Chapter 2
The mattress is an open mouth, and Jesse is almost devoured. He sprawls across the sagging center, asleep, but it’s a half-breathing, suffocating sleep, with nightmares curling around his throat like tongues. Sweat slicks his hair to his forehead, soaks through his shirt, turns the pillow damp beneath his twitching head. The room hangs heavy around him, every wall swollen, the air as thick as old blood. Somewhere in his buried mind, Jesse knows this isn’t right. He knows this isn’t a room or a bed, and it isn’t sleep that grips him tight, but he’s too tangled in it, too lost to wake. The mattress is growing warmer, as if there’s a low, sticky heat radiating from the center and working its way into his skin, his breath, his bones. Occasionally, he stirs, murmuring, but the mattress responds: shifting, adjusting, pulling him closer, cradling him deeper, almost rocking him. In the dimness, the fan spins slower, slower, each rotation dragging like time itself is sick and dying. And underneath the slow, uneven sound of Jesse’s breathing, another sound rises, so soft it almost isn’t there at all: a sigh, deep within the mattress, warm and wet and dark.
A hollow where comfort should be, the room throbs around him, pressure building like a dam about to burst. Jesse lies caught in it, twitching, shifting, drifting in and out of senseless dreams. The pillow sticks to his skin like a second face, the blankets damp and clingy, the sweat running cold and feverish along his spine. He moves an arm, and it’s the same heavy pull as a man drowning in a dream, reaching for the light just before it dies. A half-formed murmur slips through his lips, the sound not quite a name, not quite a prayer, just a hoarse exhalation into the dark. For a moment, his eyes flutter open, as if he might surface, might claw his way back to consciousness, but the dim, suffocating air closes over him again, rocking him gently back into oblivion.
Inside Jesse’s mind, something pulses, something wrong, wrong, wrong. He’s wrapped too tight to wake, but some lost corner of his brain screams that this isn’t sleep, isn’t a dream, isn’t a place where living things belong. The air feels alive, ripe, hot and humid, slipping into his lungs with every gasp of breath. Jesse turns onto his side, but it doesn’t help; the pressure is worse, pushing against his ribs like something alive, growing, spreading, too close to escape.
The bed shifts beneath him. Jesse mumbles, turns again, swats a damp arm over his eyes like he’s trying to bat the darkness away. His body curls inward, knees to chest, every muscle folding in on itself. A low, terrible warmth radiates upward from the mattress, working its way inside him, flowing through his veins, lighting up his nerves with sticky, cloying heat. Jesse twitches, rolling onto his stomach now, sweat shining like oil on the skin of his back. A pulse shudders beneath him, almost tender, almost loving, too deliberate to be the churn of ugly dreams. He shivers once, twice, but it isn’t cold, isn’t the rattling shiver of winter creeping in. It’s the shiver of breath in a mouth that’s almost swallowed him whole.
To anyone watching, the room looks almost peaceful. The fan stutters overhead, lazy and half-hearted, a dry rustle against the silence. The streetlamp outside casts a dull, gray light across the bed, across the walls, across Jesse’s stretched-out form. It’s the kind of room that could almost be still, almost be quiet, almost be dead.
But Jesse feels the thick, slow beating of it, the way everything pounds and echoes, pulses and presses down. He stirs again, kicking at the damp, twisted sheets, but they only curl tighter around his legs, holding him in. His lips part in a soundless gasp, and the room grows even closer, even warmer, even heavier. Even more alive. Somewhere deep inside, he feels it laugh.
A weight settles across him, and Jesse’s mind skids away from it, scrabbling for purchase, for air, for anything but this. The mattress cradles him, sucks him down into its soggy, sagging center. Even in his dreaming, he knows it isn’t right, but there’s no waking, no shaking free of it, no clawing his way out. He is sinking in, sinking under, trapped and helpless, devoured by a mattress, by a room, by a dream that pulls him deeper every time he fights.
