#didntheramble

The darkness is supposed to feel heavy. The sound effects make it atmospheric; the house is a good one, as haunted houses go, and even though Adam knows that this time he’s alone in the room, he doesn’t feel it.

Three more seconds until the door opens. The hairs prickle on the back of Adam’s neck. There’s no one else in here, he tells himself. The door creaks open. At the end of the hallway, a single candle flickers, but none of the light reaches Adam’s room.

The door is open. Adam knows the fire escape door is just on the left, just on the other side, but he doesn’t move.

He can’t shake the feeling that he’s not alone in here.

It feels like breath on the back of his neck. It feels like eyes on the side of his face. It feels like a warm spot, just out of his reach, like if he stepped forward, he’d be able to feel a presence…

Adam shakes his head. He’s being ridiculous, he needs to leave, wants to go home. He steps towards the door and—

A hand wraps around his upper arm. Adam screams.

Ronan laughs.

“Lynch!” Adam shouts. “For fuck’s sake!”

“Jesus, Parrish, relax.” Ronan slaps his back. “You spend every fucking day in here, man, don’t tell me the haunted house scared you.”

Adam jerks away from him. “You scared me, you asshole.” He doesn’t like to admit it, but he’s not about to let Ronan think he’s scared of the house. This isn’t the first time Lynch has pulled this kind of shit, and now it’s Adam’s turn to plan his revenge. “Come on,” he says.

Ronan snorts, and Adam feels him slide past him in the dark towards the door.

The door slams.

“Ronan,” Adam hisses.

“Are you gonna believe me if I say that wasn’t me?” he replies.

“No.”

“It wasn’t me,” Ronan says, anyway.

“The door doesn’t close by itself,” Adam points out. He knows this house, knows the pattern of traps and tricks. He knows when the—

A series of books tumble from the shelf. The wrong shelf. No. The right shelf—And then it’s the clock chimes—Or—He can’t focus like this. Goosebumps race down his spine again, and Ronan is standing too close to him, shuffling around between Adam and the mirror on the wall.

“Can you stop breathing down my neck?” he snaps at Ronan.

“Dude, I’m over here,” Ronan replies. And he is, Adam realises. He’s away across the room, Adam hears Ronan’s footsteps as he crosses to the door. The magnets holding it shut have locked in place, and when Ronan tries the handle, it doesn’t move.

“It won’t open,” Adam says. “We have to find the emergency escape controls, or we have to start the cycle again.”

“Start the cycle. The cycle never stopped,” a voice whispers in Adam’s ear. His deaf ear.

There’s crash as Ronan trips on Adam’s abandoned chair. “Shit! Motherfucker! Did you hear that?”

“I did,” Adam whispers. He shuffles through the dark, hands skimming along the warm wood of the table he sits at every evening. “Somewhere… There’s a…” His fingers skim over a tiny control panel and Adam finds the button for the emergency lights. He sighs in relief as the emergency lights come on and all the doors in the room release with soft pops.

Soft pops, that are lost beneath Ronan’s yelp.

“Parrish,” he says, and Adam has never, ever heard him sound afraid before. “Look.”

Adam looks. Ronan is pointing at the mirror behind him, the one that shows visual effects; twisted faces, strange shadows, all predictable horror tropes. That’s not what Adam sees when he looks at the mirror. His own gaunt, pale face stares back at him, through a word, written on in a rough, shaky hand.