After all that had happened, it was decided Zoe would sleep in the overcrowded guest room, rather than have a spare all to herself. She chose a cot to rest somewhat comfortably, sandwiched between the press of other beds, but was quickly huddled asleep after all that had happened.<br/><br/>By nightfall, as all the patients were counted and corralled, the wind began to howl and flex the asylum manor's creaky timbers. From the guest room window could be glimpsed a wall of clouds, like the twisting vortex of a hurricane, moving in from the west. The voices in the asylum became drowned by crashing thunder, primeval and purple, leaving afterflashes in the vision. Yet as the hurricane seemed poised to overtake the coast, its cumulonimbus column dissipated instead, and crashed instead on the rocks in a tide of dense gray fog.<br/><br/>Within hours, the windows were like frosted glass, and even the distant flashes of lightning muted into pale nimbus.<br/><br/>In the midst of rain coming down in deluge, the pipes in the manor began to hum, and judder in the walls, as though foretelling a macabre midnight bath.<br/><br/><em>Drip. </em>It came from the ceiling, from somewhere among the floral-patterned tile, a plop of red sludge in the middle of the floor.<br/><em>Drip. </em>Traveling east through the center of the guest room, another drop of thick crimson, at the foot of the solitary couples' bed.<br/><em>Drip, drip. </em>All the way east, to the chamber door, a stain of sludge splashed on the pretty threshold. Concerning how the pipes juddered, and the chamber door's latch vibrated in its housing like rattling teeth. And the knob seemed to turn on its own, and the guest room door creaked open.<br/><br/>Beyond, the parlor was huge and lifeless, and the fireplace burned low. Zoe, Margaret, and Michelle were fast asleep from the day's tribulations, but somewhere upstairs, someone was stirring. One could hear them, moving about, dragging.