Mistral Bed and Breakfast

(A short story. First released in 2016.)

Rory dropped her suitcase on the weed-choked earth and slammed her car boot closed. Finding Mistral Bed and Breakfast had taken longer than she’d expected, and the sun was already creeping behind the gnarled pine trees at the back of the property.

It looks the part, at least. Rory took the small digital camera out of her pocket, leaned against the side of her worn-down car, and snapped a photo. Half the hotels she stayed at were too modern and sterilised to have any sort of atmosphere; the other half were just plain depressing. Mistral, though, could have fallen out of a horror film. Streaks of dying light sliced over the cracked stone house at the centre of the property. Two stories of bedrooms extended from both sides of the main building. Their off-white paint had come away in huge flakes, and one of the rooms was missing its door.

It’s strange that there weren’t any photos of this place online. Maybe no one else could find it. Although its lane had speared off a main freeway, the B&B didn’t have any signage to attract guests, and the building wasn’t visible from the road. Rory had assumed the lane led to a private property the first three times she’d driven past it.

“Want a room?”

The voice was alarmingly close, and Rory sucked in a breath as she turned. A woman, bone-thin and wearing a faded ankle-length yellow dress, stood in the clearing. She held something silvery in her hand, and a stab of shock hit Rory as she recognised a cleaver.

“Rooms are fifty a night. Breakfast included.” The woman’s sunken eyes didn’t blink as they stared at Rory, but her voice was sharp and quick.

If she hadn’t promised her blog readers that she would spend the night in Mistral Bed and Breakfast, Rory would have been sorely tempted to slink back into her car and endure the four-hour drive back to her home. Instead, she fixed a wide smile on her face and said, “Sounds great. Book me in.”

“This way.” The woman turned towards the main building, and Rory caught sight of a limp, bloodied shape held in the woman’s other hand.

It took her a second to recognise it as a decapitated chicken. She must have a farm behind the house. It’s a long drive to the nearest shopping centre, so she probably tries to be self-sufficient. Come to think of it, it’s a long drive to anywhere.

Rory cleared her throat as they climbed the porch leading to the stone house. “I had some trouble finding the right turnoff.”

“Most people do.” The woman held the door open just long enough for Rory to duck through, then she discarded the dead chicken and the bloodied hatchet onto a bucket by the doorstop.

Inside, the house was oppressively dim. Rory could make out the outline of a grandfather clock and a large dark-wood desk. She waited for her hostess to turn on the lights, but the woman didn’t. Instead, she rounded the desk, pulled out a guest book, and shoved it towards Rory. “Name, address, phone number. How many nights?”

“Just the one.” Rory scribbled her details, then glanced farther up the page. The most recent guest was from three months before. In fact, an entire year’s worth of visitors fit onto a single page. “Ah… business is a bit quiet, isn’t it?”

The woman simply drew the book out from under Rory’s hands and slammed it closed. “We get by. Do you want a downstairs room?”

Rory glanced towards the windows. Thin white curtains didn’t help the room’s starvation of light, but a glimpse of her car and its boxes of equipment was comforting. “Actually, I’m here because I run a ghost research blog. One of my readers requested I visit. Have you noticed a presence or supernatural phenomenon in any of your rooms?”

The woman didn’t speak for a long time. Her cold, sunken eyes stared without blinking from behind stray strands of grey hair, but Rory thought she saw the woman’s lips pull more tightly together, as though she’d scented something unpleasant.

“There are no ghosts here,” she said at last, and her voice was definitely tighter than it had been before.

Rory gave a quick nod of acceptance. “That’s okay. Put me in the room with the best view, then.”

Her host didn’t speak or move. Rory was starting to worry she’d inadvertently insulted her—not every hotel owner liked the idea of being on a ghost hunting blog—and quickly pulled her wallet out of her jacket pocket. “It was fifty for the night, wasn’t it?”

“And breakfast.” The woman’s lips twisted as she took the cash, but her tone had returned to its even, emotionless cadence. “Room eight. Follow me.”

She snagged a key off a dusty keyring behind the desk then led Rory back out the front door. The sun had almost entirely disappeared behind the horizon, leaving the wooded landscape in a surreal state of twilight. Rory grabbed her suitcase from beside the car and followed the hotel owner up an external flight of stairs to the second-floor rooms, then to the farthest room along—the one at the end of the block.

