The train may as well have been totally empty. The few people inside did not move and were like mannequins propped up in their seats, looking out with blank expressions.
Utterly vacant human beings.
So Jim sat with these statues, shivering and sweating it was a very frightening experience not to mention very strange as well.
The voice in the speakerphone spoke:
"Next stop! The Fenwick!"
Through the window at his side Jim beheld the walled city of Fenwick for the first time.
He watched as the train rolled beneath the great grey gates. There was no way back now.
Now way out either.
He was now a prisoner of the city.
The little he knew about Fenwick was that there was now way out once the gates were closed. As the train slowly stopped at the Fenwick station a feeling of doom filled his cup.
He was beginning to think that he had made the worst decision of his life.
And he had done all this, trapped himself in the city, all for the desire of the G-Juice. He had thrown his whole life away just because he wanted another drink! Jim had never felt so foolish in all his life.
But he had done what he had done and now he had to own it. He was man enough at least to admit he had woven the webs that had formed his present situation and the time had come for him to accept his fate.
He was also very unwell, and desperately needed help from the good Doctor Ivan. O how his hands were shaking! It was horrible... Jim hated feeling that way. It was like some insidious virus had invaded his blood stream and was working hard at taking over his body. The twitching in his hands that was not him doing that. It was the virus at work inside of him and he so desperately wanted to be free of it, and be himself, and be whole again.
He grabbed the buckle of his coat with his hands and stumbled out of the train. The voluntarily shakes were worsening, he felt close to passing out - his vision started to blur. He needed to sit down. As he started searching for a chair, or a bench, or a low wall to park himself, a portly gentleman with a agreeable cheery face approached him. He seemed to know who Jim was already, calling him by his name on arrival. He introduced himself as Bill:
'You are looking well sir,' he said.
Jim felt to ill to respond. His shivering became so terrible that it was a struggle for him just to talk.
'May I take your bags sir?'
'But... I don't have any bags.'
'Surely you do sir. I mean we all have bags. Maybe you left them at home. I can have someone fetch them for you.'
'No it's alright.,' Jim responded. 'I would rather leave the past behind right now. I don't need old baggage tying me down!'
'Well none of us need that sort of thing,' said Bill. 'I certainly don't and that is why I don't carry any bags. But I do have these,' he plopped a set of keys into Jim's hand. 'I was asked to give them to you by a very fine gentleman. A doctor no less!'
'Was his name Ivan?'
'Could have been,' Bill replied. 'I wasn't listening. But I do know that these keys open the door to a rather nice room in a very lovely hotel down the road. Here now. I will be kind and show you the way. Please do follow.'
The Hotel was called Mr and Mrs Rits, but the 'i' was missing so in the eye of the imagination any letter might have stood there, maybe even the first letter in the English alphabet, that being the letter right in front of b, and we all know what that would spell.
It didn't leave a very good impression on Jim to say the least.
The front desk was operated by what Jim deemed to be a complete madman with a French accent. The operator insisted on addressing Jim as, monsour, which Jim found to be quite annoying after five minutes, and that coupled with the fact that the man kept on babbling about elephants, was one of the various reasons why Jim considered the man to be mad.
'One may call me Mandaise Seemwell Ell Mandooly, or just Dooly for short,' he said. 'You may agree, monsour, that my parents gifted me with a most majestic and memorable name. It is the name of an artist!'
'An artist hey?' said Jim. 'Is that why the manager has you sat at the front desk writing customers names and handing out keys?'
'O we! Monsour! It is a very noble honour to work here behind this desk, an honour bequeathed to me personally by my noble and beloved management! What fine people they are! They took pity on young Dooly, rescued him from a zoo. We used to clean the animal pens. Dooly was very close to being squished by an elephant you know? It is a long and sad story! But my management saved me, and here is Dooly working as a happy man safe and free from elephants!'
'What a happy story,' Jim replied, sarcastically.
Dooly finally stopped talking and led Jim to his room.
'This is on of our finest rooms,' said Dooly as he clicked the key in the lock. 'Finest rooms indeed kind sir you are most lucky to be sleeping in this room! I clean this room myself. I sleep in it sometimes when no one is around. I treat this room like my own room. I have been inside every nook and cranny. I watch this room, day and night, so feel very much at ease, my friend. For when you sleep, in the depths of the night, I will enter your room, and watch you, and see that you are safe.'
Jim quickly slammed the door in the face of the Frenchman and then grabbed the stool by the dresser table and propped it right under the door handle. He had the keys to lock the door but he just wanted to make doubly sure no one could enter the room while he was sleeping.
There was a computer in the corner of the room. Jim sat down and fired it up.
Using a password he was able to access his website.
There was a new message waiting for him.
It read this: 'See you in the morning.'
Very ominous indeed.
See who in the morning exactly?
Just then there was a knock on his door...
Previous part here
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