I stumbled out of the bathroom, slipping and almost falling. Fear engulfed me like it had never before as I looked for my phone like Velma looking for her glasses. The room got colder, like a suffocating chill making it even harder for me to breathe.

I sensed something creeping behind me in the darkness, like it was crawling on all fours. If this was a horror movie, this is the moment when I meet my end. Just as I closed my eyes and accepted my fate, I felt the entity stop. Its ice cold breath making its way into my face. The smell was horrible, like sulfur and rot. Something about it reminded me of hell.

“We’ve been waiting for you.” said the entity. The voice seemed layered this time, like it consisted of multiple other voices.

“Who – what are you?” I pleaded while my throat dried up, my voice barely making it out of my throat.

“You know who we are, what we are.” said the entity. Its eyes started glowing, like embers.

Confused and dazed, I kept looking for my phone for just a sliver of light. Anything to stop this overwhelming darkness. Then I found it, my hands shaking to turn the flashlight on. I finally managed to turn it on and saw nothing. No entity, no individual, no one else in the room besides me.

“Was it all just a hallucination? Just a really vivid lucid dream?” I thought to myself.

“No it isn’t David.” I heard the voice, right behind me.

I screamed and ran. Made my way to the front door and leaped my way out of this godforsaken room. The distance towards the elevator seemed never ending. The halls felt like it was closing in on me, to trap and crush me within the walls. I stopped in my tracks to catch my breath, lo and behold I found myself in front of the room with the red door. No humming this time, just hysterical laughter. The kind of laugh you hear from someone insane. It crawled out from behind the door in broken bursts; wet, breathless, wrong. Like someone laughing with a mouth full of blood.

My hand trembled as I reached for the handle. I didn’t want to touch it. I didn’t want to acknowledge it. But the laughter grew sharper, more aware, as if it knew I was standing there, listening, frozen.

“Don’t,” I whispered to myself. I heard the elevator ding somewhere behind me.

I turned to find out that the hallway had stretched, even longer than before. The lights flickered in uneven pulses, and with every blink, the red door creaked. The laughter followed, echoing off the walls, multiplying, overlapping.

I ran again.

My feet slapped against the floor, but the sound didn’t match my steps. It delayed, like someone else was running a second behind me. Breathing burned my lungs. My chest felt too tight, too small for the panic trying to claw its way out.

Then it all went quiet. No laughter. No footsteps. No hum. Just the soft click of a door unlocking behind me.

I turned around and the smell hit my nose, rust and rot and something human. A whisper brushed against my ear, the same one that woke me up.

“You weren’t supposed to leave, David.” It said, almost like it was being condescending.

I felt the bony hand grip my shoulders tight, and push me into the room.

The walls were filled with photographs, hundreds of them, layered and pinned like trophies. Faces stared back at me. Some were smiling, some crying and some already dead. Dates were scrawled beneath each image in a hurried, jagged hand.

My handwriting, my pen-strokes. My work of art.

I stepped back, my heel catching on something solid. I looked down and found a familiar box.

Inside it were wallets, watches, rings— trophies I carefully collected. I recognised it immediately. I remembered taking it. I remembered the weight of it in my palm. I remembered telling myself it would be the last time.

No,” I whispered. “This isn’t—this isn’t mine.”

The whisper laughed softly, right inside my skull.

On the far wall hung newspaper clippings, yellowed and curling at the edges. Missing. Unsolved. Another body found. My name appeared in none of them, but I could see myself in every line. The patterns. The gaps. The mistakes that were never traced back to me

There was a mirror nailed crookedly beside the bed.

I looked at it and saw my reflection smiling.

Behind me, the bony hand tightened. Not restraining—guiding. Proud.

“Do you remember me now? Do you remember US now?” its distorted face slowly creeping out of the darkness.

Memories flooded in like dirty water: the first circle drawn wrong, the ritual, the effort it took to conjure the entity from the depths of inferno. I hadn’t been killing, I didn’t need to, as it did that for me, through me.

The mirror across the room reflected me in the dimly lit room. My mouth moved, but the voice wasn’t mine.

“You promised me a home, David.”

The red door sealed itself shut.

And the laughter this time—was mine. As I embraced the darkness and let it consume me.

David is not here anymore.

Read part 1: https://tbsgraduates.net/writeup/fiction/cliffhanger-room-29a-part-1/