The Dartagnan Brothers Hotel

Chapter 17

The image of Rodrigo drowning in his own blood still dominated his thoughts, as he ran and made his shoes slide around every corner that turned down the corridors of the Dartagnan Brothers' Hotel underground. He had no idea where he was going, but he was sure he couldn't stay there; he did not wait long enough to see whether the man had noticed his presence or had just been in doubt of having heard anything other than the noises made by members of the sect.
Jonas would not wait to find out.
He kept running at random without knowing where he was going. The place was bigger than expected, but like every corner in that hotel, he would find an exit sooner or later. He tried to be attentive so that he could spot any corner where he could hide, he had a key and instructions in a partially wet paper in his hands. He was sure that he could not trust the person who had given him those things, but he had no option but to risk his own future.
The more further we went, the more that place started to look like the underground where he had been with Getulio. The damp walls and the mud floor gave the place the same dark and icy air that he clearly remembered experiencing. 'That was too real to be a dream.', he thought as he tried to slip between two walls at a dead end.
As he began to unfold the small piece of paper, he was already aware he would not understand its contents, which came as no surprise, as the indications contained there were given from the point of view of where he met the person who gave it to him. A drawing would have been more useful to him, but the piece of paper contained only written instructions as to where he should turn and how far he should go. 'First corridor on the left. Second on the right...'. That information would only be useful if he could return to the starting point, but he no longer had any idea of ​​the path he had taken. The fright and fear that someone might capture him made him run without thinking about where he was going, and, no matter how hard he tried, he could not remember the path he had just taken.
'As soon as you turn into this last corridor, you will need to clean the mud-covered wall so that you can find the lock. Do not try to clean the entire door. Only the middle part will be enough.' It was no surprise to Jonas that the paper contained information like that as he just started to think of a way that he could make sense of the information and get to the last corridor.
After a few minutes waiting for someone to reach him, Jonas got up and started walking down the corridors that, despite being shorter, became wider; he was more and more sure that he was heading towards the underground he had been before. He still could not perceive with certainty any corner that had been with Getulio, but the place became to look more alike the alleys where he had been walking before.
For a moment, he took his attention off the corridors he was walking on and tried to find in his pocket the key that the mysterious person had given him. The object was heavy and completely covered with gold; it had the usual shape of an old key, like everything else in that place, and should probably open one of those heavy wooden doors that were no longer found anywhere else. The base of the key contained a few gems that he couldn't quite know how to identify. 'A beautiful reflection of possessions...', he thought as he remembered that the catholic church still boasted immeasurable wealth all around the world. However, a small detail in the key caught his attention; embedded in red stones he could see the shape of a fish, the same he had supposedly found within the maze a few hours ago.
'And how do I get back there?', he wondered as that key would certainly have some connection with the small statue. He tried to remember seeing any sign that might indicate a lock on the statue, which made no sense, since he already knew that the key should open the door covered with clay, but all of that symbolism should have some kind of meaning. He wished that he were in the company of Getulio, the old one-legged would certainly have a long and profound explanation of what that could all mean.
The incessant search for such a door would have to wait. Jonas dropped to his knees on the dirty floor as he realised that his head was throbbing in pain once again. 'What the fuck...', he thought before he could be taken back to one of those psychotic attacks that he still couldn't explain.
"'My dear. You need to recover and go back to living normally. You've been like this for months. Your father and I don't know what else to do.'
Jonas soon realised he was in another of those induced dreams that were nowhere in his subconscious. The voice that spoke was familiar to him. Joana's mother watched her daughter huddled in bed in tears; she had a lean appearance, to the point of being scrawny. Her face was practically unrecognisable, clearly she hadn't been taking care of herself for some time. He recognised where he was, but he had no recollection of having lived through that situation. Certainly someone was controlling his thoughts in one of those dream chairs.
'Joana?' the voice took on a greater tone of concern.
