Margot glanced back into the hallway. Even with her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she was barely able to see more than a few inches past her arm. There was something there, though. Deep along the hallway, far past where she should have been able to see. A looming silhouette. Dark, muddy hair hanging across a naked torso. Bare feet with overlong nails dragging over the floorboards.

She backed into the dining room and shut the door in her wake. Her heart was running at a furious, unstoppable tempo. Kant’s warnings ran on a loop through her mind, the words becoming strung out and distorted, like her mother’s voice on the video tape’s damaged audio: “Don’t panic. Don’t panic. Don’t panic.”

She was very close to it. A screaming terror was boiling up inside of her, threatening to spill out, and for every time she repeated don’t panic inside her head, the urge became worse.

A door to her right slammed open. The laundry. The creature that had been outside had found its way in.

35

She backed up and raised her phone, praying the light wouldn’t shine through the gap under the door, praying the dead woman hadn’t seen her enter the room. The formal dining space was long. A large table—not ornate but solid and heavy—took up the room’s center, with fourteen chairs tucked in. There was no tablecloth, and the wood had gathered dust. This was a space for a much, much larger family. It likely hadn’t been used in decades.

Footsteps converged on her location, merging from two directions. Margot skirted the table. Large windows ran behind it. She dragged back the curtains from the nearest set and nearly choked.

Thick bars ran up the window, barely wide enough for Margot to fit her arm through.

Everyone tries the locks. The dead still get inside. But it’s a hard instinct to repress.

She clenched her teeth as she dropped the curtains back into place. One of the dead was at the door. The handle rattled. Margot backed away, her breath held, her arm raised high as she tried to see her environment.

There—!

The dining room had a second door. Tucked away in the back, behind a cutlery cabinet, it blended into the wall nearly perfectly except for its bronze handle. Margot wrenched it open.

A narrow passage stretched forward. Margot hadn’t seen it before, but there was no chance to examine it or to wonder where it led. The dining room’s main door groaned as it opened. A dry, rattling breath creaked out of the dead woman’s lungs.

Margot pulled the door closed behind her, wincing as she heard the latch click home. She crept backward on padded feet.