About the Contest

This story is an entry to @tristancarax’s 31Sentence Contest. The contest is exclusively on Hive.

If you fancy participating, you can find the contest here.

Prompt

Here is the expected sentence order:

24, 20, 16, 15, 7, 22, 9, 8, 1, 23, 21, 18, 4, 25, 29, 19, 6, 10, 2, 30, 17, 27, 13, 14, 31, 12, 28, 5, 26, 3, 11

You Can Check-In But Cannot Check-Out

The beautiful glass panes were sieving in the moonlight, allowing a rainbow of colours to pass through only to become nondescript in the darkness. The eighteenth-century Bishop’s palace was a demonstration of the British architectural splendour which was absorbed by the American society. Standing tall in Florida, the castle was one of the few remnants of the British empire.

“You should have left something to hold the door open,” the stutter betrayed Sam’s nervousness.

“I did,” Larry projected a brave front. The personification of courage is how YouTube viewers liked their ghost hunters to be, and that is the facade many carried intentionally.

“We are trapped, and help won’t arrive till morning.” The door didn’t show any inclination of budging.

“Morning?” With every passing moment, Larry was growing distressed, and if he did not watch it, he could end up drowning in unfathomable fear.

The palace had undergone some renovation work, and one of them was making the rooms airtight for protection from humidity corrosion. The airtight part bothered Sam as he worried that they could run out of air before help arrived.

“Dude, what is that?” Larry looked in the direction that Sam pointed, and sure enough, there was a figure floating near the door that they were trying to open.

“I see it,” Sam was curious at the occurrence because it never happened that both of them witnessed an entity at the same time during such a haunted stakeout. Usually, such bodies would vanish even before the other turned, and they could only observe it in the recordings.

“You can see that clearly, Fam.”

“And it is in no hurry to vanish,” Sam smirked.

“What now?”

The duo had thanked their stars for such footage while Sam could sense the room getting stiffer to breathe and wondered if it had to do with the scary entity.

“Dude is it me or is it getting stuffy?” Larry put words to what Sam was thinking.

“I wonder if that entity has something to do with it,” Sam remarked as the entity continued to float and disallowed the duo from reaching the door.

“And I am getting all the negatives vibes,” Larry got his EVM out.

“Why do you need the EVM when you can see the entity over there?”

“Yeah, buddy, I am not thinking straight,” Larry knelt while Sam realized that the oxygen level would have fallen and if he did not do something, he could collapse as well.

“God, help us out,” Sam’s spirit sent an ardent shout for help. As if by divine intervention, the newly installed television for tourists turned on, and a cartoon character zapped to life, but Sam registered just two words – hermetically sealed.

“I know what to do. Larry, the room has got hermetically sealed, and all that we need to do is open windows to let in air and equalize the air pressure. The entity disappeared.

With their combined push, the door opened, and they fell exhausted.

Image Courtesy: Spongebob