The air out in the corridor was stale and darkness prevailed everywhere. There were no windows there, so no thin cracks of light from between the wooden shutters, like in the room we had just left. It wouldn't have helped us to see anything, since the cracks only allowed very little light to penetrate the shutters, but it would've been better than the total blackness we were in. We followed the light of Elliot's phone, every step being placed carefully on the floor, eyes constantly looking in all directions. Again, we couldn't hear the rain. The silence was so complete, that it felt unreal. It made me think of the quiet before the storm. I kept waiting for something to jump us at any moment.

I tried to quiet my breathing, but I was too tense. Elliot, on the other hand, was completely silent. I couldn't understand how he managed to control his stress level like that. Maybe it was something that he had to learn during his time away. I didn't know because we hadn't talked about it yet, but I was curious to know the details of what he had been through. I made a mental note to mention it to him later when we were out of this place and safe.

At the end of the corridor, we reached the right turn. Elliot advanced slowly with his back against the wall, trying to sneak a peek around the corner before exposing us both to whatever might be lying in wait there. I followed him, holding onto his hand firmly with both of mine. I admired the way he remained calm. It helped me calm down a little myself. For a moment, I was thrown two decades back, when I was a beginner detective, partnered up with him – who had the advantage of several years of experience over me. With him by my side I was able to learn the job in no time. He saw me as his equal from the first moment, and never let me feel like he was above me. The safety net he had provided me back then by having my back so fully and completely felt much like the sense of security that he was giving me now.

"The coast seems clear," he whispered, still peering into the corridor.

"Let's go," I started to move. The will to get out of there as quickly as possible was burning in me.

We turned the corner together and started to walk down the corridor, which was shorter than the one we had come from, just like on the opposite side of the building. Only a few steps in, the light suddenly disappeared at once.

"Damn it," Elliot muttered next to me. "Phone's battery just died."

"Mine still has some power," I pulled it out of my pocket and pressed the power button. "Should we continue in the meantime?" I started moving again, but he stayed put, which made me stop immediately as we were still holding hands.

"I don't know if that's a good idea."

I couldn't see his face clearly, but I saw the dark silhouette of his head moving and I knew he was trying to look around us.

"It's impossible to see anything. Let's wait a minute until we have light again." He remained quiet after that. His hand loosened a little around mine and then tightened again, and I wondered what he was thinking. Was he just trying to concentrate on his other senses so he could perceive any danger around us, or was he doing the same as me, wondering what I was thinking?

He moved a little toward me but didn't say a word. The idea of leaning my forehead against his chest was tempting, but I ignored it and looked at my phone instead.

"Here we go," I said as I saw it was ready for use.

The second I turned the light on we realized something was standing right next to us, as if we were having a group conversation. We both gasped and took a step away from it.

After the initial shock, I recognized it, the robe-covered creature, whatever it was. It towered over us with its extraordinarily long figure and made the same growling noise that I'd heard before. If my dream was any indication, he was about to slam us both against the wall in a possibly fatal way.

"Elliot, it's the thing from my dream – "

"Mine, too," he replied quickly. "Run!"

The second he said it, we started running for our lives in the opposite direction, away from the ominous presence.

"Please, be open," I whispered repeatedly out of breath, thinking about the exit that we both assumed should be there, just like the one on the opposite side of the building. It suddenly occurred to me that there might not be an exit there at all and then we would be trapped. The thought shot through me like a poisonous arrow and made me feel weak, but I couldn't allow myself to slow down. I could still hear the terrible growling behind me.

"Here!" Elliot yelled when he saw the entrance to the stairwell, where the exit to the outdoor pool should be.

We stormed through the open door and closed it quickly behind us.

"There's no lock," he panted and leaned against the door to block it with his weight. "We need to get out of here fast."

I looked around me with my phone's light and saw that we were right to assume there was another exit here. I walked to it and tried to open it, but it was locked.

"Damn it!" I yanked the door handle in frustration, knowing that it wouldn't do any good.

BANG BANG BANG the door we had just closed behind us made a loud echo that filled the small space we were trapped in. Elliot jumped away from the door and took a few steps back.

"We have to go back upstairs, there's no other choice," I said as I looked at the door in horror.

"Liv, there's another floor underneath us."

I turned to look at him and saw that he was standing on top of another staircase, one we hadn't noticed before because of the darkness.

"You mean a basement?" I approached him to take a better look with the light.

"I don't know, maybe there's another way out down there." Elliot looked at me and I could see in his face that he was fully expecting me to react the way I was about to react.

