She walked up the stairs slowly. They went up in a spiral that seemed to go on for far too long just to get to the next floor. She recognised the walls of the building, even though she was sure she had never been here before. She ran her hands over the textured tiles and felt nothing.
She was about to turn around and head back down the stairs when a door appeared in front of her. This wasnt how it was meant to work. The stairs were meant to continue up and a landing was supposed to be here. But the stairs stopped dead, right in front of the plain grey door, with one of those fire alarm ‘push to open’ bars across the middle. The green sticker showed how to use it.
On the other side of the door was what she expected, and this surprised her. To her right, a hallway with a bunch of doors on either side. For its length, there looked to be too many doors. On her left, the same. Directly ahead of her, on the wall opposite, was a mirror. It showed the open door and the stairway behind it. Nothing else.
This was definitely the same building. The voice in the back of her head was screaming it. But everything was wrong. Or, not wrong, but different. The colours were off. She remembered, or thought she remembered, the colours being more dull, or dirty. Wasnt the hotel abandoned? Uncleaned? Surely that meant that this was a different place.
No, that voice yelled. Look ahead. Look down the end of the hallway. The door.
She looked to the right as she stepped out of the stairwell, the door closing behind her. She didnt look at the mirror. At the far end of the hallway, perfectly lined up with her vision, was the door. She shuddered as she saw it.
It was unlike the other doors in the hallway. Those were a deep blue, a classy colour, with a black trim. They looked like hotel room doors. The one at the end of the hall did not. It was like the exterior door to an old house. Brown paint flaked off it in a wind that wasnt there. In the middle, at about head height, the number 2103 could be read in those brass letterbox numbers.
She felt another chill down her spine. She had never seen that door before but she knew it intimately. Behind that door was the nest. She had lived there, in cruel solitude, for so many years before her daughters arrived.
“No,” she said. “Thats not right. I dont have daughters.”
She was walking towards the door now, down the hallway. The lights on either side of her flickered as she passed them. Behind the door was her home. It was where she needed to be. Behind the door was her freedom. Blessed freedom. All she had to do was reach out and she would be free again.
She reached her hand out and wrapped it around the handle. As she twisted it she heard someone, something, scream. She wasnt sure what it was but it was not human. She instinctively let the handle go and it flicked back to its resting position. The screaming stopped and she looked around. There was nothing on either side of her. Just the walls of the hotel. She turned around and looked back down the hallway she had come down. The lights were going off. One by one, slowly. Behind the light was nothing but shadows. Moving shadows. Already the shadows had reached the door to the stairwell. They were flickering and pinging off as she watched.
From the pit of her stomach she felt a rising bile. She couldnt explain why but those shadows were bad. Really bad. She looked to the nearest door that wasnt the old brown one and rushed to try the handle. It rattled but didnt open the door and, just to cement everything, from behind the door that horrible wailing scream started again. This time, though, it didnt stop when she let the handle go.
She looked back at the approaching darkness, it was speeding up now. The lights were flickering out with a small explosion, shattering their light shades. She turned and ran back to the old door. Deep down she knew that this was the only one that would open. In this whole hotel, this was the only room she could enter. She grabbed the handle, ignored the screaming, and rushed into her nest, her safety. And saw what was screaming.
Davis was lounging on the sofa watching Hitch sleep. She was snoring softly and her eyelids twitched every so often. He wondered if she dreamed. Whether or not the control the elder vampire had over her extended into her sleeping life. Whether or not that was a valid way to help her regain some control.
He took a bite of his apple and turned his attention back to the magazine he had been reading. It was an old motorcycle one; at least fifteen years old. But it was one of the few magazines here he had read less than a dozen times.
He sighed and kept reading the article about some new – old now, probably – engine technology that was going to reinvent the roadbike. He knew this article would put him to sleep; it had done so before, but he kept reading. He had to do this for Hitch. His only other suggestion – killing the elder vampire and hoping for the best – had been shot down so many times he had actually stopped suggesting it. So he kept reading the most boring article and watching his former coworker sleep while she was strapped to one of those hand trolleys.
Just as he got to the part of the article that always made him drowsy – the technical aspects of whatever they were talking about – he heard Hitch start to struggle in her restraints. Assuming that she was waking up and realising she was still tied down, he threw the magazine to the floor and turned to greet her.
