At first I could not make out what was inside. The light was too dim under the desk, and I made an inelegant scooting movement backward toward the center of the room, so that the thick stripe of moonlight made by the gap between the wall and the heavy curtain lay across my lap. Now I could see the rough outlines of the object that lay at the bottom of the briefcase, but it was still not quite bright enough to distinguish it by sight. Cautiously, I touched the lining of the briefcase; I brushed lightly against it with my fingertips. It was made of a soft and delicate material—suede, I thought—that had been marred in places by a sticky substance. Even in the half-light I could see that these wet patches were darker than the rest.

I brushed lower down, and my fingers closed around a hard, curved object, extremely heavy for its size and a little longer than my hand, and held it up to the stripe of moonlight to see if I could get a better look. That was when the darkness in the room took on a new quality—it thickened, somehow, and grew more opaque; it pressed inward against me. I froze, the hard, sticky object illumined by the light. I could not escape the feeling that it was the point upon which all the attention of the darkness was focused.

You’re imagining things, I told myself. Darkness doesn’t have an attention. What is this you’re holding? I asked myself. Concentrate! The thing I was holding appeared to be made of stone, a stone carving of an animal. Here was a tail, some crudely carved teeth, here the suggestion of low-set eyes. But what kind of animal it was meant to be was impossible to tell, because it was covered in a dark and viscous sludge, the same substance that had stained the lining of the briefcase. Wrapped around the carving was a thin piece of matter. I ran my fingers along it several times. I could not even say how long I remained with that object in my hand, anxiously tracing and retracing that long and peculiar filament with my fingertips, until the conclusion I’d been resisting struggled free and laid itself unequivocally across my thoughts. It was true, I thought—it felt very much like a human hair.

5

Concentrate! I told myself again, as I rode the elevator down to the lobby. Act natural! I stared at the buttons on the elevator control panel, I seared into them with the power of my gaze, as first the 3, then the 2, and then the L were illuminated, each like the pale orange glow of a cigarette tip glimpsed through the night.

That was no ordinary object! I thought. I put a hand out to the elevator wall, to steady myself.

And no ordinary hotel room! Now the button marked L was glowing, now it winked out.