Status: some other dream

The boy is walking through a labyrinth made of mirrors. He's wearing only soft white trousers, and the injuries on his palms - gaping, blackened divots where poisonous, metal-sharp rose thorns were shoved into tendons and bone - are gone. The floor is oily black and cold on his feet as he pads down a long hallway that reflects itself into infinity, accompanied only by the sound of his breaths. He turns a corner, then another, and keeps walking.

In the shadows and glints at the corners of his eyes, the mirrors reveal another figure just behind him, trailing about six feet behind. Straight ahead, though, all he can see is his own face. Or, that should be all he can see; every time he tries to focus on himself, the world tilts and blurs, and his vision grows foggy. He keeps his eyes on the floor instead.

As the boy goes further into the maze, cracks start to appear along the mirrors like technicolor spiderwebs. He skirts around shards of glass that litter the floor. A few must slice into his skin anyway, even though he doesn't feel anything, because his footprints start to leave smears of bright red over the black. At the sight of blood, his breaths get heavier.

Except, he's not breathing heavier. He's not breathing at all.

He becomes almost-but-not-quite aware of gentle breaths ghosting against his neck. And, after a while longer, his ears catch the soft slap of bare feet on the floor behind him.

Urgent heat slices through his stomach, and he starts to walk faster. So does the person behind him. Cracks spread over the mirrors in waves, now, and as the boy bursts into a run, whipping around a corner at random, entire chunks of the walls go missing. The mirrors are replaced by thick, cold darkness that reeks of must and decaying flowers, and he swears he can hear the distant echoes of screams.

He hurtles around the corner, skids to a halt. The pathway in front of him is surrounded by empty blackness, spare a single unscratched mirror standing ten feet away, just tall enough to fit his whole form into. At least, it would be, if it reflected him.

The boy tries to turn around, but his feet are glued to the floor. He can't even turn his head. He's forced to stand there, frozen, and watch as hands start to knock from the inside of the mirror. They smear blood across its cold surface, knocking and knocking and knocking. The beat of it throbs so loud against his skull that it threatens to burst.

The thing chasing him finally catches up, and he can see it now, in the mirror. Reflected. It staggers up behind him, breath frozen on his spine. Slowly, almost lovingly, it wraps its decayed arms around his chest, hugging him close. The boy whimpers.

One of the hands in the mirror writes a message with its bloody finger. Kill the girl. Wake the beast in the walls. Let us out. Let us in.

Against his temple, the monster peels back its cracked lips to reveal rows of red-stained teeth. And in a voice sweet as rain, high and cool, it whispers, "It's time to wake up."

The mirror breaks. The boy is ripped apart.

She thrashes awake into an unfamiliar bed, a scream ready to burst from between her teeth. The sound halts and crawls back down her throat as her eyes snap open and catch on the shadow figure standing at the foot of the bed. It's opaque blue-black and fuzzy around the edges, eight feet tall and too lanky to even be properly humanoid. This one has no eyes; it's just a shift of shadow, hovering. Waiting. She finds one of her hands and jabs herself in the hollow between her ear and jaw. "It's not real, it can't hurt you," she breathes, willing herself to look away, even though her body is screaming that if she does, it will lunge at her. She jabs herself again, harder, and her eyes tilt toward the ceiling. When she looks back down the shadow is gone.

She rolls off the bed and rushes to the bathroom to be sick.

It's not worth showering here, so she just twists the knob on the sink - it gives with a reluctant squeal, and the first few glugs out of the faucet are an uncomfortable yellow shade before the water pressure rights itself and runs clear - and splashes her face with cool water. She scrubs her skin dry, too roughly, with her t-shirt, and doesn't look in the mirror.

Her hair is too long, falling well past her jaw, but it's not like there are any goddamn scissors in this place, are there? At this point she'd be willing to do a hack job with a dull tomato knife. Or just rip all her hair out. The fact that she's given it genuine thought is a definite sign that she shouldn't have been given this job, but if she's performing poorly it's also not really her problem in the end.

