Hotel Nigh

Chapter 27

The Murderer Revealed

"Do we even really know what we're doing?" Melina had asked when we arrived at the pantry.

"Have we ever known what we were doing since we teamed up?" I retorted, entering the combination three-one-one-eight into the lock so we could enter. Inside, the shelf was still placed away from the wall as we had left it in our haste to discover and locate the crash by Miles.

Melina shrugged before gesturing to me to enter the tunnel first. Doing so, I bent down, only to glance over my shoulder and say, "Should we put the pillowcase at this door? Or the door in the basement? This one opens up on ourselves now, so we should easily be able to open it back up."

"Okay," she replied, shrugging as if to say you already have this figured out so I'm just going to be easy and agree with you instead of arguing and squandering away time where Gerald could strike again.

Sighing softly, I plunged into the tunnel, crawling on my hands and knees just like we did before. This time, I seemed to reach the gradual descent quicker, though it must just have been due to the fact that I had been anticipating it. Melina was still cursing lowly under her breath every so often and even groaning. She wiped her jeans the moment she stood up in the room.

"Can you open the door?" she asked.

Whilst she'd been wiping her jeans to discard the loose gravel that had been stuck in the fabric, I made my way over to the door that lead into a new room, supposedly, but there was no handle. It was not missing a keyhole, however, so I presumed that the key must have been somewhere in this room. It was only when I turned back, finding Melina standing over the box, did I theorise that the box contained the key, and I voiced this to her.

"Okay," she said again, "you should speak into the box. If Gerald knows about this or even Jenson back when he wanted the necklace, it may recognise a male voice better than a female voice. Surely Jenson would have informed Gerald of this. He's a good actor," she added grudgingly.

Melina pressed the power button for me and the familiar blue screen greeted us. Now it was a touch screen, I pressed down on the 3 as the numbers had appeared, before it changed to display VOICE CONTROL.

"Three secrets," I said loudly and clearly. Surely it had to be that simple as it couldn't recognise a whole sentence... right?

CORRECT, the screen displayed now.

Feeling a surge of adrenaline mingled with excitement, I clicked on the first 1, only for the number 11 to be displayed in the corner of the screen. VOICE CONTROL. Danny had been right. Thank God, because Melina and I would probably never have worked it out as we had been looking at it from the wrong angle. We would never have thought to press on the number for it to reveal it being eleven and not two one's.

"Eleven rooms."

CORRECT.

"Eight nights," I said, using the same tone I had for the previous two numbers after pressing on the 8.

CORRECT.

The screen began to fade, and for a moment, there was no movement from the box. Melina had opened her mouth, I noticed from my peripheral vision, and was presumably about to query about how to actually get into the box, but before she could, the box seemed to vibrate before it began slicing itself in two from a seam I hadn't even noticed. Inside at the bottom of the box, having been gawking avidly at the spectacle, was a large, shining silver key.

Reaching in to get it, I hovered momentarily above it. The box was so large, and despite the nagging feeling that the necklace should have been the contents – though that, of course, would have been too easy – it made me wonder if something was going to spring out like a torture device or something to potentially injure or part my hand from my arm. No such thing, however, when I held the key and pulled it away from the box. It began closing immediately in the reverse order as it had opened.

Eyeing the key as though it was her own heart she was seeing in front of her eyes, Melina whistled under her breath.

"You'd think I was holding the necklace in front of you, not just a key to a door," I remarked, but I, too, had to appreciate the appearance of the key.

It was startlingly shiny, almost blindingly so. Something was carved in the handle, but I couldn't make out what it was. It wasn't a collection of words or even a date. It seemed to be an image or depiction of something in some way, but it was indistinct. That made me frown before threading it through the keyhole in the door.

Melina had both pillowcases in one of her pockets, so she yanked one out as the door clicked open, separating itself from the frame, and I could door grip the edge and pull it gently towards us. It opened straight to another room, but it was dark. Almost eerie. Even so, we stepped inside as Melina laid the pillowcase on the floor, sandwiching it between the doorframe and the door edge.

"I can feel a light switch on the wall," announced Melina, "so there's got to be a light somewhere, and we do have a light bulb with us. Nothing's working when I click it." I could hear it click a good five times or so.

I had a light bulb in one of my pockets.

Melina pulled out her phone and used the torch on it to shine directly up at the ceiling. It wasn't high, so I was able to reach by just stretching. The old light bulb was discarded on the floor, having dropped it. Distinctly, I heard the sound of fracturing glass, so Melina and I were going to have to keep our eyes on the ground.

Beginning to turn around so she could navigate to the light switch on the wall back by the door, something caught my eye on the desk in the corner that we were both somewhat facing. Ordering at her to shine it back on the desk, I stared numbly at the phone. Was Gerald here in this room? Was he waiting to make us two his subsequent victims?

A tremor of fear and adrenaline surged through me as Melina swore rather loudly. As she was planted on the spot, I stepped forwards. As there was no noise except my steps and Melina's harsh breathing, I deemed it safe to press the lock button on the phone that was lying there on the desk, where the screen immediately illuminated the room, but I kept my gaze on it. It made me wonder whether it was a spare phone that was kept in this room just in case, because I was sure no one was here with us... were they? But it was a smartphone.

They would have already made themselves known, I thought, by sending a bullet or a knife through our bodies. It wouldn't have been difficult to do whilst I'd been screwing in a light bulb. It would have been so easy... so, so easy. That meant no one was here.

The background on the phone seemed to knock all the air out of me. It was a military-styled photo where everyone was dressed in camouflage and were almost all covered. I couldn't make out any of the faces, but I didn't need to. Gerald, I'm sure, didn't seem like the type of guy to ever once be in the army, and it seemed somewhat recent, too. Gerald was an author.

The utmost regret, shame and utter terror suddenly drowned me.

"We've done this all wrong," I announced to Melina, feeling the dread now replace every other emotion I was previously overcome with. "All completely wrong. We've been searching for a murderer who was a resident in this hotel. We've assumed, and this is our mistake, that the person booked a room in this hotel a day or so before I arrived to get an advantageous heart start."

My eyes remained on the phone screen even when it faded to black. I turned around to face Melina slowly to see her face contorting in bewilderment. "What are you saying, Jason?"

"The murderer isn't a resident in this hotel. Not really, anyway, in the way we thought. He was already working here."

Melina paused for a second, and even with the dim lighting of her phone light pointing low at the ground to avoid my eyes, I saw her face pale at the realisation. "Danny," she breathed, almost like a gasp as her eyes widened, shifting slightly to my right.

Something hard hit the back of my head and I fell to the ground in an unconscious heap.