The hotel's lights ahead sparkled through Greg's rain-dappled windshield as he drove up the driveway. He was finally close enough to the dot on his phone's map that the navigation had nothing more to say. He couldn't be sure if this was what he was hoping for or what he was dreading, but it was just as stunning and unexpected as before.
He parked in the gravel lot out front and got out of the car, looking at the structure from the outside. He still wasn't sure about going back in there, after what happened before. Maybe coming back here was a mistake, but he needed to get away, and he needed answers, and he thought maybe he'd be able to get them here. Maybe if he came alone, he wouldn't be susceptible to whatever collective delusion they'd been under before.
But going out to find the dragon is one thing. Climbing into its mouth is another.
Greg was not so oblivious as the rest of them seemed to think. He remembered what he saw, when they all woke up in the abandoned hotel together: his wife Amy lying naked, straddling her brother's crotch. A trail of semen when she got up off him, his cock slipping free.
He also knew Amy had come back here with Zach, spent another weekend alone here with him, and came home reeking of sex. All while she and Greg were trying to conceive. Now she was pregnant, and it could have been Greg's. She sought him out soon after that weekend away, but Greg wasn't fooled. If the baby was Zach's, that would be obvious in time.
He wasn't sure where that left him. He wasn't sure what kind of future he and Amy could have together. But that was also only the beginning.
Greg thought that what happened to the whole group of them at this abandoned hotel was something they had tacitly agreed never to talk about again. Other than Zach and Amy, who were their own thing by now. But then when Greg was over at Mike's house, he noticed photos on Mike's desk, showing the crumbling facade. It was Zach's photography for sure.
Greg asked if Mike had been back here since, and Mike denied it, but he was a bad liar. When he had a moment alone with Mike's computer, he found a dropbox password on the desktop. Greg expected to find more of Zach's photos. Instead, he found video taken inside the abandoned hotel. A video starring Mike and his sister Jenna.
Now, standing outside the place, Greg found himself scared to go in there. Scared of what it would put him through. There was clearly some trickery happening here. He knew when he was being manipulated.
Losing his nerve, Greg got back in the car. He still wasn't sure what he would say to Amy when he got home. This resolved nothing, but maybe he shouldn't have expected it to. He put the key in the ignition and turned. Something made a whirring, grinding sound under the hood, but there was no roar of the engine. He tried again. And again. And then he sighed, and sat there, defeated.
Greg would have to call a tow-truck, but only towing company nearby was already closed for the night. Maybe he'd call Mike or Zach. Or his mom or dad or Maia. But not right now.
It would be so easy to walk into the illusion of the hotel. Too easy. He closed his eyes, hoping to get some sleep in the driver's seat, and sort out the rest in the morning. But sleep wouldn't come.
He gave in, and went inside. He recognized the woman at the front desk. He probably wouldn't have remembered her name if Mike hadn't been repeating it, calling Jenna by that name, in that messed up video that Greg got ahold of.
"Hey Rosie," he said. "Can I get a room for the night?"
"Sure thing," she said, reaching for a room key for him. "You're Mike's friend, right?"
He nodded.
She waved away his credit card. "Pay when you check out. Can I show you to your room?"
"Yeah, thanks," Greg said. He knew he didn't have the best sense of direction.
Then he followed the desk attendant down corridors, around turns, up and down stairs. Eventually, halfway down an anonymous hallway of identical doors, she opened one of the rooms for him.
He went to close the room door and have a moment to himself again, when another woman walked down the hall, passing in front of the doorway. It was that young woman Zach was fawning over last time they were all here. Only now her belly was round. To Greg, the sight of it was a shock and a wound, reminding him of the turmoil he'd temporarily escaped at home.
Fucking Zach. Fucking Zach and his fucking around. Greg's brother-in-law had already knocked up a woman during college, and he had the gall to complain about child support to anyone who'd listen.
When he closed his eyes, Greg saw himself in his parent's house, when he was home after college graduation to get his things, before moving in with Amy. He was coming back upstairs to get another box when he walked past Maia's room.
As twins, they always knew when they were looking at each other, and it stopped him in his tracks. She was staring daggers into him.
"What'd I do this time?" He really wasn't sure.
"You're leaving me," she said.
"What do you want me to do? Stay here forever?"
"Yes," she said, like it was obvious. "Anything she can do, I can do better."
Greg shook his head, trying to will away the vision. No. That wasn't how it happened. Maybe his wife Amy and her brother Zach had some sick thing going on. Maybe Mike and Jenna were messed up the same way. But not him.
Greg wound up in the bar, because this wasn't the kind of night he could handle sober, even if the booze wasn't real. He nursed an old fashioned, because even if the strangers around him were all just window-dressing, his sense of propriety wasn't so easy to silence. He wanted to get drunk, but he could take his time getting there. He had all night, after all.
He felt that familiar sense of pressure, like when he was being watched. He turned on the bar stool, and caught her eye. It was Maia. His twin sister. With her head of frizzy curls, her chocolate skin just like his. This had to be an illusion, though he couldn't imagine how whatever entity inhabited this place would even know about her.
"You have a twin sister?" Amy had asked incredulously. She didn't find out until she and Greg were engaged. "Why haven't you ever mentioned her?"
"Because sometimes when you've spent more than eighteen years with someone, you decide that's plenty," he'd said. Though it wasn't that simple. He was the one who decided that, not Maia. And for reasons he could never explain to her.
But now here she was, in this cursed hotel, as if brought to life from his memories. Except she was older than last time he saw her. She was wearing a leather jacket and sipping a margarita, and he realized he was staring. Though she started it.
"Hey," he said to her, from a couple barstools away.
"Hey," she replied likewise. But not quite the familiar way his sister would have.
"Do you know me?" he asked.
"Should I?" She smiled a bit. "Are you like...a big deal or something?"
He paused for a second, and then decided to slide over and sit next to her. He couldn't not. She didn't flinch, but she didn't lean in, either. Like he was a stranger, but maybe not a stranger she was disinterested in.
