Elias bolted upright. He stared at the heavy oak door. The deadbolt was thrown, the chain was engaged. But as he watched, the brass chain began to slide, link by link, as if pulled by a slow, invisible hand. There was no sound of metal on metal. Only the silence of the room, heavy and suffocating.
A chill that had nothing to do with the air conditioning swept through the room. Elias froze. He looked around the cramped space—the bolted-down lamp, the bolted-down chair, the bolted-down bolted-downness of everything.
The film on the screen shifted. The characters were gone. Now, it was a grainy, high-angle shot of a motel room. This motel room. Elias saw the back of his own head on the screen. He saw himself staring at the door.
Elias frowned, leaning forward. He hadn't seen the first twelve subtitles. In fact, there had been no dialogue at all, no music, just the rhythmic whir-clack of a projector that shouldn't have been there.
Elias felt the bedframe vibrate. A soft, wet scraping sound rose from the floorboards. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to jump, to scream. But his muscles were lead. He kept his eyes locked on the television, watching his own reflection on the screen slowly turn its head toward the edge of the mattress.
The television screen went pitch black, leaving Elias in total darkness. The only thing left was the text, glowing with a faint, sickly green light in the center of the void.
