Switching on my flashlight, I poked the phone through the gap. The marks were footprints, leading across a carpet that looked imbued with soot, and ending at a staircase. They were significantly larger than a child’s. Though I hardly knew what the sight meant to me – perhaps I wasn’t anxious to know – I pocketed the phone so as to grab the edge of the door with both hands and exert all my strength. It juddered inwards, hindered by an obstruction that felt soft but resolute. As soon as I’d made enough of a gap I retrieved the flashlight and edged in.

Darkness swooped at me as I turned the beam on the obstruction. The door had rucked the carpet up, tearing it loose from the boards. Massive shadows dodged into rooms as I shone the light around the lobby. Beyond a doorway on my left, long rectangular shapes were draped with pallid cloths – tables in a dining-room – while to my right a faint roundish glow rose out of the dimness to greet if not entice me like a will-o’-the-wisp from a marsh, the reflection of the flashlight in a grubby mirror behind a bar, where inverted bottles glimmered without visible support. The ceiling loomed over me, untouched by the light, and the carpet underfoot yielded like moist earth. I was heading for the stairs beside the reception counter when I noticed the visitors’ book.

It lay open on the counter, displaying several entries. At first I was sure I’d misread the dates. I leaned closer to look without touching the counter, which was encrusted with grime. Although all the entries were in the same old-fashioned script, every one was dated this month, and the names were dismayingly familiar, though they weren’t the kind anyone would expect to see in a hotel register. Crux Inverso, Aqua Sacramenti, Magister Stellarum…

I came close to grabbing the blackened scabby counter as I tried to understand what I was seeing. The entries suggested some kind of secret joke nobody was meant to appreciate, unless logging them was a gesture of defiance or triumph. My mind felt unable to struggle beyond knowing who must have written them, and the names clamoured in my head as if they were importuning me to pronounce them aloud. I had a fearful sense that speaking any of them might summon its owner. Perhaps a face would sprout from one of the pigeonholes at the back of the reception recess, if not from all of them. Or might a piecemeal figure make itself apparent in the chair behind the counter, an occupant in the process of putting on some kind of flesh? Unwelcome as these notions were, they were trying to distract me from an unenviable task. I had to see where the tracks on the carpet led.