Chapter 144 - One Hundred and Forty-Four
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Four
Sasha’s POV
I was running through the mansion’s hallways, my bare feet slapping against cold marble that seemed to stretch endlessly in every direction. The corridors twisted and turned, familiar and foreign at the same time, walls closing in while simultaneously expanding into impossible distances.
Emily was behind me. I could hear her dragging something, a wet scraping sound that echoed off the walls. When I risked a glance back, I saw her. Pale and rotting, her beautiful face half-decomposed, that white dress she’d been buried in stained with dirt and something darker. She held a knife, the blade catching moonlight that shouldn’t have existed in these windowless halls.
"Sasha," she whispered, her voice like wind through dead leaves. "Why didn’t you help me?"
"I didn’t know," I tried to say, but my voice wouldn’t work, came out as nothing but air.
"You knew. You all knew. And you did nothing."
She was getting closer. The knife raised. I ran faster but my legs felt like they were moving through water, each step taking forever while she glided behind me effortlessly.
The mansion changed around me. Hallways became rooms became hallways again. Doors appeared and disappeared. Emily’s rotting face was everywhere, in mirrors, in windows, in the shadows that moved like they were alive.
"You’re going to end up like me," she said, her breath cold on my neck. "Dead and forgotten. Another body this house swallowed."
The knife came down.
I woke up gasping, sweat soaking through my sheets, heart hammering against my ribs. My room was dark except for the digital clock that read 3:47 AM. Just a dream. Just another nightmare in the collection I’d been having since Emily died.