My Friend who Vanished (Part 3: Duplicity )
This is the third part of the series, “My Friend who Vanished”. Please read the first and second parts before moving on to the following section if you haven’t done so. You can visit Part 1 and 2 of the story in the previous issues.
I looked on in utter disbelief. His eyes scanned the whole room but he seemed to have looked right through me. His appearance was exactly the same as I remembered, and almost nothing about him had changed. As he walked across the room, towards the empty seat in the corner afar, everyone acted as if they hadn't seen him before, and greeted him warmly. Soon, I realised that on a stage filled with misty illusions, I was the only conscious protagonist.
On one hand, I was pleasantly surprised to finally see Nicholas back, and extremely curious about what he had gone through in the past two years. On the other, I was confused as to why the others failed to recognise him, and even more perplexed by the absurdity of the situation. Shouldn’t Nicholas only be an imaginary personality of mine? Why is he appearing in real life, right in front of me? Countless questions filled my head and I felt like my thunderous brain was about to fulminate.
Class commenced, but time and again I turned towards the corner where he was sitting. At one point our eyes met, and in that instance, I felt a strange, overwhelming sense of irritation and anger, as if blood was boiling through my arteries, emanating fury and frustration. I was infuriated - I didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because he had me worrying for such a long time, and that he returned all of a sudden without notice.
I thought about it again. Imaginary personalities cannot break free from a body, can they? Souls cannot transfer between hosts, right? Out of nowhere an unsettling vision arose of Nicholas’ soul being sucked out of his body in a gruesome manner, distorting his blank facial expression and engulfing his pupils which stared into the voids of darkness.
I waited desperately. After what seemed like months, recess finally came. I ran eagerly towards his seat, halting just in time to avoid tripping over a leather-bound book on the floor. Not wasting any time I went straight to the point, “Nick, where have you been?”
He looked at me, confused.
“I’m sorry, have we met before?”
I froze as he calmly bent down to pick up the book below his desk. “Aren’t you Nicholas Lin? Don’t you live in Sai Wan Estate? Isn’t your birthday the 4th of August?”
“Um, Ye-Yes? How do you know that?” he replied hesitantly.
At that moment I realised that he wasn’t the Nicholas I had known. It was an ineffable sensation - but I just didn’t feel the connection that we had once had as best friends.
Right then, a teacher called him outside to discuss with her some arrangements for his ‘first’ school day. He left the classroom and I waited for him inside. After a while he returned and told me he would have to take an early leave to set up his learning equipment at home.
“I’ll give you my number, please talk to me later.” He fumbled to retrieve a piece of scrap paper before writing his phone number on it. His handwriting was impeccable, much like an imperial script. That was abnormal, since I didn’t recall Nicholas having such distinctive penmanship. Even stranger, the number he wrote down was not the one I knew.
After passing me the piece of paper he proceeded to leave in a hurry. The rest of the classes were a blur. I only remember sitting blankly on my seat and letting every lesson slip by slowly. No one knew that my subconscious was silently screaming, for I was more determined to find out the truth to this mystery than ever.
So when the final bell rang, I decided to retrace my steps and start from the very beginning - when the student first approached me two years ago at the covered playground to tell me about the meeting after school. I remembered it was a meeting with the Rubik's Cube Club … Wait! Didn’t the Student Association keep a record of all the clubs’ information before the pandemic began? Their documentation might help me find out about the club members and potentially lead me to the person who approached me on that day! I paced swiftly to their office on the 2/F and inquired about it.
“I’m sorry, our records are not to be disclosed to the public. But we could help you search the meeting files which are openly accessible. Would that help?”
I nodded. Although not ideal, it was better than nothing.
“After school on the 21st of November, 2019. please.”
He logged on to his computer and typed in the keywords. After a minute of scrolling, I was met with a shocking revelation.
“The Rubik’s Cube Club did not hold a meeting on that day. Are you sure this is the right date?”
Confounded, I didn’t know what to say. I was certain that Nicholas disappeared on November 21st, 2019. If there wasn’t a meeting in the first place, then how did this all begin? Wouldn’t that imply…
“Never mind, thank you for your help.” Walking away, a theory emerged in my mind—
The senior student who approached me was part of an elaborate hoax. There hadn’t been a meeting after school on that day after all. The ‘meeting’ was only a bait to lure and capture Nicholas. And unbeknownst to me, by inadvertently leading him to the 6/F corridor, I was used as a puppet to assist them in their mission.
