Sleep is good, death is better: but of course, the best thing would to have never been born at all.
A man, Dan Wells, walks down the street, nervously avoiding anyone he comes to. He enters the Englewood Hotel and the manager Scott Mudgett tells him to keep it down. Dan ignores him and goes to his room, and one of the guests complains that he's keeping them awake. As she goes back to her room, an old man--Charles Herringlynk--in a wheelchair watches from down the hallway.
Inside his room, Dan locks and bolts the door and checks his closet and under his bed to make sure no one is there. He nails the windows shut and puts chains over them, jumping at every little noise. He hears something moving in another closet and looks inside, but no one is there. Satisfied that he's alone, Dan nervously gets into bed and dozes off. He wakes up to find a lamprey-like Wesen opening its maw.
At the loft, Nick waits until everyone is asleep and then goes into the tunnel. Eve wakes up and goes down after him, and finds Nick taking photos of the symbols that she carved. She says that she had to do it, and points out that Diana could see more symbols on the cloth than she could.
The next morning at the Englewood, Dan jerks awake and tears apart his bed. He mutters that it's impossible that the creature got in and walks down the hallway. Dan walks down the street and a man, Michael Sobek, comes over and asks if he needs help. He offers to take Dan to the shelter where he works and gets him safe, and Dan figures the man is his attacker. Dan grabs the man and beats him to death.
At the spice shop, Nick and Eve show Rosalee and Monroe the symbols that Eve carved. They come from a variety of cultures, and the couple has no idea what it means. However, Monroe finally recognizes the Pleiades constellation, associated with times of mourning. Nick figures that the constellation's seven stars correspond to the seven Grimm Crusaders and the seven keys.
When Nick arrives at the station, he tells Hank that things are a bit strange with Eve staying there. He shows Hank the photos of the symbols. Wu calls and says that they have a murder case. The detectives go to the park and Wu explains that Michael works at a nearby shelter and was killed. Dan fled the scene on foot and they get a call that someone saw Dan going into the Englewood.
The police drive to the Englewood and Scott tells them that Dan came in screaming and ran up to his room, locking the door. Nick and Hank go up and hear hammering, and the female guest Laura Driscoll complains about the noise. They order her into her room and knock on Dan's door. He warns that if he lets them in then "it" will get them, and he doesn't know how it gets in. The unis arrive with a battering ram, and Dan says that the creature will kill them. They smash through the door and Nick yells that the monster will find them wherever they are. Once the unis take Dan away, Nick examines the chains on the windows. As they leave, Charles watches them.
The detectives talk to Scott, who says that Dan has stayed there two months. He got weirder and weirder but doesn't know if Dan was taking drugs. Scott has Dan's previous address--another cheap hotel--and doesn't know that anyone threatened him. When he hears that Dan has been nailing the doors and windows shut, Scott calls in his maintenance man Eddie Holmes. The detectives warn that no one is allowed in until they go over the place. Nick asks Scott if Charles had any contact with Dan, and Scott says that Charles has been there for decades and no one has ever heard him speak.
Renard goes into his office and hears a noise. He calls to Meisner, and turns to see a man--Anselmo Baledin--come in. Anselmo introduces himself and says that they've spoken on the phone, and it's important that they talk now that Conrad is dead and Renard killed his political career. Renard insists that Nick had help, and Anselmo explains that he's there to clean up his mistakes. They want Renard to pick up where Black Claw left off, and asks if Renard was there when Nick supposedly killed Conrad. Renard says that something powerful is protecting Nick, and tells Anselmo that he's done with Black Claw. He orders Anselmo out, and the Black Claw representative leaves.
At the spice shop, Eve, Monroe, and Rosalee check the other symbols to see if they're constellations. They spot more and wonder if it's a calendar... and of when.
At the station, Nick confirms that Dan has never been arrested for anything. Hank checks with the Housing Authority and learns that Dan has been living on general relief and hotel vouchers. Nick points out that there's no motive for the murder, but there's no record of mental illness. They wonder if Dan encountered a Wesen and it drove him insane, and they talk to him in the interrogation room. He tells them that he's afraid of sleeping because that's when it gets him. Dan doesn't know what it is, but it paralyzes him. As he tries to describe it, Dan goes berserk and the detectives are forced to knock him out.
