the top of the staircase, and it marches around the wall to form a rectangle.
It’s a door. There’s a door at the top of the staircase, and someone is throwing a party just behind it.
Mona stares at it, breathing hard. Every inch of her shirt is sticking to her skin. There are many, many voices now, so whatever party it is, it must be a big one. She starts to approach the door, but she brings the Glock up just a little, just in case.
She hears shouting from the other side again. Someone cries, “Cheers, everyone! Look at me. Hey! Fucking look at me! All right, good. Finally. Now, come on, everyone, to the New Year, am I right?”
“And on Uncle Sam’s dime, too,” says a second voice, a woman.
“Fuck Sam’s dime,” says a third. “The DOD ain’t footing this bill. We paid for this out of our goddamn pockets.”
“Then we better get our money’s worth!” shouts the first voice, and there’s a round of cheers and laughing.
It’s a New Year’s Eve party, thinks Mona, but it’s July, isn’t it? What the hell could be going on?
She’s right next to the door now. Barging in on a party with a gun drawn really isn’t her style, to say the least. But whatever her style is, it’s been woefully inadequate the last couple of days. She supposes it’s time to adapt.
She decides she’s going to take a peek. She grasps the knob, and slowly applies pressure. It is not locked. She swallows and keeps turning the knob, tensing with each twitch of the bolt.
Finally it will turn no farther. She positions herself at the opening and begins to ease the door open.
“Say,” says a voice on the other side, and it sounds mere feet away, “what kind of gin is this, anyways?”
The door is almost open a crack. Mona puts her eye to it, tries to steady her hand, and keeps easing the door open.
Then, abruptly, the light on the other side of the door dies, and the music and voices cease entirely. The stairway fills with total, impenetrable darkness.
Mona is so shocked she almost falls over. She stands in the dark, wondering what happened. Did the people on the other side know she was about to peep in on them? But surely they couldn’t have reacted that quickly? There is no light of any kind anymore, and no sound. It’s as if they simply stopped existing.
She pushes the door open all the way, and though she can’t see it, she’s very aware that she might be standing in front of a hallway with a bunch of people staring right at her. She tries to remind herself that the people in the hallway can’t see her either… or at least they shouldn’t be able to.
She raises her gun to point directly ahead. Then she lifts the flashlight, places it over the wrist holding the gun, and turns it on.
What is before her is indeed a hallway, but it looks as if it hasn’t seen people in years. The ceiling panels have fallen in and the Pergo paneling is blooming with corrosion. She can see several doors to what look like offices—because this does not look like a lab hallway to her, but an ordinary office hallway—but they are all open and she can see no movement within them.
She fights the urge to call, “Hello?” and begins to stalk down the hallway, gun wheeling to cover each angle of approach. It is an awkward and clumsy dance in this decrepit, musky hallway. Each office is littered with rotting yellow paper. Yet nothing appears to have been disturbed. No one has been here in decades.
The place looks like it was built in the sixties and never updated: all the desks are streamlined, Mid-Century Modern affairs, and they’re surrounded by chairs resembling tulips and eggs. The lamps are skeletal, geometric contraptions, like things pried off Sputnik and plugged into the wall, yet the lamps in the ceiling are rounded, organic sculptures of glass and chrome (now rusted) that look inspired by undersea life. The sheer silence of the place is intimidating. This is not a place where a party was being thrown not more than five minutes ago.
Finally Mona gives in to her worst instincts: “Anyone home?” she asks aloud, softly.
There is no answer. She continues on with quiet footsteps.
So this was where her mother worked, she thinks as she wanders the halls, even though no one in Wink can remember it. Again, it