Warm fingers brush against Charlie's hand before latching on in an unbreakable grip. Her eyes travel away from the hotel to meet a pair of frightened green eyes staring back at her. She squeezes Lydia's hand in half-hearted reassurance before pushing her body away from the bus to join Finstock in handing out the keys for the hotel room.
She takes her key and thanks the heavens that her room is a ground room. The idea of walking up a flight of stairs is daunting if not impossible at that moment. Charlie is just about to disappear to her room when she notices Lydia's reluctance.
"I don't like this place," she says.
Allison laughs as she stands beside her friend. "I don't think the people who own this place like this place. It's just one night."
Once again, Lydia locks eyes with Charlie. Allison is under the impression that Lydia is merely being her normal picky self but it's more than that. Allison doesn't feel what they're feeling. She doesn't hear what they hear.
There is a dark cloud hovering over this hotel. A cloud of sorrow and death and it's nearly suffocating. Bad things have happened here and neither girl can shake the feeling that more bad things are going to happen tonight.
"A lot can happen in one night," Lydia says softly before allowing Allison to pull her in the direction of their room.
Lydia exchanges one last worried look with Charlie before disappearing up the stairs. It's with a deep, swallowing breath that Charlie stumbles across then parking lot and into the confines of her room.
With no one around to distract her or for her to pretend that she's okay with, Charlie allows the days exhaustion to wash over her. Each movement she takes is slow and forced and almost painful. The fabric of her flannel blouse scratches against the nerves on her arms as she pulls it away from her body. At the sight of the exposed flesh of her arms, she blanches.
The long sleeves of her blouse had hidden the large, swollen inky black veins that now mark her pale skin. She rakes her nails against one of the veins as though it were merely dried pant that she could peel off. When her hands failed to do the trick, Charlie stumbles into the bathroom and snatches a wash rag off from the counter.
She scrubs and scrubs at the exposed skin, desperate to remove the offending marks. When the skin finally breaks, beads of black blood spill out and into the white basin.
"No, no, no," she whimpers as she slides down to the floor. She slumps over until she's leaning against the cold metal pipes of the sink.
"Yes, yes, yes," says a raspy voice inside her head.
Charlie shakes her, squeezing her eyes shut. "Go away."
"Charlie."
"Charlie."
"Stop it."
"Open your eyes, Charlie," says a new and different voice. It's feminine and foreign to her, and yet, somehow familiar. "Charlie, open your eyes. Open them."
Slowly, as though waking from a dream, Charlie slowly opens her eyes. There is movement in the corner of her eye and she turns her head ever so slightly to find a young blonde woman of the same age as herself. Her vibrant blue eyes are lined in black coal and they regard Charlie with a quizzical judgement.
Charlie yearns to reach out and touch her. To learn if the woman is real or just a figment of the imagination. Her fingers twitch by her side but there is no other movement. The black liquid coursing through her veins acts as a paralyzing poison. She vaguely wonders if this is how Derek felt when paralyzed by the kanima. Helpless and weak.
