I push open the door. The room is pitch-black and I feel around for a light switch, but I can’t find anything. I grab my phone, flicking on the torch, and shine it through the doorway. I hold it up, expecting it to be a room, but instead, the ceiling falls away and the light hits nothing. I lower it slowly until it reveals a staircase, lined with plush black carpet. I take a step forward, but I can’t see anything at the bottom. It looks like the staircase goes on for miles, that I could take one step and fall into the abyss.
I lick my lips, my balance still uneasy, as I splay a hand and press it against the wall to steady myself. Slowly I descend the staircase, trying to hold the light steady in front of me, but it falls and rises like my breath. At last my foot reaches the bottom, my toes knocking against something.
I hold my phone up to my face. Ahead is a door, but this time, when I push, it opens.
There’s a gentle click, like a mechanism sliding into place and a flicker as the lights come on. The doorway opens into a room from which the smell of whisky and suede wafts as I take a step forward. My foot sinks into carpet, a gold runway leading from the door to the centre of the room.
In the middle, there’s a circular booth made of worn brown leather with gold studs. It’s the first thing I see as the door shuts gently behind me. I want to call out hello, but who am I calling to?
I grasp the key in the palm of my hand as it digs into the cut from the glass. It’s the only thing that keeps me moving, that keeps me awake, as sweat starts sliding down my temples. My heart squeezes my lungs and pushes against my chest as I glance back at the closed door.
What is this place?
The room is large, spanning the breadth of the house, areas divided by thick exposed brick pillars. I press my hand against a pillar and peer around each corner. It looks like an underground nightclub, but with brown leather chairs and small round tables with crystal tumblers and several bottles of spirits on each. There’s a small bar at the back and a shelf behind it, lit up, with hundreds of bottles of bronze liquid.
The areas are divided by ivory netting and when I curl a hand around one of the curtains, behind it is a bed. It’s perfectly made with dark gold bedsheets and a black runner across the bottom. Slowly, I walk through the room, peering around curtains, but it’s all the same, double beds lit by a hanging lamp overhead.
I try to make sense of it, but the whole room feels rotten, like beneath the carpets and paint and sheen are mould and damp. I wipe my arm, like I’m trying to rid myself of the feeling, but Katy was here, I know it. I grasp the key, sweat caking my chest and trickling down my back. My hair sticks to my temple and my mouth feels dry and warm.
Something is wrong. There’s a gentle click, and as I turn, dark eyes bore into me and everything turns black.