As soon as I screamed, the images suddenly stopped appearing. She stared at me with her eyes shining red and asked, "How did you activate it?"
I had no idea what she was referring to, and in that very moment, Philip got forcefully pushed and crashed into the wall, losing consciousness.
Right when that happened, her finger was pointed directly at him, but her gaze remained fixed on me. Without thinking twice, I ran away.
In a matter of seconds, a strong force blew my chair away. I barely missed it. I chose the opposite path from where we entered the hall and hurried through the corridor.
I entered a room that seemed like a kitchen. On the other side, I spotted a back door and quickly headed towards it. After going through the door, I realized I was back in the same corridor I had just left, and she was walking towards me.
"You can't escape, Oliver,"
"How does she know my name?"
I kept on running down the corridor, passing through various rooms and stairs. But something was off. It didn't make any sense. The rooms weren't connected in the usual way. The kitchen would lead to a guest room, and then suddenly I would find myself in a bedroom. And before I knew it, I was back in the same corridor, only to stumble upon yet another kitchen. It was all so confusing.
"How big is this place!?" I said.
Whenever I looked back, she was just a few steps away from me, steadily walking closer.
After going through room after room, I opened a door in a bedroom and found myself in an attic. The attic was packed with boxes, but I didn't have a moment to see what was inside them.
Even though I could still hear her footsteps approaching, I noticed that the time between each step was getting slower and slower. My eyes widened with surprise when I looked through open the door I entered only to find the room I came from being the corridor now, with her shadow looming over it. After taking a few more steps, her footsteps suddenly ceased.
Click Clack. The sounds of bones shifting echoed through the attic. In a state of panic, I instinctively took a step back, but my foot caught on something, causing me to trip and tumble. The boxes around me toppled over, cascading onto me in a chaotic mess.
Remember when I mentioned not having time to check the boxes? Well, now I seriously wished I had never opened them.
To my horror, they were filled with black scorpions with red tails. But these were no ordinary scorpions. They were big, almost as big as my chest, and one of them was crawling on me.
As her shadow danced and twitched in every direction, the bone-cracking sounds grew louder and louder. My heart raced uncontrollably, pounding like a madman in my chest. Until the shifting bones suddenly stopped.
"Oliver," she called out. My heart raced even faster, and I could almost sense the scorpion on my chest getting ready to strike with its red tail.
Then, I heard another step, followed by the a hand touching the door frame. I desperately wanted to move, but with the scorpion weighing me down, I was immobilized. Slowly, she revealed her face, and with each step she took, the wooden floor squeaked in protest.
"Oliver, don't flee from me," she said in a strangely sweet, yet old-sounding tone. It sent a chill down my spine.
Her hair was disheveled, falling across her face in a tangled mess. Her once-grey eyes had turned pitch black, as if she hadn't slept for decades.
Her hands appeared longer and thinner than before, and she had somehow grown taller, reaching up to touch the ceiling. But the most horrifying thing about her transformation was her grin, stained with blood. Her teeth had grown larger, tinged with a hint of red, and her gums were fully exposed.
In a split second, she lunged forward, ready to strike. Suddenly, just as the scorpion was about to strike, it turned into a cloud of black dust before I could even react. And in an instant, the floor beneath me crumbled, creating a hole, and I found myself falling through it. It all happened so fast.
I landed in the same hallway where I had met Philip before. Looking up, her hand was stretching through the opening, trying to grab me, but she couldn't fit in. I couldn't look away, my eyes wide open in fear.
When she realized she couldn't reach me, she started smashing the hole with her body, making it bigger. Now, I could see her face again, and it gave me chills.
I didn't waste any time and quickly made my way downstairs, back to the dining room. Philip was conscious now, but he looked confused, holding his hand to his head.
"Why do you look so scared?" he asked. Right then, we heard a loud noise, like wood breaking apart.
"Oh no, did she get out?" I panicked, quickly stepping back in fear. In just a few seconds, I could hear the sound of multiple footsteps coming closer and closer. It was like nothing I had ever heard before. Then, to my horror, her head popped out from the entrance. Philip jumped back, scared and startled.
She couldn't fit through the entrance because she was too big. She rammed her shoulder against the opening, violently shattering it to create a wider passage.
"Run, run, Oliver, run!" Philip shouted, his voice filled with panic. Without wasting a second, we sprinted towards the opposite entrance, where we found a staircase leading down, which wasn't there before. We could hear her smashing through the entrance behind us, getting closer with each passing moment. We raced down the stairs as fast as we could, driven by sheer panic and the urgent need to escape her grasp.
We spotted two girls further down the stairs in a white dress, seemingly unsure of what was unfolding before them. "Don't you dare come this way! Run, Dawn it, run!" Philip urgently warned them. Suddenly, their eyes widened as they caught sight of the towering, elderly figure stumbling and crashing into walls behind us.
The two girls took the lead, dashing down the stairs with even greater speed than us. We followed closely behind, desperately trying to outrun the approaching menace. At the bottom of the stairs, we found a door that led to the outside. She was closing in, her grasp inching closer with each passing moment. Just as I feared she would seize me, a man bravely stepped in front of her, halting her.
We continued our escape, running until we reached outside. The house stood surrounded by a dense forest, leaving us with no choice but to venture into its depths. However, before any of us could enter, a deafening bang sounded behind us. We turned around and were met with partially destroyed house, and the man who had confronted her had his upper body gruesomely torn part.