As much as Jonas tried, he couldn't get close to the body of his old girlfriend. It was as if he was floating around a large impenetrable bubble that presented him with a story he didn't want to know about. He knew little about Lais Amon, Joana's mother, but he knew she was fond of him, at least during the time he had made her daughter happy. Jonas was fascinated by the story behind his old mother-in-law's name. 'My grandfather had a great appreciation for life and gave my mother the name of the god of fertility.', she would tell everyone who asked with curiosity about the uniqueness of the name.
Jonas always found it contradictory that such a catholic family would use a pagan name to honor someone, but Joana's grandfather had always been a man ahead of his time and saw no problem in using life as a way to mirror the past.
As he rambled on about silly memories, the story portrayed by his dream had suddenly changed. The scene was filled with people he had never seen before, all dressed in black and crying tirelessly; in the center he could distinguish Lais Amon, his former mother-in-law, as she wore a black veil over her face and tried not to show the weakness that plagued her thoughts through crying, but it was visible that her expression showed anger.
Jonas tried to talk to people - which he already knew would be in vain - whilst trying to find a sight that would explain to him what was really going on; that's when he was able to see the lid of an open coffin and realize that he was experiencing Joana's funeral. He was soon able to recognise other relatives of his former girlfriend, but the rest of the people had their faces covered and could not be identified by him.
It was not the first or the second time that he had one of those attacks, he already knew enough to differentiate a projected dream from a lucid dream of his own. That scene had never happened, he knew that Joana was alive and well. He knew that, surely, someone from the sect was trying to scare him and urge him to seek such redemption by repentance.
Jonas wanted that dream to end once and for all, he was lucid enough to know that he still had a lot to do in reality so that he could get out of that place whilst he was still alive.
'Love?' Joana's voice rang in his ear as the funeral's macabre tone started to get more and more threatening.
He tried to look inside the coffin to find the voice that spoke to him, but Joana's body was now giving way to a newborn child who stirred and cried. His mind spun as he tried to make any sense of the situation, but it seemed things were getting worse by the second.
'Love?' an unknown voice repeated Joana's saying.
One of the hooded people had started walking towards him, whilst new voices started to repeat the same word.
'Love?'
In a few seconds all the people who were present at the funeral started walking towards him, whilst the newborn child was lifted from the coffin by Lais Amon, who started to squeeze its neck until the baby was asphyxiated. One by one, the figures began to remove the black hood and reveal their faces. Or rather, Jonas's own face. All the people there depicted themselves as him, all the hoods revealed his own face; some wept and sobbed, whilst others smiled broadly until they began to salivate as if they had no control over their own actions.
Jonas tried to take steps back so that he could get away from all those people who were marching towards him, but the more he felt his body regress in space, the more he felt himself approaching the coffin where the distinguished child had its head hanging by the hand of his former mother-in-law.
'Love?'
That was the most horrifying scene he ever thought he could imagine. The baby had lifted its head from Lais Amon's arm and started to repeat Joana's saying in a suffocating voice."
That had certainly been the worst dream Jonas had had in his entire life, whether it was programmed or not, which made him think of what kind of person could have such a sordid mind as to imagine anything like that.
He woke up covered by his own cold sweat. His head still hurt and his concentration was escaping him, little by little. He needed to turn his attention to the door he was supposed to find; he was already used to coming and going from those dreams, which made him able to recompose himself quite quickly. He couldn't understand how was still be having those episodes, he really thought that after waking up in that chair, where he had spent most of the night deliriously wondering about, he wouldn't have any more problems with psychotic episodes. However, he was trying to see the positive side of it all; he sought to find useful information in each dream and use it to his advantage, but that last dream had been pure evil, something really disturbing and meaningless. 'It doesn't really fall into Giovanni's personality to want to torment me like that, for no reason and without hidden meanings.', thought Jonas before going back to the path ahead of him in search of the infamous door.
The subterranean spread to the horizon at a distance that Jonas could not see the light at the end of the tunnel, literally. He had definitely returned to the place where, a few hours ago, he wandered with Getulio; he realised that, in fact, he was taking the opposite path that old man wished he had taken.
That place was no longer an untapped map for Jonas. He tried to remember where the small room where he had entered with Getulio through the maze was, if he could find it, he might be able to go the other way and get to the fish statue. It was certain that the object had something to do with the key that dangled in his pocket with each step he took.
