Dru froze in place.
Footsteps were coming toward her, as if someone had entered from the lawn and was headed toward the trash bins.
It’s probably Chester, she told herself frantically.
But Chester had been up all night working on the generator. And the man valued his sleep.
She had just reached the little alcove where Chester had been working on the shelves the other night.
She ducked into it, hoping whoever was coming hadn’t heard her.
The footsteps rang out, closer and closer.
Dru had a sudden epiphany. She had found that secret door when she was here the other day, maybe she could hide in it until the danger had passed.
She pushed the panel that she had discovered by accident, and heard the corresponding groan of stone sliding against stone.
Dru held her breath and listened, but the rhythm of the footsteps was unchanged.
She stuck her fingers into the open gap and pried.
A door creaked open and she tried to move into the hidden area behind. With the shelf partially blocking the entrance, it was a tight fit, and her jacket snagged on the edge for a second before she freed it, slipping inside, then pushing the door closed behind her all but an inch, not wanting to get trapped in the dark alcove.
She moved away from the opening and pressed her back to the wall.
There was another groan as the wall before her slid the rest of the way shut in the darkness.
Dru bit back a scream.
You’re not trapped. There has to be another stone in here that you can push to get out, she told herself silently.
But her claustrophobia clutched her stomach with hard, icy fingers and sent sweat sliding down her spine, despite the cold.
It was impossible now to hear if the footsteps were growing closer. The stone blocked out too much sound.
Dru wasn’t sure whether to scream at the top of her lungs for help getting out, or hide for fear of being discovered.
It would be just her luck to be rescued by the murderer and end up joining Brian Thompson in that carpet, waiting for the rats.
She closed her eyes and forced herself to focus on her breathing.
One hundred breaths in and out, and then you can look for the button.
Dru made it almost to fifty before she broke and tapped the phone for light.
She was in some sort of storage closet. There were a few empty wooden pallets on the floor and nothing else.
She pressed the stones all around the door she had entered but nothing happened.
Her hands began to shake, and she put the phone back into her pocket so as not to drop it as she scoured every wall in the room, pressing each stone, one by one.
What if it’s not a single stone? What if it’s some kind of combination?
She pushed the thought aside. Her heart thundered in her ears and there was a bitter taste in her mouth, like old pennies.
She worked her way around another corner to the back wall of the room.
A single stone moved under her hand and she nearly cried with relief. But when she slipped the phone out again, the wall was still in place.
Turning around, she saw that the back wall of the room had opened into a narrow corridor.
The stones were sweating, and she could only see a foot or two ahead in the weak light of the phone screen.
She turned on the flashlight feature, though she was afraid she would drain the battery.
There was still just a narrow tunnel as far as she could see.
The idea of squeezing into an even tighter space threatened to overwhelm her.
But what choice did she have?
Out of the frying pan, into the fire, she thought to herself as she set off down the tunnel.
At least the body was on the other side of the wall now.
She was pretty sure zombies couldn’t activate secret doors.
10
Dru walked on and on through the dark, damp tunnel.
She had the sense that she was walking up an incline, but it could have been an illusion brought on by exhaustion and terror.
Surely, the hotel wasn’t big enough for her to have been walking as far as it seemed she had.
But she had lost her sense of time and direction almost immediately. Her whole focus was on assuring herself that that walls weren’t closing in, and she wasn’t going to get stuck.
Dru dragged herself onward. There had to be a door soon.
She had put the phone in her pocket, and was tracing the walls with her fingertips to stay on track. The idea of running out of battery life while she was still in the tunnels was too terrifying to risk.
When her foot hit a stone wall in the darkness in front of her, she cried out.
The sound echoed eerily through the space and she clenched her hands into fists to stop herself from breaking apart.
I’m trapped. I’m trapped. I’m trapped.
But while her mind was melting, her hands explored the wall.
Something was there, something wooden.
She pulled out the phone and took a look.
A rickety wooden ladder had been built into the wall directly in front of her. It clung to the stone surface and led up into the darkness.
I can’t climb that…
But she knew that she would climb it.
“I feel like fucking Alice in Wonderland,” she murmured to herself. “Except I’m going in the wrong direction.”
The rungs wobbled a little, but it held up. She climbed on and on.
Suddenly, there was no more ladder when she reached up.
The wall above her ended, taking a ninety-degree turn and becoming more stone floor. Somewhere ahead, she spotted a sliver of light, and her heart rejoiced.
“At least I wasn’t coming from the other direction,” she told herself, shuddering at the idea of stepping over the edge and falling in the darkness.
She pulled herself all the way up to the floor above and turned the phone flashlight on.
Whatever came next, she wasn’t going to stumble into it.
The corridor narrowed dramatically, until it scraped her shoulders and she had to turn sideways to keep going.
Breathe, Dru, breathe…
She turned off the flashlight and put it back in her pocket. If she dropped it at this point, she wouldn’t be able to lower herself down to pick it up again.
The walls seemed to press in tighter as she inched along.
She wondered how tightly she would press herself in to get to that sliver of light. Would she wedge herself into the walls so tightly that she couldn’t get out again?
Just as the terrifying thought threatened to consume her, the corridor widened again.
She moved faster, eager to get to the light and out of the tunnel.
Hopefully out.
Something crackled under her foot, but she didn’t bother to investigate it.
She moved closer to the light that she could now see was clearly coming from under a door-shaped opening made of thick wood.
Thank God.
But when she pushed, she found the door was sealed.
“No,” she moaned to herself.
Once again, she began pressing stones all over the walls. Nothing opened, so she went to the bottom stones and then finally the ones up higher than her head.
Her hand caught on a jagged piece of stone and there was a groaning sound.
Dru held her breath and watched the light.
Slowly, slowly the ancient wood slid sideways, revealing light so bright she had to cover her eyes for a moment.
When she opened them, the door was gone.
And she was standing in a stone tunnel that opened into her own bedroom.