Don't Open After Dark

Late afternoon light comes through the one window of Room 7 and dies on the floorboards. One bed. One desk. One small refrigerator, dark in the corner. Workbooks sit on the desk as if this were still a place a person came to live. A thin black notebook lies near your hand, pages almost empty. Beyond the doorway the corridor is wrong — a lived-in house with the sound emptied out of it.

You are on the edge of the mattress. Through the thin ticking, something hard knocks your knee. It does not belong to the bed.

Rhea Voss has not gone. The outer seal took the building before she cleared the threshold. One hand is white on the doorframe. The first smile she gave you on the stairs is still on her mouth. Her eyes keep returning to the suitcase.

"It is done," she says. Gentle. Short. The voice of someone used to calming new arrivals. "The block is sealed. I have you in Room 7 for one week."

The smile does not warm. Behind it the hall holds a killing quiet.

"Now you choose. You pool the night watch with me, and the last stores. Or you stay in here, sealed, and you do not open after dark." She looks at the suitcase once more. "Answer carefully. My patience is not long."

She waits in the doorway. Under your knee the hard thing waits too.