His head hurt again, but this time in a way more similar to the time when he had lost himself in his own steps before waking up in bed surrounded by Giovanni and his followers. The image that propagated the wet and cluttered floor was, little by little, alternating with that of a dry, soft grass. The pains came and went steadily, in addition to being so weak as not to hinder his concentration; it seemed that someone was trying to show him something, perhaps indicate a specific path or place. 'But how do I get there?', he thought as he returned to what seemed like his own reality.
The small psychotic break that had just shown him a short path that seemed to take place just above from where he was, in the maze of the Dartagnan Brothers' Hotel. Something simple and devoid of any surprise or mystery that might involve secret passages, but the last image had not been clear enough. He did not know exactly what he would find at the end of the path that had been presented to him in that strange moment of depersonalisation, however it did not seem that he had any alternative but to follow the way that was given to him.
He went on, trying to find the small room he was once with Getulio, as that was the only real clue he could grasp his mind around, but the corridors and walls of that place were very similar, which made it very difficult to find anything that would resemble a door. 'Maybe looking for a way out would be wiser than finding a door.', he thought as he tried to make sense of where he was. He knew that the underground contained several secret exits that would lead into the maze, but he had no idea of how to find them. 'Why don't these hallucinations show me how to get out of here?', he wondered whilst looking for a positive side in the fact that someone was controlling what was going on in his brain.
He continued to wander the underground at random, having no idea where he was going. His mental state was not the best, his mind was confused and his thoughts took turns between what had just happened to Rodrigo and the fact that he should save his own life. The similarity of those corridors confused his cognitive ability, whilst he waited for another one of those short psychotic breaks to give him a hint of what he was supposed to do.
However, the lack of attention and the anxiety made Jonas realize where he was. What he had been looking for, but had already given up on finding, materialised in front of him before he could realise how he got there. Perhaps his mind had been following the opposite path that he had previously taken with Getulio, or perhaps his lack of attention had caused him to find a place that he was no longer looking for, or he could have been wandering in circles for all that time; what mattered now was that he was in front of the door he had been looking for and could soon leave the underground and return to the maze and look for the fish statue.
As he managed to find and clean the doorknob, before he could use the key and turn it, he realised that he was entering an unknown room. The place had the same dimensions and was practically configured in the same way, the only difference being the lack of the small hatch that would take him out of the underground. Getulio had told him that many rooms like that could be found in the underground, as that was where Giovanni and his henchmen kept the people they had captured.
To his surprise, the room was empty, containing the same proportion of supplies as the other. He sought a bottle of water to quench his thirst and soon turned his attention to any peculiarities that might indicate an exit to the upper plane. 'Maybe I'm on the opposite side of the underground.', he thought as he looked across the room looking for the same lever that could open a secret passage into the maze. Each and every part of the ceiling was sealed by old rotten wood, whilst cobwebs indicated that no one had set foot in there for a long time.
'Push the holy book.'
He heard a voice whisper as he tried to understand where it came from.
'Who's there?' he asked without holding the volume of his voice.
'Silence!' the voice exclaimed after making a hissing noise.
'Holy book...', he thought as he turned his attention to look for a bible. Those words could not mean anything other than that inside that place. His eyes went over the wooden framed shelves whilst his mind continued to pay attention to the voice that had stopped speaking. The few books that were there were all turned paper forward, leaving no indication of what they might be, but Jonas did not make a point of hitting just one book and decided that pushing everything at once would save him some of his precious time.
'It won't work like that, you must find the right book.' the voice said at the same time that he used the entire part of his forearm to push a series of books at once.
'But how do I know which book to push?'
His question was followed by silence.
Jonas then tried to push the books one by one. 'There is an easier way for everything.', he thought to himself as he tried to contain all his attention on the task that had been assigned to him. One of the first books he took in his hand contained the words he longed to find: Holy bible. He already knew that was the one book to be pushed against the shelf, however, after performing the act proposed by the unknown voice, nothing happened.
'It's not working.' he whispered, hoping the voice would answer him before he could go into despair.
Silence reigned.
