Amy had grown used to the sound of the car’s engine clicking itself to sleep. Each tick was a reminder of how close they were to freezing if the heater failed for good. Jack had tried to hide it, but she’d caught him once, holding his hand over her mouth while she slept, just to feel her breath, just to be sure.
The building across the street was their silent neighbour. It loomed, a carcass of stone and glass, its jagged windows glittering like broken teeth in the moonlight.
That night, when they closed their eyes, the cold of the car dissolved—and they were standing inside.
The ballroom breathed with forgotten splendour. A chandelier trembled overhead, shedding light that seemed older than the room itself. Figures spun in time with music that had no source. Amy was no longer shivering; she was in a gown the colour of fresh blood. Jack wore a suit stiff with dust, smelling faintly of rot.
Their bodies moved against their will, pulled into the waltz. Around them, couples glided—too smooth, too flawless. Their skin was waxen, their laughter fragile as glass.
Then Amy noticed the faceless. Smooth ovals of flesh turned toward her, eyeless, smiling without mouths.
The chandelier’s crystals chimed. The faceless dancers leaned closer.
Amy screamed as the room collapsed into blackness.
They woke shaking in the car. Both swore it had been a dream. Yet when Amy glanced in the rear-view mirror, her gown still shimmered faintly on her skin before dissolving into nothing.
The second night, it happened again.
They opened their eyes inside a parlour thick with dust. Candles flickered in brass holders, their flames weak, their light trembling. Amy sat at a piano, her hands poised on yellowed keys. Without her consent, her fingers began to play.
Each note bled into the air, and the portraits on the wall shifted. Dozens of painted figures stared down—aristocrats, soldiers, children—but their eyes were too dark, too alive.
As Amy played, the portraits stirred. Heads turned. Eyes blinked.
Jack staggered back as skeletal hands pressed against the painted surface, stretching it thin like wet paper. One face pushed forward, lips peeling into a grin too wide for the frame.
Amy struck a discordant note.
The portraits erupted in whispers, voices flooding the room. “Stay.” “Stay.” “Stay.”
And then—the parlour melted into shadow.
Amy woke in her nurse’s uniform. This time, she didn’t fight it.
The ward stank of antiseptic, of something sharp and metallic beneath it—blood. Beds lined the walls, their frames eaten with rust. Each mattress sagged under the weight of shadows.
Jack lay strapped to one, leather biting into his wrists. His mouth opened, but no sound escaped.
The doctor moved in silence. His mask was too tight against his face, stretching unnaturally as he smiled beneath it. In his hand gleamed a scalpel, reflecting the weak yellow glow of the lamps.
Amy’s hands shook so violently the tray she carried rattled. Tools clanged, but the doctor didn’t look up.
Instead, he lowered the scalpel to Jack’s chest.
Amy lunged forward to stop him, but her feet stuck fast to the floor as if the ward itself had swallowed them.
The scalpel pierced skin—
And the world shattered.
The room was endless. Mirrors lined every wall, every corner.
Amy and Jack stood in the centre, barefoot on cold stone, surrounded by themselves.
But the reflections were wrong. Some looked starved, their eyes black hollows. Others grinned with serrated teeth, twitching in grotesque mimicry. And some simply stood, still and patient, watching.
When Amy moved, the reflections didn’t follow.
One cracked. Then another. Splintering sounds echoed like breaking bones.
The whispers began—low, hungry, intimate. “You should never have stayed.”
The mirrors exploded, shards cutting skin, slicing the silence into screams.
Darkness fell.
Amy gasped awake—not in the car.
The air froze her lungs. She was standing barefoot in the car park, frost biting her skin. Their car was gone. The building loomed larger than ever, its windows gleaming with a strange, unnatural light.
“Jack—” she whispered.
But Jack wasn’t looking at her.
He stared at the glass doors of the building.
Amy followed his gaze.
Inside, their reflections stood, smiling. Alive. Whole. But they weren’t waiting. They turned, one by one, and walked deeper into the building’s shadows.
Amy clutched Jack’s arm, but the ground shifted under her feet, tilting like the world had changed its mind.
The truth sank into her bones: they had never escaped.
The building had claimed them.
The doors creaked open with a sound like welcome.
Amy’s breath caught.
They were already home.
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