Final Girl by Michelle Schusterman (beach books .TXT) 📕

Mi Jin moved over to stand just behind him as he turned it on, angling her camera to see the screen on his phone. I stepped back so I could see, too. Sam’s outline glowed yellow and green against a background of various blues and purples. Roland moved closer to the corner Sam had been inspecting, Mi Jin right on his heels.

“Huh,” he murmured, kneeling on the floor. “That’s interesting.”

The rest of us gathered behind him to see. The corner itself looked totally normal: light blue-green wallpaper, bright white tiled floor. But the thermal image showed something . . . else. A brief, yellowish something that vanished when Roland shifted the camera’s position, then reappeared when he shifted it back. He stood slowly, scanning the corner from the floor up to the ceiling. The yellowish aura slipped in and out of view, like a fog seeping in where the two walls met.

“Perhaps Yumi really did see something here,” Grandma said at last, breaking the silence. “She said there was a light moving in the corner, right?”

“Yeah.” Roland lowered his phone and gestured at the walls. “But I’m not seeing anything unusual without the thermal camera. You?” The last question was directed at Sam, who was already tracing his fingers across the wallpaper. He stared and stared, brow furrowed, like the wall was a foggy window and he was trying to see what was on the other side.

While Mi Jin continued to film them, Jess turned her camera on Dad and Grandma, and they quickly slipped back into hosting mode. “What was it Jae-Hwa told us yesterday?” Dad asked. “That former patients and staff have claimed to see a bright light in this room?”

Grandma nodded. “Like a light at the end of a tunnel,” she recited. “Which is why this room was so unpopular with patients, and often vacant. It’s unclear whether they thought the room itself was haunted, or the patients who stayed in this room were cursed themselves.”

While they continued talking, I wandered around the room, mentally framing a few shots. I was itching to take a few photos, but I didn’t want the Elapse making everyone feel disoriented and anxious. Its residual haunting effect seemed to have less power the more people were around, like in the elevator back at the Montgomery. Still, not worth the risk.

Room 313 looked pretty much like every other room we’d been in on the second floor: small, neatly made bed against the back wall, simple dresser with mirror on the left wall, a steel cabinet stocked with tissues, boxes of rubber gloves, jars of tongue depressors, and other medical equipment. I eyed the mirror nervously, half expecting to see the Thing looking back at me. To my relief, my reflection was completely normal; cropped hair, jeans, and the black Final Girl Productions hoodie Grandma had given me before we left the hotel.

We stayed in the room for another fifteen minutes, but Roland’s thermal camera had stopped showing the yellowish aura and I could tell Jess was getting restless. Her phone buzzed, and she fished it out of her pocket with her free hand while balancing the camera on her shoulder. She glanced at the screen, and her eyes lit up.

“It’s Lidia,” she told us, already heading for the door. “Cafeteria, now.”

Quickly, I flipped on the Elapse as everyone hurried into the hall, ignoring the way my heart immediately started pounding out of control. Now that the small room was empty, I wanted to get a picture of the supposed portal-corner for myself. Oscar hovered in the doorway.

“Kat, come on!”

“Right behind you!” I said. “Just want to get this one shot . . .”

I turned the Elapse vertical so I could capture the whole corner from top to bottom, then adjusted the focus. Then I snapped the photo, and two things happened at once:

The door clicked closed, very softly.

The fluorescent bulbs flickered, then went out.

I froze, still gazing at the viewfinder. Because even though the lights had gone out, the room wasn’t dark. A thin line of light had appeared in the corner, like there was a crack running from the floor to the ceiling. As I watched, it grew wider and wider until it was roughly the size of a doorway. And on the other side, as if at the end of a very, very long tunnel, stood a girl-shaped shadow.

When I lowered my camera, the tunnel was still there.

I didn’t hesitate. I didn’t even think about what I was doing.

I shielded my eyes and stepped inside.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN DOCTOR PAIN WILL SEE YOU NOW

WARNING! Recording Mode Is Unavailable In This Format

MY eyelids were no match for the blinding brightness. No matter how hard I squeezed my eyes closed, I could still see the neon pink of the insides of my lids. I could practically smell the light—a sharp, antiseptic scent way more intense than the vaguely bleach-like smell in the rest of the hospital. My skin prickled in a way that reminded me of my encounter with Sonja Hillebrandt back in Crimptown, when the air had suddenly shifted and I’d felt like I’d walked into a cloud of static electricity.

I kept walking, covering my eyes with one arm and waving the other, trying to find the wall and groping nothing instead. After what felt like forever, I thought I noticed the light begin to fade and I slowed to a halt. Hesitantly, I dropped my arm, then squinted around.

I was standing in the corner of room 313, facing the room. But everything was . . . reversed. Like the negative of a color photo. The white tiled floor was pitch-black, and the light blue-green wallpaper was bloodred. The room was flipped, too, like a reflection—the shelves and the dresser had swapped walls, the door was opposite the bed. Distantly, I heard a muffled ringing sound, like a fire alarm going off in the building next door. Behind me, the portal in the corner glowed white.

But as weird as all of that was, it barely