Page 11 of The Last Vampire
Only two lights are still on—those closest to the bathroom—and the rest have been shut off, drowning most of the space in darkness. All I can see of Tiffany and Salma are the whites of their eyes.
“I don’t hear anything,” Tiffany whispers.
“Let’s go,” says Salma.
We stick close to the walls as we pad carefully down the dim passage. The illumination throughout the manor has been set so low that it’s hard to make out much of our surroundings until we reach the room with the billiards tables. This is where we said we’d meet the guys.
We huddle by the table farthest from the room’s two entrances, and I spy a shadow moving in the opposite corner.
I grab Salma’s arm, pulling her under the table with me. She yanks down on Tiffany’s arm, too.
I don’t even dare to breathe as we wait.
“It’s us.”
At the sound of Trevor’s voice, the three of us straighten.
“Did you guys run into anyone?” whispers Salma.
“No,” says Zach, who brought his camera with him.
“Where do we start?” whispers Tiffany.
“Anyone seen one of those roped-off areas Minaro was talking about?” asks Trevor.
When no one else answers, I say, “I have.”
“Good eye.” Trevor’s teeth sparkle in the darkness, and even in the poor lighting, I see his twin dimples. “Lead the way,” he says, and I march us in the direction of the dining hall.
When we get to the room with the green walls and velvet couches, the air is just one shade above pitch-black. “Back there,” I say, pointing.
“I see it,” says Trevor, edging ahead of me and making it to the velvet rope first. He pulls out his phone and touches the screen, which lights up the sign:
UNDER CONSTRUCTION. KINDLY DO NOT PASS.
He holds up his phone to look beyond the warning. “I can’t see much,” he says. “Just a long hallway, I think.”
“What are we waiting for?” Salma steps over the rope and plunges into the blackness without waiting for any of us.
Typical.
Trevor chases after my friend, and I climb over the rope next. The passage smells musty, and within a few steps, I can’t see anything.
A handheld light pops on ahead of me, then another. Salma and Trevor are using their phones to see, and I tap on my flashlight app, too.
The walls fall open around us, and we’re in a wider space blanketed in so much dust that it feels like we’re walking on freshly fallen snow. As our five light beams cast around the space, they reveal grimy white tarps covering pieces of furniture and tangles of spiderwebs clouding the ceiling.
“Anyone have service?” asks Zach. “Or see any Wi-Fi networks?”
After clicking through our phones, one by one we all report no.
“All this dust is getting in my eyes,” says Tiffany. “Have we considered this might be off-limits because it’s full of asbestos?”
Just the suggestion makes my lungs feel coated with dirty air.
“I thought you wanted to be an investigative reporter,” says Salma, illuminating the stained and bruised walls. “Don’t you want to know why the passage here was so much narrower than the others? It’s like this room is being deliberately kept out of the way.”
“I like the way you think, Hayek,” says Trevor.