With mixed feelings, I returned home. I took out the piece of paper which Nicholas had given me and carefully examined it once more. For some reason his handwriting was rather familiar, bearing a close resemblance to something I had seen before, but I just couldn’t recall what it was.
Regardless, I figured everything that had occurred up till now- seeing Nicholas in person, acquiring his handwritten note, realising the fact that he was captured for some unknown reason… was pointing towards an undoubted reality - he was indeed a real person, and I was wrong in thinking that he was only an imaginary playmate of mine. This reignited my interest in the red-haired ghost and her connection to Nicholas’ inexplicable disappearance. After all, with Nicholas’ non-existence disproved, her mysterious influence and alterations were left as the only explanation to something this mystifying and supernatural.
I switched on my computer like I had a year prior when I first discovered the Adelphi Hotel. I revisited Mr Lander’s memoirs online.
Clover Tennison checked into the hotel on 20th November, 1905 … he was found unconscious the next day, with his diary describing his encounter with the red-haired ghost…
The next day… 20th… 21st…
… 21st November, 1905! But it couldn’t be… it couldn’t be, the 21st of November??!
It was as if everything fell into place all at once. 21st November. The same day Nicholas went missing in 2019. With a click in my head another suspicion came to mind. I immediately typed the phrases, “Adelphi Hotel, murder, room 139” in the search bar and pressed enter.
Sure it was, right within the link of the first search result was the heading, in bold letters, “Grotesque Scene, Room 139, Adelphi hotel, 21st November, 1873”. The body paragraphs went on to describe how a woman with red hair had been murdered by her husband on that day in that room—
At that moment I recalled something I had read in a fictional grimoire: Individuals killed of unnatural causes tend to seek revenge on the scourge of their suffering, by … feeding on the power of living souls related to the day of their demise.
The red-haired ghost was seeking revenge on her husband by absorbing the power of Nicholas’ and Clover’s souls on 21st November.
Taken aback, I was about to turn off my computer when something else caught my eye - a few scanned pages of Clover’s diary entry. It was present on the hotel’s website as an attachment. Opening the files, the old-fashioned, cursive inscriptions looked oddly familiar - yet, I just couldn’t recognise what it was…
Out of nowhere, I felt another unusual sense of immense frustration and annoyance, as if acid was flowing through my veins, generating murky fumes and pungent smog. I was infuriated - for the second time I didn’t know why. Perhaps it was because of the horrendous actions which I theorised the red-haired ghost had done, or because I had carelessly overlooked the matching dates previously.
Hoping the wind would help calm my emotions, I slid the window open to catch the evening breeze. The fading golden glow of dusk swept through the evening clouds, shedding a faint light on a crumpled piece of paper next to my locker. Instinctively, I unfolded the paper, and as the numbers written on it came into focus under the dwindling radiance -
I suddenly recognised Nicholas’s handwriting.
The following morning, I reached school earlier than usual and waited for Nicholas to arrive. I brought the printouts of the extracts of Clover’s diary and stared at the clock as time passed by. This might just be the day.
When he finally entered the classroom I promptly placed the printouts and his handwritten note side by side on his table. He unpacked his belongings and sat down to scrutinise the pages.
For a moment I thought I saw his eyes glinting with fear.
“Why do the two scripts look identical?” I asked, while pointing to the exaggerated downstrokes in Clover’s diary, and comparing them to the big ‘3’s, ‘4’s, and ‘9’s on Nicholas’s note. I pointed to every similarity I could see.
“Wha…What is this?” He stuttered, looking at the printouts. “Where did you find all this?”
I glanced at the leather-bound book in his drawer. The same book I had stumbled upon yesterday morning.
“I didn’t. But hundreds of years ago in a hotel far away, someone else did.”
He covered the book furtively with his pencil case.
“I - I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The bell rang and with our class teacher’s entrance, I was forced to return to my seat. Yet I knew our conservation would eventually resume, for I was now more than certain about my hypothesis. The same penmanship, his leather-bound book and its similarity to Clover’s diary, how he failed to remember me… At first, it all seemed too illogical and unrealistic to be true, but then again I thought, everything that had happened up till this point had already seemed like a fictitious nightmare. And in a dream filled with delusions, sometimes the most irrational of answers might just be correct:
Clover Tennison was the person who wrote the note, the person who dropped his leather-bound diary, and the person I had talked to just now. In other words, the ‘Nicholas’ who had returned after such a long time… had actually been an illusory manifestation of Clover who had died 116 years ago.
