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The door to the attic slams open, banging against the wall so hard I listen as the drywall crumbles to dust behind it.
I glance over my shoulder, watching as she crests the bottom stair, her bony hand raising toward me.
Click.
My eyes widen, and my hand falls to the door, seeing it locked.
It’s never locked.
As my fingers try to turn the lock, it’s cemented in place.
My palms start slamming on the door, and I let out a horrified scream as she slowly makes her way across the room.
I glance over my shoulder again, seeing her so close, only a few more steps and she’ll be on me. Her torn and tattered dress scrapes across the floor, her stringy hair falling in front of her face. Her mouth opens, and all I can see is a black void, drawing me in.
I dart away from the door, picking up an old milk crate turned into a chair, ready to chuck it out the window.
The crate is jerked above my head, and my feet are lifted off the ground. I swing my legs back and forth, letting out a horrifying scream as the woman walks up to me.
“Hazel? Hazel, why is the door locked!” Vera pounds on the door, and I let out a scream for her to hear me.
“Please, Vera! Help me!” I cry.
Footsteps pound on the porch out front, and then there is banging on the window. I twist and turn, but my head is locked in the direction of the woman. I can hear my friends, though, pounding against the glass, screaming my name.
“Hazel! Hazel!” Blaire shouts at the top of her lungs.
“Hazel, you need to do something! Oh my God, someone call the police!” Piper shouts.
“The police can’t help us. No one will. Don’t you see those things everywhere?” Vera snaps.
I grip the milk crate in my hand as I’m suspended in the air. She walks up to me, an evil, malicious look on her face. Her black eyes feel endless as they attempt to pull me in. She’s begging for me to come to her, tempting me to give in to the darkness.
Vera pounds on the window, and I can tell it’s her by the ferociousness in the banging. “You need to do something, Hazel.” Her voice is so full of promise, and I know that I don’t have any time left. If I let go of this crate, I know she will get me, with whatever that entails.
I can’t.
I can feel a cool, electric jolt as her fingers brush my ankle. She grasps on tight, and I’m tugged down, her rough, bony skin gripping me, the touch colder than ice.
Leaning my head back, I’m pulled in all different directions. I bite on the inside of my cheek, tasting metallic blood as it drips onto my tongue. I grip the wooden crate harder to hold on, but the wood cracks in my grip, splintering in my skin.
Not today.
I can feel her weakening, though she pulls harder, my body jerking toward the ground.
Piper, Blaire, and Vera scream my name, and I scream from the deepest depths of my chest, my throat ripping when I feel a decrepit body enveloping me.
“No!” My head tilts down, and I can see her mouth opened, the black abyss ready to swallow me whole. Her jaw is offset, tilted in an awkward, distorted position that has a shiver working its way up my body. I try to climb the broken crate, just as her nails dig into my legs. I let out a roar as my skin scrapes away, blood trailing down to my ankles.
Tears flood my temples as I tilt my head back again, my eyes on the ceiling as I use all the power in my soul to believe what I wish to be true, what I’m hoping for, thinking it into existence.
Suddenly, she lets out a scream so loud it rocks the walls. I listen as the glass of the windows splinters, spiderweb cracks splitting down the center.
The gravity holding me in the air releases, and the milk crate comes crashing down on my head. I let out a shout, my legs kicking back and forth as I plummet toward the ground.
My spine hits the floor first, my breath shooting from my lungs like a bullet.
I gasp in air, but it’s impossible to breathe any in. I choke, seeing glass shoot across me as the girls break a window. Vera climbs through, her body tumbling to the ground as she crawls over to me. My hand grips my throat, and I rub the skin as I choke, and choke, and choke on air.
