Eli spun around, heart hammering. He grabbed the doorknob and twisted—locked. He slammed his fist against the wood.
"Let me out!" His voice echoed down the stairwell.
No answer.
The air grew colder, wrapping around him like unseen fingers. Behind him, the knocking had stopped, but something else stirred in the dark below. A slow, shuffling movement.
He turned back toward the stairs. The light from the basement above barely reached past the first few steps. Beyond that, it was pure blackness.
Then—something shifted at the bottom.
A faint outline. A figure.
It stood just outside the reach of the light, motionless. Watching.
Eli's breath hitched. "Who… who's there?"
Silence.
Then the figure moved. A jerking, unnatural twitch, as if its body didn't quite work right. Its limbs bent oddly, its head tilting too far to one side.
Then, softly—so softly Eli almost didn't hear it—it spoke.
"You shouldn't be here."
Eli stumbled back, nearly tripping on the stairs. The voice was hollow, layered, as if more than one person had spoken at once.
His mind screamed at him to run, to pound on the door, to do anything. But before he could react, the figure stepped forward.
Into the light.
Eli choked on his breath.
It was a person. Or—it had been.
Skin stretched too tight over a gaunt face, mouth slightly open as if gasping for breath. But the worst part?
Its eyes.
Empty sockets. Hollow, dark holes that seemed to pull at him.
Eli couldn't move.
Then, from the darkness behind the figure, others began to appear. More shapes. More twisted bodies.
More empty eyes.
A chorus of whispers rose, overlapping, merging into one another.
"Help us."
"Find the way out."
"He won't let us leave."
Eli's blood turned to ice.
The figures pressed closer, their hollow eyes fixed on him.
And then, from the depths of the darkness, another voice spoke.
A voice that didn't whisper.
A voice that rumbled through the walls.
Deep. Cold. Amused.
"You opened the door, Eli. Now you belong to me."