Jonas removed the book and pushed it again, looking for a different effect to a repeated mistake. Again, nothing happened. He took a deep breath and calmly returned to putting the book in the same place; with just two fingers, he slowly pushed the bible back onto the shelf, hoping that some mechanism would be activated as the bottom of the wall was reached. He did the same thing for several times, now with anger, anxiety and speed, trying to find different results in the same action that was not getting him anywhere. He leaned on the bookcase and put his other hand on his head; what appeared to be the return of psychotic attacks proved to be only his impatience towards things that didn't work. He had always been like that, he had no patience for flawed acts that resulted in a waste of time.
As he was losing his patience with the lack of results, Jonas allowed his body to slide against the shelf until his knees rested on the floor; he no longer wanted to unravel the mysteries of the Dartagnan Brothers' Hotel, his only wish was for it to come to an end. He started to look at the objects that were placed at the bottom of the small wooden bookcase. Several strange objects were exposed in there, as if a particular person had spent a considerable amount of time living off the scarce amount of supply that was already rotting. The objects were very strange; wooden skulls pinned by nails and small coloured decorative boxes - the kind that annoyingly had no space to store anything in it - in a state that was deteriorated by the lack of cleanliness. It really felt like nobody had set foot in that room in a long time. 'Perhaps the mechanism activated by the bible has some kind of malfunctioning.', thought Jonas as he got back on his feet so that he could try to find a way that would get him out of there.
'You're doing it wrong.' the distinctive voice whispered again.
'Would you just fucking tell me what to do?' Jonas raised his voice in anger as he was already tired of that game.
Obviously, the voice did not respond.
His utmost desire was to drop everything on that shelf, go out the door, and look for another place that would take him to the ground floor, he even thought of going back the way he came from and trying to leave the place where he had just seen Rodrigo being murdered in cold blood. The brief reflection of what happened made him shiver, as he still had in his memory the sound emanating from his friend as he choked on his own blood and gradually lost his life. However, he retained the urge to look for answers in his anger and decided to focus his attention on a small book that leaned between two of those wooden boxes.
The few - old and dirty - pages showed nothing that Jonas did not yet know. In fact, he could recognise the small explanatory pamphlet from the C.P.F., the same he had found in Getulio's old hut whilst living the two realities that he still couldn't distinguish. 'Maybe this is the holy book...', he thought whilst trying to make sense of the words that the distinct voice had given him, but he couldn't understand that anything other than the bible could be defined as something sacred to those people. Anyway, as much as he tried to put and take the booklet off the shelf, nothing different was happening.
Jonas lost his patience and dragged his hand across the shelf where the objects and the small book were. The skull fell heavily on his foot and the small wooden boxes crashed across the hard floor. He didn't know whether he would get down on his knees so he could pick up the mess he had just made, or if he would just kick everything in front of him so he wouldn't have to deal with that problem anymore, which was clearly the easiest choice.
'Collect the objects with attention.' the voice came again before Jonas could calmly put his knees on the floor.
He went on to collect all the small objects as he looked for anything that could catch his attention; in a few seconds he could already see that the small boxes, now slightly ajar, held each a button inside.
'Which button should I press?' he asked anxiously and tearfully.
'Just one of the buttons opens the passage through the bookshelf, the other will lock you in that room until someone realises it and come to your rescue. Pay close attention to what you are going to do. The answer lies within you.'
To his surprise the voice decided to give him an explanation that time, he really did not expect that he would get any kind of specific instruction that could help him at that point, but the riddles continued to cause him problems and his desire to unravel more mysteries was over. 'My rescue...', he thought, knowing his sole alternative was to press the right button.
The buttons inside the boxes looked exactly the same. Jonas tried to find any detail in one of them with the hope that anything would signal what the mysterious voice had just told him, but the objects were also identical and, apart from the marks of time, had no distinction capable of attracting his attention.
'The answer lies within you.', he started to repeat aloud the sayings of the voice in an incessant loop, trying to make sure that any information he had absorbed in all that time could indicate some hint of how it should work. 'Well I do have a fifty percent chance of getting it right...', he started to think whilst giving up on finding any answers, but the opposite would bring the error, and with the error would come his confinement and eventual capture.
