Alex awoke that morning to the muted hum of the hostel, a dull, mechanical drone that sounded to blend with the residual palpitation of the last room. He felt concave, as though the night had siphoned commodity from him, yet a strange coercion dallied in his casket — a need to defy what he'd encountered, to understand the presence threading itself into his knowledge.

For a long moment Maya could n’t breathe. It was n’t just sweat indurating her casket this time it was recognition, the kind that did n’t come from memory but from instinct, from commodity ancient and buried in the bone. Room 309 was n’t simply staying for her. It knew her. It had called her. And now that she was back on the third bottom, it was n’t going to let her leave again. The door stood slightly open as if it had parted just enough to taste the air. A thin, cold draft flowed from inside the room, brushing against her face like a hand drawing its fritters along her impertinence. She forced herself to sit up, her caricatures pulsing

The critter’s approach felt like graveness itself shifting, as though the hallway leaned toward Maren with each of its way, pulling her deeper into the third bottom’s empty throat. The lights flitted above in jagged beats, murk thickening like fluid, crawling along the wallpaper and wringing overhead across the ceiling. Every whim-whams in her body screamed to run, but her legs quivered, refusing to observe. The woman the critter had released lay motionless on the carpet, her hair banged out across the bottom as if firmed in skyline before dropping. Maren wanted to check if she was alive, but the critter’s figure stretching across the

Maren ran through the rain- oiled thoroughfares, her legs pulsing from the exertion and from the terror still adhering to her like a alternate skin. The girl beside her kept pace, silent, shivering, her wet hair plastered to her pale face, eyes wide and distant. The third bottom of the hostel had retreated behind them, yet its presence dallied like bank entwining into her casket, constricting her breathing. Every shadow along the alleyways and streetlights sounded to twitch in unnatural ways, intimating at shapes just beyond the edge of sight, bruiting in tones she could n't understand but felt deep in her bones. Maren’s mind

Maren stumbled over the uneven cobblestones, her shoes slick with rain and her body pulsing from prostration that refused to yield. The girl beside her moved with an creepy certainty, bases slightly making a sound as they pressed forward, weaving through alleys that sounded aged, narrower, more decayed than the last thoroughfares they had covered. The fog clung to their shoulders, belting around them like a living cloak, and

Maren pressed herself flat against the wet gravestone of the rooftop, rainwater soaking through her hair and clothes, chilling her bones, but she forced herself to remain motionless, muscles tense, every whim-whams alert. The girl beside her squinched with an nearly inhuman stillness, surveying the fog- shrouded cityscape with dark, calculating eyes. The wind swirled violently around them, carrying faint echoes of distant megacity sounds and, beneath them, the subtle, nearly inappreciable murmur of the third bottom’s presence, case and eternal. Maren felt the weight of it in her casket, a pressure that was n't physical but internal,

Maren moved through the shadowed road, rain pouring relentlessly, soaking her to the bone, her thrills squelching in the pooled water along uneven cobblestones. The alley stretched ahead, narrow and rough, walls near enough that she could feel the damp slipup against her arms as she pressed herself along the edges, a fragile hedge between her and the unseen imminence that lurked in the fog. The girl beside her moved with uncanny perfection, surveying murk, billabongs

The rain had come a roar, a grim drumming on rooftops, gutters, shattered windowpanes, and the broken asphalt beneath Maren’s thrills as she pushed forward into the narrowing road. The world around her sounded to palpitate with a deep, retired breath, the fog splashing as if alive, bending and folding in slow, unsettling swells. Every shadow moved as however stirred by some unnoticeable current, every billabong

distorted its own reflection, bending her figure into commodity stretched, stretched, wrong. Yet she moved, deliberate, counting each step, adhering to meter like a lifeline as the girl walked beside her with