Medieval Hotel

By Bobbie Barnett

Waking up in the desert on a lonesome highway with no wallet or cell phone seemed to be imminent death for David. David’s journey down the lonesome highway brings his only salvation in the form of a castle hotel. With every moment David spends in the hotel, he begins to lose pieces of his memory and himself. He begins to question the true purpose of the hotel and its patriarch, “the hotel master.” The question then becomes, is the hotel David’s salvation or his eternal damnation?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781635684018

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Medieval Hotel

Bobbie Barnett

Copyright © 2017 Bobbie Barnett

All rights reserved

First Edition

PAGE PUBLISHING, INC.

New York, NY

First originally published by Page Publishing, Inc. 2017

ISBN 978-1-63568-400-1 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63568-401-8 (Digital)

Printed in the United States of America

Dedication

I would like to dedicate this book to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Also, I would like to give a special thanks to my ghost writer, who is Chris Barnett my brother. Without his help this book would not be possible.

Chapter 1

The Dessert

David opened his eyes, and all he could see was blue sky that lay before him. He began to move his hands and could feel the hot asphalt below his fingertips. As he sat up, David strained to focus his eyes. A long stretch of highway lay before him, and on both sides stretched a desert as far as he could see. The highway seemed to be wavy due to the hot desert sun. David brought himself to his feet and began to dust off his three-thousand-dollar Armani suit. His muscles spasmed, and his neck hurt. He felt like he just ended a boxing match with a bull.

What the hell? David thought. How in the world did I end up here?

It was an odd place indeed for a New York stockbroker. David looked all around in hopes of finding a miracle handed out by God. Miracles, however, were not part of David’s life these days. His stockbroker firm was under investigation for insider trading and David was at the forefront. David was the top stockbroker at the firm. Paying out high returns on low-yielding stock was a miracle to David’s investors, but his curse all rolled into one. Time magazine called David the financial whiz kid of the twenty-first century. People often questioned how David was able to weave through the trash and garbage that flooded the Wall Street floor and find that one jewel in the never-ending trash heap. The government began to wonder too, and so David’s nightmare began.

David immediately thought of his cell phone and began rummaging through his pockets, looking for his life line to the outside world. Each pocket David fumbled through only brought up lint. David began to wonder where his cell phone was. He never left without it. Leaving it behind anywhere was like chopping off his right arm and throwing it aside. David began to think to himself that a cellphone out here wouldn’t be of any use anyway. The likelihood of picking up a single bar in this place would be near to impossible. David had a better chance of catching a ride on a giant bird’s back than actually making a phone call in this giant waste land.

David tried his hardest to collect his thoughts for a moment. His eyes scanned all around in the hopes of seeing some form of salvation. After a couple of moments, David knew his only option was to walk down the highway. David wondered about which way to go. He looked up at the sun and began to muster all his Boy Scout training from his days of a simpler time long past. David tried to figure out his directions from the position of the sun. This would be near impossible unless he could figure out the time or sat down and try to see which way the sun was setting. David looked down at his left wrist to look at the time.

Where the hell is it? David questioned as he noticed the ten-thousand-dollar Rolex his wife bought him for their ten-year wedding anniversary was also gone. David’s heart began to sink. He began to think of his wife and his children, and a sense of dread began to overtake him. He wondered if they were okay.

David tried to focus and remember what happened. He remembered having dinner with his beautiful wife, Heather, and their two children. Afterward, they went into the living room. While the kids were occupied with some late night cartoons, David snuck upstairs and threw a white sheet over his body. He came back down the steps, making ghostly noises, and began to chase his screaming kids around the house while his wife smiled fondly.

That was it! Those were the last memories he had of his wife and kids. How could this be? David wondered. As David pondered this, another thought penetrated his foggy mind. This is just a dream, he said to himself. Impossible. This was too real to be a dream. David could feel the heat from the sun and the heat rising from the desert ground as if it were released from the fires of hell itself. As David pondered this thought, he decided to shake it off and choose a path. David turned around and looked at the highway that was behind him. It lay straight ahead and seemed never-ending. He then looked once again at the path of highway that he first saw when he picked himself up. David began to feel a slight breeze coming from that direction. The breeze seemed to be perfumed with a flowery smell that David recognized but could not put it all together. This path was not all entirely straight as the other and seemed to weave through the desert sand. This was the path that David would take.

