Worlds Apart

Chapter 18

A L O N E

Sep. 09 2020 17:17 CET

Ulberg's Office / Room #104, The Port Inn

The door swung shut behind Elin, clicking softly in the silence. The carpet muffled the sound of her sneakered footsteps. The air was still, and the branches she could glimpse through the window at the end of the hall did not move. She tried not to either. Her reality stood on shaky ground as it was.

The needles of the Norwegian spruce rustled in a breeze she could not feel from behind the glass. The corridor seemed endless from where she stood—rows and rows of golden-hued lights and oak doors and a rolling tongue of red beneath her feet. She felt like she was dreaming, like the carpet would come alive or the wooden beams would collapse and suffocate her under their impossible weight.

The papers in her hand rustled and Elin realised she was crushing them. She loosened her grip and attempted in vain to smooth over the creases. She did not know why she bothered. She had never liked the Inn. Yes, it was run by her friend and she was eternally grateful for his support. She would never turn down an offer to perform here. But she did not like being linked to it like this. Elin glanced down at the papers, her fingers shaking. She was still tired.

But that phone call—she had had to come. She had had to check if it was true.

She owned the Inn.

She did not have the slightest idea about any of this before the family lawyer contacted her. She should feel resentment, anger, sorrow—something towards her family for being so secretive but she could not muster the courage to hate the dead. For that was what they were now: dead.

The spirits here were particularly active and volatile. They always had been. She had a vague memory of coming here as a child, before it was turned into a hotel. She had hated it.

Elin held the papers to her chest. Maybe her family had always owned it and she just forgot. Vidar wasn't there then either.

The hotel had sprung up virtually overnight, staffed by people no one had seen before. The place was basically taboo for the tight-knit small town community of Dalbyen, so why did her family even allow them to run it?

It was odd and Elin was willing to bet on her life it had something to do with why they all...died. Perhaps Owen had been onto something when he suggested the staff were involved. A weak smile crept up her face. Of course, he was.

The hotel could be linked in more ways than one. She had had her doubts since Riona told them about Evanos and its Gates. She had a now-vague, almost staticky, memory that didn't belong to her. A vestige of her possession, no doubt, by that spirit. There was something up the stairs just ahead of her... something hollow and mad in large cobweb-ridden rooms. She had never seen anything like it here before.

Could it be there, hidden out of sight? Would she even be able to reach it? Elin found herself pacing across the narrow hall, not daring to look at the stairs. Wouldn't it be guarded—it was such an important site, they would not just leave it lying around and she was being ridiculous and why would her family own it?

But she had to check, just once. What did she have to lose? She would never be able to forgive herself if she lost a chance to save Regine, to end this all, because of her own doubt.

Elin slapped her cheeks, hard. She would do it. She had to.

Riona had said those wormholes had a physical limit, so Neàl must be nearby for him to reach Regine's room. Elin glanced at the stairs again. The three of them may be back by now. She should let them know.

‡    ‡    ‡

The first one she found was Daisha, except it did not look like her at all—headstrong, confident, standing tall above those who dared to challenge her. No, this was a shell of her, crumpled on the bathroom floor, a trembling pile of clothes and limbs. Her eyes were blank, unfocused, staring somewhere in the room and nowhere all at once.

"Daisha?" she called out, gingerly taking a step inside. "Where did Owen go—" She followed her unseeing gaze to the bathtub nestled in the corner. There lay another pile of limbs, this time unmoving.

Elin's blood ran cold.

No no no nono—

What did she do wrong—how could—

Her legs moved of their own accord, towards the remnants of Owen's ephemeral existence. Her fingers caressed his cheek. He was already cold. Those cheeks would never warm up again and go an adorable red, those eyes would never light up or beam at her—

He was dead—dead—dead—

It was her fault. It had to be—her family—

She was all alone again.

Hunkered on her desk in middle school while her classmates huddled in a large lively group, their laughter floating over from another world. Alone in the crowd in the hallways, ostracised as the 'weird girl' who could hear voices. Peering from behind her bedroom door, watching alone in the darkness while her family spoke in hushed voices and bowed heads in the living room. 'When you're older,' they had said. They were replaced by unoccupied caskets before 'older' came. Lying in bed in an empty house, the sole survivor of a massacre, her shelves filled with photographs of a woman she couldn't bear to look at.

No.

No, she was done mourning.

Neàl.

They did this.

Elin swiped at her damp cheeks, anger burning out the abyss in her soul. They could not do this. They could not do this and get away with it. She did not know where Riona was and she did not care. They were going to that Chamber now.

She swivelled around. Daisha did not acknowledge her. Elin grabbed her wrist and tugged roughly. She looked up, but she did not see her. From here, Elin noticed the wetness of her dark eyes, which she had only ever seen hard and determined. She needed that right now. Owen needed it.

"Come on. Get up." Her voice sounded too sharp and foreign to her own ears. "I know where the fitter who did this are."

Elin did not feel alive. She felt on fire. She would burn out soon, nothing but a wisp of smoke left behind. But even smoke could choke.

'They are going to pay for this,' Elin thought as she marched out of the room and up the stairs. A listless Daisha trailed behind her. They were going to pay heavily for doing this to her and those she loved.