Grille

The Grille hangs from a stringer, the vertical bars of the ceiling grilles and stairwells. It is a still bundle, and that stillness acts as its disguise. There is no screech of metal or breathing, only the shape, at ceiling height or at a landing.

How to recognize it

A bundle over a service staircase that wasn’t there before. When you turn your head, the bundle is a step lower. Whoever goes down a staircase for the first time rarely looks at it, because the ceiling isn’t the first thing you check.

Behavior

• It waits hanging without moving while nobody approaches.
• It comes down the stairs when two things happen at once: you are eight meters or less from it and you are not looking at it.
• Looking at it stops it. The rule of the creatures that move “behind your back” applies here, and whoever holds the gaze gains time.
• Total silence. It gives no warning.

Where it appears

Service staircases are also one of the passages between levels (see the ecosystem of connections and Level 0 Staircases), so the Grille guards places wanderers can’t avoid.

How to survive

1. On reaching a stairwell, look up first, before putting your foot on the first step.
2. Go up and down with your eyes on the stringer, and if you lose sight of it, stop and find it again.
3. Don’t turn your back on a long landing with a bundle on the ceiling.
4. In a group, have someone watch the ceiling while the rest move on.

The Pulse decides when it sets it waiting at a tension peak.

What people say

Some say they have seen it on the same staircase on different runs, always on the same stringer. Others maintain it moves from one flight to another when Displacement reorders the chunks. The two versions don’t agree on the stringer.

Relation to the rest

Together with the Prowler it forms the pair “one walks, one waits.” For the contrast with the rest of the fauna, see the creature comparison and the shared entry Prowler, Grille, Stalker. Also: Stalker, Watcher.