During the last lesson I covertly pulled my phone from my pocket and sent a message to the phone number he had given to me. Something burning inside me insisted on bringing Clover and I a few years back, back to the 6/F corridor, back to the time when Nicholas and I witnessed GP Room 6’s existence, for Clover’s spirit might be the key to our mystery.
Having not received a reply, I approached him directly outside the e-learning centre when our ICT lesson ended. This time, realising that I had already found out the truth, he gave in and took out his leather-bound diary, finally deciding to reveal the whole story.
He verified that the stories of Room 139 were not fabricated, and it was also true that he was killed by the red-haired ghost in 1905. He told me that his spirit was abducted by the ghost right after his death, and at that time he felt an immense anger along with an overwhelming desire for vengeance surrounding the spectre, passions which were burning his fragile and vulnerable soul.
“She was sucking the energy out of me, and after that she would wait for me to regain some power. Once my spiritual energy was restored, the cycle repeated. She then trapped my spirit in the diary which Mr Lander later brought to the College.”
He handed his diary to me. Examining it in detail, I realised it was the same book I had seen that night when I visited my classroom. I also noticed the small, circular patterns carved meticulously on the leather cover upon closer inspection. Then for the first time, I flipped open the thick journal, but what I saw were only red stains, covering the words on every page.
“Thanks to the red-haired ghost.” He said, pointing at one of the bloodstained pages.
Uneasily I nodded. “Did you and the ghost break out of this journal in 2019, during the second major renovation project of the South Wing?”
“Yes. She then wished to build a replica of Room 139 in the College in order to trap more souls and facilitate her revenge against her deranged husband, unaware that she herself had also been demented from the very beginning…”
“GP Room 6.” I connected the dots.
He paused, looking astounded.
“You aren’t supposed to know that. The room is concealed by her advanced necromancies each time after a new soul has been added. Unless-”
All of a sudden, a surge of pessimistic thoughts, along with a colossal wrath and resentment flooded through my capillaries like a whirlwind. It was as if thunder and lightning prevailed among dark clouds, as if all forms of happiness instantaneously vanished from the atmosphere. I was infuriated - for the third time, I didn’t know why.
“Let’s go to GP6 again, right now.” Something inside of me urged fiercely. I felt like I was extremely determined to do something. Something I wasn’t aware of.
Clover’s expression immediately darkened.“Listen, I had been trapped in that tenebrous space for months before her shadow dragged your incapacitated friend into the room and sealed the chamber. My body was annihilated hundreds of years ago and had long decomposed under the soil of the cemeteries and graveyards in England. That’s why I possessed Nicholas’s body and struggled so tirelessly to break through the incarnations, finally escaping the stygian room after two years. I am not about to return anytime soon.”
“Do you mean you left Nicholas’s spirit behind by himself?”
“Well, what other choice did I have? He was too weak to leave the room anyway.”
Thousands of miles away a volcano erupted, yet I felt like its lava was flowing within me…
Fuming, I dragged him aggressively by the collar with all my might and anger. I applied brute force to bring him to the ground. Vigorously and heavily I hauled and pulled and heaved the bones and flesh which didn’t belong to him. Today, Clover Tennison would have to compensate for lying to me and all my classmates, and more importantly, for how he left Nicholas behind all alone by himself, in that dark and creepy, non-existent room. All the way through, he retaliated but with boiling hostility, I managed to trail him down the 6/F corridor and towards the concealed room. At that point I had only one thought in mind – vengeance.
As we finally reached the empty 6/F corridor where GP 6 once was, he spoke in a feeble voice.
“Have you ever wondered how you gained such extraordinary strength out of nowhere?”
I stopped. My surroundings disappeared all of a sudden.
“Have you ever wondered why you have been experiencing sudden emotional fluctuations recently?”
He took out the leather-bound diary from his pocket. The sixth general purpose room reappeared right in front of my eyes.
“ YOU HAVE BEEN THE RED-HAIRED GHOST ALL ALONG.”
With a forceful smack to the head, I fell unconscious.
-End of Part 3-