With a tinkling smash, I crashed into the net of chandelier. It was like landing on an uncomfortably studded trampoline, sloping sharply down. For a second everything swayed, nauseating, and I scrambled for a grip, but I was already slipping, sliding over the scraping glass baubles, down and sideways towards the edge...

With a whimper I clutched the mesh beneath me, wrapping my hands around faceted glass and wire and jamming my feet into gaps. One leg was already dangling out into the yawning void of empty space, but my other three limbs were all caught. I jerked to a stop, gasping, swaying, heart pounding so hard I could barely think, spread-eagled like a fly in a tacky, glittering web.

From somewhere above, Niko laughed. “See!” he called down. “Speculate, theorize all you want. Only way to get answers is to dive in head first. Or butt first, in your case.” He let out some slack in the rope. “Now untwist your panties and get climbing.”

I wriggled cautiously away from the unthinkable drop-off, back toward the center of the jangling net. Moving was awkward: the mesh was a grid of thin metal wire, squares maybe eight or nine inches apart up here, but denser farther down. Little glass baubles dangled from it every few inches, sparkling in the beam of my headlamp. The thing was not comfortable to crawl on, and had enough give that it deformed alarmingly as I shifted my weight. The thin mesh cut into my hands unless I was careful; I’d scraped them both, stopping myself from falling.

I looked back up. There was no wall around the hall we’d come through to get here. It stretched back into empty space beyond the limits of my light, wreathed in billowing pink insulation. Huge lumps stuck obscenely from the sides, also swaddled in pink: presumably the last few rooms we’d passed. It looked like a long pink tongue, thick with diseased bumps, that we’d wriggled to the end of and crawled out the tip.

Shuddering, I looked down, scouting my route to the relative safely of the impossible bedroom’s curving surface. The steep slope of the net up here flattened as it dropped and converged to chandelier. I decided facing the net and right-side up was the safest position to start, like climbing down a ladder. When the thing became more horizontal, I’d have to twist around and crawl, then drop the last few feet to the top of the tube.

It was awkward and slow going, in part because I took significantly more care than I strictly needed. I did not want to trust my life to that murderous asshole and a fucking doorknob.

One handhold and foothold at a time (and ignoring Niko’s frequent insults and urgings to hurry the fuck up) I finally made it to the chandelier proper, which I noticed, disconcertedly, wasn’t connected to anything at all. Nevertheless, it was rock-solid, anchored with implacable tenacity to its chosen point in space, hovering a suspiciously standard distance above the top of the tube beneath, as if hanging from the ceiling of an ordinary room.

Carefully, I pushed my feet over the tinkling edge and dropped the few feet to the curving hardwood beneath me.

I landed hard and dropped into a crouch, adrenaline flaring. While nice to be off the chandelier net, this felt only slightly less precarious. The very top of the huge tube was flat enough, but the edges curved down on both sides with alarming speed. The zone where I felt comfortable standing was a rounded summit only five or six feet wide; after that, the slope got steeper and steeper.

Looking down the length of the tube, the flat zone of safety stretched forward like a sinuous path, but in no way a clear one. To navigate it, you’d have to clamber over beds, edge vertiginously around angled desks. It was as if all the furniture was bolted to that cylindrical floor. Turning toward the sickening curve of the drop-off and seeing the tops of bedroom junk poking up from beyond the horizon a few feet away, I again couldn’t shake the sense I was on an incredibly tiny planet furnished entirely out of the IKEA catalogue and the dregs of garage sales, albeit one stretched from a sphere into an infinitely long cylinder.

Experimentally, I took a few steps curveward, wondering if gravity somehow worked differently here; but it didn’t seem to, at least not for me. The angle felt steep and dangerous. My own “down” was quite clearly still toward the twinkling lights miles below. Whether the furniture really was bolted to the floor or just obeying its own special rules would have to remain a mystery.

I finally remembered Niko, who’d stopped berating me some time ago, and glanced up to see what he was doing. He wasn’t there. I frowned. The rope curved from me up to the lip of the hall, tracing the path of the chandelier-net, and vanished inside. I was so far below the hallway now I could only see a few feet of walls and ceiling through the open door. The corridor still seemed lit by the refracted glow of a flashlight, moving around somewhere back there, so I figured he hadn’t gone far. Maybe he was untying the rope from the doorknob and tying it to himself, so he could follow me down. But he’d been at it a while.

