Chapter 6
Chisato's sleep was riddled with terrifying dreams and uncomfortable stretches of lying awake in her bed, sweating, while wishing Celine's snoring could be quieter. Part of her was glad to hear some sign that her roommate was off in slumberland instead of murdering people in the night, but part of her desperately needed some rest to make facing the next day more tolerable. Both parts felt sickly aware that there wasn't any escape from the unease of the situation; sleep meant nightmares, and the waking world meant a rampaging serial killer. A throbbing headache and a growling stomach punctuated the sheer discomfort of it all.
She knew deep down that the killer wanted everyone dead, and she knew she would eventually be the name at the top of the list. Eventually, her fears would have to come true, and all she could do during the night was sit around and wait for that to happen. She half wondered if she might be getting an ulcer, but at least worry, fear, and searing pain meant that, for another night, at least, she was alive.
"I can't go on like this!" Chisato blurted out, forgetting for the moment that Celine was still asleep. Celine snorted and rolled over but appeared not to have woken.
Though she's cried most of her tears away before going to sleep the previous night, Chisato felt a couple of fresh drops sliding down the side of her face and into her right ear. Her stomach began to feel even more like it was twisting in a knot, and she found herself able to hear her heart pounding in rhythm with her head.
A gust of wind outside tossed the window curtains enough to make a shadow dance across the far wall. Chisato's mind told her that the movement was more sinister than it would have appeared on a normal night. She reacted by bolting upright, panting, and wiping her face with the sleeve of her nightgown. Her throat ran dry.
Chisato felt her tolerance for her room wearing thin. Without at least a drink, she could never get back to sleep. Without sleep, she could never keep up the veneer of being competent and in charge, and solving the mystery was her best hope for survival. Taking all of this into account as well as her fragile grip on sanity would allow, she decided that her ideal course of action would be to sneak down to the hotel kitchen to find something to quench her thirst.
Checking the minibar first to make certain that Celine hadn't left anything (which she wouldn't even under more ordinary circumstances), Chisato stepped into her slippers, tiptoed to the door, and, with a creak that sounded much louder than it really could have been, pulled the door open and moved into the hallway. Not surprisingly, she found herself no less chilled by the otherworldly silence and threatening dark corners that greeted her as she made her way to the stairs. At regular intervals, she stopped, pressed herself against the wall, and listened for any sign that she was not the only one awake. None came, though. The only sounds she could make out were the same creaks and groans any old structure would make. By far the loudest noise came from her own footsteps, and those were about as muffled as footsteps had ever been in the history of Expel.
What she couldn't see or hear, Chisato felt with instincts she had built up through her intense and dangerous career. From the moment she first began descending the stairs, she got the impression that she was being watched, though she could not quite tell from where or by whom. Involuntarily, she ducked down next to the guardrail and covered her head, but she quietly cursed at herself for making such a carelessly noisy move. Her head and heart beat even more intensively, and she half worried that either was loud enough to give her away. Still, the optimist in her, tired and shrunken as it was, kept alive in her the hope that her experience with stealth could get her safely to her goal before she could succumb to either and ambush or a heart attack. What worried her was that she could not remember ever feeling quite as afraid during an assignment before, even when her life was just as much in danger.
Chisato reached the bottom of the stairs safely, and she found herself toying with the idea of running for the front door and seeking asylum at Linga University. She could never live with herself if she abandoned her friends, though, so she busied herself with searching for the path to the kitchen.
A particularly heavy flurry of wind beat against the front windows of the inn. Chisato noted how little light the windows let through, and she found herself a dark stretch of floor to follow. She had only gone a few paces when she felt her neck tingling. First her eyes and then her horrified brain became aware that there was some movement in the room just opposite of her. She shrank against the wall and stared into the dark, hoping to catch sight of anything suspicious, and hoping that she had only seen a shadow.
Indeed, she did see a shadow. Some dark trace – of a bird or tree branch outside, Chisato hoped – swayed back and forth across the center of the floor. Chisato shivered as if the temperature in the room had dropped about twenty degrees in just a few seconds. Then, her ever-sharp instincts told her to look up.
Chisato screamed.