“We’re sealing the building.”
No one questioned it. Maybe it was Tyler. Maybe it was the way Asher said it in a voice that didn’t leave room for a vote. Asher told them what was going to happen and they just did it.
He divided the work. “Jasper, Owen — get all the hallway, banquet, office. Every window, every vent cover. Tape the seams, not just the latch. If there’s a gap between the frame and the glass, cover it.” He pulled a fresh roll from the box and tossed it underhand to Jasper. “Overlap the edges.”
Elliot took the back hallway, the service entrances, the doors that led to the parts of the lodge guests weren’t supposed to see.
Maddie looked at Tyler, then at the tape, then back at Tyler. She picked up a roll and started on the lounge windows, working with one hand and checking on him every few strips.
By the time they finished, grey tape bordered every window, every door frame, every vent cover.
Jasper returned with Owen, noticeably more red-eyed. “Done. Every window, every vent. Owen found a bathroom exhaust fan that vented outside — we taped the whole unit.” He looked at the lounge windows, the grey strips catching the firelight. “It’s like gift-wrapping a building in paranoia.”
“It’s working,” Levi said. The temperature in the lounge had stabilized, holding its warmth, and the background weight in his chest — the residue from the room that hadn’t faded — was quieter.
Sealed spaces work. If the fog can’t get in, it can’t reach us.
It won’t last.
But we have more time.
Asher disappeared after dark.
The group settled into the lounge for the evening, all of them in one room. Owen read aloud from his book — nobody had asked him to, but nobody asked him to stop, so his voice filled the silence and the silence needed filling. Maddie sat on the couch nearest Tyler’s chair, her hand on his arm, squeezing periodically. Occasionally, he would respond to her questions, but never with anything close to what Levi was used to. Every question was met with, “I’m fine.”
Levi sat on the couch, turning over the rules.
The fog gets in through gaps and causes despair, and there is some creature that can materialize from concentrated fog. Being alone is a vulnerability, so we have to stay together...
Except Tyler is surrounded by people right now and he’s still empty. Proximity isn’t fixing what the fog did. So what does?
He waited. Five minutes. Seven. Ten. His eyes kept going to the lounge doorway, waiting for Asher to come back through it. The rules he’d just worked out were still in his head —alone is the vulnerability, together is the defense— and Asher was alone somewhere in a sealed building that still had missing staff and a creature that formed from fog.
Nobody should be alone right now. That’s the one rule I’m sure of and he just walked off without telling me.
At minute twelve, Levi stood up. Jasper raised an eyebrow. Levi shook his head —don’t ask— and got up.
He checked the hallway first. The bathroom. He checked their room and the adjoining bathroom. Not there.
The kitchen was down the hall near the sealed back entrance, and Levi’s breath came in thin clouds as he moved towards it. He pushed the door open and the smell hit him first: Bleach, sharp and chemical, but underneath it was …citrus?
Levi’s eyes went to the tile, recently cleaned with a wet sheen still drying in the corners, but the grout near the pantry doorwas darker than the surrounding grout, the stain set deep where bleach couldn’t fully reach. On the wall beside the walk-in’s entrance were two marks at chest height — small, dark and red, too high to be a spill, in the shape of something that had hit the wall at speed. The knife block on the counter was missing three knives. There was a dishtowel wedged at the base of the cabinet near the sink, keeping the door from swinging open.
His stomach dropped.
Something happened in here. Something with blood, something with knives, and someone cleaned it up.
Asher was at the counter. He’d assembled a plate — sandwiches cut diagonally, crackers fanned beside pieces of cheese, an apple sliced into even pieces. Asher himself was clean, showing no marks on his hands, no stains on the cream t-shirt, nothing on him that said he’d been part of whatever had left those marks on the wall.
Did he do this or did he find it like this?
He should have been more disturbed by the not-knowing, but his eyes were glued to the anomaly sitting on the counter that didn’t quite make sense. Beside the plate, there was a grapefruit, halved and hollowed, the rind holding a pool of oil with a twist of paper towel standing in the center. Lit. The small flame cast warm, uneven light across the counter, giving off a faint citrus smell that sat on top of the bleach.
Asher wasn’t looking at the food. He was running his hand through his hair, looking at the grapefruit.
“I couldn’t find candles,” he said softly. “I looked everywhere. Every drawer, every closet. The front desk, the storage rooms, in every cabinet.” He touched the edge of the grapefruit rind. “I made this instead. Olive oil in the rind, the pith holds the wick. I just —” He stopped, his mouth quirking to the side and his brow furrowing. “I don’t know where I learned that.”
Levi took a careful step into the kitchen. “What is this, Asher?”