My hand lands on my knife handle. Maplegrove is, unironically, the name of the run-down house in the woods occupied by a serial killer in a recent film flop; a cheesy Horror thing whose setting is creepier through sheer audience expectation than its actual storyline. Or so I've been told. I don't watch Horror movies. I'm not the only one to notice the name, though. Patrick retreats like a snail in its shell, and Calico J takes a step back. Ditzy's hand tightens on the handle of the flail that she is, of course, carrying.

Rather than jump us with a knife, Ember's expression turns wry. "It was supposed to be a joke. Shoes and Triptych took one look at the house and the rest is history. Now we can't get rid of the name."

My brain processes that sideways and latches onto the first part. "Is it still a joke?" I ask stupidly.

But Ember pauses for way too long. Oreo has tensed up, but says nothing as his co-leader finally runs a hand down her face. "We don't murder people. We've just had a... Sleeper incident recently. You know how those end."

When the Sleeper either dies or runs out of batteries and needs to rejoin the Redding network to recharge. Something prickles at the back of my mind, but I can't pin down what it is. So I say the next thing that comes to mind. "Are we safe here?"

"As safe as we can keep you," says Ember. It's exactly the kind of answer someone would give if they were actually from a murder house and I gave them such an easy opening to reassure me. I look around at my companions, but none of them are stepping up to help me here. Ditzy's been silent ever since we found Vix's body, and I would be more surprised if Patrick did speak than if he suddenly sprouted wings. I think Calico J took the Maplegrove not-a-joke harder than I did. He looks spooked.

I shouldn't be the one making this decision, on whether or not to trust this group now that we're actually here. We could still back out. I could turn around right now and tell my friends to get back in the car, that we were leaving and going back to Chesnet, but that irrational compulsion raises several rational ones in its stead. The first is that I shouldn't have that kind of authority. The second is that leaving now would be letting the whole group down, and especially Calico J. The third is that we still don't know what's wrong with Chesnet. Maybe it's familiar, but going back there without whatever knowledge this group holds might be the stupider decision in the end.

I can only just barely cling to the second of those thoughts. The longer I spend here, the louder the alarm bells in my head become, despite my feeble barricades. Nothing's happened to us yet. But standing there with a big black van on my left, my friends behind me, and the murder house with both its leaders in front, I make a decision. I discard Calico J's original motivation for meeting this group.

At least for myself. I'm not here to socialize. I never was, but acknowledging it feels different. I'm here to get information about Chesnet, and Calico J can do whatever he wants. I'm not going to pretend I'm letting that convince me to stay when the only things that are are the first and last reasons that just paraded across my mind.

Something about that resolution opens up new channels in my thoughts, like it's freed me to make other plans than the ones we're formally going along with. Patrick is still in the back of the car, within reach of the journal and phone still hidden there. I contemplate how to get a message to him to bring those with us, then realize we've all got precisely the skill for that. I never anticipated using Morse code to talk to my friends in secret in the driveway of another survivor group's murder house, but I'm flexible.

Calico J has opened up a little and is chatting with Ember now, both of them warming to the other as they do. I surreptitiously catch Patrick's attention. When I think I've got it, I tap a message on the side of the car. Bring phone and book. Keep hidden.

I hear him shuffle back in the shadows of the vehicle to retrieve them. By the time he returns, Calico J's gotten us a room in the murder house and probably learned some things about how this group works. The car's dashboard clock reads 2:48. The Red Rain starts around three in the morning in Chesnet, but I have no way of to know Plyster-Anport county will be any different.

When the conversation lulls, I jump back in. "Shouldn't we be headed inside soon?"

Ember checks the watch I didn't notice her wearing, and starts a little. "Shoot. Yeah, grab your stuff and come on in." She beckons us after her, calling as she goes, "Psy? Lock down the shed; it's almost three."

The morose-looking guy skulks off around the house. Watching him, I miss Ember's next orders; tiredness is scrambling my ability to track conversations, and Ember is some ways ahead of us now. I hang back just long enough to grab my backpack, then follow our new host up the rotten porch steps and in the door.

The inside of the Anport murder house looks exactly like you would expect from its name, name's association, and general outside condition. The thick scent of mildew and mold wraps my face the moment we emerge into a long, dark hallway. Its threadbare rug is stained with mud, and a rickety side table boasts a collection of junk both useful and otherwise. A bag of rice slumps against the wall underneath. This is entirely the wrong place to be storing rice.

To our left, a doorway opens up into a living room lit by candles. Where most candlelight makes a place look softer and more inviting, this ambiance only manages to turn beat-up couches and antique-looking wooden furniture into something I'd expect to find in a satanist's den. It doesn't help that both the carpet and the curtains are red. So are both couches. It makes me wonder who was responsible for the interior design when this place was last inhabited.

To our right is another room, this one barren except for an assortment of scattered shoes. Calico J asks something of Ember, who says something back, that Calico J passes to Ditzy, all without my parsing a single word. Ditzy turns around. "Keep your shoes on."

