r/u_Lilia_Briganda

​It was past two in the morning, a quiet shift where the motel neon hummed right outside the lobby window. Sterling was sitting behind the front desk when the doorbell clinked.

​A traveler stepped inside, shaking rain off his jacket, looking pale and half-asleep. He walked up to the counter, pulled a soaked twenty out of his pocket, and slid it across.

​"Hey," the guy said, rubbing his eyes. "Fellow out by the ice machine told me you had a bed available. Said to ask for Room 4."

​Sterling’s hand froze over the registration ledger. ​His stomach dropped into a hard knot. Room 4 wasn't just a room. On the grid mapped out in his head—and on the board back in his living quarters—Room 4 was the exact square holding the line.

​"Guy by the ice machine?" Sterling asked, keeping his voice dead steady.

​"Yeah. Tall fella in a dark coat. Said Room 4 was the only one worth a damn tonight."

​Sterling didn't say another word. He tossed the guy a key envelope, told him to sit tight, and pushed through the heavy wooden door into his back quarters.

​The air in his back quarters room was cold enough to raise the hair on his arms. Sterling stepped up to the table and looked down at the board.

​There it was.

​Without a sound, without a trace, a black pawn had been pushed directly onto the square matching Room 4. Spook hadn't attacked Sterling's Bishop head-on. He’d slipped an innocent human life right into the line of fire.

​If Sterling kept his Bishop where it was to protect his own position, the poor bastard in Room 4 was going to take the hit. If he moved the Bishop to save the guy, his whole defense cracked wide open.​

Sterling stared down at the polished wood pawn, his chest tightening as the realization hit.

Tucked neatly underneath the base was a small, torn corner of notebook paper;, scrawled in thin, pitch-black ink was a single word:

"​Check."

When Almeda finished cleaning Room 110, she just scooped up the heavy yellowed white Knight off the nightstand and tossed it into her cleaning caddy alongside the bleach wipes and stray socks. At the end of her shift, she dropped the piece off at the front desk with a dull, solid thud--the unmistakable weight of old bone.

"Found another one," Agnes said, leaning against the counter, her uniform smelling faintly of lemon Pine-Sol. She pointed a half-polished chipped purple fingernail at the desk. "it's just like the black horse I found in 112 on Tuesday, only this one is white. Creepy looking thing, too. Who leaves behind fancy ivory chess pieces in a place like this?"

Sterling just grunted, didn't even look up from his ledger. He just swept the carved ivory piece off the laminate desktop with his palm, dropping it into a plastic bin beneath the counter with the rest of the stuff that had been collected over the last month.

"People leave all kinds of junk," Sterling muttered, but he knew that nobody would come back to reclaim them.

Almeda gave a tired snort, collected her purse and clocked out, leaving Sterling alone with the quiet hum of the lobby.

As Sterling lifted the full heavy bin to carry it to the back storage room, the White Knight's head rolled the clutter bumping against the shiny Black Knight he'd throw in three days ago. A faint skittering noise came from the bottom of the bin. He looked down and saw both kings in opposite corners, the junk between them shoved aside to leave a clear, empty path.

They were a mismatched pair, but both felt ancient, cold, alive and heavy. A cold chill went straight down Sterling's spine as he stared down at the impossible space between them. Shaking off the chill, he thrust the bin high onto the top shelf, cramming it between a stack of old linens and dust-bound ledger books.

After catching a few hours of sleep in his back-room quarters, Sterling swung his legs out of bed, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and froze. Across the room sitting on top the old dresser was a dusty chessboard with a few chess pieces he had collected years ago-- including his White Queen who was not sitting where he left her--she now pinned squarely between 2 knights--the white and the black that he had put away up on the shelf.

The message was enough to rattle the floorboards. This was not a game. The invitation is a threat. Something terrible was going to happen--either to his own life or to someone the white Queen represents in the real world.

It was now Sterling's move.

The drive through the Hudson Valley was supposed to be a straight shot, just a way to put some miles between himself and the wreckage of his last year.

But as the river fell away and the road seemed to climb toward the Catskills, the radio started to bleed. It wasn't static exactly; it was a bone-deep hum that seemed to vibrate right through the steering wheel.

He hadn't planned on taking the exit. It was like the highway had decided for him, dragging him toward the shadows of the mountains where the air got thin.

He kept driving, chasing the phantom promise of silence never realizing that the vibration he felt wasn't leading him to peace but rather into the static.

He checked into the Hells Bells Motel just as the light was fading, heavy road-weariness finally overriding his better judgment. He didn't bring any luggage as he hadn't planned on even checking in. The room was nothing special--just a bed, a dresser, and a heavy suffocating quiet.