Not anymore.

The hotel with no name (it has a name, and she knows it, but no one else agrees with her) is at least kind enough to have given her a bottle of ibuprofen. They're even the gel capsules. She swallows three dry, pops her shoulders, and pulls on a clean-ish pair of pants. No laundry or room service. Of course, most people who come here wouldn't have a need for either, because they're just having a dream. They don't stay here, like fucking freaks. Like her. Like the rest of her team. Like [REDACTED]. Like the girl they've been put here to monitor, Naomi H-something. Houston? Hudson? It was a place name.

Fuck, if she can remember the existence of Hudson, Wisconsin, she's not in this dream deep enough.

The zip on her duffel bag is snagged on itself, and she's tempted to rip it clean off, but she forces herself to take a deep breath and squeeze her hand into the little open gap, luckily just big enough to pull out a fresh pair of socks and her dagger (it's far too valuable to be used for a haircut, but depending on how long they're here she might have to stoop that low).

She wasn't supposed to bring any weapons, but fuck that. Her shoulderblades have been twitching like something's staring at them from the moment she got here, and if she ever happens to turn around and meet an actual set of eyes behind her, she retains the right to stab them.

Especially because Sinclair is missing. He was on this mission with them, it was supposed to be a three-man operation. Blake is present and accounted for (frankly too present, even though she loves Blake with all of her bitter little heart), and she's, well, also as present and accounted for as she'll ever be. But Sinclair hasn't reported yet. They have no contact with the outside unless they break, and if they break, the mission is over. There's no guarantee of ever coming back. So, it could be that he just couldn't make it in, and neither end can communicate it. It could be that he's somewhere in this place and they just haven't found him yet.

She would prefer the former, which tells her it's probably the latter.

Before stepping out into the hall, she takes a moment to breathe, sucking in through her mouth and pushing out through her nose. She checks to make sure the tiny pouch of dried ocean sand is still hanging securely around her neck, gives one last glance to the dark, drab room, and steps out. Her eyes sting against the brightness of the hall.

Bless the hotel, at least, for putting her in the room right next to the elevators. She presses the heel of her palm against the crack in the doors, murmuring a soft incantation - ga'hr njrah sel - and the elevator rewards her with a soft ding, gliding open. She hits the button for "church," which is where she's supposed to be meeting Blake. After so many years (eons, maybe, who knows with this place) of not working, the elevator seems a little confused about being an elevator, so it ascends way too fast and descends way too slow. She's going down today, all the way to the bottom, which is a good ten minute ride.

She spends the entire time with her eyes closed, elbows against the railing, daydreaming about steak. Thick and rare, whiskey marinade, steam curling off, a butter-slathered baked potato on the side... that's it. That's what she'll do as soon as this job is over. She'll take herself to a fancy restaurant and order a nice steak, the kind of treat that regular people get to indulge in.

Her father's marinade was the best. She should break into his house and steal the recipe. After she's done at the restaurant maybe she'll drive over a few states and do it. She's not supposed to know where he lives now, for several reasons, the simplest being that they haven't spoken in, what, nine years? Ten? She's lost track of time, and long-since lost track of him. But she has her methods, and she also has a craving. Two dangerous things.

Sinclair would tell her to knock it off. But he'd also go with her, if she was serious about going to her father's place. He'd wait with the car running while she slid through a window, and he wouldn't ask questions about it when she came back. That's just how he was. Too bad he's not here.

The elevator finally dings. The doors slide open, and she steps directly out into a cobweb littered hall, lit by a single naked bulb hanging from a cord. The hallway is short, terminating in a dark archway.

It's not a church, really. Not like any of the ones she's been to, anyway. No altar, no pews. It consists of a single octagonal room, each wall painted a different shade of grey. The wall around the archway is white. In each of the eight vertices there are tall, clear vases that hold white roses. The floor is the same white hospital linoleum that fills the rest of the hotel, but at the middle of the room it drops off into a three-foot-deep stone pit. A few inches of bluish liquid swirl around at the bottom. She thinks it would traditionally be full.

