Room Six

“Mum said it was just a motel, but it felt like a waiting room for something that hadn’t caught up yet.”

Room 6 smelled like old carpet and eucalyptus spray. Not the nice eucalyptus—not the kind Grandma used when she cleaned the house before church, the type that smelled like forests and opened your lungs like magic. This was the stinging kind, the chemical kind, sharp and artificial, like it was trying to hide something worse underneath. Mould. Cigarette smoke. The slow decay of too many nights passed in silence.

Mum unlocked the door with a soft metallic click, then shoved it open with her shoulder. The hinges gave a drawn-out whine of protest, like they didn’t approve of being disturbed after dark.

The room swallowed us in dimness. One overhead bulb buzzed faintly like a trapped wasp, taking its time to flicker on—as if it had to think about whether or not it could be bothered. When it finally lit, it was a sickly yellow, the colour of weak tea or stained wallpaper, and it cast odd shadows across the sagging beds and the uneven carpet, making everything look a little jaundiced. A little unwell.

The cold slipped in behind us and stayed. It settled into the corners and crept across the floor, rising in slow fingers that wrapped around my ankles through the thin soles of my sneakers. I could see my breath, tiny clouds that hung for a second before vanishing, proof that I was still here. Still breathing.

There were two beds, both single, with coverlets that were trying not to admit they'd once been blue. Now they were just tired—bleached and fraying at the edges, stitched with lines of wear. Mack dropped our bags beside one and sat down heavily. The mattress gave a tired wheeze beneath him. He bounced once, experimentally, then looked over at me and raised an eyebrow.

“Well,” he said, “at least it’s not full of lizards.”

I managed a crooked smile. “Yet.”

He made a show of checking under the pillow. “No scales. No tails. Promising.”

The carpet beneath our feet was the colour of dead leaves and had the texture of something that used to be plush but had long since given up. There was a damp-looking stain near the bar fridge—dark and irregular—and I didn’t want to think too hard about what had made it.

A tiny round table was tucked under the window, a kettle squatting beside it like a relic from the 1980s. The sachets of instant coffee and tea stood in a small plastic tray like tiny soldiers trying to look welcoming. The spoons were wrapped in clingfilm that crackled when you touched it.

Mack crossed to the curtain and tugged it shut. It squealed along the metal rail and bunched unevenly, the mouldy-floral pattern frowning down at us like it disapproved of our arrival.

The TV on the wall was no bigger than a shoebox. It sat perched on its bracket like it might leap off in the night. Its screen reflected a funhouse version of us—stretched and ghostly in the warped glass. I turned away from it.

Mum closed the door with care and slid the security chain across. The sound it made—metal against metal—felt final. Safe, almost. As safe as anywhere could be right now.

She rubbed her arms through her coat sleeves, then glanced around the room like she was doing inventory. “We’ll make do,” she said, more to herself than to us.

Mack looked at her, then at me. “It’s warmer than the car,” he offered.

I nodded, tucking Ribbons under my arm, her cotton ear slipping from my fingers. “And no one’s tried to open the walls yet.”

Mum flinched—just a little—but then smiled. Thin and worn, but real.

There was silence for a beat.

Then Mack flopped backwards on the bed and groaned. “Wake me when it’s Brisbane.”

I laughed softly and peeled off my jumper, folding it over the back of a chair that wobbled slightly on one leg. The room was strange, small, not really ours—but for now, it was enough.

It was a roof. It was a pause.

And that was all we could ask for.

I dropped Ribbons onto one of the beds and jumped up after her. The springs squeaked like a startled bird beneath my weight, protesting with every bounce—one, two—before I flopped back with a theatrical sigh that filled the cramped motel room like a puff of smoke in a still room.

The ceiling above was cracked and stained, the patchwork of discolouration forming the rough shape of an island. I traced its edges with my eyes, imagining it as a place on a map no one had ever visited. A lonely outpost in the middle of nowhere. A fitting mirror to this strange journey.

“I call this one!” I declared, grinning up at the ceiling like it might care, my voice cracking the fragile hush that had fallen over the room like a dropped plate.

Mack didn’t say anything.

He was still by the other bed, lowering himself onto it like it might shatter under him. The mattress barely dipped, but he hunched forward, elbows on knees, and rubbed his face with both hands, dragging them down like he was trying to pull off a mask he couldn’t quite reach. He stayed like that for a while—folded in on himself, quiet, like something was still pressing down on his shoulders and wouldn’t let go.

Mum was moving the way she always did when she was holding something in. Quick, controlled, precise. She strode over to the window and yanked the curtains open, peered out for just a second, then pulled them closed again with a snap that made the walls flinch.

She checked the latch twice — tug tug — then turned away and flicked the TV on. A burst of static and some distant newsreader’s voice filled the room, sharp and sudden, before she muted it with an equally sharp jab at the remote. The screen stayed on, colours flickering uselessly in the corner, casting strange shadows that twitched across the walls.

She was doing things. Tasks. Small ones. Pointless ones. The kind that filled silence and distracted hands, as if movement might keep something darker at bay.

