chapter 11
673 Words
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The wardrobe didn’t just whisper. It screamed.
Lena’s fingers froze on the cold brass handle. The sound ripped through her bedroom like broken glass. It was grandma’s voice.
“Lena, don’t open it!” The scream was desperate, aged, broken. “Forty years of screams! Don’t end up like me!”
The air turned to ice. Frost spread across the wardrobe doors. Lena stumbled back, heart hammering against her ribs. 2:17am blinked on her phone.
Then the wardrobe doors swung open by themselves.
But it wasn’t her bedroom she saw. It was a hallway. Endless. Dark. Hundreds of wooden doors stretched into blackness, each one shaking violently like something inside was trying to break free.
Black-Eye Lena stepped out of the darkness. Her smile was sad this time.
“You heard her,” she said softly. “Your grandma lied to you, little Keeper.”
Lena couldn’t breathe. “What do you mean lied?”
Black-Eye Lena pointed at the doors. Each one had a year carved into the wood. 1986. 1996. 2006. 2016. 2026.
“She wasn’t just keeping the Entity trapped,” Black-Eye Lena whispered. “She was screaming for forty years to do it.”
Black-Eye Lena walked to Door 1986 and pressed her palm against it. The wood became transparent like glass.
Lena gasped. Inside, a 17-year-old version of her grandma knelt on the floor. Young grandma was crying, blood running from her nose and ears. She held the wardrobe doors shut with both hands while something black and clawed pushed from the other side.
“Please,” young grandma sobbed. “Take me, not them. Take me for forty years.”
The Entity’s voice boomed: “DEAL.”
The doors slammed shut. Young grandma’s scream was cut off. But Lena could still hear it. A faint, endless scream echoing through all the other doors.
“She traded her life,” Black-Eye Lena said. “Forty years of pain. Forty years of hearing the Entity try to break free every single night. That’s what being Keeper means.”
Lena’s knees buckled. “Grandma… she never told me.”
“Of course not,” Black-Eye Lena smiled bitterly. “Keepers don’t tell. They just suffer in silence until they die.”
The temperature dropped more. Lena’s breath became visible. From deep inside the hallway, the Entity began to laugh.
“Now you understand, Lena,” it hissed. The voice came from every door at once. “Forty years, girl. Can you survive what your grandma survived? Can you scream for four decades and still be human?”
Lena clutched her chest. The diary in her pocket burned hot. She pulled it out with shaking hands.
New words were writing themselves across the page in red ink.
_The screams stop when the Keeper dies. The Entity stays trapped only while the Keeper suffers. Choose, Lena Okafor. Choose before 2:18am._
Lena looked up. Black-Eye Lena was pointing at Door 2026.
“Look,” she whispered.
Lena touched the door. It turned to glass too.
Inside was herself. But not the 17-year-old Lena. This Lena was old. Hair white. Back bent. Eyes hollow and red from crying. She was kneeling in front of a wardrobe, both hands pressed against the doors, screaming with blood on her lips.
The old Lena looked up and met young Lena’s eyes through the glass.
“Don’t,” old Lena mouthed. Blood dripped from her mouth. “Run.”
Lena stumbled back, dropping the diary. 2:17am became 2:17:55am on her phone. Five seconds left.
Black-Eye Lena picked up the diary and held it out.
“The world lives if you scream for forty years,” she said. “The world dies if you don’t. Those are your only choices, Keeper.”
Lena stared at the screaming old version of herself. Then she stared at the hallway full of shaking doors.
The Entity laughed louder. 2:17:58am.
Lena closed her eyes. Her lips moved.
“I choose—”
The wardrobe slammed shut before she could finish.
Darkness.
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- Writer
