The Choice
Janelle hesitated, the weight of the key pressing against her palm. Her instincts screamed at her to drop it and walk away, but something kept her rooted.
She turned back to the journal, flipping further into its pages. Evelyn’s final entries were erratic and fragmented—a woman trapped in fear.
“Whatever is here…it won’t let me leave. The door. The basement door. If I can get to it—”
The sentence cut off abruptly.
Janelle’s pulse thundered. She gripped the key tightly and raced down the grand staircase, ignoring how the air thickened around her, as if the house was responding.
The basement door loomed at the end of the corridor, its edges warped, its handle cold beneath her fingers. She slid the key into the lock. It turned—easily, too easily.
The door creaked open—revealing not darkness, but light.
A room fully furnished, pristine, and lived in. And in the center of it, atop an antique desk, sat a single, fresh journal, its pages blank…except for one sentence, written in ink so dark it looked like it bled from the paper:
“Welcome home, Janelle.”