Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 19: The Ghost Hotel (Part 2)

Records of the Halls of Ten Thousand Affairs: Chapter 19: The Ghost Hotel (Part 2)

Xu Xin took Su Xiaoyu off to get settled and washed up, while Miao Yin brought Chen Jiu to a private meeting room for a quiet conversation.

Miao Yin poured her tea, her expression troubled. “I won’t hide it from you. We’re afraid that involving the police will hurt business, so we’ve just been pushing through. From yesterday to today we’ve already refunded three rooms. If this keeps up, we won’t be able to keep a lid on it. We can’t keep paying triple compensation to every single guest.”

“What exactly has been happening?” Chen Jiu asked, then added: “Don’t worry. In our line of work, client confidentiality comes first.”

Miao Yin seemed to hesitate briefly, but nodded. “There isn’t really anything I can’t say. The locals probably all know anyway. Our hotel…”

The hotel was small, but it had been around for some years. The entire seventh floor had been renovated after a fire, completed before the new year and reopened for guests.

“Sometime in winter, apparently an electrical appliance in one of the rooms suddenly caught fire.” Miao Yin recalled. “There were over a dozen people on that floor at the time. None of them made it out. The owner paid out a great deal in compensation, but his family has deep pockets. The money was paid, the doors reopened, and business went on.”

A knock at the door. A young staff member came in with tea. Miao Yin slid the cup in front of Chen Jiu.

Chen Jiu accepted without ceremony, took a small sip. Quite attentive service, she noted. The tea was lightly sweet without being cloying.

“The owner brought in someone to deal with it at the time. An old Taoist priest. And right up until these past couple of days, nothing had happened since.” Miao Yin frowned. “That old man wasn’t just a fraud, was he? He certainly charged enough.”

“Not entirely.” Chen Jiu rubbed her chin. “If his ritual had done absolutely nothing, the period right after the fire would have been chaotic too. The fact that things were quiet until now means something.”

Miao Yin clasped her hands together and looked at her with thinly veiled anxiety. “So in your view…”

“Take me up to the seventh floor.” Chen Jiu stood, a compass already in hand.

Miao Yin nodded quickly. “Please follow me.”

It was late and the night was still. Miao Yin was not entirely confident in Chen Jiu, and wasn’t willing to bet on her being the real thing, so she called two male staff members along for the moral support.

Chen Jiu started reading the compass in the elevator, and found exactly what Miao Yin had described. The closer they got to the seventh floor, the more violently the compass needle swung. The magnetic field had been severely disrupted by some unknown force.

“Seventeen deaths,” Chen Jiu murmured.

The words had barely left her mouth when the elevator stopped. A soft chime sounded. The doors slid open slowly, and the group looked out into the corridor. Not a single light was on. Pure darkness, no visible end to the hallway.

Miao Yin and both young men immediately broke into a cold sweat.

“Did the power go out?” one of the men asked.

The other said: “That can’t be right. Everything was fine a moment ago. And even if it cut out, there’s an emergency power supply.”

“True… the elevator is still running fine. How does just one floor lose power? Ha…” He laughed dryly.

A strange silence fell over all of them. They looked at each other. Nobody spoke first.

After a long moment, Man A finally swallowed and suggested: “Um, Manager Miao, maybe we should come back tomorrow in the daytime? All the guests on this floor seem to have checked out anyway.”

“I’ll go check the seventh-floor fuse box.” Man B looked a little embarrassed. Two women were right there watching, and he was a grown man. He couldn’t just stand there looking useless.

With that thought, he drew a deep breath and forced himself to take one step forward into the corridor.

“Stop.” Chen Jiu moved without hesitation, seized the back of his collar, and yanked him back. Her other hand immediately pressed the button to close the elevator doors.

Her movements were not gentle. Man B stumbled badly and nearly fell into Miao Yin, catching himself at the last second.

Man B’s expression darkened. He turned on Chen Jiu. “What are you doing?!”

“If you’d taken one more step, you wouldn’t have come back.” Chen Jiu kept her eyes fixed on the doors as they closed. “Keep quiet.”

Miao Yin patted Man B’s arm. “She’s an honored guest. Watch your tone. She just saved your life.”

Man B opened and closed his mouth, rubbed his nose, and after a considerable pause managed to produce an “I’m sorry.”

Chen Jiu’s reaction was minimal. She went back to watching the floor numbers change. After running a shop this long, there wasn’t a type of difficult customer she hadn’t dealt with.

The elevator descended. Then, in front of all of them, the number jumped back to 7.

The air went completely still.

Miao Yin asked, her voice wavering: “Master Chen, does this mean we’re…”

Chen Jiu glanced at the three of them. “Ah. Ghost loop.”

It was just past midnight, the peak hour for yin energy. A ghost loop was one of the more common tricks malevolent spirits used to unsettle people. Not difficult to break in principle. But the seventh floor was something else. The yin energy up there was thick enough that even she felt a degree of discomfort.

None of that was anything the three laypeople in the elevator could understand. The moment they heard the words “ghost loop,” the color drained from all three faces simultaneously. Man A went straight down onto the floor, legs giving out entirely.

Man B began shaking his head, mumbling something under his breath, over and over, too low to make out.

