The Dartagnan Brothers Hotel

Chapter 15

The sight of that face made Jonas shudder. Only a few hours before, the same man was helping Giovanni torture him with those dreams, and now, he held out his hand as if nothing had happened. His appearance was much cleaner than Jonas could remember. The few strands of oily hair were now properly cleaned and combed back, whilst the thin, stubble beard had left room for the priest's features to further intone his old age. He carried the same old bible under his arm, but was now not holing anything that resembled that branch of plants that he had previously lightly beaten Jonas's face with.
'Pleasure.' he said whilst the priest looked at him with a curious expression after spending a long time with his hand outstretched.
'Please...' the priest replied pointing to a small container engraved into the stones of the entrance of the church that contained water.
'No thank you.' Jonas refuted, knowing that the priest was pointing to something they called holy water.
'Giovanni told me a little bit about you, welcome to our humble church.' said the priest as he turned towards the corridor that stretched between several wooden benches until it reached a small altar at the end of the structure.
That place was completely new to Jonas, which made him think that maybe he was really hallucinating about what he had just experienced in one of his lucid dreams. The place where he had seen Rodrigo being tortured bore no resemblance to the one he was now visiting.
They continued their walk around the church as Jonas tried not to say too much so he wouldn't let out anything that might take the small advantage of knowing the real intention of Giovanni and his sect. Although he was still not sure of what was the reality he was living in, everything that had just happened had taught him to be meticulous with his words, and his time with Getulio had made him understand that trust was a rarity inside the environment he was stuck in.
'Several loved ones have passed through here.' said Giovanni whilst himself and the priest alternated in history lessons.
He had no idea of what was going to happen. Giovanni and the priest seemed to be happy that he was around, but he was sure that something bad was already planned and set for his near future, but the uncertainties were still a majority at that exact point in time.
Little had caught his attention within that place, until they suddenly stopped walking and Father Romulo started to point to a distinct inverted cross raised into the stone wall. The priest watched the surprised expression on Jonas's face, as it was already clear that the situation was some kind of test.
'Do you recognise this cross?' asked the priest, realising Jonas's singular interest as he fixated his glaze in the object.
'Not really.' lied Jonas, trying to be short with his words, remembering the little history class he had received from Getulio a few hours ago.
'Most people confuse St. Peter's cross with some kind of satanic symbol, which is normal.' said the priest, running his old fingers through the cross.
'Saint Peter's Cross?' Jonas tried to be curious about the version of the story chosen by the priest.
'Yes. The cross that represents humility, love and respect.' replied the priest whilst Jonas laughed internally with the hypocrisy that exuded through the mouth of the old vicar.
'But why is this cross inverted?' Jonas decided to show interest in the story told by the priest, maybe he could buy some time until any kind of help could miraculously come to him.
'Saint Peter, when condemned to crucifixion for burning Rome, asked for his cross to be placed upside-down, saying he was not worthy to die like his master Jesus.' replied the priest with great enthusiasm.
'But what was so important about Saint Peter?' Jonas wanted to get to a point where he would irritate the man.
The priest sighed loudly and laughed briefly out of the corner of his mouth. He seemed to be appalled by Jonas's lack of knowledge, but he was not going to dismantle the tension he and Giovanni were building up just for the sake of satisfaction.
'He founded the church of Rome, he was the first bishop of the city. He was one of Jesus's great apostles.'
'Hmm... I always thought he was that gentleman who welcomes people in paradise.' Jonas decided to turn up his debauchery and see if he could extracted anything that could help him.
The expression in the priest's eyes changed abruptly. The simple animosity that reflected Jonas's play turned to anger. He could now see it in his eyes, the real priest who harassed him in the room where he had been imprisoned for hours and hours was right there, ready to come out and play. He was on the verge of exploding and grabbing Jonas by the neck, sentencing him right there to whatever penance he sought fit.
'Should we go back to the party?' interjected Giovanni before things reached an irreversible level.
Jonas didn't answer, he just looked away from the priest so Giovanni wouldn't suspect that he might know anything. The conversation was definitely interrupted and the three went to the door through which they had entered in silence.
'Feel free to return whenever you want.' said the priest in a forcedly calm tone.
'Thank you!' he replied by chanting sarcastically and sticking both hands deep into the small bowl of holy water and rubbing them together.
He felt Giovanni's haste as the host pushed him towards the exit. The old priest blasphemed whilst Jonas entered Giovanni's swing towards the exit.
'What the fuck was that? Why the lack of respect?' he asked as they walked sharply away from the church.
'Sorry, but I don't think your priest treated me well...'
'Didn't treat you well? He was nothing but nice!'
Jonas was silent. The priest had really shown himself to be more than sympathetic, and he was the one who sought to show animosity.