Then she stopped.

Collapsed into the chair by the window. The plastic creaked beneath her, a sound like cracking ice. She sat still, one leg bouncing up and down in a stuttering rhythm that was almost a heartbeat, the sole of her boot tapping the carpet in dull thuds. Her coat stayed on. Her hands stayed clenched. Her eyes stared at a spot on the floor that didn’t seem particularly interesting, but held her attention as if it were telling her secrets only she could hear.

I slipped off the bed and crossed to the bathroom. The door creaked as I opened it, hinges stiff with age. The light flickered uncertainly above the mirror before deciding to stay on. The smell hit me first—sharp pine cleaner layered over something sour and unplaceable, something that had been here too long and didn’t want to leave.

It was tiny. So small I could’ve touched all four walls with outstretched arms if I tried. Mint-green tiles lined the walls, the grout between them blackened with creeping mould like cracked roads on an old map. The towel on the rail was brown—not by design, I thought—and frayed at the ends, threads dangling like the legs of dead spiders.

The mirror above the basin was warped, the silver backing peeling around the edges so it looked like it was retreating from the glass. My reflection stared back, hazy and oddly shaped, like I was looking through water. Or time.

I washed my hands. The tap groaned as I turned it. The water came out rusty at first—just for a moment—before running clear. It was icy cold, then suddenly scalding. I jerked my hands back, shook off the heat, then tried again, adjusting the knobs slowly, coaxing the right balance like I was talking to a nervous animal.

Then I washed Ribbons' face, even though she didn’t need it. Her soft cotton fur was already worn bare in places, and the pink stitching of her smile had begun to fray. She didn’t react, of course—her expression was always the same: wide-eyed, calm, unbothered. But her presence helped. She’d been with me through thunderstorms and stomach aches and bad dreams. She was still here. Still mine.

“It’s okay,” I whispered, pressing my forehead to hers. “We’re safe now.”

But the words didn’t taste quite right.

They dissolved in the cold air like breath on glass. A fog. A hope. A lie that wanted to be true.

When I stepped back into the room, everything looked the same. The beds. The TV. Mack still sitting with his head bowed, unmoving. But something had changed. The air felt thinner. Off-balance.

Mum wasn’t there.

The front door clicked shut behind her.

I didn’t even have time to see it open.

The sound was small, just a tiny snick, but it landed in the room like the end of a sentence. Like something being sealed.

I clutched Ribbons tighter, my fingers curled into her soft fabric like a question I didn’t want to ask. The room, still and yellow-lit, felt suddenly larger and emptier all at once. Like it had been waiting for this moment. For the absence to settle in.

I looked at Mack.

His eyes were open now, watching the door.

He didn’t speak.

Neither did I.

We just sat in the stillness she left behind, wondering where she’d gone—and if she’d come back.

I didn't hear what Mum said at first.

I was too busy building a nest out of the motel blankets — tugging them up and over the pillows to make a sort of cocoon against the winter air pressing in from outside, the way I imagined it gathering against the windows like a curious animal. I couldn’t see the glass — the curtains were shut tight — but I pictured it foggy at the edges, clouded with condensation catching the light in soft, glowing halos. I imagined frost creeping up overnight, sealing us in like a snow globe left on a forgotten shelf.

The bedsheets smelled of something sharp and industrial—clean, but in the way hospitals are clean. The kind of clean that felt like it was trying too hard, scrubbing away years of use but never quite succeeding. I didn’t mind. It was the kind of smell that told you someone had tried. I tucked Ribbons into the crook between two pillows, her button eyes shining faintly in the dim lamplight. She looked like she was on watch.

The heater grumbled from its place under the window, filling the room with waves of uneven warmth. It was the kind of heat that came in pulses—too hot when you stood near it, too cold when you moved away. The air around the windows still felt icy, as though the glass was just a thin idea separating us from the rest of the world. My feet, bare against the carpet, flinched at its chill. The fibres were stiff and slightly damp, as though the floor had absorbed the breath of every winter before ours and didn’t want to let it go.

Mack helped, in his way.

He didn’t speak, but he handed me his pillow without being asked and folded the mustard-coloured motel blanket into a chunky roll. We called it the “cold air monster wall”—he didn’t say the words, but I did, and he didn’t correct me. That was enough. He tucked it into place beside me, careful with the edges. For a second, it reminded me of the way he used to help me build cubby houses under the kitchen table. Before. Before everything.

His face stayed unreadable, the set of his mouth too tight, his jaw working silently like he was chewing a thought he couldn’t swallow. But his eyes softened a little as he looked at the mess of bedding I’d made. He almost smiled. Almost.

Then he stood up.

The bed springs let out a long sigh as he rose, the mattress exhaling the shape of him. He moved to the door on silent feet, his socks muffling every step.

He opened the door a crack.

A squeak of hinges followed—a thin, strained sound like breath drawn through clenched teeth. We both froze for a moment, as if the sound itself might bring something rushing to meet us.

