I had brought back a key memory of his mother before she had become a different person. Was it she who had placed those words in my mouth?

 "I… I thought I did. Does it not mean to have fun with people you like?" He questioned.

 "That is only part of it. The most important part of love is trust. Never break the trust of someone you love. Sometimes, those who break trust and those whose hearts are broken as a result will become monsters. We mustn't cause that to befall anyone. Do you understand, Renard?"

 The vision faded… leaving Renard and I alone at the lobby of the hotel, sitting together on a couch. He looked down at the floor, his arms resting on his knees as he hunched forward and hid his face behind his broad shoulders.

 "Renard…" I reached out and placed a hand gently on his side.

 "I never knew what that meant until my father betrayed my mother… then I saw the both of them become monsters before my very eyes. Now look at me." His voice was low and depressed as he looked straight at me once again. Although his facial features and tall, lanky body gave him a frightening physical appearance, I could see past that.

 "Renard… you're not a monster." I assured him. He looked away from me and up at the ceiling. His facial expression looked pained, as though he couldn't bear looking at me any longer.

 "Don't lie to me and lull me into a false sense of being. I frightened everyone that gazed upon me as a child. When my mother hid me here, she instructed me to never let anyone see me." He looked back into my eyes once more. "But you… even though I scared you so very many times, you never stopped reaching out to me. Why?"

 I scooted a little closer. "Because you don't scare me." I reached over and grabbed his bony, bloody hand, proving what I had said.

 "What do you mean? You have been running and screaming in terror at the monstrosities I created, and you ran from the twelfth floor."

 "I was not running from you. I was running from the destruction that threatened to harm my father and me. You gave us no choice."

 "Yes, but why are you not scared of me?"

 "Because you've shown me who you really are, and you are not scary." I gripped his hand with both of mine and held it up. "Your presence is what drew me further up to this hotel. I realize now that it was you all along that I was curious about. I don't care about the Dutch man or the three gossiping women. Although I do care about my father's hopes and dreams, that most certainly wasn't enough to carry me through a life-or-death situation."

 "You… trust me?"

 "I do. So please…" I clenched his hand tighter, unable to cover the enormity of it with my two hands. "Don't break it."

 Renard's face lit up. A small smile seemed to appear, his pointy teeth making a strange but adorable charm as he smiled. "You should smile more." I commented.

 "Lyra… you are a strange woman." He quipped, taking his hand away slowly. "I like that about you."

 For what felt like an hour at least, we sat there on the couch talking to each other about the smaller details of our lives. Details like what foods were our favorites, what colors most suited our personalities, and some of our fondest memories with loved ones.

 "I do love olives." He answered my question about his favorite food. I thought that was strange, but then it made sense to me.

 "Is that why you stole poor Lucas' bowl of fruit?"

 He chuckled a little bit at my question. "He only had the one black olive in that bowl. I am still a human being, believe it or not. I need to eat, too, and there's only so much pumpkin I can stand to eat."

 Our bantering was fun, and despite the pain coursing through my body, I felt at ease talking to Renard. That is, until my father came crashing through the door.

 "Lyra! Are you okay!?" He frantically rushed to my side and was about to run off through the lobby door with me when I stopped him.

 "Yes! I'm fine! So is Renard! Why don't you sit down and join us?" I invited him.

 My father looked over at the now calm Renard with hesitation and slowly sat down on the other side of me. "If you say so." He muttered, still looking somewhat suspicious. "I don't suppose this means you're willing to reconsider the ownership of this hotel?"

 So… we now come to the end of the most thrilling portion of my life. Renard apologized to my father and me deeply about all the trauma he had caused and promised his aid in the repairs of the hotel. "I would like to see this place become something new." He said, "Somewhere people can take shelter from the heartbreakers and backstabbers of the world."

 Although everything from the sixth floor and above was nearly demolished, it was all rebuilt within a few years. The corpses, bones, and other morbid displays had all strangely vanished. The voice of Vivienne, the spirit of the adopted mother of Renard, expressed her gratitude for helping her adopted son to begin the healing process before her presence vanished as well.

 We made sure to rebuild the thirteenth floor, just the three of us. It was now much higher quality and a personalized room just for Renard. We allowed him to live there and to earn his wages as the maintenance specialist. Of course, we would occasionally hear a customer scream when he snuck up behind them. My father would try to correct him, but I loved to see how it made him smile, even if it was childish to startle people like that.

 He was a mischievous man, but with all of the horrid things he had been through, this was the least we could afford him. He was otherwise kind, empathetic, and even a smooth talker at times.

 Finally, Adeline and her family were the first ones to stay in the hotel for the grand opening. We made sure to give them a free stay on the VIP floor up on the eleventh story. After all, we had perhaps unduly subjected them to some deep insect-related trauma.

 So, the story of Renard could finally take a peaceful turn. My father got to finish what he had started, and the souls stuck within the walls finally were released from their prison with a little bit of help from the local priests.

 As for my story, well, let's just say that I am now living happily with L'Hôtel Hanté.