'Where are we going now?'
'Back to the party.' Giovanni's reply was dry.
Jonas was already regretting the direction his audacity had taken. He wanted to hurt the priest, but he didn't expect that anything he might say was going to make Giovanni angry like that. He wanted to gain time and advantage over the information he held, but he did not want to speed up the process of his penance.
'It was not my intention to offend anyone.' he said as the two started walking in less haste. He was so hot by that upscaled conversation that he had to take his jacket off so he wouldn't sweat.
'You didn't offend anyone.' he replied whilst emphasising the last word. 'But rather an entire ancient institution that houses a multitude of devotees!'
Giovanni's tone was one of anger. Jonas realised he was over the top and his apology was more than necessary so that time was still on his side and he could find a way out of there. He had a huge belief that Getulio was still alive. 'That situation was too real to have been just a dream.', he thought as he waited for Giovanni to calm down again.
He was already certain that Mr. Dartagnan would take him somewhere from which he could no longer escape. 'Is he finally going to do to me what he did to the others?', that was the question that prevented his brain from thinking clearly.
At the same time that his mind started to speed up, due to the fear he started feeling, Jonas noticed a slight stain on the sleeve of his shirt. His mocking gesture, with the so called holy water he had used to wash his hands in the church, had run inside his shirt and seemed to be revealing spots of ink between his skin and the piece of cloth. He knew he couldn't be wrong about that. He had felt his skin hurt. He just did not understand how the soap and water, which he had just rubbed on his arm, had not exposed the still fresh wounds on his skin. 'It is ridiculous to think that, in some way, the so called holy water would have cleaned the makeup that hid the tattoos.', he thought before he could start raving about the subject. He needed to calm Giovanni's spirits and hide from the old man that his marks had reappeared.
They were approaching the strenuous staircases that led from the garden to the ballroom when Jonas saw that he could no longer remain in that situation.
'I hope everything is alright between us. I believe that you have misunderstood me as I did not mean to offend you.' he said without any confidence.
Giovanni lowered his eyes and looked at Jonas up and down. He noticed that the young man crossed his arms over his belly and hid the wet sleeves of his shirt.
'You got wet...'
'Nothing major.' he replied as he decided to put his jacket back on.
'Why don't you go to your room and change your clothes... I'll send someone to bring you a clean shirt and ask to wash that one.' said Mr Dartagnan with a tone of security.
'No need to bother... The sun is already going high in the sky and soon the heat will dry the water.'
'Nonsense. You are my guest and you will not roam around like a rag.'
Jonas decided to stop contesting Giovanni, even though his insistence on getting him to change his clothes was very strange, he knew that he had already bothered him too much in the last few minutes.
'Who knows, maybe I can find Rodrigo on my way there...'
The two climbed up the stairs until they reached the door that opened to the ballroom, as Jonas headed towards his room. He had already lost hope of finding Rodrigo since, apparently, that lucid dream had shown him a reality that he was not willing to believe. The door that connected the two rooms was still locked, but even so, he uselessly knocked again and called out his friend's name.
Several clean and well ironed shirts were at his disposal in one of the wardrobes inside the room. Giovanni, of course, knew that, as he incongruently plead to send Jonas to his room and ask him to wait for someone to deliver him clean clothes.
He started to hear strong footsteps coming from the corridor. He imagined that whoever Giovanni had sent for him with would be coming, but the pace of the steps and the diversity in the tone that the soles touched the floor made him believe that perhaps it was not clothes that were about to arrive.
He glanced at his arm and realised that his black tattoos were contrasting with the almost transparent white of the wet shirt, making the so called marks more than visible again. He knew it was ridiculous to think that the church water was different from the soapy one he had tried to use a few minutes before, there would certainly be an explanation to how that had was happening, but if Giovanni and his gang were coming to meet him, that wouldn't be the best time to unravel another one of the puzzles that hung over the property of the Dartagnan Brothers' Hotel.
As he could hear the footsteps approaching his door, Jonas forced his brain to think of a way to escape. He needed to be alone and fix his thoughts before he could be captured again, he had no idea of what would be the next item on Giovanni's list of horrors, but he was sure the old host had noticed the sudden appearance of the tattoos and that would speed up whatever the future was holding for him.
Jonas went around each corner of the room, trying to find anything that would help him get out of there. 'Of course...', he thought as he approached the windows and found bars behind the glass. He even tried to look under the bed and think about hiding there, but he knew that was the most ridiculous option he could think of at that moment, despite being the only one that came to mind.
Quickly, he went back to the bedroom door and locked it so he could buy a little more time before Giovanni's henchmen could capture him.
'Open the door!' a distinct voice sounded a tone of authority.
