They say a city’s true character comes out at night.

  If so, our city had no character.

  Our city was like a whore, beaten blue and black by her pimp; who put on some make-up to look pretty enough to get at least one client.

  That was the character of our city.

  And the army presence made no difference to it.

  I wasn’t the only one who had figured out a way to hide from the army. Even though there was a curfew, I could see drug dealers, prostitutes, and other lowlifes hanging around in the backstreets still trying to offer their services. There were still enough clients to keep them busy.

  The army presence had one good effect, though: the drug dealers were no longer aggressive. They left me alone, which for once was a good change.

  It was completely dark now, and I followed the yellow street lamps as I made my way to the deserted farm, where I had been told the hotel would appear. I had seen the farmhouse farm in the day, and it was a generic farm to the side of the main road. I clearly remember there was no hotel in that general vicinity.

  There was only one checkpoint at the place where the city ended. The countryside was starting here, so there was no place to hide. No back alleys. No trees. No empty buildings, just miles of farm land. And the army had it well lit, so you couldn’t slip out without them noticing. The only way out was through the checkpoint.

  I took out the envelope and approached the checkpoint.

  “Halt!” shouted a soldier. “No one is allowed to leave.” “Hey governor, my wife is really sick and I need to visit her in the hospital.” I handed him the envelope. “How about you make an exception for me?” He smiled and put the money in his back pocket. I was about to cross the checkpoint, but he pushed me back.

  “Sir!” he shouted, “We got a smart one here. Thinks he can bribe us.” A senior officer came by. He said, “Well, punk, you’re under arrest. Resist and I’ll break every bone in your body. Get down on your knees now and put your hands on your head.” I didn’t have time for this. I quickly looked around to find something that could be used as a weapon, but there was nothing there. Except a nearby car whose rearview mirror I could see.

  I stared into the mirror. “Help me. Without killing anyone, please.” “Who are you talking to? Your weirdo?” said the soldier.

  “I think he’s on drugs,” said his officer. “Get the restraints and be prepared to use force. I’m sure he’ll fight back.”

  “Please, help,” I said. “My sweetie, my love, I ask you nicely.” A woman appeared in the rearview mirror, a woman who was not me.

  Today, she was wearing a fashionable red Spanish dress, her magnificent cleavage on full display, her hair tied up in a bun the way a Spanish dancer would when she was about to start the flamenco dance.

  She stepped out of the mirror even as the soldiers started approaching me.

  Anything for you, my love. I won’t even kill them this time because you asked so nicely. Also, I have been learning how to restrain my powers.

  The soldiers all froze where they were. Their eyes went blank, and many started mumbling. I could sense that they were stuck in their worst nightmare. Many had their faces red and their fists clenched while they were sweating profusely.

  While, technically, they weren’t dead, I knew they would go insane or have a heart attack if left in this stage for too long. I had to leave.

  I grabbed the envelope of cash back from the soldier. “Thanks, mate,” I said. “That was very shitty of you.”

  ***

  The hotel, when I finally reached it, was a bit anti-climactic. I’d heard of the impossible hotel for years now and had fancied it a horror hotel from the movies. Forbearing, large, with towers and spires.

  Instead, I found a run-down bed-and-breakfast with garbage lying out in the front. The sign, “The Garden Hotel,” was written in faded red ink with the G and the H vanishing.

  It looked like one of those hotels that would have been really popular 10 years ago but then the customers stopped coming and the people running it stopped caring.

  The walls were painted dull grey and the paint was flaking. The wooden door was starting to crack and its hinges were rusty.

  I pushed the door open to find a dingy, small reception area with no one there. The whole place was in darkness, except for one small yellow table lamp that was barely filling the room with light.

  “Hello,” I said, “Is anyone there?”

  “We are back here,” I heard a voice say.

  I followed the voice to the dining room where there was a large table and a few people seated around it. A thin and balding man wearing a well-tattered suit came up to me and shook my hand. “I’m James Joyce, the hotel manager. We have your seat right here,” he said. “Everyone else arrived early. You are the last to arrive, so don’t worry. We still have 15 minutes to dinner.”

  He took me to a seat that had a name tag on it: Royce Raine, world-famous psychic detective.

  “What the hell?” I said. “How were you expecting me? And how come you have my name here?”

  “We have been expecting you for three days, Mr. Raine,” said the manager. “And now, please have a seat. Would you like anything to drink?”

  I stared at my name tag in surprise. Was someone playing a practical joke on me?