As he walked down the highway David realized all he had were his thoughts. How in the world could a New York stockbroker from Long Island end up in the middle of the desert without any knowledge of how he got there? This was not a punishment for a thirty-five-year-old man of Christian faith. David began to think that maybe it was a punishment after all. Within recent years, David’s faith had been tested with the excess of Cristal champagne and diamond necklaces for his wife. David’s life had become more about making money and less and less about God. Once part of the Christian faithful, David wouldn’t miss a single Sunday session inside the Holy Trinity Church, which was only two blocks from his home.

Nowadays, you would be more likely to see Lucifer himself sitting in a pew, taking in the Word of God before you would see David inside a church.

David looked all around as he continued his journey down the highway. It snaked back and forth slightly as David drummed on. The flowery smell seemed to intensify, and the slight breeze grew a little cooler. This was a great welcome to David. His throat became more and more parched, and the gentle, flowery breeze seemed to help.

David began to think of all the brokers at the firm. David really didn’t have any friends per se. The occasional barbeque or get-together with the high-society people from his neighborhood was the most outside-of-work get-together that David would engage in. David really didn’t consider these people his friends, and the closest people to him were the other brokers at the firm. Late-night paper shredding and hanging out at a local pub with the other brokers seemed to bring them closer together. These were the only people David could consider possibly calling friends.

How pathetic is that? David thought.

David seemed to get lost in almost a dreamlike state as memories of his firm flooded his mind. Charlie’s bachelor’s party at a Manhattan strip club brought a smile to his face. He began to laugh when he thought about the time Rick’s wife took a baseball bat to his new corvette after she found out he was cheating on her with their babysitter. David had sat on the front porch of Rick’s house, drinking a beer, witnessing this little drama unfold before his very eyes. David thought to himself that he was glad to have seen this, but at the same time, he wished he hadn’t. Watching a grown man fall to his knees, crying about the damage inflicted to his prize car, was almost enough to make David himself cry. Even so it was a great story to tell the rest of the guys at the firm.

What was that? David asked himself. Something just streaked before David’s eyes and was gone in an instant. David figured the heat must be getting to him, and he began to rub his eyes. What in the world was that? David was not sure of what he saw. It was a short glimpse, but it appeared to be something that was of human form but not human. It appeared only a couple of feet tall and ran like the wind. It appeared to have a red face and a tail. It was gone as quickly as it came.

Keep it together, David, David said to himself. It’s the heat and the sun. It’s driving me mad. David collected his thoughts and continued walking on. As he walked, it seemed to only get hotter, and the sun never moved. This is impossible, thought David. I have been walking at least for three hours now, and the sun hasn’t moved one bit. As these thoughts poured through David’s head, he wanted to cry so badly. His throat was so parched David believed he wouldn’t have any tears available to shed.

David continued for some time down the road. When David was about to give up and fall down and die, an object began to take form in the distance. David hurried up his pace, hoping it was not a mirage. As he continued to walk, the object began to become more and more focused. The outlines of a building began to take shape. It was not just an outline of any old dusty desert building, not any typical building you would see in New York or even in the desert for that matter. The building was actually a castle, one of the biggest castles David had ever laid his eyes upon—bigger than anything he has ever seen on television or in a magazine.

This has to be a mirage, David said as he came closer and closer to the castle. With each step, the castle came more into view. David was thinking this castle had to be two million square feet at least. Its enormity made him gasp as he gawked wide-eyed at its colossal size. What the hell is this castle doing out in the middle of nowhere like this? David thought to himself.

David began to think of the trip last year to Vegas with his firm. David had told his wife that they were going to Vegas for an investor convention. In part, David wasn’t lying, and they did attend the convention so they could write the trip off as a business tax. Even so, his wife thought David was there to obtain useful knowledge that he could apply to his job; however, David and his business associates slept through most of the convention. The real reason the trip took place was something a little more devious and unknown to the wives. It was a getaway for the boys filled with booze and high-dollar call girls, an exotic vacation filled with lustful sin that would make a priest have a heart attack.

