‘Very well, I’ll pack my belongings. We’ve another long journey ahead of us,’ Juraj stated, motioning towards his pack whilst looking outside the window.
Standing to leave the room, Milos offered a small smile to Juraj, who responded with the same.
‘Milos, before you go, let me see that note of yours,’ Juraj asked inquisitively, with a look of suggestion and continuance.
Milos handed him the note without complaint, and before Juraj could reply, Milos had already left the room. Juraj held it up into the air, alongside his own note that he, too, found the night before. His eyes scanned the two, noting how different they were, both in writing, quality, and style. ‘Interesting,’ Juraj muttered out loud. ‘Very interesting.’
11.
Milos made his way down the hallway, peering into Edgar’s room as he passed. As expected, the detective was not there. The hotel seemed an empty chasm—hollow and desolate. Following the same path down the staircase Edgar had when he and Juraj had entered the hotel, Milos looked down into the lobby. Silence was the only entity that greeted him. Even the clerk, who was normally busy doing some form of mundane task, was not to be found at his desk.
Walking past the deep reddened oak counter, Milos made his way around a corner past the desk, where he had last seen Edgar. A grandfather clock chimed somewhere in the distance, counting off the numbers as the bell tolled. It seemed to match the tempo of his footsteps as he made his way farther into the restricted areas of the hotel. It appeared to be the back-office area, which was even less well-kept than the front of house, and that was quite a statement considering the poor and untidy character of the mainstay of the establishment. Stacks of cardboard boxes lined the hall, full of utensils. Another room appeared to be used for laundry of some description, towels thrown and unkempt, bustled into piles, each one apparently stacking higher than the next. How long has this place been so disowned and unloved? Milos asked himself. A faint hum pricked his ears to attention, carrying across the hall from the next room and into the vacant space.
He crept towards the sound with caution, each step highlighted by the creaking of the floorboards below his feet. His pulse reminded him of just how alone he was, as it thumped inside his neck, just below his ears. The pressure was building within him, the anticipation brewing, a thunderous cauldron stirring and twisting, morphing into something indistinguishable and abstract. Why had he volunteered himself to this task? Juraj had offered to go in his stead, and now he wished it was Juraj and not himself making tracks through a barren hall of old. He was like a trespasser within a forbidden dungeon, where demons and dragons lurked, awaiting their next feeble prey to fall perfectly into their web of entrapment. An enticing compliment for evil, if ever there was one.
Milos entered the black room to the sound of a phone unhinged from a receiver, the tone mundanely buzzing and murmuring in an innocuous beeping.
The phone hung by its cord, swinging in the silent air. There were no windows and he had to duck low to make his way under the entrance’s frame. Below the phone laid a figure hunched over. Still and quiet, a pool of dark blood slowly seeped from underneath and collected around the figure. Milos’ own shadow reflected from the pool—a haunting image that disturbed him to the core, his own presence animating the scene further into chaos and unwieldy dread.
A glint of silver metal reflected brightly back into Milos’ horrified face, the blade stuck into the side of the victim.
Milos moved closer, fear and terror lacing his breath, fingers clenched tightly into the balls of his fists, his hands trembling at the horror before him. His stomach shrank and bile rose in his throat.
The room smelled of the taint of iron and copper, the blood fixed into a sickening concoction of horror and trepidation as it swept over him—there was no antidote to be served.
Milos was deeply in fear for what he might find as he knelt beside the body, turning it toward him to reveal who the empty and lifeless victim was. A jacket deeply immersed with dark red blood was wrapped around the person’s body, altering its appearance to one more of a brown than its previous green.
The body slumped and thudded as the weight of its being turned towards Milos, revealing the identity.
Milos let out a gasp.
‘My God,’ he whispered aloud, his cold breath reverberating around the dark room.
Shaking all over, his face turned pale-white, his knees buckled and defeated.
There was no doubt about it: the face revealed a pair of aged eyes, left wide-eyed and final.
It was Edgar.
His empty and motionless face communicated one of surprise and unexpectant resolution—he so obviously had had no idea this was coming.
Milos instinctively placed his fingers on Edgar’s neck—he did so because he tells himself he must.
But there was no reply, no pulse—Edgar was gone.
12.
When the husband of Baroness Teralova died in Perm, the timing could not have been worse. It was 1905, and the Soviet revolution was in full flight.
The Baroness returned to Prague, to what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with her two young children, Peter and Juraj. The years that followed went well for the Teralov family, having the rights and ownership of several large gas mining companies in the heartlands of the Soviet Union. They were not short of money, and their wealth grew exponentially through the harsh times that struck the economic and socialist aspects of all life, the effects of which were felt throughout Europe.
It was realised that the late Mr Teralov was not the only one in