“Breakfast is between seven and nine.” The woman’s eyes fixed on Rory, forceful and insistent. “Checkout is by ten. I’ll knock on your door to let you know when it’s bedtime; once you hear my knock, don’t leave your room until sunrise.”

Rory had reached out to take the key, but stopped at the last statement. Her face didn’t know whether to form a smile or a frown and awkwardly managed both at once. “Sorry, was that a jo—”

“Don’t cause trouble.” The thin woman thrust the key into Rory’s hand then clattered down the stairs. Rory watched her until she disappeared into the main building, then exhaled heavily and turned to unlock her door.

* * *

I’ve stayed in a lot of dodgy hotels since I started this blog. There was that place in Carthage that had cockroaches coming out of the taps. When the heater in the Moors Point B&B broke, I thought I might actually freeze to death. And there’s no forgetting the multiple used condoms I found in that sleazy Kettletree place. But this may just be my first ever one-star hotel.

Rory paused, her fingers lingering over her laptop’s keyboard. It was a tough choice to know what to write next; should she mention how she was sitting cross-legged on the bed on account of that being the only furniture in the room? Should she describe the dust that coated every surface, the suspicious stain she’d uncovered behind the bed’s headboard, or the way the light occasionally flickered before stabilising with a dull hiss?

The room was small, and it felt even smaller once her equipment was set up. A video camera sat on a tripod in the corner opposite the door. The second, higher-definition motion-detection camera, which Rory would turn on shortly before going to bed, would activate only if it sensed movement in the room. An EMF recorder sat on top of her travel case. Mistral Bed and Breakfast didn’t offer any wardrobes, so Rory had resigned herself to wearing crumpled clothes the next day.

The equipment was largely for show. When she returned home, she would edit the video footage down to a choice couple of minutes: reaction shots of her exploring the poky room then a summary of her experience recorded either during breakfast or in the car drive home. Neither the motion camera nor the EMF recorder had seen much action since she’d bought them two years previously.

Rory made no secrets about her belief in the supernatural—or, rather, her lack of belief. Her shtick was that she was a sceptic rigorously investigating—and debunking—haunted hotels. When she’d started her blog, she’d expected to build a following of like-minded readers. It had been a huge surprise to get fanmail from people who claimed to firmly believe in ghosts.

Rory worked hard to make sure each post was entertaining. She accepted suggestions for hotels she should visit—that was how she’d ended up at dead-end Mistral—and dutifully investigated each location as thoroughly as she could in a single night. It was fun for her, and the readers ate it up. In the time she’d been debunking haunted locations, she’d met the full gamut of hotel owners. Some didn’t want their reputation tainted. Others wanted to embrace notoriety and eagerly asked her what she’d found. And one very memorable owner had tried to fake a haunting, complete with sound effects and rattling doorhandles. That location had produced Rory’s most-read post.

A sharp knock on the door startled her, and Rory stood. “Hello?”

“It’s bedtime,” the strange hotel owner called. “Stay in your room until morning.”

Rory turned to the camera and gave it a bemused reaction shot. She still wasn’t sure if the woman was joking or being serious, but she called back, “Okay. Good night, sleep tight.”

There was no reply, but a strange, scraping noise came through the thin door. Rory frowned, picked the camera off its tripod, and carried it to near the door so that it would pick up the noise. Wet sticking noises punctuated the scrapes, almost like a paintbrush.

Rory held her breath for a beat as she listened to the noise, then she called, “Hello?”

A dull thud like a wooden object being dropped into a bucket was followed by footsteps moving down the stairwell. Rory waited until she was certain her host had gone, then she opened the door.

“Oh, what the hell?”

Rory glanced over the rail that bordered the stairwell to make sure she was alone, then hurried to change the settings on her camera so that the door would be visible in the pale moonlight.

She panned the camera across the door then stepped forward so that she would be in the shot. “Okay, it’s eleven thirty at night, and I just got my ‘go to bed’ knock. But look what she did to my door before she left. I swear this wasn’t here when I checked in.”

Rory repositioned the camera to film the door again. A large X had been smeared over the surface, all four corners touching the edges of the frame. It was hard to be sure in the dim light, but the liquid looked red. Rory dabbed a finger on one of the dribbles.

“It’s wet,” she said, rubbing her finger and thumb together. “Kind of… uh… tacky. Not smooth like paint. Guys, I think this might be blood.”

A hysterical laugh built inside her chest, but Rory clamped her lips shut before it could escape. The main building was close, and she didn’t want to attract her host’s ire.