There’s a sick heat underneath him, spreading slowly upward, moving through Jesse’s back, Jesse’s bones, Jesse’s half-lidded eyes. He tries to roll again, but the mattress shifts with him, pressing against him from all sides, an embrace he can’t escape. His lips move like he’s trying to speak, but the air is too thick, his throat too tight, his breath too far gone to form words. The mattress holds him close, like a thing with fingers, with hands, with something wetter and warmer. His body lurches against it, one final shiver, one final breath, before everything collapses around him, damp and dark and gone.
He opens his eyes and the room spins, shadows stretching across the walls, the fan ticking slower and slower, slower and slower, each rotation longer than the last. A bead of sweat drips down his temple, sliding onto the pillow with a splash that sounds like thunder in the drowned-out quiet. The darkness leans in closer, a slow motion mouth swallowing him down, and all Jesse can do is let it happen, let himself sink, let the pulse inside him stretch until it breaks.
The mattress is too warm, a living thing beneath his spine, and he can’t move, can’t think, can’t fight the heavy, sucking pull. He’s caught inside something he doesn’t know, something older, crueler, a soft-stitched trap that springs in silence. There is no sleep here. There is only the drowning, devouring dark, swallowing him with a low and humid sigh.
The blackness pulls Jesse up from a drowning sleep. He opens his eyes and the room contracts around him, everything so dark and so near he can feel it pressing against his skin. He blinks into it, his eyes gummy and slow, the lids heavy, the lashes sticking together with old, crusted salt. His mouth tastes of cigarettes and rust and dead things. A thin, wet warmth licks along the edge of his jaw. It feels like the room is drooling on him, soaking him in spit. When Jesse shifts to push himself upright, he freezes. The mattress under his back doesn’t react like dead foam. It flexes, bending and unbending with sluggish effort, as if he’s lying on something with muscle and breath and terrible, desperate life. He lies paralyzed for a few seconds, every hair on his arms standing on end, the surface underneath him heaving gently, gently, like a rotten animal dragging in one final breath. The smell is worse now: mildew, sweet rot, a metallic tang that coats the back of his throat. The room is swimming, black on black on black, but Jesse sits up into it, listening to the silence. It feels poised, balanced on a blade’s edge, like something is holding its breath along with him.
His head throbs, a slow, deep pulse in the center of his skull, radiating outward, beating its way through the darkness. The room squeezes around him, close, tight, sucking him back down, pulling him back under. Jesse digs his fingers into the mattress, holding on, trying to stop the thick black spin. He sits very still, his breathing ragged, too loud in the quiet. It’s the sound of a man not sure if he’s waking up or falling apart.
The air is heavy, hot, crowding him like the press of a thousand bodies, every surface so damp it feels like it’s drooling on him. A thin bead of moisture works its way along his jaw, slides down his neck, between his shoulder blades, the slick trace of it as warm as blood. He drags the back of his hand across his face, wiping the sweat from his eyes, but it doesn’t help; the room is too wet, the air too dense, clinging to him like mold, coating him like spit.
Jesse tries to swallow, but his throat closes up, raw, dry, full of nothing but the heavy press of heat. The taste on his tongue is ash, metal, the way a body goes when there’s nothing left but dirt to fill it. He leans forward, gasping for air, trying to pull breath from the thick, drowning dark.
When he finally shifts to sit up, the mattress flexes beneath him. Jesse freezes, eyes wide, skin crawling, nerves lit up like flares. He waits, listening, half-expecting the steady hum of his own pulse to stop dead.
The mattress moves again, bending and unbending, rising and falling, almost gently, a soft, terrible give-and-take. Jesse stays perfectly still, too afraid to breathe, to blink, to do anything but wait for the horror to settle around him. He feels the pressure underneath his spine, the slight, sick drag of it, and it’s wrong, all wrong, wrong in ways his mind can’t grasp, can’t name, can’t bear to think about.
It isn’t dead, and it isn’t just the heat making it feel this way. The mattress is flexing, sluggish and alive, and the slow weight of it builds and builds until Jesse wants to scream, to run, to claw his way out. But all he can do is lie there, frozen, listening to the silence around him.
The stillness thickens, and Jesse tries to move, but it’s like trying to shift mountains. The room grows closer, the air more humid, more impossibly warm.