David began to think of a hotel that he saw while he was down there. It was a hotel that was in the shape of a castle very similar to the one he was now looking at but on a much smaller scale. David and the rest of the firm decided on staying in one of the casino rooms instead so they could be close to the fun and have a girl on their sides at all times.

As David continued to stare at the castle, he tried to comprehend what his wide eyes were taking in. He compared his Vegas trip and the castle there to this one to try to make sense of it all. Yes, the castle in Vegas was in the middle of a desert as well, but the major difference was, that castle was in the middle of a large city surrounded by buildings and filled with people. This castle, however, was in the middle of nowhere and did not have a speck of life anywhere. As a matter of fact, David thought back to the moment he awoke in the middle of that dissolute highway to his present time, and as far as he could remember, he had seen not one life form besides the creature that blazed in front of him when he was walking down the highway.

The creature, which was red and had a tail was not a creature at all as far as David was concerned. David’s senses told him that it was merely a hallucination brought on by extreme heat and dehydration. This baffled David because he thought life existed everywhere on this planet, even in a desert. But here there was not a bird or a scorpion—nothing. Not even as much as a fly buzzing by David’s head. No corpses of any dead animals or anything. No plant life either was to be seen by David, just sand and a highway as far as the eye could see and now, of course, this giant castle.

David was looking at the large monstrosity that lay before him. It had these huge giant rotundas everywhere with the huge cone-shaped roofs. It reminded David of fairy-tale stories with a princess locked away within its walls. The majority of the castle seemed to be constructed of huge cinder blocks that looked like each must way a ton. The rotunda cone-shaped roofs appeared to be made of wood, but they began to disappear as David walked closer and closer to the castle.

David’s neck strained as he tilted his head farther and farther back as he got closer in the hopes of catching one last glimpse of the top of this goliath of a building.

David was now a near thirty yards from the front gate of this desolate fairy-tale construction. The top of the castle was no longer visible from where David was standing. The front entrance gate was only a few feet from the highway. It’s quite close, David thought. Maybe the builders didn’t want people to miss it and pass it by as they drove down the highway. David chuckled at this thought and realized that the castle sitting back a little farther from the highway wouldn’t make a bit of difference. A blind man couldn’t even miss this thing.

As David walked up to the front gate, an image began to form from the ground up right in front of David. It was almost like it appeared from nowhere and formed out of nothing. David began to rub his eyes almost like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, but there was no mistaking it. It was a man.

The man stood in front of the gate, peering closely at David. He was dressed extremely well. A nice black suit glistened in the sunlight. His eyes were that of cold blue that represented the icy waters of the Northern Atlantic, so cold they sent a chill down David’s spine, which instantly cooled him in this extremely hot environment. The man’s skin on his face and hands appeared leathery but not sunbaked. As a matter of fact, the man was extremely pale, as pale as fresh winter’s snow. His hair had a fine silver sheen with the glint of sharpened steel.

David noticed that under the man’s suit jacket, he wore a red shirt with a fiery-red tie. The thing that David noticed most was that the man was extremely old. If David didn’t know any better, he would swear that the man was at least two hundred years old.

David now stood a mere couple of feet from the man. David had noticed that the man’s cheeks were sunken in and almost appeared as giant hollow holes.

Around his ice-cold blue eyes, the skin was blackened and old. The man was hunched over and extremely lean and frail. David thought that a small gust of wind could easily blow this man away. David stared past the man for a moment at the giant front doors of the castle. They appeared they were made of thick steel and were at least thirty feet tall. The entire castle appeared to be wrapped by an extremely old iron rod gate. On top of each rod were razor-sharp points that looked like they were put in place to pierce anyone trying to get in or out.

Directly in front of the front entrance of the door and gate stood the old man.

You wouldn’t believe how glad I am to see someone else alive out here, stated David. I couldn’t begin to tell you what I have gone through. I mean, I still don’t believe it myself. Maybe I can tell you everything, but first, I was hoping maybe I could use a phone and get something to drink. I am about to die from dehydration.

I doubt that, replied the man in a crackling voice.

The smile that David was beginning to develop from finding someone else alive began to quickly disappear due to the man’s response. There was something off about this man. Something strange that David did not like. Not like this whole setting