The mist at Vista Lake was thick enough to swallow the red beam of his flashlight. He stood in the overgrown courtyard staring up at the dilapidated VISTA LAKE HOTEL sign, its dying red light bleeding into the fog. He had come for Room 302, nothing else, but the hotel was already watching him back. Inside, the basement was a throat of rust and hanging shapes, the light cutting forward as his footsteps clanked on the metal grating. He crouched over the floor grate, feeling small and trapped, and found it — a cold brass key tagged 302. Then the doorway erupted. Something screeched and lunged from the dark, and he froze mid-reach, shoving that single red beam straight into it to blind it as the shadows closed in.