Haunted Hotel: The Axiom Butcher

**Haunted Hotel: The Axiom Butcher** is the eleventh installment in the *Haunted Hotel* series by Elephant Games.

## Plot

The detective finds himself stuck in a bad Washington blizzard. He encounters a police officer, Ray Turner, who asks for a ride to the Axiom Hotel. Years earlier, a serial killer known as the Axiom Butcher performed terrible acts in this hotel before meeting his own demise, and now it seems a copycat is doing the same. Ray advises the detective to wait out the storm at the hotel, and provide a second pair of eyes on his investigation.

As they arrive, the hotel's current owner, Ben, welcomes them cordially. His wife, May, departs to the kitchen to make them tea, while the pianist strikes up some music. Looking around, the detective is surprised to spot his friend James on the stairs, but James puts a finger to his lips so the detective won't reveal their acquaintance. Moments later, just as Ray is explaining the reason for his presence, the power goes out, and once it's restored, they discover that May has been fatally stabbed. The detective retrieves the hotel guest book for Ray, who suggests he start questioning people. He refers to James as "that drunkard," for no clear reason.

Upstairs, the detective knocks on James's door and peers through the keyhole. James greets him and explains that he's working undercover, asking his friend to please trust him. Apparently the 'drunkard' is his cover. Across the hall, fortune teller Cassandra Leighton refuses to talk to the detective until she sees his badge. Even once he gains access to her room, she is too upset to talk until the detective brews some herbal tea for her. She charges him with collecting her scattered tarot cards so she can perform a reading about how things will play out that night. Once he does, her reading warns him that he is being lured into a trap by evil forces.

The room next to Cassandra's is the hotel music room, and the entrance is blocked. When the detective finally gets inside, he finds the next victim - Molly, the hotel maid. Bringing this news to Ben, Ben explains the hotel's history. The Axiom Butcher rented a room on the third floor to hide from the police, but another hotel guest recognized him and alerted the authorities. He killed everyone in the hotel, then himself before the police could arrest him. The hotel was closed for a few years and he was able to buy it cheaply, but rumors about the ghost still being on the third floor made him reluctant to let the maid have it. He gave in, however, and unlocks the door to the room so the detective can investigate Molly's things while Ray examines the body.

In Molly's room, the detective finds evidence that she and Ben were having an affair. Between her diary and another note, he learns that Molly took the job at the hotel to help pay for her college tuition, and gradually took advantage of Ben's interest in her to seduce him, resulting in bigger paychecks. She hoped to convince him to leave his wife and marry her so she'd own the hotel. They were even caught together by another hotel employee, but May hadn't believed the story.

Ben and the detective then enter the hotel's medical room, where a door is tied shut and locked with a puzzle. Once the detective gets it open, he's greeted by the sight of a massive pool of blood. Before he can react, he's struck from behind and knocked unconscious. When he wakes, he finds a bloodied knife gripped in his hand, and Ben's body on the floor. Ray arrives and places the detective under arrest for the murders, locking him in the hotel theater until the storm passes

The detective realizes that his only hope of clearing his name is to escape and find James, and have James solve the case. Ransacking the theater for useful items, the detective has a brief vision of the day the Axiom Butcher died; when he returns to the present, he finds a cleaver mysteriously embedded in the film projector. He manages to climb through a window to the hotel's backyard, from which he can get to the kitchen. Using a hidden passage inside the hotel's dumbwaiter, the detective gets into a rear stairwell, which Ray has cordoned off. He gets into a darkened room and is surprised when someone turns on the light, but thankfully it's James, who assures the detective that he knows he's not the killer. James was staking out the hotel because of the rumors, but says he never expected it to go so far and that they need to find the killer. He suggests they talk to Cassandra, whose diary suggests that the pianist Christian Donovan will be the next victim; the diary also contains a list of everyone in the hotel besides Cassandra. It looks like Cassandra may be the killer. A puzzle reveals more dark secrets about others in the hotel - not only were Ben and Molly were having an affair, but Ben and May were charged with tax evasion, and Christian was charged with sexual assault.