It's different than the other Mystic's rooms she's seen, but a lot of things are different here and now, so it doesn't really account for much. It does bug her, though.

Blake is sitting on the opposite side of the pit, her legs dangling into the pit. Her curly hair is pinned up, and she's exchanged her usual pinstripe pants for solid red ones. "Hey Montag," she says with a smile.

Montag attempts to curve her mouth upward in response, but it probably just looks like a suppressed grimace. "Hi. What's your report?" She doesn't like this place. It should be quiet, but there's a perpetual soft shushing sound, almost like wind rustling over leaves, that makes the hair on her arms stand up. But she forces herself to walk further in and sit down, half a foot away from the pit, legs crossed.

"Nothing. Again. Naomi still hasn't shown back up, and I still can't figure out what room [REDACTED] is actually supposed to be staying in."

"Room one," Montag says, fingers drumming against her kneecaps. She also doesn't like how bright it is in here, considering that the only light down here is the bulb in the hallway. "Or zero."

Blake tugs at her hair and looks like she's trying very hard not to roll her eyes. "Yeah, I know, Einstein, did you hear they're handing out free smart-person certificates on floor seven? It's just a matter of actually figuring out where the hell rooms one and zero are, if they're even visible, which, knowing that asshole, they might not be. I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but I can't stand how unorganized this place is. It gives me indigestion. Some people should not have a career in architecture."

Montag presses her lips together. "I don't have anything to report either. The road makes even less sense than the hotel. It's absolutely infested with demonic energy, but there's still a functioning pathway between the energy patches. And you can walk that pathway forever, and you'll only get maybe five, ten feet out of sight of the hotel sign." Montag bites at a callus on her thumb. She's almost become demon chow about a dozen and a half more times than she would've liked to, these past few days. God knows she doesn't need any more infections. But that's what bothers her - the fact that she's almost been demon chow. The fact that there is a path, albeit one that doesn't get you anywhere in either direction. And the fact that there are hints of something beyond, like the headlights and gas station Naomi described. If the hotel wants to keep you here, why tease? Why build half a way out? "And I'm still exactly where I was at with the pool. There's no touching that body without going in."

"Well I'm sure as hell not going in there," Blake says. She frowns down at the liquid in the pit. Somehow it manages to be less ominous than the pool water, but it still can't be good news.

"No. Neither am I." Then she says something that she's been mulling over for the past few days, blurts it out before she can take it back. "Hey, when you do happen to run into Naomi again, tell her to come to room 818."

Blake blinks a few times, cheeks sucking in. "You want to handle her? I thought you said you'd only do this if-"

"I know what I said. I said I'd only do this if I didn't have to talk to her and if I didn't have to even glance at [REDACTED]. But I'm rescinding it. I want to talk to her. I think I can crack her."

"It could be dangerous."

"I know."

"If you... Montag, if you slip... she's already vulnerable. So are you. You're too close to this case as it is. You can't afford to fuck this up."

"I know."

Blake smiles then, a dazzling flash. "Then I'll tell her. Unless you get to her first."

Montag nods in thanks and then turns to look at one of the roses. Its outermost petal is starting to crumble, little flakes of ash drifting off in spurts like macabre snow. She longs to walk over and crush the whole flower in her fist, to let the thorns tear into her palms and leave scars like the ones in her nightmare.

It wasn't a nightmare, though. It was a memory. It was a reminder of the last time she died.

Now it's her job to make sure the hotel with no name doesn't turn out the same way.

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Obviously, this entry was not penned by Naomi, though also it's not penned by the writer of entries twelve and fifteen. We are actually unsure of who documented it.

The redactions are mentions of Lilith's true name, which we have removed for the sake of continuity.

Although Naomi becomes aware of this later, it maybe worth pointing out here that time passes differently in the hotel than it does outside of it.