Elora ran.
The halls twisted as she moved, turning into corridors she didn't recognize walls covered in old, peeling wallpaper, soaked with blood. Not fresh. Old. Rotten. The kind of blood that had memory.
She could hear the house breathing pulsing with every step she took. And with every turn, whispers followed. Names… voices… memories she never lived but somehow knew.
Emmanuel's voice screamed her name from down the corridor.
"Elora! Don't let it in!"
She reached the door at the end, her fingers trembling as she twisted the knob.
Inside was a room she shouldn't have seen.
It was her childhood bedroom.
But it wasn't right.
A figure sat on the bed.
Clara.
Dead-eyed. Smiling.
She didn't blink. Didn't speak. Just smiled.
"Clara?" Elora's voice cracked.
But Clara wasn't Clara. Her head tilted to the side, unnaturally.
"You remember now, don't you?"
Elora shook her head. "No!....."
"You lit the fire."
Silence.
Time stopped.
"You killed us all."
Flashback
The fire. The screams. Emmanuel dragging Clara out. Elora holding the matchstick. Crying. Screaming. But not in fear in rage.
Her mother's voice yelling behind a closed door. Her father's ghost nowhere in sight. Her hands shaking. The whisper in her ear.
"End it."
She didn't mean to.
But she did.
She had burned the house down.
She had brought it back.
The house wasn't cursed. She was.
The walls shook.
The thing that wore Clara's skin rose from the bed, limbs cracking, bones stretching like a spider unfolding.
"Finish what you started, Elora."
Behind her, Rev. Graves stood in the hallway, Bible in one hand, gun in the other.
He aimed at Elora.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. "You're the key."
BANG.