Janelle stiffens. She knows this voice. She shouldn’t. How could she know this voice? But she knows the flow of the words rolling off the stranger’s tongue.
The floor shifts beneath her, tilting ever so slightly—not enough to move her, just enough to remind her that nothing is solid anymore.
Her fingers tighten around the key, but it is gone. And the door behind her? It is no longer there. The light flickers again, stronger this time, revealing the silhouette of a figure—not the stranger, but someone else, someone waiting.
Janelle’s breath shudders in her throat. The figure stands just beyond the flickering light—a shape pulled from the depths of memory, perhaps something she has been made to remember.
She steps forward, ignoring how the air thickens and the gnawing sensation that she has walked into something she cannot walk out of. Her voice is steady, but only because she forces it to be.
“Who are you?”
The question tastes wrong in her mouth; it is too simple and small. But it is all she has.
The figure shifts, as if considering the weight of the answer. Not hesitant—deliberate.
“You already know.”
Janelle clenches her fists. No. She doesn’t know. But the mansion does. The floor pulses beneath her, the walls flex in their quiet respiration, pressing the truth into the space between them.
Now, she does know—her pulse hammers against her ribs. The flickering light barely catches the edge of the figure’s face, and her stomach drops.
It’s her. Older. Changed. Not quite right.
Janelle stumbles back, but the space does not allow her to retreat. The door, the key, and the exit are gone.