I half expect the floor to turn sticky beneath my shoes as we pad down the hallway to a set of stairs that absolutely do not look like they should be able to hold human weight. They creak horrifically as Ember starts up them. It's like the whole house knows what it's been dubbed and is determined to live up to the reputation. The last time I heard something like this was in a windstorm last summer. Two trees by our campsite squeaked and grated against one another all night. These stairs are objectively worse.

At least they give me a brief view of the back parts of the house before we climb out of sight of it. There's a kitchen that looks marginally better maintained, if its gleaming surfaces are to judge. There's someone moving about it with a candle. Creepy.

Ember flicks on a tiny flashlight like Oreo's as we ascend into the dark pool of the house's second floor. I squint to see where the light is coming from. It's embedded in the end of a pocket knife. Ember keeps it pointed towards the floor. The upstairs hallways are muffled with a few more rugs, this time in an array of colours and plush levels that hints they were probably stolen from the town. They're also filthy. I wrinkle my nose. The smell of mold lingers in the air, and the house's inhabitants clearly don't bother wiping their shoes before tramping upstairs. It's a standard of cleanliness so far below what we maintained in Chesnet, I begin to question again why this group chose this house, of all places. Maybe they just didn't care about something as trivial as respiratory infections in the middle of the apocalypse.

There's an open door at the end of the hallway. The room beyond has a huge window that, if my direction sense has served me correctly, looks out onto the driveway. There's a person perched on a window seat in front of it. The Anport Rescues keep watch.

Ember brings us to a room and waves us inside. "Bathroom's on the right just beside the stairs. I'm at the end of the hall if you need anything. Our breakfast is at nine tomorrow morning, but we don't have enough to share, sorry. Hope you brought food."

With that, she's gone. She takes our only light with her, so I fish out my headlamp and flick it on to survey the room. It's bare except for a single bed and a single mattress on the floor, plus one tiny bedside table and a decomposing bookshelf.

"Guess we're sharing." says Calico J. "You guys want the bed?"

The question is directed at me and Ditzy, and my face flushes red-hot as I realize what that means. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ditzy's smile turn sly. "Sounds fine to me," she says, then turns and scritches a finger against the back of my shoulder on her way by. I hear her ask something, but I haven't the faintest idea what she said. One image has slammed itself over my vision. Me and Ditzy sharing a bed. A single bed. We'll be close enough to touch, accidentally, or—if she's in a teasing mood—on purpose. She'll be right there all night, and it's not exactly warm in here.

Ditzy chuckles and gives my braid a tug as she leaves me frozen in the middle of the room. With her departure from my immediate vicinity, my senses return to me. Bedding. There are no blankets on either of the mattresses—not even sheets—but we all have sleeping bags. I made sure of that while we were still roving around Chesnet, with access to as many beds as we wanted, but sometimes not enough for all of us. Besides, it was a good precaution in case we ever needed to take shelter somewhere that wasn't a house. I'm glad of that decision now.

Patrick and Calico J are already halfway set up. By which I mean Patrick is entirely set up and Calico J is still re-fluffing the pillow he insists on packing. Patrick is sitting cross-legged on his sleeping bag, watching me. When he catches my eye, he puts a hand on the sweater spread out beside him. My brain jumps as I catch on to what he's asking. I cross the room in two strides and shut the door. It has a lock. It's a bit stiff, but it clunks shut when I work it a little. The door holds when I test it.

Only when we're secure does Patrick pull out the notebook and phone. I accept the notebook back with a tired thanks and stash it in my bag just as the first drops of Red Rain patter softly on the roof overhead. With no wind, no traffic noise, and enough distance to the ocean that we can't hear the waves, they sound unnaturally loud. It compounds whatever unease still nags me about this place and makes me restless, even with how tired I am. I need to sleep. We can unpack the mystery of Vix and the Anport murder house tomorrow.

Even being tired enough to sleep now, though, does not stop me from standing in the middle of the room, listening to the staccato non-rhythm of the rain. I tried to listen last night, too, but fell asleep before three. The memory feels alien. My first inclination is still to tell myself I imagined it, but that doesn't work anymore. Not with that line in Vix's notebook. It doesn't stop tapping, and I want to know what it says.

Vix heard something, too, even if she didn't understand it. Her later-notebook ravings may have been psychotic, but both this and the river mentions are too much like my own experience of the Redding to be coincidence.

The rain, though, says nothing. With the option of blaming my imagination off the table, I fish for other possibilities. That the Red Rain only warns each person a limited number of times. That something about this house is safe, or that Plyster-Anport county in general is safer than Chesnet. Vix's notebook vetoes all those options, though, leaving me with the one I least want to reckon with.

That the Red Rain isn't done talking. It just hasn't found us again yet. 

Like this chapter if you love watching characters suffer over Only One Bed

Comment why you think this survivor group might have chosen this house