Never Take the Last Room

Ruthie Calloway, 22, has just graduated. She was raised by her grandmother in the Ozarks, and the one thing her grandmother taught her is the one thing she still uses: never answer a knock at night without asking who it is. On a graduation trip she takes the cheap fifth room at the end of a corridor in a New England seaside inn, the one the owner rents out without mentioning why, the one with a padlock on the outside. She is the only person in the building who can see what is following her. Her boyfriend of two years is gentle, attentive, endlessly accommodating. Her best friend chose the inn. A master she found online keeps saving her and never explains what the saving costs. Three people want something from her and only one of them is dead. The horror works through physical evidence only: salt, cold tile, a bulb on a slow flicker, the smell of the corridor at 02:40, and the exact number of seconds she can hold her breath.