(A/N): Sorry for the late update, guys... I couldn't update yesterday because I was out of station.
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After mimicking the voices of the missing victims, Megan slowly turned toward her friends.
Her eyes, still glowing eerily white, locked onto them.
"Don't let it in."
She rasped, her voice layered with unnatural tones.
Then, with a sharp crack of her neck snapping to the side,
Megan collapsed to the floor—
Unconscious.
The room erupted into panic as Abel and Nina rushed to check on her.
But before they could speak, Clover froze.
Bang!
Bang! Bang!
"____"
"____"
"____"
A desperate knocking came from the front door, followed by a trembling voice.
"Clover! Please—open the door! He's going to kill me!"
Clover's heart stopped.
It was her sister's voice—
Terrified, pleading, unmistakable.
"Melanie?"
She whispered, stumbling toward the door.
Abel grabbed her wrist.
"Clover—no! Remember what Megan said. It could be a trap."
"You didn't hear it."
Clover replied, her voice shaking.
"That was her. I know it was. She's out there alone!"
Nina stepped forward.
"And Megan said not to let it in. What if that voice is it?"
Clover stood paralysed, tears in her eyes, torn between hope and fear.
Her sister's cries continued, each one chipping away at her reason.
The door stood inches away.
The decision, one heartbeat away.
"It could be a trick,"
Nina added, her eyes darting toward the boarded-up windows.
"You said it sounded like your sister, but—what if that thing is using her voice?"
Clover shook her head, eyes wide and brimming with tears.
"No… I know her voice. That was Melanie. I swear—it was her. She sounded terrified."
Before they could say anything more, a bloodcurdling scream rang out from the other side of the door—
Melanie's scream.
AHHHHHH!
"HELP ME! PLEASE! NO—PLEASE, DON'T—!"
The sound of a heavy object striking flesh echoed through the house, followed by frantic banging and her voice screaming Clover's name.
That was all Clover needed.
"No! I'm not letting her die because we hesitated!"
She cried, wrenching free of the others' grip.
"Clover, wait—!"
But it was too late.
She threw the bolt back and flung open the door.
The screaming stopped.
Silence.
"____"
"____"
"____"
A haunting, suffocating silence.
There was no one outside.
No Melanie.
No attacker.
Just fog.
But what froze them all was the sight ahead:
Directly across from the house—
Where there had been only empty woods—
Stood another house.
Old. Crooked.
Like it had been standing there for centuries.
And yet… it hadn't been there before.
Just as they all stepped out of the house in confusion,
An invisible force suddenly slammed into them like a hurricane.
Abel, Nina, and Max were hurled backwards into the old house,
THUD.
The door slammed shut and locked with a loud clang before anyone could react.
Only Clover remained outside.
"CLOVER!"
Abel shouted, slamming his fists against the window.
"HELP ME!"
Clover screamed, digging her heels into the mud as an unseen force dragged her across the ground,
Inch by inch, toward the strange house that had appeared from nowhere.
She clawed at the wet earth, kicking, screaming, grabbing at tree roots—
Anything—
But it was useless.
Her nails tore against the stone path as she was dragged through the fog and pulled into the doorway of the second house.
And just like that, the door closed behind her.
Gone.
Inside the house, the others froze in panic.
"OPEN IT!"
Nina screamed, running toward the front door.
Abel joined her, rattling the knob, throwing his shoulder against the wood.
"Clover's in there! We have to go after her!"
But Max stepped in front of the door, arms outstretched.
"No! We can't,"
He said firmly.
"What do you mean we can't?"
Nina snapped.
"She's out there—alone!"
"She's not alone,"
Max said grimly.
"It has her."
The room fell silent.
"____"
"____"
"____"
He looked at them all, his voice low but steady.
"Don't you get it? That house… it wasn't there before. Whatever is out there—it wants us to follow. This is how it works. It lures us in one by one. If we open that door now… We'll all die."
"I have a plan,"
He said.
"I'll take the car, drive out of here, and bring help. People who know how to deal with this kind of thing. Maybe the police, maybe… someone."
Abel scoffed.
"You think we can get out?"
He shouted, voice rising.
"There's no out, Max! We've been trapped in a loop. We've seen people die and come back! This isn't just missing posters and weird fog—this is something else entirely!"
Max stayed calm.
"I'm aware. But if we all charge out blindly, we'll just end up dead too. Let me try—just me. I'll find help and come back for Clover."
"Then go,"
Abel snapped.
"But I'm not sitting around waiting for whatever that thing is to come back."
Without another word, he stormed toward the front door, grabbed the handle—
And to everyone's shock, it opened easily.
"Abel, wait—!"
Nina called out.
But Abel had already stepped outside, vanishing into the dense fog.
