The taste of salt made her tongue tingle as a tear meandered its way to her mouth. The image was achingly beautiful, in a way that she didn’t usually consider anything about herself to be. Turning a smidge more toward the hoary light, Morgan chose a low aperture on the dial. Making eye contact with herself, she held the shutter down for a second until she felt the autofocus find purchase, and clicked. She took two more for good measure, already envisioning a black-and-white, grainy print she might make of it, when in the background, just over her shoulder, a spot of red peeked in and out of the frame.

Morgan jumped, dropping her camera onto the dresser top. She rescued it before it bounced onto the floor and clutched it to her chest like a newborn kitten as she tiptoed toward the hall.

The door to her old room was open. The edges of her vision darkened as she neared it. Her mouth felt dry. Her eyes watered as she fought the urge to cough, to not disturb the ghosts and the dust mites that had made this hovel their home.

She realized the cause of her tunnel vision now. Subconsciously, she’d lifted the camera to her face to only peer through the viewfinder. She gasped. A red balloon floated in the center of the floor, like the one that had waited for her in the smoky haze at The Ruins.

Morgan knelt. The balloon was tethered to a present wrapped in cheap holiday paper—white, patterned with the words NAUGHTY OR NICE in red calligraphy. A note was taped to the top of the box. It was a scrap of the same wrapping paper that had been folded, and on the blank inside was written TO: MY RUIN.

Her stomach seized. A cold sweat prickled at her hairline.

Morgan tore at a corner of the paper, wincing at how the empty house magnified the sound.

The box itself was nondescript, no name or shipping address to denote where it had come from. Inside, it held a black device. A portable DVD player, she realized, when she opened it. Stuck to the screen was a Post-it with two words that chilled Morgan’s blood: Wanna play?

Her breath rattled in her chest. The sudden gust of cold that swept in through the busted windows dug into her shoulders, keeping her in place. She pressed Play, and watched as all the walls she’d carefully constructed since returning to Black Harbor came crashing down.

She recognized the room depicted in the video. The walls were painted matte black, mostly, but for a white orb: a skull missing its bottom jaw. Words were spray-painted in white in a scrawl-like fashion. Shatter me. Beat me. Break me down. A bench on a chain protruded from beneath the half skull where Morgan, herself, sat. Shackles glinted around her wrists.