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Shit. This was an opportunity, and I was squandering it. I glanced down at the rope tied to my ankle, but there were multiple knots, some kind of Navy-ass shit, pulled so tight my foot was losing circulation. Sharp. I needed something sharp. I cast around desperately. A few paces from me was a nightstand with drawers, and I yanked one open, hoping for—I don’t know. Something. Anything. But there was only junk inside: a few dusty paperclips, a mechanical pencil with a missing eraser. A single red prize ticket from a skeeball alley.

I stared at it, despair creeping over me.

Light played across my face. I started and looked up, guilty. Niko was back, peering down distractedly from the hanging doorway, the rope now tied around his waist. He didn’t seem to notice what I was doing. He seemed on edge.

“I think there’s one of those fucking Lookie-Loos up here,” he said. “Way, way back in the hall. At the edge of my light. Doesn’t matter. Not going back that way, are we? I’m coming down. Find something to brace yourself on. Brace good and tight,” he added, “because if I fall and you’re not secure, you’re coming with me, baby.”

Maybe that would be preferable, the best fate for all concerned.

But maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he really wasn’t planning to kill me. Maybe there was a door up ahead for my key. A way back.

Without Niko?

My survival instinct shoved the thought away, like a drowner pushing their rescuer down into the choking depths, desperate to keep their own head above water.

I looked for a way to brace myself, and that’s when I discovered the furniture wasn’t bolted to the floor.

If you gave it a shove, it slid, like normal furniture. But as I inadvertently shoved an armoire two feet farther towards the curve, I hopped back, expecting gravity and momentum to pull the top-heavy thing down and around the slope till it fell over the edge and plummeted into blackness.

Instead, it slid a few feet and then stopped, tilted at a dizzying angle but perfectly content where it was.

Frowning, afraid to get too close, I reached out with my foot and gave it a solid kick. It slid another foot around the curve, angle steepening towards a ridiculous thirty-five or forty degrees. But it showed no signs of toppling over. It acted, in fact, exactly as if I was shoving it over flat ground.

“Bracing myself might be a problem,” I shouted up, but there was no response. I figured he hadn’t heard—the empty space around us swallowed up sound, creating a surreal distance to everything, like someone had turned down the volume on reality—but when I looked up to shout, Niko was staring back down the hallway behind him again.

“I think it got closer.” He glanced down at me for a moment, face unreadable, then looked back down the hall. “While I wasn’t looking. Fucking creepy. In fact...” He trailed off, staring at something I couldn’t see. My vantage point only showed a couple feet of ceiling.

“What?” My stomach churned, as if in warning.

He didn’t look away from whatever he was staring at.

“It’s got something in its hand,” he said, quite calmly.

Nausea swept through me, chemical fear. Hairs prickled all over my body.

“It’s coming toward me, Ry.” He was still calm, still staring down the hall. “I’m starting down in twenty seconds. Figure out a way to brace yourself. Fast.”

Maybe he was messing with me again. Trying to put the fear of God in me so I’d hurry it up.

Or maybe he wasn’t. I knew what his calm tone meant. What he hid behind it. He was fucking terrified.

“I’ve never seen one move like this,” he said, voice still calm. “It’s running down the hall towards me, now. Ryan. Hurry.”

Something inside me screamed. He’s not lying and something is coming and there’s nowhere to run and maybe I should let it get him but I’m tied to him I’m fucking tied—

I ripped my gaze from the floating hall and cast frantically around the narrow path of safety for something secure, anything heavy. There: a bulky bed with a bookcase headboard filled with books and knick-knacks. I pushed another armoire, a solid-looking oak monstrosity, over on top of it, then scrambled underneath the bed and back over the top of the armoire, pulling the rope tied to my ankle behind. Quickly I did it again, wrapping the rope twice around the heavy furniture. If Niko fell now, all that weight plus my own should be enough to hold him.

“Hurry up,” he shouted from above me, still staring down the hall, and then I could hear it. Footsteps, beating against the carpet. Something running down the hallway, running flat out. A manic run. Fast. As fast as it could.

“Ready,” I shouted up, not sure which side to root for, not sure of anything but the pulse hammering in my ears.

He nodded once, then pulled his gaze away and swung out over the edge, flipping around to face the net, feet feeling for purchase while he clutched the end of the carpet. Pointedly focusing on his hands, not glancing down the hall again, he started down. He descended efficiently, much faster than I’d been capable of.

It was coming for him. The footsteps thudded the hall above, creaked loose floorboards. They were very close.

“Shit,” he said. “Shit shit shit.” He was still close to the doorway. Too close.

What is it what does it want why is it running what does it have in its...

With shocking suddenness a hand wrapped itself around the doorframe.