There was a heavy silence in the room.
Nina turned on Max, furious.
"How can you be so cold? She's our friend, Max. She risked everything to find her sister—and now we just leave her?!"
"I'm not leaving her."
Max said, voice strained but controlled.
"I'm trying to save her. But if we go out like this, one by one, we'll be picked off. We need a real plan, real backup."
Nina's eyes filled with tears, but she didn't say anything.
Max reached out gently.
"Come with me. Please. We'll get help. We'll come back. And we'll save Clover—for real."
After a moment, Nina nodded, though her jaw was tight with emotion.
"Okay,"
She whispered.
"But if we don't come back soon… she's dead."
Max nodded.
Nod~
"Then we'd better move fast."
Meanwhile, Clover, who had been dragged into the other house by the invisible force, stumbled to her feet.
The air was cold and heavy, thick with a strange, metallic scent.
The house was gloomy and suffocating, its walls lined with odd, tribal masks—
Each twisted in expressions of agony, fury, or grotesque laughter.
A chill ran down her spine as their empty eyes seemed to follow her.
Then she saw it.
An old woman sat hunched in a creaking wooden chair, her back turned to Clover, facing a static-filled TV screen that flickered with glitchy, broken images.
The woman wore a large oxygen mask strapped to her face, and every breath she took sounded like a mechanical wheeze echoing through the room.
"____"
Something felt horribly wrong.
Clover swallowed hard and slowly, carefully, and began to move toward the door.
She kept her steps light, her breath shallow, her heartbeat deafening in her ears.
Reaching the door, she gripped the knob and twisted—
Once, twice, three times. Nothing. It wouldn't budge.
And then—
The woman moved.
The creaking of bones accompanied her slow turn in the chair.
Still holding the oxygen mask,
She turned her head unnaturally far, revealing a pale, wrinkled face stretched into an evil, unnatural smile.
Clover's heart jumped into her throat.
"P-please,"
She begged, backing away.
"Don't hurt me. I didn't do anything—please just let me go."
But the woman chuckled hoarsely.
"No one escapes Glore Valley, dear... All of you... You are going to die."
Before Clover could react, the old woman lunged, impossibly fast.
Her bony hands slammed into Clover's shoulders, knocking her to the floor.
She forced the oxygen mask onto Clover's face.
Clover struggled, panicked—
But as she inhaled, a strange numbness spread through her body.
Her limbs felt heavy, her vision blurry.
Her pulse slowed.
And then, something horrifying happened.
As Clover faded into unconsciousness, she watched in horror as the old woman began to shrivel, her skin cracking, crumbling.
Her body grew even older, more brittle—
Until finally, with a final rasp of breath, she collapsed into a pile of ash.
Clover lay still, the oxygen mask hissing softly on her face.
Clover—
Who had moments ago been struggling for her life—
Suddenly fell silent.
"____"
Her eyes snapped open, but they were no longer her own.
They had turned pitch black, void of any humanity.
A wide, unsettling grin stretched across her face as she slowly sat up,
And from her lips came a dark, guttural chuckle that grew into a full-blown evil laugh.
The room echoed with the sound, unnatural and bone-chilling.
Clover was no longer Clover.
She had been possessed.
Meanwhile, outside…
Max and Nina had reached the car.
Rain continued to pour in violent sheets, lightning split the sky with loud cracks, and the muddy road trembled under the weight of the storm.
Max jumped into the driver's seat and started the car.
The engine sputtered—
Then roared to life.
"Let's go!"
He muttered.
But Nina hesitated.
She looked back toward the house, torn with guilt and dread.
"Max, we can't just leave them. We have to help Abel… and Clover—we don't even know what's happening to her!"
Max didn't answer.
"____"
Without a word, he slammed the car into reverse and jerked the wheel.
The tires spun through the wet ground, and the vehicle shot backwards down the road and into the shadowy woods, ignoring Nina's pleas.
"Max!"
She shouted.
"STOP THE DAMN CAR!"
"No,"
He said, eyes locked forward.
"If we stay, we die."
As they drove deeper into the storm, Nina tried to call for help.
She clutched her phone tightly, holding it up toward the windshield.
The signal bar blinked once.
One bar.
"Yes!"
She whispered, frantically dialling the emergency line.
The call connected.
The line rang.
"Hello? Hello?! This is Nina! We're stuck in Glore Valley—there's something wrong here! We need help, please—people are dying!"
A calm male voice answered.
"Oh, we know exactly where you are, Nina."
Her blood ran cold.
"Wh-what?"
She stammered.
"Who… who is this?"
The voice on the other end wasn't a police officer.
"You really shouldn't have called."
The voice continued, now distorted—
Glitching, almost digital.
"Now we know where to find you."
The line went dead.
