I know you left me standing there...

[Nailah Weaver]

After the lights had turned back on and had left Nailah standing there, confused about what just happened she takes her book and makes her way down to the lounge.

[Steve Jones]

Steve is there, reading a superhero comic featuring a glowing sword on the cover.

[Nailah Weaver]

She gives him a weary smile and sits down on one of the couches, putting the book down on the table and lighting up a cigarette.

[Narrator]

Nailah hears the sound of something dripping as a faint metallic odor, masked by the smoke of her cigarette, fills the air.

[Nailah Weaver]

She glances around, then looks at her cigarette suspiciously, trying to shake the odd feeling creeping up on her.

"You were right, this place is strange. Very strange."

[Steve Jones]

Steve doesn't answer.

[Narrator]

There is only the dripping of something red from the comic book. Its cover is soaked with it.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Mister Jones...?" she says carefully, trying to look around the comic and at his face, telling herself that he just must have spilled something on the cover. Cranberry juice or something.

[Narrator]

The comic book somehow manages to obscure the boy's face at every angle. Under the red, the cover is no longer that of a superhero tale. It is a man's face peering hungrily through a window. The title is the same as the very book she had just mysteriously recovered.

[Nailah Weaver]

"How is that..." she takes the book to double-check, though she knows the title is the same. The book cover she remembers as much less unsettling though, showing just an empty window.

[Narrator]

The empty window suddenly isn't so empty as a shadow moves towards the glass with lightning speed.

[Nailah Weaver]

She lets out a sharp scream and drops the book as if it bit her, pressing herself backwards into the couch.

[Narrator]

Both Steve and the reddened comic are now gone, as if never there. The smell is also gone.

[Steve Jones]

From a different direction, the boy hurried into the lounge and towards Nailah.

"I heard a scream, are you okay?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"I... what?" her head swivels around to Steve, then back to who was sitting across from her and back to Steve. Meanwhile she has pulled her legs up onto the couch, away from the book.

[Steve Jones]

He looked to the empty furniture across from Nailah, then to the book, then to to her.

"You... saw something... didn't you?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"How... but... you..."

Now that whatever it was seems to be gone she slowly comes to her senses again.

"You were sitting there, reading a comic-book. At least... I thought it was you..." she adds, realizing she never actually saw NotSteve's face.

[Steve Jones]

"And it was just sitting there?" he asked. A strange choice of words.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Yeah, he just disappeared into thin.... Why did you say 'it'?"

[Steve Jones]

"You wouldn't believe me..."

[Nailah Weaver]

"I just watched someone disappear into thin air!" And was attacked by my book. I think. "I'll gladly listen to anything that means I'm not hallucinating."

[Steve Jones]

"Okay..." he said, breathing out, "The air... it smelled funny but is normal now and the lights wigged out, right?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"Well there was this weird smell and I thought I heard something..."

[Steve Jones]

"The smell shows up just before the nightmares. Only... they aren't nightmares. And there are these... things... in the dark... usually just out of sight. That me that wasn't me must have been one."

[Nailah Weaver]

"Right. A nightmare. I barely got any sleep last night and I dozed off for a moment." she says, ignoring the fact that NotSteve had been sitting there when she walked in.

[Steve Jones]

"That's not it. These come when you're awake," he said with an odd air of authority.

[Nailah Weaver]

"So they're hallucinations?" she asks, sitting properly again, then leaning down to pick up her book, looking at Steve as she does as not to be impolite. As she picks up the book something falls out between the pages and onto the carpet without her noticing.

[Steve Jones]

"Not... exactly," he began, but paused as he looked at what fell out of the book.

[Nailah Weaver]

"You're telling me that actually happened? Someone was sitting there and then just disappeared?"

[Steve Jones]

He shook his head. "Not someone."

He stepped closer to the object that fell. "You dropped this," he said as he picked it up.

[Nailah Weaver]

She looks at the strange key he picked up and shakes her head. "That's not mine."

[Steve Jones]

What a weird key...

"It was in your book though."

[Nailah Weaver]

"Whoever brought the book back must have put it in there..."

[Steve Jones]

"I wonder what it opens," he wondered.

Something creepy, duh.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Maybe it's a staff key?"

[Steve Jones]

"Yeah maybe," he said, turning it over in his hand.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Well there's two ways to find out. And there aren't that many people here who could have left it for me, right?"

[Steve Jones]

"What way besides handing it to someone on the staff which I sooooo don't want to do?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"Trying it on doors."

[Steve Jones]

He smacked his head. "Duh."