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I’ve just been through a spiritual purge,” said Happy. “I feel good. I feel good about myself. I’m not used to that.”
    “It feels like someone cut me open and let all the poison out,” said JC.
    “Not someone,” said Kim. “The room. The room did it . . .”
    The door to Room 418 swung slowly open on its own; and beyond it lay a perfectly ordinary corridor. The room . . . felt like just a room. Nothing more.
    “Whatever just hit us, I think it’s over,” said JC. “The room is finished with us. But you know what . . . I’m not finished with this room.”
    “Normally, I would be the first to say, let us get the hell out of here while the getting’s still good,” said Happy. “But I have to admit I’m curious. It feels like we all just passed some kind of test.”
    “A haunted room as personal therapy?” said Melody. “Weird . . .”
    “Something made this room a Bad Place, originally,” said Happy. “But it doesn’t feel like the work of any individual person. So what’s powering this phenomenon? There was a definite sense of direction, of purpose, to everything we were put through.”
    “Don’t say purpose,” said Melody. “Say rather programming. This room now exists to perform a specific task . . .”
    “I don’t think this is a Bad Place,” said JC. “I think . . . it’s a testing ground.”
    He walked around the room, looking at everything, his nerve endings almost painfully raw and receptive after everything he’d been through.
    “Think of all the people who’ve stayed here, down the years,” he said finally. “So many people, in this room, passing long, dark nights of the soul . . . Lying awake in the early hours of the morning, asking themselves the kind of questions that people only ask themselves in the long reaches of the night. All the things we don’t dare think about in daylight but can’t hide from in the dark.
Is this it? Is this all there is? Is this what my life has come to? What happened to the life I was going to live? What happened to the person I planned on being? When did I lose all my ideals, give up on my dreams?
    “And somehow . . . all that soul-searching and personal despair rubbed off on the room.”
    “Imprinted it,” said Melody. “Soaked into the surroundings and programmed Room 418 to search for the truth in all of us. No wonder so many people died, or went mad, or hurt themselves . . .”
    “Why didn’t it affect everyone the same way?” said Happy.
    “Not everyone can be honest with themselves,” said JC.
    “But then . . . why aren’t all hotel rooms like this?” said Kim. “People must ask questions like that in every hotel room. What’s so special about this one?”
    “Something about the location, perhaps?” said JC. “Or perhaps some psychically gifted traveller passed through, and supercharged the room . . . Who knows? The result is a room that tests everyone who stays here. Tests to destruction, if necessary. Forces people to confront their own personal demons . . . who sometimes turn on their owner. I suppose we never hear about the ones who pass the test—just the ones who fail dramatically.”
    “Did we pass?” said Melody.
    “Hard to tell, with us,” said Happy. “But I think so. We’re all still here and as sane as we ever were.”
    “We can’t leave the room like this,” said JC. “It’s like an unexploded bomb, waiting to go off over and over again. It plays too roughly with people and breaks too many of them. We have to defuse this room.”
    “How the hell are we supposed to do that?” said Happy.
    “I’m open to suggestions,” said JC.
    “I could bring my equipment up here, hit the room with a small, localised EMP,” said Melody. “That might be enough to wipe the slate clean.”
    “Bit too scientific and real-world, for a spiritual experience,” said Kim. “Didn’t you once have an exorcist grenade, JC?”
    “The energies that have accumulated in this