Karma kitty's Arc

Chapter 7 of 8

The doors opened into a small, bright box. The boy pedaled in without a sound. Karma hesitated at the carpet's edge. She had followed this child to help him. She stepped inside. The doors closed. The elevator climbed, then stopped with a soft bump. The boy rolled out ahead of her into a new hall. Upstairs looked older. The striped runner was the same brown stripes, but the walls had changed. Glossy red and yellow wallpaper ran in bold curls down both sides, like a photo from fifty years back. Karma passed a mirror set in the wall. She saw the hall, the carpet, the wallpaper. She did not see the boy. He kept pedaling toward a second pair of elevator doors at the end. "Wait," she said. "Who brought you here?" Two girls stood between her and the boy. They had not been there a second ago. They wore matching blue dresses with round white collars. Same dark hair, same blunt bangs, same flat stare. They stood shoulder to shoulder, perfectly still. "Do you want to play with us?" they said together. One voice, doubled. Karma backed up. Her shoulder hit the wallpaper. The far elevator doors slid open behind the twins. There was no car inside, only a dark shaft. Then red water poured out. It rose in a thick wave, dark as old blood, curling toward the ceiling. It crested and broke across the carpet. The flood rushed at the girls, the boy, her boots. Karma turned and ran. She pounded back down the hall as the wave of blood rushed toward her. The boy was gone. The twins were gone. She reached the first elevator and slapped the button. Nothing. She shoved through a side door and ran. The halls bent and split. Red wallpaper, brown stripes, shut doors, dead clocks. She turned left, then right, then left again. Every hall looked the same. She was not finding the stairs. She was going deeper. She stopped, gasping, hands on her knees. No blood chased her now. She heard only distant whispers through the corridors and the hum of the quiet building. She had wanted one day that wasn't a problem. Instead she was lost inside a place that bent around her like the hedge maze outside, and she had no idea which way was out. Karma pressed her back to the wallpaper and made herself breathe. She thought of her house. She had been lost in it too, the first day, choking on the smell, sure it would beat her. She had found one room then. One true thing to start from. She looked down. The striped runner ran under her boots in both directions. It had led her and the boy here. It had to lead out. She picked the direction the stripes grew worn and faded, toward feet that had walked out before. She started walking. Not running. Reading the floor like a map. The hotel wanted her lost. In the distance she started to hear screaming and thunking noises, like something being broke.