  ***

  I took the seat and looked around at my guests. Two people immediately struck out at me. Both were extremely attractive women in their twenties. But that was not the only reason.

  For one, they were wearing too much makeup—more suited for going to the Grammys than coming to a run-down hotel in the middle of nowhere.

  Second, both had cameras pointed at their face and were doing test video recordings, testing the audio, light, background, etc. I realized these must be the “influencers” I heard so much about but had never actually seen or met.

  One of the influencers had a lackey with her who was installing at least four cameras, all pointed at her face, which was ridiculous. We were in a tiny dining room. Not the White House. The other influencer was working alone with one camera.

  There were two black women. One in her 30s, wearing a very ornate evening gown. She was a bit on the heavy side and a bit on the melodramatic side too. The feathers in her hair and the many crystals around her neck marked her as some sort of psychic or one of those related fields.

  Sitting next to her was a woman in her 20s. She looked fairly normal, wearing jeans, t-shirt, and nerdy glasses. She was reading some sort of detective novel and she waved to me when I looked at her.

  Next to them was a scientist looking Indian man. He had that typical nerdy look: big beard and unkempt hair and pink glasses. He was tinkering with some electronic equipment. He vaguely looked familiar. I remember reading about him.

  And the final guest on the table was my old friend Joey, the local journalist. The town was too small to have a proper newspaper, so he was the publisher, editor, only journalist, and ad salesman. He did really good work, often covering issues like city corruption and the increasing homelessness problem. I was surprised to see him here. He recognized me and waved.

  “Ah! It’s my favourite psychic detective! The most famous psychic detective in the world. Royce Raine. How are ya buddy?”

  “I’m great, and I’m hardly world-famous. I’m barely Elderwick famous. Even most people in the town haven’t heard of me.”

  “You are being too humble, mate! People all over the world have certainly heard of you! Why do you think they invited you tonight? They only invited the most famous influencers, scientists, and psychics. At least 1 or 2 million people will be live watching us tonight. This event has been planned for weeks, and I’m so excited to be finally here.”

  I picked up the card with my name on it and tapped it. “Planned for weeks, you said. Then how come I only found out an hour ago?”

  James, the manager, interrupted my stream of thoughts.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, since we are all here, should we all introduce ourselves? I know some of you are quite famous,” he said, looking pointedly at the influencer with four cameras pointed at her face, who did a fake humble wave, “but it would still be nice to introduce ourselves, in case someone doesn’t know the others. I’ll start.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  I’m James Joyce. As most of you already know, I originally owned this hotel more than twenty years ago when the original murders here took place. It was great publicity but unfortunately it ruined my business. Nobody wanted to stay at a hotel where dozens of people had been ritually killed. I had to abandon this place and just walk away as I couldn’t even afford to pay my bills and business taxes.

  Luckily for me, some rich people reached out to me a few weeks ago and planned this ghost hunt. When I heard who was on the guest list, I was really impressed. The world’s best ghost detectives, scientists, psychics, and more. I left this place under a shadow, as it were, and I would really like some closure on what happened here all those years ago.

  For those of you who don’t know, or who are watching online, more than two dozen people were killed here-- ritually sacrificed; but the police never found out who did it. Maybe tonight we will with the help of our ghost hunters. Anyway, that’s me. Who wants to go next?”

  The bearded Indian man sitting right next to him raised his hand. “I’ll go next. I don’t mind. I am Dr. Anand Roy, but please call me Anand. I have two PhDs, one in electrical communication and one in paranormal research. I’ve been trying to prove that ghosts and spirits exist from a scientific point of view. Some of you may have seen an interview with me on BBC that was covered in a lot of media. I haven’t been able to conclusively prove that ghosts exist, but I have made several discoveries, and my equipment is getting better and better on each run. Hopefully, we’ll find something interesting here.”

  I remembered him now. He was a scientist. The BBC had interviewed him for a TV show. They had tried to trick several psychics by giving them a mixture of fake murder sites and real ones, and trying to guess which was which.

  Most of the psychics had failed the test, but Dr. Anand had gotten more than 70% of the guesses right, which was incredibly hard. The BBC interviewer wasn’t impressed, and had tried to explain away his success by using words like randomness and chance, which hadn’t convinced anyone.