She slipped back inside her room, returned the camera to its tripod, and moved into the cramped bathroom to wash her hand. The dingy yellow towel hung beside the sink looked dusty, so Rory dried her hands on her jeans as she returned to the main room.

What did I do to earn an X on my door? And if that really was blood, where did she get it from? The memory of the headless chicken answered the what, but did little to solve the why.

Rory was starting to suspect she’d stumbled into a hoax. If Mistral had so few guests, a desperate owner might try to drum up business any way she could—including faking a haunting. Ghost tours were a surprisingly healthy industry, and Rory knew of more than one hotel that survived on curious thrill-seekers.

An anonymous commenter had left the request to visit Mistral. While the bed-and-breakfast didn’t seem to have technology more advanced than a radio—Rory’s room didn’t even have a TV—it wasn’t impossible to imagine the hotel owner using a library’s computers to submit the comment or even asking one of her friends to do it for her.

No matter how or why Rory had ended up there, it would all be good fuel for her blog. The house’s atmosphere was the perfect level of neglected and unsettling that her readers craved, and the hoax would provide an addictive narrative.

On the flipside, it meant she would probably have to pull an all-nighter to document the experience. Rory sighed, stretched, and pulled a packet of nuts and a bottle of water out of her bag. She was craving caffeine, but her room had no kettle.

I’d be better off if I were camping, she thought ruefully as she chewed on a peanut. At least then, I could have a fire.

* * *

Rory lifted her head from her laptop and rubbed at her sore eyes. It wasn’t long past midnight, and she’d turned the room’s light off and dimmed her computer screen to give the impression that she’d gone to sleep. If the hotel owner was planning to fake a haunting, Rory wasn’t going to make the job easy.

Something crunched below her window. Rory held her breath and listened; what sounded like footsteps moved through the yard behind her room. Being careful not to make too much noise, Rory rose and crept towards the small window. The long white curtains obstructing her view would also help keep her hidden. She leaned as close to the glass as she dared and peered into the property’s backyard.

As she’d suspected, a large vegetable patch and chicken coop took up much of the clearing. Tall trellises cut through the moonlight, creating spikes of black over the ground. A solitary chopping block stood near the building, where an axe protruded from the log. Rory squinted to see the woman, but as far as she could tell, the yard was empty.

She stepped away from the window and was about to return to her computer when a hard noise stopped her. Breath held, Rory returned to the view of the yard.

A man stood at the chopping block. As Rory watched, he lifted the axe and brought it down in a long arc to cleave a slice of wood in half. He then bent, picked up a fresh log, and put it into position.

How didn’t I see him before? Frowning, Rory reached into her pocket for her camera. Is he the hostess’s husband? And why’s he chopping wood after midnight? Is this meant to disturb me?

His back to the window, he brought the axe down in a series of quick arcs to turn the log into kindling. He seemed just as thin and wiry as his wife, and from what Rory could see, his clothes were no less dirty. Rory lifted the camera to her eye, focussed it on the figure, waited for him to raise the axe, then snapped a photo.

Light burst across the scene, and Rory swore under her breath as she ducked below the window. She’d forgotten to turn off the flash.

Despite the sharp embarrassment spreading heat across her face, Rory lifted herself to her knees to peer over the windowsill. The axe stood in the chopping block, and the yard was empty. She frowned. He’s disappeared again—but where to? I didn’t hear any footsteps.

As she sank back below the window frame, she clicked the camera’s button to retrieve the most recent photo. It was, to her frustration, slightly blurry. Shock had moved Rory’s hand too soon, and not much of the figure was clear except for his eyes. He’d somehow sensed her and turned just as the picture was being taken. She could make out a grizzled, twisted face fitted with two bright reflective lights where his eyes should have been.

Rory’s mouth was dry. She put the camera aside and went into the bathroom to drink from its sink. It’s not unusual for light to reflect off eyes. You’ve seen it a hundred times before.

She splashed water across her face. It was cold enough to sting. She still wasn’t desperate enough to use the towel hung beside the sink, so Rory wiped her face on her jacket’s sleeve instead. Every time she blinked, she saw the gaunt, sagging face and its flashing-light eyes as though the memory had been seared onto the back of her eyelids.

“Stop being a baby.” Rory stalked into the main room, though she stayed well away from the curtains. “They won’t need to try and scare you if you do their job for them.”