"In the BASEMENT? You want to go to the BASEMENT? You realize that is where all the worst things ever happen, right?" I knew I was exaggerating, but I was scared to go down there.

"It's either that or go back upstairs, and we already know that there's no exit there."

BANG BANG BANG this time both doors boomed and echoed. The sound was so loud, that it felt like it was hitting my brain.

"Come on, Liv!"

I looked from him to the doors and back to him, but I didn't have time to make a decision. He started to run down the stairs and gradually disappeared into the darkness. I was terrified to be separated again and that one of us might get seriously hurt this time. Our whole stay in this place seemed to be leading up to some peak that would finish us both. The place was out to get us.

"Elliot!" I yelled after him and started following him down the stairs, right before he disappeared at the bottom. I hurried my steps and reached the bottom, too, only to discover that there was another flight of stairs a few steps away. Elliot was standing at the top of it, waiting.

"You didn't wait for me!" The stress made me sound angrier than I had intended.

"I was making sure it was safe," he said defensively.

"I told you to stop doing that."

"You know I won't."

We stared at each other for a moment. I couldn't read his face. Was he angry? Was he amused?

"Are we really going to do this? My phone doesn't have much power left. We might lose the light while we're down there," I tried one more time, but I knew he was right. The other choice could possibly be worse.

"I have a feeling about this. There has to be an exit there," he said gently, his eyes asking me to trust his intuition.

"Fine," I said, shaking my head and walking toward him so this time we stayed together.

"Hey, Liv…" he grabbed my arm to stop me from moving forward, but I wasn't going to start descending without him, anyway. "In case something happens, I want you to know that…" he looked at me and I knew he was trying to find the right words. That was never an easy task for either of us when discussing personal matters. Neither of us wanted to pull the other too near or push too far. It was a delicate balance that we constantly had to maintain in order not to lose each other.

"You mean a lot to me," he finally said, looking hesitantly into my eyes. "Even if you weren't in my life for ten years… you were always there in my thoughts," he paused for a few seconds, trying to read my expression, and then, as if to make sure I fully understood, he repeated, "always."

I swallowed hard. All of the words have vanished from my brain except for his. They echoed in my mind, blocking everything else. For a while, we just stood there on the top step and looked at each other.

Eventually, I sighed and looked away. "We can't do this right now," I muttered.

"Yeah, well, I don't know if we'll get another chance, so I just wanted you to know," he sounded defensive. I knew he was expecting to hear something similar from me, but there was so much I needed to tell him before I could finally talk about my feelings for him. If at all.

"We need to have a proper conversation, this is not – "

"Not what?" he looked hurt now. "The right time? I guess if we don't make it out of here alive we won't need to worry about that anymore."

"You really want to do this here and now, Elliot, when my phone's battery is about to die?"

"Look, I understand if after all this time you don't care anymore – "

"Oh, my god, Elliot, you know I do!" my voice echoed loudly in the stairwell and he stared at me, surprised at the sudden burst of emotion. I knew I wouldn't be able to maintain my stoic façade with him for long, but it must have worked up until then because he looked like he was genuinely shocked to discover there were still feelings there. He really believed I had forgotten about him and moved on. It made my heart hurt.

"Let's just go," I said quietly after a long silence.

Elliot nodded without saying a word and we started going down the stairs together, following the light from my phone. It was running out of battery fast and I prayed that it would last until we found a way out.

At the bottom of the stairs, we stopped and examined our surroundings. The basement was vast and full of old things. Due to the darkness, I couldn't see the walls and it made the room look like it was an endless space. There were pieces of furniture that were probably taken out of the guest rooms at one point to be fixed or disposed of. A few old televisions, floor lamps, and other equipment was also scattered all around as far as we could see. The strangest of all were the garden statues. I couldn't guess why they would be down there, two flights of stairs below ground. Maybe it was simply for the same maintenance reason, but their human forms gave an additional creepy vibe to the already eerie basement. It looked like they came in there to escape from the rain.

"Okay, let's look for a door or a window or anything that might be an exit," Elliot started moving forward carefully.

"Don't touch anything," I didn't exactly know why I said it, but I was pretty sure it would be a bad idea. "And stay close."

We walked between the old stuff not too far from each other. I tried to keep aiming the light at an angle that would allow Elliot to get some of it, too. Here and there I wanted to take a better look at the objects around me and got selfish with the light. At first, he said he couldn't see anything, but after the third or so time I had done it, he gave up and kept moving carefully in the dark.