Of the three, only Miao Yin managed to hold herself together with any dignity. She checked her phone, saw there was no signal, and with great effort looked calmly at Chen Jiu. “Master, is there a solution?”

“There is.” Chen Jiu rubbed her fingers together meaningfully. “It won’t be cheap, though.”

Miao Yin let out a quiet breath of relief. “That’s fine. Whatever you need. All expenses tonight are on the hotel, and your room and your friend’s room will be comped as well.”

Chen Jiu gave an approving nod. She regarded Miao Yin with a measure of admiration. Management material, through and through. Real situational awareness.

She said nothing more, gestured for everyone to step back, positioned herself in front of the elevator doors, and took out a brush. She began drawing talismans in the air.

One stroke opens the heavens. Two strokes part the earth. Three strokes open the gates of the living. Four strokes seal the roads of the dead. Five strokes, six strokes, seven strokes complete. Beneath this talisman, no maze holds.

“Go!”

Chen Jiu spun her hand back and slapped the talisman against the doors with a sharp crack. It landed perfectly flush. Golden light rippled across its surface.

As if in response, the elevator chimed and resumed movement. The numbers began changing normally at last, counting down floor by floor, until the ground floor arrived and the doors opened onto the brightly lit lobby, the two familiar front desk staff standing exactly where they’d been left.

Man A scrambled to his feet and stumbled out of the elevator almost before the doors were fully open, saying repeatedly: “Manager, my head is spinning. I’ll come with you again tomorrow. Ugghh.” And with that he actually buried his face in the nearest trash bin and began retching in earnest.

Man B wasn’t doing much better. He slumped against the wall, forehead drenched in cold sweat, gasping as though he had genuinely just made it back from the edge of death.

Miao Yin pushed herself out of the elevator, clearly struggling to stay upright, swaying with each step. A few more and she would have gone over. Chen Jiu quickly stepped forward to steady her. “Your constitutions are too weak. I’ll put a few needles in you, or you’ll be running fevers tonight.”

That would, of course, also be billed.

Miao Yin nodded weakly. Man A and Man B offered no objections whatsoever, collapsed against the wall like discarded ragdolls, past caring about anything.

Chen Jiu took out her needles, passed them through a lighter flame, and put three into each of them. The effect was immediate.

Man A and Man B were completely converted. They rolled their shoulders experimentally and stared at her. “Incredible. She’s some kind of god.”

“Both of you, get some sun tomorrow. Full two hours.” Chen Jiu turned to Miao Yin. “Give me a key or a room card. I’ll go up on my own. Mark which rooms were at the center of the fire damage.”

Miao Yin hesitated. “That’s… a bit…”

Under normal circumstances you simply didn’t hand room cards over to anyone. As manager, she should be accompanying her. If anything went missing, it would fall on her.

But her body genuinely could not handle going back up there.

Hearing this, Man A and Man B weighed in immediately. Man A looked at Chen Jiu. “Master, you’re going back up? I truly cannot. What I felt just now was like something pressing down on my organs from the inside. I nearly brought up bile.”

“I felt like something was grabbing my hands and feet, trying to drag me down.” Man B kept rubbing his own arms. “No, no… I’m a materialist. A materialist…”

So that was what he’d been mumbling to himself up there.

Miao Yin, seeing that Chen Jiu wasn’t budging, asked: “Master, could we just wait until tomorrow morning?”

“We could,” Chen Jiu said, considering. “Just less efficient. Nothing beats catching them fresh.”

Man A and Man B stared at her.

She sounded exactly like someone at a wet market describing live seafood.

Miao Yin still looked torn. Chen Jiu, apparently noticing, said reasonably: “All right, we’ll do another run tomorrow. Everyone get a good rest tonight.”

Man A and Man B nodded with great enthusiasm, then shuffled off practically arm in arm. By the look of things, neither of them was going to be sleeping alone tonight.

After the events of the evening, Miao Yin had formed a fairly solid assessment of Chen Jiu’s abilities. She discreetly looked her up and found a listing for Wanshi Zhai online. The reviews were largely positive, though there were a few negative ones, mostly complaints about Chen Jiu’s attitude and accusations of being money-minded.

Wanting money is hardly the worst quality a person can have. It’s the ones who want nothing you have to worry about.

Miao Yin put her phone away, satisfied.

She walked Chen Jiu to her room and was about to leave when she hesitated at the door, still looking a little uneasy. Chen Jiu folded a piece of talisman paper into a small paper crane and held it out to her. “Sleep easy tonight. This is a soul-settling talisman. Consider it a gift, no charge.”

Miao Yin thanked her with genuine warmth, then carried the paper crane away in both hands with great care.

Xu Xin was in the middle of towel-drying her hair and heard them talking at the door. “Wow, Boss, you’re being unusually generous tonight.”

“Please, I tricked her.” Chen Jiu waved a hand. “It’s just a paper crane. Pure psychology. As long as she believes the talisman works, it will work.”

Xu Xin laughed so hard she nearly toppled over. “It’s a real waste you never went into sales.”

Chen Jiu looked over at Su Xiaoyu. The little girl had Chen Xiaoxuan’s tail clutched in one hand and was fast asleep.