The elf was Bella Garlove. That was the first thing that I was informed of the moment we sat down in the dining room next to the kitchen with their food. And as she explained, it was officially called the Bar and Restaurant of the Northflame Inn. Thus, I decided to honor and reward her specificity by torturing all of you with the same full governmental name of that place every time we visit it.
Don’t worry, though. I’ll remove the ‘of the Northflame Inn’ part at the very least to give you just the smallest bit of relief. You can thank me for that later <3.
“You expect me to believe that you appeared in that room just an hour ago, do you, innkeeper?!”
“Uh, yeah. I totally do. Also, not the innkeeper. Like, seriously. Can you just call me Laura and be done with it?”
“Laura, then!” Bella spoke up with a smile, rolling her eyes as the perfect blend of textures and tastes melted in her mouth. “Where do you actually come from, Laura?”
“Um…Earth? I mean, I don’t know how to explain it. I’m not even sure what this is. Is this a different planet in the same universe? Is this a completely different universe? Maybe this is still Earth, but in a different timeline. Who knows? You know…”
“Sorry, Laura. I don’t know. It sounds complex and difficult.”
As the elf girl shook her head side to side, all I could do was stare. And because staring was rude, I just looked away and turned into one of those " can’t-maintain-eye-contact " type of people. At least the room itself was worth looking at, so let me give you a little glimpse into the Bar and Restaurant of the Northflame Inn.
There were some round tables with chairs around them in the fairly long room. And then, there were smaller square tables in a more private corner. The majority of the room towards the north wall was occupied by the ‘bar’ area of the name. Multiple stools were laid across the shining wooden platform, behind which a plethora of bottles of alcohol were on display. Finally, at the very corner of the room was a door that led to a different space, which I could not be bothered to go into.
All of this, as you might guess, was only given enough light by the many candles lining the walls and the two chandeliers on the ceiling. The windows of the Bar and Restaurant were, just like the Innkeeper’s Room and the Kitchen, completely barred by the alien black slabs.
“What’s with the lack of light anyway?” I decided to just get to the point now that it was on my mind, “What did the windows do to you?”
“Funny you’d ask, innkeeper…” Poltrick grumbled, taking the final bite of his toast while trying to hide his satisfaction, “All of us have been meaning to get the same answer out of you for so long. We’ve been dying to see the damn sunlight!”
“Look, call me dumb. But couldn’t you just…leave? Door’s open.”
“No, Laura,” Bella explained, finishing her breakfast at the same time as her dwarf companion. “The main door in the Lobby is closed. Nobody could find the key, even though we looked everywhere. We’re all just stuck in here without any explanation or food. Well…until now.”
“Yeah, alright.” Yours truly was feeling a little embarrassed at the girl’s happiness, so she had to activate the more aggressive personality. Bear with it, please? “Don’t make a habit of it, though. I cooked just now because this fat old guy thought he could gauge my skills. It’s not my job to be making you all food, so forget it.”
“Aw, that sucks.” She looked down at the empty plate in disappointment, “But I’m glad I got to have something after so long, Laura!”
Bright! Too bright! The moment she said those words, I had to look up and focus on the intricate details of the chandelier to isolate my joy. Sweet words could not make Laura Mason lose her focus, alright? There was one thing I needed to do, and one thing only. Getting out of this damn place, post-haste. Giving these two a good meal had been nothing more than a slightly fortunate side effect.
“Whatever, innkeeper. Say what you will, but you’ll be right there to cook dinner later. Or else I’ll get the entire inn to lodge a complaint against you and this establishment. Got it?”
Poltrick hopped off the chair and wiped his mouth with the tip of his beard. How did that even work? Then, muttering something about wanting to rest for a bit, he left the Bar and Restaurant without any gratitude shown. He really did think that I was some wholesome, happy innkeeper who just wanted to feed him a good meal and be an excellent host.
I looked at Bella, who was also busy tracking the dwarf as he got out of the room. I rolled my hand over the slick table and grabbed hers. Bella shrieked, moving around enough to get her chair standing on two legs before she got control once more. The creaking of the chair against the wooden floor had made me pull my hand back by then. So much for trying to appear needy and helpless.
“S-sorry, Bella.” I hid my hands under the table. “As I was saying. Maybe there are some spots that you haven’t checked yet, right? It would be super helpful if I could just…leave, you know?”
“I don’t know that, but I certainly can understand your worries.” She nodded. “However, I do not think that there are any areas in this building that we haven’t searched yet. Except for all the places we just can’t get into, of course.”
“Well, let’s start there, then. Why can’t you get in?”
“Uh…” She tilted her head and then looked at the door leading out into the inn. “I think it would be easier for you to understand visually.”
“O…k?”
Bella pushed the chair back and stood up before putting the furniture back in place like a good customer. Then, gesturing for me to come with her, she left the Bar and Restaurant of the Northflame Inn.
