**chapter14**##Evelyn didn’t scream.
565 Words
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She couldn’t.
Fear locked her lungs, pressed tight against her ribs as she stared at her daughter’s face—so familiar, yet utterly wrong.
“Lila,” she said again, firmer this time. “Come here. Step out of the closet.”
Lila didn’t move.
The closet felt… deeper than it should have been. The darkness inside it stretched back, swallowing the edges of her small body. The red crayon marks on the floor seemed to pulse in the candlelight, like something still alive.
“The Hollow Man doesn’t like waiting,” Lila said.
Her mouth moved too slowly for the words.
Evelyn took a step back.
“No,” she whispered. “You’re not him. You’re my daughter.”
At that, Lila tilted her head.
> “Then tell her,” the voice replied softly, “what you buried.”
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The candle went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
The temperature plunged further, and the air filled with the smell of damp wood and rot—old memories clawing their way back.
Evelyn’s heart pounded as the house *shifted*.
She felt it in the floorboards.
In the walls.
In the bones of the place.
The house remembered.
And it was ready to speak.
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The closet door creaked.
Evelyn fumbled for her phone, the flashlight snapping on just as Lila stepped forward.
Her eyes were black.
Not dark.
Not shadowed.
**Black.**
Like empty rooms.
Behind her, the closet was no longer a closet.
It was a hallway.
Long.
Narrow.
Lined with doors.
Each one marked with a child’s handprint.
Red.
Black.
Fading.
Evelyn’s knees buckled.
“No,” she sobbed. “I left that house. I saved her. I saved *us*.”
A shape shifted at the far end of the hall.
Tall.
Too thin.
Its limbs bent the wrong way, scraping the walls as it moved closer.
> “You ran,” the Hollow Man whispered.
>
> “You never *answered*.”
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Memories flooded her all at once.
The night the first child went missing.
The whispers in the walls.
The locked room she told herself *never existed*.
And the truth she had buried deeper than the house itself.
She hadn’t just ignored the knocking.
She had **closed the door**.
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Evelyn dropped to her knees.
“I was scared,” she cried. “I didn’t know it would follow. I didn’t know it would take them.”
The shadow stopped inches from Lila.
Its face leaned forward, splitting into a smile that was far too wide.
> “Fear is a choice,” it said.
>
> “So is silence.”
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The house groaned.
The hallway trembled.
The red crayon marks began to move—snaking back toward Evelyn, wrapping around her wrists like binding ropes.
Lila’s voice broke through, small and terrified.
“Mommy?”
Evelyn looked up.
Just for a moment, her daughter’s eyes were hers again.
That moment was all she needed.
“I’m here,” Evelyn said, tears streaming. “I won’t hide anymore.”
The shadow recoiled.
The house *listened*.
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Some secrets demand confession.
Others demand **payment**.
And as the hallway doors began to open—one by one—Evelyn realized the Hollow Man hadn’t come for Lila.
He had come to collect what was owed.
And this time…
The house would not let her leave.
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*(To be continued…)*
- Writer
