Consciousness slowly returned to them.
They woke groggily on the carpet—real carpet—stretching stiff, heavy limbs as if they had just dragged themselves out of a deep, hours-long sleep in the same upstairs hallway.
Lester's first instinct was pure panic.
His body screamed at him to run, to bolt down the stairs and put as much distance as humanly possible between them and whatever nightmare they had just escaped.
He was already half-turned, ready to make a break for it.
Then he stopped.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Skye.
Her head felt as if it were spinning. The hallway tilted violently around her vision, and a sudden, overwhelming urge to puke hit her.
Against his better judgment—overriding every survival instinct screaming at him to flee—Lester turned back and hurried over.
He reached out to hold her hair back as she gagged over the edge of the corridor wall.
He stumbled a bit as he dropped beside her, a heavy, nauseating wave of dizziness clawing at his own brain, but he pushed through it.
He didn't know where that Futa was, and that thought terrified him even more.
The memory of its packaging was a hard one to forget.
The phantom dread of her reappearing at any second hung heavy in the air, and worse—Skye was in zero condition to defend herself if she did.
As he held her hair, steadying her, a stray, completely unhelpful thought drifted through his dazed mind: Her hair actually smells kind of nice.
He lingered on the thought for a second too long, getting momentarily lost in the bizarre normalcy of it amid the chaos, until Sky's voice snapped him right out of it.
"Jeez, it feels as if I got a hangover from partying all night," she groaned, her voice strained, before she bent back down and continued puking.
"Ah, you're welcome, you know?" Lester muttered back, rubbing her back awkwardly.
The lingering awkwardness of their mutual anonymity dissolved instantly, replaced by a much heavier, sharper weight that settled over the quiet hallway.
Skye pulled her knees up to her chest, resting her forehead against her arms as the last waves of nausea finally receded.
The color was slowly returning to her face, chased away only by a deep, burning flush of shame.
She stared down at the patterned carpet, tracking the weave with her eyes because looking at him was suddenly too difficult.
"And by the way I…" Skye's voice wavered, cracking slightly in the quiet air. "I'm… I'm sorry."
Lester blinked, caught off guard by the abrupt shift in tone.
His arms dropped to his sides.
"For what?"
She took a shallow, unstable breath, her shoulders curling inward as if bracing for a blow.
"For leaving you on the spot back then,."
The words hung between them, his mind had put that at the back of his mind due to everything that happened.
A bitter grimace twisted across Lester's face.
He didn't hide the reaction entirely; she deserved to see it.
But as he looked down at her—shaking, defeated, and genuinely remorseful—the anger sputtered out, leaving behind a tired, heavy acne.
He forced his features to relax, working his jaw before meeting her eyes.
"I would be lying if I said it's all water under the bridge," Lester said, his voice flat, honest, and entirely devoid of false cheer.
Sky flinched slightly, nodding once as she accepted the blow, knowing she had earned every word of it.
Lester let out a slow, steady breath, shifting his weight against the wall.
He reached out awkwardly, giving her shoulder a short, reassuring tap before pulling his hand back.
"But…" He offered a faint, crooked ghost of a smile, trying to clear the heavy air. "I think you made up for that."
She managed a weak, self-deprecating huff, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
"Pass me my bag. I need to get gum for my breath."
Lester nudged the fallen backpack toward her. She unzipped it with trembling fingers, fished out a pack of mints, and popped a piece into her mouth.
As she chewed, the ambient noise of the house died down completely.
And that was the first sign of something wrong.
"Do you hear that?" Sky asked him, freezing mid-chew.
"Hear what?"
"Nothing."
Lester realized it then. The absolute, deafening void of sound.
No muffled bass from a stereo, no drunken laughter, no footsteps.
"Do you think the party ended?" he asked, a knot tightening in his stomach.
Sky pulled up her phone, pressing the side button to light up the screen. "No, it's not midnight yet."
They stood up back-to-back, scanning the dim, elongated shadows of the corridor.
"When is your backup supposed to be here?" Lester muttered.
"They were supposed to be here by now… wait, my phone doesn't have any signal."
She held the device higher, watching the signal bars flatline into a hollow X. "Let's move so I can find it."
"Hold your camera out just in case she appears."
"His name's Robert," she shot back defensively.
"Fine. Just keep 'Robert' on the ready. We'll keep checking for signal."
They started walking cautiously around the upper floor, noticing something deeply wrong. Everything left behind from the party was still there—the red plastic cups, the crushed cans, the scattered trash, the abandoned jackets draped over banisters.
But there were no people.
Not a single soul.
So what happened? Lester thought frantically, his grip tightening on his phone.
"The network must just be bad up here," Sky said, her voice strained, masking her growing panic.
"Let's try going to different places."
They hurried downstairs into the main living room and kitchen.
It was the same story—completely deserted, dead silent.
But the moment they hit the ground floor, the phone in Sky's hand buzzed violently, and the connection snapped back into place.
A voice crackled through the speaker, harsh and hurried. It was her supervisor, Richard.
"Sky?" Richard's voice barked through the receiver.
"Richard—where are you?" Sky demanded into the phone, her voice sharp. "You guys were supposed to have been here minutes ago!"
There was a brief, awkward pause on the other end before Richard offered a vague excuse about a routing delay, quickly brushing past it.
"Never mind that. What's the situation right now?"
"I'm engaged with… you know, the paranormal," Sky hissed, keeping her voice low.
"You're engaged with the paranormal?" Richard snapped back, his tone turning incredulous and severe.
"You know that's breaking protocol. You aren't supposed to handle that alone!"
"I know, it's an emergency situation!" Sky argued back, her patience wearing thin.
"Okay, there is only one thing left I need to tell you. Listen well," Richard responded.
"I'm listening."
"Cell Meow Hotel," Richard said.
Thinking she hadn't heard properly, she asked, "Can you repeat that sentence?"
"Cell Meow Hotel."
Getting frustrated, she shouted, "What the frick does that mean, Richard? Speak English!"
Lester froze.
His breath caught violently in his throat, his jaw dropping slack as his eyes darted upward toward the ceiling.
His body stiffened.
Without a word, he lunged forward, grabbing Sky's arm and violently yanking her upward.
"Hey! What are you—just hold on a second, Richard—" Sky tried to pull her arm away, glaring at him.
"Sky. Look," Lester choked out, his voice reduced to a terrified, breathless whisper as he physically forced her head toward the ceiling.
She opened her mouth to chew him out, but her eyes followed his trembling hand.
The words died instantly in her throat.
Through the glittering, multi-faceted crystal of the massive chandelier, the inverted reflection of the room appeared.
They could see, in its reflection, movement—people dancing and having a blast, drinking.
It was as if they were looking through a one-way window.
On the floor, the phone speaker let out a wet, unnatural click.
It was now loud enough for both of them to hear, Skye removed it from her ear as it was too loud
Richard's voice hitched. The crisp, annoyed human tone instantly warped, dropping a full octave into something mechanical, dripping, and profoundly wrong.
The final words of his sentence—began to distort, the syllables violently tearing apart, scrambling in real time across the tiny speaker like living insects.
The audio melted into a sickening, whispered:
"You just died, Moel Cleh Wotel."
The phone screen went violently haywire, jagged crimson lines of static eating away at the display.
With a sharp gasp of sheer horror, Sky dropped the device. It hit the hardwood floor with a sharp crack.
As the casing shattered against the boards, the glowing, glitching screen flared one final time, spelling out a twisted, mocking final message:
You just died. Welcome to Hell.