She sniffed and folded her hands across her chest. The laptop waited for her to finish the half-formed blog post, but she knew she wouldn’t be able to focus on it. All of a sudden, the dark, narrow room felt claustrophobic. It was a cage, where she was expected to stay until morning—where the hotel’s owners would be free to poke her and torment her like some trapped animal.

Not tonight, creepy hotel owners. Tonight, I write the rules.

Rory plucked her video camera off its tripod and checked the batteries were full. She’d planned to wait until two or three in the morning before venturing out to explore the rest of the hotel, but the suffocative sensation was growing so strong that she thought she might scream if she didn’t get some space.

She checked the window a final time before leaving. The backyard was empty; the axe still protruded from its chopping block. The handle cast a painfully long shadow, but the axeman had vanished. Rory crossed to the front door, switched her camera to night vision, and turned the handle.

Cold air skittered over her exposed skin. Rory hesitated on her room’s threshold and scanned the front yard for motion. Her car still stood in the driveway, alien and threatening in the dark, but she thought she was alone. Not even the highway’s lights were visible.

Rory blew out a slow breath and inched the door closed behind herself. Despite her attempts to keep her footfalls light, she still made more noise than she was comfortable with as she edged along the walkway.

It took only a dozen steps to reach the door to Room 7. Rory tried the handle and wasn’t surprised to find it was locked. She kept moving to the stairwell and took it to the ground floor.

When she’d gotten her first view of the building, she’d noticed one of the rooms was missing a door. If she had to guess, she would say a previous guest might have broken it—and because months had passed between her and Mistral’s last visitor, the room’s interior was bound to be a mess. Rory was counting on it. A desolate, environment-damaged room would provide the drama her readers craved.

At the ground floor, she paused to listen. Except for an insect humming in the weeds and a bat’s chatter in a far-off tree, the night was uncomfortably quiet. She wasn’t naïve enough to assume the hotel owners had gone to sleep, but she hoped they wouldn’t expect her to leave her room. She didn’t want to be caught before she’d documented as much as she could.

The lights in the main building were off. Rory lifted her camera to the windows as she passed and tried to make out the details through the screen. The distorted green view was grainy, but she could see dining tables set with cutlery and glasses, apparently waiting for guests that never came. As she kept moving, she passed a sitting room with a cold fireplace, three lounge chairs, and an empty bookcase.

Rory had started to pan her camera to the outside world when motion froze her. Something had shifted near the back of the room, only its silhouette visible in the poor light. The breath seized in Rory’s chest as she squinted at the camera’s screen. Was that the hotel owner? Her husband? Someone else?

She could no longer see the figure. In the twisted green-tinted world of her camera, all she could make out was the empty sitting room, a curtained window, and a hallway leading deeper into the house.

It might have been the curtains moving in the breeze. Rory licked her lips and tried not to feel how still the air was. There’s no one there. It had to be the curtains.

A branch snapped, and Rory swiveled to face the forest. The yard was bare, but the pine forest threatened to host infinite, invisible figures in its shadowy depths.

Sweat trickled down the back of Rory’s neck despite the cold air. Part of her wanted to run back to her room, but a mix of stubbornness and curiosity kept her rooted. I’ve visited nearly a hundred supposedly haunted hotels in two years. I’ll be damned if this poky little place is the one that beats me.

Her chest was tight, but she forced air into her lungs. The room with the missing door was close. She refused to run, but kept her steps brisk as she strode towards it. The open door was a black gaping hole, lifeless, soulless, a space that not even the moonlight could penetrate. Rory wanted to hesitate on the threshold, but she knew any pause would allow the creeping misgivings to hook their claws into her. She stepped inside.

Light came through the broken window at the back of the room, but it wasn’t enough to bring the space into relief. Rory blindly felt for her camera’s buttons and turned on its external light. The beam was smaller and dimmer than she would have wanted, but it worked well enough to expose her surroundings.

The elements had been less kind to the room than she’d expected. Dead leaves were scattered over water-stained carpet. Patchy discolouration—mould or something else, she wasn’t sure—grew up the walls. As she approached the bed, she saw the mattress had been pulled off and jammed against the wall near the empty window frame. At first glance, it was possible to imagine it had been used as a barricade. At second glance, Rory felt herself overwhelmed by a deep sense of dread. The mattress had been torn by either a knife or claws, and thick wads of stuffing spilled out like congealed blood from a stabbing victim.

