In her dream, she was suddenly tumbling down a hillside. The ground was shaking underneath her. The shaking didn’t stop.

‘Wake up Michaela! Holy shit, wake up already!’

Michaela opened her eyes. Trisha was shaking her by the shoulders. She forced the dream away and herself awake. ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, grabbing Trisha by the hand. She could see Caro at the end of the bed too, her face pale under her heavy, dark hair.

‘You gotta get up. They’re back.’

Michaela looked around and groped for her jeans. The room was ablaze with electric light. Through the bedroom door she could see the rest of the suite similarly bright.

‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

Caro was chewing on her fingernails. Trisha handed Michaela her shirt.

 ‘We were just watching TV. The movie had finished and you were asleep. Most of the lights were off and then it was just like at home. Shadows started moving, but you could only see them from the corner of your eye. But that was bad enough.’ She shuddered. ‘We could feel them, in the corners, watching us; it felt like there were hundreds of them.’ She sank down on the edge of the bed. ‘It was horrible, Michaela. Caro leapt up and we started turning on all the lights. What’re we going to do?’

Michaela took in their drawn, white faces and knew they had to do something. She looked around for her boots, eyes drawn to the corners of the room, where she could have sworn she felt them waiting. She shivered all of a sudden.

Caro asked again. ‘What’re we going to do?’  She stuck her fist back in her mouth. ‘They’re not going to go away, are they?’

Michaela stood up, socks on now, shoving her feet into boots. ‘Get your shoes and jackets on,’ she said.

‘Where are we going?’ Trisha asked, but she was already looking around for her shoes.

Michaela leaned down to do up her laces. ‘We’re going to take them back,’ she said after a moment.

There was a slight popping sound from the other room, and the ceiling light went out. Caro squealed in fright and Trisha clamped a hand on Michaela’s arm.

‘What the fuck?’ she said.

Another popping sound, and another light out. The suite’s small lounge grew dark through the doorway.

‘Shoes, jackets, now,’ Michaela commanded, standing up and drawing Trisha with her. ‘Get your car keys.’

Trisha nodded mutely and Michaela pushed past to Caro. ‘Caro?’ she hissed. ‘Get your shoes on.’

Caro shook her head, eyes gripped by the dark room. ‘They’re in there,’ she said.

Michaela put an arm round her. ‘I’ll come with you.’

They went through into the next room, lit now only by the television. Caro moved round by the couch and groped on the floor for her shoes. Michaela stood by her, willing her to hurry up, eyeing the corners of the room where the shadows seemed to grow and darken, gelling together into solid blackness.

The light in the bedroom went out.

‘Trisha?’

Trisha appeared in the doorway. ‘The keys are on the table,’ she said.

Michaela glanced down at Caro, still pulling on her shoes. ‘Are you ready?’ she asked, tugging on the girl’s sleeve.

The television screen went back. Trisha gave a startled shriek from the doorway.

‘We have to get out of here now,’ hissed Michaela, pulling Caro through the sudden blackness to where she hoped the table was. The darkness enveloped her, as though it had form and mass, pushing at her face. ‘Trisha?’ she called. ‘Where are you? Find the door.’ She heard movement, hoped it was Trisha groping towards the suite door. Caro stumbled behind her and Michaela could hear the harsh sounds of her breathing. Her bag was on the table. And the keys, somewhere.

She crashed into something, hitting her shin. She bit her lip on the pain and stuck a hand out, groping, relieved to find the tabletop under her fingers. She swept up her bag, slinging it over a shoulder and reaching back for the keys. Where were they?

‘Michaela?’ Trisha’s voice was almost unrecognizable.

‘Keys,’ Michaela said into the darkness. ‘Where the fuck are the keys?’ She could feel movement in the darkness of the room, hoped to God it was Trisha or Caro.

Caro moved to her side, hands sweeping the table, looking for the keys too. Her hand touched something that jangled and she grasped them. ‘Found them,’ she said, her voice an outrush of held breath.

Michaela grabbed hold of her. ‘Don’t drop them,’ she said, already turning them towards what she hoped was the door.

The air seemed to be growing thicker. She bit down on her panic. Just imaging it, she told herself. A breeze of something fanned past her face and she gave a startled yelp. The darkness was filled, and writhing. Hand clamped on Caro’s arm, she dragged the girl forward.

‘Trisha?’ she called, throat filling with syrupy darkness. ‘Where are you Trish?’

Something bumped into her. She flung out a hand and was relieved when it struck something warm and solid. ‘Trisha? That you?’

The warm body grabbed her back. ‘I can’t find the door.’ It was Trisha and Michaela hung onto her.

‘It has to be here somewhere,’ she said, struggling for calm. She peered into the dark room, straining her eyes. There must be a chink of light somewhere, just the smallest reflection from a window where the drapes weren’t fully closed. But there was no light anywhere. And the darkness was pressing closer.