Then, the low hum broke through it, steady and droning, lulling him into a restless sleep.

By morning the traveler was gone.

On the nightstand where there had been nothing but dust the night before, was a chess piece, a carved heavy Black Knight-- a dark opening move left waiting in the quiet for a game no one knew they were playing yet--

... but one that Sterling would soon realize was guided by a deeper, more sinister frequency.

Part 2 is here.

Clover had always been a plant person, the kind who kept soil under her fingernails and crammed every window ledge in her house with pots.

​While scrolling through a forum late one night, a banner ad for Botanical Oddities caught her eye, advertising a rare, hard-to-find specimen called Phagocordyceps vorax. The listing described it simply as an exotic, fast-growing hybrid with responsive foliage. Intrigued, she clicked Order without giving it a second thought.

​An unmarked cardboard box landed on her porch about a week later. Inside, packed in damp moss and rich, pitch-black dirt, was a heavy, strange-looking specimen already the size of a gallon jug, with a bruised-looking stem and rubbery, closed leaves. There was no care card, just the handwritten Latin name on a plastic marker.

​She set it down in the bright corner of the room so it could get light. As the sun hit and warmed up the plant, its bulbous center slowly unfurled, revealing three stiff, upright hairs on its surface. Curiously, when she leaned down and brushed her index finger against them, the fleshy plant split open, and the trap snapped shut. Needle-thin teeth sank deep into her finger. She shrieked and violently yanked her hand back, dripping blood onto the table stand.

As she nursed her bleeding finger, a dry gravelly voice hissed from its leaves, "more..."

Clover thought to herself, "Did I just hear this plant say "more?" but quickly shook her head, thinking it was just her imagination.

As the days wore on, every time she passed it, its voice grew stronger.

"more...

MORE.

FEED ME, CLOVER!"

She grew terrified, especially the night she heard a high-pitched squeal from the kitchen. She found the plant had crawled onto the kitchen floor, its vines wrapped tight around the mouse as it was thrust into the open trap, followed by a sickening wet chewing sound.

She knew it was slithering out from its pot now, hunting for prey. It grew bigger, stronger, louder.

On some nights, she lay awake listening to it slither across the downstairs floorboards as it hunted for mice or anything else that moved--which explained why her cat had vanished a week ago.

Every night, she would shut her bedroom door to feel safe, knowing she had to get rid of it before she became it's next meal.

Tomorrow she would dump it. That night, after getting up to use the bathroom, she pulled her bedroom door behind her, but it didn't shut fully.

She crept back into bed, assuming she was safe. Hours later, she was awoken by something cold and damp slithering across her ankles. Heavy, muscular vines wrapped tight around both her legs, the stiff, needle-like spikes locking deep into her skin. ​She didn't even have time to kick. The vines yanked her hard, sliding her right off the mattress.

Her fingers clawed uselessly at the sheets as she was dragged over the edge of the bed, plunging straight down toward that big, nasty, gaping maw waiting on the floor.

​Her scream was broken off with a heavy, wet snap! 

The glow of the TV screen was the only thing illuminating the living room. I’d finally gotten the kids tucked into bed and fell onto the couch to catch my breath, letting the late-night broadcast drift me off to sleep.

​A sharp burst of white noise snapped me awake as the national anthem faded into heavy gray static buzzing on the screen. As I got up to turn off the TV the gray snow abruptly gave way to the stark, blinding glare of a test pattern, only for the audio to cut out as a high-pitched alert shrieked from the speakers. A bright red banner flashed across the screen:

​CIVIL DEFENSE EMERGENCY > INBOUND BALLISTIC THREAT DETECTED > SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY.

My heart dropped straight into my stomach. I stared at the harsh block lettering, waiting for the announcer to pop on and say it was just a drill-- or that I was still asleep.

​Then the town siren started to scream. ​It wasn't the steady, low hum of a storm warning; it was the high-pitched, rising wail reserved for absolute catastrophe. I just stood there dumbfounded for a few minutes.

Outside my window, the quiet night shattered. Tires squealed, car doors slammed, and shouting echoed down the block. Headlights swept wildly across my ceiling as neighbors scrambled into their cars, desperate to outrun something you couldn't outrun.

​Within minutes, the street was a wall of red taillights and blaring horns. Nobody was moving. The main road out of town was completely gridlocked.

​I stood frozen in the middle of the dark living room, listening to the sirens howl outside and the low, rising whistle cutting through the sky from high above.

Down the hall, my children were still fast asleep.