The range of the objects was baffling. It seemed like someone took everything from the hotel and placed it there for some reason. I saw kitchenware and toys, cosmetics and towels, tools of different kinds.

The first statue that I saw was of a miserable-looking woman. She had a sad expression on her face and was hunched over as if the constant standing had taken a toll on her. I had to pass pretty close to her because the unoccupied space between the objects was very narrow. I moved carefully, keeping my arms at my sides so I wouldn't accidentally touch it. When my face was right in front of the statue's face I had to stop for a moment and stare at it. There was something mesmerizing about it. The pain in it felt real.

"Liv, you okay?" Elliot's voice startled me.

I hurried to move again but my leg bumped into something, which made me panic and stumble. I automatically grabbed the nearest thing – the statue – to regain my balance, and immediately regretted it.

As if a button had been suddenly pressed, I started to hear whispers out of nowhere. At first, quiet ones. I couldn't make out any words. But the volume increased gradually and I felt as if the whispers were filling my ears and they were all I could hear.

"…useless. I always knew you were useless. I had to give up everything because of you, you ungrateful bitch..." I recognized those words almost instantly. Growing up, I had heard them repeatedly, every time my mother got drunk and bitter. "Why don't you just run away and leave me, I know you want to. My life was over the moment you were born."

The voice got louder and louder with each word. I was so shocked, that I just stood there with eyes wide open and stared into the statue's face.

"YOU RUINED MY LIFE!" my mother's voice thundered inside my head. I jumped back at that, moving away from the statue and bumping into whatever was behind me. The voice stopped the second I lost contact with it.

"Liv?!"

I heard some things being knocked over and a few seconds later Elliot appeared next to me, looking frightened.

"Are you alright? What happened?" he panted.

I must have looked just as terrified because he placed his hand on my shoulder in a comforting manner.

"I…" I didn't know how to even begin explaining what had just happened.

He waited a moment to see if I wanted to say anything else, and then he gently prompted me with his hand to move, muttering, "come on."

We resumed walking but I was tempted to stop and look back when I was far enough. The statue looked normal for a second, but then it turned its head toward me, as if it was watching me.

The air was sucked out of my lungs at once. I didn't want to stick around and see if it would move its whole body next. Elliot was already several steps ahead and I ran to him and grabbed his arm, pinning it close to my body. It made me feel more secure, having him so close to me, and I was too terrified to care about how he might interpret it. He looked at me with a questioning expression on his face but didn't ask anything. I appreciated it so much at that moment because I was embarrassed to tell him what I had heard and seen. Even after everything we had witnessed in this place, that was one of the weirdest.

"What was that?" Elliot suddenly stopped walking. Holding onto his arm had forced me to stop, too.

"What?" I was too distracted by my shame to hear what he had heard.

He didn't answer. Instead, we stood there for a moment without moving, just listening. And then it happened again and this time I heard it. It sounded like something small dropping to the floor and rolling toward us. I aimed the light down just in time to see a plastic chip, similar to those that are used in casinos, coming to a stop next to another one – probably the first that Elliot heard.

"What…?"

A third chip dropped to the floor between the shadows and rolled toward us.

"Who's there?" Elliot asked. It seemed like whoever was sending those chips our way was a few feet right in front of us, but we couldn't see them. We squinted at our surroundings, trying to catch any movement, but there wasn't any.

A fourth chip dropped and rolled. This time we looked at each other, not sure what to do.

"Come play with me…"

It was a half-whisper. I couldn't tell if it was a child or an adult.

"We should just continue going," Elliot sounded unsure of himself as he said it.

"But it's right in front of us," I objected, tugging on his arm lightly.

Another chip rolled toward us.

"We can turn here and move away from it."

I allowed him to lead me because I wasn't going to let go of his arm. We passed between two rows of stacked up cardboard boxes. One pile was taller than us, the others at different heights. Some had 'fragile' written on them in black. At the end of the rows, we were able to turn again in the direction we were headed before and continue crossing the basement.

It seemed quiet again. I looked to my left to make sure no one was there, then turned my head to the right. Between Elliot and me appeared a hand from the darkness behind us. I looked just in time to see it letting another chip drop and roll and immediately turned around and jumped away from it.

Elliot didn't notice the hand, but he saw the chip and followed me, realizing there was something behind us.

"I SAID, PLAY WITH ME!" it wasn't a whisper anymore, but a roaring yell, which came from something that couldn't possibly be human. It was right in front of us again, and we both took another step back and gasped, realizing that, whatever it was, it wasn't planning on letting us go.