Hostel M2

M2-Part XXI

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The sound of his heart hammering against the walls of his chest could be heard faintly beneath his harsh breathing. His eyes darted from one corner of the room to the other as the hairs on his skin stood on end in maddening fear while he remained crouched in the same position he had been all night long till the break of dawn.

The pounding on the door made his heart leap painfully with a gasp escaping his lips. There were words being rained from the other side of the room but his mind could make no meaning out of it as he was lost in his current dilemma, this cascade of unbearable insanity which clouded his soul.

"I don't know what's wrong with him," a female voice said from the other end of the door in a worried note, "he's been this way since he returned."

"He'll come out of it," the masculine voice replied to her, pulling her close to himself and away from the locked door which her eyes remained fixed on all the while.

Hot salty tears rolled down his sweaty cheeks as he frailly crawled to the center of the room against his will. His weary legs pulled close to his chest as he rocked back and forth, mumbling something, the words becoming indecipherable as tears and gentle sobs joined his plea to be freed from the insanity of moving figures at the corner of his eye and the absurd words replaying in his head.

In his mind's ear, he had heard a movement behind which caused a sharp gasp of shock to be expelled from his exhausted lungs followed by a heave. The shadow of a masculine figure slowly appeared in front of him and he knew the time had come. The darkness he experienced as his tear filled eyes shut was nothing compared to the cold shiver that ran down his spine when a pale, frail hand wrapped around his mouth from behind him.

~

"He was right," Henry started, "li'ann 'ujrat alkhatiat hi mawt. That's Arabic for 'The wages of sin is death'."

"Right, so how does an Arabian translate bible passages?" Chris asked with his hands crossed over his chest.

"He's got Egyptian roots, remember? Arabic is the country's official language," Professor Parker said.

Chris let out a long heave and then shook his head as if trying to arrange every piece of the puzzle to make sense. The computer chimed causing the three of them to give a quick glance at one another, their eyes, full of hope.

They all hurried over to the table on which the computer sat, being displayed on the screen was an invite to a video call from an unknown user. Professor Parker hesitated for a moment before finally accepting the call.

There was a moment of nothingness on the screen before Detective Maloney's face came on, his hair was all in a mess and he looked quite in a rush.

"Were you able get what we asked for?" Professor Parker was first to speak as he sat in front of the computer, Henry and Chris staying by his side.

"Yes," he replied with a sigh, "enough to cost me my job so this better be worth it. And I still can't make out what you need a dead guy's bio for."

"What've you got?"

"Jones Adib-"

"A.K.A The devil," Chris interrupted.

"Jones Adib," Maloney started again, "born a Muslim but got converted later in his life, there are no records of him ever getting married and there's zero to nothing about any family member-or at least, not alive."