Play@YSDC

This narrow and reasonably clean room nonetheless smells quite musty with overtones of damp and decay. The bathtub is encircled with a shower curtain, and there's a cabinet above the basin and black out curtains on the small windows which have slight gaps that allow a little of the moonlight into the room. The paintings on the walls are all of fluffy ducks swimming along the rivers. The bathtub is full of grimy water filled with misshapen shapes whose details are lost in the gloom. The light in this room also doesn't work.

Places to go:

• Upstairs Corridor.

Charlie swings the door wide and shines a flashlight into the room.

The flashlight picks out more detailing in the gloom. A brown furry shape can be glimpsed in the gap between the bathtub curtains as the flashlight passes over it. Beyond that ... oddity ... the room appears to be in reasonably good condition. The cabinet is shut and the basin is quite clean. There are no notes in here to draw attention nor wastepaper baskets.

With some trepidation, Charlie uses the flashlight to nudge the bath curtain aside.

The murky waters of the bathtub are full of the floating, soggy-furred bodies of rats. Each one is missing its eyes, the sunken hollows burnt at the edges, the air holding a hint of match stick smoke. There's gotta be a dozen of these things! The water itself is a murky grey with a greasy sheen like old laundry water from a mechanic's laundry. A key glints, caught in the teeth of one such floating corpse-rat, its jaw stitched shut around it with thick black stitches. The sight is gruesome enough, but as he stares at the water, light trembling across their furry bodies, he sees something ripple across the water, causing the rats to bob and move.

Charlie recoils in revulsion upon seeing the rats but lingers because of the key, as he starts to consider how to get the key without having to touch the water or rats he sees the ripple and jumps back in shock. Still shining the light towards the tub, he finds the wall with a trembling hand and hastily guides himself back out of the room.

Nothing changes in that awful greasy water as he leaves the room.