Her eyes were firmly shut. Her face was contorted in fear as she wrestled fruitlessly against her ties. For once, he was actually afraid she would break out of them. He was about to throw something at her when the phone next to him rung.
“Davis,” he said.
“Its Viola,” she purred back to him. “What is the status of our little friend right now?” she asked.
“It looks like she is having one hell of a nightmare,” he replied, his eyes on Hitch. “Shes straining against the binds and struggling against something. Why?”
“The other three guests are in the midst of a similar thing,” she replied. “I was under the impression that vampires, as a rule, do not dream.”
“Then should we wake them?” he asked.
“Hmm,” Viola said slowly, causing Davis to grind his teeth. “What do you think?”
“If they dont dream, then something has got into one of their heads,” he said quickly. “That means something external. Where have they each been lately? Have any of them been given the opportunity to become host to … something?”
“Only your little Hitch,” Viola said softly. “Your trip to Montana.”
“Montana, ok,” Davis said thinking. “The unicorn and the little girl. She said something about a bigger threat. The unicorn was protecting her from something bigger.”
“I remember,” Viola said. “What scares little girls bad enough to bring a unicorn out from its hiding?”
“What scared you when you were a girl?” he asked stupidly.
“Now is not the time to be flirting with me, Davis,” she said in a drawl that made his knees weak. “Besides which, there is nothing that scares me.”
“Boogeymen,” Davis said, ignoring Viola as much as he could. “Older siblings? Ghosts?”
“Nightmares,” Viola suggested.
“Sure, bad dreams,” Davis said. “But dreams are dreams, they cant hurt you.”
“These arent dreams,” Viola said. Her voice was now tight and focused, which allowed Davis to focus.
“Right,” Davis said. Which is why we need to find out whats causing it.”
“You men are so stupid sometimes,” she replied. “Vampires do not dream,” she said.
“So these arent dreams,” he replied.
“What can enter in through dreams, or what could be mistaken for dreams?” she said.
It sat on the edge of the bed. Its limbs were long and bent at the wrong angles. It screamed at her and reached out one of its many limbs towards her face.
“No,” she screamed, and with an unusual cooperation from her body, she fell to the floor and rolled over towards the other side of the room.
“Let me in,” the creature hissed, the voice coming from within the screaming. “Let me in,” it repeated as one of its limbs lifted off the bed in a jerking, testing motion.
She scrambled across the floor, away from the creature, as it placed its foot where she had been laying. She rushed to where her memories told her the window would be. The window out of the hotel. The freedom she desired so badly.
She pulled the curtains back and the only thing there was a brick wall. She turned and the creature was staring at her from across the room. It was between her and the door. But even if she made it out of the room, whatever was out there in the shadows was still waiting for her.
She felt a tug on her shirt. Something was pulling at her clothes. She swiped her hand behind her to free whatever she had been caught on and found nothing. She took a chance and looked back. Nothing. Just the wall. No hooks or protrusions. Nothing for her clothes to catch on. She felt the tug again. She wasnt imagining it, was she? The creature took a step towards her, its weight almost always on one or two of its spindly limbs. It didnt look like it actually knew how to walk, and was just learning now.
“Wake the fuck up,” a voice screamed. The creature didnt seem to notice as it kept on creeping towards her. “Hitch for the love of god, wake up before it touches you.”
Davis was slapping Hitch about the face as hard as he could. Bright red marks had appeared on each cheek and she still slept.
“Can those thing keep her asleep?”
“You never had sleep paralysis?” the other analyst, the one whos name Davis didnt know, said. “They can pretty much make her, well, paralysed.”
“But you wake up, right? Thats the thing, yeah? You wake up and you cant move. Why isnt she waking up?”
“Because shes a vampire, maybe?” the other one said.
“Dont call her that,” Davis hissed.
“Maybe Viola hasnt woken up the others yet,” he suggested.
Before Davis could answer this, Hitch took a gasp of air and started coughing. Davis jumped back before she could realise he was physically touching her and waited.
“Hitch?” he said cautiously. “You ok there?”
“No,” she hissed in anger and hatred. “It touched me. You took me to that place and it got in. Now its free again and it can jump into humans as well as vampires. You let loose a sleep paralysis demon into this facility.”