Fifty percent was a chance he couldn't take. He didn't have that privilege and he needed to think of a way to find the right way out, but he had no idea of how to do it.
'The answer lies within you.'
The words of the unknown voice returned to sound like a song in his mind as he fixed his thoughts on anything that could bring him a solution to his problem.
The only thing he could think of was his tattoos. The famous St. Peter's Cross still had two different meanings to Jonas, but none of them brought any coherence to that particular situation. 'Fallacia Alia Aliam Trudit.', he read aloud the words of the small letters that marked his forearm. The meaning behind that sentence had not yet been completely clear to him, except for referring to the mistakes he had made in the past. But what he definitely couldn't understand was how someone would have tattooed him tips, which he would eventually need, on his arm so that he could escape a situation that had not yet happened. Even if it didn't make sense, he tried to use all the cognitive capacity that he still had to search for any meaning in those words.
Jonas sat down on the floor once again, lifting his knees so he could support his head and concentrate his thoughts on what he was supposed to unveil, when he heard the sound of a metallic gleam hitting the floor, bouncing until it stopped.
'The answer lies within you.', he repeated the words aloud as he remembered the key he had received and that it, more than likely, would have something to do with all that mystery.
His eyes started to run over the key he now had in his hands. Jonas had already observed almost every detail of the object; the little fish symbol continued to shine through the red stones, which told him nothing about how the key that could help him at that moment. That was when a brief breath of lucidity came to clear his mind and reminded him of the little phrase placed under the fish stuck in the nearby maze: 'Laedere Facile, Mederi Difficile.', he brought his mind back to a place that was dormant.
'Easier to tear than to sew.', the translation soon came out of his mouth when he took the booklet that was being held between the two boxes and began to tear it without any parsimony, and, to his surprise, the answer came with immense ease; the cover of the booklet was the only sheet that did not tear, locking itself as he put on a little more strength before realising that something was stuck in there. A flaccid metal tape was attached between the front and back cover; Jonas took all the care in the world so that he wouldn't break the little filet of metal. Little by little he managed to pull the object out, which was exactly what it appeared to be: a mere piece of some kind of mouldable metal. He tried to analyse it before he could give it any purpose, but the small object did not contain any writing or anything else that could indicate a continuity to the mystery he had been unraveling, which came to be quite unsettling, as he did not have any idea of how to connect the metal thread to his problem.
The first, and simplest, solution was to lay the metal strip on the boxes, but nothing happened. He also tried to touch the buttons, being very careful not to press them by mistake, with the newly found object, something that also had no effect. Obviously, it wouldn't be that easy, but Jonas was already tired of unraveling mysteries and simply rested his hands on his thighs making an expression of someone who was waiting for the wall to give him another clue through the mysterious voice that had been speaking to him. Another sudden act of magic came to happen when he tried to dry his sweaty hands on his shirt and realised that the small metal had been stuck to his trousers. Apparently, the object contained some kind of magnetic force that had worked when coming in contact with the key in his pocket.
The small metal fillet fit exactly on the side of the key that was opposite to the one containing the small red stones. As soon as Jonas allocated one object to the other, the magnetic field did the rest of the work by perfectly covering the gap in the key. 'It still doesn't make any sense...', Jonas thought as he noticed that none of the boxes had any entry for a key. He brought the key near to the boxes, one at a time, looking for any kind of surprise that would solve his problems; as soon as he approached the box on his left, a faint, short red light flashed inside the button, which made him suddenly think that it would be the button to be pressed, but his momentum was broken by wisdom, causing Jonas to approach the key to the box on his right very sparingly, hoping that nothing would happen and that the mystery would end right there.
As he was expecting, his luck had not kept pace with his wishes and a green light decided to bring torment to his mind as it slightly blinked with the proximity of the key. 'Green or red?', he thought when he reasoned that the logic would be: green goes, red stops. However, logic had not been helping him in his unexpected and unwanted adventure at the Dartagnan Brothers' Hotel. After all the effort he had spent to unravel all those mysteries involving the key and the boxes, Jonas had arrived at the same point where he had started; he had a fifty percent chance of getting it right, as the green one still gave him a slight advantage if logic was his starting point.