He blinks, his eyes adjusting to the dark, but there’s no relief, no light, no sign that any of this is anything but a nightmare. His chest is tight with the heat and the weight and the way everything presses down. His spine arches up against the mattress, instinct, panic, desperation all at once. Every hair on his arms stands at attention, skin goose-bumped and slick.
He should have kept driving. Should have stayed on the road. He knows that now, as sure as he knows there’s something waiting for him in the sick, humid dark. Something worse than waking up alone.
Finally, Jesse sits upright, the mattress springing back into place with a damp sigh. He gasps for breath, the air thick as soup. His heart knocks against his ribs, trapped and frantic, but there’s no escaping it. The press of moisture, the rotting stink of the room, the horror creeping in from every side.
The blackness isn’t just heavy; it’s alive, and Jesse feels it settling in his lungs, his gut, his brain, feels it so thick and close he wants to tear it out of himself. But there’s no tearing, no breaking free, no waking from this. He’s caught in the total, awful silence.
A bead of sweat rolls down his forehead, into the corner of his eye. It stings. It burns. Jesse flinches, shaking his head as if the motion will clear away the heat, the darkness, the sensation of something soft and heavy closing in.
The smell is worse than anything he’s ever known. Mildew, rot, and the metallic tang of blood just under the surface, all mixed together, all so strong it coats the back of his throat, leaves a film on his teeth, turns his stomach into knots.
The mattress heaves once more beneath him, but Jesse’s already upright, every nerve standing at the ready, muscles twitching, fighting the paralyzing weight. The room is close and the walls are closing in and there’s no air, no light, no comfort in anything but the lie that this might be a dream.
The silence is poised, a wire pulled so tight it could break any second. Jesse sits in the center of it, sweat running down his face, his back, the insides of his wrists, listening to the quiet that surrounds him, feeling it build like a wave about to crash. It’s the kind of quiet that knows, that waits, that echoes his own breath back to him.
The wrongness is everywhere. It’s in his mouth, in his chest, under his skin. He leans forward, gasping for air, and the mattress seems to pulse with him, an awful mirror of every terrified movement, every breath, every desperate thought. The fan is dead. The lamp is dead. And deep in the dark, Jesse Morgan is afraid.
The stillness stretches out like the space between heartbeats, empty and endless. Jesse barely dares to move, the heat and silence pressing against him, inside him, threatening to split him wide open. The fan creaks overhead, blades moving so slowly now they look like they’re swimming in tar. The mattress shudders very slightly beneath him, like a long-held breath exhaled. He places a tentative hand on the bed beside him, and his stomach drops into his feet. The surface rises and falls, steady, like something breathing, like someone breathing, like a goddamn body dragging in air right underneath him. Jesse feels the wrongness roll over him in waves, a nausea that leaves him dizzy and almost blind. Panic prickles through his limbs, but exhaustion, confusion, and the heavy heat chain him in place. It’s just old springs, he thinks. His imagination. A trick of the night. Just a bad mattress, Jesse. Not like this. Not here. He forces himself to lie back down, against every instinct screaming to run. The surface lifts and lowers, lifts and lowers, a lullaby of lungs that leaves him gasping for air. Jesse pulls the thin sheet up to his chest, his breath and heart a war-drum racket in the stillness, trying to convince himself the movement was nothing, nothing at all. Deep under the mattress, something stirs and waits.
The quiet hangs like a question, unanswerable and cruel. Jesse sits in the center of it, a thin sheen of sweat glistening on his arms, his forehead, pooling in the hollows above his collarbone. He’s never felt anything like it. This heat, this darkness, this terrible, aching silence. He barely breathes, barely thinks, every nerve on edge, listening, waiting, feeling the heavy air collapse around him.
It feels like an eternity before the fan overhead creaks again, longer than the last time, a sound that pulls at the stillness like a tooth yanked slow from a bone. The room is so tight with heat that Jesse wants to claw the walls down, tear a hole in the center of it, breathe something besides this wet, hot air. He feels the mattress shift very slightly, like something testing the weight of him, and panic skitters through his chest, but the rest of his body won’t move.