They decide to warn Christian by having the detective access his room through a secret passage, but he's already dead, hanging from the ceiling by a noose. The door opens and Cassandra is standing in the hall. "I checked everything. The cop is the killer!" she exclaims, just before she's shot from behind. Sure enough, Ray is the murderer, and now James and the detective are the only ones left. He's planning to frame them for the murders, since the police won't arrive until the storm has passed and "all they'll find are a pile of bodies and two wounded detectives with bloody knives in their hands." Ray locks the detective in the cellar, promising to return after he's killed James.

Engineering an escape, the detective searches the back hall, Ben's office, and the garage before finding his way into the greenhouse, where James narrowly avoids getting his head cut off when Ray sneaks up and swings a hatchet. He's injured, however, and needs the detective's help. After treating James's wounds, the detective finds Ray's diary and learns exactly what happened...

Ray used to work at the same conservatory where Christian Donovan was a music teacher. He met a young woman named Sarah and they fell in love. Christian assaulted Sarah, then managed to frame Ray for the crime; he went to prison, but Sarah knew the truth and was waiting for Ray to be freed. She took a job at the Axiom Hotel, and Ben tried to make a move on her but she wasn't interested. He then got involved with Molly, and Sarah was the employee who caught them together, but May didn't believe her. Sarah was then murdered, and Ben told Ray it was the work of "a madman" but Ray suspected Ben himself was guilty. He swore revenge on all of them. Cassandra was not one of his targets, but he had to kill her when she figured out the truth, and James and the detective are convenient pawns to frame. Armed with the truth, the detective chases Ray across the snow and defeats him in a fistfight, then saves him from drowning in the frozen lake. Authorities arrive to take Ray into custody and provide medical treatment for James.

### Bonus Chapter

The detective must return to the Axiom Hotel, now under new ownership and called The Lonely Soul, because the guests are convinced there is a ghost. He meets a woman named Joanna whose son has been acting strangely. Solving this case requires delving into the history of the family who once owned the property; before it was ever a hotel, it was the mansion of the wealthy Maxwell family. The youngest Maxwell child, Jerome, was often accused of being the devil, but his father didn't believe it until the boy deliberately engineered an incident which almost killed his older brothers. Feeling he had no choice, the father joined forces with a priest to kill the boy and bury him in the family chapel. Now Jerome's ghost has possessed Joanna's son, trying to return to the world. The detective must get into the chapel and confront Jerome's angry ghost, battling him until he finally departs into the afterlife. The ending shows Joanna reunited with her son, no longer possessed, and the detective reads a newspaper article celebrating his success.

## Characters

* The player: An unnamed detective who finds himself wrongly accused of murder.
* James Blackthorne: A paranormal investigator and a friend of the player, who is already at the hotel investigating the situation when the player arrives.
* Ben Stale: Owner of the Axiom Hotel.
* May Stale: Ben's wife and co-owner.
* Molly: A maid at the Axiom Hotel who is having an affair with Ben.
* Cassandra Creighton: A fortune teller staying at the hotel.
* Christian Donovan: The hotel's aloof piano player.
* Jerome Maxwell: In the bonus chapter, the ghost of a child whose father was forced to do the unthinkable when he realized the boy was evil.

## Connections

* In the detective's car he finds three newspapers with headlines about "Family finally finds peace!", "Project Eternity Revealed," and "James B. escapes death sentence." These are related to the plots of *Haunted Hotel: The X, Haunted Hotel: Eternity,* and *Haunted Hotel: Death Sentence*, respectively.
* In the basement theater is a fading advertisement inviting moviegoers to "Watch the legendary film *Haunted Hotel: The X*, coming soon!"
* The later installment *Personal Nightmare* references this game. One of James's nightmares is about Ray Turner, the villain of this adventure.

## Trivia

* The fortune teller introduces herself as Cassandra Creighton. However, in the hotel's guest book, her name is written as Cassandra Leighton.
* This is one of the only two *Haunted Hotel* games in which the main game doesn't actually have a supernatural force creating problems; the ghost of the Axiom Butcher is just a rumor. The bonus chapter, however, shows that the property really is haunted.
* Brad Ziffer, who voices James, is also the voice of Christian the piano player.

## External Links

* *Haunted Hotel: The Axiom Butcher* at the Elephant Games website
* *Haunted Hotel* at TV Tropes
* Elephant Games on Facebook