He could no longer wait for time to pass. His options were limited and logic would have to be his ally from that point on.
He was ready to press the green button as he saw the red stones on the key turn black as he approached it to the box. He then realised that everything was giving him a hint towards red. Everything in that was being unraveled throughout his latests steps had been indicating him towards red. All the stones engraved into the objects were red; Giovanni's staff was red; Rodrigo's last words were red - he really thought that situation had nothing to do with what he was about to decide, but his mind couldn't stop returning to the sight of his friend bleeding to death.  
Without further dwelling over the idea, Jonas approached the key back to the red button as he saw the stones sparkle again. He then closed his eyes and pressed the red button, leaving logic aside and hoping that his world would not be confined within those four walls that surrounded him.
A crackle sounded from behind the bookcase, pushing it forward and causing a small passage to be exposed into a dark direction and with no sign of anyone being around.
'Did it work?' he asked, waiting for the unknown voice to come to his rescue, indicating the next steps to be followed.
A figure surrounded by a dimly lit silhouette began to run in the opposite direction. Apparently the person was not prepared to receive Jonas anytime soon, which indicated that his actions had taken the right direction at the presented crossroads.
'Wait, please!' Jonas hissed with a certain intensity that he still had from the adrenaline given by his latter choice, realising that the shadow wasn't even paying attention to him.
'Follow me.' whispered the voice as it took an even greater distance.
Jonas followed the straight path ahead of him, unsure if he was really following the mysterious person who was guiding him. His hope was that he would not be led into a trap and that the unknown voice was really on his side. The path was really dark, as well as damp, which made Jonas slip every time he tried to speed up his pace to get closer to his newest guide.
'Keep your distance and be quiet!'
It wouldn't do him any good to upset the person who was helping him. Jonas followed the orders he was given and continued to walk slowly, hoping that, sooner or later, he would reach a illuminated place where an enlightened soul would be ready to save him. The space covered was short. A beam of light opened when the mysterious person slowly climbed a wooden ladder and opened a hatch that led to the ground floor.
Jonas couldn't believe he was back to the place he had made so much effort to get out of, but the events that had unraveled throughout the weekend made him go back to the exact same spot where he swore never to go back to.
Daylight lit the face of the person who had been helping him. His eyes startled and confused his brain, as it made no sense that Monalisa was leading him away from the sect of which she was a part of.
'You?' he asked aloud, jumping backwards as he stood firmly on the grass that shaped the maze.
'Yes, your only chance to get out of here. Now keep silent and help me with this fucking thing.' Monalisa's voice was back to its normal intonation.
'No, no, and no!' he replied trying to contain the volume of his voice.
Monalisa ignored the audacity of the man who was in one of the most vulnerable points of his life and pointed to a place on the floor. Jonas followed the movement of her finger and saw the small statue of the fish that had previously made him confused as he circled the maze. The questions were so many that his mind could not focus on a single point, but the presence of the small statue in front of him made him realise that he had reached the destination that had been imposed on him. He was sure that this would not be a favourable situation, but if Monalisa wanted him dead she wouldn't have taken him to a place where others would hardly be able to find him.
'What do you want from me? Why are you helping me?'
'The last thing I want in this life is to help you.' replied Monalisa angrily. 'Now do as I say and be quiet!' she finished by pulling a gun from behind her waist and pointing it at Jonas.
He raised his hands after controlling the shock that had made his legs tremble. His desire was to close his eyes and let Monalisa end that suffering once and for all, but fate still had some way to go on.
'What do you want from me?' repeated Jonas as he kept his head down.
'You really don't know who I am? Can't you recognise me?' asked Monalisa with a tone of anger that increased with each word.
Jonas tried to find that old, wrinkled face in some corner of his mind, to at least have some idea of ​​who was talking to him, but nothing he could remember made any sense. He had no idea of who Monalisa could be, his only memories of her was that she had recently haunted his dreams, whilst he was made prisoner inside that red room, with threats of torture.
'Let's refresh your memory then, shall we?'