“Fuck!” Jason let go of the person and stumbled backwards, and he got a fuller view of the person that he was trying to pull back from the window: a twisted and extremely slender man with deep cuts and  and wearing broken and dirty rags for clothes.

 

This gnarly looking humanoid creature did not give Jason any chance or room to breathe, the moment Jason backed off, it charged at Jason, still at its current state of twisted head and body facing the window.

 

Both arms and both legs bending backwards in a creepy angle, the creature let out a roar mixed with both high-pitched and low-pitched muffled sound, and both of its backwards bending arms reaching towards Jason, fingers with sharp and dirty fingernails attempting to scratch out some holes in Jason’s body.

 

But, fearsome as this creature maybe, its movement was still not fast enough for its attacks to strike true.

 

Though first being stunned at first sight of the appearance of the creature and the dark colored blood looking liquid covering both of his arms, Jason was quick to recover from the shock and form his fight-ready pose.

 

Two hands formed into palms and smoothly pushed both of the creature’s hands to the side, immediately followed by a quick straight kick to the creature’s waist, then another full force high kick on the creature’s face.

 

The movement flow was so smooth and solid, even Jason himself was a bit surprised and impressed by himself - yes he practiced Kung Fu moves regularly and with Jianmen’s teaching and he sparred sometimes with Jianmen and Caroline, but he had never been in an actual fight since he started working at the inn.

 

Yet, strike back at the monstrous creature and knock it down he did. And his attacks were quite effective as well - the creature was down at the window, struggling to stand up.

 

For some reason, after the strikes, the creature looked blurred and thin - color and shape wise, it was like the creature was about to turn into a fog or dust.

 

A breath of cold wind blew from the side, Jason, who was about to give the creature the final blow swiftly hopped to the side.

 

One, two, three, four … many more pairs of eye-shaped figures lit up from a distance down the hall. Yet Jason was not able to make out anything else from where he stood. 

 

The knocked down creature gave out a deafening high pitched scream, sounded like it was afraid, frightened, terrified maybe.

 

Jason was soon made aware why - as the creature struggled to stand up, something invisible pulled it towards the eye-shaped figures before he could even lift its upper body up.

 

While being dragged away, the creature continued to scream.

 

Then the darkness that surrounded the eye-shaped figures swallowed the creature in whole, and it was the same time the screaming got muffled and stopped.

 

“Boom!” Jason’s back hit the wall behind him, completely breaking the wall paper and wall boards, exposing the wall fillings. The back of Donovan’s head bumped into Jason’s nose due to inertia, which led to Jason’s nose smelling a salty and watery smell and his eyes being filled with tears.

 

“Help! Somebody come and help!” after quickly checking the man in his arms was indeed Donovan and was not another twisted creature, Jason cried out to try to get attention for the situation.

 

“What happened? Oh my god Donovan! What happened?” the first to wake up and coming out of their room was a middle aged lady, a relative of Donovan.

 

“I don’t know, he tried to jump out of the window, I had to pull him back.” Jason placed his index finger below Donovan’s nose for a brief moment, and was relieved to find that Donovan was breathing steadily.

 

“What? How is that possible?”

 

“I don’t know that either, look at the window.” Jason said, shaking his head and gently putting Donovan at the corner of the wall sitting up, “Looks like he was sleepwalking.”

 

“I never heard of him sleepwalking before.” more people gathered around, including some hotel staff.

 

“I tried calling him and waking him up, but he did not answer me.” Jason looked around frowning and explained, “Wait, where’s Elaine?”

 

-------------------------------------------------------------

 

The Limbo.

 

A piece of the realm of the mind. A place of consciousness, subconscious, dreams and raw emotions. It was just a notion Jianmen brought up during one of their visualization sessions, but Jason did not expect to get in touch with one this soon.

 

Now Donovan was being sent to the hospital for a check after not waking up for more than 30 minutes, and Elaine was going along for a check as well, due to her being in a coma-like deep sleep on her wedding night and not even noticing that her husband walked out of the room and tried to literally jump out of a window.

 

Jason noticed that Donovan and Elaine both had a weird vaguely hand-shaped bruise on their arms, as if someone grabbed them by their arms forcefully some time ago.

 

And for almost the whole rest of the night, Jason had been trying to reach Jianmen. But Jianmen was totally unreachable, it seemed like either his phone was not turned on at all, or he was in a place with no cell signal.

 

He was able to get through to Caroline one time. But unluckily, Caroline swore him off right after telling him that she did not know where Jianmen was either.

 

By the time Jason made it back to the inn, he saw an awkward and somewhat dorky young man roughly his age standing over at the reception’s desk.

 

“Hi, um, who are you?” asked Jason.

 

“Oh, hi, my name’s Dave. Mr. Yu hired me to cover his shift for today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow … and then the day after.” the young man smiled nervously.

 

“Oh, hi, I am Jason, I also work here. Do you know where Boss is and how I can find him?”

 

“Oh, you are Jason! I met Caroline earlier, she was, um, very friendly.” Dave chuckled, “Is the food here always this good? I just ate a piece of seafood pancake Mr. Yu left in the fridge. And it was awesome, I’ve never had anything like this!”

 

“Yeah the food here is pretty great. Welcome to the inn.” Jason fought off the urge to cut Dave off, “Do you know where I can find Mr. Yu? Or how I can get a hold of him?”

 

“Ah, sorry, my bad.” Dave shrugged and laughed nervously, “He didn’t tell me any of that. He just hired me and told me to take his shift for 4 days. He also gave me a list of things to remind you about. But then he just left in a hurry. I tried his cell a couple of times but uh, he didn’t answer.”

 

“Um, Ok, what’s in the list?”

 

“It is very long, so I did not read through. But basically he told me to tell you to not forget meditation and … visualization? And also there’s food for you and Caroline in the fridge, so you can just reheat them when you feel like it.”

 

“Hmm, that’s it?” Jason took in the written list handed over by Dave, it was indeed a very long list.

 

“Don’t forget to visualize and meditate, food is in the fridge, materials for the medicinal bath is the storage unit, meditation incense in the basement under the altar ... and um, be focused and on alert, remember your personal scriptures?”

 

“Hmmm, yeah, your boss said some weird stuff man.”