“Can you guys see this?” She spoke in a hushed whisper as she ran the camera’s view over the ravaged mattress. “What the hell happened in this room?”

A scraping, dragging noise came from behind her. Rory impulsively pressed the button to turn her camera’s light off and swivelled to face the open doorway. She couldn’t see anything, and the noise didn’t repeat.

It might’ve been leaves caught up by the wind. Again, she was aware of how calm the night air was. But it was hard to come up with any other explanation. The outside world was so quiet that her ears had adjusted to the near-painful silence. If someone was trying to approach, she would have heard their footsteps.

We’ll go in a minute, she promised herself. We might not even stick around for breakfast—just grab our laptop and jump in the car. Get one or two more minutes of footage and then we’re out of this place.

She flicked the camera’s light back on and leaned close so that her whispers would be audible. “I thought I heard something outside. I’m not going to lie, guys—this is pretty freaky. I…”

Her voice dropped to silence as she saw a spray of something dark beside the door. She frowned and moved towards it, aware that her hands were shaking so badly that the camera’s image would be blurry. There was no mistaking what the stain looked like, though: blood, arcing in a rough line away from the empty doorframe, as though a person had been gutted while trying to flee.

Rory reached a shaking finger towards the marks and brushed one of them. It was dry. Like flicking a light switch, her mind had turned from thinking about taking film for the benefit of her subscribers and moved to the far more awful idea that she might need to hand her recordings over to the police. The rational, grounded part of her mind tried to say it was all an elaborate ruse, that the room had been decorated like a crime scene for her benefit, but the panicked side didn’t believe it. You don’t go through all of this effort to impress one small blog, it said.

Rory slowly lowered the camera to shine its light on the stain on the floor. She’d initially mistaken it for water discolouration, but now, she realised the stain spread into the room. Dribbles led into the bathroom.

Her nerves were begging her to leave, but she took a hesitant step towards the back room. A desperate need to know what the blood led to gripped her and refused to let her go. She needed to see what the shadowed room hid—and record it—even if every second she spent in the building made her prickle like a hundred invisible spiders crept across it.

She moved towards the bathroom. Her camera’s weak light provided only brief glimpses of the space at a time: cracked tiles; the sink broken off its pipes and discarded on the ground; the shattered shower door. Once inside the room, she could hear a slow, heavy dripping coming from one of the exposed pipes. Damp air filled Rory’s nose and made her snort to clear it.

Her light flashed across the mirror, blinding her momentarily. She pointed the camera towards the ground and squinted. The mirror reflected half of the bathroom, part of the hotel room, the front door… and a tall, unnaturally thin figure standing in the exit.

Rory’s heart lurched. She opened her mouth, but fear froze her. She couldn’t even muster the momentum to turn. Is it the man? Has he been following me?

He stood perfectly still, blocking Rory’s escape, only his silhouette visible in the moonlight. Rory’s mind spun out of control. Part of her wanted to confront him, either to demand an explanation for the room’s state or to laugh off the situation, but the other half was terrified for her safety. Someone died in this room, her mind insisted. You’re going to be next.

The figure tilted its head. Rory shrieked. At the same moment, the mirror shattered. Spiderweb shaped cracks spread across the surface, distorting her horrified expression.

She turned, camera held ahead of her body as though it might provide protection. The doorway was empty.

No. Impossible. He was right there—

Her mouth was dry, and nausea tightened her stomach. Only one thought persisted: Get outside. Get to the car. Get away.

She took a hesitant step towards the door, blood rushing in her ears, her chest so tight that she thought her heart might be crushed. Don’t go that way, her subconscious pleaded. He’s waiting for you—axe in hand, probably preparing to mix your blood with the spray already adorning the doorway.

A soft cold wind brushed across the back of Rory’s neck. She turned to see the window behind her, its glass long fallen from its frame. He wouldn’t expect her to leave that way. He wouldn’t be fast to give chase.

Rory moved too quickly to second-guess herself. The window was narrow but low; she leapt as she neared it, hit the sill, and rolled over. The hard ground forced the air from her lungs. She bit back on a cry and curled into a ball as the rush of pain subsided. The impact would leave bruises, but at least she was no longer trapped in the too-small room.

Get up. Run.

She scrambled to her feet and noticed, with a dull shock, she still held the camera. Its screen had cracked from the impact but it continued to record, and its light acted as a make-shift torch.

