“They’re going to kill you.”
A glass table shatters with an inhuman scream. Suddenly there’s only the sound of breathing.
...
A girl alone in a cloud of dark twilight like blood. She’s covered in broken glass, and aches fill her chest and fists. Her panting breaths echo in the emptiness. Warm crimson washes over and burns her eyes. Brutal agony fills her head. A ceiling lamp swings side to side slowly, creaking, casting a dim red glow over the scene in heartbeat pulses:
Mangled human forms litter the carpeted floor. A sweet burnt smell fills the air and iron fills her nose. Horror screams in past-minute flashes. Rent flesh and snapping bones. Eyeballs bursting in skulls. Teeth scattered in pieces.
An army of footsteps. The door breaks open. Eternal light blinds, filling the space.
A girl in a room. It’s dark. Damned souls scream the halls, chaos of a thousand lives. Gnashing teeth. Clenched fists digging into palms. Siren songs of silence and great whispers.
Muttering. A door squeals open. Blinding light. A struggle, a pinch, silence. Darkness.
A girl is in the wind alone. Morning light scattered on treetops. Her hands are iron and pain. The forest takes her in. She washes in a cool, stinging brook and crimson reflections wash away in the water. She trudges through the stream in ill-fitting shoes.
Sun shines on a dark tower lifting through green hills, draws her closer for aching miles.
She brushes through dagger brambles and bone branches and emerges. A stone structure rises ahead in a dirt and gravel lot, surrounded by grasping claws of hanging wood. At the top of the steeple rests a cross of iron melted by rust, dry in the daylight.
Familiarity crawls up her spine. A small smile nearly streaks across her cheek as an age-old door of splintered wood appears, flaking powder-blue lead paint, surrounded by fieldstone.
A girl grasps the brass knob, forces it ajar. The portal opens.