  Influencer #1 spoke next. “Hey, everyone! My name is Hazel. I’m a fitness and lifestyle influencer. I don’t have many followers on YouTube, unlike Lydia here, only a few hundred thousand, but I do have 4 million followers on Instagram. The people producing this event invited me to come here as they wanted somebody who didn’t know much about ghosts and psychics. I know virtually nothing of this field, and to be honest, I’m a little scared. So I don’t know why I turned up.”

  She gave a short nervous laugh.

  Influencer #2 (Lydia, I think her name was) raised her hand next. To be honest, maybe I was getting old, but I couldn’t tell the difference between them. They both had the perfect face, no doubt filled with chemicals, both had perfect hair, perfect lips, and perfectly trimmed hair.

  The only difference was while Hazel looked kind and harmless, Influencer #2 looked like a shark. I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley. She had that sort of cold ruthlessness, normally seen on serial killers. If she hadn’t been so young, barely in her twenties, I would have pegged her as a Unit 7 agent.

  “Hi”, she said, “Most of you already know who I am. Certainly my 4 million YouTube subscribers know me. Hey, everyone!” She sat waving at the camera. “So nice to have you here.”

  And she started talking to her online viewers, answering their questions and completely ignoring everyone in the room. I felt that was a little bit rude, but who was I to say? Maybe that’s how social media worked.

  Finally, she got bored and pointed at the middle-aged bald man standing next to her. He was wearing dark blue trousers with a blue t-shirt and seemed to be her handyman.

  “This is Andy. Do you want to introduce yourself, Andy?” “Nothing much to say really. I help Lydia with her tech stuff. Setting up cameras, lighting, sound, and everything. Anything that’s needed, really. And I make sure that her channel is live when she’s doing interviews, etc. I’ve worked with Lydia for about two years now, and it’s been a great partnership.” “It has been a great partnership,” said Lydia with a fake smile.

  She went back to answering her viewer’s question. Joey noticed my awkwardness and stepped in.

  “I’ll go next,” he said. “I’m Joey Mariano. I’m the local journalist and the publisher of the local Elderwick Chronicles. I would like to say that I am the most qualified person for this job, but that would be lying. People from the BBC, CNN, FOX News, and even Indian and Chinese channels wanted to come here, but because of the army curfew, they weren’t allowed in. I have made a good deal with these foreign channels, though, and I will be providing them with my reports as the night progresses. Good bit of money for just a few hours’ work. Right next, let’s go to these two beautiful ladies next to me.”

  The bigger black woman in the fashionable evening gown spoke. She had a slight Nigerian accent, but one that had been softened through decades of living in Britain.

  “Hello, everyone. My name is Selena Ward. I’m from the old-fashioned TV networks. I had a prime-time show on Channel 4 a few years ago where I used to investigate supernatural places and try to uncover the secrets behind them.”

  I remembered her now. Her show was a bit cheeky and on-the-nose, but I wasn’t sure how much of that was her fault or just how the medium worked. She would walk around alleged haunted sites while the camera followed her at a weird angle and they always used a blue filter even when shooting in the day. The show used so much theatrics, I never had a chance to discover if Selena actually was psychic.

  She continued. “The TV channels are in trouble, what with everybody on YouTube. So I’m trying to make a new career on the internet. I only have a hundred thousand subscribers, but I’ve only been at this for a few weeks.”

  Hazel, the nice influencer as I was calling her in my head, patted her hand. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” she said. “Took me more than two years to get to 100k.”

  “Yes, darling. I know I’ve been following your channel for years. I’m a big fan.” Both the women giggled like they were schoolgirls.

  Selena continued. “Of course I had a slight advantage in that many people recognized me from TV. So I could get to 100,000 subscribers even though I don’t have much content at the moment. I’m hoping to change that with tonight.

  I’m so excited to be here! I can already sense the ghosts and the demons haunting this place. They are trying to get through to me, and it is very hard for me to keep them out.”

  There was an audible groan, which I realized was not an accident as Selena turned to the slightly younger woman sitting next to her. “And this sceptic, Miss Science Journalist sitting next to me, is my younger sister. She doesn’t believe anything in the supernatural and thinks I’m just an old-fashioned fraud. Go on, say it, Wynn!”

  Wynn pushed her glasses up. “I don’t think you’re old-fashioned at all, my dear sister. I think you’re keeping up with the times very well.”

  Selena took it as a joke and gave a genuine hearty laugh.

  Wynn waved shyly to us.

  “Hey everyone, I’m Wynn, Selena’s less-famous younger sister. I was training to be a science journalist, but as you may know, traditional media is in trouble, and I couldn’t find any internships.