Rory squinted to see she was in the backyard, not far from the trellises and their ominous shadows. What’s the fastest way to the car? Left? She turned towards the building’s corner and stumbled back. The tall, gaunt figure stood there, one hand resting against the building’s stones, barely visible in the darkness save for a flash of light crossing his eyes.

Rory turned and ran. Her breaths came in harsh, quick gasps, and her heart thundered. She saw the chopping block ahead, its axe protruding like a twisted art display, and noticed, with dull surprise, that the handle was covered in cobwebs.

Something snagged around her ankle. Rory cried out as she tumbled to the ground then twisted herself around to face her attacker. She expected to see him looming over her, his wild eyes flashing in the moonlight, but he still stood by the end of the building.

She looked down. Her ankle had become tangled in some kind of wire protruding from the dirt. The loops of metal cord extended through the yard, sprouting up erratically like a deformed, dead weed. Rory tried to kick herself free, but the loops only tightened. She exhaled a curse and dug her fingers under the cord. It was fine, but refused to break.

A harsh, repetitive bird screech came from the chicken coop behind her, but the sound was abruptly silenced. Rory lifted her eyes. The man had begun to pace towards her, his long gait lurching and unnatural. She could make out the grizzled stubble and flashing eyes catching in her camera’s light, but his expression was unreadable.

“No—” Rory pulled against the cables. They dug into her skin, growing excruciatingly tight.

The man drew ever closer, each step measured and patient. As he passed the chopping block, he reached out to pull the axe free. As it came away from the log, the cobwebs about its handle sloughed off. A thick, dark liquid spread up from the blade’s tip, running against gravity until the tool was drenched.

“No!” Rory couldn’t breathe, could barely see. She was vaguely aware that a second figure approached from behind. The wife, her mind said, but her brain was too clogged by terror to appreciate anything else. She couldn’t escape from either figure; all she could manage was to lift her arms to cover and protect her head.

“Be calm,” the woman said, and Rory cried out as a heavy hand landed on her shoulder. “I killed a fresh one for you.”

Rory peeked from under her arms to see the woman at her side. She thought she might be hallucinating. Blood, bright red even in the thin moonlight, sprayed across the woman’s gaunt features. A droplet trickled down across her eye, but she didn’t blink it away.

She lifted a twitching, writhing bundle, and Rory saw the woman held a chicken, so recently dead that its legs still kicked. Blood dribbled from the severed neck. The hotel owner raised it above Rory’s forehead, and Rory shrieked, trying to twist away from the pulsing, hot liquid running over her.

“We have a contract, my husband and I.” The woman’s voice was low, but she spoke each word clearly. “He stays on this land and protects me from intruders, but he doesn’t touch those who have been marked with chicken blood.”

Rory tried to pull away from the chicken, but the hand on her shoulder was a vice. The blood ran down her face, onto her chest, and soaked into her clothes. She spat three words out between clenched teeth. “Let me go.”

“Give me your camera.” The woman discarded the chicken, its twitching body rolling several feet before coming to rest. The hotel owner held a bloody hand towards Rory, and she placed the camera into her palm.

There was a screeching crack, then the camera’s broken shell fell alongside the chicken. “No footage,” the woman muttered, then finally released Rory’s shoulder. “Now go back to your room. Don’t leave again until sunrise.”

Rory looked down and saw the wires had vanished—not just from around her leg, but from the yard. The man stood nearby, watching her. Light flashed across his eyes. Then he turned and began walking towards the forest. He’d vanished into the darkness within ten paces.

The strange woman watched her husband leave, seemingly unconcerned by the blood splattered across her face. Rory held still only long enough to be sure her limbs would obey her, then she was on her feet and scrambling around the building.

She didn’t return to her room—not even to collect the laptop—but pulled her keys from her jacket pocket as she raced towards her car. She barrelled into the driver’s seat, jammed the key into the ignition, and stomped on the accelerator.

As the car screeched down the Mistral’s driveway towards the highway, Rory spared the bed-and-breakfast one final glance in her rear-view mirror. To her horror, the house had changed. It had once been decrepit; it was now in ruins. Graffiti had been sprayed across the walls, the windows had been broken in, and the roof on one side had collapsed. Decades-old crime-scene tape was crumpled around the area like discarded streamers. And standing at the front door, watching her leave, were the two gaunt, dead-eyed proprietors.

Rory turned her eyes back on the road, her breathing ragged, and focussed on speeding back to the safety of civilisation as quickly as her car would allow her while the warm chicken blood continued to drip down her face.