All of my things are significantly drier now. I undress, put my underwear and sports bra on, and then my shorts and top back on. I pile the things like the bills, cards, socks, t-shirt, and tie that are completely dry and flip everything else that is still wet to dry more on the other side. I sit down crisscross on the carpet roll

  I open the handbag and the first thing I find inside is some sort of cheap burner phone from a company named Nokia. It has a tiny little screen and giant buttons and even a big thick cylindrical antenna. Hopeful, I put the phone to the side and dig through the rest of the purse to see if there is a charger. There is, but it’s a barrel plug like some notebook computers have. Could it be for a wireless charger? I don’t see one. I look more closely at both items, and the charger seems to match the hole in the button-phone. It won’t do any good to charge my phone unless I can somehow make an adapter, but at least I can see if the old phone works. I see it has a removable battery cover, so I press a big oval button on the back and slide it off to make sure there’s a battery in there that looks like it is in decent shape. Almost the entire back of the phone comes off. I guess the battery is the back cover; it has a sticker on it saying it was made in Japan. Inside the phone is a label saying the device itself was made in Germany and is a model 6110. I don’t see a date-of-manufacture, but it does have a gigantic SIM card slot with a card in it. Probably it is not a burner but is just a couple of decades old.

  Nothing looks swollen or leaky or rusty and they always say old things lasted longer, so I move closer to one of the outlets that are on the wall of every side of every room whether the wall has an opening or not. I connect the wire to the phone and try plugging the charger in. It is time to see if these outlets really work, assuming this old phone still works. I set it down to give it some charge time. I feel faint with hunger.

  I try to distract myself from my rumbling stomach by focusing on my investigation of the dead woman’s things. It’s probably too much to hope there’s a granola bar in there. The handbag contains a number of socks and strips of fabric, all with reddish brown stains. It is immediately clear what she was using these for and I’ll have to address that too before long assuming I find food. It’s a good sign though. She must have been surviving here for multiple months. I just need to figure out how she did it. It also shows that she was harvesting items from victims of the rooms, so I feel a bit less bad about what I’ve taken.

  Additionally, I find a small mirror in one of the interior pockets of the bag, and in another I find an iPhone. It is an old white chunky plastic version and has a big wide slot for charging. There is no charger, and the battery is completely dead. There’s nothing else in the bag. She probably would have put the charger in this bag like she did for the other one if she had it. I’ll check the room for it once things air out more.

  I go over to the first phone. If this Nokia is going to work, it probably should have enough charge to turn on while plugged in by now. The phone doesn’t have a power button in the normal place on the side, but I notice a button near the antenna with a red symbol that seems like it indicates power on and off. I press it. Nothing. I press and hold it and the phone starts up slowly. The screen is even worse than I expected. It boots to a dark gray image of two hands reaching for each other over the company name on light greenish gray background. Eventually there is a mostly bank screen with the words “Menu” and “Names”. The screen is not touch, but I figure out that the two little triangular buttons under the screen work to select the word that appears above them. There is also an up and down arrow button in between. When I click on “Menu”, the menu turns out to be one item long, but then I press the up arrow and that seems to switch between the different functions. Surprisingly, it even has one called “Games” with three things listed but now was not the time for games. I return to the screen that says “Messages”. There are only outgoing messages. I scroll through the most recent ones. The last four messages are a single text. The first says:

  My name is Amy W

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  ang. I have been

  trapped in this

  yellow hell for

  eight years. If

  you find this me

  ssage and escape

  , tell my husban

  d and children I

  love them. This

  The next message says:

  room is the only

  source of food I

  have found. You

  need to let the

  doors close and

  go at least 100

  rooms away for i

  t to reset. A bo

  ttle will appear

  that gives you e

  It continues:

  nough to survive

  . Anything you l

  eave disappears.

  I’ve explored

  1000s of rooms i

  n every directio

  n but there is n

  o way out and no

  other food. I gi

  ve up. Everythin

  Finally…

  g I have learned

  about this place

  can be found on

  the walls near J

  ohn Mason’s body

  -From here go 1U

  14L6U9L27U1R5U18

  L27U5L8U9L2D14L8

  1U11L14U5L6U2R3U

  1R54U232L3U1L8U.

  The rest of the outbox is filled with personal messages to friends and loved ones. I add up the numbers. Assuming each represents a number of rooms, it would be nearly a four-mile walk. I wonder if anyone else found Amy’s body and never checked the phone. Probably they would have taken the purse like I did, so she has probably been lying there undisturbed for nearly two decades. What if I hadn’t found it?

  I let the old phone keep charging and go back to Amy’s room, which smells a lot better now. It seems she was wrong about a bottle of nutritious drink automatically refilling itself, because the only bottle in room is the broken one she used to slit her wrists, and I was definitely a hundred rooms away. Maybe it worked until she broke the glass? I search through the room and pat down the pockets of the mummy, but I can’t glean anything new, so I decide to follow the instructions to John Mason’s room.

  I return to my latest camp to see how charged the old phone is. It says it is full, but I don’t know how long the charge will last—hopefully at least the hour or so I need to walk. I wish I had a piece of paper to write the instructions out. I check the bag again for some sort of writing implement and even try the pen I retrieved from the pool room in case it has any ink left, but to no avail. Maybe I could break off a piece of wall and carve the directions in? I reluctantly turn on my phone and take a quick picture of the text message just in case and then shut it down again: Thirty-One percent battery. I also set the correct time and date on the Nokia before unplugging it. I head back to the starting point of the route.

  At the entrance doors I look at the directions again. They are written like she was using the arrow keys on a keyboard instead of the turn left, turn right, go straight for number of rooms method I have using. I already outside of Amy’s room, so I turn left and go straight for fourteen rooms. I continue following the directions, trying to remember several steps ahead and keeping the screen off most of the time, especially for the two hundred thirty-two rooms without turns towards the end. Finally, I walk the last eight rooms straight to my destination.