Chapter 1: Yearbook

November 1st, 2023

The photograph was the only thing that felt real anymore.

I found it in the back of my sketchbook, tucked between pages of half-finished drawings I’d abandoned when the lines wouldn’t go where I wanted them to. The corners were soft from being touched too many times, and the glossy surface was worn thin by my fingertips. I’d handled it so often over the past five months that I’d practically memorized every detail: the way Patricia’s dark hair caught the autumn light, the curve of her smile that suggested she knew something the rest of us didn’t, the red sundress that seemed to glow against her olive skin.

Patricia Kama. My mentor. My friend. The girl who’d disappeared into the Blue Ridge Mountains and never came back.

I traced the outline of her face with my fingertip. “Where did you go?” I whispered.

The question hung in my bedroom air, unanswered as it had been every night since June. My mother had installed soundproof tiles on my walls two years ago. She said it was for “better concentration during study hours.” I knew it was really so she wouldn’t hear me crying in the middle of the night, and wouldn’t have to acknowledge that her perfect daughter might not be so perfect after all.

Outside my window, the Virginia autumn had stripped the oak tree bare. November had arrived with its gray skies and damp cold, the kind of weather that seeped into your bones and made you feel like you’d never be warm again. Halloween had come and gone, and with it, the final thread of hope that Patricia might somehow reappear, that the urban legend about the Empirella Hotel might be just a story after all.

I knew better. I’d seen the footage. I’d read the articles. I’d spent countless nights scrolling through forums where strangers debated whether the hotel was a portal to another dimension or just a cleverly staged hoax ... and then there was what I’d seen last night.

The memory of Halloween still clung to me like cobwebs. I’d gone to the school party because Elena begged me to, because she said I needed to “get out more,” because she thought that if I just pretended to be normal for one night, I might actually become normal again.

I’d worn a nun costume. Not because I was religious; I wasn’t, but because I thought it would make me invisible. The black habit covered everything. No skin showing. No curves. No vulnerability. I’d wrapped myself in layers of fabric and hoped no one would look at me.

They hadn’t. They’d seen a girl in a costume, someone to be pitied. The girl whose friend vanished. The girl who couldn’t let go.

I’d stood in the corner of the gymnasium, watching everyone else dance, laugh, and pretend the world wasn’t falling apart. The strobe lights had flashed in time with the music, creating a stuttering, disjointed reality that made me feel like I was already halfway to the other side of something.

Then I heard it. A girl’s voice, shrill and excited, cutting through the noise.

“Did you hear about the Empirella Hotel? It’s so creepy. Women check in and check out naked, and then they just ... disappear.”

I turned. Four girls were huddled together, their faces illuminated by the glow of someone’s phone screen. They were watching a video of the same grainy security footage I’d watched a hundred times. Patricia enters the hotel. Patricia leaves the hotel.

Patricia naked. Patricia free.

“That’s so fake,” one of the girls said. “No one would just walk out of a hotel naked.”

“Some people say it’s a cult. They brainwash women and make them join some nudist colony.”

“It’s just an urban legend. My mom told me about it when I was little. It’s not real.”

I wanted to scream. I’d wanted to grab them by their shoulders and shake them until they understood. It wasn’t fake. It wasn’t a cult. It was real, and Patricia was gone, and I was the only one who seemed to care.

Yet, I hadn’t moved. I’d stood frozen in the corner, my costume suddenly too tight, too hot, too suffocating. I needed to escape. I pushed through the crowd, ignoring the shouts and complaints, and stumbled into the girls’ bathroom.

The fluorescent lights had buzzed overhead, casting everything in a sickly green glow. I leaned against the sink, trying to catch my breath, trying to stop the tears that were threatening to spill.

Then I saw it ... a photograph. Stuck to the mirror with a piece of tape. Patricia’s face, smiling at me from within a faded frame. On the back, written in handwriting I knew too well, four words:

“HELLO, KIRA. I’M WAITING.”

I’d grabbed the photograph, my hands shaking. It was impossible. Patricia’s handwriting, without question. The same looping capital letters, the same slight tilt to the left. I’d recognized it instantly.

How? How had it gotten there? Who had put it there? Why?

I stared at the photograph, my mind racing through possibilities. A prank. A hallucination. A cruel joke by someone who knew how obsessed I’d become.

Then the photograph dissolved in my hands. Not ripped, dissolved. Turned to ash that fell through my fingers like sand. I’d watched it happen, watched Patricia’s smile crumble into nothing, and I’d screamed.

The bathroom door burst open. Elena was there, her face pale with worry. “Kira? What happened?”

I looked at my empty hands. I looked in the mirror. I looked at Elena.

“Nothing,” I’d said. “I just ... I need to go home.”

I drove home in a daze, my hands gripping the steering wheel so hard my knuckles turned white. I drove the familiar route through town, past the old church, the cemetery, and the diner where Patricia and I used to get milkshakes after photography club meetings. Then I’d taken a wrong turn.

I didn’t remember deciding. One moment I was on Main Street, the next I was on a winding country road I’d never seen before, surrounded by darkness and the hulking shapes of trees. The road had narrowed, the pavement giving way to gravel, and in the distance I saw a building.

The Empirella Hotel.

It appeared in my headlights like a ghost, turreted, sprawling, its windows glowing with warm light that seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. I slammed on the brakes, my car skidding to a stop in the middle of the road.

I stared at the hotel, my heart pounding. I’d never been here before. I’d mapped the route dozens of times, but I’d never actually made the drive. Yet, here it was, in all its gothic glory, looking exactly like the photographs I’d studied obsessively. Then there, at the edge of the road, stood a figure.

A woman. Tall, with red hair that caught the hotel’s light like fire. Completely naked, her pale skin glowing against the darkness. She’d been watching me, her green eyes fixed on mine through the windshield. She smiled a slow, knowing smile that made my blood run cold, and then she raised her hand and waved.

I looked away for just a second. When I looked back, she was gone. Then everything went white.

“You came home in the middle of the night,” she said, her voice soft but frayed at the edges. “You didn’t even say goodnight. I found you asleep on the living room floor. You were muttering something, but I couldn’t tell if you were dreaming or ... something else.” She paused. “You scared me, sweetheart.”

“Was I wearing this?” I asked, gesturing at the costume I wore to the Halloween party the night before.

She frowned. “What do you mean?”

I looked down. I was wearing my pajamas. I wasn’t wearing the nun costume anymore. Then I saw it, draped over the back of my computer chair.

“I changed you,” she said, following my gaze. “You were out cold. I carried you up here and put you to bed. You didn’t stir once.” She hesitated. “Your hand was clenched so tight I couldn’t pry it open. I figured you were holding something in your sleep. I didn’t want to wake you.”

I opened my mouth to explain, then closed it again. There was no explanation. There was only confusion, and fear, and the feeling that something had shifted in the world while I wasn’t looking.

Then I felt it. In my hand. A cold piece of metal.

A key. An old-fashioned brass key, engraved with the words: “Empirella Hotel, Room 217.”

I’d been holding it all night. I was almost sure of that. The weight of it was still pressed into my palm, the metal still cold against my skin. When I tried to remember my mother lifting me off the floor, I couldn’t picture my hand at all. I couldn’t picture the key in it. I couldn’t picture anything.