Yelan had heard the stories all her life. The old store at the end of the block had stood abandoned for years, windows blacked out, door rusted shut. No one ever went near it. Not even on Halloween, when the air itself seemed to invite mischief and terror.
But something about the place gnawed at her, even after all the warnings from her friends, her parents, the neighbors. They said it was haunted, cursed. A place where the dead never left.
On Halloween night, Yelan found herself standing in front of that store, the air colder than it should have been, even for October. Her breath came in sharp, visible puffs. A chill ran up her spine, but she ignored it. She didn't believe in ghosts. Not anymore. Not since she'd lost her little brother, not since she'd stopped looking for explanations in things she couldn't understand.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket. A text from Xixi. Don't do it. Seriously, Yelan. Yelan scowled, slipping the phone back into her jeans. She wasn't a kid anymore. Xixi would never understand.
The store's door was barely hanging on its hinges. She stepped forward, each footfall louder than the last, until she stood before it. The wooden boards creaked under her weight, the door screeched when she pushed it open. It wasn't the sound that made her shiver—it was the smell. Musty, old, like something had died in there.
Inside, the place was as she expected. Shelves were overturned, boxes and discarded items scattered across the floor. The light from the moon filtered through cracks in the walls, casting long lines of gray across the room. It was silent, unnervingly so, like everything in the world had decided to stop just for a moment, to watch.
Yelan walked deeper into the store, her footsteps mixing with the occasional creak of the building, the sounds falling like echoes from nowhere.
She stopped by an old shelf lined with broken dolls. Their glass eyes stared back at her, their cracked porcelain faces frozen in some strange, permanent expression of horror. She reached out, her fingers brushing against one of their heads. The air shifted. Her hand froze.
Something else was in the store.
Her heartbeat sped up. She swallowed hard and pulled her hand back. Nothing moved, nothing changed. But there was something… there. Something that didn't belong.
Get out.
It wasn't a voice, but a feeling, a pull at the edges of her mind. Yelan shook her head. She wasn't going to leave. Not now. She was here, and there was no reason to let her fear win.
She pushed forward, turning the corner into the next room. The store stretched on forever, rooms hidden within rooms. She didn't know why she expected the place to make sense. She hadn't come for sense. She'd come because something had called her. She felt it, deep inside her chest.
In the corner, something caught her eye. A faded portrait hung crooked on the wall. She walked over to it, noticing the faint scrawl of words on the bottom of the frame. They were hard to read. The letters were too faded, smudged by time. But she could make out They die here.
The words left a chill that sunk into her bones. Her fingers trembled as they traced the letters. They die here.
A sound behind her stopped her cold. She spun around.
Nothing.
Except the dolls.
They were closer now. Their empty eyes no longer stared at the floor, but directly at her, their heads slightly tilted. She should have screamed. She should have run. But instead, her breath caught in her throat, and her legs refused to move.
Then, there was the soft thud of something falling from the shelves behind her.
She turned quickly, the panic rising.
It was just an old can. It rolled across the floor, hitting a nearby wall with a dull thump.
Yelan exhaled, a laugh escaping her lips. Idiot.
But when she turned back, the dolls were gone.
Every single one of them.
Her stomach twisted, and her body tensed. She wasn't alone. She could feel them now, closing in on her. The air was thick with something… wrong. The walls felt closer. The floor beneath her feet seemed to shift with every step.
She turned to leave.
The door was gone.
It wasn't there anymore. The doorframe was empty, a gaping hole of blackness in the wall.
Panic surged. She ran to the next wall, then the next, but every one was just more darkness. The store had grown, had stretched out like some kind of living thing.
Something screamed.
It was her.
The cold hands grabbed her, pulling her to the floor. Her heart slammed in her chest, and she gasped for air, clawing at the ground. There was nothing but blackness now, no walls, no doors.
And then the pain.
A sharp stab across her stomach, followed by a sickening twist. Her scream was muffled by a hand—too cold, too wrong. She felt the knife slice, felt it tear through her skin. Her legs kicked out, but they didn't move. Her fingers went numb as they reached for anything, anything to stop this.
There was no escape.
No one would hear her.
Her screams faded into the silence.
------
The next morning, the town was quieter than usual. A few kids walked around in costumes, some of them laughing, some of them searching for candy. The stores had opened, the town's usual noise returning.
But no one noticed the odd shapes scattered around the streets. They didn't notice the bloodstains on the pavement. They didn't see the small, dismembered pieces of Yelan lying in the alleys, the pieces of her body scattered across the town like forgotten refuse.
The store, though? It was gone. The door was shut tight again. The shelves and the dolls? Nothing.
The place had never been there.
But Yelan had.