The Shadows' Empress (Part 5)

The Nitris, as the Empress called it, had finally stopped pounding the door. For the first time since Roland encountered the icy beast, it was quiet. Concerned that the horse-like creature would return if it heard any movement behind the door, Roland came out from under the heavy desk and stood slowly. For a minute or two, he stared at the door, half expecting the banging to start again. When it didn’t, he placed the map of the hotel and the blueprints on the desk he hid under to examine them.

There were so many rooms in the blueprints. Rooms that weren’t on the map. They looked as if they led to places that you couldn’t get to from any of the main rooms. In fact, the blueprints showed what looked like an entirely different building placed inside the old hotel. On one hand, there were the rooms designed to be a part of the hotel that spread outward, giving the building it’s wide structure. On the other, the secret rooms seemed to be built on their side; as if the building was vertical.

“A skyscraper….?” Roland said quietly, before quickly clamping his hands over his mouth.

There was a faint sound of a horse snorting on the other side of the door. Obviously, the horse hadn’t left, yet. Roland wasn’t sure if it was waiting for him to come out, or if it was planning on roaming the halls. Roland preferred the latter. At least then he’d be able to dash from room to room, ducking out of danger if he needed to. That idea led him to the realization that there might be more than just one Nitris.

‘Or something even worse.’

“How can they put two structures in one building?” Roland whispered to himself. “Am I even looking at this right?”

The confused boy began to look around the drawer from which the map and blueprints fell out of. There were several large pieces of paper stored in it; however, none of them were complete. Each piece of paper was marked with thin gray lines in what looked like random areas. Nothing connected. Everything seem out of order, and on a majority of the poster-sized papers there was on one line, if any at all. And then, he noticed that each page was numbered.

‘Maybe if I put them on top of each other in order…’

Roland did so, arranging the numbers so that the first page was at the top of the pile, and the eighth was at the bottom. That didn’t help the lines makes sense, so he rearranged the pages, with the first at the bottom, but still no luck.

‘They’re probably just mistakes,’ he reasoned, putting the failures back into the drawer. For now, he’d only use what he had. At least the blueprints and map made sense in a weird sort of way. ‘This is a dream, though. Nothing really has to make sense.’

“But…what if it everything I’m seeing here really means something?” Roland asked, looking down at the map. He couldn’t help but feel like the red symbols meant something. None of them look like anything particularly familiar. There were seven of them, but only three different types. Three of them looked were a circle with a small dot in the middle. Another three looked like X’s that didn’t connect in the middle. And the last one looked just like a set of French doors. Similar to the entrance, and exit, of the hotel. The only problem was that this symbol was nowhere near where Roland had come in. Instead, it was at the center of the building.

Noticing this made something click in Roland’s mind. The rooms with the symbols on them coincided with rooms that matched up on both the map and the blueprints. He put the blueprint on top of the map since the blueprints were printed on some very translucent paper. Roland looked over the map at the areas where the symbols were.

“I need to get to each of these rooms,” He said, not bothering to keep quiet any longer. He was too determined to figure out what he was looking for and leave the hotel. It occurred to him that he could possibly just pry the boards off the windows, but the Empress made this sound so important. Not to mention, he had a feeling that what he was looking for had something to do with what he’d heard his father say the night before.

‘Stop bothering my family. They’ve done nothing to you.’

Those words echoed in Roland’s mind as his eyes became glued to one room on the map that bore a symbol; one like a target with it’s small dot surrounded by a circle. When he registered that he was already in one of the rooms he’d been looking for he began to hear the song We Wish You a Merry Christmas being played from something that sounded like a music box. He looked around but couldn’t see where it was coming from. No matter where in the room he stood, it still sounded the same distance from him.

But it sounded familiar, and not just because he knew the song. The way it sounded, it reminded him of a snow globe. His favorite snow globe. His mother had given it to him for Christmas one year to add to his collection. It had a red base, lined with gold. A nutcracker soldier stood in the center, surrounded by presents. And if you turned the winding mechanism on the bottom it would play We Wish You a Merry Christmas. A memory of Roland holding it in front of him watching the snow fall in the globe played in his head, as he noticed the music he was hearing was part of the memory.

At the hospital, sitting in a chair in the waiting room. Holding the snow globe, watching the fake snow fall while listening to the music. In the background, Roland could hear crying. It was his father. Begging Clara not to leave him alone. Roland’s Grandparents were there, also crying. Holding his younger siblings who were trying to take off their heavy winter jackets.

The memory ended, and Roland felt like he’d taken a baseball bat to the head. But the physical pain didn’t bother him. Not as much as the realization that he’d been lied to his whole life. His father, Jacob, told him that his mother had died giving birth to his younger siblings. He knew that wasn’t true. However, Roland let himself believe that. His father would never lie to him. ‘Right?’