Clara backed into the kitchen, the scissors still clenched tightly in her hand. The voice behind the wardrobe door had stopped mimicking Elora it was humming now. A lullaby. One her mother used to sing. The very same lullaby she hadn't heard since the funeral.
She was shaking so hard her knees nearly buckled.
She didn't know what to do. Call Elora? Run outside? Pray?
The humming stopped.
The door creaked open an inch. Not by Clara's hand.
A fingernail long, cracked, blackened curled around the edge of the door.
And then the voice came again. Not Elora's. Not her mother's.
It was deep, wet, and smiling.
"We don't knock anymore, Clara. You invited us in, remember?"
She dropped the scissors.
And ran.
At the Church
Elora flinched violently, her heart seizing.
Reverend Graves noticed. "What did you see?"
She stared past him, her voice hollow. "It found her."
Graves stood abruptly and walked to a hidden cabinet. He pulled out something wrapped in cloth, unrolling it slowly on the table. A book bound in worn skin, pages lined with symbols that looked like they were etched in dried blood.
"Then we don't have time."
"What is that?" she asked, breathless.
He met her eyes.
"The only way to send it back."
Elora leaned forward and touched one of the symbols.
It burned her fingertip.
Clara's Apartment
She barely made it into the hallway before the lights above her began to burst, one by one, trailing her escape.
Pop.
Pop.
Pop.
And from her apartment, she heard the sound of something dragging. Heavy. Slow.
But worst of all familiar.
Like Emmanuel's boots. The ones he wore when they first met. He wasn't due back till morning. But the voice coming from behind her was his.
"Clara? Baby, why are you running? I'm home…"
She turned around slowly.
And what stood at the end of the hallway was wearing Emmanuel's skin.
But it wasn't him.