Another sound breaks the silence, deep, deep under Jesse: a soft, soft sigh, low and humid and full of longing. It vibrates through his spine, his ribs, his skull, not the sharpness of fear but the dull, numbing weight of it. Jesse closes his eyes, opens them again, looking for some clue, some proof, something besides this. But there is nothing to see, nothing to feel but the slow pulse of the mattress beneath him, alive with want and warmth and wet, endless hunger.
Jesse puts a trembling hand on the bed. The surface lifts and lowers, a horrible, steady rhythm that moves with him, inside him, until his breath matches it, until he can’t tell the difference between the room and himself. Not like this, he thinks, and it comes out half-prayer, half-sob, like a voice choked out of him by the thick, unmoving air. Not here. Not like this.
He wants to scream. He wants to laugh. He wants to believe this is just another shitty motel, another lousy night, another fucked-up trick of his tired mind. But Jesse has never felt anything like this, never felt something so terribly alive underneath him, and he knows. He knows.
The wrongness makes him sick, an acid burn behind his eyes, the kind of knowing that can split a man in half. Jesse holds himself together, every inch of him a raw, trembling wire, but he can’t hold on for long. There’s too much weight, too much heat, too much of everything he can’t fight, can’t win, can’t run from.
He swallows, his throat full of ash and blood, and the noise is too loud in the silence. His stomach lurches, and he closes his eyes again, the darkness pressing against him with so much force he almost can’t see it. He sits there, soaked and shivering, caught in a place where time is a closed circle, waiting to snap.
A memory. Jesse remembers the bed in their first apartment. Clean sheets, cheap wine, Kate’s laughter as it bounced off the bare white walls. He remembers the creak of the frame, the warmth of her skin, the way everything seemed so goddamn possible. The way a night like this would have left him breathless, but for all the right reasons.
He thinks: Goddamn it, Jesse. Get your shit together. This is not how it ends.
But even as he thinks it, even as he tries to push the fear back down, the mattress shifts, a little more insistently, and the panic wells up again. Jesse shudders, wiping a slick arm across his mouth, across his eyes, trying to clear away the terror like sweat, like blood, like dirt.
Just a bad mattress, Jesse. Just old springs. You’re tired, that’s all. Get some goddamn sleep.
He forces himself to lie back down, against the press of his own frantic thoughts, against the pressure of the room. His heart and lungs are an unruly orchestra, fighting to be heard over the creeping silence, but Jesse pretends he’s not scared. Pretends he’s still a man who knows how to hold it together.
He lies very still, letting the dampness seep into his shirt, his hair, his skin. It feels like falling asleep inside something soft and heavy, something that already knows how the night will end.
He pulls the thin sheet up to his chest, closing his eyes to the heat and the hunger, to the fan that barely moves, to the soft sound of a mattress breathing him in.
Deep under Jesse, deep and warm and waiting, something stirs.
Jesse lies rigid, his body tuned to every vibration, every whisper of movement, the thin sheet pulled tight against his skin. The mattress shifts again, more purposefully this time, more intimate, like a long-lost lover or a slow poison. Something thin and cold strokes his calf, faint but undeniable, a touch that slips inside him, unwelcome and soft and infinitely real. Jesse jerks his leg away, heart hammering, breath caught halfway up his throat. The touch follows, brushing higher now, testing, almost petting, and Jesse Morgan knows: he’s fucked. He scrambles backward, the sheets tangling, the headboard rattling, the room swimming dizzily around him. The stink is unbearable, cloying and sweet like spoiled milk and old pennies, thick enough to feel in his lungs. For a moment, Jesse catches himself holding his breath, and in that terrible, waiting silence, he hears it: a soft, wet slithering, like something rolling just beneath the skin of the mattress. The world closes in, black and hungry, a mouth with no end. Jesse reaches a trembling hand for the lamp, desperate for light, for escape, for anything besides this, and finds only a dead switch and blackness deeper than night.
His brain locks up, shattering against the wall of thick black terror. It all happens at once, but Jesse feels every slow second of it: the way his mind goes numb, his muscles go limp, the way his heart beats its fists against the insides of his chest. He waits for the world to come back into focus, but it doesn’t. It pulls farther and farther away, leaving him alone in the center of the wet, creeping dark.
