Luca went to the reception desk yet again to make a complaint, this time with Robi on her side. But it stood empty as usual, a sign on the counter reading ‘Be Right Back’. The sign had been placed upside down.

The weather turned cold, rain coming down heavily in thick, icy drops. A wolf howled in the distance, although Luca was sure no wolves inhabited this part of the country. They wanted to use the outdoor thermal pool, but even that was out of order now.

‘We should leave,’ she proposed once more, but Robi again shook his head, with Alexandra and Vajk taking his side.

‘It’s just a minor inconvenience,’ Vajk said in a soothing voice. ‘Soon everything will be perfectly fine again.’

‘Maybe it’s all perfectly fine even now! Even if we can’t use the outdoor thermal pools, the indoor ones are still functioning,’ said Alexandra.

Luca felt like her head was full of wasps; she perceived the world with a slight delay. She needed sleep; she hoped she was actually sleeping now, because then all of this would just be a stupid dream.

‘The more we sleep,’ said Robi, even though Luca hadn’t said a word about sleep, ‘the less time we have to relax.’

Luca left the group abruptly and headed to her room, because despite everything she just wanted her bed. The hell with relaxation! She pressed the elevator button and as she waited she saw a reflection in the elevator door. A woman stood behind her, the mother who had been reading her maga­zine by the pool earlier. Luca turned to look at the woman. She was in bad shape. Blood dripped from a wound above her eyes, her hair was soaked into a sweaty knot on top of her head, her dress was torn apart, revealing fresh bloody scratches all over her skin. Tears poured from her eyes, eyes that looked like broken crystal, their glimmer dulled by a loss unfathomable to Luca. The woman opened her mouth to say something, one final thing, but no sound came from her throat no matter how hard she tried. She turned away from Luca and ran out the main entrance into the cold rain before Luca could stop her.

The elevator arrived and Luca stepped in. She headed towards their room to put on something warm and then either to sleep or warn the others of an undefined danger. The thick carpet was soaked in stale water; footprints left by bare feet stretched across the hallway, leading from the fire escape all the way to room 303. Under the smell of chlorine she picked up the reek of decay.

She looked down at the outdoor pool from the window at the end of the hall. The corpse was no longer floating on the surface.

She heard a door opening slowly. It wasn’t their room. It was room 303.

She ran away as fast as she could.