  Luckily, my sister needed help with her channel, so I provide her with whatever help I can: doing research, contacting people she can interview, editing her videos, and setting up her system and so on. I’m all new to this but getting the hang of it.”

  Joey, my journalist friend, spoke up. “So, how does that work? Your sister being one of the most famous psychic and ghost hunter and you being a sceptic. How do you work together?”

  “Why do you think we work together well?” said Selena, and everyone burst out laughing. Except for Lydia, who was still chatting with her subscribers online and completely ignoring everyone in the room.

  “We manage,” said Wynn, “by staying out of each other’s hair. I do the original research and plan how the interview will take place. But once my sister starts her thing, I leave the room and do not interrupt her or try to show my scepticism. We work great together as long as we stick to our own specialties. She with her woo-woo go stuff, and me with my more concrete technology stuff.”

  Dr Anand smiled at her. “So you are more of the scientific bent, are you?” “Well, I’m not a scientist. Though I do have a Bachelor of Science degree that I never got to use. I have been learning how to use some of the equipment people use to detect ghosts and other supernatural activities. My knowledge is more at a ‘read the manual and turn it on’ level.” “That’s good enough for most cases,” said Anand encouragingly. “Maybe I’ll show you my stuff later on.” A short woman wearing an apron and silver hair came into the room. She was carrying a pot of tea with some biscuits. James the manger introduced her.

  “Hi everyone, this is Mrs. Lienz. She will be our cook for the evening, and she’ll also make us breakfast tomorrow. We were lucky to hire her on such short notice, she just arrived a few hours ago. Luckily, she is a great cook!”

  The cook bowed and spoke with a thick Russian accent. “Hello everyone, I don’t have much time to cook, so I made simple Yorkshire pudding. I do have vegan option for those who want dinner. It will be ready in 10 minutes. So I bring tea while you wait . For breakfast I will make you a full English. Kitchen open all day. You can come in for tea and snack any time you want.”

  “Thanks Mrs Lienz,” said Joyce. “Please everyone, help yourselves to tea and biscuits.” “Wait a minute,” said Hazel, “there is one person who hasn’t introduced themselves.” And everyone turned to look at me. Even Lydia got away from her cameras. She whispered to her assistant, “Quick, focus one of the cameras on his face.”

  That made me even more nervous.

  “Hello everyone, my name is Royce Raine. I am a local private detective. I only found out about this event an hour ago when I was asked by a client to come here.”

  “Asked to come here? Why?” asked Lydia, playing the journalist.

  “That I am not at liberty to say.”

  Everyone groaned and complained and started throwing questions at me, but I tried to keep quiet. I had never had this much attention focused on me.

  “I think we can guess why he is here,” said the hotel manager, James. “This is the place where multiple murders happened. Surely our hosts thought a psychic investigator would be a good person to have here?”

  “What sort of psychic investigator are you?” asked Selena. “Do you read the auras? Or do you talk to ghosts? Or hear the spiritual world?”

  “I’m not really a psychic investigator; I’m more of a traditional detective. Though I have had some brush-ins with the supernatural, I’m not allowed to talk about it.”

  “Oooh, you like being mysterious, do you?” asked Selena with a mischievous smile, and suddenly, it felt I was open target.

  The interrogation just wouldn’t stop.

  Luckily, at that moment, the cook came in and announced that dinner was ready and she wanted to know who wanted vegan options. While people started getting ready to eat, that gave me an excuse to quietly get up and slip out. I pretended I needed to use the toilet.

  ***

  I washed my face in the sink. There was a mirror in front of me, but as usual, I couldn’t see my face or indeed see anything, except for a fog.

  I hadn’t seen my face for many years now and was used to only seeing a haze in the mirror. Normally, it didn’t matter, as I was used to it now. I didn’t even remember what a “normal” mirror looked like anymore.

  What I could never get used to was her appearing as my reflection in the mirror.

  She didn’t do it often, but every time she did, my blood ran cold.

  Because every time she appeared, someone died.

  Very horribly.

  Come now, darling. You cannot blame me for that. I hardly cause these deaths, except when you directly ask me to.

  “No, but you are a bad omen. Can you help me tonight? What is this thing about?”

  She shrugged. I have many thoughts. I will show you as the night progresses.

  “Thanks.”

  That was as good as I was going to get. I decided to leave the toilet and go back to the dining room before people realized I was a crazy guy who talked to mirrors.