Monroe relates the calendar to two different cultures three thousand years apart. Nick and Hank arrive and Eve suggests that it documents an event a long time ago that might tell us where the stick came from. The detectives describe the monster Dan listed, and Monroe recognizes it as an Alpe. They're responsible for sleep paralysis and insomnia, and an Alpe attacked his aunt. The Wesen get inside of a victim's head and feed on their victim's sleep to avoid insanity. The heavier the sleeper, the more melatonin is generated and the Alpe feeds on it.
At the station, Nick and Hank confirm that 35 guests stayed at the hotel the night before the murder. Hank finds a reference to a murder in 1954 when a long-term guest killed a maid. There have been six suicides and three murders since then, and Hank points out that Charles has been in the hotel for a long time. Wu digs up the phone number of the owner, Beverly Garwood, and Nick calls her. He asks for background information on Scott and Eddie, and Beverly explains that she inherited the Englewood from her grandfather and doesn't manage it on a day-to-day basis. All she knows about the men is that they keep the place running. Nick points out that there have been violent incidents at the hotel but Beverly dismisses it as typical for most hotels.
That night at the Englewood, the Alpe feeds on Laura.
Renard arrives at the station and finds Meisner waiting for him. Meisner advises him to go somewhere that no one else can see, and warns that there are two men waiting by Renard's car who want to kill him. Renard goes down and kills the two men, and Meisner says that he saved Renard's life because he chose the right side. Meisner walks away and disappears.
Laura falls out of her bed, in shock from what she saw. She stumbles out into the hallway but trips and falls over the balcony.
Later, Wu, Nick, and Hank arrive to investigate the new death. Scott dismisses it as an accident, and says that Eddie found the body. Eddie tells them that he was covering the front desk and heard the scream, but didn't think anything of it. The detectives go to Laura's room and Nick sees Charles down the hallway. There's no sign of forced entry and the windows are locked from the inside. They wonder how the Alpe got in, and Hank figures that it's Scott. Nick suggests that they catch the Alpe in the act.
The detectives go to the spice shop and ask Monroe to act as bait. They assure him that they'll have a camera and mike on him, and Monroe agrees. He points out that he's not a heavy sleeper, and they suggest that Rosalee give Monroe a large dose of melatonin. She agrees and the detectives assure her that they'll have Monroe under constant surveillance.
Hank and Nick take Monroe to the Englewood and give him the camera and earbud so that they can keep in contact. Monroe goes in and gets a room, and sees Charles in the hallway as he enters his room. He locks the doors and windows, sets the camera up on the dresser, and goes to bed. Monroe soon dozes off from the melatonin shot.
The camera shakes and the detectives run in. Meanwhile, the Alpe paralyzes Monroe and prepares to feed on him. The detectives shoot their way through the locked front door and break into Monroe's room. The Alpe is gone and they find a hidden passage behind the dresser. The detectives follow the Alpe and emerge out into the hallway, and find Scott. He woges into his Hundjager form and attacks them, but Nick manages to break his neck.
Monroe staggers in and says that he saw an Alpe, not a Hundjager. The trio goes back into the passageways and Nick hears the Alpe moving. They go into an expensively appointed room and Beverly comes out. Monroe says that he wants payback for his aunt and woges, and Beverly woges. The two of them revert to human form for a moment, and Beverly realizes that Nick is a Grimm. She says that she didn't kill anyone and tells them to leave, but Nick advises her to either sell the hotel and leave Portland, or... he kills her. Beverly agrees to leave, but then woges and attacks him. Nick shoves her down and she hits her head on an end table, cracking her skull.
In the hallway, Charles woges into a red herring-like Wesen and laughs hysterically.
At the spice shop, Eve suggests that they map the planets to determine their alignment. Rosalee runs a program to determine the date, and discovers that it's a date in the future: March 24, 2017.
Written by Gadfly on Feb 11, 2017