He found the door that connected the rooms again, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't even move the handle down. That was when, suddenly, he remembered a time when, during one of his trips, he had encountered a country where the handles opened when turned upwards. That memory had marked his mind because he had spent more than half an hour in the cold trying to open a door that refuted his entrance. He quickly turned the handle upward with great ease, causing the door to open without making a sound.
He then entered Rodrigo's room, which was exactly the same as his, and went directly to the window to see if it also held the bars that had recently prevented him from running out into the garden. Before opening the curtain, he already knew he shouldn't have any hope that this room would be any different from his, but his mental confusion, mixed with a brief excess of anxiety, did not allow him to save the little time he had. Jonas confirmed what was expected at the same time that he heard people shouting after his bedroom door, making a big fuss and opening it up against its will; he knew he had a few seconds before Mr. Dartagnan's henchmen realised that he would have crossed the door between the two rooms.
He quickly opened the door that locked Rodrigo's room and walked out without looking back. 'If I'm quick enough, I can disappear from their view before they realise I'm not in the room.', he thought as he imagined he would have a minute or two before Giovanni's troupe searched the room; the stupid idea that someone was going to hide under the bed had just given him a short and valuable span of time.
Jonas knew he couldn't go back to the main party room, as he had no doubt that Giovanni and some of his henchmen would be waiting for him there. He went in the opposite direction looking for a door or a window that would help him, but the corridors that connected the rooms were private to the point of having no opening to the outside world.
'Jonas!' the man shouted again.
He knew that he should now think quickly. His seconds of advantage were already catching up with him, and he would soon be discovered if he couldn't find at least a place to hide.
He continued walking through the corridors hoping to find any door that could be open. He tried almost every handle he could find - pushing them both up and down - whilst he felt the footsteps of Giovanni's henchmen approach him.
Nothing seemed to work.
He remembered - when he saw a huge mirror superimposed on one of the walls that made one of the corners in the corridor - the wise words that Getulio had spoken to him a few hours ago, whether that was a dream or not, it seemed that the excess of information he had absorbed throughout the night would serve him good after all. 'This place is full of surprises.', he thought as he recalled the words of the old one-legged man. He began to run his hands around the mirror in search of any deformity that would open a magical passage to another place that no one could even imagine existed. It was obvious that his hope was crushed with the same intensity that it had been built.
'Do not move!' the voice that had not yet been defined by a face had spoken to him from afar.
Both time and space were getting shorter by the second.
His brain had to think very sharply as he noticed what his eyes had just seen. The sturdy man who strode towards him pointed a flashlight so close to his face so that the beam hindered him form seeing anything else, it was when Jonas turned to face the mirror and was able to see that the flashing reflection of the object mirrored itself on the opposite corner, revealing that the wall held a false bottom.
He started to run, before the stranger could reach him, going towards the wall that resembled the one he had seen in the maze, when Getulio had passed from one side of the wall to the other without making any effort except to rotate the object in the opposite direction. He had finally found one of the big surprises by himself. All the time he spent with Getulio had served him well in the end.
The mirror rotated one hundred and eighty degrees, allowing Jonas to end up in a small cabin held between the mirror and a wooden door. He could hear the footsteps of the men, who continued to chant his name at random, as they followed running after him through the corridors of the hotel. Everything seemed to be fine. He had succeeded in dodging those who wanted to impose harm on him as he began to feel safe, even if confined, in that small space between the corridors and the mysterious door.
He did not know why, but something told him that door wouldn't open so easily, and that some kind of magic or juggling would be necessary so that he could escape from that confined space without having to return to the main hall. It wouldn't be long before Giovanni's faithful men came to him with the information that Jonas was missing, and even if they didn't know about that passage, Giovanni would certainly narrow down in his own mind the few places where Jonas could be found.
However, the surprises continued to present themselves to Jonas. The door was not locked at all, and, curiously, its doorknob opened downwards, unlike the one found in the modernity of the rooms.
It seemed too simple to be true.
The opening of the door revealed a simple wooden staircase that would take him downstairs. He knew that his time was short and that he should thread very carefully down those steps, he was entering unknown territory and had no idea what he was going to face at the bottom of that staircase. He went down the stairs very carefully as not to make any noise that might attract any attention.
The place was pitch black and Jonas no longer had his cell phone to light the way. He tried to feel the walls so that he could walk without hitting anything along the way; the uncertainty was a surprise and the disadvantage was imperative, he could not make any mistake before he knew where he was. The stone walls were damp and Jonas could feel the moss that had grown there due to the lack of light; an icy air seemed to cross his face little by little, and his shoes came up against an uneven path with poorly fitted and slippery stones.
He spotted a small clearing a few meters away. 'Yes, of course.', he replied to the very thought which whispered that was the direction to be taken. He did not have many choices for what would be his next step, so he decided to follow his instincts and look for a path that would take him out of there.