Following like a nice little chihuahua named Coco or something, I got out, too. Opposite the Kitchen was a massive hall with a small receptionist desk, a miniature hearth with some couches, and the main door of the Inn. While the desk wasn’t manned, and the hearth hadn’t been lit up, there was still enough homeliness to get it through my thick skull that this was the Lobby.
Maybe it was the premium rug that had been precisely cut to fit every corner, and maybe it was the scented candles that made the entire place smell like roses. Nothing had been left out.
Bella led me past the hearth and reception desk, and then turned to reveal the two grand staircases that led to the first floor via the lobby. Before I could keep walking behind her like a loyal pet, however, I made sure to confirm that there was indeed a padlock on the main gate. Getting out of the inn seemed impossible.
“Have you, I don’t know…tried breaking the lock? Just take a hammer or something and…”
“Oh no!” Bella turned with wide eyes, and sweat almost forming at her brow. Shaking her head like an offended cultist, she made her point. “We would never dream of harming the inn. It is an incredible place, and no matter how bad things get, it is close to our hearts. And that’s why…”
She shook it off and started moving up the stairs. I followed, wondering what she was about to continue with.
“Gregson sure didn’t seem to think so.”
“Master Gregson is definitely an odd one. But he is about seventy-five years old, so it certainly becomes more difficult to tolerate small inconveniences for him.”
Bella, by all means, should have been the innkeeper. Maybe we could even sneak into that women’s washroom I had seen earlier and switch our costumes. She could be the motherly innkeeper that that senile old dwarf needed, and I could be the pure maiden in embroidered white that…alright, fine. Maybe not the ‘pure’ part. But, still!
Right as I was about to start considering the many ways in which Bella’s earlier dialogue could have continued, I was given an answer by the Northflame itself. Reaching the top of the stairs, I found myself looking at a room which was similar to the Kitchen in its shape. That part was obvious, given that it was right above it. The part that wasn’t obvious was that the garden it was supposed to house was not in very good condition.
The plants had withered, with almost every strange little leaf and flower that I could see being colour graded brown and black. Their wilted stems contained the exact same black goo as the monster that had attacked the Kitchen earlier, dripping on the dirt below them. That directly led to the soil itself being polluted with the same mold. Spreading through the garden, it had already started to form black tendrils that gripped the black slabs covering the floor-to-ceiling window for support.
Right in the middle of the room was a spiral staircase leading upwards to what I assumed was the second floor. And while this staircase had been left mostly intact, there were still small offshoots of the moldy grass that had latched onto the beginnings of the metal staircase and wooden guardrails.
Put together, they had started polluting every inch of the first floor with their disgusting, rotting smell.
“It’s spreading everywhere, Laura,” Bella explained, sighing at the dead plants. “But…that thing. That monster? We’ve never seen one of those before. In the two days that we’ve been in this situation, that was the first time it physically attacked us.”
“Whew…” I stepped forward, kneeling beside one of the plants to touch the mold dripping off it. “Look, I promise I didn’t cause any of this, alright? Or even if I did…I am not aware of it. I just…woke up.”
“Heavens, no! I would never assume that you were the cause of this mold. Or that mold monster. I totally believe you. I do. We know that different worlds exist, and this is not the first time that our world has come in contact with another’s.”
The mold reached out for my index finger, wrapping around the tip with its slimy, greasy substance. I pulled back instinctively and rubbed it off. Despite leaving behind a black mark, it mostly fell down and singed the wooden corridor.
“So, you see? The mold has either been blocking parts of the inn completely, or its horrid scent has made it impossible to check every room without passing out. The places we were able to see did not have the key to the front door.”
“Wow.”
I groaned and stood up, stretching while taking a look at the spiral stairs leading up. Did they go to the second floor? Or was it just the attic? I had only seen Poltrick and Bella in this place till now, so I was assuming that they were its only inhabitants. Because in the case that there were more, I was not going to be making cheese omelet toasts for all of them!
The tendrils slowly started moving. From the edge of the stairs, they reached out to the top vertically. Going straight for the hole that opened into the ceiling of the first floor, it was almost like they had been attracted by something. Something…living.
Out of the corner of my eye, on the very corner of the stairs, I saw the edge of a white dress disappearing up the stairs. That too, moving exactly as if its owner had just gone up the stairs. Except nobody had. We had been standing here the entire time, and were probably the only people on this floor.
“Does someone live upstairs?” I asked Bella.
“Uh, yeah. Four of them do.” She nodded. “I live on this floor with Master Gregson and Master Dom. And the second floor has Masters Tray and Tr-”
“Ok! Great. Lots of people.” I cleared my throat. If she had more names to give me, I had no intention or need to know them. Just knowing that three more named human beings (or other species) existed in this place was more than enough torture. Damn Gregson if he actually believed I was going to cook dinner for this lot.
