"I need..." The words appeared to come from all of them and none of them at the same time. Much like the mystery surrounding the milky Glow that shrouded their eyes, the sound was a paradox.

Laszlo and Silas exchanged frantic glances. They had been foolish to come here without backup, and now they were surrounded. Their silent communication was interrupted as one of the hag clones broke from the pack. She stepped forward, her bare feet light against the plank floor. A shapeless cotton gown cloaked her brittle limbs. Her lips parted in a hideous grin. Laszlo was almost certain she could detect the fetid breath from where she stood.

"Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil," the old woman recited in a blasphemous wheeze. 

She let out a low, constant chuckle, and her counterparts followed suit. She advanced another couple of steps, and Laszlo could hear the joints in the woman's knees and elbows grind around thinning ligaments. The circle around them was closing, and there was no apparent way out.

As the decrepit human shells drew closer together, their combined Glow became almost unbearable, as if channelled and magnified through a prism. Looking directly into their eyes would be as detrimental as staring into an eclipse. Laszlo looked up for relief. There, in the rafters, she found her answer. 

A swift hand grabbed for the gun at her belt, unholstered, and aimed for the vaulted ceiling. Thanks to her earlier close encounter, she knew their weakness, and she planned to leverage it: water. She shot off two rounds, strategically blowing the caps off two sprinkler heads. The building may have been abandoned, but its auxiliary emergency system was still functional.

Laszlo blinked fervently as tepid water sprayed down in a radius that covered the length and width of the musty space. Insects and rodents long nested in forgotten boxes and piles of garbage scurried for cover.

Immediately, the encroaching Glowers began to squeal and writhe. The Glow itself diminished; its rays strobed in all directions as the bodies of the otherworldly elders twitched.

Laszlo witnessed the scene in frozen horror. She watched helplessly, in mixed disgust and triumph, as their skin began at first to peel, and then to crack – finally sliding off in gelatinous chunks to the dust-caked floor below.

Systematically, the bodies began to fall, each with a hollow clunk. The Glow was extinguished.

In her shock, Laszlo had been too distracted and her body too wracked with adrenaline to realise that Silas, too, now lay in a puddle of liquefied skin and exposed bone at her feet. He, too, had been infected.

There was no time to grieve. She had to know what secret lay hidden inside those trunks. She moved forward through the stark darkness, careful to sidestep smouldering carnage.

The floor wailed under her weight, as if mourning the loss of the building's bizarre inhabitants. She willed her eyes to adjust, and they slowly complied. Her hands groped for the nearest piece of luggage. The tips of her fingers brushed against scaly leather, leaving trails of dust in their wake.

Aha! She found the latch...and felt the cool metal of a rusted padlock.

Now, where was the key?