Elias, Jordan, and Marcus had been friends since childhood. Now seventeen, they still carried their dares and reckless promises into places they had no business being. That night, the target was the abandoned house on the edge of town—an ugly, warehouse-shaped husk swallowed by woods and dead fields.

The windows gaped like empty sockets, the walls inside scrawled with graffiti. Names, symbols, crude jokes—layer on layer of proof that others had come here before, spray cans hissing bravado into the dark. If so many people had gone in and out unharmed, what was there to be afraid of?

Their footsteps echoed on bare concrete as their flashlights swept across steel beams and broken furniture. The air was stale, but the silence only sharpened their nerves.

Marcus muttered, “See? Just a dump.” Elias forced a smirk. “Yeah. Not exactly nightmare fuel.” Jordan said nothing. He stuck close, eyes darting at every shadow.

Then they found the basement.

The door groaned when Elias shoved it open, releasing a breath of damp, rotting air that coated their throats. Marcus gagged before he doubled over and vomited on the first step. The smell clung like sickness, wet and heavy.

“God, that smell…” Elias muttered, pulling his shirt over his nose.

Still, they went down.

The wooden steps groaned under their weight, each one sinking them deeper into the wet dark. Their flashlights cut weak cones through the air until the basement opened around them.

Their beams cut through the gloom—and froze.

Dolls. Dozens of them, strung from the ceiling with ropes knotted around their necks. Porcelain faces cracked, glassy eyes staring blankly, their bodies swaying as if stirred by invisible hands. Unlike the rest of the house, the basement walls were bare. No tags. No spray paint. No sign that anyone had dared linger here.

Then came the sound.

A shuffle. The shape of someone too far back in the shadows. Before any of them could speak, a deafening bang cracked through the basement like gunfire.

They ran.

Panic turned the house into a twisting labyrinth. Hallways stretched and bent the wrong way, doors slammed shut, windows exploded as they passed, shards raining down. Their flashlights jerked across walls scrawled with chaotic graffiti, but nothing looked familiar anymore.

And then—suddenly—they stumbled through the front door, gasping night air as if they had surfaced from drowning.

That was when the scream came.

“ELIAS! MARCUS! HELP! HELP!”

Jordan’s voice. From inside.

“HELP ME!”

They froze, hearts hammering as his cries fractured into raw panic. “GET OFF ME! LET GO OF ME!” His voice broke into ragged screams, wild, terrified. Then into something too animal, too desperate, to be human anymore.

And then—they ran and Jordan’s screams echoed into the night.