Jesse sits very still, the silence a vise around his head, his arms, his legs, squeezing the fight out of him. The weight of it presses his ribs together, tighter and tighter, his breath coming in shallow, brittle gasps. He doesn’t want to die like this. Doesn’t want to die at all, but especially not like this, on this goddamn bed, in this godforsaken room. The room that shrinks with every breath, smaller and hotter and impossibly near.
Jesse holds himself there, the room swaying like a drunk, like a ship lost at sea, hoping, waiting, desperate for any sign of morning. For any sign of something besides this terrible knowing, this feeling in his bones that the night is endless and he’s already lost. But there’s no hope in the dark, and the minutes drag on forever, and the silence closes around him, a fistful of dirt at the bottom of an unmarked grave.
When the mattress moves again, Jesse almost doesn’t feel it. Almost, but not quite, because the movement is different this time, closer, a pressure he can’t pretend is anything but what it is. Thin, cold fingers wind around his ankle, winding into his nerves, winding into his mind. A part of him is shocked he can feel it at all.
But Jesse feels everything.
He feels the sudden snap of panic through his spine, the flood of adrenaline turning his blood to acid. He feels his legs pushing, kicking, scissoring through the damp air like a man swimming for shore. He feels the touch of it, colder than ice, warmer than breath, so gentle, so hungry, so terribly, terribly sure.
It doesn’t let go. It follows him, unfurling along the length of his leg, creeping higher and higher, a patient, lover’s touch.
A surge of terror kicks Jesse up against the headboard, his body lurching sideways, the lamp crashing to the floor. He lands hard on one shoulder, teeth jarring, the skin of his knees scraping against the rough fabric of the sheets. They’re wet and warm and impossible to untangle, but he scrambles at them, arms and legs a tangle of frantic, thrashing motion. The touch is relentless, brushing across his hip, his belly, wrapping him up in heat and memory and the stink of his own useless sweat.
And all at once, the air is too thick to breathe.
The smell is enough to stop a heart, the awful odor of death before it even arrives. Jesse coughs against it, chokes on it, feels it pushing into his lungs, into his veins, turning everything inside him to spoiled milk and copper and wet, growing things.
The sheets are strangling him. The room is swallowing him. There’s no light, no air, no exit.
The bed shifts again, and Jesse goes still. He holds his breath, closing his eyes against the rotting dark, the way it presses into him, the way it crowds him so far into himself there’s almost nothing left.
There’s a moment of terrible quiet, and in that silence he hears it: a soft, wet slithering, like a creature fresh from the egg.
Jesse knows the sound. Knows it from dreams, from fears, from every restless, hopeless night in every dead-end motel in every dead-end town. The sound of a life coming to a stop, a slow and patient end. It grows louder, closer, a steady rhythm he can feel in his chest, his head, his teeth. The sound of something rolling beneath him, pulling him in, pulling him under.
His eyes fly open, and the world spins around him. The dark leans in, closer than breath, closer than skin, a mouth with no end. Jesse throws himself toward the nightstand, toward the lamp, his whole body a desperate, kicking lunge. His fingers scrabble for the switch, twisting, shaking, too slick with sweat and fear to hold on. He knocks the lamp to the floor, dead before it even lands.
The switch gives nothing back, just the softest click, the slightest shrug, like an indifferent god. Like a box of letters returned unopened. Like the bare, blind walls of every empty room he’s ever called home.
Jesse’s mind reels, shatters, skips its tracks, spinning out in ragged circles until it finally, mercifully comes to a stop.
He’s alone in the dark. The mattress yawns wide beneath him, and there’s no getting out.
He thought he was afraid before, but that was nothing, nothing compared to this, to the complete and final collapse of everything he used to be.
It’s the end, and Jesse knows it. Feels it with every shiver, every hair on his neck standing at attention, a salute to the godless night.
It wraps him in silence and the smell of himself. It wraps him in terror and heat and breathless dark.
Jesse Morgan knows he’s fucked. He knows, but he fights.
The way a match fights rain, the way a memory fights time.
The switch goes dead under his fingers, and the blackness takes him whole.