Aisha thought she had finally found the perfect apartment after constantly moving from place to place. The complex was located in a quiet neighbourhood, equipped with CCTV cameras, and fitted with extra locks on every door. However, there was something deeply unsettling about the mansion opposite her building. It was not merely abandoned; it stood there like a silent sentinel of dread, its windows boarded up and its once-grand façade a haunting reminder of a dark past.

The stories surrounding it were enough to send shivers down anyone’s spine. A wealthy elite family had supposedly lived there before every single member was murdered on the exact same night. Some locals claimed it was the work of rival parties, while others insisted it was an FBI operation. But the most chilling rumour was that the family had committed suicide while possessed by a supernatural force, punished for their past sins. Aisha tried to convince herself they were just urban legends, but she couldn’t deny that they gave her goosebumps.

Because of these sinister tales, the streets emptied as soon as the sun dipped below the horizon. Aisha knew the unwritten rule of returning home before twilight, but one night, a week after moving in, she got delayed at work. The street was pitch-black, and the flickering yellow streetlight did little to ease her growing anxiety. The area was eerily quiet, and an unfamiliar sense of dread washed over her, despite travelling this exact path every day.

As she passed the mansion, she heard footsteps behind her, perfectly matching her stride. Her heart leaped into her throat as a cold sweat broke out on her skin. She tried to dismiss it as her imagination, but the heavy, rhythmic thuds following her were impossible to ignore. To test her fear, she stopped dead in her tracks. The footsteps behind her halted a fraction of a second too late, and that was all the confirmation she needed. Aisha bolted towards her building as if there were no tomorrow, her breath coming in ragged gasps, her heart pounding violently in her chest.

Even after slipping inside the lobby, her ears rang with the echo of those steps. Shaking, she entered her apartment, bolted the door, and nervously approached the window to check the dark street below. There was no one there, just a vacant, soulless road.

She then turned her gaze directly towards the grand mansion. An uncanny, oppressive energy seemed to radiate from it. As she stared, a small red dot of light suddenly appeared in one of the mansion’s windows, on the exact same floor level as her own apartment. Her eyes widened. Curiosity briefly outweighed her terror as she tried to decipher what the light could be.

Suddenly, the red light beamed directly into her eyes. Aisha let out a strangled cry, a mix of a gasp and a sob, and instantly backed away, pulling the curtains shut. Her body trembled, and her head throbbed with a dull ache. She tried desperately to put the light out of her mind, but the memory burned behind her eyelids like a brand.

Her night was restless. She tossed and turned, completely unable to shake the feeling of being watched. Finally, she decided to peek through the curtains one last time just to reassure herself. The mansion appeared dark and still, until, within a second, the red dot flashed back on, pointed directly at her.

Terrified, Aisha recoiled, her breath coming in erratic gasps. She retreated under her blanket, covering herself from head to toe as she shivered in the dark.

She didn’t sleep a wink. The moment dawn bled a pale, sickly grey through the seams of her curtains, Aisha called her landlord. Voice shaking and choked with tears, she begged to break her lease immediately, offering no explanation other than that she could not stay another night. Baffled by her sheer desperation, the landlord reluctantly agreed.

Aisha didn’t care about her lost security deposit or the logistical nightmare of moving again. She worked frantically, jamming clothes into suitcases and zipping up boxes with trembling hands, eager only to escape the suffocating shadows of the apartment.

Yet, as she grabbed a jacket from the back of the chair near the window, something caught her eye. A tiny, vibrant red dot was resting on the windowpane, the exact spot she had peeked through hours before.

Aisha froze. Thinking it was another trick of the morning light, she reached out and ran her fingertip over the glass. The mark wasn’t a beam projected from across the street. It was an imprint, a hot, faint ember embedded directly within the glass itself, as though something had scorched it from the inside out.

The temperature in the room dropped instantly. A wave of dizzying nausea hit her as a repressed memory violently tore through her terror, unlocking what her mind had tried so desperately to block out from the night before.

When the red light had beamed into her eyes, she hadn’t just looked across the gap into an empty mansion. She had seen someone standing behind the boarded floor-to-ceiling windows of the abandoned house. The figure had been holding a single, blood-red flame in the palm of their hand. And as the illumination struck Aisha’s face, the shadow in the mansion had leaned into the light, revealing a pale, sharp face.

It was her own. The duplicate was rather staring directly back at Aisha, wearing a slow, terrifying smile.