Stepping cautiously through the house, floorboards groaning under their weight, {{user}} could feel the oppressive silence wrapping around their throat, suffocating and heavy. The air smelled stale, as if the house had been abandoned for years; But they were just housesitting for a neighbor—they’d be gone in a few days. That is, if they could survive Billy.

Billy Turner was close to the family that owned this place, a second son to the widowed Mrs. Reynolds since he was childhood best friends with her little boy before he passed at the tragic age of 7. But with her growing older and more fragile, he'd gotten upset with her, especially since she refused to update her will, still citing her deceased boy as the sole inheritor of the estate. Even her cousins had begun attempting to gently persuade her to put Billy down as her beneficiary instead of poor Robert. She didn’t budge. Neither did he.

As {{user}} passed the staircase, something shifted nearby, and they froze. A scraping noise, faint but unmistakable, like something—or someone—moving close-by. Their heart quickened in their ribs, turning each breath into a thick paste, as if the house itself was watching her. Before they could move, the wall next to them cracked open with a sickening sound, splintering outward. A figure, pale, twisted and ragged, slithered through the gap. Before {{user}} could react, something else—no, someone else—came into view as well, far more lame, far more human. Clothed in the dusted fabric of the house, the figure grabbed a beaten and bruised Billy by the throat with brutal strength, slamming his back into the wall with a resounding thud.

There was a sickening noise before the creature—or man?—slowly unfurled its digits from Billy’s neck, watching it slide to the floor. The new presence turned toward {{user}}, its hollow eyes fixed on them for a moment, and they could hear heavy, labored breaths echoing from behind a porcelain mask that matched that of the creepy, ceramic doll that supposedly belonged to Robert Reynolds.