Basil’s cell phone cast a watery digital glow over the walls as Amy made her way to the stairs, her senses hyperalert. At the top she turned down a hallway lined with office doors. Each was hiding something, each was on the verge of swinging open and showing her something she didn’t want to see. In the cell phone’s glow, she saw that the walls were riddled with cracks, weeping water, their paint bubbling, flaking, sloughing off and peeling to the floor in drifts.

Something darted across the floor—another rat, wet and filthy, racing along the edge of the wall and vanishing into darkness. Amy forced herself to calm down. Rats were the least of her worries right now. They were just more scripted disorientation. She breathed deeply and continued down the hallway. And then she heard it. A gentle scrape from behind one of the doors.

There is no point in being scared anymore, Amy told herself as she watched her hand reach for the handle and turn the knob. The door swung open. Inside was a supply closet filled with reams of paper and black markers, staplers and printer ink cartridges, everything lined up in neat and orderly stacks on the shelves.

But at the bottom of the back wall, a hole had been torn in the drywall. It was surrounded by scratches, the edges smeared with something dark. A cold rancid wind vented from the void, and something on the floor caught her eye. Amy knelt down and picked it up. A small tube of Blistex Medicated Berry lip balm. Amy dropped it and backed into the hall.

She had a feeling that the break area was going to be empty when she got there, and she was right. The first thing she did was open the first-aid kit bolted to the wall beside the door. Relief washed over her when she saw the yellow flashlight clipped inside. She yanked it out and clicked it on, and suddenly the room was full of daylight. Amy slid Basil’s cell phone into her pocket and ran her flashlight over the walls. She checked under the Arsle tables, just to be sure. No rats, no men in striped pajamas, no Matt, no Ruth Anne, no Trinity. No Basil. Something cold and wet touched her skull, and she ducked to escape it. Whirling around with the flashlight revealed more shadows. Something small and silver dropped in front of her.