A slice of yellow light spilled across the floor, slicing through the dim room like a paper cut. Dust motes danced in it, slow and lazy, like they hadn’t realised the day was over. Cold air slipped inside, brushing past my ankles with the smell of damp earth and eucalyptus—and something else. Something sharper, harder. The tang of rusted metal or rain on hot concrete. It made me think of blood, though I didn’t know why.

I stayed on the bed, curled in the dip of the mattress, Ribbons under my arm. I peeked toward the curtains, just a sliver parted.

Then I heard it too.

Mum’s voice.

Not the one I knew. Not the one that said “You’re alright, I’ve got you” or hummed along to the radio when she thought no one was listening. This one was lower. Sharper. Like it had been honed into a tool. The sound of someone holding too much in, just one crack away from splitting open.

Mack edged the door wider, just enough to let the words through. The light from the outdoor lights fell across his face, catching the side of his cheek and one eye. It lit him up in halves—one side calm and shadowed, the other exposed. Vulnerable.

He didn’t turn back to me, but I could tell he was listening hard. His shoulders had gone stiff, his head tilted slightly, like a wolf scenting something on the wind.

I couldn’t make out the words. Only the sound of them—fast, clipped, too urgent for comfort.

My stomach curled in on itself.

The blanket nest I’d made—my fortress, my cave—suddenly felt childish. Too flimsy. As if, by building it, I’d drawn something toward us. Like those stories where naming the monster is the thing that invites it in.

I didn’t move.

Didn’t speak.

Just clutched Ribbons tighter and tried not to imagine what waited beyond the edge of that thin door and the thicker silence that followed.

“…you said it was isolated,” she hissed. “No cameras, no bloody neighbours, and no risk. That's what you promised.”

I froze mid-breath. Not just because of what she was saying, but because of how she was saying it. I'd never heard her voice like that before—tight and sharp, as though she were pulling it through clenched teeth. It trembled, just a little, but enough to make my skin prickle. Not with cold.

With knowing.

A pause. A waiting.

Beyond the thin motel walls, other sounds edged in. A lorry grumbling in the distance as it climbed through gears, the faint metallic rattle of its frame echoing off empty space. A single dripping tap, rhythmically ticking like a metronome from somewhere nearby. An owl calling softly from the gum trees behind the motel, its voice low and ancient, like it knew all the endings already.

Then Mum again—quieter now, but every word carrying weight.

“I'm with them now. I've got them. But we're not safe. Not if people are asking questions already. Not if the neighbours know things.”

The word neighbours caught somewhere behind my ribs.

Neighbours knew us. Knew Grandma. Knew where we were supposed to be.

I pulled Ribbons tighter into my chest, her frayed arms barely wrapping around me the way they used to. Her button eyes gleamed faintly in the lamplight. Watching. Waiting.

Another long pause followed. A gap too wide to fill. Mack stood unmoving beside the door, his silhouette cut clean by the strip of yellow light still seeping in from outside. Arms folded, jaw set, his knuckles gone white where they gripped the sleeves of his jumper. His shoulders were high, drawn tight like bowstrings. I could tell he wasn’t just listening—he was absorbing it. Turning the words over like puzzle pieces that didn’t fit, but still meant something.

Then Mum’s voice again, snapping like a brittle branch.

“Don't tell me to calm down.”

The air inside our room changed. My heart jumped, legs tensing automatically, and I knocked my knee against the bedside wall. The sound was dull, but in the silence that followed, it rang out like a dropped plate.

Silence swallowed everything after that.

Thick. Total.

The kind that made your ears start inventing noise just to fill it.

Mack closed the door slowly. Not rushed. Not angry. Just… done. The kind of close that says, no more tonight. The latch caught with a soft click, and the outside world vanished behind painted wood and weather stripping.

The heater stopped humming.

Without it, the quiet thickened, solid as fog.

He turned to me for a second, and for once I couldn’t read him. He looked like he'd aged in that doorway, like all the things he’d been carrying had settled more deeply into his skin. I don’t think he meant to look at me that way—it was just what was left when he stopped pretending.

Then he lay down, arms behind his head, eyes up.

Watching the ceiling like it might move.

I didn’t speak. I didn’t need to.

I just climbed into the blanket fort I’d made. Drew it tighter around me. My notebook was under the pillow. I didn’t reach for it. Not yet. The words and pictures felt like too much tonight. Too sharp. Like they might draw blood if I let them out.

I thought about what she’d said.

Unsafe. Neighbours. Risk.

They sounded like grown-up words, official words. Words you said in office buildings or hushed kitchens late at night. But even without knowing exactly what they meant, I felt their shape in the pit of my stomach. Heavy. Icy. The kind of words that rearranged your life without asking first.

Outside, the clouds had rolled in, hiding the stars.

The moon still hadn’t risen.

A door closed somewhere nearby. Not ours.

Gravel crunched under unseen footsteps. Then nothing.

But that kind of nothing doesn’t last.

I stared at the ceiling, at the stain shaped like a map of nowhere, and realised something I didn’t want to say out loud—not to Mack, not even to Ribbons.

We weren’t just on a road trip anymore.

We were hiding.

And something was trying to find us.