The dimmed illumination came from a lantern hanging on the wall and as soon as he was able to grip his hands around it, Jonas confirmed what his mind imagined about the architecture of the place. Stone walls everywhere. He still couldn't see much further ahead of his own nose, and taking the unattached object from the wall allowed him to run the risk of being spotted whilst continuing to take new steps down the unknown.
The silence was filled with brief and indistinguishable whispers, and the pitch black gave way to a weak and symbolic illumination that wouldn't reveal much ahead.
'We can't start until we find him!' exclaimed a female voice, which Jonas was able to suddenly attribute to Monalisa.
'That indigent is extremely important for the event, Giovanni.' said an unknown voice as he left one of the dark corridors.
'My men are looking for him. We will start without him, we cannot postpone the ceremony any longer.' the leader of the sect replied without waiting for anyone to contradict him.
The three started walking through the corridors as they were followed by more people who remained silent and obedient. Jonas had already quietly and slowly placed the small object of illumination in one of the corridors walls before it could spoil his presence amid those people. He felt that if he kept a good distance from them, he could take an advantage of the poor lighting to follow their footsteps to wherever they were going.
The scene began to take on a shape that seemed very familiar to him. As soon as that small wave of people had passed through what appeared to be an entrance to a larger room, Jonas decided to hide between one of the corridors and observe - or at least try - the situation before he could make any decisions about what he would do next.
He still could not see exactly what was happening, which required him to sharpen his hearing and try to pay attention to the words proffered by the troupe of madmen who were part of Giovanni Dartagnan's sect. They all wore some kind of black robe that covered them from head to toe; having their head wrapped by a hood that barely showed any of their features.
'We meet again, my dear friends...' Giovanni's distinguished speech intonation started to reverberate through what seemed to be a great structure.
His voice continued to chant words of devotion and divine promises. The more he spoke, the more people worshiped and applauded him with tremendous admiration; Mr. Dartagnan really had the gift of speech and knew exactly how to attract the attention of the people around him. The induction was delivered with fancy words and sayings in Latin. Jonas tried to understand everything Giovanni was saying, but the distance between that small space that he was confined to and the place where the devotees met did not allow such clarity.
'I need to get closer.', he thought as he got down on his knees and started crawling like a frightened child at the damp and dirty corridors. His brain was startled at the information his eyes were giving him.
From a distance he saw the same stained glass window that he saw whilst playing pretend in Rodrigo's body before. That was, of course, the fateful horror room where he had seen his friend being tortured in one of those crazy dreams he had had. The members of Giovanni's sect were positioned in the same way as before; as their chief stood up pretentiously on that altar with the priest posing besides him, who now took the reins of the situation and was beginning to babble fictitious blessings in a dead language. It seemed that history was repeating itself inside Jonas's mind, but he was now sure he was there. That had to be his real reality. Even if what he had lived with Getulio could be true, the situation before his eyes was too real to be a dream.
The torture bed, which once occupied a primordial position in front of the altar where the priest prayed, had now been replaced by two large polished and varnished wood trunks. The structure looked even more macabre than the previous one; the two trunks were interconnected by steel cables, which extended from top to bottom to form some kind of fence.
The ceremony continued as Giovanni spoke in an imperative way once again; the other people continued to follow his words as if they vehemently believed that man to be an envoy from their god.
'Bring me the offering!' he exclaimed after babbling another half dozen words that were blessed by the priest with an amen.
Jonas tried to find a better position to observe what was going to happen next, but if he continued for a few more meters he would be completely exposed to the public eye. He was the only one who didn't wear one of those black robes, what made him prone to attract attention very easily. He could swear he was supposed to be there, so his absence in such an offering should have already sharpened people's attention in a way that any sign of his presence would cause an alarm.
A chant started to sound as soon as two huge iron doors parted with the crossing of several of those people in black carrying a completely naked person right about their heads. The body was hung on several supports and had its arms and legs dangling through the air as if it was dead - or at least unconscious.
'Let us receive our guest with a round of applause, ladies and gentlemen!' intoned Giovanni as he raised his arms in awe.
Everyone there followed his cue and accompanied each other in what seemed some kind of greeting. Everyone raised their hands as if they were waiting for a divine force to take over their own bodies and lead them into ecstatic worship. They were slaves to an archaic indoctrination and made their own lives an object that should belong to their god.
'Let us give a warm welcome, ladies and gentlemen...' continued Giovanni as the troupe approached the structure with steel cables. 'Let us receive the one who sinned and will receive his penance. Let us receive the one who will be offered to god as a vote of confidence to his plans.
Giovanni sighed, filled his lungs with air, and exhaled.
'Let's welcome Rodrigo Costa!'