My gaze tears away from the doorway, and I turn my head to look up.
The winding staircase beside us disappears into absolute nothingness. No light reaches those steps, and the blackness there feels almost oily, like it’s waiting to pour down and devour us.
Mattie steps forward first, her cold fingers sliding into mine, gripping too tight, the way children do when they’re small and scared.
She tugs me after her as we ascend slowly, every creak of the wood exploding through the silence like gunshots.
The stairs feel rotten to the core, soft in places, as if they might collapse and swallow us into the guts of the building.
The higher we climb, the shallower my breath becomes, because I can’t see the others anymore. I can only feel their presence as terrifying shapes press too close.
We only reach what must be the fifth floor when the sound suddenly hits us—a distorted ice cream truck melody drifting up from the streets below.
Twisted notes flow like a child’s voice played backward through fucked speakers. The sound is corrupted, the fake cheer smeared into something menacing.
We halt on the landing, Mattie’s hand squeezing mine hard enough to bruise. As we both edge toward a brokenwindow, debris crunches under our feet, and we peer around it with one eye.
Down in the abandoned streets on the far left, sickly coloured lights sweep lazily through the rain—pink, yellow, and faded blue cutting weak paths through the gloom.
The ice cream truck crawls slowly between townhouses,its engine growling, as if clogged with something bad.
It feels like it’s searching the same way the shadow had searched.
It fucking knows we’re here already.
One of the bald girls, I think I heard her friend call her Lena, suddenly jerksbehind me. Her hands fly to her skull, fingers digging into her temples like she’s trying to claw something out.
“That noise,” she whispers, follow by a broken whimper. “Not that fucking noise. Please not that fucking noise.”
Her whole body starts shaking, knees buckling as she slides down the wall.
Lena’s pupils blown with pure panic, wide and unfocused. She rocks slightly, nails scraping against her scalp hard enough to draw blood.
“It’s okay, Lena,” her friend murmurs quietly as she kneels beside her. “It’s not real. None of this is real.”
“Yeah,” Mattie says, trying to sound steady. “We’ve all just had a really rough night. We need to keep moving and find somewhere to sleep.”
My eyes flash to Mattie's, my brows knitting hard, cause that sound is very fucking real.
The warped music is still swarming through the walls, faint but persistent, like sticky fingers pressing into my ears.
If it wasn’t real, how the hell did we all hear it? Why is Lena still tearing at her own skull, drawing bloody lines down her temples?
Lena’s breathing saws through the dark, and when her friend tries to pull her hands away from her face, Lena jerks like she’s been burned.
The ice cream truck’s tune seems to grow more distant, and I swallow the scream wanting to build in my throat.
We’re not safe here, we’ve never been safe.
“Whatever it was, it’s going,” the brunette whispers, “this is the best chance we’ll get to find somewhere for the night.”
Lena’s friend pulls her up as she weeps, wrapping an arm around her back as we decide to go up a few more levels.
???
When we find an empty room further down the hall, we bundle inside, quietly pulling the door almost shut, just ajar, so a faint ribbon of dim light can still bleed through, the windows boarded up.
It seems like a filthy bedroom, and thick dust coats everything, making every inhale sharp in my lungs.