I didn’t need to know all of them, after all. I just needed to know one. The person who had either been spying on us from the top of the stairs, or had some kind of copyright-infringing invisibility cloak to walk past us in broad…chandelier light. Look, I am still working on my purple prose. Spare me.
“Any of them wearing a white gown today?”
“White gown?” She looked down at her own clothes, and then back at me, raising her eyebrows.
“No, of course not. I don’t mean you. Anyone else?”
She shook her head, and her eyes widened once more as the intensity of her movement increased, “No, no, no, no! That’s none of us, Laura. Did you see someone wearing a white gown? Did she have auburn hair? Oh, that’s none of us. I mean…none of us…living people. That’s the Ghost of the Northflame.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course. Stupid me.” I nervously laughed, hitting my head with a fist once more. “The Ghost of the Northflame. Should’ve known. Should have…known. She’s not very violent, is she?”
“Not really. She just walks around.”
“Oh, she’s one of those typ-”
She started walking around. Right as I was about to make my point and joke about ghosts always wanting to hit their 10,000-step goal, she started walking around. From the second floor came the sounds of a series of footsteps running across the hall. Pattering across the wood, they quickly moved from one end to the other before dying out at once.
I opened my mouth, hoping to make a comment about the spirit suddenly getting serious about those steps, but then more running happened. More, and more, and more. Until it felt like there were about five different people running up there.
“Wh-what?” Bella looked up as well, as if the increase in the number of ghosts was a new occurrence. “That hasn’t happened before…”
“Oh, shut it, will you!? Who’s making that ruckus!?”
From the left end of the corridor appeared Poltrick Gregson, once more. Stomping up to our position, he was also busy looking upstairs. And following him were two boys who seemed to be in their early twenties. The same as Bella and me, then. Except that both of them looked identical. Twins. Twins in the Northflame Inn with the dwarf and elf who were being haunted by a ghost who went up a moldy garden.
Wonderful!
“I’m gonna give that man a piece of my mind!” Poltrick grunted and hurriedly ran up the stairs.
The twins looked at me for a split second before following him at once. Clearly, the entertainment potential of the dwarf shouting at ghosts was higher than some weirdo girl wearing a blue dress.
“Uh, should we follow them as well?” I looked at Bella.
“I am a bit concerned, yes. There should not be that many people on the second floor.”
“Perfect…”
I went first this time. Ensuring that I did not touch any of the moldy goo that had spread across the floor, I hopped onto the first step and started moving. It was difficult to keep my balance while ignoring the existence of the guardrails, given their condition. And yet, I managed.
No shouting had started yet, and the footsteps had stopped by the time I poked my head through the hole and came out on the second floor. The dwarf and the twins were standing right in the middle of the corridor, looking both ways to figure out where the noises had come from. I looked down first, waiting to confirm that Bella was following me before I got closer to them.
“Found them, Gregson? Give them a piece of my mind, too!” I cheered him on with my hands on my waist.
“Oh, shut it, innkeeper! You go down and start preparing dinner. I will handle the rest. Got it!? Rest assured, they will know exactly what Poltrick Gregson thinks of their awful behavior.”
“Yayyy…” I unenthusiastically clapped as Bella finally got up and stood with the rest of us.
Once all five had gathered, one of the twins moved first. He nudged his brother, and both of them nodded.
“We’ll check one side each.” One of them looked at Gregson, who sent them off like he was an old cartoon villain.
I watched from the back as the boys walked to different sides of the corridor and disappeared from my view. The dwarf waited as well, looking at the ground in anger as he stomped his foot with impatience. That finally got me to step forward and put my hand on his head out of the intense urge to just do that, and no other reason.
“Innkeeper!” He boomed, “Don’t you dare my he-”
“What the fuck!?”
He was interrupted by the guttural screams of one of the twins, attracting all of our attention. Moved aback by whatever he saw, the boy fell to the floor and started crawling back with dramatic tension. Trying to get away from the corner that he had turned just now, his body shivered with desperation. The candles on the wall lighting his half of the corridor went out at once, leaving behind nothing but silhouettes.
Through the slight illumination that the rest of the corridor provided, however, we were able to lay eyes on what exactly had scared him. From the turn in the corridor appeared an arm, slapping against the wall as the mold monster pulled itself forward. Dripping all over the wooden floor just like before, it moaned some gibberish as it stumbled forward.
“Well, that’s alright. We can kill that.”
The moment my smart self said that, another arm appeared. And then another. And another. And another. And keep doubling that until the first mold monster was thrown to the floor because of the sheer weight of the number of the evil creatures that had appeared from that turn. A dozen? A couple dozen? I could barely count how many there were as their moldy bodies started to collapse into each other and made knowing impossible.
Together, as the twin finally got out of range and made it back to our group, they let out a collective, horrific howl that rang through the entire inn.