The phone screen flickered, then shattered in Nina's hand—seemingly without reason.
She screamed.
Max's eyes widened, and his grip on the steering wheel tightened.
Something—
Or someone—
Was watching them.
Max was speeding through the rain-drenched road, windshield wipers struggling to keep up with the downpour.
Nina sat beside him, trembling from the call she had just received—
Her phone was still sparking with broken glass in her hand.
Suddenly—
SCREEEECH!
The car came to a violent halt as Max slammed on the brakes, tires skidding against the soaked mud.
Nina jerked forward, heart in her throat.
"What the hell—"
She started, but then she saw it too.
Up ahead in the headlights, a towering shadow loomed across the road.
It wasn't human.
It stood very tall, limbs unnaturally long, fingers that scraped the ground.
Its body was wrapped in rags and black mist, head tilted sideways like it was studying them.
Two glowing white dots marked its eyes, and even from a distance, they could feel its malice pressing down on their chests.
Max's face drained of all colour.
"Nope. Nope. We're going back."
He yanked the gear into reverse and slammed the pedal.
The car spun around and roared back toward the house in Glore Valley.
The rain seemed to follow them like a living thing.
Just as the house came into view, Max exhaled in relief.
"We're almost there—"
CRASH!!!
Blood splattered across Nina's face.
She gasped and turned in horror.
The window next to Max had shattered, and in that moment, Max's body slumped lifelessly against the steering wheel—
His throat was sliced open.
Standing outside the broken window was the masked man from before.
His emotionless, cracked porcelain mask stared back at Nina through the broken glass, unmoving.
In one hand, he held a bloodied machete.
Nina couldn't scream.
Couldn't move.
"____"
Paralysed with fear, her breath shallow,
She watched as the masked figure circled the car slowly, methodically, like a predator playing with prey.
He stopped in front of the passenger door.
Their eyes met through the glass.
He raised the machete.
SMASH!
Meanwhile…
Back in the second house—
The one Clover had been dragged into—
Abel pushed open the creaking door, his voice echoing into the darkness.
"Clover? Are you here?"
No response.
"____"
"____"
Only silence.
He stepped inside, his shoes creaking across the dusty floorboards.
The house was colder than before, as if the very air resisted his presence.
The glitching TV still buzzed in the corner, flickering with static and images too fast to follow.
Abel's eyes landed on a pile of ash on the floor near a toppled chair, but he didn't think much of it—
His concern was with Clover.
"Clover!"
He called again, louder this time.
Still nothing.
"____"
As he moved deeper into the house, his eyes caught a cluttered table filled with scattered papers.
Curiously, he picked them up—
Charts of the moon's lunar cycle, phases meticulously circled.
Beneath them were crude anatomical sketches of werewolves, their transformations tied to specific phases of the moon.
Abel furrowed his brows.
"What is this place...?"
He moved on, entering a dimly lit room.
A swing chair creaked back and forth on its own.
"Okay, creepy,"
He muttered, stepping forward to stop it with his hand.
The chair stilled.
THUD.
He froze.
Spinning around, he saw it—
A doll now sat in the chair he had just emptied.
Its eyes were buttoned shut, and its stitched smile grinned too wide.
Letting out a shaky sigh, he scoffed.
Sigh~
"Just a doll."
Annoyed, he picked it up and kicked it across the room.
It landed with a soft thump in the shadows.
But when Abel turned back—
Clover stood in front of him.
"____"
Only… it wasn't the Clover he knew.
She wore one of the disturbing ceremonial masks that had unnerved her earlier.
Its grotesque smile curved unnaturally.
Her eyes—
No longer hers—
They were hollow black voids, soulless and still.
"Clover?"
Abel whispered, stepping back.
"What... what happened to you? Why are you wearing that?"
She didn't speak.
"____"
Instead, with an unnatural calm,
She reached out and, before he could react—
Ripped open Abel's throat with her bare hands.
Blood sprayed across the walls.
He gasped, gurgled, and collapsed—
Dead on the spot.
Clover tilted her head… and began to laugh.
HAHAHAHA!
Not a human laugh.
Something guttural.
Twisted. Inhuman.
Possessed Clover stepped out of the house and started sprinting back toward the old house where everything began—
Her movements were erratic, limbs almost breaking from the unnatural force driving them.
But before she could reach the porch—
CRASH!
A speeding car slammed into her, sending her body flying through the air and landing in a grotesque heap on the muddy ground.
She didn't move again.
"____"
Smoke rose from the dented hood of the car.
The driver's door creaked open.
Out stepped the masked killer, blade in hand.
Clover dies there, and the beginning of another loop.
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(Author's POV)
(A/N):
Thanks for reading the chapter!
Please give a review and power stone!!!