She tried to remember the room, picturing it in her mind. It wasn’t that big, for fuck’s sake! Where the hell was the door? Hell, where was a wall? She surged forward, taking the other two with her. She could feel the shadows reaching for them, grasping with their inky fingers…

A wall. She let go of one of the girls, no longer knowing which one. ‘Hang onto me,’ she commanded, letting her hand sweep the smooth surface and moving along it. The door must be close.

Her hand closed over the door knob and her knees just about buckled with relief. She twisted it but it didn’t budge. ‘I can’t get the door open,’ she whispered.

A hand slid down over hers, grasped the door knob, did something, twisted it and it turned.

‘Move back!’ Trisha yelled. ‘It opens inward.’

They stumbled back, the three of them entwined in the twisting darkness and Trisha yanked the door open, letting a welcome oblong of light spill into the room.

Through into the hotel hallway, Trisha banged the door shut behind them and staggered back against the facing wall. All three of them stared at the closed door, their breathing hitching.

‘Oh fuck.’ It was Trisha. She was staring down at the bar of blackness under the door. She groped for Michaela as they watched in stunned fascination as the blackness bulged beneath the door and began to ooze under the gap and into the hallway like an oil spill. There was a fizzing and a popping and the hallway light beside them burst in a shatter of glass and went out. The stain grew larger in the dimmer length of corridor.

‘We’re outta here,’ Michaela said, pushing the other two in front of her and towards the exit. Within seconds the three of them were running.

There was no one at the reception desk when they ran past and pushed the doors open, tumbling out into the night. Probably just as well, they would have been a suspicious sight, Michaela was sure, three wild, disheveled women running as though the hounds of hell were chasing them. They backed away into the car park.

‘You still have those keys, Caro?’ Michaela asked, her voice barely a croak, her throat dry.

Caro didn’t even answer, just held the shining bunch of keys up. Michaela nodded at her and turned towards Trisha. ‘Where’s the car, babe?’

They walked off, huddled together, looking for the car. Trisha saw it first and pointed it out. Caro gave her the keys and the doors were unlocked and they all clambered in, feeling a little safer.

‘Where are we going to go?’ Trisha asked at last. She looked over at Michaela sitting in the passenger seat and her face was starkly pale in the yellow car light.

Caro spoke up from the back seat. ‘We can’t go home,’ she said. ‘Those, those things will just follow us, I know they will.’ She stifled a sob and set her face. ‘They’re going to follow me wherever I go aren’t they?’

Michaela tried to smile at her, but she was afraid it would have looked more of a grimace than a reassurance. ‘We have to get rid of them,’ she said, knowing the other two women weren’t going to like what she was about to say. Hell, she wasn’t thrilled with it either.

Caro was struggling not to cry. ‘How?’ she asked. ‘We don’t even know what they are? How are we supposed to get rid of them?’

Michaela shifted, uncomfortable. She looked at Trisha. ‘We know where they came from though,’ she said. ‘We can take them back.’

Trisha’s face creased in a frown and she started shaking her head. ‘Oh no. No way. Michaela you have to be fucking kidding me,’ 

Caro swiped at her eyes. ‘What?’ she asked.

Trisha was still shaking her head. ‘You can’t be serious. It’s the middle of the night. Middle of fucking Halloween night, no fucking less. There’s no way we’re going back there.’

Michaela ran her fingers through her hair. There was no way she wanted to go back there either. Not when something had been stalking them last time, something that was not a bear, but was probably worse than a bear. And she didn’t have a clue what they were supposed to do when they got there, but it was the only idea she even thought might be worth something.

‘What?’ Caro repeated, looking from one of them to the other.

‘I don’t think we have a choice,’ Michaela said to Trisha, her voice gentle. ‘And I think the fact that it’s Halloween will be in our favor.’ She looked at Caro. ‘It was Midsummers when you went there and were noticed. If we can lead them back there, perhaps they will go back to what they should have been doing.’ She watched horrified comprehension dawn in Caro’s dark eyes. ‘Or something,’ she finished, aware of how lame her argument sounded. 

There was silence in the car. Trisha had her hands set on the steering wheel, gazing out into the dark night.

‘I really, really need a smoke,’ she said at last.

Michaela opened the glove box and passed her a pack of cigarettes. Trisha shook out a smoke and groped around for a lighter. She cranked the window down a little and blew out a stream of white smoke.

‘Okay then,’ she said and turned the key in the ignition. ‘Let’s do this thing.’

Michaela nodded as they backed out of their parking space and pulled out onto the road. She swiveled in her seat and tried to smile reassuringly at Caro.

If only she felt as confident as she was trying to look.