She didn�t know. Vague things were slowly coming back to her. She had been out at a party with some friends. There�d been drinking involved but she hadn�t had anything� at least not that she remembered. Her memory got foggy there. She must have left the party though because this certainly wasn�t Teddy Morgan�s house.
Little by little her eyes adjusted to the gloom. Pale shafts of light floated through open doors, casting long shadows across the dust strewn floor. A long hallway stretched out in front of her, the floor littered with paint chips and dirt. The whole place smelled of dust, decay and fouler things she couldn�t identify. She could see spots floating in the rays of light coming through one of the doors but couldn�t be sure if it was dust or her mind playing tricks on her.
She pushed herself up to stand, one hand leaning on the wall for support. It was uneven, missing chunks of plaster, and she could feel cool brick through the flaking paint. She ran her hand over it�s surface, soft pieces fluttered off the wall and into the palm of her hand. She strained to see them, but in the dark it was nearly impossible. Looking around again, and searched for a sign of how she�d gotten to this long forgotten place. So long as she moved slowly her head didn�t seem to protest as much. Maybe the boys had gotten her drunk and � left her in� hell? No it was far too cold to be hell.
Walking cautiously down the hall, she could feel the dirt scraping between her shoes and the wooden floor beneath. Picking her way through the debris, she kicked something which rolled across the floor, and through a doorway. Bending to reach for it, her head began to swim again. She braced herself for a moment and suddenly was sitting on the floor, leaning against the splintered wood of the doorframe.
As her vision cleared, she reached for her prize, clutching the cold but solid, modern feeling, object. It was the only thing so far that felt real to her in this unreal place.
Hands sliding over the smooth surface, she found a switch on the side and with a surprisingly loud click the hallway was thrown sharply into focus. Her new found flashlight extended her field of vision and she glanced into the room beside her. The light revealed an ancient bathroom.
A bathtub sat askew on one side of the room, a pedestal sink on the other, with a smashed toilet bowl beside it. The shadows cast by the shaky beam of light harshly emphasized every frighteningly decrepit aspect of the room.
She realized it wasn�t the light that was shaking, rather it was her hands. Shoving one hand into her jacket pocket she found a pair of folded gloves and pulled them on over her trembling fingers. They weren�t warm but they would be before long. The cold was bothering her less and less now that she was moving around, and the light from the flashlight and feel of the gloves were starting to make the hollow place a little more bearable.
Now if only she could figure out where the place was, and why she was there. She closed her eyes for a moment and suddenly heard the sound of footsteps, running above her. Eyes flying open she flashed the light up, to see the sagging ceiling. What was she really expecting to find? The sound had disappeared already. Great. Now not only did she not remember what she was doing there she was hearing things.
Getting back to her feet, Tess steadied herself and flashed the light down the hall again, looking for a way out. The eerie corridor stretched on in either direction, with doors standing open at odd angles on either side of her. She began to walk, one hand trailing across the soft decaying plaster. Paint chips fluttered to the ground behind her like a breadcrumb trail.
Shining the flashlight through the open doors she passed, she gave each room a cursory inspection before moving on. She wasn�t intending to explore, she just wanted to find a way out.
Most of the rooms were barren of all furniture, disconcertingly left stark and almost monochrome by the chilling light of the moon. Each room was slightly different. One seemed almost wholly intact, moth eaten curtains hung from the window framing a rusty metal bed frame below them.
She had nearly reached the end of the hall when her light reflected off of something in the final room. Taking a few hesitant steps in, she glanced around to find what had caught her eye. The twisted skeleton of a rusted bed frame lay haphazardly on its side, bathed in the ghastly pallor of the moonlight. The rest of the room was empty, dust and debris littering the floor. But there, at the foot of the rusted bed, lay what had first attracted her attention.
